Death at the Chase Read Free Page A

distinguished on mouldering walls what had once been linenfold panelling. It had been great fun. And then the man had come. He was some sort of caretaker – an abandoned family retainer (they had afterwards decided) told to prowl the place in order to repel such vulgar persons as might commit nuisances in corners or scratch initials or even more objectionable graffiti upon disgraced chimneypieces. They had heard his footfalls from afar. Footfalls plus an unnerving tap . For he was an ancient creature who got around only with the aid of a stick.
    Plop, plop, and a tap . Plop, plop, and a tap . Admittedly it had been unnerving. Judith had persuaded him to hide in a cupboard.
    Much later, and in an unwary moment, Appleby had told this story to the children. It must have been after dinner and when the Applebys – as tended to be their habit – were lingering amid Beaujolais and guttering candles before turning to the washing-up. And now the story, if inexpugnably hilarious, had turned faintly tedious. The man, like some homing device of ghastly sophistication in modern warfare, had walked and tapped his way straight to the cupboard. He had thrown open the door – and there Sir John and Lady Appleby had been, like the woman (according to Bobby Appleby, who was of a literary turn) in a play of Strindberg’s, who lived in a cupboard because she believed herself to be a parrot. And Appleby had emerged, fumbling for the famous visiting card in one pocket while noisily jingling a kind of Danegeld of halfcrowns in the other. The man (according to Bobby) had behaved in an impeccably Jeeves-like manner. Recognizing (despite the halfcrowns, which had been a false note attributable to Appleby’s unassuming origins) the presence of the upper classes, he had bowed the Applebys deferentially off the premises.
    Bobby Appleby was not only of a literary turn. He had lately become a novelist. He was entitled to his fantasies. But had it been a fantasy? Appleby could no longer precisely remember. The cupboard indeed he could vividly recall. It had exuded what he vaguely conjectured to be the smell of the droppings of untold generations of bats. But had there really been that moment in which he had simultaneously obtruded an oblong of pasteboard ( Sir John Appleby, New Scotland Yard ) and a couple of halfcrowns? Appleby no longer knew. But he had been left with a distaste of what might be called false situations. Perhaps he was heading for one now.
     
    The garden through which Mr Ashmore had conducted him abounded chiefly in hemlock and thistle – these (as once at Byron’s Newstead) having choked up the rose that once bloomed on the spray. Here and there headless statues presided over exhausted fountains and departed shrubberies. There was a croquet-lawn abundant in fungi and mushrooms. Appleby rather suspected that Mr Ashmore relied upon these as upon a home farm; that the fatally inviting stile had tumbled him into the society not merely of a pathological recluse but of a pathological miser as well. The mere possession of a tobacco-pouch had transformed his status with the proprietor of this impressive if mouldering mansion. Extravagantly prosperous gentlemen in the City of London would part with large sums for the possession of so authentically feudal a set-up as lay before him. But Mr Ashmore was prepared to admit to it anybody who would provide him with a free smoke.
    ‘I like your house very much,’ Appleby said. ‘I must have missed it on my map. What is it called?’
    ‘Ashmore Chase, of course.’ Mr Ashmore had turned to stare at him. ‘What do you think? They’re all around me, my damned brothers and cousins in their bogus Lutyens homes-and-gardens manor houses. Opening their interesting grounds for the benefit of District Nurses and God knows what. But I’m the head of the family, after all. You may say that the Sixteenth Century means nothing nowadays. Fair enough. But land does. I’ve been out in your bloody modern