Free The Open House by Michael Innes Page B

circumstances than a laugh, this wouldn’t have been a bad one. A resourceful novelist might have declared that the drawing-room was like a place hit by a tornado. In one large sash window there were only a few jagged and evil-looking spears and sickles of glass, as if somebody had been sufficiently in a hurry to chance making an exit that way under the impulsion of a hurtling shoulder. Of the smaller objets d’art with which the place had been stacked and littered Appleby judged at a rapid glance that about a third had disappeared. And something more striking had disappeared as well. Over the mantelshelf only an expanse of faintly discoloured white enamel showed where lately there had hung a landscape by Claude Gelée, called le Lorrain. It had been, Appleby recalled, a View of the Campagna, with some banditti – no doubt supplied by one of the Courtois brothers – lurking rather unconvincingly in a corner. Now one could imagine these ruffians as having broken out of their own picture, grabbed at it frame and all, and made off with whatever they could hastily tip into a couple of sacks.
    ‘It isn’t surprising that there’s a bit of a draught,’ Absolon said. He walked over to the shattered window. ‘But this isn’t like the private wing, you know. No terrace. We’re simply perched above the basement storey. Booty and all, they had to find some means of taking a twelve-foot drop. It can’t have been a planned exit this way. They were surprised – and bolted in an unpremeditated and highly hazardous fashion. What’s the odds they got at least a gash or two from all that flying glass? There will be blood down there, if you ask me.’ Having peered briefly out into the night, the vicar turned round to look at Appleby. ‘But why did the lights go out?’
    ‘My dear Dr Absolon, that is a question to which I don’t doubt that you can supply me with more answers than one.’
    ‘One needs an answer that fits into the simplicity of the thing.’
    ‘Its simplicity? Are you sure you don’t mean its nonsensicalness?’
    ‘Essentially its simplicity, surely. On this night of the year alone, the Snodgrasses keep, as it were, open house. Anybody can walk in – and be sure of finding nobody around. By “anybody” we have to mean, of course, anybody who knows just how our friend the Professor’s annual ritual has evolved. Well, in they come, having a mind to the Claude I see you mourning, and to much else. Unfortunately, what nobody except Beddoes himself believes will ever really happen has happened. Adrian Snodgrass has turned up; he has sat down to the waiting meal; his uncle’s faithful old servitor (I refer to that patent rascal, Leonidas, my dear Appleby) presents himself, opens a bottle of champagne, and makes his way – full of glad tidings – to the library. The thieves, meanwhile, have arrived. Adrian hears something suspicious; something so suspicious that he picks up a poker and goes to investigate. He appears at the door of this room. The criminals panic; one of them shoots at him point-blank, and they make a disorderly retreat through the window. Appleby, don’t you see it that way?’
    ‘I fear I lack your amateur élan , sir. I shouldn’t dream of asserting that I see it at all.’ Appleby offered this reply absently, since he was prowling restlessly and enquiringly around the room. ‘However, it may well be that you have arrived at some part of the truth. You were asking yourself, by the way, why the lights went out.’
    ‘They went out as they did – with a shattering simultaneity – simply because they could so go out. It has been Beddoes’ whim so to order matters that he can turn on every light in the house at the flick of a single switch. So they can similarly be turned off, and therefore…’
    ‘My dear Vicar, there is nothing singular about that. Almost every lighting system is arranged in that fashion.’
    ‘Is that so? I am bound to admit I have never enquired. But my main point