Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

her tiresomeness was evident. ‘But now,’ she continued, ‘there is suddenly this larger sphere of usefulness before you. You will have the happiness of bringing some of your father’s finest schemes to fruition.’
    â€˜I hope I’m going to have the happiness of keeping out of quod. My father has been done in, and now the dicks have found me hiding in the wood-shed. It doesn’t look too good, does it?’
    This odd and indecorous speech did for a moment hold Miss Kentwell up. Yet almost at once she returned to the charge.
    â€˜You must not distress yourself, Mr Tytherton, with morbid fancies. They are common in the first shock of bereavement. But they quickly pass, particularly if one throws oneself at once into some wide sphere of usefulness, some well conceived scheme of beneficent activity.’
    It was at this point that Appleby felt the character of Miss Kentwell to be coming clear. She was a fanatical promoter of good works, and she felt that somebody freshly in command of what must be presumed a large fortune was a prospect to be gone for at once. It was even possible that she had softened up the late Maurice Tytherton in the interest of some charitable project or other, and was now beginning to mount a campaign to ensure his son’s carrying it on. Appleby judged this something of a forlorn hope. Certainly Mark Tytherton was responding far from amiably now.
    â€˜I must be getting on to the house,’ he said abruptly. ‘Only decent to see Alice. I suppose.’ This remark he had addressed to Appleby. ‘Hope you won’t be obliged to hang around Elvedon indefinitely.’ This had been for Miss Kentwell. ‘So long.’ And on this colloquial note Mark Tytherton strode away.
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    â€˜A most interesting young man.’ Miss Kentwell had somehow managed to take it for granted that Appleby would remain in conversation with her. ‘His manner is a little unpolished, but that is merely a matter of his colonial associations. I believed him destined to be a person of strong character and vigorous conviction.’
    â€˜Possibly so. But by the way, and talking of his colonial associations, you didn’t seem at all surprised at his having suddenly turned up here.’
    â€˜It would have been scarcely civil, Sir John, to betray any reaction of that kind. One is only sorry that he didn’t arrive a few days earlier. He might have cheered and heartened his father’s last hours.’
    â€˜His father didn’t exactly have last hours of that sort.’
    â€˜Perfectly true. For a moment I was forgetting the extremely distressing circumstances of Mr Tytherton’s end. A death without a deathbed is a horrid thing.’ Miss Kentwell paused on this curiously Victorian sentiment. ‘Unless,’ she added as an afterthought, ‘it be death on the field of battle. That is quite another matter.’
    â€˜It appears so to us. To the people dying, I suppose, these distinctions may not be all that apparent.’
    â€˜That is a most interesting thought.’ It was evident that Miss Kentwell was not readily made aware of any element of levity in response to her observations. ‘I am so glad that the young man is going straight to Mrs Tytherton. As you can well imagine, she is prostrated. The presence of her step-son will be a great support to her.’
    â€˜No doubt – although I can’t see that they can be very well known to each other. Would you describe the Tythertons, incidentally, as a devoted couple?’
    â€˜Ah.’ Miss Kentwell made this noise in a considering way, and was plainly playing for time. It must be her instinct to treat as scandalous any suggestion that couples – at least among the respectable classes – are ever other than devoted. On the other hand, and in this instance, it looked as if there was something to a contrary effect that she wanted to say. And she managed to say it now.