‘Just so.’ Pride appeared a little crestfallen that he held no monopoly in this idea, but a moment later he chuckled amiably. ‘And in that event, I suppose, we should have to estimate the degree of malice intended. You see what I mean? Is it proposed just to give Ashmore a bad time every year? Or are these demonstrations – however many or few there may actually have been – intended to climax in the real thing?’
‘It may be,’ Judith said, ‘that if Mr Ashmore was actually killed – say next year – the intensive investigation you would set going might turn up real evidence of previous attempts, or apparent attempts, and all with something of the Cross of Lorraine association attached to them. And away your people would go, hallooing and baying in that direction. But it would be a false scent, very deliberately contrived.’
‘It’s a theory that isn’t quite plain sailing,’ Appleby, having produced this, paused as if to consider his abrupt shift from a hunting to a nautical metaphor. ‘We have to take account of the precise character of what occurred the other morning. Of course it’s easy a little to misinterpret just what has been happening in the second or two before one has nearly been killed. But I can’t believe that the stone came over that parapet blindly. The chap must have been aware of my presence, and presumably of my being a total stranger to him. And he lobbed the thing over, therefore, equally in a hit-or-miss way in relation to either the one or the other of us. Do I make myself clear? It was quite likely that he would kill neither of us – indeed the actual cold probability might be estimated as lying that way. But he very well
might
have killed one of us. He
might
have killed Ashmore – who was clearly the
relevant
one of us in the context of that scratched symbol on the roof – or he
might
have killed me. It’s a difficulty that has to be faced in considering any annual-build-up theory.’
‘But you have to consider,’ Pride said, ‘that fellows who go in for that sort of thing often get surprisingly muddled. All calculation one moment, and completely random behaviour the next. Or so I’ve read in the books on criminology. We don’t get much experience of that sort of thing in these parts’ – Pride innocently winked at Judith – ‘or didn’t until your husband came along. Mustn’t make a joke, though, of a bad affair like this.’
‘What we’re considering is that there may be a kind of joke at the heart of it,’ Appleby said. ‘A thoroughly evil joke. But you’re absolutely right about the criminal mind – or rather about any mind wrought to plan and perpetrate something like murder. Calculation and rationality can suddenly go by the board, and something quite unpremeditated, and even quite profitless and meaningless, take their place. That’s why detective stories are of no interest to policemen. Their villains remain far too consistently cerebral.’
‘
You
wouldn’t have remained very cerebral, either – not if that hunk of roof had copped you.’ Even before he had concluded this reflection, Colonel Pride looked conscience-stricken. ‘Sorry, my dear,’ he said to Judith. ‘Rotten sort of crack, eh? Fact is – come to feel much at home here.’ The Chief Constable, if not embarrassed, was diffident. He turned to Appleby. ‘Been on my mind for some time. John and Tommy, perhaps? Seems reasonable sort of thing.’
Appleby gravely agreed to this somewhat heavily promulgated advance in relations. It seemed, moreover, the moment at which to produce the sherry. He had just addressed himself to this task when there was a sudden roar from outside the house. Bobby Appleby had arrived.
It seemed to Judith that the two men might well be left alone, so she followed her common habit when any of the children turned up and went hospitably out into the open air. The autumn dusk had already fallen, and mist was drifting up from the river and curling round the house; out of this Bobby’s car seemed to thrust a bonnet of disproportionate size, as in a badly focused photograph. Behind this two bear-like figures were in process of heaving themselves out of the front seats while simultaneously shedding shaggy outer integuments; the car was an open one, and both had been appropriately attired.
‘Hullo, Mum!’ Bobby called. ‘Here we are, unscratched but perished. This is Finn.’
The appearance called Finn – he seemed quite as large as Bobby – advanced amid awkward contortions which stemmed from the difficulty of shaking hands while halfway out of a duffel-coat.
‘Oh, I say!’ Finn said. ‘How do you do? Frightfully kind of you Lady Appleby, to offer to put me up. Bobby’s always babbling about Dream. Wanted to see it for ages.’
