Read Online The Long Farewell by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

explaining this extraordinary situation seems to require? Who is this Alice woman, anyway?’
    ‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Sir John.’
    ‘I find that rather hard to believe.’ Appleby spoke patiently but with firmness. ‘Even if you had never heard of her before the last few days, you have shared with her since then, it seems, a most shocking and harrowing experience. You must have found out something about her. Does she belong to the learned classes – with a line on Thomas Horscroft’s Nether Ladds, and Seth Cowmeadow, and all that?’
    The young woman driving Appleby gave a hollow laugh. ‘She might have a line on the “Welcome Home.” I understand Alice is a barmaid.’
    ‘I see. Well, it’s a perfectly respectable calling. Would you say that she is simple-minded?’
    ‘Entirely so.’
    ‘Then, if I may say so, she is much the less puzzling of the two of you. May I, by the way, ask your name?’
    ‘You ought to call me Mrs Packford.’
    ‘But at the moment I can’t tell – can I? – whether that would be quite fair to Alice. I think you’d better give me your Christian name. Only, of course, for the purposes of ready identification and convenience in internal monologue. It looks as if I shall be doing quite a lot of internal monologuising over this affair. Aloud, I shall call you madam.’
    ‘My name is Ruth.’ The young woman had thrown the engine out of gear and was bringing the car to a halt. They were in a deserted lane between high hedges. She had presumably decided that some more leisured conference was desirable before introducing Appleby to Urchins. ‘Aren’t you striking,’ she asked, ‘rather a frivolous note? After all, poor Lewis died only–’
    ‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure.’ Appleby was sincerely apologetic. ‘It’s only, you know, that I don’t want to strike a note that’s all too uncomfortably grim.’
    Ruth edged herself sideways in the driving-seat at this and gave him a rather uncertain glance. She wasn’t after all, he noticed, exactly young. And she wasn’t fast, and she wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t – superficially, at least – emotional. In fact, she was quite a problem. ‘Grim?’ she now asked. ‘I’d supposed that, although there’s still quite a bit of a mess lying around, the real grimness was over.’
    ‘Perhaps it is, in a way.’ Appleby wondered if Ruth was really rather a hard type. ‘But I think it fair to explain that the case – for it must be called that – is by no means closed. For instance, Lewis Packford’s solicitor – who is not in the least a fool – is disposed to believe that his client was murdered. He has, I’m bound to admit, a very queer notion of why the crime was committed. But his actual suspicion mustn’t be accounted negligible.’
    Ruth had made no attempt to interrupt this speech, and she remained silent for a further moment now. When she did speak, it was rather surprisingly. ‘But it’s not possible,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not possible. I wish it was.’
    ‘You wish that Packford had been murdered?’
    ‘Well, yes – in a way.’ As she said this, Ruth looked rather bewildered, as if the oddity of the sentiment were coming home to her. ‘Because it was unlike him – to kill himself because he’d been a bloody fool.’ She paused. ‘It’s disconcerting, I suppose, to have a person one believes one knows well acting suddenly out of character. Particularly when the action is, at least by conventional standards, a little craven.’
    ‘Or even ridiculous?’ Appleby, as he asked this, was conscious that he was quickly coming to have a considerable respect for Ruth. Whether he was coming to have any liking for her was a different matter. And the mere puzzle of her grew. She was too intelligent for her own slightly ludicrous situation to be at all easily explained.
    ‘Or even ridiculous,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But I don’t think, Sir John, that you can have been given all the facts.