There Came Both Mist and Snow (11 page)

Leader, to whom I addressed this question, appeared to think it possible that the answer might be found in his notebook. It was left to Appleby to speak.

‘Simply, Mr Ferryman, that you are the only person in this house about whom we have any information. You make a natural starting point.’ Young Mr Appleby met my slight frown with an amiable and deferential smile. ‘I understand that you are a relation, but a distant one. You will take an objective view. And – I needn’t hint – a penetrating one. An investigation of this sort is largely a matter of probing human conduct, of penetrating human character. Here you are our natural ally – and one of the most effective we could find in England, if I may be impertinent enough to say so.’

I had no doubt of the sufficiency of his impertinence – nor that it was accompanied by considerable intelligence. He knew that flattery may usefully be applied to the most sophisticated, particularly if not laboriously dissimulated. As the sweet barb passes the intellect notes it for what it is; it strikes down nevertheless to that uncritical level where self-esteem is all. ‘If you need literary counsel,’ I said, ‘you would do better to co-opt Mrs Chigwidden.’ But I felt pleased all the same.

Appleby treated my reply as a very good joke indeed, and was backed by Leader with a rather belated chuckle. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘you would wish to exercise a certain discretion in discussing people you know. On the other hand you will certainly want to help.’

There was no certainty in it. I do not approve of the police. My desire was entirely that the whole horrible business should be hushed up. Nevertheless I heard myself say: ‘Of course I will help in any way I can.’

The young man looked grateful. He had just that deference which I am accustomed to meet with from young critics at literary parties. It would not have been irrelevant had I remembered how some of these behave when they get home to their flats and portable typewriters.

‘Then,’ said Appleby, ‘let us sit down and get one or two matters clear.’

I sat down. I think I may be said to have relaxed; I recall going so far as to begin filling my pipe. Whatever the traditional avocation of the Applebys in Stonegate, the manners of this wandering son were good. And in these times good manners are as soothing as the three or four perfect days an English summer provides.

I sat down in an easy chair. Appleby moved towards the fireplace as if to sit down there. Leader continued to stand, his notebook supported on a hand as sufficient for the purpose as a lectern.

‘A quarter to eight,’ said Appleby. He was still moving away from me. ‘That’s the interesting time. Mr Ferryman’ – and he swung suddenly round – ‘what were you doing on the terrace then?’

I looked at Appleby and he looked at me. My impression was something that of contemplating an expensive camera. Indignation would have been the natural emotion to express at the perfidious way in which the question had been led up to; what I actually contrived must have been something very like dismay.

‘Was it anything,’ Appleby continued blandly, ‘which would have precluded your hearing a pistol-shot at this window?’

I recovered myself. ‘If you mean was I letting off fireworks or playing the loud bassoon the answer is No.’

Appleby turned to Leader. ‘There’s an idea: fireworks. But I suppose that is over in the district?’

‘Quite over. Plenty for a bit before the fifth of November and then a quick tail-off. I haven’t heard any now for weeks.’

‘Well then, the loud bassoon.’

I believe Leader wrote ‘loud bassoon’ in his notebook; it was his instinct when at a loss.

‘The bassoon,’ continued Appleby gravely, ‘is a good suggestion of Mr Ferryman’s. Something of the sort was playing as I came up the drive: perhaps a Salvation Army band. But I doubt if it is quite what we want.’

‘What we want,’ I said, ‘is merely the general hubbub of traffic round the Priory. Motor bicycles on the hill, for instance, produce the filthiest racket. A revolver-shot would pass unregarded simply because the ear is so accustomed to that.’

Appleby nodded triumphantly, as if I had thought of something very bright indeed. ‘That’s it!’ he said.

‘And then there is the additional fact that revolvers have been popping away all around us. Sir Basil has a range at which we have all been practising.’

Leader looked as if he were going to inquire about revolver licences. Appleby glanced up sharply. ‘All of you? Including the two guests at luncheon – Cudbird and Cambrell?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have yourself watched everybody having a turn?’

‘Yes. It seemed the civil thing. I’m not attracted myself.’

‘Fire-arms,’ said Appleby as if dictating to Leader’s notebook, ‘do not attract Mr Ferryman. But they attract Mr Foxcroft?’

