The observation tower was unimpressive. It was like a very large packing case on stilts, and a ladder led up to it. Head high, there was a narrow unglazed aperture all round. A draughty place in winter, Appleby thought.
Although not high, it yet commanded, over this flat country and the broad stretches of water beyond, a remarkable view. It was an uncommonly deserted tract of country, Appleby thought, and admirably adapted to be some sort of nature reserve. Just visible on the other side of the estuary was the road along which he had himself driven. But there seemed to be not so much as a cottage on it, and only far to the east a smudge of black smoke gave some suggestion of industrial activity. And on this side, apart from the chimneys of Ailsworth Court just visible about a quarter of a mile to the north, there was nothing except a few low sheds and – far out towards the river – a second observation tower. What at first caught one’s attention, however, lay quite near at hand. It was a large pool, connected by a broad channel with the estuary, and having four arms which gave it the shape of a conventional star. Each arm led into a sort of openwork tunnel, apparently constructed of wire netting, which curved gently and grew narrower until it ended as a straitened cul-de-sac. It was rather as if four skeletal cornucopias had been thrown down at the corners of the pool – except, presumably, that they were designed not to pour anything out but to entice something in.
Appleby studied the arrangement with real interest. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that waterfowl will settle on the pool. But what persuades them to swim up these sinister-looking tunnels?’
Jean Howe laughed. ‘I don’t think you’d guess the answer at all easily. It’s a dog.’
‘A dog? You mean it swims after them?’
‘Not at all. You see the wattle screens flanking the tunnels, as you call them? And the gaps in them, here and there? The dog is simply trained to show himself successively at the different gaps, and always working up towards the neck of the trap. He doesn’t chase the fowl. The fowl chase him. Nobody knows why. But they do. Then one of the men – my grandfather has three or four – appears at the mouth of the trap in a dinghy and drives them forward.’
‘How very odd.’ Appleby was genuinely impressed. ‘And then the birds are caught and ringed and so forth?’
‘Just that. And, next year, we shall hear of them turning up in Hawaii or Siberia or wherever. The study of migration, you know, is absolutely fascinating. It’s absolutely absorbing. I can’t tell you.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Appleby was aware that Jean had spoken with a sudden intensity which suggested that her grandfather’s master passion was getting a firm grip on her too. ‘Am I right,’ he added, ‘in thinking that the fascination comes in part from the whole purpose and mechanism of the thing being largely inexplicable?’
‘Well, one can occasionally see why birds go to and fro within their range. It’s a simple matter of climate and food. But not always. One has to suppose that they are still doing something that ceased to have any point ages and ages ago. And, you know, it isn’t only birds. Butterflies can be even more mysterious. Painted Ladies come out of their chrysalises in the Sudan and move straight north in hordes. They may end up in the Arctic Circle, which doesn’t seem sensible at all. There are other kinds that fly straight out to sea until they fall and drown. But the birds, of course, are the long-distance champions. The North American Golden Plover thinks nothing of 2,000 miles non-stop over the Atlantic. And there’s really no explanation of why it makes the effort. But the how of the thing is more mysterious still. The first broods of young swallows, you know, leave England before their parents – and make their own way to the tribe’s prescriptive winter quarters in South Africa. And in the following spring they may return to the very barn in which they were hatched. For countless centuries every one of the little creatures has been born with its own radar and so forth ready built-in. It’s impressive. But if one wants really to scare oneself, one has to turn from the butterflies and birds to some of the small mammals. Do you know about the Lemmings?’
Appleby considered. ‘Don’t they,’ he asked cautiously, ‘behave with some degree of folly?’
‘Their behaviour isn’t technically migration, because they never come back. It’s irruption. Every now and then their numbers rocket up – nobody knows why. So food grows scarce, and they get on the move. That’s sensible enough. But their one idea is to move on a dead straight line. There may be millions and millions of them, obsessed with this necessity to turn themselves into a vast crawling Roman road. They turn aside for nothing at all. When they get to the sea – as they’re bound to do in the end – they don’t turn aside for that either. They swim straight out into it till they drown.’
‘It’s disturbing,’ Appleby said.
