Appleby File Read Free

thought, was made to take this sort of situation in her stride. One couldn’t even say that she was putting on a social turn. She was just being natural. Judith, in fact, ought to have married not a policeman but an ambassador.
    ‘I hope that being held up for a night isn’t desperately inconvenient,’ Robert said. ‘And I really came in to ask at once whether we could do anything about a message. The snow has brought our telephone line down, unfortunately – and it’s the same, it seems, at the home farm. But I think we might manage to get one of the men through to the village.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Appleby said. ‘But there’s no need for anything of the sort. Nobody’s going to miss us tonight, and I’m sure we can get ourselves dug out in the morning.’
    ‘Then, for the moment, I’ll leave you.’ Robert turned to his brother. ‘They’re amusing themselves in the gallery again. I’ll just go and see they do nothing lethal.’ With the ghost of a smile, he left the room.
    ‘ Thank you!’ Judith was saying – not to her host, but to her host’s butler, whose name appeared to be Frape. The fact that Frape himself had brought up their suitcases was a simple index of the grip Judith was getting on the place. ‘ There , please.’ Judith had pointed to an enormous expanse of oak – it might have been a refectory table of an antiquity not commonly come by – upon which the suitcases would modestly repose. She turned to Darien-Gore. ‘It’s so stout of you,’ she said. ‘Sheer pests hammer at your door, frost-bitten and famished ’ – Judith quite shamelessly emphasized this word – ‘and you don’t bat an eyelid.’
    ‘I had no impulse to bat.’ Darien-Gore was amused. ‘And, of course, one mustn’t – not on one’s own doorstep. But, come to think of it, I almost did – bat, I mean – shortly before you came. You see, somebody else has turned up: a fellow who had to abandon a car–’
    ‘The car that prevented ours from getting through, I expect,’ Appleby said.
    ‘That may well be. And a perfectly decent fellow, I imagine. Yet I had an obscure impulse to get rid of him – or at least to murmur that Frape would fix him up comfortably–’
    ‘I should be very willing to, sir.’ Frape, who had been giving a little ritual attention to the appointments of the room, interrupted his employer. ‘And it’s not, I think, too late. Nothing very definite has been proposed.’
    ‘Thank you, Frape – but I think not.’ Darien-Gore had spoken a shade sharply, and now he waited until the butler had withdrawn. ‘Frape finds the fellow not quite qualified to sit on the dais, as one might say. No doubt he’s right. But of course he’ll dine with us. Under the circumstances, anything else wouldn’t be the hospitable thing. Perhaps I was put off when he told me his name was Jolly. Difficult name to live up to – particularly, of course, when your car has been stranded in the snow.’
    ‘I wasn’t terribly clear that his car was stranded,’ Appleby said. ‘He didn’t say anything to suggest it had broken down?’
    ‘I don’t recall that he did. Oh, by the way.’ Darien-Gore, who had appeared to be about to take his leave, now changed his mind, and walked over to a heavily curtained window. ‘I’m terribly sorry that, in the morning, you won’t find much of a view. This room simply looks out on the inner bailey – an enclosed courtyard, that’s to say. Perhaps you can see it now. The sky’s cleared a little, and there’s a moon.’ He drew back the curtain. ‘Step into the embrasure, and we’ll draw these things to again. No need to turn out the lights.’
    Appleby and Judith did as they were told. The effect was suddenly to enclose them in a small darkened room, one side of which was almost entirely glass. And as a moon had certainly appeared, they were looking out on a nocturnal scene very adequately illuminated for purposes of picturesque effect. Directly in front of them,