‘This is my father,’ Bobby Appleby said to the girl. ‘I think you ought to talk to him. I’ll be strolling round the place.’
‘Don’t go too far, Bobby.’ Appleby glanced curiously at his son. ‘And talk to Finn. He’s feeling disapproved of. Miss Ashmore, shall we take a turn in the park?’ Appleby led the way down a flight of steps. ‘Of course you know of your uncle’s death?’
‘Your son told me. And I said I would like to be brought over to the Chase. Has my father turned up here?’
‘Not yet. The police are trying to contact him. Can you help them, by any chance?’
‘I don’t think so. It seems very probable that my father has run away. Does that sound insane?’
‘I should like to think it did.’
‘I have only just discovered that I live among mad people. Or I have only just admitted it to myself.’ Miss Ashmore, although clearly in some state of extreme tension, said this quite calmly. ‘It makes one do stupid things. For example, I have told your son some perfectly useless lies.’
‘Useless lies are not commonly very bad ones.’
‘One was that Jules – who is known as my fiancé – would look after the dogs while I came over here. It wasn’t true. Jules has departed.’
‘You mean that he has run away like your father?’
‘Not quite that. He quarrelled with my father yesterday afternoon–’
‘Miss Ashmore, you really are a quarrelsome crowd.’
‘I agree. And it was quite mad. It wasn’t because – as I’ve discovered – my father had been doing something unspeakably cruel and wildly criminal.’ Miss Ashmore’s voice had become icy. ‘It was because the rationality of the French nation was being aspersed. Jules came and told me the facts, read me a lecture on them, packed his bags, and departed.’
‘I think, perhaps, you had better tell me the facts.’
‘Very well. This is something else I lied to your son about. My Uncle Martyn, it seems, had dreadful experiences during the war – and also, in France, for some years afterwards. It had left him with a neurosis, an idée fixe – I’m not sure what it should be called. And my father has been working upon it, causing strange and sinister things to happen, in order to drive Uncle Martyn slowly mad – or to have him tell such an unlikely story that he would be thought to be mad–’
‘Yes.’ Appleby thought he might well interrupt at this point. ‘Your father has struck me as a man whose methods would be oblique or devious.’
‘Then, only a few days ago, one of these silly and wicked pranks went wrong. My father was stupid enough to do something before a witness–’
‘Quite so. It was an enormous mistake, and perhaps the product of a sudden access of real homicidal feeling. Incidentally, I was the witness. And Jules, Miss Ashmore?’
‘He simply decided he couldn’t take it, and asked for his cards. I don’t blame him. Only, I suspect he was aware of what had been happening, in a general way. He only started creating because he had a thing about France.’
‘It’s to the credit of a Frenchman that he should have a thing about France. Do I understand you to regard your engagement as broken off?’
‘Most decidedly.’
‘I think you now know about another broken engagement? At least, I suppose it must be called that. I mean your brother Giles’ relationship with Miss Bunker, and how your Uncle Martyn appears to have disrupted it? Presumably your father knows about it too by now. Have you any idea when he found out?’
‘He was very upset yesterday afternoon, after he had been looking through the newspapers.’
‘I see. And that was before his quarrel with Jules?’
‘In a way, yes. But something had been blowing up for some days.’
‘May I return to the subject of your father? Why should you judge it probable that he has run away?’
‘If he knows about Uncle Martyn’s death – about it’s being sinister, I mean. If investigation turned up the fact that he himself had been faking attempts on his brother’s life, and so on, he would be in a very awkward situation.’
‘He certainly would. Although it is entirely uncertain that he does know about his brother’s death, so far. When did you last see your father?’
‘Isn’t that the title of a famous painting?’ Miss Ashmore had smiled faintly. ‘It was late yesterday afternoon. He said something about his dentist. Then he just got into his car, and drove off. He’s often very casual about such things.’
‘And he hasn’t come home? Surely he wouldn’t spend the night at his dentist’s?’
‘That would be most unusual, I suppose.’ There was a note of what might have been sudden desperate fatigue in Miss Ashmore’s voice. ‘It’s a London dentist. My father would spend the night in town. So his running away is not proven, so far. I imagine the same thing holds true of Giles.’
‘We at least know just when Giles took himself out of the picture. As you must have heard, my son Bobby saw him off on the midnight train. Perhaps your father and brother will come back together.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Miss Ashmore, you have done right to tell me what you have. But the situation must be extremely painful to you. Had you better go home – where your mother is possibly in anxiety by this time? Bobby will take you back. Or I can find a police car.’
‘Thank you very much. But, please, not yet. For a little time, Sir John, I think I want to be alone. I’ll walk round the park. That will bring me back to the house in about half an hour.’ Virginia Ashmore smiled wanly. ‘Perhaps the mystery will have solved itself by then.’
‘It won’t have solved itself, Miss Ashmore.’ Appleby looked at the girl steadily, and spoke gravely. ‘But it may be solved – even in so short a time as thirty minutes.’
‘You mean you know–?’ The girl’s very lovely eyes had rounded perceptibly as she spoke.