‘Just that. You’ve found a splendid word for it.’ Jean spoke ironically, but her voice was tense with the excitement of some inward vision. ‘Ages and ages ago, this forward-march business must have had some positive biological value. It was what, if you were a Lemming, in certain circumstances got you through. So Lemmings, when they get rattled, do just the same thing today – and will go on doing it, one supposes, as long as any Lemmings are. Don’t you think, Sir John, viewing human behaviour as a whole, that it’s the Lemming and not the Lemur or the Chimpanzee that has most claim to cousinship with us?’
She hadn’t spoken for effect; it wasn’t like a clever point in an undergraduate debate. A certain impulse towards sombre philosophical reflection was perhaps constitutional among the Howes. And Appleby had a sudden and alarming picture of this intermittently brooding and intense girl forty years on – if somebody didn’t come along and rescue her from Ailsworth and its birds. She would be as cranky as her grandfather was said to be now. And this would be a great shame. An attractive as well as an intelligent girl.
There was a flight of wild duck in the air, and across the pool some swans were majestically gliding. But what one was chiefly aware of was silence and the empty sky.
‘You spend quite a lot of time here, when you’re at Ailsworth?’ Appleby asked.
‘Quite a lot. It depends on the season.’ Jean caught his glance and laughed. ‘You’re thinking it’s all rather bleak and lonesome? It isn’t, if you understand what’s happening. I think I could spend my life very happily here – if I didn’t have an idea that it would be a kind of running away. To get like my grandfather – frankly preferring feathered to unfeathered bipeds – is rather throwing up the sponge, don’t you think?’
‘Well, yes.’ Appleby smiled. ‘That’s to say, I think it may be all right in an elderly eccentric. Your grandfather no doubt does good work on the feathered tribes, whereas he might be a mere nuisance in the House of Lords. But I’d deprecate it in a young woman.’ He took a last look out over the empty landscape, and turned to descend the ladder. ‘But I’m not sure, myself, that I’d find your birds the best way of escaping from a contemplation of the human condition. Certainly not the migrating ones. They get together in mobs for the purpose of performing prodigious but senseless acts. That’s precisely the state of the case in our own world. Lemmings, birds, or men: there’s really nothing to choose between them.’
Jean laughed. ‘You’d better not make that a line of talk with my grandfather. Why, there he is! He’s been to the other tower. He keeps the big maps there, and allows nobody near the place. He likes to make a secret of them until he really has something to communicate.’
Appleby, who had been about to scramble down the ladder, turned back and looked out. At the moment, Lord Ailsworth was a barely distinguishable figure. One might have taken him for one of his own ducks – the more so as he appeared to be advancing mysteriously on the surface of a patch of water. ‘Is he wading?’ Appleby asked.
‘No. There are several little causeys, although it’s hard to see them. Can you make out what’s following him? Use your field glasses, if you can’t.’
Appleby got out his binoculars. What was following Lord Ailsworth was really ducks: a sedately waddling line of them. Lord Ailsworth himself turned out to be a long-legged man with a stoop – less a duck, after all, than a heron. As Appleby watched, he stopped, turned, and appeared to address the creatures that were following him. Then he rummaged in a basket which he carried over his arm, scattered something, and walked on.
‘We’ll go and meet him,’ Jean said. And she added, with a touch of mockery, ‘It will be fun seeing what you make of each other.’
‘I’m sure it will. But please remember that my actual business isn’t at all funny.’ Appleby was serious. ‘I’d like to think I can rely on you to back me up.’
‘I’ll do what I can, of course, Sir John.’
‘Thank you. By the way, what are the big maps?’
‘Maps of the world. There’s a storey in the other tower which has its walls lined with them. When a bird that has been ringed here is reported as caught and recorded in another country, the place is marked with a coloured bead. You know the sort of war film in which people keep track of air raids, and so on, on enormous charts? It always reminds me of that.’
‘With your grandfather as a sort of Air Marshal, sending his winged squadrons hither and thither about the globe? It’s another queer parallel between birds and men.’
‘Except that men carry bombs, and birds carry nothing but their own identification papers.’
They had reached the ground, and Lord Ailsworth was no longer visible. But Jean set a brisk pace in the direction from which he would come. For a couple of minutes they walked in silence. There were more pens, but Appleby didn’t much attend to them. At least, he was telling himself, one couldn’t find more appropriate territory upon which to conduct a wild-goose chase. He had sent Judith on one yesterday, and he had himself embarked on one today. That, at least, was the sober probability of the matter. Unless, of course –
He turned suddenly to Jean. ‘Out there where your grandfather is now,’ he said. ‘Is it dangerous? Would it be risky for someone who didn’t know the place to go prowling over all that marshland?’
