‘Then it was a white camel,’ Appleby said, ‘and it walked on two feet.’
‘Puzzling thing.’ Professor Snodgrass received this exasperated remark quite seriously. ‘Might be a trick of the light, perhaps? In mirage conditions, I’ve seen them with up to eight. Feet, that is.’
‘There was a woman at this door, and presumably she was listening to us.’ Appleby pursued his plan of dogged rationality. ‘A woman in white. Have you…’
‘A woman in white? Fellow wrote a yarn called that. Not at all bad. Much better than modern stuff of the same sort.’
‘No doubt.’ Appleby felt no disposition to digress upon the literary merits of Wilkie Collins. ‘Have you any idea why a woman dressed entirely in white should be wandering round Ledward?’
‘None whatever. It sounds a shade eccentric to me.’ Having produced this brilliant riposte, the Professor at once capped it. ‘Do you think she might be impersonating a ghost?’ He picked up the decanter, and held it interrogatively over his guest’s glass.
‘No more, thank you – although it’s a capital port. May I ask whether you have many women in your household?’
‘Lord no, my dear fellow. Lost interest in them years ago. And in a quiet country situation it just doesn’t do.’ Professor Snodgrass shook his head a shade nostalgically. ‘Adrian found that.’
‘Did he, indeed? I was thinking of servants, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, I see. Not quite the same thing, eh? Not that one can’t have what you might call an overlap.’ Whether genuinely or not, the Professor’s glance momentarily suggested a ripe Edwardian depravity. ‘There’s my cook, Mrs Gathercoal. Invaluable woman. Understands a soufflé. Set her to one for you, if you’re kind enough to stay on. Manage you a bit of rough shooting, too. Brought your gun?’
The wandering course of these remarks, and much else in his host’s conversation, might be the result, Appleby supposed, of their being offered in a large absence of mind. There could be no doubt that, as he talked, the old gentleman never ceased to listen. And it wasn’t for those problematical personages whom Appleby was coming to judge rather thick on the ground. Women in white, for example, didn’t interest the present guardian of Ledward Park in the least. His mind was entirely concentrated upon that imposing property’s missing heir.
‘And a couple of other women,’ Snodgrass said. ‘Housemaids, I suppose they’d be called. And, of course, there’s my butler, Leonidas. Uncommon name, eh? Very decent one, too. I engaged him on the strength of it. Can’t say he’s turned out all that Spartan. Still, it puts one in mind of what was a damned good show. If the Phocians had just held on to that mountain path by Anopaea, it might even…’
‘I suppose so.’ Appleby judged the tactics of the battle of Thermopylae to be even more irrelevant than the literary accomplishment of the author of The Woman in White. ‘Does Leonidas keep an eye on the Park as well as your own house?’
‘Dear me, yes. They all have to lend a hand. And some of my outdoor people as well. Must stay shipshape.’ Professor Snodgrass paused. ‘But I was telling you about my nephew Adrian. Boring you, I expect.’
‘Not at all. And, for that matter, you haven’t told me very much. We were interrupted. South America, for instance. Your nephew spends a good deal of his time there?’
‘He certainly used to.’ It was conceivable that the Professor – unmindful of the uses of Who’s Who – had glanced at Appleby with fleeting suspicion and surprise. ‘We have family connections in more South American countries than one. In fact, both the Snodgrasses and the Beddoeses have. I daresay you may have heard of my maternal grandfather, Beddoes Beddoes. Known as the Liberator, in that part of the world. Liberated a pretty packet for himself, in a quiet way.’ The Professor produced his hoarse chuckle. ‘Still, a great patriot in his adoptive land, and so forth. Decapitated a pretty ugly dictator called Gozman Spinto with his own hand, they say, and then gave the place a constitution. Literally handed it over, handsomely bound in full morocco, to some ruffians he’d appointed vice-presidents and judges and senators and what have you. But really held all the strings himself up to the day of his death. Smart politician, was my grandfather Beddoes the Liberator.’
‘And Adrian has also interested himself in politics there?’
‘Decidedly – and fished in some deuced muddy waters, if you ask me. The boy has all the Beddoes spirit of adventure. He also has the Snodgrass brains. He needed both for that affair in Azuera. As revolutions go, a classic of its kind.’
‘I think I remember what you’re talking about. Adrian was in on that?’