‘What I chiefly know is that the temporal dimensions of this affair are confusing. Some things, like your father’s campaign against your uncle’s nervous balance, seem to have been building up for years. Then much happens in a few days – and, after that, even more in a few hours. But just how many hours? It’s the next thing I want to find out.’
‘The girl has gone off by herself,’ Appleby said to Bobby. ‘I think we’ll keep clear of her for a time. She has the devil of a lot on her plate, poor child.’
‘Perhaps her Frenchman will sustain her.’ Bobby said this with unconvincing casualness. ‘De Voisin, you know.’
‘I do know. But there is something she didn’t tell you. Pride, I suppose. De Voisin has walked out on her.’
‘The low hound!’
‘Well, yes. But the fact is he couldn’t take the knowledge – or a substantially enlarged knowledge – of some freakish and black-guardly tricks his future father-in-law had been up to. All these people are a really awful crowd.’
‘The girl isn’t.’
‘I think she might stick by them at a pinch, Bobby. But at least this Jules de Voisin is out. As long as he was going to marry Virginia Ashmore, he had an interest in the distribution of the Ashmore property. It would be a feasible motive for murder of the totally calculating and cold-blooded sort. But the moment he broke with these people, the motive vanished.’
‘He did come over here last night. It’s the final thing we know about him. He said he brought his kinsman a small farewell present.’
‘We must presume his present was just the nasty truth about his kinsman’s precious brother Rupert. No vengeance and nemesis from those Résistance days long ago. Just brother Rupert being utterly diabolical.’
‘Would that upset Martyn, do you think, or be a kind of relief to him?’
‘Upset him, I think. Do you know? That morning, when I was up on the roof with him and with de Voisin, there was a moment in which I thought his belief in his own interpretation of these episodes – call it the Croix de Lorraine interpretation – faltered. And his confidence faltered with it. Looking back, I can almost see him as clinging to a fantasy – but feeling, in the depth of his mind, that it was his own kindred who were after him.’
‘How utterly ghastly! But if some revelation of de Voisin’s upset him last night, he was composed enough when Giles took me in to be introduced to him. I had a sense of his feeling he was in command of something.’
‘Well, the main point is that de Voisin had ceased to have the slightest occasion to return later and kill him. It’s one elimination, and that’s something.’
‘What about this chap you and the Chief Constable were interviewing when I drove up with Virginia – the younger surviving brother, isn’t he, Ambrose?’
‘The violent Ambrose. I don’t think Ambrose was in on Rupert’s plot. Rupert’s plot belongs to the region – come to think of it – of slow poisonings. Not Ambrose Ashmore’s style. And I think Ambrose has told a good deal of truth about himself. He came storming over to the Chase last night, hard upon reading of Martyn’s engagement. He says he found his brother alive, had a flaming row, left his brother alive – and relieved his baffled feelings, so to speak, against your friend Finn’s jaw. There is a certain logical reason why his story ought to be true. But I find myself not believing it – not believing the whole of it – all the same.’
‘You believe he may really have killed his brother in a passion?’
‘That doesn’t follow. But I want to avoid that girl in the park. Let’s simply walk round the house.’ Appleby came to a halt. ‘By Jove, no! First of all, we’ll go in again – unobtrusively.’
‘You mean, avoiding the eye of Tommy Pride’s men?’
‘Why not? They might want to be helpful, and only succeed in being puzzled. I’ve had an idea.’
‘Oh, I say!’ Bobby produced Finn’s exclamation with cheerful irreverence. ‘It’s a bit of a thrill, you know. I’ve never had a close-up view of Sir John in action before.’
‘Don’t be a young idiot. What about this door? It’s open, all right. Crazy place, the Chase. What we want is the cellarage. This way.’
‘Whatever do you want that for?’
‘To make ghostly noises from, and startle Colonel Thomas Pride upstairs. Mind these steps; they’re tricky. I’ve been down here before.’ Appleby located and flicked on a light-switch.
‘Good Lord!’ Bobby said.
‘Exactly. This is the Newcastle to which your hopeful companion Giles Ashmore brought his coal in the form of a dozen of claret. The stuff isn’t upstairs, so my guess is that Uncle Martyn brought it straight down here and dumped it in a bin. I’d just like to check on it.’
‘Here’s claret,’ Bobby said, and started puffing dust from a bottle. ‘Holy smoke! Château Margaux ’47.’
‘I had Lafite ’49.’ Appleby chuckled. ‘And here’s what we’re looking for. The whole dozen, just standing on end.’
‘I can’t see that tells you anything.’ Bobby turned round. ‘Is the champagne there too?’
‘Champagne?’
‘It seems Giles went the whole hog, and had half a dozen bottles of champagne shoved in the bottom of the box. It made it uncommonly heavy.’
‘There isn’t much champagne down here.’ Appleby poked around for a couple of minutes. ‘Louis Roederer Cristal Brut. I think it improbable that our young friend bought that in Linger – or anywhere else. We’ll go upstairs again. In fact, back into the open air. I need a breath of it.’