Appleby File (20 page)

‘As you please.’

It was only after a pause that Appleby had spoken. He might have been staring with interest at some small smudge of smoke on the horizon. For a couple of long minutes he continued immobile, sombrely waiting. For a further minute he continued so – even after the revolver shot had made itself heard. Then he rose with a small sigh and sought the late Adrian Brockbank below.

It was some years since the Barbacks had been abroad, and they decided to go to Italy. Or rather, Irene Barback decided this, and for once she carried her point. Charles whose responses to life were turning elderly far more quickly than they should, at first produced a surly opposition. He wasn’t, he said, going to be pushed; and he continued for some time to collect and study illustrated brochures about a number of quite perversely dreary English seaside resorts. Then Irene had the bright idea of sending him to old Cheall, their family doctor.

Charles did, in fact, look rather badly run down, and anything about his health worried him tremendously. So the situation was hopeful, if only dear old Cheall could be persuaded to declare – whether with his tongue in his cheek or not – that Italy was quite definitely the tonic Charles required.

Irene remembered that all sorts of distinguished people had gone to Italy on medical advice – particularly poets, like Mrs Browning and John Keats. Her husband wasn’t a poet – but he was a publisher, which is roughly the same sort of thing: and she felt that medicine and literature between them might get Charles on the move.

And they did. Old Cheall rang up and said rather bleakly that Charles would benefit from plenty of sunlight and plenty of distraction; and when Irene mentioned Italy Cheall replied that Italy would be just right. Then there was another piece of luck. Gregory Fan, Charles’ junior partner, announced that he was motoring to Naples, and that it would be most delightful if the Barbacks joined up with him at least as far as Rome. Irene thought this quite wonderful – she had never hoped for such good fortune – and Charles kindled to the idea when it became clear that he wouldn’t be asked to share the expenses of running Fan’s car. These were the circumstances in which the Barbacks set out for a country which the English have always tended to associate with violent passions and dark crimes.

Sir John Appleby encountered them in Florence. He wasn’t there on holiday himself; he had gone over to consult with the police about security problems attending an international conference soon to be held in that hospitable city. But he had a few days at his disposal when these duties were finished, and he ran into Fan and his friends during a leisurely afternoon in the Uffizi.

He knew Gregory Fan as a man of considerable drive in more directions than one, and he was interested in the contrast between this restless personality and his very conservative senior partner. Barback was senior in every sense, and certainly a good twenty years older than his wife. He didn’t look a happy man. Nor, for that matter, did Irene Barback look a happy woman, although she was undoubtedly a strikingly beautiful one. Or
did
she look a happy woman, at least in some short-term way? The more settled lines on her face suggested boredom and frustration. But there was something else – something that you could get at only by noticing that she was making a very quiet and unobtrusive affair of her Italian holiday. She didn’t have much to say to Fan. Indeed, she hardly looked at him. But there were some paintings in the Uffizi – not Florentine paintings, but glowing Venetian things, pulsing with sensuous life – that she seemed very well able to pass the time of day with.

‘Did you hurry through to Italy?’ Appleby asked. ‘I usually find myself doing that.’

‘Oh, no.’ Fan had shaken his head. ‘We’ve loitered along, and lingered in all sorts of pleasant places. Haven’t we, Charles?’

Charles Barback agreed. But, Appleby thought, it was in an oddly bewildered way, as if much in this holiday were a puzzle to him.

‘And we intend to potter about a good deal here, too,’ Fan said. ‘What about coming with us to Monterino tomorrow?’

And Charles Barback, who had been staring rather sightlessly at a Carpaccio, turned round.

‘Yes, do,’ he said.

They made the trip in Fan’s car, accompanied by Appleby’s friend Cervoni, of the Ministry of Security. It was a wonderful day, and they stopped for a picnic lunch. Barback seemed depressed and reluctant to get on the road again. He fussed over the packing up; there was a wineglass missing, and the cork wouldn’t go back into the Chianti flask. He was almost certainly, Appleby thought, a tiresome man about the house. His wife, however, seemed scarcely to notice him. And at length they got on their way.

