Appleby's Answer (19 page)

‘I've had enough of you!' The voice of Ralph Jenkins had suddenly risen to a panicky squeal. ‘I'm going to–'

‘You'll have had enough of me by the time I've worked over you tonight,' Mr Waterbird hissed hideously. ‘Blubbing for your dear old nanny – that's what you'll be.'

‘You beastly great cad, I'll–'

‘Out!' As he gave this order, Mr Waterbird sprang to his feet – a good deal more athletically than when putting on his polite Kensingtonian stand-up-for-the-ladies turn – and contrived an expert clutch on one of Mr Jenkins' wrists. Mr Jenkins found himself yanked upright, twisted round, and subjected to a rapidly mounting impetus generated by a skilful bumping action on the part of Mr Waterbird's knee on his behind. But the unseemly spectacle was at least of momentary duration only, since with a surprising approximation to instantaneity the gentlemen had tumbled alike out of the bar and (as it was to prove) Miss Priscilla Pringle's life. For seconds Mr Jenkins' yelping was audible
diminuendo
as he presumably began an uncomfortable homeward progress to ‘Kandahar'. And then silence fell.

It was a silence that sustained itself for a full minute. This must have been due, in part, to the shock the ladies had sustained. Neither was without a sense that the behaviour they had just witnessed was quite grossly atavistic, belonging essentially, as it did, to that preparatory stage of an English gentleman's education which commonly comes to a close in the course of his fourteenth year. But a further element in the silence undoubtedly lay in the fact that neither Miss Pringle nor Miss Vanderpump quite knew where each stood in relation to the other. Miss Vanderpump, detected in fishing around at the bidding, no doubt, of nothing better than the most vacuous inquisitiveness, did not know whether to expect severe censure or mere ridicule. Miss Pringle, the very crisis of whose fate had been broken in upon by this totally unexpected encounter, was obliged to calculate just what kind of menace to her strategy was involved.

It was Miss Pringle who recovered first. It would be impolitic, she saw, to keep mum. To behave, that was to say, as if nothing in particular were happening would bear an implausible appearance when, later on, her conduct necessarily came under a certain degree of scrutiny by the forces of the law. Barbara, in fact, must be taken into her confidence at once.

‘My dear friend,' Miss Pringle exclaimed impetuously, ‘how truly thankful I am for your totally unexpected presence! For matters are dark, indeed. You will be an invaluable support to me.'

‘Dark, indeed?' Miss Vanderpump echoed doubtfully.

‘My confidence has been abused. Perhaps it is better to say that it has been betrayed. Oh, Barbara – how right you were!'

‘I can't think what you are talking about.' Miss Vanderpump was disagreeably ungratified by her friend's generous exclamation. ‘And you have formed some very peculiar notions about the people round here, I am bound to say. I take it that the young ruffians who have just left us are the present pupils of Captain Bulkington?'

‘Certainly they are.'

‘“Brilliant and delightful young men”, I seem to recall as your description of them. And “hand-picked”, as well. Hand-picked from the gutter, it appears to me.'

‘Not at all.' Miss Pringle, although aware that the dreadful youths would presently have to be thrown to the lions, was indisposed to admit a falsification of social fact. ‘Adrian Waterbird is a Shropshire Waterbird. And Ralph Jenkins' people are of consequence in the industrial sphere. It is true that they have been constrained to behave badly. But at least their ill-conduct has brought me certainty. You heard what they said about burglary? It is something to which they have been driven by the maniacal Bulkington. But now he is to be unmasked! For I have seen the revolting truth in the nick of time. And now I am acting' – Miss Pringle glanced at her not inelegant wristwatch – ‘at the eleventh hour.'

‘Priscilla, I perceive you to be raving. You must have suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Permit me to summon a physician.'

‘Nothing of the kind, Barbara, although I must allow that the strain of the last few days has been very great. Could it be? I had to ask myself that. Could it possibly be? And I had to answer Yes – and that my oldest friend had penetrated to the truth long ago. The despicable Bulkington has made a tool of me. I had supposed that I was assisting him in a harmless diversion. The provisional title of his book was
The Three Warnings
. It was to make amusing use of the fallacious theories of mediaeval physics. Earth, air, fire, and water!'

