Free Appleby's Answer by Michael Innes

him?’
    â€˜Pinkerton?’
    â€˜Sir Ambrose. Fellow who read the lessons. Baronet, and all that. We might well think of Pinkerton.’
    â€˜As somebody to be murdered?’
    â€˜Or kidnapped. Bound to say my mind comes back to that.’
    â€˜But what would be the point of kidnapping Sir Ambrose?’ Not surprisingly, Miss Pringle’s head was beginning to swim.
    â€˜Give him a bad time.’ Captain Bulkington’s reply was alarmingly prompt. ‘And his wife would be no good. Nobody would give twopence to get her back.’
    Miss Pringle restrained an impulse to rise and bolt. Of Captain Bulkington’s substantial madness there could now be no doubt whatever. He existed, as Barbara Vanderpump had averred, in a dream of unachieved crimes. Whether this could be called a hopeful circumstance, Miss Pringle was by no means sure. He is a dreamer – she almost heard herself saying with Julius Caesar – Let us leave him: pass . But one couldn’t be certain. His bite might be as bad as his bark. Miss Pringle (who was already becoming the victim of her own splendid imagination) thought it was worth continuing to take a chance on.
    â€˜For the moment,’ she said, ‘let us stick to the central fact. Sir Ambrose is to be your victim. He is going to be killed, and the killer is going to get away with it. But just who – I mean, what sort of person – is going to commit the crime? Have you at all thought, for instance, of somebody rather like yourself?’ Miss Pringle’s voice was more loaded than ever; transparent conspiratorial irony positively clotted it.
    â€˜Ha-ha-ha!’ Captain Bulkington laughed so loud and long that Captain Bulkington’s housekeeper, a respectable female, stuck her head through the door of the sanctum, and then withdrew it again. ‘Capital joke, that. Matter of fact, my mind has been moving towards Miss Anketel. Playing around her, you might say. What would you say to her?’
    â€˜I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Miss Anketel.’ Miss Pringle was bewildered. ‘Is she a friend of yours?’
    â€˜Woman who sat in front of you in church. Thick with the Pinkertons, as a matter of fact. And then there’s the parson, Henry Howard. He ought to come in. Up your street, that. Ratsbane in the Rectory , eh?’
    This was not, as it happened, the title of one of Miss Pringle’s romances of the clergy, but the Captain’s use of it showed that he at least remembered the general character of her work. She sipped her madeira, and wondered whether it would be wise to stay to lunch. Perhaps she should escape; make her way to, say, that interesting White Horse at Calne; and try a little to think things out. Perhaps she ought to call the whole thing off. Any joint enterprise (if that was how to think of it) undertaken with Captain Bulkington was revealing itself as something to which considerable hazards must attach.
    â€˜Kidnapping and murder!’ the Captain said suddenly. ‘A double bill, so to speak. How about that?’
    â€˜It deserves to be considered, certainly,’ Miss Pringle said, rather desperately. ‘And we might even go further. Arson could be got in, too. And a little forgery. Embezzlement, for that matter.’
    â€˜Arson’s quite an idea.’ Captain Bulkington, as he absent-mindedly poured himself more brandy, was plainly pondering deeply. ‘Yes, arson attracts me. The Hall, eh?’
    â€˜The Hall?’
    â€˜Pinkerton’s place. A pretentious bounder, Pinkerton. Amusing to see the flames licking round him, you think, my dear? A great crackling and roaring there would be, as well as a howling, if one managed a really healthy blaze. Yes, I like that. Not so sure about forgery and what’s-its-name. A shade tame, to my mind. For our readers, that’s to say.’
    There was no doubt that an hour was revealing much. The psychology, or rather the