Appleby Talks Again (3 page)

“I wonder what Lady Elizabeth Poole would make of that? To think of one of her descendants become a common player would probably make her turn in her grave.” Judith looked at Mr Buttery with sudden indiscreet mischief. “But perhaps it’s that sort of thing that Lady Elizabeth is by way of doing – turning in her grave, or even rising from it on stated occasions to dance a pavane or a saraband?”

Mr. Buttery shook his head. “No, no, my dear madam. That is an error – I am bound to say a grave error.” He picked up his bell again and tinkled it, as if here was something in itself calling for the rite in which he proposed to engage. “We must not suppose that the souls of virtuous persons, or their bodies either, engage in any such pranks. We are not in any sense confronted with true apparitions. Goblins are the explanation. I have not the slightest doubt of it.”

“It is a most interesting supposition.” Appleby interposed this with gravity. “But just
what
do they explain? You haven’t yet told us that. We have only gathered, so far, that last night you witnessed something remarkable. How did it happen? Were you called out to it?”

“Not precisely.” For the third time Mr Buttery tinkled his bell, but on this occasion what appeared to prompt the action was mild discomfiture. “The fact is that, round about midnight, I was on the river. For purposes of meditation, and on a fine summer night, it may confidently be recommended.”

“Particularly when there is no moon?”

“Oh, most decidedly so. There is a great deal of distraction in a handsome moon.”

“I see.” Appleby felt constrained to conclude that – astonishing as the fact must seem – this reverend old parson’s nocturnal occasions were not unconnected with possessing himself of other’s people’s trout. Perhaps Mr Buttery was an instance of the shocking poverty of the rural clergy prompting to a life of crime. Perhaps he simply derived entertainment from outwitting, with arts learnt in boyhood, those unpleasant commercial people from London. “And being on the river, sir, you saw this spectral ball?”

“I did indeed.”

“I believe you said that the occurrence of something of the sort is a traditional belief among some of the older people in these parts. Perhaps you had been thinking of it yourself?”

“Decidedly not. My walk from the rectory to the river is by a path from which there is some view of the back of the house, and I could just dimly distinguish its outline against the sky. I recall simply reflecting how lonely and deserted it seemed.”

“There were no lights?”

“None. Anything of the sort would have attracted my attention and interest at once. For the astonishing spectacle which I saw later I was utterly unprepared. It came upon me, indeed, with the suddenness of a
coup de théâtre
.” Mr Buttery paused upon this phrase with some satisfaction. “I was dropping quietly – I may say very quietly – down the stream in my dinghy. My thoughts were occupied with – um – entirely other matters. In fact I was meditating” – Mr Buttery, who seemed to feel that verisimilitude and conviction called here for more specific statement, visibly paused for inspiration – “I was meditating upon the mutability of human affairs.”

“A very proper subject for reflection, sir. And then?”

“I came round the little bend that brings Water Poole into view. It was all lit up.”

“All?”

“Certainly this hall and its adjacent apartments. And there were lights on the terrace and – I think – the lawn. I was extremely startled.”

“Naturally. And what was your first thought?”

Mr Buttery considered. “It must appear very absurd now – but undoubtedly it was of my own situation. I was struck by the impropriety and – er – inexplicability of my dropping down, at that hour, upon some private occasion. And then I realised that there could
be
no private occasion. For Water Poole, as you have yourselves seen, is an empty shell. Indeed, there could be no natural explanation whatever. And as soon as I had made this reflection, I noticed the peculiar character of the light. It was
not
that of a normally illuminated mansion.”

“Have you ever seen this particular mansion lit up before?”

“Certainly – although it is now long ago. As you may notice, there is an old electrical installation of sorts. But the light last night was utterly different.”

Appleby had walked to a window and was looking out thoughtfully over the lawn and the stream beyond. “Can you describe it?” he asked.

“A low, soft, golden light. The effect was strikingly beautiful.”

“I see. And you have reason to believe that goblins command that sort of thing?” Appleby put this question with gravity. “I am myself inclined to think of goblins as restricted to glow-worms. But glow-worms would scarcely be equal to the job.”

“Decidedly not. Glow-worms could not possibly illuminate a large party of ladies and gentlemen.”

“And that was what you saw?”

