‘It is very good of you all to have come together in this way,’ Appleby said. ‘Particularly as for some of you, as for myself, it’s a matter of standing room only. The late Mr Tytherton didn’t intend this room for large companies, and the furnishing is a little inadequate to our present purposes. However, it will not be necessary to detain you long.’
Nine o’clock had sounded on the stable clock, and the round-up had been brought about in the workroom. Mark Tytherton, with what was perhaps an unconscious assumption of proprietorship, had sat down behind his father’s writing-table. Alice Tytherton and Mrs Graves were perched together – most inappropriately – on the Italian cassone. Miss Kentwell was on a low chair in front of the window, occupied with her embroidery. The only other comfortable chairs had been appropriated by Carter and Raffaello. Archie Tytherton was sitting cross-legged on the floor – perhaps from an obscure feeling that he might get off more lightly if he looked as much as possible like a small boy. Ramsden was leaning against the door. Catmull was standing in one corner of the room (it would not have been proper for him to sit down, anyway), and Inspector Henderson in another. Mrs Catmull had been excused these curious proceedings. And Sir John Appleby stood in front of the fireplace, with Goya’s nobleman above his head. It was now an hour after sunset, and almost dark outside. But the evening was warm, and the window had been left open and the curtains undrawn. When the moon rose it would be a beautiful night.
‘Some of you may be a little puzzled,’ Appleby began, ‘why I myself am here at all. It simply happened that my friend Colonel Pride brought me over this morning for the purpose of introducing me to Mr Tytherton. There was some idea that I might be consulted, I think. Certainly, when I heard that a number of valuable paintings had disappeared from Elvedon a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that Mr Tytherton might have it in mind to ask me whether I thought any useful steps could still be taken to effect their recovery. It is a matter, I should explain, of which I have experience. The first supposition of mine, however, has proved to be wrong.’
‘Do you mean, Sir John,’ Ramsden asked, ‘that there was, in fact, no intention to tap your professional knowledge?’
‘I don’t mean that, either – and I think I began guessing as much when I became aware of the presence at Elvedon of Mr Raffaello. He too, in his way, is a man of special experience in such matters.’
‘You be careful what you say,’ Raffaello interrupted rudely. ‘There are a lot of people here – and there’s such a thing as the law of slander.’
‘Mr Raffaello is perfectly right. He just hasn’t been given a chance to get going at Elvedon, and must be accounted blameless at least in the immediate context I am considering. Shocking though it may seem, Mr Tytherton, although he had trusted Mr Raffaello in an interesting transaction a couple of years ago, he didn’t quite trust him on the present occasion. But I must not talk in riddles. Let me simply say that picture-dealing – to give it a polite name – is prominent in this affair. Mr Tytherton had a big, and totally illegal, operation to put through; he thought of employing Raffaello – now, as he had done before; but he had a notion of picking my brains about the shady side of the thing in general. So, incidentally, at a later stage and somewhat naively, had our friend Catmull here.’
‘Nothing of the kind!’ Catmull broke in robustly. ‘In a position of trust, I was. And can prove it.’
‘In a limited sense, that will presently prove to be true.’ Appleby paused. ‘I have been led to place this matter of picture-dealing and picture-stealing in the forefront of the thing, and I am afraid you will have to listen to a little more about them later. But now–’
‘Can’t you stick to what is plainly at the heart of the affair?’ It was Charles Carter who asked this, and with an air of simple impatience. ‘If crooked art-deals were the occasion of Tytherton’s death–’
‘I understand Mr Carter’s anxiety to exclude from these public explanations extraneous matters which may possibly be of an unedifying sort.’ Appleby spoke without irony. ‘And we need not, I believe, positively dig in them. But the circumstances of the case are so complex that I fear I cannot be over-nice about it all. And now let me go on. Mr Carter will perhaps allow me to be sufficiently relevant if I begin with the finding of the body. This is supposed to have been by Mr Ramsden and Miss Kentwell round about–’
‘Supposed?’ Ramsden queried sharply.
‘Round about eleven-twenty. In fact, it was discovered by Mr Archie Tytherton, and at a somewhat earlier hour.’ Appleby paused. ‘Perhaps a significantly earlier hour. But now, I fear, I have to go back a little, and to touch upon certain matters of just the sort Mr Carter has been deprecating any airing of. Earlier yesterday, the late Mr Tytherton and his nephew had a sharp quarrel – I will merely say over something that reflected singularly little credit on either of them. And it had nothing to do with pictures.’