Monterino is an astonishing place; it stands on a hill, and in the Middle Ages its leading citizens vied with one another in building themselves tremendous towers. A sufficient number of these remain to suggest a sort of thirteenth-century first-cousin to Manhattan. You can climb some of these venerable skyscrapers and enjoy the most extensive views.

They climbed the tallest of the towers, and admired equally the tumble of picturesque roofs crowded immediately beneath them and the prospect of half Tuscany which lay beyond. Descending, they crossed the Piazza del Duomo towards a café where Irene Barback proposed they should explore the possibility of obtaining tea. But her husband and Fan became detached from the others, and when they looked back they saw the two men standing before another of the towers and waving to them.

‘The Torre della Cisterna,’ Cervoni explained politely. ‘Our friends propose the ascent. But they signal, I think, that we should go forward and order our refreshment.’

So they went on to the café and sat down. It was in a corner of the square from which the Torre della Cisterna was clearly visible.

And thus, five minutes later, they all three saw the thing happen. What drew their attention to the top of the tower was a scream – and an instant later they realized that it was Barback’s voice. The scream came again – it was a high-pitched desperate call for help – and then they saw Barback himself appear from behind a turret and stagger backwards. He was clutching his face; suddenly he thrust out his arms as if to avoid a blow; and then he ran forward as if making a dash for safety. The movement took him once more out of sight. There was another scream; then silence; then a hubbub of many voices calling from the other side of the tower.

Appleby was already up and running; presently he was thrusting his way through a horrified little crowd: some of them tourists, most of them inhabitants of Monterino. They formed a ragged circle round what was all too clearly Charles Barback’s dead body. It lay, dreadfully crushed and gashed, in the hot Italian dust – having fallen first to one roof and then to another, much as a ball might helplessly do on a pin-table.

Appleby turned away, rounded a corner, and arrived before the entrance of the tower just as Gregory Fan staggered out of it. Fan’s hands were thrust deep in his pockets.

‘I wasn’t…’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t…I couldn’t…’

Without speaking, Appleby pointed. And then – slowly, helplessly – Fan brought his hands from their concealment and held them out. They were covered with blood.

‘Certainly Barback’s blood.’ Appleby, sitting in the Palazzo Municipale and beginning explanations to Cervoni, was in a very dusty state. He had been clambering hazardously over the rooftops of Monterino; and now on the table before him were a penknife and some small fragments of thin, curved glass. ‘It was probably a good idea, declaring at our picnic that a wineglass was missing; if he hadn’t, and its disappearance had been noticed later, one of us might have begun wondering.’

‘He needed a receptacle?’

‘Precisely. He slashed his wrist, collected the blood, and then put on that turn for the benefit of people on the ground below. At the first scream, Fan must have gone running up from the final chamber of the tower – a sort of museum – where he had been lingering. You can imagine him wondering what on earth had happened.’

‘My dear Sir John – indeed, yes.’

‘As he opened the door giving access to the roof, Barback tipped the blood on him, slashed himself again for good measure, gave another scream, hurled the wineglass and pocket knife as far as he could across the rooftops of Monterino, and pitched himself over the parapet.’

‘Revenge?’

‘Just that. He knew of the intrigue that was going on between his wife and Fan. And from what your doctor says, it is clear he must have known that he was mortally ill. He didn’t mind dying a little sooner, if he could leave the suggestion that his wife’s lover had attacked him with fatal consequences on the Torre della Cisterna.’ Appleby turned to Irene Barback, who was sitting immobile in a corner of the room. ‘I’m sorry. But it is best that you should understand the whole thing at once.’

The wretched woman nodded. She appeared quite dazed.

‘Charles wouldn’t be pushed,’ she whispered strangely. ‘But he would jump.’

A motor tour in the West Country makes it possible to visit any number of historic houses. Having done Montacute that morning, and being pledged to do Barrington Court in the afternoon, Sir John Appleby rather hoped to slip past Roydon Abbey without stopping. But his wife would have nothing of this.

‘There’s a famous El Greco,’ she said. ‘Turn in.’

