Appleby's Other Story Read Free

hand.’
    â€˜Don’t be absurd. There isn’t a sound.’
    â€˜Perhaps they’re all dead. The representatives of crime and of the law have eliminated each other to a man. Also Maurice Tytherton and all his quality.’ Appleby had climbed from the car. ‘It’s more probable, however, that what has happened is entirely prosaic and unremarkable.’
    â€˜Well, that’s a much more sensible remark.’ Pride had joined Appleby before the steps of the mansion. ‘Somebody had another go at Tytherton’s confounded pictures – that’s my bet.’
    â€˜And, after their former ill success, your people are mounting a really impressive operation. Tumbling over each other, Tommy, in their haste to obliterate anything that could be called a clue.’ It was half seriously that Appleby spoke; he had never much gone in for spectacular parades. ‘Perhaps we’d better go away. The circumstances don’t seem propitious for a polite call.’
    â€˜My dear chap, whatever it is, I must obviously muck in.’
    â€˜Then I’ll take a turn round the lake, and hope to see you emerge in about half an hour.’
    â€˜No, no – we must carry on together. Dash it all, John, it may be something absolutely up your street.’
    â€˜So much the worse. I haven’t retired from the Yard, you know, to play Sherlock Holmes.’
    â€˜Perhaps not. But there was that affair–’
    â€˜There have been several affairs, I admit. But the general proposition holds.’
    â€˜Really, John, we’re making too much of this.’ It was with a considerable effect of cunning that Pride thus shifted ground. ‘We’ll just drop in, pay our respects to the Tythertons, and find out what these theatricals are about. Then we’ll come away. Later on, I can return officially, if there seems any point in it.’
    â€˜Very well.’ Appleby spoke with resignation. ‘But just remember, please, that I’m not interested in stolen pictures. Repeat not .’
    â€˜Then that’s agreed.’ Pride had already begun to climb the flight of broad steps before them. ‘And we’ll start by behaving as if we’d noticed nothing out of the way.’
    This last appeared to Appleby an implausible proposal. But Pride stuck to it. Pausing before an impressively massive door, he rang a bell, and waited. The door opened almost at once upon the figure of a sombre manservant.
    â€˜Is Mr Tytherton at home?’ Pride asked formally.
    â€˜Yes and no, sir.’
    â€˜What’s that?’ Not unnaturally Pride was startled by so absurd a response from a well-trained butler.
    â€˜Mr Tytherton is in the house, sir, but unfortunately he is unable to receive visitors.’ The butler paused, and it suddenly came to Appleby that he was conceiving himself as breaking something gently. This proved true. ‘I regret to say that Mr Tytherton is the late Mr Tytherton. He was shot dead last night.’

 
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2
    One must look on the bright side, Appleby told himself as he stepped into the hall of Elvedon Court. He had been entertaining a notion – perhaps baseless, yet supported by a good deal of experience – that there had existed, as it were, wheels within the innocent wheels of Tommy Pride’s car; that the morning’s expedition had owned a basis in some desire expressed by the late Maurice Tytherton to confabulate with the country’s acknowledged authority on art robberies. The man hadn’t really reconciled himself to the loss of whatever had been filched from him; he had heard of Appleby as a friend of Pride’s; and he had taken it into his head that here was a chance of getting a fresh and better-directed hunt started. Some nonsense like that. However, Tytherton was now the late Tytherton – as his butler had with a kind of mournful satisfaction announced. Perhaps he would recover his missing pictures in