Free The Long Farewell by Michael Innes Page A

circumstances, Lewis would certainly judge it a shame not to provide it. So he did.’ Ruth paused again. ‘And now I think we’ll drive on.’
    ‘Yes, drive on.’ Appleby watched her throw away her second cigarette and start up the engine of the ancient car. ‘But could Packford,’ he asked, ‘do such a fundamentally muddle-headed and irresponsible thing? He was, after all, a highly intelligent man.’
    ‘It was a canalized sort of intelligence. It all went into a sort of jet propulsion, driving on his work. Outside that, he was capable of any number of ineptitudes.’ Ruth’s voice had changed, and Appleby’s startled ear had to acknowledge that what it now held was tenderness. ‘Don’t you remember how clumsy he was?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘And isn’t bigamy about the clumsiest crime a man can commit?’ she laughed softly. ‘So there you are.’
    ‘It’s a crime that may be extremely cruel and heartless. On the other hand, it may be committed in such circumstances as to be not much more than silly.’ Appleby paused. ‘If one misses out the theological aspect, that is to say.’
    ‘Lewis was certainly being merely silly.’ Suddenly, she was almost crying out. ‘And it oughtn’t – oh, it oughtn’t – to have brought him to his death!’
    ‘If it did.’
    There was a long silence, unbroken until Ruth had swung the car between rusty iron gates and up a somewhat neglected drive. ‘Urchins doesn’t exactly flourish,’ she said. ‘A comfortable sort of semi-decay. Plenty of money for food and books and travel. But beyond that – well, I’m beginning to be doubtful.’
    ‘I see.’
    The silence renewed itself. They were in sight of the house before Ruth spoke again. ‘Talking of travel,’ she said, ‘will you tell me something?’
    ‘Certainly – if I can.’
    ‘You said you visited Lewis when he had the villa on Lake Garda. What did he talk about?’ She hesitated. ‘For instance, did he have anything to say about–’ She hesitated again.
    Appleby smiled. ‘About you – or even about Alice? No, not a word. There were one or two moments when I found myself speculating as to whether he had involved himself in some personal perplexity. But it wasn’t because of anything at all explicit in his conversation.’
    ‘Then, Sir John, what did he talk about?’
    Appleby had to consider only for a moment. ‘Forgery,’ he said.

 
     
4
     
    Urchins turned out to be a surprisingly large house. It seemed moreover to be of considerable antiquity. But it had been made a mess of, comparatively late in its history, by some owner with a taste for the Gothic. And this must have been done on the cheap, for the battlements, pointed windows and so forth were now in a crumbling and tumbling condition and what remained solid appeared to be of an altogether earlier date. The whole place could only be described as in shocking disrepair.
    And it had something to tell, Appleby supposed, about its late owner. Packford could have taken very little interest in this – presumably – ancestral home. Appleby remembered him as only vaguely and conventionally aware of his surroundings at Garda – just conscious that his villa was modest and his summer-house rather grand; gesturing unseeingly at the grotteschi from which he believed himself to be experiencing pleasure; boundlessly enthusiastic over the idea of giving masterful instructions to Gino, but not really at all possessed of the difference between one shrub and another. All Packford’s real traffic had been with the memorials and signs and traces of things, and not with things in themselves. What was left of things in the library of the British Museum, in the neglected muniment rooms of houses just like this, in the Public Record Office: his real territory had been there. Conceivably the two ladies in the case were the first material objects of which he had ever become aware, so to speak at all vividly in the round.
    Yes, Urchins looked decidedly