The Long Farewell by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

information or surmise, the matter couldn’t, it seemed to Appleby, be precisely dropped. Were he to take no action, and then some independent turn of affairs demonstrate that the solicitor hadn’t been talking nonsense, he would himself scarcely appear in the light of one who had set a very striking example of vigilance to his subordinates of the Metropolitan Police.
    But, even apart from this, he felt prompted to do something. He hadn’t been a close friend of the dead man’s. But he had liked him, and had happened to seek him out not so very long before he died. To Appleby’s mind this meant that there would be a mild impiety in now continuing to take the manner of that death for granted. If a man is murdered, his shade is presumably grateful for being vindicted from the charge of suicide.
    At the same time, Appleby felt another and simpler impulse – an impulse but for the constant strength of which within him he would probably be indifferently adorning quite another walk of life. He was curious about the business: curious about Packford; curious about Rood; and curious, above all, about that tenuous personal involvement in the supposed mystery constituted by his evening on Lake Garda not long ago. He spent the rest of his taxi journey trying to feel himself back more securely, more sensitively, into that. The result wasn’t very satisfactory.
    There undoubtedly had been some sort of expectation or distraction present at that simple feast, and there had also been some personal preoccupation in a sphere where one wouldn’t have expected it. But Appleby found that his memory possessed no instrument with which to measure these things with any accuracy. Sharp but irrelevant sensuous impressions were what chiefly remained from that occasion: the brown torso of the boy Gino and his flashing smile; the fungi and the acid Tuscan wine; the lake turning to a long sheet of light as the sun sank. He had, after all, been very much on holiday. Perhaps he hadn’t at all noticed the right things.
    When he got back to Scotland Yard his first inquiry produced a surprise. The death of Lewis Packford, although taking place in Dorset, had been investigated by Detective-Inspector Cavill. It wasn’t at once clear why it had been promoted to that busy officer’s regard, and Appleby sent down a message that he’d be glad to find out.
    Charles Cavill was in the building and appeared at once. He didn’t look too pleased; he contrived to infuse a good deal of gloom into the simple business of handing Appleby a file; and he was unnecessarily formal and civil.
    ‘I’m sorry to take up your time,’ Appleby said. There were always these difficulties in a place that was neither quite one thing nor yet quite another, in which the set-up might be called quasi-military. Appleby had had his stiff periods; had weathered, as he made his way up the ladder, phases of resentment quite as acute as if he had come in at a high level from elsewhere. There had been times when it would have been extremely rash to indulge in apologetic murmurs. But he took all that very easily now; he was almost through, after all; he’d say what came into his head – and let them react, bless them, any way they chose. ‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘Terribly sorry, Cavill. But the fact is I knew this fellow Packford. It isn’t long since I visited him in Italy and had dinner with him.’
    ‘Indeed, sir.’ Cavill’s tone indicated that he didn’t himself belong to a class of society that went gallivanting about the continent.
    ‘And he seemed quite all right then. A great barrel of a man, but full of life, and with all sorts of forward-looking plans in his head. He was going to surprise people. Not a lot of people. Just a good many learned people. That was his line.’
    ‘Yes, sir. I did gather that he appeared pretty harmless.’ Cavill’s voice now had a hint of weariness which Appleby instantly told himself was not necessarily meant to be offensive. Nobody in the