There existed, Appleby reflected, a highly esteemed school of prose fiction which represented the rural inhabitants of the British Isles as possessed by a ferocity and general nastiness to which the Kurd and the Tartar of the late Bishop Adolphus could scarcely hope to measure up. Was this, then, a regular winter sport, unsuspected in the Metropolis? At stated seasons did the simple peasantry delight in stamping their senior brethren into compacted snow? The effect as of some horrid decapitation had certainly been striking; was it an example of the lingering art of the folk? Or – since this macabre fantasy was surely baseless – what rational purpose could be served by such a deed? Was it within the bounds of possibility that–? Appleby, here beginning to frame some professional question, found that his thoughts on the whole matter led nowhere. Just nowhere – unless conceivably to the late Ranulph Raven?
Why had Judith told him all that rigmarole, ending with the story of the preposterous harnessing of Spot? Probably just because she had felt that way, and with no ulterior motive whatever. Appleby shifted his gaze from the Old Stone Age Man to a rapturous Sabine lady, and suddenly quite a new idea started into his head. He turned to Everard. “I suppose,” he said, “that Heyhoe was a fairly elderly man – older than any of you?”
Perhaps because they had been talking of something quite different, perhaps because the question had an odd turn to it, all the Ravens looked mildly surprised. “Heyhoe?” said Everard. “Dear me, yes. Old as the hills, poor chap. Must have been a stable lad about the place when I was a baby in arms. About a contemporary of Rainbird’s, I should say. Wouldn’t you, Robert?”
“Rainbird and Heyhoe,” said Robert carefully, “were both born some years before any of us.”
Which brings us back, thought Appleby, to Ranulph. Judith has already built up Ranulph as such a legendary figure in my mind that it is hard to realise that three of his sons are here in the room with me. And a fourth has been dug out of the snow. And a fifth – it now almost appears – is pottering round arranging a breakfast table across the hall. In fact the Dream Manor household is eminently a family affair. But if Heyhoe –
“Heyhoe,” said Everard. “How right Mr Appleby is to recur to him. You know, we must get all that clear. What happened to each of us after our – em – dispersal at the ford? The jotting down of a note or two would not, to my mind, be by any means amiss.”
“Ask Mr Appleby,” said Mark. “It’s just his line. Judith tells us he’s a policeman.”
Everard frowned. “I certainly heard Judith make some obscure joke. But I hardly suppose–”
“It’s quite true.” Appleby, who was becoming very sleepy, endeavoured to give his features an adequate expression of mild apology. “I am a detective inspector from Scotland Yard, and on my way to inquire into some troublesome affair at a place called Snarl. As I explained to Mr Raven when he was good enough to bring me along, I hope to get over there tomorrow morning. The death of your coachman is, of course, no business of mine whatever, and I haven’t the remotest intention of taking down notes about it.”
Mark Raven jerked up his chin with a movement that sent the yellow hair tossing above his forehead. “Then why did you ask whether Heyhoe was older–”
“If I may say so, these are uncommonly good cigars.”
Everard beamed. “As I think I remarked, the New Millennium people are most enlightened in matters of that sort. It comes of one or two of their directors being of decent family, no doubt. I’m sorry to say the Enlarged Resurrection folk don’t sound nearly so promising.” Everard shook his head and looked gloomy again – almost as gloomy as Luke. “And, of course, we must not worry Mr Appleby with Heyhoe. His profession is purely – um – fortuitous and coincidental. Any further reference to it, my dear Mark, will be uncivil. We shall piece the matter out as best we can tomorrow morning and give an account of it to our own local police. Robert, I think Mr Appleby might be interested in the group at the far end of the room. It is called Nausicaa and her Maidens Washing, and is estimated to weigh seventeen tons.”
Appleby doubted if he had any substantial interest left except bed. It would, of course, be satisfactory to know whether among the voluminous writings of Ranulph Raven there was anything prophetic of Heyhoe’s displeasing end. But on that Judith was the authority, and he would himself, no doubt, be off to Snarl on quite a different matter before Judith was up and about again. Everard too must know a good deal about the body of his father’s writing; had he also the impression that the ghost of Ranulph haunted Dream? On this a little fishing might be done while consuming the last third of the New Millennium people’s cigar.
But at the moment Robert Raven held the field. Standing before Nausicaa and her Maidens Washing, and eyeing their nicely rounded contours much as if disposed to bite out great collops of gleaming marble flesh, he was discoursing mildly on the harmless if expensive nature of his late uncle’s pursuit. “Of course, he did very little actual carving himself. Nineteenth-century sculptors didn’t. At least one scarpellino was employed chipping away full-time. Among the benefits of the growth of science, you know, is this: that it gives the Theodores – talented, second-rate men – something more or less useful to do. His sort of fair-to-medium intellectual energy is drained off elsewhere. Science and pseudo-science. Today Theodore would be a professor of economics in some hole in Wales.”