‘I’d scarcely suppose so. There can’t be any deep water to drown in, or the sort of mud in which one can sink and leave nothing but bubbles. And it’s late in the season for my grandfather to feel he must take a shot at anybody trespassing on the breeding grounds.’
‘Would he really do that? It sounds a little feudal and high-handed.’
‘Of course not. There have been incidents in which he has raved at intruders in a most alarming way. But I’ve never known him do anything as a result of that sort of brainstorm… Now then, here he is.’
They had walked down a long path past a line of pens sheltering a variety of exotic fowl. Lord Ailsworth had paused beside the last of these, set down his basket, and stooped over a bird. Now he straightened up. He was older than Appleby had supposed – a worn and haggard man, with craggy features, and long and untidy white hair. His expression was gentle and withdrawn – a fact which made the more startling the extraordinary brightness of his deep blue eyes.
‘The Andean Crested Duck,’ he said. ‘Something not quite right about him, I’m afraid. Pinioned, of course. One is never quite easy about captives, wouldn’t you say? But they can’t be helped.’
Appleby was for a moment at a loss. The formidable Lord Ailsworth, whom Colonel Pickering had been so little anxious to approach, had addressed him casually and almost absently, as if here were somebody he was accustomed to meet about the place every day.
‘This is Sir John Appleby,’ Jean said.
‘How do you do?’ Lord Ailsworth now advanced with a sort of shy courtesy and shook hands. ‘I am always very glad to see Jean’s friends. I should have liked to meet more of her Oxford companions. But we are not much by way of having visitors at Ailsworth, these days.’ Lord Ailsworth delivered himself of this in a mildly puzzled manner, as if it were a circumstance of which there must be some obvious explanation that escaped him momentarily. ‘Do you come from Oxford yourself?’ he asked. ‘I get great assistance from the Bureau of Animal Population there. It is much the most important department of the University at present. I myself read Greats, with some emphasis on philosophy. But studies of that sort were already in a decline.’
‘I don’t come from Oxford,’ Appleby said. ‘I come from the Metropolitan Police.’
‘Yes, of course. How foolish of me.’ Lord Ailsworth appeared to judge himself guilty of some discourtesy in not having been better informed about his visitor. But he was not otherwise discomposed. ‘Shall we go up to the house?’ he asked. ‘I hope you can stay to lunch. You mustn’t expect roast duck.’ This was apparently a joke, and it was accompanied by a smile which somehow made Appleby uneasy. ‘But Jean will have explained to you that ours is a vegetarian regimen.’
‘When did you last eat roast duck, Grandpapa?’ Jean appeared to ask this question quite seriously.
‘In 1898, my dear.’ Lord Ailsworth gave this reply confidently. ‘I remember the occasion very clearly. It was – God help me! – a very good roast duck. In fact it gets into my dreams from time to time. Probably roast duck is not what it was. Burgundy is certainly not what it was. Which makes abstention from roast duck the less of a penance. And therefore the less meritorious, it is to be feared.’ He touched Appleby lightly and with charming politeness on the arm. ‘Let us take this path, my dear sir. No, Jean, you need not carry that basket. I am very capable of managing it myself. I have been taking some cress to the Versicolour Teal. And passing the time of day with our new arrival, the Perry River White-fronted Goose. A charming creature, but rather uncommunicative at present.’
It was obviously desirable, Appleby thought, to find out at once just how mad Lord Ailsworth was. ‘You find,’ he asked, ‘that new arrivals haven’t much to say for themselves at first?’
‘Quite so, my dear sir. And there is no occasion for your being an exception to the rule.’ Lord Ailsworth smiled gently. ‘But perhaps I might know whether you are interested in birds? It is something inborn, I think. Certainly I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know a hawk from a hernshaw.’
