There Came Both Mist and Snow (9 page)

Again the cold caught me. I stamped my feet on the flags and then went briskly down a flight of steps to the garden. Indeterminate light – from the distant bottle, from lamps in the drive, from a fugitive sickle moon – lay on a frozen lily pond; I tested the ice and judged it near to bearing. The noise of the traffic, usually a confused hubbub, came out of the night in a symphony of distinguishable sounds: the flat patter of wood or leather on concrete; the crack of some skin of ice beneath a tyre; far away, and faint as its evocations were massive, a brass band playing
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
. A tram clanging and clattering by drowned the music; a succession of sparks, crackling amid the wires as it took a corner, lit up the terrace as with a faint lightning and I thought I discerned by this unexpected illumination the figure of a man leaning with his back against the balustrade. A motive of curiosity made me linger on the chance of another shower of sparks revealing more. Another tram passed, but without producing any fortuitous flashlight. I lit a cigarette and leaning against a stone seat glanced upwards at the house: on the bedroom floor nearly every window showed some glimmer of light.

A few minutes later I turned away and entered the park. The brass band had come nearer; plangent now, it was scarcely drowned even by the sudden explosive uproar of a motor bicycle starting up near the gates. I had intended merely a reflective stroll of fifteen minutes. But I had much to occupy me – I was still revolving the fate of Belrive – and it was just short of ten to eight when I arrived at the front door. A light was burning in the porch. Under it stood a young man in a dark overcoat and evening clothes. He had just stepped back from ringing the bell.

I believe I was disconcerted. There is always something slightly awkward in such a convergence upon a fellow guest who is unknown to one. In town it is very common for people who have presumably enjoyed the advantages of breeding simply to ignore anyone so encountered – much as one might do if one arrived together with the linkmen and the hairdresser and the caterers. But if I was disconcerted it was not merely by a momentary impulse in myself to this depraved conduct. I remembered that this must be Mr X.

Basil, it struck me, ought to have dissipated the mystery before his guest arrived. It was not quite courteous to the young man, who doubtless thought of himself as Mr Smith or Mr Brown, to have him present himself on the doorstep in the character of an enigma…

By the time that I had got through these unnecessary reflections the young man had wished me good evening. I responded, and as I did so the door opened. A familiar parlourmaid, the familiar lobby, the hall with its great fire beyond – so much I had time to take in. And then the thing happened – happened with the smooth rapidity of good melodrama. A female voice cried out in terror or alarm and a moment later a second maidservant ran into the hall. The young man beside me – who had as I suppose been about to murmur his host’s name – took a swift step forward and checked himself; and even as he did so the breathless girl in the hall found voice. ‘Help,’ she cried, ‘help! Sir Basil is killed!’

It was like a cue. There was the sound of a door thrown open and a man’s figure appeared silhouetted against the fire. It was Basil himself. ‘Jane,’ he said with mild severity, ‘what is the meaning of this?’

Jane behaved in the conventional way of one who sees a ghost. She screamed, swayed, collapsed. And hard upon this appeared Richards, Basil’s butler. He spoke without agitation. ‘It’s Mr Wilfred, Sir Basil. He appears to have been shot – badly wounded. Shall I–’

I had been listening horror-struck and dumbfounded. Now I believe I cried out and almost collapsed myself. The young man, who was still standing beside me, took me by the arm. ‘A relation of yours?’ he asked quietly.

We were moving into the hall. I shook my head. ‘A distant kinsman only. But…’

Richards was at the telephone. Basil, hurrying across the hall pale and stern, skirted the recumbent body of Jane. The parlourmaid who had answered the door was emitting tentative sobs. And hurrying down the stairs with dangling braces came Sir Mervyn Wale, looking very upset indeed.

All this the young man observed. Then, almost imperceptibly, he sighed.

‘When one dines out,’ he murmured, ‘one scarcely expects to be served with one’s own pigeon as promptly as this.’

We never discovered how Basil had come to make the acquaintance of John Appleby, nor how Appleby came to be in our part of the world. We had to content ourselves with the fact that within what appeared to be minutes of the shooting of Wilfred Foxcroft a young detective-inspector from Scotland Yard had rung the bell and proceeded to look circumspectly about him. The effect ought to have been reassuring – like that of the unobtrusive person who rises from a corner of the railway-carriage and says ‘I am a doctor’ when somebody has fallen down in a faint. Actually the revelation of Appleby’s way of life was unnerving in an extreme.

