Free Appleby's End by Michael Innes Page B

and Appleby saw that Judith had slithered down the ladder and was standing in clear moonlight below. “A calculating machine couldn’t do better,” she called up mockingly. “One just slips in the facts at one side and out comes the solution at the other. Not even a handle to turn or a lever to pull. Can you jump? Or would it upset the delicate mechanisms?”
    Appleby jumped. “Don’t you think it a likely explanation?” he asked as he scrambled to his feet.
    â€œI rather think it is. But it means that the blind man whom Mark and I met when we were kids was meditating putting into effect against his brother some murderous plan he had been cherishing for thirty or forty years. That’s pretty stiff.”
    â€œI would call it extremely nasty.” Appleby took Judith’s arm and helped her over the fence. “Listen,” he said. “It so happens that I want to know whether this story of yours is all fibs. Yes or no?”
    â€œNo.” She looked at him doubtfully, her brow puckered. “The whole story of the blind man is gospel. Why?”
    â€œBecause for some reason you don’t seem very proud of it.” Appleby hesitated. “In fact, you seem less pleased with it every time we look at each other.”
    â€œWhat rot.” Judith was stuffing her battered hat viciously in a pocket. “It’s just that the Ranulph business is tiresome, I suppose.”
    â€œBut the Ranulph business is surely all past history now.”
    â€œIs it? Well, yes – I suppose it is.” They trudged on in silence. Suddenly Judith stopped in her tracks. “Appleby’s End!” she said. “Surely they couldn’t–”
    â€œWhatever are you talking about?”
    â€œNothing.” Judith Raven plunged forward again, ankle-deep in snow. “Nothing at all.”

 
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6
    There was clear moonlight now and the only trouble was the snowdrifts; in places these were deep and they floundered. But Judith had found her bearings again and led the way confidently uphill to where a great elm stood dimly silhouetted against the sky. Here was a lane and they went ahead steadily.
    Midwinter and midnight lay about them; their clothes were for the most part soaked in river water; a thin and biting wind blew. But the landscape, softened and withdrawn beneath the snow, was as beautiful as it was still and cold. The Comic Spirit, hitherto so decisively in charge of the wanderers, slipped quietly away and Poetry, stealthy of approach as always, dominated and enfolded the scene. It was mysterious – the more so as their proceedings were now directed to so rational a goal. Bacon, eggs and coffee were the forces beckoning them on. But they followed as to a trumpet of silver.
    Appleby’s trousers clung wetly to his legs. “ Sed iacet ,” he chanted,
    Â 
    â€œSed iacet aggeribus niveis informis et alto
    Terra gelu…”
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    â€œIs that the beginning of the story about the Spanish anarchist sculptor?” Judith, her wet hair flattened round her head like a boy, was glancing at him with an obscure new wariness in the moonlight.
    â€œNo, we haven’t got to that yet. Still some of this Raven business to clear up. What about a race?”
    â€œNot in this overcoat.”
    â€œI’ll carry it.”
    â€œI thought I was wearing it to satisfy your sense of decorum.”
    â€œReady, get set–”
    They raced wildly through the snow and fetched up at a bend in the lane, panting. Judith once more huddled into the overcoat. “We might even,” she said, “be home before the family. They would all go ploutering round, you know, knocking up the countryside and saying we must be searched for. I’m surprised we haven’t met strings of angry rural bobbies already. Is ‘bobbies’ disrespectful?”
    â€œIt’s not really so many hours since we drifted away from the ford. Your man Heyhoe