The Open House by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

undeniably present. Equally – if only for a moment – there was clear evidence of how it had, as it were, come on the air. The figure of a woman had disappeared round the curve of the quadrant corridor. Appleby hesitated, and decided not to follow. He really could not go pounding after somebody who might well enjoy a better right to be here than he did. Then he found that Professor Snodgrass was standing beside him, sniffing vigorously.
    ‘Not a doubt of it,’ Snodgrass said with satisfaction. ‘Unmistakably camel.’

 
     
5
     
    ‘Then it was a white camel,’ Appleby said, ‘and it walked on two feet.’
    ‘Puzzling thing.’ Professor Snodgrass received this exasperated remark quite seriously. ‘Might be a trick of the light, perhaps? In mirage conditions, I’ve seen them with up to eight. Feet, that is.’
    ‘There was a woman at this door, and presumably she was listening to us.’ Appleby pursued his plan of dogged rationality. ‘A woman in white. Have you…’
    ‘A woman in white? Fellow wrote a yarn called that. Not at all bad. Much better than modern stuff of the same sort.’
    ‘No doubt.’ Appleby felt no disposition to digress upon the literary merits of Wilkie Collins. ‘Have you any idea why a woman dressed entirely in white should be wandering round Ledward?’
    ‘None whatever. It sounds a shade eccentric to me.’ Having produced this brilliant riposte, the Professor at once capped it. ‘Do you think she might be impersonating a ghost?’ He picked up the decanter, and held it interrogatively over his guest’s glass.
    ‘No more, thank you – although it’s a capital port. May I ask whether you have many women in your household?’
    ‘Lord no, my dear fellow. Lost interest in them years ago. And in a quiet country situation it just doesn’t do.’ Professor Snodgrass shook his head a shade nostalgically. ‘Adrian found that.’
    ‘Did he, indeed? I was thinking of servants, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘Oh, I see. Not quite the same thing, eh? Not that one can’t have what you might call an overlap.’ Whether genuinely or not, the Professor’s glance momentarily suggested a ripe Edwardian depravity. ‘There’s my cook, Mrs Gathercoal. Invaluable woman. Understands a soufflé . Set her to one for you, if you’re kind enough to stay on. Manage you a bit of rough shooting, too. Brought your gun?’
    The wandering course of these remarks, and much else in his host’s conversation, might be the result, Appleby supposed, of their being offered in a large absence of mind. There could be no doubt that, as he talked, the old gentleman never ceased to listen . And it wasn’t for those problematical personages whom Appleby was coming to judge rather thick on the ground. Women in white, for example, didn’t interest the present guardian of Ledward Park in the least. His mind was entirely concentrated upon that imposing property’s missing heir.
    ‘And a couple of other women,’ Snodgrass said. ‘Housemaids, I suppose they’d be called. And, of course, there’s my butler, Leonidas. Uncommon name, eh? Very decent one, too. I engaged him on the strength of it. Can’t say he’s turned out all that Spartan. Still, it puts one in mind of what was a damned good show. If the Phocians had just held on to that mountain path by Anopaea, it might even…’
    ‘I suppose so.’ Appleby judged the tactics of the battle of Thermopylae to be even more irrelevant than the literary accomplishment of the author of The Woman in White . ‘Does Leonidas keep an eye on the Park as well as your own house?’
    ‘Dear me, yes. They all have to lend a hand. And some of my outdoor people as well. Must stay shipshape.’ Professor Snodgrass paused. ‘But I was telling you about my nephew Adrian. Boring you, I expect.’
    ‘Not at all. And, for that matter, you haven’t told me very much. We were interrupted. South America, for instance. Your nephew spends a good deal of his time there?’
    ‘He