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

were asking, for instance, why this lady returned to Water Poole when she did. Stress is put upon things like that?”
    “Certainly it is.”
    “Awkward. Troublesome. Vexatious.” And Mr Buttery shook his head. “If I myself had what might be termed a respectable motive–”
    “Folk-lore.” Appleby was brisk. “Your own further investigations of Water Poole last night, sir, were prompted entirely by your interest in folk-lore. You were after the goblins, and nothing but the goblins. And now perhaps you can go ahead.”
    “I don’t quite follow this.” Richard Poole was curious. “Am I to understand that Mr Buttery–”
    “Mr Buttery is a great law-breaker.” Appleby announced this without any appearance of censure. “A little quiet poaching warms the cockles of his heart. But lately he has taken larger flight. He found, I think, a very tempting cellar, to be entered unobtrusively by a cut from the river. Perhaps he found some suitable implements and utensils as well. Anyway, he has been having great fun distilling illicit spirits. Hence the smell remarked by Miss Brown. And hence Mr Buttery’s own enthusiasm for Total Prohibition. He feels that if that came in he might go into business in a large way. But these are irrelevant matters–”
    “Really irrelevant?” Mr Buttery was sharply hopeful.
    “At least there is a very good chance of it. Last night, sir, you watched the goblins in some alarm until they packed up. And then you came to investigate. They are said, after all, to do terrible things in dairies. Perhaps they might have been behaving equally mischievously in your distillery.”
    “I certainly waited in my dinghy until all was dark and silent again.” Mr Buttery now spoke with much placidity. “It was a tedious vigil. I was not however greatly surprised. For goblins, as you know, have a great reputation for keeping it up till dawn. Gradually their lights went out, and I was conscious of intermittent rumblings. Parties of them were returning to the nether world.”
    “Or our vans were driving away.” Richard Poole was looking at the clergyman in some perplexity, as if finding it hard to gauge just how deep his eccentricity went.
    “When at length I ventured to land they had all vanished – as our national poet puts it, following darkness like a dream. Or all, that is, except the Goblin King.”
    “The Goblin King?” Miss Brown, whose spirits appeared to be a little revived, interrupted. “Do Goblins have that?”
    “Certainly – and he is rather a fine personage. It is a mistake, you know, to suppose that goblins are dwarfs, or in any sense little people. I was not at all surprised to find that the Goblin King was a most distinguished figure, magnificently attired in black and gold.”
    “Cousin Hiram!”
    “With him he had an obscure familiar. I caught only glimpses, you know. As I remarked earlier, it is very dangerous for the clergy to get involved with goblins. So the utmost circumspection was necessary. The Goblin King had some species of lantern. I had to be very careful to keep out of its beam; and it was only from the oblique light coming from it that I could distinguish him at all. The familiar puzzled me. Could it have been Hecate? I am more inclined to suppose a minor Teutonic divinity. Possibly the Sow Goddess.” Mr Buttery looked ingenuously at Miss Brown. “Would that appear to you to be a tenable hypothesis?”
    “I think you are a very wicked old man.” Miss Brown’s response, if not strictly relevant, was spirited.
    “Presently however the familiar was banished. This was the only occasion upon which I actually heard the Goblin King speak. ‘Go away,’ he said. I was much struck by his tone of authority. Without more ado, the Sow Goddess – I am sure she was that – took her departure.”
    Richard Poole looked wickedly at Miss Brown. “With more rumbling?”
    “I should rather say with a purr. I am inclined to suppose some species of chariot. The Goblin