Appleby at Allington (6 page)

The music had sounded quite grand from far away, as if it were provided by a regimental band. It turned out, however, to utter itself from a van, the property of young William Goodcoal, who owned the wireless shop in Linger. The van was boldly lettered PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM, and justified this claim by every now and then breaking away from melody into a curious dry crackling, susceptible of uncertain interpretation as a human voice commending to the general regard any of the surrounding attractions being inadequately patronized at the moment. There was another van vending ice-cream – conceivably in the interest of new doors and windows for the village hall, but more probably in a spirit of successful piracy and private enterprise. Between two splendid oaks in a nearer reach of the park a long trestle table had been set up, and behind this the females of middling station in Allington and round about were preparing to dispense teas at half-a-crown a time. Nearby, a commodious bathing-tent, decorated with sphinx’s heads, crescent moons, broomsticks and similar objects suggestive of arcane knowledge, all cut out of coloured paper, housed old Miss Pyefinch, the postmistress, who read fortunes for a shilling, with an express service for juveniles at sixpence. Other ladies stood at small tables, inviting speculation as to the number of beans in a bottle, or the precise weight (in his clothes as he stood, and including the grey bowler) of no less a person than Owain Allington Esquire himself.

‘Jolly good idea, eh?’ There was unenvious admiration in Wilfred Osborne’s voice as he commented on this last invitation. ‘Go down very well. They’ll weigh him, you know, right at the end, when the prizes and so forth are being announced. And he’ll make quite a thing of it. No condescension, a friendly air, dignity nicely maintained all the same – and at the announcement they’ll all clap and he’ll take off that hat to them. Then he’ll have a word with one old woman, and a word with another old woman, and walk back to the house and disappear. And there it’s understood that the quality join him for a glass of sherry. We’ll have to go, I’m afraid.’ Osborne paused. ‘It does recall old times to me, I’m bound to say.’

Appleby had listened to this little speech with interest. It seemed to have been spoken in perfect charity. But had it been sharpened – surely a little beyond Osborne’s common command of language – by something deep down in the man?

‘Oh, look!’ Judith said. ‘They’re going to have the opening. I’m so glad we’re in time for it.’

‘It’s old Bertha Killcanon. She was younger than my mother, but a great friend of hers.’ Osborne was silent for a moment. ‘Take careful note, Judith. It will probably be your turn next year.’

‘Judith’s already a connoisseur,’ Appleby said. ‘That’s why we had to be early. She collects these occasions. I suppose it’s in the interest of a little book. A monograph which will come out at the same time as the one she says I’m going to write on bee-keeping.
One Hundred and One Ways to Open Charity Bazaars
.’

Lady Killcanon had advanced with Owain Allington to a small platform. The Reverend Adrian Scrape (‘MA Oxon.’ Appleby had remarked on the church notice-board) walked a pace behind, rather as if about to provide the consolations of religion to some illustrious victim of the scaffold. Lady Killcanon smiled graciously to right and left, and one almost expected her to make, with her gloved right hand, the little seesaw motion which used to be as much as royalty judged dignified in the way of a wave. But Lady Killcanon, of course, did not do this, since she perfectly knew her place. It was the place of a very grand Edwardian lady, who had written speeches for her papa the Foreign Secretary to deliver in the House of Lords, and who had no intention of merely stumbling through a few artless words now. Lady Killcanon, who was dressed with exaggerated old lady’s femininity in a multiplicity of filmy and fluttering garments, raised a bony face to the heavens and in a strong masculine voice entered upon an anatomy of the current political situation. Allington stood on one side of her, looking thoughtful and instructed. Mr Scrape stood on the other, clearly aware of himself as smiling fixedly. Actually, Mr Scrape was boiling with impatience, since there was already seething in him that master-passion which he had to repress (because of his cloth) during three hundred and sixty-four days of the year. Below, the commonality stood properly attentive and silent – except that on their outskirts, two or three infants-in-arms, as yet unacquainted with the ordinances of English society, kept up an unseasonable wailing. Only William Goodcoal, who cherished the insane dream of piping radio and television through all the hundred and twelve principal apartments of Killcanon Court, kept shouting ‘Hear! hear!’ very loudly, in the secure conviction that this would recommend him to the favourable notice of the speaker.