‘Master-minded it, my dear fellow. And then led the assault on the Ministry of War himself.’
‘There was a certain ruthlessness to it, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Dear me, yes. I don’t think Adrian actually took an axe to anybody’s neck. But he didn’t precisely stay the hand of his supporters.’
‘Did they remain his supporters for long?’
‘Ten days or a fortnight, I think it was – and then young Adrian – he was young Adrian then – was on his travels again.’
‘What has he been doing during the last ten years?’
‘The last ten years?’ For the first time, the conversable Professor Beddoes Snodgrass had hesitated. ‘We haven’t heard much of him, as a matter of fact. I don’t know that we’ve heard anything at all.’
‘So you simply keep this place going, and expect him to turn up? It seems rather strange to me – if I may say so – that with such a splendid patrimony in his own right your nephew should remain a wanderer on the face of the earth. For I take it that Ledward is Adrian’s absolutely?’
‘Of course it is. Not a doubt of it.’
‘Doesn’t his absence – or at least his complete silence added to that – produce any legal difficulties?’
‘Nothing of the kind. There are trusts, and powers of thingummy, and so forth – all fixed up by the sharks. I have no difficulty at all.’
‘Who would inherit Ledward if Adrian never came back – if he got himself killed in another palace revolution or military coup?’
How Professor Snodgrass might have responded to this outrageous curiosity was never to be known. For he had suddenly raised an arresting hand.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Here he is.’
For seconds Appleby heard nothing at all. As his ear remained tolerably acute, he was inclined to suppose that the Professor was imagining things. Anybody, after all, who mounted so odd an annual occasion as Appleby had stumbled upon must be regarded as harbouring a certain liability in that direction. But in this supposition Professor Snodgrass’ fortuitous guest proved wrong. It was simply that Professor Snodgrass’ own ear – at least for the matter in hand – was very acute indeed. For now there was a sound. It was that of a car which was still a long way off. Perhaps it was simply passing in the night, and would come no nearer than the road upon which Appleby’s own car was stranded. But in a moment this conjecture too was falsified. The car was coming up the drive.
‘He’s not quite on time,’ Professor Snodgrass said. He had adopted a casual air which carried no conviction at all. It was plain that, whether fondly or not, he believed that his great moment had come. He had kept his promise by Adrian: the candle in the window, and much other welcoming ritual besides. And now, after many years, Adrian was keeping his promise by him.
Appleby’s only impulse was to get out. If the car didn’t herald the owner of Ledward at all – if it contained, for instance, a conscientious local policeman doing his best to keep an eye on what must by now be a notorious folly – then Professor Snodgrass’ disillusion would be an uncomfortable thing to witness. If, on the other hand, Adrian Snodgrass had really and truly turned up, the resulting family occasion would equally not be an affair for a stranger to assist at. Adrian after ten years or more would not be quite the Adrian his uncle remembered, and the encounter might not, for one reason or another, run on the kind of lines the old gentleman had been envisaging. Appleby somehow couldn’t believe in an agreeable Adrian Snodgrass. In a sense, no doubt, the Professor had enjoyed his long wardenship of Ledward Park, but he would surely have enjoyed it more if he had continued to receive, from time to time, some token of thanks or interest from its wandering heir. Moreover, unless he had been treating himself to the perverse enjoyment of putting on a dotard’s turn, it seemed likely that the Adrian who now chiefly existed in his memory was a very early Adrian indeed: perhaps even the small boy who had been photographed in soldier’s uniform long ago.
Having decided so much, Appleby got to his feet. Discounting as much as possible the mere oddity of proposing to walk out into the night, he would take a firm conventional farewell of Professor Beddoes Snodgrass (not forgetting a further word of praise for the port) and depart resolutely from the house. And he decided to leave by the french window he had lately investigated. It would be more awkward still to run into the returning Adrian (if, again, conceivably it was he) before his own open front door.
‘Not yet, my dear Appleby.’ The Professor had made a gesture which invited his guest to resume his seat. ‘I know you must be as eager to greet Adrian as I am. But it won’t be proper quite yet.’
‘Not proper?’ Appleby was so astonished that he did actually sit down again. ‘If it’s really your nephew who is arriving, surely you are going straight out to welcome him?’