It required only a nodding acquaintance with the tragedy of Hamlet to realize from this that Lord Ailsworth – superficially at least – had all his wits about him. But it still didn’t necessarily follow – Appleby thought – that his madness was only north-north-west. A man can be at the same time extremely acute and extremely crazy. ‘I should certainly like to speak up about myself at once,’ Appleby said, ‘and before trespassing further on your hospitality. It’s true that I haven’t come because I’m interested in birds. But I have come because it seems probable that somebody else is. I understand that Colonel–’
‘Good heavens!’ Lord Ailsworth had paused by a pen and now interrupted in some agitation. ‘Whatever can have happened to the Wandering Whistling Duck? Fully winged, of course – but very sedentary in habit. And now there’s no sign of him. This is most upsetting.’
‘Mightn’t he’ – Appleby ventured to suggest – ‘for once be living up to his name? If he’s a wandering–’
‘Precisely!’ Lord Ailsworth was becoming more and more excited. ‘Sometimes, you know, birds stray out of the reserve and over to the village. They’re all scoundrels there – all damnable scoundrels. Particularly at the Bell.’
‘At the inn?’ Appleby was interested.
‘If my fellow magistrates did their duty, that fellow, What’s-his-name–’
‘Keylock,’ Jean said.
‘Yes, Keylock. Ought to be under lock and key – eh? Certainly he has no business to be holding a licence. Put anything in the pot – absolutely anything.’ Lord Ailsworth was now hurrying forward, apparently intent upon hunting the errant bird. But at the same time he talked on with mounting vehemence and increasing incoherence. ‘Weren’t we talking about roast duck? Frivolous talk never any good. Real thing on top of you in no time. Apple sauce. I was going on to make a joke about apple sauce. Still possible to have the apple sauce. And something about Burgundy – eh? But Keylock keeps nothing in his miserable tavern except mouldy cheese. So how did he come to be feeding that fellow Juniper on a roast bird? Smell of it all over the place when I went in to talk to him.’
Appleby stopped in his tracks – so uncompromisingly that the others halted too, ‘Did you say Juniper?’ he asked. ‘You are talking, Lord Ailsworth, about Professor Howard Juniper?’
‘Yes, that’s the man. Put up at the Bell about six weeks ago.’
‘But am I not right in thinking that you told the Chief Constable yesterday–’
‘Pickering? Tiresome fellow. Do you think I’d admit to young Tommy Pickering that I’d been induced to pay a friendly call on a man who turned out to be eating one of my own ducks?’
‘But you’re admitting it to Sir John,’ Jean said. ‘And I’m very glad. I’d like you to go on and tell him all about it.’
‘Should you, my dear?’ Lord Ailsworth was calming down. ‘Why, there he is!’ He pointed ahead. A large – and, to Appleby’s eye, quite commonplace – duck had turned a corner and was coming sedately towards them. ‘Do you know, I think he’s struck up a friendship with the Sushkin’s Goose? Yes, I believe that is the explanation. Which is a great relief, I’m bound to say. Now, what were we talking about?’
‘Howard Juniper,’ Appleby said with emphasis.
‘Ah, yes. Well I’ll tell you all about him at lunch. Interesting chap, in a way. Tolerable, but for his disgusting feeding habits. Had a sense of adventure that’s not common nowadays. And intelligent. But that made it all the worse – wouldn’t you agree? Stands to reason he knew what that blackguard Keylock had served up to him. However, one oughtn’t to speak ill of the dead.’
‘The dead?’ Appleby was startled. ‘You have some reason to suppose that Professor Juniper is dead?’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, dear me, yes. Almost sure to be, I’d say. But here we are. I’ll show you where to wash, my dear Sir John. Madeira, Jean, would be the right thing, to my mind. Sherry-drinking is overdone these days. And didn’t I say something about Burgundy? Capital with nut cutlets. I’ll tell Cowmeadow to hunt up a bottle. This way. Water not hot, but privy does flush. Cowmeadow is my butler. My great-grandfather found a lad called Cowmeadow in his regiment of militia. Engaged him as a stable boy at once. And we’ve had them ever since. Wonderful name – eh? No towel? Too bad. Use my handkerchief.’
Lord Ailsworth was clearly in high good humour, and at the moment it seemed useless to try to penetrate the barrage of his hospitable talk. Appleby contented himself with observing as much of Ailsworth Court as came within his view. Jean’s description had prepared him to find the place a vast aviary, and he had rather looked forward to the queer spectacle of some splendid state apartment become the lodging place of the celebrated Tibetan Donkey Ducks. But although a faint persistent susurration in the air did suggest the presence in distant chambers of sundry breeds of lesser fowl, the house as a whole seemed normal in its rather decayed and neglected way.
