Read Online Appleby Talks Again by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

there are still a good many possibilities. For example, we don’t know – at least I don’t know – what was in the dead man’s mind. How did he take the revelation which it is agreed was made to him? Miss Brown, the only person to be in his company after the truth was revealed, quite failed to get any change out of him. That, at least, is her story. Suppose it to be true… Do you hear a car? It will be my wife with a doctor.”
    “I am not in the habit of prevarication.”
    “Very well. Your story is gospel, so far as it goes. But there may have been – indeed, if it is gospel, there must have been – a further and distinct act in the drama. Mr Richard Poole may have been lurking around – or he may have returned after you left, encountered his cousin, and become involved in some altercation with fatal consequences. In the circumstances it is a possible picture.” Appleby paused. “I mentioned the chance of Mr Richard’s being already , in some degree, Hiram Poole’s heir – and knowing it. On that, the actual truth must, of course, eventually become available. For what my own opinion is worth, it is slightly improbable. But one fact is admitted. As matters stood last night, and still stand now, the Daughters of Abstinence are very large beneficiaries under Hiram Poole’s will. And this bring us back to Miss Brown. Her story may not be gospel. It may be quite untrue.”
    “I am not in the–”
    “No doubt, madam. But there are tight corners in which the most inflexibly truthful persons find themselves a little inclined to stretch a point. Suppose that this investigation of the true state of Water Poole brought both Hiram Poole and yourself to the top of that staircase. He had been silent. You became vehement in your denunciation of Mr Richard. And then Hiram Poole did something which surprised you very much, but which in fact was thoroughly consonant with human nature. He cried a plague on both your houses.”
    “He did what?” Miss Brown was both startled and at a loss.
    “He declared that Richard should not have a penny of his. And then he said precisely the same thing about the Daughters of Abstinence.”
    “He would never do such a thing.”
    “I repeat that I think it extremely likely that he would. Your organisation had set a spy on him, and subjected him to an acute humiliation of which you, madam, cannot have the faintest imaginative understanding. So here is another sober possibility. Up there, at the top of that crazy staircase, this old man told you that your organisation would be struck out of his will tomorrow.”
    Miss Brown was silent – and suddenly old and spectral. Richard Poole looked at her not unkindly and then turned to Appleby. “I must say you have considerable skill in making it uncomfortable for everybody in turn. Is there more to come? What about Mr Buttery?”
    And Appleby nodded. “I’m coming to Mr Buttery now.”
    “To me?” Over his steel-rimmed spectacles the clergyman looked at Appleby in naïve alarm. “I fear all this has been incomprehensible to me, and that I am unlikely to be able to assist. Here and there – on the goblin side of the thing – I am fairly clear. But all this of wills eludes me. Mr Poole, it seems, has told one story; this lady who keeps on changing her name has told another; and I suppose you, sir, must choose between them.”
    Appleby shook his head. “That may be unnecessary. I have myself ventured some alternative hypotheses which are no doubt mutually exclusive. But the stories of Mr Poole and Miss Brown do not in themselves contradict each other. Both may have told as much of the truth as they know. And now it is up to you to tell the rest.”
    Mr Buttery considered this injunction for a moment in silence. Then, disconcertingly, his venerable features assumed an expression of the deepest cunning. “I suppose,” he asked, “that what is called motive is of great importance in a matter of this sort?”
    “Undoubtedly.”
    “You