Lady Appleby – whose practised glance had already penetrated to the back of the car and distinguished not one suitcase but two – made a suitable reply. She couldn’t recall that she had ever heard her son speak of a friend called Finn. Perhaps they had been at school together – in which case Finn might be a surname. Or the young man might belong to Bobby’s Balliol period – and then he would be Finn plus some further appellation which the elder Applebys might or might not learn before he went away again. It at least seemed unlikely that Finn was part of Bobby’s new and literary life. At least he didn’t
sound
literary. Perhaps he too had achieved the distinction of a match against the All Blacks.
‘Funny that Finn’s never been down before,’ Bobby said, and tossed the suitcases out of the car as if they had been handbags or school satchels. ‘Where shall I put him, Mummy? In the haunted room?’
‘Well, it is the haunted room that I’ve prepared for him.’ Having managed this polite prevarication – which she could see that Bobby appreciated – Judith turned to her totally unexpected guest. ‘The haunted room is the one with a bathroom,’ she explained. ‘Most people feel it balances up.’
‘Oh, I say! Yes – what fun!’ Finn – or Mr Finn – appeared slightly at a loss. He scarcely seemed to be of what could be called an intellectual habit, or likely to be
au fait
with the
nouveau roman
world. Perhaps, for professional purposes and in quest of ‘copy’, Bobby was reviving an acquaintance with uncomplicated types. ‘Jolly good!’ Finn said – perhaps a little overdoing things. ‘I don’t a bit mind a ghost.’
‘I’m so glad. But I may just mention that the bathroom is a modern addition, and the ghost never enters it. If the ghost turns tedious, you just go and have another bath.’
‘Yes, I see.’ Finn sounded puzzled rather than suspicious, so that Judith took an honest vow not to make further fun of him.
‘You’re in splendid time for dinner,’ she said. ‘Bobby will steer you round, and bring you down for drinks.’
‘Oh, thanks most awfully!’ They were now in the hall, which Finn was surveying with large rather than merely civil admiration. ‘I say, jolly fine! Marvellous base for operations – eh, Bobby?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Bobby Appleby appeared to feel – very properly – that this naïve remark called for explanation. ‘As I was saying, Mummy, it’s odd Finn’s never been to Dream before. He has a lot of friends in these parts, and we’re going to look them up. Not close by, actually, but on the other side of the downs. People we haven’t met, I think, since we moved into the old home. But you must know all about them. The Ashmores at King’s Yatter. And I suppose the other Ashmores – the ones at Abbot’s Yatter – as well.’
‘Finn has rung up one of his pals,’ Bobby Appleby announced an hour later. He had come downstairs before his friend, evidently with the very proper aim of putting his parents a little more in the picture. ‘Giles.’
‘I don’t think I know anybody called Giles in these parts,’ Appleby said. ‘But no doubt your mother does.’
‘No, no, Dad. Not Dash Giles Esquire. Giles Ashmore, the son and heir of the King’s Yatter lot. Finn and this Giles were after the same girl. Name of Robina.’
‘I don’t believe it. No girl with a name like Robina could possibly have two suitors simultaneously.’
‘Well, this one had – and it seems to be Giles Ashmore who has got away with her. But of course it brought Finn and Giles together.’
‘How very odd!’ Appleby turned to Judith. ‘Competition in that sphere is commonly regarded as divisive, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not at all.’ Bobby seemed to judge it unnecessary to give his mother time to reply. Although essentially a modest youth, he was inclined to regard himself as the family’s authority on human relationships. ‘One gets terribly thick with a chap who wants the same girl. As a matter of fact, Finn wants to give this Giles a bit of a leg up. That’s partly why he’s come down to Dream.’
‘I see.’ Appleby provided his son with a glass of sherry. ‘A leg up with Robina?’
‘No, not exactly with Robina. As a matter of fact, Finn seems rather to have stopped talking about her. Giles is in some sort of family scrape or difficulty, and Finn thinks it would be decent to lend a hand.’
‘Your father,’ Judith said, ‘also has benevolent impulses towards an Ashmore. But an older one. By the way, your friend doesn’t happen to have invited Mr Giles Ashmore to dinner? I ought perhaps just to know.’
‘Of course not!’ Bobby appeared decently astonished. ‘Only to drive across and drop in afterwards. I suppose all those Ashmores are old family friends.’
‘Before the Flood,’ Judith said, ‘your great-uncle Everard knew them all. And of course we’ll be glad to see the young man. As a matter of fact, I think your father has some notion of extending his acquaintance among the whole Ashmore tribe.’