There was dust but not much cobweb, the carpets were threadbare but not positively treacherous, the large gloomy canvases on the walls were no more indecipherable than they had probably been for a century or more. Cowmeadow when he appeared was indeed excessively shabby, and had much the same encrusted appearance as the bottles of Madeira and Burgundy which he successively produced. The Madeira was of incredible age; the Burgundy, although even half an hour later it was much too cold, could not be accused of the degeneracy that Lord Ailsworth had attributed to its species. The nut cutlets were not, of course, cutlets – but neither, blessedly, did they appear to be compounded of nuts. When Jean was at Ailsworth, Appleby suspected, its domestic economy in general, and its vegetarian diet in particular, were a little tuned up. Lord Ailsworth, although capable of adequately courteous attention to a guest, had little eye for these matters, and every now and then he seemed to withdraw into a dream-world of his own. It wasn’t, Appleby hoped as he ate his very reasonable Lenten meal, a dream-world haunted by the phantom savour of fowl hissing on the spit.
Getting back to the subject of Howard Juniper was not easy. Lord Ailsworth, although intermittently talkative on this and that, was elusive about what had happened at the Bell. For a time, indeed, Appleby was inclined to wonder whether his volte-face in point of what he had said to Colonel Pickering the day before might not be the product of a weird sense of humour, and his story of having met Howard Juniper at the inn be a sheer invention designed to baffle the second vexatious irruption of the police that Appleby’s visit represented. On the other hand, Lord Ailsworth’s invitation to lunch held no trace of anything other than entire good will. Appleby was wondering how to get farther – if indeed there was farther to get – when Jean came briskly and effectively to his assistance.
‘Grandpapa,’ she said, ‘you must tell Sir John all about Professor Juniper. You must tell him at once. Because it seems the matter is very important.’
‘The matter of the Garefowl is very important? I quite agree, my dear. But not to our guest. His interest in ornithology is somewhat below the normal, I should say.’
‘We don’t know what you mean about the Garefowl, Grandpapa. And what is important to Sir John is Professor Juniper. He has disappeared–’
‘Quite so. Of course he has disappeared. He couldn’t hope to do other than disappear.’
‘He has disappeared. And he was engaged, it seems, on very secret work.’
‘Quite so, quite so.’ Lord Ailsworth was increasingly impatient. ‘I know about that. He told me about it. He said, you know, that having to keep his own affairs secret was quite enough, and that he didn’t propose to respect similar humbug elsewhere. If they caught him, he said, they were welcome to take a pot-shot at him. That, of course, was nonsense. Or so I suppose. Perhaps if it happened in the dark, and they thought he had come out of a submarine, or something like that, they might shoot. Come to think of it, I suppose they would. But, you know, he’d never get there. He’d be drowned.’
Appleby had listened to this rambling discourse in steadily deepening astonishment. And what seemed chiefly astonishing was his luck. Unless this excessively eccentric peer was really making the whole thing up, he was on the track of Howard Juniper at last.
‘But that is neither here nor there.’ Lord Ailsworth seemed to be referring to the supposition that Juniper must have been drowned. ‘What startles me, Jean, is your saying that you don’t know what I mean by a Garefowl.’
‘I said nothing of the sort, Grandpapa. I merely said we didn’t know what you meant by starting talking about Garefowl in connexion with this Professor Juniper. I know very well that the Garefowl is the Great Auk. Why, I believe even Sir John knows that. It’s the Alca impennis of Linnaeus. And it’s extinct.’
‘Of course it’s extinct. It has been for more than a century. But it’s true that there has been this rumour. It had quite seized the imagination of this fellow Juniper. I was attracted by him on my afternoon visit, I must confess. But not, I need hardly say, later. Fellow who could devour one of my birds as served up to him by that reprobate Keylock would devour the Great Auk itself, if you ask me. Disagreeable topic, this we’ve hit on. Let’s change it.’
‘Not until you’ve given Sir John a systematic account of the whole affair.’ Jean was implacable. ‘Or let him ask you whatever questions he thinks necessary.’
‘Certainly, certainly. Let him fire away.’ Lord Ailsworth spoke with good humour, and turned to Appleby smiling.
