An Awkward Lie by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

Constable to let me try to keep it out of the press, and just have a bit of rumour going around. To repeat, sir: the people who killed the unknown man were careful to leave this ’ – Howard gestured towards the bunker – ‘neat and tidy – as one might hope to find it, you might say. They did so in the hope that your son’s story would be discounted. Don’t let’s disabuse them yet. That was the line I worked on. Only this afternoon, sir, it went wrong. And it went wrong because I slipped up badly.’
    ‘I’m surprised to hear it,’ Appleby said quietly.
    ‘There was a telephone-call from the Home Office. They wanted information.’
    ‘The Home Office?’ Appleby was puzzled. ‘But you’d been getting data from Missing Persons at Scotland Yard, hadn’t you? Why on earth should the Home Office–’
    ‘Yes, Sir John. But I didn’t work out that one until five minutes too late. It was a Principal. He gave his name, and sounded uncommonly steamed up. He said there had been a gross irregularity of procedure, and that the Minister himself was gravely concerned.’
    ‘The Home Secretary gravely concerned about this! My dear man–’
    ‘Yes, sir But you must remember that I don’t have your familiarity with Whitehall. And all he wanted was confirmation that we had good reason to believe there had been the body of a dead man with a missing finger discovered on this golf-course during the early morning of–’
    ‘I see. So you confirmed it – and then began to wonder? And your wondering took just five minutes?’
    ‘Just about that. So I called back the Home Office – which took a bit of nerve, Sir John, as you will understand – and nobody knew what I was talking about. They weren’t too pleased at being bothered by a rural policeman who’d plainly been taken in by some joker in a call-box.’
    ‘Too bad, Sergeant.’ Appleby laughed in rather a muted way. Standing just where he did, he had an irrational sense of being in the presence of the dead. ‘But I’ve been taken in often enough in rather the same fashion, I must confess.’
    ‘Well, there’s consolation in that.’ Howard paused on what was his own first ray of humour. ‘But something further followed. One of my men brought me the midday edition of one of the evening papers. Somewhere or other, there’s been a leak. It carried a fairly full account of your son’s adventure. But perhaps you’ve seen it?’
    ‘We don’t take an evening paper.’ Appleby thought for a moment. ‘You think the telephone-call was precipitated by the newspaper report? It was an attempt to get official police confirmation of what the paper might, or might not, have got accurately?’
    ‘It looks that way to me.’
    ‘Tell me, Sergeant – is the newspaper precise about the time of the discovery?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘But the fellow on the telephone got that out of you?’
    ‘Certainly he did. And I’m bound to say I feel a fool. It’s not how one wants to feel, when an affair of this sort comes one’s way. It’s an uncommon chance – here in a country situation.’
    ‘Perfectly true, Sergeant.’ Appleby was interested in this frank avowal on Howard’s part of some touch of the last infirmity of noble mind. ‘But it’s early days yet. And at least you know more than you knew this morning.’
    ‘Yes, sir. I know there are other sleuths on the trail.’
    ‘Meaning my son and myself?’
    ‘Not that, at all.’ This time, Howard managed a subdued laugh himself. ‘I don’t fancy it was an Appleby who was on the other end of that telephone-line.’
    ‘In that case, Sergeant, may I ask just what is your present reading of the affair?’
    ‘Well, Sir John, since you ask. I’ll offer a guess. We’re far from being up against a one-man show. There’s quite a little crowd of villains somewhere. And they’re not trusting one another very far.’
     

PART TWO
     
Dr Gulliver’s School
     
3
     
    Overcombe didn’t seem to have changed much. Nor