“That was what I appeared to see. And I need scarcely remark that their costume was Caroline. It would not be correct to say that the effect was as of a canvas by Van Dyck – since, you see, from my point of view, it was all in miniature and in open air. But if you may suppose Van Dyck to have painted something in the manner of Watteau’s
fêtes champêtres
you have the impression exactly.” Mr Buttery smiled ingenuously over this triumph of precision. “I may perhaps be permitted to mention that I possess a great love of the visual arts.”

“No doubt.” Appleby was looking at the old clergyman in some perplexity. “Did you think to study this particular example at closer quarters?”

“I must confess that I did not. There they were – Caroline ladies and gentlemen strolling on the terrace and across the lawn. Behind them – here in this hall – I had an impression of dancing, and strains of music were definitely detectable. My mental state was peculiar. I recollected the circumstances of Lady Elizabeth’s ball but not, oddly enough, the legend of its periodical re-enactment. As is so frequently the case during an actual encounter with supernatural appearances, no thought of the supernatural formed itself clearly in my head. I accused myself of inebriety.”

“It is a thought that might come to anyone. But I am sure there was no justification for it.”

“Reflection shows me that there was not. It is true that I had ventured upon a glass of burgundy at dinner, followed by a little madeira. But I hardly consider–”

“Plainly it is not a supposition with which you need distress yourself.” Appleby contrived a stern glance at Judith, who was displaying some signs of amusement at this exhibition of her husband’s professional manner. “Did you think of anything else?”

“Certainly. I thought of those two Oxford ladies – learned and sensible women, they appear to have been – who believed themselves to have had an adventure with time at Versailles. You no doubt recall their story. They saw Marie Antoinette. It seemed possible that I had met a similar kink in the centuries and was back with the real Lady Elizabeth Poole.”

“I believe there’s decidedly something in that.” It was Judith who interposed, and she spoke with decision. “It goes with what I felt myself when I entered this hall. It goes with what I
still
feel.” She gave her husband a glance of some defiance. “Time has been squashed up like a concertina, and it’s only just expanding again to the dimensions familiar to us. I fancy that – ever so faintly – I can hear that music now. I fancy I can hear those people: the sound of their voices and the rustle of their silks. And I know I can smell them.”

“Smell them?” Appleby was positively startled by this primitive assertion.

“Yes, John. The powdered hair. The scents –
their
scents. And their mere seventeenth-century humanity too. Mr Buttery caught them and we just missed them. I’m sure of it.”

“I think Mr Buttery was not without a feeling that they might catch him.” Appleby offered this rather dryly. “Isn’t it so, sir?”

For a moment Mr Buttery looked quite startled. And then he blandly smiled. “I must confess to having been under that uneasiness. I should hate to be caught. By goblins, that is to say. Not unnaturally, they are particularly malevolently disposed to persons of my cloth.” He produced a box of matches and lit his candle. “But I fancy that we can get decidedly on top of them now.”

Mr Buttery was evidently about to open his campaign. Whether the manner of his announcing this constituted an invitation to participate was obscure, and Appleby appeared to feel that it was rather a tactful withdrawal that was indicated. The proper deportment for spectators during a ceremony of exorcism is not easy to hit upon impromptu, and his decision was perhaps occasioned merely by this. Judith, whose natural bent was for trying anything once, followed him from the hall with some reluctance. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she presently asked.

“Part of it, at least – or part of it as he believes it to be. Presumably he simply turned his dinghy round and stole away. And now with daylight and the paraphernalia collected in that box he’s nerved himself to come back again. Or at least that’s the obvious picture. And I can’t think he’s making up that queer vision. Certainly you didn’t seem to think he was.”

Judith frowned. “I believe – I don’t know why – that all these people were here.”

“Did I say you ought to have become a historical novelist? Perhaps you ought to have become a detective. Would you care to be one now?”

“Assisting Scotland Yard?” She glanced at him cautiously, for it was not always easy to tell when John was being serious. “I don’t mind having a go.”

“Then just keep an eye on our reverend friend while I make another cast round the place.”

Judith was puzzled. “Does the old gentleman really need keeping an eye on?”

“I don’t quite know. He may be nothing more than an endearing clerical eccentric, much beloved by all the parish. But I have my doubts.”

