Free Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes

downstairs seems to have been amusing itself every now and then with intermittent bursts of loud music – pop music, it seems – from an affair like a domestic juke-box.’
    â€˜Good heavens!’ The Chief Constable made an expressive gesture. ‘A thoroughly rackety crowd. Ashamed, my dear John, that I thought of introducing you to them.’
    â€˜On the contrary, Tommy, I can hardly wait to make their acquaintance. But, Inspector, you say there is some record about hearing a possible shot?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. From a Mr Archibald Tytherton. I don’t think I’ve had occasion to mention him.’
    â€˜But I have,’ Colonel Pride said. ‘You remember, John? Nephew of Tytherton’s who comes and goes, and seems not on record as doing much else. What was he doing last night, Henderson? Coming and going, I shouldn’t be surprised.’ And Pride chuckled, much pleased at thus refreshing the company with wit.
    â€˜Well, sir, he certainly went. Rather early, it seems. Even before his uncle went off to write letters, or whatever it was supposed to be. He went to bed. He’s quite frank about it.’
    â€˜Frank?’ There was resigned acceptance of scandal in Pride’s tone. ‘You mean he went shamelessly off to bed with one of the women?’
    â€˜No, sir – or not so far as he has admitted, or I know.’ Henderson had turned warily wooden before this guileless admission of the possibility of disorderly courses on the part of persons of consideration in the county. ‘Mr Archibald Tytherton’s frankness was on the score of inebriety. He had been drinking too much from early in the evening. It was on account of his having had a dispute with his uncle. It had unsettled him.’
    â€˜Just a moment, Inspector.’ Appleby was now prowling almost uneasily around the death-chamber in which this conference was taking place. ‘Did he produce this story of a dispute with Maurice Tytherton off his own bat? No – that’s not quite what I mean. Were its circumstances such that it might have escaped the record altogether if he hadn’t mentioned it himself?’
    â€˜I rather gather not, sir. There had been a witness of at least some part of it. But the young man says he was most attached to his uncle, so that this little flare-up upset him very much.’
    â€˜And sent him to the bottle?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. Or to the decanters, perhaps one ought to say.’
    â€˜My dear Henderson’ – Colonel Pride’s ear for irony was not of the finest – ‘alk is alk, whatever it arrives in. The fellow got tight, and had the grace to take himself off?’
    â€˜Just that. And it seems that, when fairly drunk, he goes off to sleep the moment his head touches the pillow. An enviable physiological predisposition.’
    â€˜No doubt. So he went straight to sleep?’
    â€˜So he says – but with a complete inability to name a likely hour. He seems not to have Mr Ramsden’s habit of taking an informative look at his watch. What he next reports is a nightmare.’
    â€˜An informative nightmare?’ Appleby asked.
    â€˜Well, that’s what he suggests. He was rather proud of producing it. He says he had a dream in which he was playing billiards.’
    â€˜What’s nightmarish about that?’ the Chief Constable inquired. ‘Boring occupation, I’ve always felt. But nothing alarming about it.’
    â€˜The billiard-table kept growing larger and larger, he says. So did the cues. And the balls were eventually like cannonballs, and he had to keep on banging them around for dear life. The noise was like a breaking-up of icebergs.’ Inspector Henderson paused appreciatively. ‘Rather a graphic touch, that.’
    â€˜And then,’ Appleby said, ‘one particularly resounding crack woke him up, and he thought it might have been a revolver-shot? Is that the