‘Certainly not. You forget that this is his own house. He enters and takes possession of it. He enjoys, if he cares to, the refreshment laid out for him. It will then be for us to present ourselves. In a sense we shall be welcoming him. But it will be, on my part, as a kinsman who is a neighbour, and, on your part, as that kinsman’s guest. Listen! The car must be a hired car. It’s driving away again.’
This was true, and it was a circumstance that seemed to Appleby to negative the notion of an expostulating policeman. Whoever had simply been dropped at the front door of Ledward at such an hour plainly proposed to spend the rest of the night there. For the first time, Appleby found himself positively inclining to the view that Beddoes Snodgrass’ dream was about to realize itself. But this only strengthened his own resolution to depart. So he once more rose, and this time advanced upon Professor Snodgrass with an outstretched hand.
‘It has been a great pleasure to call upon you,’ he said in what he hoped was a virtually hypnotic tone. ‘But I must not intrude upon your family occasion. In fact, I will leave by the terrace. What a splendid port that is! Good night.’
‘My dear fellow, must you go?’ The Professor, to Appleby’s relief, appeared to be politely masking surprise, and had even extended his own hand. ‘Do drop in on me at my own place at any time. No point in standing on ceremony with a new neighbour, eh?’
‘I shall be delighted,’ Appleby said mendaciously, and made for the french window. It was perhaps because he was so decidedly not standing upon the order of his going – because, to put it crudely, he was in flight – that a second later he failed to pull up in time. He had opened the window, stepped briskly into the night, and collided violently with a more or less solid object. But it was not, in fact, an object so solid as to be immovable. It was now, indeed, supine on the terrace. And it was undoubtedly a man.
Appleby took no time at all to decide that here was one prowler too many. He pounced on the intruder not with any intention of assisting him to rise but in a determination to pin him to the ground. This resolution was only enhanced when he remarked, in the abundant light from within, that the lurking individual had chosen to attire himself in the garb of a clergyman. It was a form of disguise on the part of the criminal classes which he had always strongly reprobated.
‘You’d better not struggle,’ he said. ‘I have a pretty good hold on you.’
‘My dear Beddoes, you are being somewhat impetuous, are you not?’
Appleby let go hastily. The clergyman – who now quite plainly was a clergyman – sat up. And, at the same moment, Professor Snodgrass emerged on the terrace.
‘That isn’t Beddoes,’ the Professor said prosaically. ‘It’s Sir John Appleby, my dear William. He’s our new neighbour. At least I take it he’s that. I suspect he has a notion there may be thieves around. I suppose him to imagine that he has apprehended one in your person. Appleby, this is our vicar, Dr Absolon. Shall we all go inside? William, you need a clothes-brush. Leonidas must find you one. He’s coming over to the Park presently. Your visit is at a surprising hour – but timely, as a matter of fact. I’ll tell you why, as soon as you’ve had a drink.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by a surprising hour.’ Dr Absolon had risen and was dusting himself down. He was also regarding Appleby (whom he might reasonably have considered to be little better than a mad dog) with perfect charity. ‘It’s the hour you asked me to turn up at, after all.’
‘Dear me!’ The Professor appeared slightly disconcerted. ‘Are you sure, my dear fellow?’
‘Of course I’m sure. You said there was a strong probability of your nephew arriving, and that I ought to be here to welcome him on behalf of the parish.’
‘Did I? In any case, it’s very jolly of you, William, to have come across. And Adrian is certainly back at Ledward, I’m delighted to say. So come inside, both of you.’
Although conscious of thereby indicting himself of some infirmity of purpose, Appleby submitted, along with the new arrival, to this injunction. The odd posture of affairs at Ledward was really too seducing to abandon. Had Professor Snodgrass, or had Professor Snodgrass not, really invited Dr Absolon to turn up at this unearthly hour? If he had, the manner in which he had now received the vicar suggested that he had forgotten all about it. Had Absolon (like other problematical persons earlier that night) been for some reason lurking outside the library when Appleby tumbled out on him? Or did that particular terrace constitute his normal route from his vicarage to the Park? As he framed these silent questions, Appleby found himself in possession of another glass of port. He regarded it without enthusiasm. He was again feeling hungry, and what he would chiefly have liked would have been to return to the dining-room, and there – whether in the company of Adrian Snodgrass or not – recruit himself from the collation provided. But it was clear that Adrian’s uncle attached an almost sacramental significance to the returned wanderer’s supping in august solitude. And probably he would regard the inside of an hour as the minimum time requisite for this refection. Appleby would have to put up with satisfying a purely intellectual appetite.