“Very well. I expect he’ll relish a bit of an audience.” And Judith slipped back into the hall.

Water Poole would take some time to explore systematically, and Appleby contented himself for the moment with a prowl through some of the neighbouring rooms. The place was none of his business. He had been decidedly aware of this as Judith had driven him up to it, and he told himself that nothing had happened since to alter this basic fact. Even a policeman should be ready to admit that not everything enigmatical is necessarily nefarious. Even if Mr Buttery was a poacher, it was not a matter of which an Assistant Commissioner from Scotland Yard need take any very active notice. Nor ought he to concern himself with investigating an elaborate joke; to do so, indeed, was only to invite annoyance or ridicule. But yet…

He had paused in a large and gloomy chamber which had been converted at some period to the uses of a library. There were handsome shelves for many thousands of books, but they now harboured nothing but dust. Dust was thick on them, and thick on the floor. The sight was melancholy – but for Appleby it was finally and definitively informative. He stirred the dust with his toe. It was the first thick dust upon which he had come. One can’t, in a hurry, do anything much with an enormous empty library. So it had been left out. It had been left out of the joke. But the hall and one or two rooms around it had been dusted. They had been needed for the fun.

The joke…the fun. Appleby prowled on, dissatisfied. There was one very simple and very obvious explanation of Mr Buttery’s vision. Water Poole had been used for a fancy-dress ball. Or better perhaps, for a sort of theatrical party or green-room rag. The owner, young Richard Poole, was an actor. It seemed very probable that the old legend connected with his house had prompted him to organise what he conceived to be an appropriate entertainment there for his friends. This was at least a more tenable theory than Mr Buttery’s of a kink in time.

As for goblins – Appleby thought – they don’t drop cigarette ash. They don’t leave candle-wax on mantelpieces. They don’t – he had moved once more into the open air – presumably leave a lawn something the worse for wear. When Judith had imagined herself to be obscurely sensing presences in the house, she had merely been letting these and other prosaic evidences of the late party filter unnoticed into her imagination. A perfectly commonplace if rather elaborate joke…

But goblins disappear at dawn, and nobody sees them go. The cock crows, whereupon they fade and vanish. And something very like this had happened. Any sort of large party creates a good deal of litter; but the litter left by this party was so inconsiderable that a trained eye was required to perceive it. There had been a deliberate care taken to obliterate all traces of whatever proceedings had been going forward. The probability appeared to be that, but for the curious nocturnal habits of the local rector, nobody except the actual participants would have had any knowledge of the affair.

This was queer. It suggested that perhaps Richard Poole bore no responsibility in the matter. It was a joke unobtrusively perpetrated, followed by a careful – and astonishingly rapid – tidy-up. Why? Appleby shook his head as he found himself confronted with this tiresome little, yet perpetually fascinating, key-word of his profession.
Why?
There must be a reason. Probably it was a harmless reason. Perhaps it was a quite stupid and uninteresting reason, and any beguilement an explanation seemed to promise was no more than an effect of the romantic associations of this lonely and mouldering house. Still, explanation must be possible. There was a reason, if it could be found.

He had strolled down to the river again. It must, after all, be termed something more than a stream – for although narrow, it was quite deep and decidedly navigable. One could bring up a motor-boat – say one of those substantially powered house-boat affairs that were now so popular on the Thames itself… It struck him that he had seen no boathouse. Yet this was something which Water Poole must surely possess. The absence of anything of the sort intrigued him. He began to poke about.

There was certainly no boathouse on the bank – but the reason, when after some minutes’ search he found it, was interesting. An arm of the river – it was in fact a cut, but of evident antiquity and perhaps indeed as old as the mansion itself – passed clean under one wing of the house. Each end was secured by an iron grille which extended perhaps a couple of feet below the level of the water. That by which the cut emerged had quite clearly been undisturbed for generations. But at the entrance the state of affairs was different. The grille was rusty and bore every appearance of disuse – yet as Appleby peered at it he had his doubts. It was secured by an enormous padlock, plainly manufactured in early Victorian times – and on this too the rust was thick. Appleby however found it of considerable interest, and performed some complicated gymnastic manoeuvres in order to get a hand on it. When he rose and walked away he was softly whistling a melancholy little stave of his own composition. Judith would have marked the sign. His spirits were rising.