The Long Farewell by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

whole place worked harder than Charles Cavill. And if he had concluded that there was no reason to suppose anything particularly sinister about Packford’s death he now had a right to feel a little irritated, anyway.
    ‘So I was surprised,’ Appleby went on, ‘to learn that the poor chap had blown his brains out. It’s uncommon, you’ll agree, when a man’s looking actively ahead to this and that.’
    ‘That’s certainly true.’ Cavill now spoke with decent professional briskness. ‘But even a man who is absorbingly interested in life may make away with himself, provided that something bad enough turns up on him suddenly. The suddenness is important, I’ve often found. But perhaps I’m wrong. Of course you’ve had much more experience than I have, sir.’
    Appleby sighed slightly. This unnecessary excursus hadn’t even the justification of truth. Cavill’s experience would fill whole filing-cabinets. Indeed, that was just what it did in a large unbeautiful fireproof room downstairs. ‘Well then,’ Appleby said with sudden sharp challenge, ‘what about Packford? Is there any sign of something pretty bad bobbing up on him? He blew his brains out. What was it in aid of, anyway?’
    ‘Page four,’ Cavill said.
    Page four was the last in the file. Cavill hadn’t thought it necessary to compile extensive notes on Packford. Appleby glanced at the first sentence. ‘Married!’ he exclaimed. ‘He kept uncommonly dark about it, I must say.’
    ‘He had reason to,’ Cavill said grimly. ‘Read on.’
    ‘Married again!’ Appleby scanned the page for a moment and then put down the file. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said.
    ‘Quite so, sir. It must be surprising – about somebody you knew quite well.’
    ‘I didn’t say that, Cavill. I’ve never, for instance, been near the place I know Packford had in the country. I’ve dined with him from time to time in a London flat, where he certainly lived in a bachelor way. And I gave him lunch occasionally at my club. And he was in my own house once or twice, and entertained by my wife, without our ever having a glimmer that there was a Mrs Packford.’
    ‘Two Mrs Packfords, sir. That’s rather the point, isn’t it?’
    ‘No doubt.’ Appleby took another glance at the file. ‘The existence of the one easily accounts for his reticence about the other. And vice versa.’
    ‘Just so, sir.’
    ‘I did rather gather that there were ladies somewhere on his horizon, and that he was finding them perplexing. But there isn’t, after all, anything uncommon about that. I had a dim feeling that he might be a late beginner, and making heavy weather of it.’
    Cavill nodded. ‘It’s my guess that that was the way of it, sir.’
    ‘But this story you have here’ – and Appleby tapped the file – ‘is another matter. Crude bigamy just isn’t an educated man’s crime. He knows it can’t be got away with. The thing’s nonsense.’ Appleby was conscious that his chief reaction to the queer information just presented to him was exasperation. But Packford, he reflected, although so largely sympathetic a character, had always possessed a certain flair for producing that. ‘It was when somebody revealed this awkward fact about the dead man,’ he went on, ‘that the local people asked us to take a look at the business?’
    Cavil nodded – still rather wearily. ‘That was how it came about, sir.’
    ‘I must say you’ve lost no time in making up your mind what really happened.’ Appleby paused, seeing that Cavill was now smiling faintly. ‘But of course I’m still in the dark.’ He shook his head rather helplessly – being aware that the spectacle of his chief in some bewilderment would in all probability put Cavill into a better humour. ‘Apart from some obscure mutterings when I last ran into him. I’d never connected Packford with that sort of thing.’
    ‘You wouldn’t have said, sir, that he was of an enthusiastic temperament?’
    ‘Indeed I should.