‘It seems to have had something to do with jewels,’ Mark said grimly.
‘Not really. That is a theme I have to come to a little later.’
‘But might we at least say,’ Ramsden asked acridly, ‘that their quarrel was about a pearl among women?’
‘Is that me?’ Mrs Graves asked and looked round the company as one conscious that a compliment has been paid to her. ‘Not that it is at all refined to be quarrelled over by gentlemen.’
‘Sir John,’ Miss Kentwell said authoritatively, ‘be pleased to proceed.’
‘Very well. His dispute with his uncle upset Mr Archie Tytherton very much – particularly when he heard that his uncle had sent for his solicitor. Mr Archie, I understand, cannot in any sense be described as gainfully employed. He had an allowance from his uncle; he looked for a legacy from his uncle; so here was the writing on the wall. His response to this crisis in his affairs was to get very tolerably drunk. Mr Tytherton, that was so?’
‘That’s right.’ Archie nodded nervously and eagerly. ‘Most awfully, really. Not responsible for myself, and all that, for the rest of the evening.’
‘A judge might conceivably give some slight weight to such a contention. It was in this state of inebriety, however, that Mr Archie achieved what must be called, I fear, his only rational action in the course of the affair. When he knew that his uncle had withdrawn to this room, he resolved to come and plead with him.’
‘You’d jolly well have done the same thing yourself,’ Archie said, still from his juvenile stance on the floor. He appeared not to appreciate that a mild commendation had been offered him. ‘If they’d been going to turn you away without a bloody bean.’
‘It took the young man quite some time,’ Appleby continued, ‘actually to nerve himself to come along. But eventually he did so. It was to find that his uncle had been shot dead.’
‘Do we just have Archie’s word for that?’ Ramsden asked.
‘Yes, Mr Ramsden – simply Archie’s word. And we have only Archie’s word, too, for how he then comported himself. As it may be said, however, to transcend imagination, I think we may place reasonable reliance upon it. Mr Archie Tytherton did a rummage. The expression is his own. And I have no doubt he will be happy to confirm it now.’
‘That’s right,’ Archie said promptly. ‘The old boy being shot was, of course, an awful shock, and all that. Still, a quick rummage seemed the thing.’
‘In the course of this hopeful exercise, it appears that Mr Archie opened a drawer in that writing-table which may be described as having been virtually under the dead man’s nose. He found a jewel case, opened it, and knew what was there at once. They were diamond ornaments, and for the moment I will describe them merely as an heirloom which had been moving to and fro a good deal between what may be termed the ladies of this establishment.’
‘Maurice told me he had sold them.’ Alice Tytherton said this perfectly calmly, and followed up her words by giving Mrs Graves, perched beside her, a cold and equally calm stare. ‘I knew he was a liar, I need hardly say.’
‘So Mr Archie Tytherton pocketed the things, and made off to his room. He spent some minutes trying to decide where to hide them for the night. Then – already very frightened, I think – he undressed and got into bed. He says the stable clock was striking eleven.’ Appleby looked contemplatively for a moment at the hero of this recital. ‘His only further positive achievement was to think up a purposeless cock-and-bull story about a nightmare. At the moment he is a little sustained by being the centre of your attention, but in the main he now exists in a condition of abject terror. For is it not very colourable, as Mr Ramsden has hinted, that his earlier account of himself has been a cock-and-bull affair too? May he not have shot his uncle himself? He had a very good motive in the preventing his uncle from making a new will. But then – to put it with necessary brutality – so too did his uncle’s friend Mrs Graves.’
‘That’s right,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll bet it was her. Funny I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Mr Tytherton, you may spare us your further remarks. And I now pass to another matter. I move back in time – from Mr Archie Tytherton’s concerns to those of his cousin, Mr Mark Tytherton.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ Mark interjected. ‘And I do think we’ve had enough of Archie.’
‘Seconded and carried,’ Ramsden said.
‘Mark Tytherton returned from overseas a few days ago, and put up in a local inn. For family reasons of a delicate nature, he hesitated to come to Elvedon. Last night, however, he eventually did so, entering the house, unobserved, just after ten o’clock. It was the hour at which his father, even if entertaining guests, commonly came up here for a while. Knowing this, Mark walked straight upstairs to this room.’
