Read Online Appleby on Ararat by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

Practically–” She stopped as if searching for some even more emphatic statement. “Well, practically like that.”
    Glover coughed. “Hoppo, you are right.” He frowned. “No, I don’t know that you are. Surely when you were dredging for the oysters and decided to try the farther pool–”
    “My dear Glover, you must recall that it proved empty and that not more than five minutes–”
    Appleby held up a hasty hand. “I don’t think it will be useful to work along these lines at present. Although we were in a sense – er – paired–”
    “John” – Diana looked suddenly accusing – “you did leave me once – for nearly five minutes, it must have been. Why–”
    More urgently this time, Glover coughed. “Really, I agree with Appleby. In the course of a whole day it is natural” – he coughed ferociously – “ strictly natural, that–”
    “We had better be off.” Hoppo shaded his eyes and gazed determinedly into distance. “I must confess that I shall be happier in my mind if we find Miss Curricle before dark.” They set out, Diana reluctantly, and Glover and Hoppo somewhat self-consciously armed with cudgels. Appleby watched them depart and then turned to what, in this out-of-the-way hole, must now be called the scene of the crime. Where had the black man been killed? It would be best to begin with the spot where his body was found, consider the possibilities there, and then move progressively farther afield. The body had been found on a submerged rock surrounded by water. And the water was surrounded on one side by a broad sickle of sand and on the other by a reef sometimes exposed by the tide and sometimes covered to the depth of about a foot. The body had been found with the head smashed in from behind with what might have been either a boulder or some smooth and heavy fabricated weapon.
    This was the setting. Suppose, then, Unumunu and another bathing as he and Diana bathed that morning. And suppose them to have reached the submerged rock and the thing to have happened there. It was impossible: the weapon could scarcely have been conveyed there, and certainly not conveyed with concealment; moreover the necessary purchase for a crushing blow could not have been obtained in water or on a fragmentary foothold of rock awash with the sea. Short of such an unknown factor as a boat the crime had no feasibility here.
    But in two places in the bay there emerged rocks more considerable than this; on both of them Diana and he had found space to bask in the sun. On one of these the deed might have been done, but again there were difficulties. Boulders or loose rock there were none, so that a weapon would have to be hidden beforehand. And for a premeditated deed of violence such a site was inconveniently open to observation by such tiny population as the island had.
    So next came the beach. Appleby tried to imagine himself killing Unumunu there. It would mean walking with him or towards him in an attitude or with a burden which was almost certain to attract attention; it meant then stepping behind him to strike. There was the possibility of approach entirely from behind and unbeknown. But this would not be easy; with a black man who had not some scores of generations of tolerable physical security in his make-up it would probably not be possible at all. And again the site was public.
    And now the jungle – or whatever it was properly to be called. Here in the half-light of the tree ferns and amid a maze of thicket and creeper was the likely place – secrecy, concealment and the cover of a multitude of small alien sounds…
    Appleby, standing yet in the beating sunlight, stared dubiously into this abrupt cavern of vegetation. He moved towards it up a hillock of loose sand; slithered and fell. The sand was fine and hot, and there was a kind of drifting skin to it stirred by an imperceptible breeze. It was toilsome stuff. And over it and out of the secrecy of the jungle, over it and across a further