William was now returning through the snow; in one hand he dangled his catapult and in the other – mysteriously – the carcase of a domestic fowl. The old man with the beard, having knocked out his pipe and deposited it unexpectedly in the band of his hat, was placidly consulting a large silver watch. Gregory Grope himself seemed perfectly agreeable to conversation both indefinitely prolonged and enigmatical in intention – but Appleby felt that the time had come to set the local railway system in operation once more. Reiterating, therefore, his lively expectation of pleasure from the snowplough come Wednesday, he climbed down from the cab, with Mutlow following. William, having deposited his fowl in a box labelled First Aid, fell to raking cinders and shovelling coal, and Gregory, by dint of much tugging at a lanyard above his head, produced a very creditable whistle as the engine got slowly under way. Gregory waved and William waved; the old man with the beard raised his hand in a gesture at once economical of effort and expressive of the most patriarchal benignity; the sheep bleated and the cattle lowed. And so Gregory Grope’s care and pride steamed away – incidentally, in the direction whence it had come, so that it had to be presumed that the matter of Murcott’s milk was in abeyance once more. It steamed away most purposefully, nevertheless. Were the paint only a little brighter, Appleby thought, and the impression of speed more convincing, the whole would have been virtually indistinguishable from the more moderately priced sort of Hornby Train. Almost one expected a vast but juvenile Hand to descend from the heavens and transfer the complete outfit to a neatly compartmented cardboard box.
Appleby turned round and tramped towards Mutlow’s car. “Well,” he said, “what do you make of it all?”
“Very much what I was beginning to make of it before.” Mutlow’s response was prompt and decided. “This business of the old man Heyhoe at Dream links up with the queer doings at Tiffin Place. At Sir Mulberry’s the boy Hoobin disappears and there’s a waxwork left instead. That’s strange enough. At Mr Raven’s Heyhoe gets buried alive in snow. That’s strange enough too – and uncommon nasty as well. And now it seems the boy we’ve called Hoobin may be the old fellow Heyhoe’s son. Mark my word, Mr Appleby, there’s a tie-up between them somewhere.”
They climbed into the car. “If I may say so,” said Appleby, “your district seems to be a hotbed of sexual immorality. The people are as promiscuous as old Amos Sturrock’s goats.”
“Amos Sturrock’s goats are not promiscuous.” Mutlow was suddenly indignant. “They’re uncommonly carefully bred.”
“No doubt. And so, perhaps, are Kerrisk’s cows and Major Molsher’s colts.” Appleby was feeling cold, slightly hungry, and definitely depressed. “So let’s say rabbits. Round about here you behave like rabbits, and the fact that one man is reputed another man’s illegitimate son is scarcely a tie-up at all.”
“Old Mrs Grope fell down a well – which is what you might call a fatality, Mr Appleby. And Heyhoe was her son. Heyhoe has been buried in a snowdrift – which is another fatality, I’m sure you’ll agree. Now, Hannah Hoobin’s boy was his son. Hannah Hoobin’s boy has been turned into a waxwork–”
“Which is undoubtedly a fatality too.” Impatiently Appleby slammed the door of Inspector Mutlow’s car. “So drive to Mrs Hoobin’s now. And, if possible, take old Mrs Ulstrup on the way.”
“Mrs Ulstrup?”
“The maid who milked the marble cow, my dear man.”
Mutlow let in his clutch. “So many folk come into this that one fair loses count of them.” He was silent for several minutes. “You don’t seriously suggest that these affairs aren’t connected up together?”
“Of course not.” Winter light was dying from the afternoon sky, and the snow-covered landscape had gone bleak and ugly. Appleby stared sombrely out at it. “Of course not. Indeed, I’ve got further evidence that it is so. The waxwork and all that marble rubbish which has been turning up at Tiffin Place: it comes from Dream Manor.”
Mutlow sat up abruptly over his wheel. “From Dream! But surely, then, the Ravens must have known?”
“I don’t think necessarily so. Their place is as full of junk as a badly overcrowded museum. A lot could vanish without being missed. Anyone could have stolen it. Heyhoe, for instance.”
“Well, I’m dashed!” Mutlow looked at Appleby with a mixture of distrust and respect. “And I’m not surprised that you were a bit reluctant to see the whole thing as hitching up. A thoroughly unpleasant business for your friends.”
“My friends?” Appleby frowned, absent and perplexed. “Oh, that! At midday yesterday I didn’t as much as know that any of these Ravens existed.”