Resigned to this, he took a good look at Dr Absolon. He was a middle-aged man, and plainly in the enjoyment of a robust constitution and benign temperament. This latter endowment, indeed, he had decidedly required to carry him unperturbed through his recent upsetting experience. He seemed to bear Appleby no ill-will, but he was certainly eyeing him with some curiosity. Considering that this stranger had been abruptly presented to him as a new neighbour with a more or less obsessive interest in thieves, this was natural enough. Appleby decided further to expand his claim to the role.
‘On this occasion last year,’ he said firmly, ‘the Professor had some reason to suppose that there might be thieves around. And this year – although I haven’t so far alarmed him with the mention of it – I have had some reason to feel the same thing myself. I wonder, sir, whether you have seen or heard anything as you walked over to the Park?’
‘Too dark to see even the nose on one’s face. I simply aimed at the Professor’s illuminations, and walked straight ahead. Lead, kindly Light, to Ledward, so to speak.’ Absolon appeared to find this turn of phrase amusing rather than profane, for he laughed cheerfully. ‘But I did hear something, as a matter of fact. Voices somewhere in the dark, and close to where my path joins the drive.’
‘Do people normally move through that part of the park?’
‘Oh, certainly. There are several paths that people in the local hamlets are let use quite freely. It was uncommonly late for anything of the kind. But I imagined there had been some junketing somewhere in the neighbourhood.’
‘Ah – then they were rustic voices?’
‘No, I don’t think they were. No, decidedly they were not.’
‘Cultivated voices, in fact?’
‘I wouldn’t say they were that, either.’ Justifiably, the vicar seemed a little surprised at this inquisition. ‘Come to think of it, I’d say they might be described as lower-class urban voices.’
‘And just engaged in careless nocturnal chat?’
‘That wasn’t my impression, at all. What I seem to recall is two or three men, talking in low tones or whispering, as if to avoid all possibility of being overheard, but swearing at each other, and therefore raising their voices a little from time to time. I think one of them may have had a bicycle, since there was a sudden metallic sound which might have been a pedal scraping a wall in the dark. But certainly there were at least two men on foot, because I heard them go off more or less at a run.’
‘You must be credited with a most discriminating ear, sir.’ Appleby looked thoughtfully at Dr Absolon. ‘Would you draw any conclusion from this encounter?’
‘Thieves again, eh?’ The Professor interrupted with this. ‘But retreating, baffled, because the house is so brightly lit. I believe, my dear Appleby, I put that point to you earlier.’
‘You did. But they mayn’t have been baffled this time. Certainly we’ve taken no hand at baffling them. They may have made off with the Lord knows what, and they may have sounded cross to Dr Absolon because they were starting to quarrel over the booty.’
‘This is very disturbing,’ Dr Absolon said. He sniffed comfortably at his port. ‘Anything of the sort would sadly mar the homecoming of your nephew, my dear Beddoes. Ought we, perhaps, to investigate?’ As he made this suggestion, Absolon settled himself more deeply into his chair. ‘A most vexatious thing!’ he added. ‘I appear not to have brought my pipe.’
‘Then you must have a cigar.’ Professor Snodgrass had risen hospitably to his feet. ‘As for investigating, there is much to be said for it. Appleby, would you agree?’
‘Most definitely. But it’s not quite my place to take the initiative.’
‘Quite so. Nor mine, either.’ Having found and offered a cigar-box, the Professor was settling down again as for leisured chat. ‘We must put the matter to Adrian, wouldn’t you say? Report to him the slight uneasiness we feel. But not, of course, until the dear fellow has supped comfortably.’
‘I hope he appears to be in good health?’ Absolon asked.
‘So do I. I haven’t yet seen him, you know. As I’ve explained to Appleby, I feel Adrian should begin by taking undisturbed possession of the house.’
‘I see.’ Absolon looked puzzled; it was apparent that he found this whimsy as odd as Appleby did. ‘In fact, it is not yet quite certain that your nephew has arrived? It may be somebody quite different?’
