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Authors: Michael Innes
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view? The PM perturbed and informing the Cabinet. My own Minister wanting to guard the reservoirs. The genuinely alarming thought of how the public might react to a bit of scare reporting. Bacillus botulinus has already been making some headway in people’s imaginations. Suppose the populace at large got the idea that any wandering stranger of intellectual appearance was likely to be the mad scientist, intent on dropping the small fatal dose straight into the national teapot? It is a prospect almost equally ugly whether false or true.
And – just conceivably – it is true, more or less. But it is far more probably false. So, too, are all the other more sensational readings of the affair. Isn’t it likely, in fact, to be on a par with two or three other cases with which I’ve been concerned in the last half-dozen years?
Marchbanks, for instance – remember him. He hadn’t been kidnapped. He hadn’t gone mad. He hadn’t even bolted with somebody else’s wife. He had simply packed a bag and gone off trout-fishing in Scotland. And, although Marchbanks’ disappearance was public property from the first, with a national hue and cry whipped up by twopenny papers, nobody came within a mile of spotting him for a month. Marchbanks himself had read The Scotsman every day over his tea, and without himself turning a hair. He was just being damned to them – which was an expression, come to think of it, that the Junipers seemed to be fond of as a family. Marchbanks – so far as Appleby could make out afterwards – hadn’t as much as seen the thing as an enormous joke. His absence had cost no end of public money; heaven knew what complicated experiment had gone to pot because of it; but the simple fact was that he had decided it was about time for a holiday.
And wasn’t Howard Juniper – Professor Howard Juniper – out of the same stable: a don, seconded to this national work, who had grown up in an ancient university as a sweet law unto himself? Appleby would never forget the mild surprise with which Marchbanks, run to earth – or rather run to burn – in Morayshire, had received the suggestion that there might be people who were displeased with him. He’d had more useful ideas, he’d said, while flogging this very decent bit of water, than he’d had for years in their ineptly pretentious laboratories. He’d even brought off the really crucial experiment at last – with a length of gut, Mrs Macnabb’s porridge pan, and a really superb spring-trap that old Macnabb had invented in pursuance of his profession as a poacher. So what the hell?
Appleby smiled at the memory. There was decidedly a lesson in Marchbanks. Entirely sane, Marchbanks had been, even if by some standards irresponsible.
Irresponsible… The word moved uneasily in Appleby’s mind. It was something that Miles Juniper had said. It was something in the tone, the mere inflexion, of something he had said… Appleby paused on this, aware that he was on curiously obscure ground. For this hadn’t been the only moment of its kind during that interview at Splaine Croft. There had been something else of the sort too: something that had just hung for a moment on the ear – and something that Appleby, try as he might, just couldn’t pinpoint or bring back to consciousness. But this was clear enough. Miles had expressed his certainty that his brother Howard was up to nothing irresponsible. But there had been just the faintest hesitation or reservation in the way he had said it.
And there was that freakish past – common, indeed to both brothers. Wasn’t it conceivable that Howard Juniper had simply behaved in some fashion that would indeed be merely freakish in an unimportant young man, but that did rather more than verge upon irresponsibility in a famous one?
Very well. Go back to Marchbanks. He had in the end found Marchbanks – and had put a good deal of ingenuity into the task. But wouldn’t he have done it quicker if he had kept one fact more
And – just conceivably – it is true, more or less. But it is far more probably false. So, too, are all the other more sensational readings of the affair. Isn’t it likely, in fact, to be on a par with two or three other cases with which I’ve been concerned in the last half-dozen years?
Marchbanks, for instance – remember him. He hadn’t been kidnapped. He hadn’t gone mad. He hadn’t even bolted with somebody else’s wife. He had simply packed a bag and gone off trout-fishing in Scotland. And, although Marchbanks’ disappearance was public property from the first, with a national hue and cry whipped up by twopenny papers, nobody came within a mile of spotting him for a month. Marchbanks himself had read The Scotsman every day over his tea, and without himself turning a hair. He was just being damned to them – which was an expression, come to think of it, that the Junipers seemed to be fond of as a family. Marchbanks – so far as Appleby could make out afterwards – hadn’t as much as seen the thing as an enormous joke. His absence had cost no end of public money; heaven knew what complicated experiment had gone to pot because of it; but the simple fact was that he had decided it was about time for a holiday.
And wasn’t Howard Juniper – Professor Howard Juniper – out of the same stable: a don, seconded to this national work, who had grown up in an ancient university as a sweet law unto himself? Appleby would never forget the mild surprise with which Marchbanks, run to earth – or rather run to burn – in Morayshire, had received the suggestion that there might be people who were displeased with him. He’d had more useful ideas, he’d said, while flogging this very decent bit of water, than he’d had for years in their ineptly pretentious laboratories. He’d even brought off the really crucial experiment at last – with a length of gut, Mrs Macnabb’s porridge pan, and a really superb spring-trap that old Macnabb had invented in pursuance of his profession as a poacher. So what the hell?
Appleby smiled at the memory. There was decidedly a lesson in Marchbanks. Entirely sane, Marchbanks had been, even if by some standards irresponsible.
Irresponsible… The word moved uneasily in Appleby’s mind. It was something that Miles Juniper had said. It was something in the tone, the mere inflexion, of something he had said… Appleby paused on this, aware that he was on curiously obscure ground. For this hadn’t been the only moment of its kind during that interview at Splaine Croft. There had been something else of the sort too: something that had just hung for a moment on the ear – and something that Appleby, try as he might, just couldn’t pinpoint or bring back to consciousness. But this was clear enough. Miles had expressed his certainty that his brother Howard was up to nothing irresponsible. But there had been just the faintest hesitation or reservation in the way he had said it.
And there was that freakish past – common, indeed to both brothers. Wasn’t it conceivable that Howard Juniper had simply behaved in some fashion that would indeed be merely freakish in an unimportant young man, but that did rather more than verge upon irresponsibility in a famous one?
Very well. Go back to Marchbanks. He had in the end found Marchbanks – and had put a good deal of ingenuity into the task. But wouldn’t he have done it quicker if he had kept one fact more
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