“But Billy Bidewell says–”
“Bother Billy Bidewell for a great gossiping booby. The Ravens are interesting and rather pleasing folk, and I would be sorry to see them involved in a vulgar sensation.”
“It looks like being that, all right.” Mutlow spoke with unconcealed satisfaction.
“No doubt, inspector, no doubt. You will have your photograph in the national press, wearing your best bowler hat and pointing to the spot where you eventually found the body. I know the feeling. I had it years ago in the case of an old person called Gaffer Odgers.”
“Find the body!” Mutlow was startled. “You found the body, I gather. You and this young Miss Raven between you.”
“I mean the body of Hannah Hoobin’s boy. Do you realise that this boy – a helpless, idiot boy – disappeared quite a while ago and that you’ve done virtually nothing about it? That you’ve moved in the matter only because a local big-wig has taken to feeling creepy, and to fancying himself the Discobolus or the Medici Venus? It’s very bad, inspector, very bad. Colonel Pike may protect you to some extent, but I fear that the Home Secretary will take a serious view of it. Let us hope that Hannah Hoobin’s boy is alive, after all. Let us hope that the whole affair is of a sort that can be – um – composed.”
“Composed?” said Mutlow – somewhat weakly.
“Composed. And, now that we are beginning to see our way through it, we shall soon know.”
“See our way through it?” Mutlow sounded his horn petulantly at an irresolute hen crossing the road. “The whole thing is plainly sinister, but just doesn’t make sense.”
“Possibly so. Or possibly contrariwise.”
“Contrariwise?”
“Might be useful as a damned dictaphone.”
“Really, Mr Appleby–”
“I know, I know. And you must forgive me. My nerves are very bad.” Appleby shook his head solemnly. “A presentiment, inspector. Shall I be turned into a ferocious waxen Kurd? Or, puzzling over the case, shall I be made marble with too much conceiving – as happened, you will recall, to Milton when he started reading Shakespeare?”
Mutlow accelerated. “I don’t know,” he said, “that I see the joke. If it is a joke, that is.”
“Ah – that’s the question. The whole thing looks like a series of jokes – and so may Appleby’s End.”
“Appleby’s–” Mutlow checked himself. “We have a station called that down here.”
“Precisely. I got off a train there last night – and immediately stepped into a freakish universe in which such a coincidence will most assuredly not pass unexploited. There will be another Appleby’s End as certain as Paxton’s Destined Hour.”
Mutlow opened his mouth – and once more checked himself. “I never,” he said carefully, “heard of Paxton’s Destined Hour. Would it be of any use asking about it?”
“Very little. Paxton’s Destined Hour is merely one fragment of the nonsense by which we are surrounded in this affair. But I suppose you’ve heard of the alphabet murders?”
“I don’t know that I have.”
“Dear me. Well, they began with the murder of Mr Archer of Abernethy – a horrid business. And then it was the turn of Miss Bell of Bolsover. Poor old Sir Christopher Catt of Coldstream followed, and then a certain Mrs Dawes, who lived at Dover–”
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Quite so; I’m making it up. But what is the point of the story? Obviously that only poor old Sir Christopher was really aimed at, and that the murderer began with Mr Archer, and ended with Mr Ziesing–”
“Really!”
“–just to make things confusing. What do you think of that?”
“Very little.” Mutlow spoke with conviction. “Very little indeed. Unless you were a scribbler looking for a short way to a long yarn, that is to say.” Mutlow paused on this, apparently disconcerted by its approximation to the epigrammatic. “And I don’t see what you’re getting at, anyway.”
“Then consider this. Suppose that it is to your prosaic, practical interest to do something uncommonly odd – and not be found out. The difficulty is clear: oddity almost automatically betrays itself. The needle gleams in the haystack, and can’t possibly be missed.”
Something seemed to strike Mutlow. “Talking of haystacks–” he began.
“So what you do is to stuff the haystack full of needles. You see? Oddity wherever the perplexed investigator turns. Now, this affair – the Tiffin Place–Dream Manor affair – may very well be like that. A great many odd things have been happening; a good many more than you’ve heard of yet, inspector. They’re strung together, very roughly, on a string which is itself pretty odd too – a string that leads back to Ranulph Raven, the father of the present elder Ravens, who wrote mystery stories and the like half a century ago. But there may be nothing in that but a desire to lead us up the garden path. And just one of these queer happenings – it may be – makes sense. The others are like the deaths of Miss Bell of Bolsover and Mrs Dawes of Dover – just extra needles in the haystack for the sake of muddling things up.”
