Free The Open House by Michael Innes

going on a stick.
    The two men stood between two of the columns that soared to the scarcely visible ornate ceiling. Merely between these, there would have been room without crowding for four or five men more. Who had once talked, Appleby asked himself, of feeling like a mouse in a cathedral? Here – holding aloft these three wax candles – one felt more like a glow-worm in a forest: an enchanted forest, in which the tree trunks were a frozen honey and the foliage hammered gold. A cold breath blew through the forest. Appleby wondered why.
    ‘The drawing-room,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’ll try that first.’
     
    The dead man lay prone on the floor, with his head in the drawing-room and his heels in the hall. Even by candlelight his deadness didn’t seem arguable, since a bullet had emerged – not tidily – through the back of his head. His left arm was crumpled beneath him; his right was outstretched as if to reach into the room, and in its hand was grasped a heavy brass poker. It was from the cavernous darkness beyond the body that the small chill breeze was blowing.
    Appleby had set the candelabrum down on the marble floor – inconsequently aware, as he did so, of its decorous Georgian elegance. This damned house, he reflected, is full of loot. His hands busied themselves expertly with the body. He straightened up.
    ‘If he were on the operating-table at this moment,’ he said to Snodgrass, ‘there wouldn’t be a hope for him. But we must still keep our priorities right. I’ll give Leonidas that shout.’
    The shout rapidly produced footfalls, the glimmer of a match guarded behind a cupped hand, and then the bearded face of the butler in the chiaroscuro thus created. It wasn’t, Appleby told himself, the face of a frightened man; one didn’t warm to Leonidas, but there seemed to be plenty of stuffing in him. And of his employer there could be no question. Snodgrass was agitated, and no doubt in acute anxiety as to the identity of the shot man. But the possibility of further shooting didn’t alarm him.
    ‘Leonidas, go back to that telephone, and summon your local doctor at once.’
    ‘The telephone appears to be out of order, sir. Dr Absolon has just discovered so on trying to call the police. If there has been a robbery, one must suppose the line to have been cut.’
    ‘There’s been more than a robbery, as you can see,’ Appleby said grimly. ‘Is there a car here at the Park?’
    ‘My own car is in the stable-yard. I save time by coming across in it.’
    ‘Good. Then go and fetch the doctor yourself. As fast as you can possibly manage. And have a call put through to the police from his house.’
    ‘Very good, sir. And the lights?’
    ‘Yes – give a moment to that as you go. But don’t let it hold you up, if you can’t get them on instantly. And take one of these candles.’
    Leonidas hurried off. It was only when his footsteps had died away that Appleby knelt down again, and for a moment half-turned the body over.
    ‘Snodgrass,’ he asked gently, ‘is this your nephew?’
    ‘Yes.’ The Professor spoke in a low voice, which for a moment broke into a sob. ‘And in the very moment…’ He checked himself. ‘It is Adrian,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Is it quite certain that nothing can be done?’
    ‘Quite certain, I am afraid.’ Appleby lowered the body again to its first position. ‘Take a candle,’ he said, ‘and go into that bedroom near the dining-room. Bring a sheet. It will be all that is required.’
    It was just as Snodgrass was stooping to do as he was bid that the lights snapped on. The two men stared at each other, momentarily dazzled, and then both looked down at the corpse. It was, somehow, the most macabre moment yet. Appleby was glad that Adrian Snodgrass’ face was concealed again. The shot had been fired straight into it – so that the crime seemed to cry out the additional horror of a revolting brutality. Beddoes Snodgrass turned away, and now it was slowly and