Free The Open House by Michael Innes Page A

painfully again that he made his way across the great marble expanse of the hall. It was as if his years, and more than his years, had returned to him.
    ‘Somebody has been killed?’ It was Dr Absolon who asked the question. He had emerged through the music room, and had now stopped dead at the spectacle before him. ‘Snodgrass’ nephew?’
    ‘I’m afraid so.’ Appleby suddenly remembered the somewhat odd speculations in which this country clergyman had been indulging. ‘But I could almost believe he had made the identification too confidently. There’s no need for you to look – indeed, I’d rather the body wasn’t disturbed again until the doctor and the police have seen it – but the features have suffered pretty badly.’
    ‘I see.’ Absolon (who might be momentarily shocked by the fact of death, but presumably was professionally immune from being puzzled by it) knelt down by the body, put a hand gently on its shoulder, and then stood up again and unobstrusively crossed himself. ‘Would you say,’ he asked curiously, ‘that he has been killed just as he has been killed precisely with that end in view?’
    ‘Preventing his uncle from positively identifying him?’
    ‘Preventing anybody from doing so with certainty.’
    ‘It’s conceivable, I suppose.’
    ‘Or at least may that be the actual consequence? May it never be certainly known who this unfortunate man is?’
    ‘I’d have thought that barely possible.’ Appleby was again fleetingly conscious of something idiosyncratic in the mental operations of the vicar of Ledward. Perhaps they really were coloured by an obsessive reading of mystery stories. The archetypal reader of such things, after all, was popularly thought of as a blameless parson with long afternoons to put in on a vicarage lawn. ‘It would be something extremely unusual – in England, at least. Particularly where there’s the presumption of a specific identity. We have every reason to suppose that here is Adrian Snodgrass – an elusive character, perhaps, but of some position in the world, and to be read about, if you care to, in Who’s Who . Of course, Who’s Who doesn’t record his dentist. But we can probably run him to earth.’
    ‘ “We’’?’
    ‘You catch me out there.’ Appleby might have been laughing if propriety hadn’t appeared to forbid. ‘I’ve passed my active days among policemen, and ended up running a certain number of them. I still talk like a policeman.’
    ‘And act like one too – and very convincingly. Do you know, I find that reassuring?’ Dr Absolon gazed candidly at Appleby across the body of the dead man. ‘Otherwise, I shouldn’t find your presence here tonight altogether unalarming. Beddoes seems only to have the vaguest notion of who you are, or where you’ve turned up from, or why. You are the mysterious stranger who has been the first to find the body.’ Absolon paused. ‘But I see, my dear sir, that you judge me flippant. What has become of Beddoes?’
    ‘Professor Snodgrass has gone to the other side of the house to find a sheet. He ought to be back by now – but I suspect he is under some strain, and has sat down for a few minutes to rest and recollect himself. I suggest that you and I take a look at this drawing-room.’ And Appleby moved forward, skirting the body. ‘We can keep an eye on one another,’ he added dryly.
    ‘Very well.’ But Dr Absolon was looking thoughtfully down at the poker in the dead man’s hand. ‘Do you know, I’d have expected that to go flying as he fell?’
    ‘Indeed? That has been your experience, in cases in which persons carrying or brandishing weapons have been dropped by a revolver-shot as they ran?’
    ‘My dear sir, now you are making fun of me.’ The vicar was not at all offended. ‘But let me make one more observation in the character of Dr Watson. I am convinced, my dear Holmes, that there have been thieves in this room.’
    If a joke had been any more appropriate to the