Not that he appeared to push himself into the incident that had befallen; he held on to his hat until it became clear that the situation was not one from which he had best withdraw with the murmured words of the untimely guest. But he was from the first professionally observant. The house party gathered in the hall member by member – hushed, clamorous, confused, controlled as the temper of each dictated. Appleby stood in a corner and gave to everyone the roving but sufficient attention of a competent critic making preliminary observations in an unfamiliar gallery. He was impassive, but once or twice his eyes grew slightly round. I found myself thinking of the pleasure of a small boy who discovers how something works.

Wale’s voice came from the study. ‘Casualty,’ he was saying, ‘Casualty… Dr Mervyn Wale…to Belrive Priory at once. And I want the RSO… I said Sir Mervyn Wale… RSO…’

Basil, staring into the fire, roused himself. ‘The police,’ he said. ‘I suppose we must have the police.’

‘Ashton? Never heard of him. I must have Badger.’ Wale’s unimpassioned voice came from the telephone still. ‘I don’t care who your senior man is. I am Mervyn Wale… Badger.’

Wale was enjoying himself. He would get Badger. And I supposed the young man Appleby to be enjoying himself too. I wondered whom he would get.

‘I suppose,’ said Basil, ‘I had better ring them up when Wale is finished.’ He looked interrogatively at his new guest.

‘Oh, decidedly,’ said Appleby. He spoke with a slight nervous diffidence: I wondered if it was the professional manner of the higher branches of his calling. ‘Perhaps I might do it for you?’

Surprisingly, the parlourmaid who had opened the door stopped crying. ‘The other line, sir,’ she said to Basil. ‘It will be free.’

Basil nodded and led Appleby into the lobby. Wale’s voice came again. ‘I want to speak to Mr Badger. If he is at dinner be so good as to tell him it is Sir Mervyn Wale.’

‘Detective-Inspector Appleby.’ The voice came from the lobby. ‘Is Inspector Leader still on duty there? Haines? No, I don’t want Haines. Put me through to Inspector Leader’s house…’

‘My dear Badger, how are you? Yes…yes…but my game has gone sadly to pieces, I fear… I wonder, could you come to the infirmary at once? A rather ticklish thing…’

‘Leader, I wonder could you possibly come along to Sir Basil Roper’s at once? Somebody shot…yes, but I rather felt that Haines… capital. Yes, I’ll take a look round.’

It was all very efficient. But I found myself unreasonably resentful that we were to be deprived of the services of Ashton and Haines; I had a momentary suprarational conviction that Badger and Leader were lesser men. The end of life is action and we instinctively rebel against decisions made while we have to stand passively by. I was meditating this evidence of human imbecility – there was nothing better to do – when the front door was pushed open and Horace Cudbird came in.

‘Is anyone ill?’ he asked soberly. ‘There’s an ambulance on the drive.’

We dined at about a quarter to nine. Inspector Leader was in the study, making what observations he judged useful. Young Mr Appleby, on the other hand, was sitting beside Lucy Chigwidden as had been planned – an arrangement which made us all acutely aware that the evening had produced a more shattering surprise than any Mr X could afford. Richards, no doubt upon a nice calculation of proprieties, had left Wilfred’s and Wale’s places undisturbed. In the absence of the still distraught Jane he was also handing fish; this trifling variation upon the customary ritual of Basil’s table struck me in my slightly dazed state as the most extraordinary circumstance of all.

News, good or bad, might come from the hospital at any time: nevertheless it had seemed reasonable to eat. This presented no difficulty; we consumed what was set before us. Our conversation however, we had to choose, and for some time there was difficulty in deciding where to begin. It occurred to me – I fear in somewhat macabre vein – that it would have been simpler had Wilfred been killed outright. We should then have been silent, or conceivably have spoken sparingly of other things. As it was, we were left guessing both as to the gravity of what had occurred and as to its meaning. Cecil was the first person who endeavoured to take soundings.

‘This,’ said Cecil – and he glanced round the table as if to command general attention to an important utterance – ‘this is a very distressing thing.’

There was a distressed silence.

‘A most distressing and disturbing thing.’