“Science?” said Everard. “Well, I don’t know. But certainly there’s a terrible lot of it. I ought to be getting on with Science. Devilish near, by the time one’s got to Religion.”
Luke too had placed himself in front of Nausicaa – whose innocent exhibition of les tétons et les fesses he seemed to view without even the faint carnal curiosity which the art of Theodore seemed alone calculated to arouse. “Science?’’ said Luke. “Consider the rocket gun and the time bomb. Science has done nothing but sharpen the fangs of the sabre-toothed tiger.” And Luke, who appeared to vary quotation with epigram, walked gloomily away.
“But,” said Appleby, “there is such a thing as specific inclination or talent, after all. Your Uncle Theodore might have been a professor of economics, in Wales or elsewhere. But your father, surely, would never have been other than the kind of writer he was.”
“The kind of writer he was?” Everard was amiably discursive. “Now what kind was he, would you say? I don’t know that we’ve ever as a family got that fixed. You see, Ravens have never done anything in what you could call a popular way – or not as a rule. I suppose the New Millennium might be called popular” – and Everard looked momentarily rueful, as was proper in a scholar who yearned to labour on the frontiers of knowledge – “but anything of the sort has always been the exception with us. Even this stuff of Theodore’s was regarded as utterly refined in its day. Chaste was, I believe, the word commonly applied to it.”
“Do you hear that?” Mark Raven interrogated the most nubile of Nausicaa’s Maidens, and enforced the question with a resounding spank. “Le mot juste, if ever there was one.” He shook a finger warningly. “No, no, my girl – it won’t do.”
“I do not say” – Everard eyed his young cousin meditatively – “that there is not a marked strain of coarseness which sometimes appears in our family. But almost without exception we have been earnest. Our dear father, therefore, was always something of a puzzle. Was he earnest? Did he endeavour to impart real literary quality to his work, or did he consciously write down? We just don’t know. Although I myself edited a collected edition of his work for publication shortly after his death – and it cannot be described as a success, I am sorry to say – I really formed no very clear idea on the matter. Now, Roger was an interesting man. A first cousin of Papa’s, and a most distinguished Latinist. A little collection of translations from Horace and Martial which he put out was extremely well received. Jowett of Balliol was delighted with it.”
“Is that so?” said Appleby. Disinterest in the highly coloured writings of Papa was quite clearly the ruling attitude at Dream. Roger, Theodore and Adolphus had been earnest, and were preferred. Were the present generations earnest too? Everard plainly worked like a nigger. Judith with a mallet in her hand was no doubt as earnest as Theodore had ever been. It was Luke’s line to be burdened with a melancholy temperament – which was presumably a way of being earnest without the necessity of buckling to. Mark was somewhat enigmatic; Robert wholly so; and Clarissa was seriously resolved that Rainbird at least should remain unburied in the snow. This was about the sum total of Appleby’s knowledge of the Ravens so far – and as he grew sleepier he became increasingly prone to the delusion that he had known them through uncounted years. He decided to have another shot. “I gathered from Miss Judith,” he said, “that she was very well up in Ranulph Raven’s works. Indeed, I almost felt that they were on her mind.”
“Judith’s mind?” said Mark. “You would maintain Judith has a mind? She certainly has a temper, and sometimes she has wit, and occasionally she has designs. Beware of Judith, Mr Appleby, when she’s by way of having designs. But a mind? Cousin Robert has the family mind and rather resents it. That’s why he looks so farouche. Pray observe the ferocious countenance of the Kurd.”
But Appleby was not going to be beaten so easily. “Miss Judith,” he repeated, “seems to have Ranulph Raven’s books on her mind. Thinks them uncanny. Something of that sort. Something about that horse. Spot, isn’t he? And one of Ranulph Raven’s stories. I didn’t quite understand it. But she seemed to think there was something queer.”
“Spot?” said Mark. “Oh, that! Well, I suppose she felt the necessity of entertaining you with something. Did she tell you about the blind man when we were kids?”
“Yes; she told me about that.”
Everard took the cigar from his mouth and looked at Appleby in mild surprise. “That old family story! I haven’t heard it mentioned for years. And yet it was an uncommonly strange affair which we never got to the bottom of. There was, of course, an element of what they now call rapportage in Papa’s work. He picked up material from the country folk round about in rather odd ways, and as a result he seems to have gained something of a preternatural character in their regard. But whether the blind man had really committed some crime and believed Papa to have wormed it out of him and put it in a book we shall clearly never know. If I remember aright, it was some little time before the children came out with the story, and we judged it best to take no action. I trust we were right. Robert, would you say that we were right?”