‘Stuff and nonsense, my dear William! This is Adrian’s birthday, and there is a compact between us. Of course it is he. He simply drove up, and dismissed his conveyance. Appleby and I heard it quite clearly. Adrian will by now be in the dining-room.’
‘But has he not always been something of a jester, Beddoes? What if he has sent some wholly unsuitable person to keep this tryst with you?’ Dr Absolon, who was beginning to strike Appleby as possessing as curious a turn of mind as the Professor himself, paused consideringly. ‘A mistress, for example? It has never been clear to me that your nephew’s morals were particularly good. What if it is some outrageous Paphian girl, my dear fellow, who is scoffing whatever is upon your outspread board?’
‘This is no occasion for foolery, William.’
‘Perfectly true.’ The vicar paused to draw appreciatively upon his cigar. ‘For let me mention another hazard. It is many years since you saw Adrian; and your faculties, you know, are not quite what they were. My own acquaintance with him was slight, and my memory of him is a very general one. And he can never have been known to your butler, Simonides.’
‘Leonidas.’
‘To be sure. But my point is that, in this queer business we are involved in, there exist almost ideal conditions for successful impersonation. This ritual return, with its extravagant build-up of expectation on your part, must have the effect of rendering you wholly uncritical. Credulous, in fact, and ready to swallow anything. Sir John, don’t you agree with me?’
‘There is some cogency in your line of thought. But I don’t think the Professor is very happy with it.’
This was an understatement. Absolon had certainly not paused to put much tact into the role of candid friend; and Professor Snodgrass was not taking kindly the suggestion that his wits were so decayed as to render him incapable of identifying his own nephew. That the vicar’s remarks were offered with perfect good humour and a kind of genial pastoral concern probably rendered them all the more annoying. Certainly the Professor retorted upon them with some heat.
‘William, the truth about you is that you spend too little time writing your sermons, and too much reading mystery stories. If you only came over to talk rubbish to me…’
‘But I didn’t. I came to make sure that no successful imposture takes place. For some years, I don’t think people had a clear notion of what you were about on this annual occasion. But now, as I happen to know, the whole neighbourhood has more or less got the hang of it – and it may well have spread a good deal farther than that. The very least that you must expect sooner or later is either some tiresome joke, or the much worse annoyance of a kind of Tichborne Claimant. I believe that imposture of that kind, my dear chap, has to be killed at once and on the ground. Let it take the air, and the devil’s own mischief may follow. Sir John, you would again agree with me?’
‘Certainly.’ Appleby was allowing himself to look with some astonishment at the vicar. ‘And you feel, sir, that you are the man to make that early kill?’
‘I could have a pretty good shot at it. And if anything of the sort is a possibility, I judged that Beddoes would be the better of a friend standing by. I was supposing, you know, that there would be nobody else here – except, perhaps, that fellow Leonidas. So I decided that Beddoes’ invitation should be accepted.’
‘You would nevertheless agree that, if somebody is indeed at supper in the dining-room at this moment, he is much more likely to be the genuine Adrian Snodgrass than a pretender?’
‘Oh, dear me, yes! I merely claim that there must be some substantial possibility of vexatious foolery, or of deception. Beddoes, I hope you are not upset by these cautions and suspicions of mine?’
The Professor, it seemed to Appleby, was less upset than bewildered. He had stood up to Absolon stoutly enough, but – if only obscurely – his confidence could be felt as flickering. Or was it rather that the vicar’s unexpected onslaught had caused him to lose command of a role, so that he was searching round to recover it? Flushed, whether with indignation or alarm, he made only an unsuccessful attempt at utterance. Before he could try again, the library door had opened as library doors can only open under the hand of a trained manservant. The figure revealed was heavily bearded, and he was not dressed as butlers are dressed in the advertisements. Nevertheless Appleby was instantly assured that this stiff and ponderous figure was Leonidas, who had been received into the service of an eminent retired military historian on account of his name’s recalling the hero of Thermopylae.
If Leonidas was surprised to find that his employer had company, nothing of it showed on features which were at once professionally impassive and so unprofessionally hirsute. If his glance did pause on Appleby, it was for no longer than was wholly decorous. And then he addressed Professor Snodgrass with an impassive formality.
‘Mr Snodgrass is in residence, sir,’ Leonidas said.