‘All this is just my story,’ Mark said composedly.
‘Certainly it is – but let me take it at its face value for the time being. Father and son meet in decent amity, and have a drink. Unfortunately Mark rather hastily advances a subject that rankles with him; even obsesses him at times, it is fair to say. And here we are back with the diamonds. They had been the property of Mark’s mother, Maurice Tytherton’s first wife. Mark is aware of what must be called certain moral weaknesses in his father’s character, and he is convinced that the jewels are now in the possession of Mrs Graves, who may be described as for the time being his father’s intimate friend. So there is a sudden quarrel – as is the fashion, one may be tempted to think, in this unfortunate household. Maurice Tytherton declines to act in the matter, and Mark, still unobserved, flings out of the house in a rage. He has been in it for only fifteen minutes.’
‘It may all be a fairy-story,’ Mark said.
‘Of course it may. But now I have the kind testimony of Mrs Graves. She had indeed been in the enjoyment of the diamonds for some time; and this may, or may not, have been admitted by Maurice Tytherton in his interview with his son last night. Certainly this morning Mark Tytherton. having come to Elvedon to condole with his stepmother, ran into Mrs Graves and taxed her in the matter – speaking to her, I fear, most violently and improperly. Mrs Graves denied having possession of the jewels, and later in the morning she made her way to his inn, the Hanged Man, to reiterate this denial, and perhaps explain herself. But Mark was quickly in a rage again, and in fact I myself interrupted another useless and uninformative quarrel. I was much at fault, as it happens, in not getting a little more out of Mrs Graves there and then. But the actual course of events is at least perfectly clear now.’
‘It’s far from clear to me,’ Charles Carter said.
‘My dear sir, simply consider. Mrs Graves has had this troublesome jewellery for some time. But within an hour of Mark Tytherton’s tackling his father about it Archie Tytherton is fishing it out of a drawer in the writing-table in front of us now. The sequence of events is not hard to elucidate. Maurice Tytherton is fond of his son; and he knows perfectly well that he has acted wrongly, and in a fashion justly most offensive to the young man, in doing with his first wife’s jewellery as he has done. Hard upon Mark’s departure in a passion, therefore, this compunction takes him to Mrs Graves’ room, where he demands the jewellery, and receives it. Mrs Graves, is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Fair’s fair, after all.’ Mrs Graves showed no disposition to sulk. ‘But what I don’t like is the way that young man speaks to me. He ought to take a leaf out of his father’s book. Always refined, Mr Maurice Tytherton was.’
‘We are gratified to hear it. Very well. Maurice Tytherton receives back the diamonds, returns to this room with them, and for the time being simply puts them away in a drawer. He doesn’t know that within a few minutes he will be dead.’
‘This woman went straight to Archie, and Archie came straight to this room!’ With a sudden and disturbing vehemence, Alice Tytherton had come out with this. ‘Everybody knows that, only a few hours before, these two had been in–’
‘No doubt. And the fact of Mr Archie Tytherton and Mrs Graves having, shall we say, expressed a passing interest in each other no doubt made Mr Maurice Tytherton the more ready to retrieve the jewellery. So the conjecture Mrs Tytherton has just expressed is at least a tenable one.’
‘From which it follows,’ Ramsden said, ‘that Archie is still by no means out of the wood. He may have to face a good deal more than a mere charge of squalid family pilfering.’
‘You keep your mouth shut, you great beast!’ It was on his shrillest note that Archie had produced this. ‘I never went near Cynthia. Not again, I mean.’
‘Will you allow me to go on?’ Appleby looked coldly at both young men. ‘I have reached a point within minutes of Maurice Tytherton’s being killed. He is sitting in the chair in which his son is sitting now, having thrust the diamonds into that drawer. If you accept – as you will later find I have some reason to do – Archie Tytherton’s story, you will see that we are confronted with a very tight time-schedule. Timing, in fact, becomes the crux of the whole matter. So have we much to go on in that regard? For the moment, a good deal less than we could wish. But at least – and very fortunately – Mr Ramsden has a habit of consulting his watch. That gives us one fixed point. For it was at just twenty past eleven that he and Miss Kentwell entered this room and found Maurice Tytherton dead.’