Free Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes Page A

story?’
    â€˜Not quite. It didn’t, that is, occur to him at the time, but swam up in his memory again when I was questioning him. It’s a way one does remember dreams.’
    â€˜True enough. And it’s popularly supposed that one builds into them at times external stimuli registered in the instant of waking. But if he has no notion of when this supposed happening took place – as I gather is the fact – then it seems unlikely to help us very much. Does he believe himself to have gone to sleep again?’
    â€˜He thinks he dozed off. Catmull got him out of bed just before midnight, but doesn’t know whether he was asleep. Catmull thought proper to arouse the whole household, apart from such servants as there are. Sensible enough. It meant people were more or less on parade when we wanted them.’
    â€˜Ah, yes – servants. Just how does the household run?’
    â€˜Through a good part of the year it appears to be a modified week-end affair. The Catmulls and Ramsden are the only permanent – that’s to say, continuous – residents. There’s a house, or flat, in town, with another Catmull as a fixture in it.’
    â€˜Do you mean a brother of this fellow?’
    â€˜No, sir – just another manservant of the same standing. What else there is, apart from outdoor people, is a few Italian maidservants who shuttle to and fro in the wake of their employers.’
    â€˜Quite an entourage ,’ Pride said. ‘Deuced expensive, too. Money there, I suppose. But one wonders. Henderson, is it your immediate impression that Mrs Tytherton would be a woman with extravagant tastes?’
    â€˜Oh, decidedly – by what I think of as ordinary standards, sir. Ordinary wealthy people’s standards, that is. Drives her own Rolls, and nobody else let near it. Nothing too staggering in that, perhaps. But indicative, in a manner of speaking.’
    â€˜I’ve heard things to the same effect, I’m bound to say. Come to think of it, met her at dinner at old Lady Killcanon’s some time ago, absolutely dripping diamonds. Might have been proposing to dominate the grand ball of the season. Not really the thing. Tytherton a bit hard-pressed, I shouldn’t be surprised. If you have a wife like that, it’s unfortunate to have a taste for buying Goyas and what-not as well. However, poor chap won’t be hard-pressed in the grave, eh? Not even literally, so to speak. Slap-up mausoleum just over the hill. Airy and commodious, I believe. No crush of ancestors as yet… By jove! Twelve o’clock.’

 
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8
    It was certainly noon. The fact had been signalized at some middle distance by the unassuming chime of a stable clock. And exactly on the last stroke, with something of the effect of an expensive automaton, the door of the late Maurice Tytherton’s workroom flew open, and a newcomer stood framed in it. It was a woman, and although she wasn’t at the moment dripping diamonds Appleby found himself without the slightest doubt as to her identity.
    Here was a principal personage of the drama at last – Alice Tytherton, widow of the dead man. She had every right thus to march straight in, yet she had done so with a hint of challenge which for a moment left the three men standing alerted before her. But then men must often have stood before her like that, either aroused or alarmed by an uncommonly handsome woman so manifestly capable of designs of the most predatory sort. If one had to live in a jungle, Appleby told himself, it would probably be sensible to compound with the whole system of savage nature, and take on a mate like this. In civilized conditions she might turn out an awkward buy. That she was as hard as nails seemed to appear in the fact that, thus suddenly bereaved, she was carrying about with her not the slightest indications of grief. But it is not merely the trappings and the suits of woe – Appleby reflected