‘Then he can begin with this one.’ Bobby glanced curiously at his father; he was a young man whose mind was readily prompted to speculation. ‘Wasn’t that Colonel Pride who was here when Finn and I arrived?’
‘It was Tommy,’ Appleby said. ‘In future when you meet him you will address him as “Tommy” and not as “Sir”. But you will preface this familiarity with a suitably diffident speech. Verbs ought not to figure in it.’
‘I’ll remember.’ Bobby turned to his mother. ‘Daddy can’t forget, can he, that our excellent Chief Constable was one of your earliest loves? But you’ll find it’s a basis on which they eventually get tremendously chummy. Like Finn and this Giles because of Robina.’
Appleby’s first reaction to Mr Giles Ashmore was one of surprise that he was quite young. This was irrational. It was clear that a contemporary of Bobby’s and of the character called Finn
ought
to be quite young. But Appleby had arrived at the persuasion that all Ashmores must be, if not old, at least ageless. As here one may find a bevy of maidens, roes, quails, or larks, or simply a gaggle of geese, so on the farther side of the downs (he had come to suppose) there dwelt a crawl of tortoises, and Ashmore was the name of each.
But Giles Ashmore could be described only as immature, as having indeed scarcely as yet developed a carapace. Perhaps it was in compensation for this that he appeared to have a somewhat excessive interest in old armour. The late Luke Raven (who, unlike his great-nephew, had been a poet and not an anti-novelist) had during his post-William Morris phase accumulated various chunks of chain-mail, the continued rusting presence of these in various unregarded corners of Dream was the occasion of young Mr Ashmore’s embarking on the subject at somewhat tedious length.
He had arrived a shade early for an after-dinner call, and Judith had marked the circumstance by inviting him to wash the sherry glasses. He had taken this outrage – Appleby judged – extremely well; it was undeniable that, even if rather a bore, he had deserved his coffee and brandy when these came along. He was a nervous youth – one felt one knew why the notion of an artificial skin of steel attracted him – and gave the impression of being only imperfectly in contact with material things. If Robina (as Appleby somehow suspected) was very much a material thing, it was hard to imagine how he could have got away with her. One would have supposed that Finn – although he seemed to specialize in being a Bertie Wooster or Bingo Little type – would make the running every time. But Giles no doubt had something which, even with a Robina, counted for something. Perhaps it was just being an Ashmore. Giles, one supposed, had a pretty clear recollection of relatives who had been edified by Joseph Addison or got drunk with Dick Steele. Perhaps Robina was sensitive to things of that sort.
Finn did a good deal of the talking – quite enough to suggest that he was the master mind behind whatever hopeful design was going forward. And certainly there was a design. It wasn’t at all possible for the elder Applebys to feel that the charm of their company alone had drawn to Dream these two oddly assorted friends of Bobby’s. It was true that Giles Ashmore seemed as ready to stare round about him as to talk – perhaps in the hope of spotting an interesting basinet or placcate from Luke Raven’s collection. He did not suggest himself as a very enterprising young man. If he was in a scrape – as Bobby had suggested – he would certainly need friends to haul him out of it.
‘You see,’ Finn said expansively to Judith, ‘old Giles is all fixed up to get married. Jolly good, don’t you think?’
Judith agreed that it was jolly good. The reference could only be to Robina, and it could only be presumed that Finn’s magnanimity in relation to his and old Giles’ late rivalry was unflawed. This seemed probable enough; nothing in Finn suggested what could be called a brooding temperament.
‘But there’s trouble about the mun,’ Finn went on. ‘Giles hasn’t any, and he hasn’t even a fat pay-packet to look forward to later on. That’s right, Giles?’
‘That’s right.’ Giles’ reply was absent – perhaps because he had just spotted the gorget by Jacob Topf which had been the most notable of Luke’s acquisitions.
‘You see, he wants to curate things in a museum,’ Finn went on, ‘and it isn’t a career that leaves you rolling. But the real trouble is that Giles’ father is feeling the wind a bit.’
‘I see,’ Judith said, and for a moment cast around for a diversion. It didn’t seem proper that the
res angusta domi
at King’s Yatter should be familiarly canvassed to virtual strangers in this way. But then she remembered that John was becoming curious about the whole tribe of Ashmores, and she let Finn go on.