“Probably not.” Robert Raven had retreated a few paces and was now approaching Dirce’s bull with the finely controlled bellicosity of a figure in a Hemingway tauromachy. “But it’s an old story, as you say. What Judith must have on her mind is the business of The Coach of Cacus, and the other affairs of that sort. Luke’s tombstone, for instance.”
This was bewildering. “Your brother,” Appleby asked politely, “has a tombstone?”
“A Christmas present.” It was Mark who broke in. “Somebody sent Luke a tombstone – and what could better hit his taste? Did you ever read Richardson’s Clarissa? The lady takes several volumes to die. And she keeps a coffin in her bedroom and calls it the ‘dread receptacle’.” Mark gave his sudden, harsh whoop of laughter. “Well, Luke has a tombstone just like that – thanks to an unknown donor. My notion is that he always longed for one, and so he sent it to himself – like Gub-Gub.”
“Gub-Gub?” said Appleby.
“Gub-Gub was Doctor Dolittle’s pig.”
“Really, Mark” – Everard Raven held up a protesting hand – “if Mr Appleby must be told these grotesque and confusing things, is it sensible to mix them up with Clarissa and Doctor Dolittle’s pig – particularly when Luke’s tombstone is mixed up with a book already?” He turned apologetically to Appleby. “I don’t suppose you happen ever to have read my father’s Paxton’s Destined Hour? It’s about somebody called Paxton who is strolling past the sort of place where they make tombstones when his eye is suddenly caught by his own name. He finds he is reading his own tombstone, complete with the date of his death–”
Appleby frowned. “But I’ve read a story like that. And certainly not by your father.”
“Quite so, quite so.” Everard looked embarrassed. “But these things do happen. You will find, for instance, that Conrad’s Inn of the Witches is very much the same story as Wilkie Collins’ A Terribly Strange Bed.”
“Everard,” Mark said, “if Mr Appleby must be told these grotesque and confusing things–”
“The short of it is this.” Robert pitched his cigar end into the fire and turned round with an air of firmly winding up matters for the night. “There’s this story of my father’s in which Paxton, having seen the date of his own death inscribed on a tombstone – a mystery never accounted for, if I remember aright – waits in mounting apprehension for that particular date to come along. He shuts himself up in an attic. He won’t see anyone, just in case he’s a homicidal maniac. He won’t eat anything, just in case the food has been accidentally or purposely poisoned. Then at last, at the end of twenty-four hours of agonised apprehension, he hears the hall clock chime out midnight below. He rushes triumphantly from his attic, trips in the dark, tumbles downstairs and breaks his neck. The clock was just two minutes fast. What d’you think of that?”
Appleby took a last puff at his cigar and looked across the derelict library to where Luke, a dark green blob against Genius guarding the Secret of the Tomb, was plainly sunk in sombre meditation on the furthest processes of vermiculation and decay. “I don’t think it at all bad. Much better than Cacus. And the story I remember was different: something about a runaway horse.”
“The unfortunate hero did his own running away in this case. Well, that’s the story. Paxton had his destined hour. And so with Luke. Only Luke didn’t just see a tombstone. Somebody sent him one by rail. Complete with date of death. The reference to Paxton’s Destined Hour was obvious.”
Appleby was regarding the melancholy Luke with fresh interest. “And how did your brother feel about it?”
“To start with, he went round telling everybody. And that was awkward. For some little reporter creature on our local paper got hold of the story, and it looked as if Luke was going to be thoroughly pestered. Fortunately, Everard’s solicitor, who is a family friend, was here at the time and stopped any fuss. After that Luke began rather to hug the thing.”
“I see. May it be said to account for his present – well, rather elegiac mood?”
“I should hardly say so. Luke is commonly like that. But as the date approached – what you might call Luke’s Destined Hour–”
“You mean the date’s past?” As he asked this question Appleby was quite unable to keep a thoroughly professional disappointment out of his voice. “It’s all over?”
“Dear me, yes. How long ago was it, Everard? Six months, I should say. The appointed day” – Robert spoke drily, yet with a certain compassion – “must have been not without its discomfort for a man of naturally morbid mind.”
Mark Raven lounged forward towards the fireplace. “We did what we could,” he said. “Offered to fit up one of the attics. Sent for a fellow from Yatter to check up on the clothes–”
“Be quiet, Mark. If Mr Appleby is to be burdened with family history, he needn’t have family humour piled on as well. The date came, I say, and, of course, nothing happened. We scarcely know whether Luke was really disturbed. Anyway, the day just passed.”
“How very flat.” Appleby remembered that Judith was impressed by the ineffectiveness of the ghostly Ranulph’s proceedings. “But, of course, you would not regard it quite in that light.”