‘Yes.’

‘You watched quite carefully? You could provide a fairly reliable estimate of each person’s degree of skill?’

I was puzzled. ‘Yes, I believe I could. One or two things struck me. Geoffrey Roper, who has all the delicate muscular correlations necessary to a painter, is quite surprisingly bad.’

‘That is very interesting.’ Appleby was looking absent again. ‘By the way, just what
were
you doing on the terrace?’

‘I had been taking an evening stroll in the park.’

‘I see. I thought that when we met under the porch you were slightly disturbed. I have wondered if you had happened to hear or notice anything giving cause for uneasiness.’

This sort of technique was doubtless going to be applied to everyone in the house. It was clear that this time the camera must be faced squarely. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing of the sort. When one is stopping in a house there is always a slight awkwardness in meeting a new guest on the doorstep.’

‘Would you mind,’ interposed Leader, ‘saying that again?’ I realized with something of a shock that he was scribbling away in efficient shorthand. I repeated what I had said. It sounded extraordinarily foolish.

But Appleby agreed. He agreed and at the same time contrived to suggest respectful surprise that this embarrassment should be experienced by a man of the world so finished as myself. ‘These questions,’ he said, ‘must be asked of everybody’ – the words came as smoothly as they come in Lucy’s fictions – ‘as a matter of routine. We must endeavour to fix the whereabouts of everybody concerned round about a quarter to eight. At half past seven Sir Basil was undoubtedly in this room and sitting at that desk. The parlourmaid Jane saw him there. That is why she was convinced that it was he who had been shot when she returned here at about ten to eight and saw Mr Foxcroft’s body. We were at the front door. Jane ran into the hall crying that Sir Basil had been killed. Sir Basil appeared and so, almost at the same moment, did Richards. Richards announced that it was Mr Foxcroft to whom an accident had happened. I am afraid’ – Appleby glanced at me mildly – ‘that you were very much upset.’

I felt an uncomfortable sensation in my spine. The man had the skill of a competent barrister. There was the suggestion that Wilfred had been shot in mistake for Basil; there was the suggestion that it was Richards’ correction of Jane that had upset me; there was the fact that I had been wandering about outside. I had an impulse to say something about demanding the presence of a solicitor. Repressing this extravagance, I simply replied: ‘I was naturally much shocked.’

‘A shocking affair,’ said Leader suddenly and very solemnly. I wondered if he was recalling some official manual of etiquette.

Appleby, without expressing verbal agreement, spared a moment to looking adequately serious. ‘Will you give us,’ he asked – and I realized how firmly he had dug himself into the investigation – ‘a fairly detailed account of your movements this evening?’

‘I changed early and came down to the library. It was just seven. There was nobody about. I glanced at a book for about ten minutes and then went to the front door and out to the terrace. It was cold; I returned to the lobby, got a coat and galoshes, and once more went out to the terrace. I stood there for a few minutes, watching the big sign on the brewery. Then I went down a flight of steps – those not far from this window – and paused by a small sheet of water below. I remarked that it was frozen hard. Then I strolled off into the park and did not return until just before our meeting under the porch.’

‘Thank you. I suppose you met nobody during your walk?’

‘No. It would be a most unlikely thing to happen.’

‘Quite so. And that means you saw nobody from the moment you came downstairs to the moment we met before the front door?’

I suppose I must have hesitated; at least I was aware of both Appleby and Leader looking at me very inquiringly indeed. ‘I did think,’ I said, ‘that I caught a glimpse of somebody from the garden: the figure of a man leaning with his back against the balustrade of the terrace.’

‘He would be facing the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘About where would he be standing?’

I was beginning, despite myself, to like the police after all. The thing had a sheer intellectual fascination which was extraordinarily compelling. ‘It could not have been very far from this window.’

‘You could not identify the figure?’

‘No.’

‘You made no further investigation?’

‘No.’

‘And you saw no one else?’

‘No one.’

There was a silence. ‘This,’ said Appleby, ‘would be some five or ten minutes before Jane paid her first visit to this room and saw Sir Basil sitting at his desk.’ He turned to Leader. ‘Ring the bell.’