Appleby – and it was for the second time – wasn’t sure he liked the smile. But at least it seemed as if he were going to get his facts. ‘It was specially to see you that Professor Juniper came down to Ailsworth?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t a doubt of it. Although – mark you – he didn’t let on that way. He’d heard, no doubt, that we don’t at Ailsworth welcome visitors indiscriminately. I ran into him when he was taking a stroll. He had a pair of binoculars and was watching some teal coming in from the estuary. All quite in order; the fellow wasn’t trespassing, or showing any signs of it. So I passed the time of day with him. Quite knowledgeable and keen, he turned out to be. I went in to take a cup of tea with him at the Bell.’
‘Why – I remember now!’ With a confirmatory nod, Jean turned to Appleby. ‘Grandpapa mentioned it in a letter – just that he had met somebody and talked birds with him over a cup of tea. It struck me as quite an event in his social calendar. As it would be, wouldn’t it, Gran?’ And she looked affectionately at Lord Ailsworth.
‘No doubt, my dear. But I soon saw that this fellow was after something. Being a very old buffer, you know, and having kept at it for a very long time’ – Lord Ailsworth offered a vague gesture which might have been meant to indicate modesty – ‘I’ve made myself something of an authority on the Alcidae. And that’s what Juniper had in mind. He thought he wanted my opinion. But what he really wanted was to be encouraged in his own. He’d set his heart, if you ask me, on this exploit; and he wanted me to say there might really be something to find at the end of it. Great nonsense, of course.’
‘Just what,’ Appleby asked patiently, ‘is great nonsense?’
‘The notion that Garefowl can have appeared and begun breeding on Ardray.’
‘Ardray!’ Involuntarily, Appleby sat up in his chair.
‘I can see you know about the place. Though I’d have thought, Sir John, it was the job of the Navy to guard it, rather than the police.’
‘It certainly is. And what started this notion, do you know?’
‘A young fellow doing a spell of duty there, I believe. He knew something about birds. And he swore to it. My guess would be that he simply saw some Razor-bills and misjudged the distance and the size. One or two might have aberrant markings above the bill. The lad was killed in a motor accident, shortly after spreading this story. That would give it greater appeal, no doubt. But you can see where the heart of the nonsense lies. Ardray is a prohibited island – rockets or something of the sort – and the story gets a romantic lift, you might say, from that. And it can’t be checked up on.’
‘But that’s monstrous!’ With a suddenness that surprised Appleby, Jean was alive with indignation. ‘They couldn’t exclude properly accredited ornithologists.’
Lord Ailsworth shook his head. ‘You forget that the story is nonsense. It must be nonsense. No learned society would badger the Admiralty about it. Only a crank would get excited at such a notion. This Juniper was a crank. Highly intelligent, as I said. Leading scientist in his own line. Very interesting line, too. He told me all about it. But a crank, all the same.’
Appleby considered this for a moment. ‘These birds,’ he asked, ‘have just died out?’
The effect of this seemingly harmless question was surprising. Indeed, it might almost have been called alarming. Lord Ailsworth sprang to his feet with a vigour totally unexpected in one of his years. He was quivering with nervous excitement and his eyes were blazing. ‘Died out!’ he exclaimed in a harsh, high voice. ‘Have you been reading the miserable Owen? Have you never heard of John Wolley? Are you unaware, sir, of the criminal folly of your own species?’
There was a moment of silence. Jean made no effort to calm her grandfather. She had gone pale, and was watching him with eyes in which Appleby thought he detected the same haunted expression as he had imagined lurking in them at their first meeting.
‘My dear Lord Ailsworth, I do apologize for my ignorance.’ There was nothing for it, Appleby decided, except to try to make some soothing remarks himself. ‘I quite realize that inept remarks must be very irritating.’
‘The apology must be mine.’ Lord Ailsworth had sat down again. He was reaching, with a movement that seemed curiously blind, for his Burgundy. But, when he picked up the glass, it was only to thrust it away with a hand that still trembled so violently that the wine was spilt on the table. ‘It is the most obstinate of vulgar errors. Sir Richard Bonnycastle, a naturalist almost as great as Wolley himself, exposed it more than a hundred years ago. The Garefowl was murdered, sir, like the Moa and the Dodo. And not by wretched natives seeking food – which was the state of the case with the Donkey Duck until providence allowed me to intervene. Unspeakable blackguards hunted it down in a miserable traffic of eggs and skins.’
