The company had dispersed from the library, with the sole exception of Miss Kentwell. The emissary from the Kremlin sat in a window embrasure, engaged in a task of embroidery. It occurred to Appleby that it might not be entirely without profit to have a word with her before resuming his quest of the elusive Archie.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘What a charming design, and how delicate the execution! I see that you are a person of aesthetic sensibility. Elvedon and its treasures must hold a great deal of interest for you.’
For the first time in their admittedly scant acquaintance, Miss Kentwell looked at Appleby with a hint of suspicion and even of alarm. He had already, he remembered, congratulated her on being a woman of iron nerve, and it was not unreasonable that this further absurdity should puzzle her.
‘Thank you,’ Miss Kentwell said. ‘But I have few pretensions, Sir John, of the sort you suggest. My embroidery work is undertaken for charity. The Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. It has lately been making great headway, I am glad to say.’
‘Has it, indeed? You surprise me. And you do seem to have a variety of calls of this sort upon your time. You must be anxious by now to conclude your visit to Elvedon, with all its distressing associations, and return to your customary fields of philanthropic endeavour.’
‘That, of course, is true.’ Miss Kentwell inclined her head sedately. ‘But I plan, in fact, to stay on for a few days. Mrs Tytherton, indeed, does now have her delightful stepson to support her. But feminine counsel has its special place in times of sorrow.’
‘There is Mrs Graves, however. Would you say she might serve?’
‘I fear, Sir John, that Mrs Graves is not a person whom we ought to discuss.’
Appleby accepted this rebuke with a good grace. He was wondering whether he had, somehow, got Miss Kentwell wrong. If she had really come to Elvedon for the reason he supposed – as a private inquiry agent hired by Maurice Tytherton to spy upon his wife – it was odd that she was now parading what was plainly a wholly fictitious reason for lingering any longer in the house. The Catmulls wanted to linger – whether as a matter of professional security or in order to have the opportunity for a little quiet thieving. The tenor of Catmull’s artless questions, indeed, rather powerfully suggested the latter motive. Raffaello wanted to linger – and almost certainly to pursue some better informed and more considerable act of depredation. But why Miss Kentwell? Appleby noted the question as worth meditating, and turned to something else.
‘Miss Kentwell, I am sure you have been most helpful to Inspector Henderson in his inquiries. But I wonder whether you would answer one or two questions which have occurred to me as well? They may really be called timetable inquiries, and they stem from my feeling that quite a number of things – really, of disconnected incidents – may have fitted themselves into a very short interval last night. And into one definite place: Maurice Tytherton’s workroom.’
‘That is precisely my own view.’ Miss Kentwell checked herself – conceivably, Appleby thought, because she detected this speech of hers as having been a little out of character. ‘But my mind is not at all clear about it all. It is so shockingly remote, Sir John, from anything within my experience hitherto.’
‘That I can well imagine. But my principal question is simply this: on the first occasion that you went into Tytherton’s workroom, and found it untenanted, how long did you and Mr Ramsden remain there?’
‘I’m afraid I find that hard to say.’
‘Perhaps you can arrive at an approximate answer by recalling the sequence of your actions, or for how long you were engaged in any one of them. For example, did you spend a little time looking at the Goya?’
‘The what, Sir John?’
‘The picture over the mantelpiece: a portrait of a man, by the Spanish painter, Francisco Goya.’
‘Oh, yes – I think I have heard of him. And I suppose – now you mention it – that Mr Ramsden may have meant to draw my attention to the picture. I certainly didn’t spend any appreciable time studying it. But now I can remember something I did – or thought of doing. Lighting a cigarette. There was a glass box with cigarettes on the mantelpiece–’
‘I remember that.’
‘And I thought I’d take one. That was why I put down my bag, when I come to think of it. You will remember about my bag. I put it down just where, on my return to the room, the tray with the brandy was standing.’
‘Ah, yes. And you didn’t, in fact, take a cigarette.’
‘No. Because of the scream.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby looked at Miss Kentwell in astonishment.
‘There was a scream, you see – from outside the house. We heard it particularly clearly, because the window was open. So I–’
‘One moment, Miss Kentwell. I suppose you have told Inspector Henderson about this scream?’
‘Oh, no. He didn’t ask me about it.’
‘Good God, madam! How could he ask you about something he had no notion of? But no doubt Mr Ramsden–’
‘Sir John, pray do not indulge in profanity. The matter was entirely trivial, but I am embarked upon a narrative of it, and will continue. The sound, I will own, startled me, and I moved over to the window to investigate.’
‘That was most courageous of you.’
‘Stuff and nonsense. I believe, however, that Mr Ramsden may have supposed something unpleasant to have occurred, since he made a motion to restrain me. However, we reached the window together, and realized how absurd was any apprehension we might have entertained.’
‘I am relieved to hear it.’
‘On the terrace directly below – as you will have noticed, if you have glanced out – there is a statue.’
‘Hermes, Miss Kentwell. He conducts the souls of the dead to Hades, and is therefore designated psuchopompos by the ancient Greeks. An appropriate divinity for you to observe. But continue.’
‘There is hardly anything more to tell. In that clear moonlight, all was apparent at once. The scream had come from a peacock, perched on the statue’s head.’
‘I’ve seen him there myself.’ Appleby, if disappointed, was at least amused by this anticlimax. ‘So here you are recalling an incident lasting no more than perhaps a couple of minutes. You propose to take a cigarette; are diverted by this alarming scream; and discover it to be, so to speak, a peacock’s nest. What then?’
‘I believe, Sir John, that it was immediately thereafter that I came to reflect that I was not in what might formally be styled one of the reception-rooms of the house. A study, or the like, is prescriptively not so regarded. Of course Mr Ramsden had behaved with complete propriety in taking me there. We were seeking Mr Tytherton – and Mr Ramsden himself has clearly been entirely free of the establishment, and on a footing of perfect social equality with the Tythertons.’
‘Clearly.’ Appleby was very willing to accept these social niceties. ‘So what?’
‘I suggested to Mr Ramsden that we go on our way. And so we did.’
‘Thank you very much. You have told me something that I find extremely interesting. I suppose you didn’t see or hear the peacock again?’
‘As I have just explained, we left the room at once.’
‘Quite so. But what I have in mind is your return to it. In the interval Tytherton had been shot. And you were, I believe, in the room for some little time, attended by Mrs Catmull.’
‘An absurd woman. Yes, that is so.’
‘No further sight or sound of the peacock?’
‘Definitely not. But I hardly see–’
‘It isn’t absolutely certain – is it? – that Tytherton was shot in that room, more or less as he sat at his desk. Just conceivably, his dead body may have been dragged there. But if a shot was fired there, close to the open window, I’d rather expect that peacock to make himself scarce for the rest of the night.’
‘That, no doubt, is what is called detection.’ Rather alarmingly, there was a faint hint of irony in Miss Kentwell’s voice.
‘I don’t know that it’s more than common sense.’ Appleby, who had been sitting beside Miss Kentwell in quite a companionable way, stood up. ‘And now I must continue my search for Mr Archie Tytherton. I wonder whether you have any observations to offer on that young man?’
Miss Kentwell considered.
‘I can imagine,’ she said, ‘circumstances in which I should entertain high expectations of him.’
‘Quite so.’ And Appleby and Miss Kentwell exchanged what might fairly have been described as a meaningful glance. Only Appleby, as he walked away, found himself wondering whether this notable lady would find the slightest difficulty in rising to the boldest double bluff.