‘Earth, air, fire, and water?' Miss Vanderpump repeated bemus-edly.

‘Yes – but that is by the way. Let me say only that the man Bulkington has achieved
in fact
the three warnings with which I provided him for the purposes of
fiction
. The theft, by those unhappy youths, of poor Sir Ambrose's clothes, is dramatic confirmation of what has been going on. And tonight was to have been the fatal night.' Miss Pringle, who had now drunk her large brandy, sprang to her feet. ‘
Fire!
' she cried dramatically.

‘Fire?' In not unnatural perturbation, Miss Vanderpump had sprung to her feet too – having formed the momentary impression that the Jolly Chairman must be going up in flames.

‘Do not be alarmed, Barbara. Do not be
unduly
alarmed. The situation is in hand. The police have been summoned. I am on my way to a meeting with them now. Bulkington shall rue the day' – Miss Pringle here allowed herself a modest touch of drama – ‘that he and I met in a first-class railway-carriage!'

‘Priscilla, what appears to me to be in question is a first-class vulgar sensation.' Miss Vanderpump paused, as she well might, in this moment of devastating and (in her) surely unnatural perspicacity. ‘You say you have summoned the police. May I enquire whether you have summoned the press as well?'

Miss Vanderpump had accompanied this question with what both she and Miss Pringle were accustomed to describe in their fictions as a long hard look (or, alternatively, as a significant glance). Miss Pringle returned it fearlessly. There is, after all, a tide in the affairs of women which, if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. And now Miss Pringle didn't intend to let the boat depart without her.

‘Dear Barbara,' she said urbanely, ‘I must excuse myself. My appointment is an important one, as you can imagine.'

‘I can imagine more than
that
,' Miss Vanderpump rejoined darkly.

 

 

Detective-Inspector Graves, as was appropriate to one of his cognomen, was a man of sombre habit. That Sir Ambrose Pinkerton, a grandee whose powers Mr Graves was unequipped with the sophistication very accurately to determine, should for some months have been tiresomely creating about the discovery of two or three senseless scarecrows around his estate had in itself been enough to tinge the sombre with the positively saturnine in Mr Graves' nervous constitution.

Then there had come, from some seemingly deranged woman declaring herself resident in the neighbourhood of distant Worcester, the vehement assertion, too urgent to be ignored, that Sir Ambrose was in immediate need of protection against mysterious menace alike to his property and his life. And now – Mr Graves having arrived with several subordinate officers in order to preserve the Queen's peace at Long Canings Hall – it had transpired that there was already on the scene, irregularly and therefore the more alarmingly, nothing and nobody less than a retired Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Mr Graves had nothing against Sir John Appleby, a man famous within his late jurisdiction for impeccable relations alike with his most exalted lieutenants and the humblest constables on the beat. Still less had he anything against Sir John's wife, a woman who struck him at once as of an agreeably composed and sceptical disposition. The situation, nevertheless, could legitimately be regarded as trying to any honest man soothingly habituated (as Mr Graves was) to the rapid sorting out of petty and crystalline misdemeanours of a sort compassable by the yearning but incompetent rustic criminals of darkest Wilts. It was the first tenet of Detective-Inspector Graves' professional code that before acting one must make sure of one's ground. But in this instance it was distressingly unclear to him how this preliminary step was to be achieved. The sensible thing would be to await a hint from Appleby himself. But Appleby too appeared to be waiting. Nothing much could be done, it seemed, until the lady from Worcester arrived. She was expected at any minute now.

‘A Miss Pringle, she called herself,' Graves said. He had cautiously consulted a notebook before committing himself thus far. ‘Would anything, now, be known about her? She isn't on the list of folk who make irresponsible calls to the police. And a pretty long list it is – as you, sir, know.'

Appleby agreed that this was indeed within his knowledge, but offered no further remark. Sir Ambrose, a hospitable if irascible man, advanced upon Mr Graves with a cobwebby bottle which apparently contained brandy of an unusual and superior sort. This embarrassed Mr Graves, who had been taught as a young man that he must not, when on duty, accept refreshment of this sort. Sir Ambrose, of course, was Sir Ambrose. But then Sir John was Sir John. Sir John resolved this dilemma by himself commending the brandy to Mr Graves in a relaxed and friendly manner. Mr Graves accepted a glass like a young football and applied himself, not ungratefully, to the reassuringly moderate tot it contained.

