Appleby File by Michael Innes

in the gallery as Robert crashed to the floor.
    ‘ By God – he’s dead! ’ Like a flash, Jasper had been on his knees beside his brother. But now he rose, dazed and staggering – and with the pistol in his hands. He came slowly over to Appleby. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘my brother is…dead. Will you…see?’
    Appleby took a couple of steps forward – and as he did so, Jasper dived behind him. What Robert had hurled into the fireplace was Jolly’s pocketbook; it had missed the fire, and lay undamaged. Jasper grabbed it just as Appleby turned, and made to thrust it into the heart of the flame. Appleby knocked up his arm, and the pocketbook went flying across the gallery. Jasper eluded Appleby’s grasp, vaulted a settee with the effortlessness of a young athlete in training, retrieved the pocketbook, and turned round to face the company. He still had Robert’s pistol in his hand.
    ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Don’t any of you move.’
    ‘This is foolish,’ Appleby said quietly. ‘Foolish and useless. Your brother is indeed dead. And his last day’s work has been to involve you in murder. You knew nothing about Jolly when he arrived – except that you distrusted him. But Robert made you receive him as a guest, and by dinner-time Robert had persuaded you to his plot. Your own first part in it was to concoct that legend about the well. But your main part was to be in the keep when the arrow arrived. You face a charge of murder, just as your brother would have done. Nothing is to be gained by waving a pistol.’
    ‘All of you get back from that fire – now.’ With raised pistol, Jasper took a pace towards Appleby. In his other hand he raised the pocket-book. ‘What I hold here, I burn. After that, we can talk.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Darien-Gore, but it won’t do. Before you burn those papers, you’ll have shot a policeman in the course of his duty. And if–’
    ‘Permit me, sir.’ Frape had stepped forward. He walked past Appleby and advanced upon his employer. ‘It will be best, sir, that you should give me the gun.’
    ‘Stand back, Frape, or I shoot.’
    ‘As Sir John says, sir, it won’t do. So, with great respect, I must insist.’ And Frape put out a steady arm and took the pistol from his employer’s hand. ‘Thank you, sir. I am obliged to you.’
    For a fraction of a second Jasper looked merely bewildered. Then, as Appleby again advanced upon him, he turned and ran from the gallery.
    ‘Frape – help me to get him.’ Instinctively, Appleby addressed first the man who had proved himself. He was already running down the gallery as he called over his shoulder. ‘Strickland, Trevor – he must be stopped.’

     
     
VIII
    The chase through Gore Castle took place in the first light of a bleak winter dawn. Judith Appleby, who had followed the men, was to remember it as a confusion of panting and shouting, with ill-identified figures vanishing down vistas that were composed sometimes of stately rooms in unending sequence, sometimes of narrow defiles through forbidding medieval masonry. It was the kind of pursuit that may happen in nightmare: in one instant hopelessly at fault, and in the next an all but triumphant breathing down the hunted man’s neck.
    They were in the open – plunging and kicking through snow. Suddenly, in front of Jasper as he rounded a corner, there seemed to be only a high blank wall. But he ran straight at it; a buttress appeared; in the angle of this stood a ladder, steeply pitched. Appleby and Frape were at its foot seconds after Jasper’s heels had vanished up it; but even as they were about to mount it, it came down past their heads. As they struggled to set it up again Judith could see that Jasper, with a brief respite won, was crouched down on a narrow ledge, and fumbling in a pocket. With trembling hands he produced a box of matches – and then Jolly’s fatal pocketbook. From this he pulled out a first sheet of paper, crumpled it, struck a match. But the match