Death at the Chase by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

his voice had come wholly under control. He turned to Appleby.
    ‘My dear Sir John, you will realize that it is a long time since I have received a visit from one of my French connections. It is a red-letter day, and I find myself becoming positively excited! I take it very kindly that Jules should have made his way to the Chase. I rather fear his visit may be only a short one. And he and I, as you may imagine, will have plenty of family matters to talk about.’
    ‘That will be most agreeable, I don’t doubt.’ Appleby glanced curiously at de Voisin, hoping for some indication of how he felt about this belated welcome. But de Voisin merely returned the glance with faint irony. He had entirely picked up the abruptness with which Appleby had been dismissed.
    It was a dismissal to take gracefully. Appleby murmured further words about his excellent lunch, shook hands solemnly with both men, and begged to be so far indulged as to see himself out of the house. Mr Ashmore and Monsieur de Voisin, he added, would no doubt wish to spend a little more time admiring the view.
    In five minutes he was walking thoughtfully down a weed-covered drive. Tentatively, he tried telling himself that what lay behind him was no affair of his. But he found it wouldn’t do. Simply as a matter of public duty it wouldn’t do. He would run over that evening, he decided, and have a word with the Chief Constable.

 
     
Part Two
    Benevolent Intentions at Long Dream Manor

 
     
5
     
    ‘Do you mean,’ Judith Appleby asked, ‘that you went on till you were stopped?’
    ‘Precisely that. I observed your canons in such matters to the letter.’ Appleby accepted a second cup of tea, shook his head austerely at a seducing plate of chocolate Bath Olivers, and then nodded it in gloomy substantiation of what he had just said. ‘And no good came of it. No good ever does.’
    ‘It doesn’t strike me that way at all.’ Judith, whose weight remained constant regardless of dietary indulgence, picked up one of the biscuits. ‘You arrived home with a mystery – or at least with the tip or the ghost of a mystery – and you’ve been battening on it ever since. All that business, for example, of rushing over to alarm poor Tommy Pride. You enjoy it enormously. Just like old times. Much better fun than stacking wood. By the way, we’ll be out of dry wood and living in a smoky house before Christmas if you don’t–’
    ‘Very well.’ Appleby gave a decisive nod. ‘I’ll tell Hoobin.’
    ‘Yes, do tell Hoobin, John. And don’t forget his bottle of whisky. It will be for his eightieth birthday.’
    ‘Of course not.’ Appleby gave a resigned sigh. ‘Your hale and hearty husband will go through this Caliban act, stacking wood. And the octogenarian Hoobin, a dignified Prospero, will tipple whisky in the potting shed. What were we talking about?’
    ‘ The Great Maquis Mystery . Or perhaps Peril at Ashmore Chase. And about scaring Tommy Pride.’
    ‘I’m not in the least averse to scaring Tommy Pride. I wasn’t at school with him. I didn’t dance with him at hunt balls, as you–’
    ‘Of course not. Men don’t do that sort of thing at hunt balls. Or not at the balls of good hunts.’
    ‘You are quite idiotic. I am only saying that I don’t mind scaring your Tommy. Not that it is scaring him. Pride’s a very good scout. As for the maquis , it’s not to be joked about. In France itself such things went on happening for years after the war. A fellow would square this chap and that, and get himself solemnly acquitted in court of any species of collaboration. And then young men – or not so young men – who had acquired a taste for summary justice under résistance rules would turn up one night and simply rub him out. Read Les Mandarins . Simone de Beauvoir, you know.’
    ‘I do know. But they didn’t fall down on the job every 10th of October.’
    ‘Fair enough.’ Appleby got up and paced the room. ‘There’s something really fiendish