‘A most impertinent woman,' Lady Pinkerton said. ‘For a start, we do know
that
.' Lady Pinkerton was not only herself drinking brandy; she was also smoking a cigar. This increased Mr Graves' sense of being a little out of his depth. ‘She came into our church,' Lady Pinkerton said. Lady Pinkerton said this much as if she was saying ‘She took off all her clothes and danced on our lawn.' Mr Graves, who was accustomed to regard church-going as meritorious and reassuring, was further baffled. ‘And it appears that she writes books,' Lady Pinkerton said.

‘Like Jane Austen and George Eliot,' Appleby offered, and gravely shook his head.

‘Obscene publications, sir?' Thus seeking some glimmer of light, Mr Graves produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘Or merely literature, like?'

‘Detective literature,' Lady Appleby said, with a gravity equal to her husband's. ‘Which you might describe as betwixt and between.'

Not unnaturally, this appraisal produced absolute impasse. Silence descended upon Lady Pinkerton's impressive drawing-room. It was terminated by the distant ringing of a bell.

‘And – damn it – here she is,' Sir Ambrose said.

But the lady presently ushered in upon the expectant company was Miss Anketel of Hinton House. Miss Anketel was known to Detective-Inspector Graves as being, like his host of the moment, an ornament of the bench. This increased his sense that something portentous was going forward, without at all enlightening him as to just what it was. He consulted his watch, however, and resourcefully recorded in his notebook that the lady had arrived at 11.20 p.m.

‘Ambrose,' Miss Anketel demanded sternly and without preliminary greeting, ‘what do you mean by surrounding your house with lurking men? Fortunately I have come on foot. A horse might have been seriously alarmed.'

‘Not men, my dear Kate,' Sir Ambrose said – placatingly and while reaching for the brandy. ‘Constables. Constables and sergeants and so on. Graves' people, I'm sure you know Graves. Fact is, it has been decided the place must be guarded. All those damned unaccountable goings-on. You'll take a drop of this?'

‘Well – I think I can add to
them
.' Miss Anketel gave a vigorous nod which served at once to emphasise her claim and accept Sir Ambrose's offer. She then surveyed the room and acknowledged the presence of the Applebys. ‘Judith,' she demanded, ‘didn't you say you were driving straight home?'

‘That was the idea. But it so happens that John has interested himself in Sir Ambrose's perplexities. Have you really got something to add to them?'

‘I have the explanation of something.' Miss Anketel sat down and consulted her glass. ‘That's why, Cecily, I've made so uncommonly late a call. You ought to know about it at once, I felt. And I'd have brought Henry Howard with me. Only Henry felt he ought not to leave the boy.'

‘One of Captain Bulkington's boys?' Appleby asked.

‘Quite right!' Miss Anketel was surprised. ‘It was like this. After dinner, I left Barbara Vanderpump to her own devices – she said she thought of taking an evening walk – and went over to the rectory. I had promised Henry to check the parish accounts with him. It is something we do together from time to time. But we had scarcely settled to the job when this youth burst into the house without ceremony. He was in a state of abject terror.'

‘This,' Appleby said, ‘must have been the one called Ralph Jenkins?'

‘Yes – that appears to be his name. It was difficult to make sense of his blubbering account of himself. But the other youth had been bullying him, and for some reason he had got in a panic about a very queer escapade in which they both had engaged–'

‘Stealing some of Sir Ambrose's clothes?'

‘I see I am not bringing you news, after all – or not so far as Jenkins is concerned. But it seems that he had been reading a historical novel – no doubt Bulkington keeps his pupils quiet by obliging them to follow such useless pursuits – and there had been something in it about the right of fugitives to seek sanctuary in a church, and Jenkins had felt that church and a rectory are very much the same thing. It was a little awkward for Henry, being suddenly confronted with such a piece of nonsense. But there was something else that Henry appeared to like even less. It was when Jenkins began talking about Bulkington and the well.'