‘Cousin Cecil,’ said Anne, ‘makes wonderfully articulate the sentiment of us all.’ She paused. ‘But of course with the extra warmth which only a brother can feel.’

Appleby gave my appalling niece the most fleeting glance. He seemed to find much to engage his attention on the plate before him.

‘I may say’ – Cecil was not at all discomposed – ‘that I have had my apprehensions lest something of the sort should occur. With firearms there is
always
an element of danger.’

This was unchallengeable; nobody spoke.

‘We have a rifle-range for the OTC. I impose the most stringent regulations upon the boys.’

In Appleby’s face I thought I could discern the satisfaction of a supposition confirmed.

‘Both instructors are always present, and there are never more than five boys at a time.’

Geoffrey Roper put down his glass. ‘Excellent,’ he said, ‘most sound indeed. If only Cousin Wilfred were here to mark and learn.’

Appleby, having finished his fish, appeared to be giving politely furtive attention to the quality of Basil’s silver. Basil said ‘Geoffrey’ in a sterner tone than I had ever heard him use. There would have been a most uncomfortable pause had Cecil not gone straight on.

‘The slightest carelessness and a possibly fatal accident may occur. Wilfred has been fiddling with those revolvers constantly.’

‘I think,’ said Basil, ‘that nothing is to be gained by entering on suppositions. We know too little. After this meal – which must be a hasty one – we shall place ourselves at the disposal of Inspector Leader, who will make every necessary inquiry.’

This was designed as final – and only Anne would have embroidered on it. ‘It is quite childish,’ she said, ‘to pretend that we may assume that Wilfred shot himself accidentally.’ She made one of her feline pauses. ‘Or that he shot himself at all.’

‘Oh, but surely we know
something
.’ This was Lucy; I realized with dismay that she had surrendered her discretion to what might be termed her professional angle. ‘For instance,
where
was he shot?’

‘In my study.’ Basil’s firm misunderstanding was wholly forbidding.

‘Through the right lung.’ Anne deplorably raised her voice. ‘I heard Mervyn say so on the telephone.’

‘
There!
’ said Lucy triumphantly. ‘And in a dinner-jacket. If the shot were fired from close range the whole shirt-front would be blackened with powder. Would it not, Mr Appleby?’

Appleby was absorbedly helping himself to a fragment of steak – so absorbedly that the question had to be repeated. There was irony in the thought that it was for just this sort of thing that Mr X had been invited to Belrive. And I was mildly delighted when Mr X offered by way of reply only an inane social smile.

The young man’s position was obviously difficult. His own pigeon was indeed being served up at Belrive; but not, as it were, at the particular table to which he had been bidden guest. At the end of dinner he could, of course, go away. I suspected, however, that this was not in his mind. I had an uneasy feeling that as a collection of human beings we had rapidly come to interest Appleby quite a lot; I even suspected that the little manoeuvre over Inspectors Haines and Leader had represented a first move in some plan to insinuate himself into our perplexities. And of this some confirmation presently emerged. Richards, who had been out of the room, reappeared somewhat dubiously at the door. He moved towards Basil; then, changing his mind, he turned to Appleby. ‘The inspector of police, sir,’ he said, ‘would be glad if you could join him in the study.’

Appleby looked at Basil. His expression – compounded of apology, surprise, and willingness to act as his host should desire – was very nicely suited to the occasion.

There was a little silence. ‘Mr Appleby,’ said Basil formally – I could see that the two men were the merest acquaintances – ‘if you can give your local colleague any help it will, of course, be a kindness to us as well as to him.’

It was all rather solemn. Appleby looked decently hesitant. ‘Leader,’ he said, ‘is an excellent man. You can have great confidence in him, Sir Basil.’ He laid his table-napkin beside his plate. ‘But perhaps I ought to do anything I can.’ He rose and with sudden large strides was out of the room.

‘The bloodhound unleashed.’ Geoffrey Roper was endeavouring to catch Richards’ eye in the hope of more claret. But Richards, having very properly decided that the occasion was one on which drink should be poured at his employer’s nod alone, was giving absorbed attention to a
café filtre
. ‘A most presentable bloodhound. For Aunt Lucy a very glass of fashion and mould of form. Quite the new sort of bloodhound. Endless uncles in the Foreign Office and belongs to at least half a dozen exclusive clubs.’