‘I see,’ Appleby said. ‘And I can understand it’s making you very angry.’
And now Jean did speak. ‘There’s a vicious circle,’ she said, ‘in matters of that sort. When creatures are naturally scarce, specimens become valuable. Every beastly museum wants one to stuff and stick in a glass case. So the hunt becomes vigorous. And the fewer the individuals remaining extant, the higher the price it will command. The hunters’ effort is progressively stepped up, until not a single specimen is left alive. It’s not so bad nowadays, because reputable collectors keep off. But there are plenty of unscrupulous ones. Isn’t that it, Grandpapa?’
‘Yes, yes – that is it.’ Lord Ailsworth produced, with visible effort, the smile Appleby didn’t like. ‘Let us pass from the subject. Juniper, at least, had no lethal intentions. Or not against birds. But he had them – well, you may say against himself. He was proposing suicide.’
‘Suicide?’ In his turn Appleby reached for his Burgundy. He was finding Lord Ailsworth hard going. ‘Professor Juniper confided to you that he proposed to take his own life?’
‘It amounted to that. He had a plan for later in the summer. He proposed to make a dash for the north of Scotland, without letting anybody know, and to go out to Ardray by night. He knew, he said, where he could get hold of a dinghy with an outboard motor. I don’t know whether you are acquainted with that coast–’
‘I certainly am.’ Appleby spoke grimly. ‘It’s almost unbelievable that he should entertain such a crazy notion.’
‘But he was crazy.’ Again Lord Ailsworth smiled. ‘I’m a bit crazy myself, and I should know. There was something entirely freakish in the way the man’s mind worked.’
‘But didn’t you–’
‘I simply listened to him in the afternoon. I wasn’t quite clear that he was serious. The thing left me, however, very uneasy. That is why I went back in the evening – to do what I could to dissuade him. But, when I found him at that particular dinner, I naturally gave him up.’
Jean was looking at her grandfather in horror. ‘How perfectly awful!’ she said. She turned to Appleby. ‘Is he married? Has he any relations?’
‘He isn’t married. But he has a twin brother, Miles, who is a schoolmaster. At first I thought it might be Miles who had put up at the Bell. It seems they can pass for one another, they’re so alike. But it was the professor, after all.’
‘It’s a horrible story. Grandpapa, why ever didn’t you stop him somehow?’
Lord Ailsworth made no reply. He appeared to have fallen into a sombre reverie.
‘I don’t think your grandfather could have done much,’ Appleby said, ‘even if he hadn’t been put off by the unfortunate matter of the roast duck. Juniper was a perfect stranger to him, and simply revealed himself as entertaining this dangerous and irrational project. There was no means of restraining him. Lord Ailsworth couldn’t lock him up. If Howard Juniper has come to grief – and it looks very much as if he has – the disaster is his own fault.’
‘I suppose I could have locked him up.’ Lord Ailsworth emerged abruptly from his muse, as if lured by this attractive idea. ‘Of course I don’t sit on the Bench nowadays. But, after all, I am a magistrate. Yes, perhaps I could have committed him. Sent for that young fool Tommy Pickering and had Juniper gaoled for his own good. But there might have been legal repercussions. Things aren’t what they were – would you say?’
Appleby wasn’t much disposed to attend to this. He drained his wine – it was too good to sacrifice to any emergency – and then asked his host a question. ‘I wonder whether I might use your telephone? At once?’
‘Certainly, my dear sir. I have no doubt you will want to follow the matter up.’ Lord Ailsworth was at his most courteous and normal. ‘Indeed, you make me feel I have been very remiss. I could have done something, I am sure. Contacted the poor chap’s relations, for example. There is, you say, a schoolmastering brother.’
Jean looked up suddenly. ‘That wouldn’t be at a place called Splaine something?’
Appleby looked at her in surprise. ‘That’s right. Splaine Croft.’
‘I thought so. I travelled down from Oxford in the same compartment as the schoolmastering brother only the other day. An old pupil of his, Arthur Ferris, was there too. He got Arthur into Rugby. Arthur told me all about him afterwards.’
Lord Ailsworth had risen. ‘Interesting but irrelevant,’ he said with surprising briskness. ‘I’ll take Sir John to the telephone.’