‘And finally’ – Lady Killcanon said after some fifteen minutes – ‘let me remind you (and I know that it need be no more than that) of the words which my late father–’

‘Hear! Hear!’ This time, William Goodcoal flourished a small Union Jack, hastily snatched from the grasp of his son and heir.

‘–of the words which my late father uttered in the Upper Chamber upon the occasion of the Third Imperial Conference in London – which took place, as we all know, from the 15th of April to the 14th of May, 1907–’

‘Hear! Hear! Hurrar for her Ladyship!’

‘“
Let nation speak peace unto nation
” – these were my father’s magnificent words – “
and let a despicable administration resign forthwith
”.’ Lady Killcanon paused impressively. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure in declaring your beautiful new hall open.’

There was a moment’s bewildered silence. Among those present, the more impressionable even raised their eyes and looked about them, as if expecting that at this august personage’s summons, as at the decree of Kubla Khan, some stately pleasure-dome should at once create itself in air. Mr Goodcoal, however, saved the situation.

‘Hurrar for her Ladyship!’ shouted Mr Goodcoal. ‘Hip, hip, hurrar for Lady Killcanon, God bless her!’

Adequate cheering ensued. Little Alice Mellors (the keeper’s daughter), a born exhibitionist who had been straining at the leash for some time, marched perkily forward and presented Lady Killcanon with a bouquet. Owain Allington proposed a vote of thanks. Mr Scrape seconded it with becoming brevity. The fête had begun.

The dog Rasselas, Appleby noticed, was bearing a dignified part in the proceedings. He had accompanied the personages of principal consideration to their platform. Now, with a money-box strapped to his back, he was moving purposively among the company at large. Rasselas was an almost depressingly well-trained dog, and his technique in the cause of charitable endeavour was simple and effective. He simply came to a halt dead in front of you. If you took evasive action, he made a little detour of his own and then planted himself firmly in your path once more. Determined that there should be no mistake about buying himself off, Appleby produced a florin, held it firmly before the creature’s nose, and then dropped it as noisily as possible into the box. Rasselas gave him a polite nod and walked away. And he showed no further interest in Appleby during the remainder of the afternoon.

Judith had been detected by Lady Killcanon, and constrained to form part of her
entourage
as she made her ritual round of the several stalls. Although Lady Killcanon appeared now to be under the impression that she had just successfully launched a liner (‘And God bless all who sail in her,’ she had said suddenly to the astonished Mrs Pecover the cow-man’s wife), she preserved a marked acuity as a purchaser – holding up jars of jam firmly to the light, and further bewildering Mrs Pecover by referring to her gingerbread as parliament-cake and questioning her closely about the ingredients. Appleby felt it justifiable to slip away from this progress. Judith would no doubt buy more than enough of this and that to uphold the reputation of Long Dream.

As he made a general survey of the scene, he found it hard not to feel something slightly uncanny in its complete transformation from the night before. All that was left of the whole elaborate lay-out of the
son et lumière
was, so to speak, a shadowy presence constituted by various trodden or discoloured areas of the turf. And now, rapidly obliterating even that, was this harmless jamboree. Would its paraphernalia, in turn, be cleared away as expeditiously? The marquee and some of the tents would presumably stand until the following morning. What if there was a dead body in one of them by then?

This bizarre speculation brought Appleby to a halt. It is not thus that the imaginations of retired policemen are accustomed to start into activity. There must really be something sinister in the atmosphere of Allington to put such an idea into his head. And yet, quite clearly, there was nothing of the kind. Over there was Owain Allington, a modest country squire going to some trouble to keep up a traditional relationship with his simpler neighbours and their kind. Even his grey bowler fitting in quite well – particularly with Lady Killcanon, whose papa had probably worn one on informal occasions. And a little farther away was the former squire, Wilfred Osborne, perfectly easy in not the easiest of situations. Osborne was, of course, all right with the gentry; whether or not he still owned a park and a manor and hunters and a trout-stream was nothing to them, and if he was sociably disposed he certainly needn’t go without a single invitation he had formerly received. But with the village people and the small tenants it was rather different; no doubt they preserved the sterling virtues of the folk, but it was equally certain that they experienced honest satisfaction at the spectacle of a former oppressor fallen into near-indigence. Not that Osborne had really been an oppressor; quite obviously, there was nothing of the sort in his nature. Still, he had owned the broad estates and the hall; and he was a fair target for mild malice in consequence. But then Osborne knew this perfectly well, as any countryman must do. He would also be aware – even if not in a consciously formulated way – that it was only one component in an attitude as complex as anything centuries-old must be. He was having a very good time now, talking to all and sundry. No, it was improbable that in that direction there lay anything sinister at all.