“I suppose there may be something in that.” Mutlow visibly brightened. “The only sense in the whole affair might be this Appleby’s End business you’ve been speaking of. Yes, I think it’s a very likely idea. And simplifies matters a lot. Ninety per cent of what has happened is strictly meaningless and can be ignored.”
“Just that. Only, you have to fix just which ninety per cent. And that makes it not so simple after all. In fact, that’s the idea.”
“I suppose so.” Mutlow, thus briefly taken a turn round Robin Hood’s barn, was dashed again. “You don’t think it might be Appleby’s End? Figure it that somebody wanted to get you down to this district, Mr Appleby. It’s in this person’s prosaic, practical interest – wasn’t that your expression? – to get you down here and do something uncommonly odd – I think uncommonly odd was what you said. And sinister, of course.” Inspector Mutlow’s voice was faintly wistful. “Well now, if this person can create a whole bunch of queer doings and bring you down on the strength of them – which is where the usefulness of your belonging to the Yard comes in – and if then something equally queer happens to you – why, it’s very unlikely that we shall be able to solve the matter.”
“I agree with you there, inspector.”
‘Because we shall be beginning at the wrong end, and nothing will make sense. Suppose, Mr Appleby – no offence, you understand – that there happens to you something like what has happened to Sir Mulberry’s pig. Or to this Heyhoe, if you prefer it.”
“Take it that I have no preference.”
“We should naturally suppose that – that your sad misfortune, Mr Appleby, was the consequence of your having come down and got mixed up with whatever the mystery was. Whereas it would really be the cause of the whole affair – and Heyhoe and old Mrs Ulstrup’s cow and the rest would simply be the additional needles stuffed in the haystack. Billy Bidewell” – this association of ideas seemed inevitable with Mutlow – “says there are some of those Ravens that are uncommonly interested in you. You’re sure you have had no connection with any of them before? Suppose that some previous case of yours had resulted in bringing a friend or relation of theirs to the gallows, and vengeance had been sworn–”
“Good heavens!” Appleby looked in frank astonishment at a Mutlow who was proving thus unexpectedly prolific of ideas, “You speak with the voice of old Ranulph Raven himself. This is just, I imagine, how his yarn-spinning mind worked. ‘Vengeance had been sworn.’ Who can doubt that the phrase is endemic in his works?”
“That’s just it!” Mutlow tapped his steering-wheel incisively. “Something in the blood, as you might say. Their minds work just as this tale-spinning old man’s did. In fact, I think we’ve got a line on this whole case. Only, of course, we’ll have to wait.”
“To wait, inspector?”
“Certainly. You see, it hasn’t happened yet. The real needle is still missing from the haystack. Only the red herrings have been displayed so far. They’re still planting the trees that are going to prevent my seeing the wood.” Mutlow, his imagination evidently afire, swung hazardously towards the ditch. “But presently the hour will strike. Presently, Mr Appleby – mark my words – the real blow will fall. And I must say” – Mutlow was suddenly handsome – “that I shall be uncommonly sorry not to have the benefit of your collaboration in clearing the thing up.”
“I see.” Appleby looked at this rural colleague, genuinely impressed. “Well, well. And do you know, one of those Ravens has already offered to do me a memorial? As a joke, of course. But the sinister underlying irony is now revealed.”
“A memorial? You mean something carved – and out of marble, or something like that?” Mutlow was now deep sunk in a sort of detective ecstasy. “Well – there now! Once one just gets a hold on cases of this sort it’s astonishing how quickly everything links up. Which one is the sculptor?”
“The girl. And she’s going to do the John Appleby Memorial for Scotland Yard. Only it may, perhaps, just be called Object.”
“Object?”
“Miss Raven’s work is modernist in manner.”
“Is that so?” With Mutlow this seemed to clinch the matter. “I’m inclined to think we may set about getting a warrant.”
“Possibly so.” The late afternoon air was chill, and Appleby buried his nose in Mark Raven’s shapeless tweeds. “Of course, I haven’t had the opportunity for much conversation with Miss Raven. But I do not think it would misrepresent the situation to say that she and I are engaged.”
“Engaged! But you say it was only yesterday–”
“That’s how I see the matter.”
It would have been difficult to say whether Appleby’s voice indicated resolution or resignation – which was one more enigma for Mutlow to meditate. And for some time he meditated. “You know,” he said eventually, “it is a confusing affair. And at times I almost think you’re concerned to keep it so.”
“My dear fellow, one gets these fancies after a long day.”
“I suppose that’s it.” Mutlow’s voice was apologetic… And now the car drew up before the ivy-clad cottage of old Mrs Ulstrup of Drool.