Appleby's Answer (12 page)

And Miss Vanderpump certainly recognised him – although it seemed not a circumstance which afforded her particular pleasure. For a moment, indeed, she had even appeared rather confused. An animated demeanour and much silvery laughter quite failed to obscure this odd fact to Appleby's professional eye.

‘But how very delightful!' Miss Vanderpump exclaimed, exuber-antly and hazardously waving one of her hostess' oversize sherry glasses in the air. ‘Your husband charmed us, Judith. He held us spell-bound, I can truthfully say. And I was
extremely
lucky in being introduced to him. It was at the last
Diner Dupin
.'

‘Yes, of course,' Judith said. ‘And John came home saying it had been the most marvellous occasion.'

‘So it was,' Appleby agreed, with decent conjugal loyalty. ‘Only you and I didn't have the chance of much conversation.'

‘We must make up for that now!' Miss Vanderpump said – perhaps with more gaiety and emphasis than conviction. ‘I've been so looking forward to meeting you again.' She waved her glass anew, to an effect of sending a fine spray of sherry over Appleby's waistcoat.

‘The
Diner Dupin
?' Miss Anketel asked briskly. ‘Whatever is that?'

‘A gathering of people who write detective stories,' Judith said. ‘So of course John adored it.'

‘Good Lord! A kind of trade-union bean-feast?' Miss Anketel appeared much struck by this idea. ‘I didn't know, Barbara, that you went over the sticks under those colours.'

‘Only as what may be called an honorary member.' Miss Vanderpump produced this rapidly and on her emphatic note. ‘But it was all the greatest fun.'

‘You were with a friend to whom I was introduced too,' Appleby said.

‘Ah – that I don't remember.'

‘In what I'd inexpertly call a pink gown. She was going to tell me a story, I think about a railway journey.'

‘How very odd!'

‘Or rather you yourself were trying to persuade her to embark on it, but she turned the conversation. Perhaps she thought it would take too long. It was to be about a man who discovered she wrote detective stories, and tried to exact tips from her in the general area of criminal enterprise.'

‘What sort of man?' Miss Anketel asked.

‘A retired army man, who had turned coach or crammer somewhere in the country. But that was as far as the story got.'

‘It sounds to me,' Miss Anketel said briskly, ‘uncommonly like Captain Bulkington.'

‘What lovely roses!' Miss Vanderpump exclaimed. ‘Do tell me, Kate dear, what they are called.'

‘Captain Bulkington,' Miss Anketel reiterated firmly, ‘whom you have been so uncommonly curious about, Barbara. It seems to me – I'm bound to say it has already seemed to me – that there's something going on. Out with it, woman. I don't care for mysteries about my neighbours.'

‘Oh, dear!' Before this sudden devastating acuteness Miss Vanderpump appeared to flounder badly. ‘It's true I am curious about Priscilla and her Captain. Priscilla Pringle, Sir John. You know her tremendously clever books.'

‘Priscilla Pringle? I've never heard of her.'

‘You
said
you had.'

‘Did I, indeed.' Detected in social prevarication upon the occasion of that absurd dinner, Appleby avoided his wife's amused eye. ‘Has Miss Pringle encountered this enquiring soldier again?'

‘Yes, indeed.' Miss Vanderpump had cast a despairing glance around the room, as if seeking distraction in vain. Now she took a gulp of sherry and plunged. ‘Priscilla has written to me about him. And I detect a romance. It is terribly frivolous of me, I know. But the occasion of my curiosity is just that. You see, we writers–'

‘Good God!' It would have been hard to tell whether Miss Anketel was indignant or entertained. ‘Am I to understand, Barbara, that you have come to stay with me simply for the purpose of fishing out such absolute nonsense? It's more than time that we went in to lunch.'

This was self-evidently true – and at table the awkward little
contretemps
ought to have been dropped. It was Miss Vanderpump herself who refused to drop it.

‘But I must defend myself,' she said. ‘Even if it makes me appear absurd.'

‘I'm sure it won't do that,' Appleby said blandly. ‘And what you have said is most interesting. I hope you'll go on.'

It was with detectable resignation that Judith Appleby picked up her knife and fork. Here – in the heart, surely, of a large rural innocence – her husband had come upon the tip of a mystery. The wretched Miss Vanderpump's chances of not going on were nil.