What was troubling Appleby – it suddenly came to him quite clearly – was the man who had died. And it wasn’t just the fact of the man’s death, or even the macabre unaccountability of its circumstances. It was rather the manner in which it seemed to have been swept rapidly into oblivion. Where was the man’s body now? Presumably in some county mortuary, awaiting or undergoing post-mortem. Just where had he died? Appleby found he couldn’t even exactly place the position of that unlikely glass box. And who was he? Appleby experienced an unaccountable impatience to find out about this. Allington would have the answer; he must have been kept informed – even on this busy day he must have been kept informed – of any facts that had come to light. Appleby looked round for the grey bowler, and found himself confronting a green trilby instead. It was on the head of Colonel Pride – Tommy Pride, according to Osborne – the Chief Constable.

Appleby recalled with dismay having committed himself to the statement that he didn’t care for Pride. He wasn’t in the habit of saying that sort of thing – and why should he say it about this particular chap? Pride was a quiet man, military-looking but not obtrusively so, with a close-cropped moustache and close-cropped, carefully brushed hair. This last fact was apparent because Pride had now taken off his hat to Appleby – a gesture intended to acknowledge, perhaps in a slightly chilly way, the fact that Appleby had held a job more exalted than, if not exactly comparable with, his own. Appleby, of course, took off his hat in turn. He wanted to say, with reference to the rustic populace surrounding them, ‘And a pretty pair of Charlies we must look.’ He was inhibited partly by suspecting that Pride might find this a mysterious remark, and partly because he had just noticed that his own hat was a green trilby too. Moreover Pride’s tweeds were very like his own tweeds, and Pride’s stature was precisely his. If, after the ceremonial weighing of Owain Allington Esquire, he and Pride were to mount the scale in turn, it was unlikely that there would turn out to be a couple of pounds between them.

Colonel Pride looked distrustfully at Sir John Appleby, and Sir John Appleby looked distrustfully at Colonel Pride. It was possible that to each the same thought had come in the same moment. But it probably came to Appleby in rather more picturesque form. If he and Pride, he was thinking, were to hunch themselves down on each side of a fireplace, the effect would be very much that of those twinned china dogs still frequently to be found guarding the hearths of the good poor. More learnedly put, here was his
Doppelgänger
. No wonder he didn’t care for Tommy Pride.

‘Afternoon, Appleby,’ Colonel Pride said.

‘How are you, Pride?’ Appleby said. ‘Very pleasant show.’

‘Very pleasant. Nice afternoon for it.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Good turn out,’ Appleby said. ‘People from all over the place.’

‘Car park full.’ Colonel Pride paused, as if about to move on. Instead, he made quite a long speech. ‘They go through the house – the people who have come some way in cars. Half-a-crown. The locals don’t, of course. They’ve satisfied their curiosity long ago. A great bore, having people trailing through your rooms, I’d think. Decent of Allington. No call to. Simply for charity, and so forth. Nothing to do with income tax. Treats my people very well, too, I gather. I send in a couple of men, you know, to help keep an eye on the spoons and forks. Always have to have a dinner-table elaborately laid – have you noticed? – when you open up your place like that. And I advised him against hiring private-eye fellows. Heard some very bad things about them. Planting the appearance of pilfering on perfectly innocent half-crowners, you know, just to gain a bonus. We don’t want any of those city rackets down here.’

‘Extremely wise of you, if I may say so.’ Appleby fancied he was conscious of people glancing curiously at Pride and himself. Perhaps they were making jokes about Tweedledum and Tweedledee. He himself must be careful to see that these two didn’t have a battle. He was determined to get some information out of Pride, all the same. And presumably Pride
had
information. Chief Constables are not invariably well clued up on the passing scene within their jurisdiction. But Pride couldn’t have failed to acquaint himself with what had happened on the previous night at Allington Park. He must know about Appleby’s own odd implication in it. Indeed, it would scarcely be possible for him not to refer to it. So Appleby refrained from prompting. And, sure enough, Pride came to the point.