Richards came and went. Jane, now somewhat recovered, came and went. And the upshot was that Jane, coming in to tend the fire, had been conscious of a fierce draught. Sir Basil, she said, liked the cold. In the coldest weather he would sit before an open window. Almost certainly the window had been open. About the curtains she couldn’t say. Almost certainly they had been drawn or she would have noticed. But likely enough they had not been drawn completely. Sir Basil had a habit of interfering with drawn curtains, pulling them back a little to admit the air.

Appleby turned to me again as the door closed on the parlourmaid. ‘From where you stood on the terrace, and later in the garden, would you have been aware if the curtains here had been drawn back?’

‘If they had been fully drawn back, yes; if there had been merely a substantial gap – even a foot or so – probably not.’

‘When Richards came in hard upon Jane’s discovering Mr Foxcroft they were just as they are now – a gap of a few inches. Just enough, if one stepped through the window from the terrace, to enable one to peer into the room.’ Appleby crossed to the desk and appeared to study the letter on margins. ‘Mr Ferryman,’ he said, ‘you have given us an account of your movements. Will you now give us an account of something much more interesting?’

I looked at him in somewhat suspicious perplexity.

‘I mean, will you now give us an account of your thoughts?’

‘Really, Mr Appleby–’

‘I don’t mean your thoughts since this thing has taken place, valuable though they may be. I mean your thoughts
before
it took place. For instance, what were you thinking of during your stroll in the park? It is for the purpose of reflection, as often as not, that one takes such a ramble.’ He paused and looked at me almost anxiously. ‘My point – my experience – is this. In any party of the sort gathered here – and particularly in a family party – there are likely to be various current issues and conjectures. Certain subjects are of general speculative interest. There is expectation here, apprehension there. Has Charles proposed to Mary–’

‘Charles?’ asked Leader perplexedly.

‘And is Richard, perhaps, seriously ill?’

‘Quite so,’ I said. It was evident that Appleby had developed a technique for putting things clearly to persons of low intelligence.

‘The familial constellation,’ continued Appleby, as if suddenly remembering that I was in a different category. ‘If one can get hold of all that one is in a very strong position as an investigator. It is different, of course, if it is a matter of vanished spoons and forks. But in an affair like this the policeman has to seek very much the same preliminary information as the psychiatrist would seek were it he who was called in. It would often be better if it
were
he.’ And Appleby smiled at me encouragingly, like one excessively educated man to another. Leader, as if confident of what was to come, began vigorously to sharpen not one but several pencils.

The temptation was great. I do not know if I can construct a narrative or record a train of reflection. But to do so is my constant preoccupation. Moreover there was very little question of giving anything away; almost everything that I could tell I was very sure this young man would get at soon or later. Still I might have hesitated but for the writer’s primitive impulse to produce surprise. I turned to Leader: he poised his pencil. ‘In the park,’ I said, ‘I was meditating the rocket which my cousin Basil proposes to fire at the moon.’

‘The moon,’ said Leader with satisfaction. The exclusion of Saturn or Uranus might have been a considerable step forward.

‘Or – in what is perhaps a better-authenticated version – my cousin’s determination to establish a meteorological station in the Antarctic. Whatever it be, he is proposing to sell Belrive.’

Appleby, standing before the fire, was stuffing a pipe. ‘Your cousin,’ he asked, ‘is wealthy?’

‘Not, I think, excessively so. This estate – of which the site must be extraordinarily valuable – is probably his principal asset.’

‘And he proposes virtually to sink it in his expedition: I see. What, by the way, of Mr Foxcroft?’

‘Wilfred is said to be something of a millionaire.’

‘And has no children?’

‘He is unmarried. I suppose’ – I saw no point in beating about the bush – ‘his brother Cecil would largely inherit. But my niece, Anne Grainger, who is his ward, might reasonably expect to be a legatee.’

‘And Sir Basil? His heir is his brother, Mr Hubert Roper?’

‘Yes.’

I spoke a shade reluctantly and Appleby smiled. ‘There is nothing suspicious in being somebody’s heir.’ And before I could estimate the cogency of this soothing remark he went on: ‘So much for the main interest in all your minds: the Priory, it seems, is to be sold. What else?’