 

 

‘I said that I detected a romance,' Miss Vanderpump began. ‘And that is quite true. But there is something more. I find something disingenuous in dear Priscilla's account of this – this developing relationship.'

‘If Sir John is interested,' Miss Anketel said dryly, ‘I suppose we must hear you out. But it is an odd sort of report to offer upon the private correspondence of one's friends. Jefferson' – she had turned to her parlour-maid – ‘you may put the wine on the table and withdraw.' She paused while these instructions were obeyed. ‘
Now
,' she said grimly, ‘let this scandalous talk proceed.'

‘There is nothing scandalous about it.' Miss Vanderpump was disposed to show a flash of spirit. ‘I simply suspect something not merely distressing, but possibly dangerous as well. What if this man has turned poor Priscilla's head?'

‘That may be your business,' Miss Anketel said, ‘but I'm not at all clear that it is ours.'

‘Romance is one thing, Miss Anketel.' Appleby spoke with a new briskness. ‘But danger is another. No harm in putting our heads together, if you ask me.'

‘Then Barbara must certainly continue.' Something in the formidable Miss Anketel's tradition, it had to be supposed, produced this prompt submission to mature male authority. ‘Even,' she added, ‘if it means no more than knocking our united heads against a post.'

‘Of course Priscilla Pringle hasn't anything one could call money, any more than I have.' Miss Vanderpump ventured a deferential glance round the large solidities of Hinton House. ‘But at least she is now making a comfortable income. And this Captain Bulkington sounds to be the very type of the unsuccessful man. I've found out a little about his coaching establishment. He might be described as within two or three pupils of mere bankruptcy. And he can't really believe that Priscilla could teach him to make a fresh livelihood out of writing crime fiction.'

‘Is that the idea?' Judith asked. ‘It hasn't been explained to us.'

‘That, and some nonsense about collaboration. Priscilla seems to have fallen for the nonsense, which she could scarcely have done if she were in her right mind. And she has written about Captain Bulkington, and Captain Bulkington's pupils, and Captain Bulkington's neighbours (including yourself, Kate) in the most sugary way. Only infatuation can explain such stuff.'

‘Possibly so.' It was plain that being written about in a sugary way didn't please Miss Anketel at all. ‘And this is all very regrettable, no doubt. But I don't see how your friend has been made a dupe, or where what you call danger comes in.'

‘I don't quite see it myself.' Miss Vanderpump was suddenly helpless. ‘But I do
feel
it – very strongly. “Kandahar” – which is the name, Sir John, of Captain Bulkington's house – sounds such a sinister place. Somebody was murdered there – only Priscilla now says it was an accident. And now there is the wicked idea of murdering somebody called Sir Ambrose.'

‘Sir Ambrose!' Miss Anketel was startled. ‘Sir Ambrose Pinkerton?'

‘Yes, indeed – although Priscilla says he is a quiet man with a pleasant voice. It is extremely shocking.'

‘Is Sir Ambrose Pinkerton the chief local notability?' Judith asked. ‘If so, I believe John and I have encountered his wife.'

‘Certainly he is.' Miss Anketel said. ‘Rather a tiresome man. But it does seem extravagant to propose to murder him.'

‘Only in a book, of course. In this collaborated book.' Miss Vanderpump, by nature so sprightly, again had her helpless look. ‘It does seem in very bad taste.'

‘May I get this quite clear?' Appleby asked. ‘In this proposed joint effort that we are hearing about, a figure more or less identifiable as Sir Ambrose is to be the victim?'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘Do you think it is your friend who has thought up this aspect of the thing – or is it Captain Bulkington?'

‘Priscilla writes as if it were her idea. But I believe it is Captain Bulkington who has put it in her head.'

‘Then what he has put there is something highly injudicious. I'm not sure you don't libel a man by murdering him in cold print.' Appleby paused. ‘Miss Vanderpump, you don't suppose that it is a real murder that is in prospect?'

‘Oh, dear – what a dreadful idea! But it is very strange. You see, if you had heard Priscilla's story about the railway journey – from which all this started – you would get the impression that Captain Bulkington was some sort of maniac who did have some horrid actual crime in mind.'

‘I see.' Appleby turned to his hostess. ‘Miss Anketel, you must know this man. Have you any reason to think him mad?'

‘I wouldn't trust him an inch. But I'd call him cunning rather than mad. Just occasionally, one has heard of a pupil of his passing an examination. I recall one boy who gained entrance to St Edmund Hall, which I understand to be at Oxford.'