They turned in. Lord Roydon’s country seat was imposing but not exactly flourishing. The house could have done with a lick of paint, and the grounds with a few more gardeners. Perhaps his lordship was something of an absentee. Certainly there was no flag flying, so presumably he wasn’t lurking about now. But this made it only the more certain that the Applebys would be allowed to look round. Appleby foresaw another long tramp through a succession of chilly splendours. But his wife was adamant. She closed the guidebook she had been consulting.

‘There’s nothing about it being open to the public,’ she said. ‘So you’d better see if you’ve got a pound note.’

‘Quite so.’ Appleby was resigned. ‘You said an El Greco?’

‘Yes. The Beggar with Skull.’

‘Good Lord!’ Appleby was impressed. ‘I couldn’t call a pound absolutely outrageous if I’m going to see that.’

They were received by the housekeeper, a myopic old person who appeared well used to the job. She stood them in the middle of a vast panelled hall and began a lecture.

‘The family is of great antiquity,’ she said. ‘Doutremeres have lived on this spot for more than nine hundred years. But his lordship is not in residence just at present.’

Appleby reflected that this break with tradition was a pity. But Judith Appleby seemed possessed of some relevant information.

‘Isn’t Lord Roydon a great yachtsman?’ she prompted.

The old housekeeper beamed. The present Marquis was certainly much distinguished in that line.

‘Of course,’ she purred, ‘his lordship has the magnificent physique of all the Doutremeres. It’s in the blood, I say. And there is his portrait. Presented by the tenantry on the occasion of his lordship’s giving up active command.’

Appleby and Judith looked with due respect at the portrait. Lord Roydon had a red face and a red beard, and he had been painted against a red sky in what appeared to be the uniform of a Vice-admiral of the Fleet. As the artist had somehow contrived to indicate that his subject wasn’t much short of seven feet tall the effect was altogether impressive.

‘And next to him is his brother Lord Charles Doutremere.’ With suitably modified awe, the Applebys looked at this portrait too. Lord Charles was another giant. He was depicted, sideways-on, as clean-shaven, florid, and in garments appropriate to shooting things. He looked, indeed, quite as if he would shoot anything on sight. A red setter was eyeing him apprehensively from the bottom left-hand corner.

‘His lordship–’ the housekeeper began, and then broke off. ‘But here he is,’ she added in a lower voice, and in some confusion. ‘He’s got back.’

It was certainly true. Lord Roydon, in untidy nautical kit, strode through the screen at the bottom of the hall. Seeing the Applebys, he gave a brisk bow, barked out a ‘Good afternoon’, and marched on. Which was civility enough, Appleby reflected. Then suddenly Lord Roydon stopped dead in his tracks and pointed at an empty space on the wall.

‘Mrs Cumpsty,’ he snapped, ‘what’s become of the El Greco?’

‘The El Greco, my lord? Why, it hasn’t come back since you took it away.’

‘Since I took it away! What the devil are you talking about?’

Mrs Cumpsty stared.

‘Why, three weeks ago, my lord. The last time you called in. You had a word with me here in the hall, my lord. And then you took away the picture–’ Mrs Cumpsty faltered, as she well might in face of the enraged appearance of her employer. ‘And then you took away the picture, saying you were going to have it cleaned in London.’

‘Absolute nonsense! You’re mad, Mrs Cumpsty – or in collusion with some scoundrelly thief. I haven’t been near the Abbey for six weeks.’

Mrs Cumpsty – very naturally – began to weep. And Sir John Appleby stepped forward and introduced himself. It was clearly going to be a case for the police.

The housekeeper stuck to her story. She was quite certain that it had been Lord Roydon himself who had taken away El Greco’s Beggar with Skull. His lordship had been most affable and had chatted about various Abbey affairs in a manner that no impostor could have managed. If there had been the slightest cause for suspicion, she certainly wouldn’t have let the picture go.

Appleby inquired whether anybody else had been aware of Lord Roydon’s – or the supposed Lord Roydon’s visit. The whole household had of course heard of it. But only one of the Abbey’s two footmen had actually set eyes on him – having admitted him in the first place and then been sent to summon Mrs Cumpsty. This young man also was certain that it had been Lord Roydon.

‘Anybody else? Can you think, sir, of anybody else we ought to see?’ asked Appleby.