“Luke still has the tombstone. He says that only a little alteration will be necessary, and it will do later on.” Everard shook his head sadly. “The dear fellow feels the need of economy, no doubt.”
“But surely not in tombstones.” Mark was lighting a line of bedroom candles near the library door. “We can all have the most whopping monuments, if we choose. And I think I’ll have Nausicaa. Has it ever occurred to you, by the way, that Theodore has got her wrong? She and her girl friends ought to be washing King Alcinous’ vests and pants. But here they are, just washing themselves. A chaster conception, no doubt.”
“I seem to recall,” said Everard, “that Homer, when he tells the story of Odysseus’ arrival on Scheria–”
Appleby moved resolutely towards the door. “Nothing like a candle,” he said to Mark, “to light you to bed. Which is mine?”
“–and the subject of a lost play by Sophocles.” Everard’s voice, comfortably instructive, drifted across the room. “When I come to Sophocles – and Sophocles is deuced near when one is beginning to think of Science – I shall be able to mention cousin Roger’s conjecture that certain Sophoclean fragments – But, dear me, how late it is – or early, perhaps one ought to say! We must really be getting Mr Appleby off to bed. And Billy Bidewell must be told to make some arrangement about getting him to Snarl in the morning. I hope, my dear sir” – and Everard came toddling across the room – “that you will come back to us when your – um – business is transacted. We are all most sorry that you should have been harassed by the untoward course of our affairs. I would like to have leisure to show you my Scriptorium. And Judith, I am sure, would be anxious to have your opinion on her work. Luke, too, would enjoy your conversation. This evening, I fear, he has been in somewhat taciturn mood.” And Everard, murmuring these vague and amiable courtesies, fished ineffectively among the candlesticks. “I believe Rainbird has forgotten an extra one. No – here it is. Pray be careful of the draught as Mark opens the door.”
They passed out into the hall. The Tartar and the Kurd and all their kin, infinitely reposeful after the baroque contortions of Theodore, stood uncertainly revealed in the light of the five candles. Everard paused to expatiate on a figure with drooping moustaches and a nastily curved sword: then, mercifully, proceeded to climb the dilapidated Regency staircase. They passed down a succession of corridors, some straight and businesslike, some winding and with undulating floors. A large place, Appleby reflected, which had plainly come into being by a process of accretion over several centuries. And here – at last – was his bedroom. A few further polite expressions and he was alone.
The room, irregularly shaped and large, was panelled in dark wood to the ceiling. Two oil lamps gave a soft, yellow light to which a faintly flickering counterpoint was added by candles burning unsteadily on the mantelpiece. Below this glowed quite a brave fire, and before the fire a Persian cat lay stretched. The bed was a four-poster, formidable with massive tester and faded hangings. The sheets were a fine linen, lavendered. A folded slip of paper lay on the pillow.
Appleby walked across to the bed and sat down. The sheet of notepaper, a clear blue, was curiously compelling where it lay – a focal point around which the whole shadowy room stood disposed. An obscurely fateful slip of paper. He picked it up and unfolded it slowly; then he carried it to the nearest lamp.
DEAR MR APPLEBY,
There is nothing corresponding to the death of Heyhoe in Ranulph Raven’s works. You are in his room, by the way, and everything he published is in the bookcase near the door. My Aunt Clarissa would, I think, have me say that the biscuits in the tin, though few, are fresh; and that the cat is because of the mice. The safety razor is Mark’s; he will sleep late. The soap was shocking and something honest from the kitchens has been substituted.
Yours sincerely,
JUDITH RAVEN.
Appleby read this through, frowning. Then he perched it on the dressing-table and read it through again as he undressed. Presently he turned it over; there was a single sooty smudge on the back. He was looking at this rather wide-eyed when there came a tap at the door and the ancient manservant Rainbird entered.
“I hope everything is as you would wish, sir?”
“Dear me, yes. It’s very kind of you to have lit a fire at such an unearthly hour.”
Rainbird’s gaze travelled slowly to the fireplace. Then he stopped and picked up an empty water-jug. “We always endeavour to make Mr Everard’s guests comfortable, sir. Is there anything else that I could get you?”
“No, thank you – nothing at all.”
“Then good night, sir. Or good morning, as I ought to say.”
The door closed softly on Rainbird. Appleby slipped into pyjamas – Mark’s, no doubt – and walked over to the fire. For a moment he warmed his hands before it, gazing into the flame. The day had assuredly been something of an Odyssey and had ended – where? Was it indeed Nausicaa’s Scheria – or was it the Circean Aeaea? Might it be Ithaca itself? And at least was there not something truly Homeric in this: that the princess in her own person had kindled the traveller’s evening fire?
Appleby extinguished the lights and tumbled into the late Ranulph Raven’s bed.