‘A college of the most respectable antiquity,' Appleby said. ‘Its founder was canonised in the mid-thirteenth century.'

‘No doubt. But it is my point that the boy probably owed his success to his own exertions. I doubt whether Captain Bulkington knows Greek from Latin.'

‘Perhaps he has organising ability,' Appleby suggested, ‘or is a good disciplinarian. Has he a large supporting staff?'

‘Nowadays, I believe he has nobody at all.'

‘In other words, the coaching establishment is pretty well on the rocks. In the circumstances, one might suspect Captain Bulkington, no doubt, of having formed some design upon the modestly prosperous Miss Pringle. A matrimonial design – lawful although not perhaps edifying. And all this business of looking around the local gentry for a good person to murder is nothing more than courtship behaviour of a slightly macabre sort, suggested by Miss Pringle's professional interests. Mating birds – and even reptiles, I believe – go through motions that are quite as odd.'

‘That is probably the whole thing,' Judith said. ‘John's answers to such problems are invariably correct. It was a saying, as a matter of fact, at Scotland Yard.' Outrageous invention was occasionally one of Judith's amusements. ‘“Appleby's Answer,” they used to say. It became proverbial. So now we can forget Miss Pringle and her gallant admirer, and talk about something else.'

‘An excellent suggestion,' Appleby said blandly. ‘Melodrama just round the corner is always a beguiling possibility. And – seasoned though I am – I've almost yielded to it! But it's nonsense, of course, in point of any sort of sober fact.'

Judith said no more. Her husband, she thought, was a profoundly disingenuous man. He had interested himself in these wretched people, without a doubt.

 

‘We have a backward son,' Appleby said an hour later. They had climbed into their car, and were leaving Hinton House behind them. Not, however, in indecent haste, since Miss Anketel had caused sundry humps and hollows to be constructed across her drive with the aim of restricting mechanically propelled vehicles to a speed agreeable to the susceptibilities of resident dogs and horses. So Appleby was cautiously nosing his way towards freedom. ‘He shall be called Arthur,' Appleby added. ‘Note the name please: Arthur Appleby.'

‘John, don't be ridiculous.' Judith had no illusions as to what was in her husband's mind. ‘There's a great deal to be done in the garden. The Bundlethorpes are coming to dinner tomorrow. We can't possibly waste time on these absurd people.'

‘But the Bundlethorpes are absurd too – at least I've always felt so.'

‘They have some sort of claim to polite attention, which is more than can be said of Captain What's-his-name.'

‘Bulkington. And I don't think it will really take up much time. Mysteries don't often take long to clear up.'

‘You'll meet the insoluble one yet.'

‘No Appleby's Answer?'

‘None.' Judith, who had been restoring a handkerchief to her handbag, closed the receptacle with an expressive snap. She rather regretted having made that foolish crack. ‘Besides, there isn't a mystery. It's some mere fatuity.'

‘Hitherto, Arthur has been privately educated. He is a promising but delicate lad. It is our ambition that he should go to Oxford. New College has crossed our minds. But on the whole we should prefer Christ Church. Arthur's great-great-grandfather, you will remember, was a Canon of Christ Church.'

‘And what is Arthur to read when he gets there? Theology?'

‘I think not. The boy's own taste is for Military History.'

‘You can't read Military History at Oxford – or only along with a lot of other kinds of History.'

‘It will be interesting to see if the Captain can put us right in the matter. Ah!' – Appleby had glanced at a sign-post – ‘Long Canings: 1 mile.' He slowed the car, and brought it to a halt at the side of the road. ‘Judith, would you describe yourself as having your bearings in this affair?'

‘Of course not. There are no bearings to have.'

‘I admit they're not numerous, but they do exist.' Appleby appeared to have turned serious. ‘Let me start from the beginning –
my
beginning, that is. I go to that dinner of all those detective-story people, and two women are introduced to me. We now know them as Miss Pringle and Miss Vanderpump. Miss Vanderpump is very keen that Miss Pringle should tell me about an amusing incident during a railway journey. Somebody whose name now turns out to be Captain Bulkington spotted her identity – Miss Pringle's that is – and tried to pump her on hopeful techniques of murder. That's all I gathered from the two ladies at the time – for the reason that Miss Pringle didn't want to play. She choked off her friend Miss Vanderpump, and talked about something else for the remaining minute or so that I was with them. Now, that's odd.'