Appleby Plays Chicken by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

quietly, ‘that you heard a shot, but simply took it to be somebody out having a pot at something?’
    Again there was a little silence. It was heavy with the implication of David’s words. The stranger, they asserted, might have thought up a more plausible line. But this didn’t – immediately at least – draw any fire. The fellow just turned back to the body. ‘We’d better make sure,’ he said.
    ‘You can be quite confident he’s dead.’
    This time, the stranger gave David a glance of keen scrutiny. ‘I’m not quite sure’, he said, ‘what’s in your mind. But let an older man give you a word of advice. Just take it easy. An affair like this can be damned upsetting. There’s no discredit in feeling a bit rattled by it. Sit down. And I’ve got a drop of brandy, if you care for it. But barley sugar’s better – and I’ve got that too.’ He smiled. ‘Barley sugar and a pocket compass are the first things to put in your pocket when you go walking. Of course, half a crown’s useful, in case you feel like a bus at the end of the day.’
    David almost found himself sitting down. This easy magistral talk was undermining. But he glanced at the body, and stayed put. ‘What’s in my mind?’ he said. ‘Well, one thing in my mind is this. The chap’s dead. And you and I are the only people who can be involved.’
    ‘But neither of us is.’ The stranger was suddenly impatient. ‘I know nothing about the matter whatever. As you no doubt saw, I had no intention of coming up to the summit of the Tor. As for you, sir, the chance of your having contrived this’ – and the stranger nodded grimly towards the body – ‘seems to me inconsiderable.’ And again the stranger smiled. He was the elderly experienced man, undemonstrative, but genuinely liking a youngster who shaped well. ‘Now listen. You heard a shot as you were approaching this summit from the other side?’
    ‘Certainly I did.’
    ‘But nobody appeared?’
    ‘Nobody.’
    ‘And you saw nobody on this skyline – here where we are standing now?’
    David shook his head. ‘No. But one wouldn’t, unless they came close to the edge. Study the lie of the place, and you’ll see.’
    ‘You’re perfectly right.’ The stranger said this after a careful survey both of the rocky basin in which they stood and of the entire terrain beneath them. ‘Now, where were you when you heard a shot?’
    David pointed out what had been his approximate position. For the moment he was quite prepared to let the stranger take the lead. He had a notion that, if he kept wide enough awake, it might be a way of learning something. ‘And then I came straight up,’ he said.
    ‘Very well. And you can see that, on either hand, the summit falls away on a perfectly bare shoulder of moor. There’s nothing remotely approaching continuous cover. Of course there’s the next Tor – the Loaf, I think it’s called. There is cover there. But one couldn’t make it all that quickly.’
    David studied the terrain. He was rather powerfully aware, once more, of its loneliness. But the chap seemed right about the topography. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I agree.’
    The stranger nodded. ‘So far, so good. We can be clear that, after that shot was fired, nobody could have got away without one or the other of us spotting him. You’ll admit that?’
    ‘Yes – if you were looking towards the Tor every now and then.’ David paused. ‘When I saw you, you seemed entirely absorbed in the view in the other direction.’
    ‘My dear lad, I have no doubt you hailed me within seconds of becoming aware of me. I may have been looking the other way, just then. But of course I kept glancing at the Tor, and at the skyline round it. One naturally does, in country like this.’ The stranger was again faintly impatient. ‘But my main point is simply that you are right in your general reading of the situation. If you were down there and heard a shot, and if it was that shot that killed this man,