Appleby File by Michael Innes Page A

– and then a second and a third – went out. And now the ladder was in place again. There was no time for another attempt. Clutching the pocketbook, Jasper rose and ran on. He vanished through a low archway. He had gained the keep.
    It was almost dark inside. Judith was now abreast of her husband. As they paused to accustom themselves to the gloom, Jasper’s voice came from somewhere above.
    ‘Are you there, Appleby? I don’t advise the climb.’
    ‘Darien-Gore, come down – in the name of the law.’
    ‘This is my keep, Appleby. It was to defy the law – didn’t I tell you? – that my ancestors built it long ago.’
    The last words were almost inaudible, for Jasper was climbing again. They followed. Perpendicular slits of light spiralled downwards and past them as they panted up the winding stair. Quite suddenly, there was open sky in front of them, and against it Jasper’s figure in silhouette. In front of him was a criss-cross of scaffolding. One aspect of it they had seen from other angles already: a wooden plank, thrusting out into vacancy for some feet – and startlingly suggestive of a springboard. Beyond it, the eye could only travel vertiginously down…to the inner bailey, the well, the single set of prints across the snow.
    Jasper turned for a moment. They could see his features dimly, and then – very clearly – that he was holding up the pocketbook to them in a gesture of defiance. He thrust it into a pocket, turned away, measured his distance, and ran. it was not a jump; it was the sort of dive that earns a high score in an Olympic pool. In a beautiful curve, Jasper Darien-Gore rose, pivoted in air, plunged, diminished in free fall, and vanished (as they ceased to be able to bear to look) into the well.
    And from behind them came the breathless voice of General Strickland: ‘Good God, Appleby! Jasper didn’t better that one when he gained a Gold for England in ’36.’

 
     
Poltergeist
    ‘Aunt Jessica has a poltergeist,’ Judith Appleby said, as she watched her husband pour drinks. John had got home from Scotland Yard after a hard day. High-powered criminals were very much abroad in the land, and he had conferred at length with half a dozen of his most major officers about one large-scale villainy or another. He deserved to be entertained with a little relaxing family gossip.
    ‘In that case your aunt had better keep a sharp eye on the new kitchen-maid.’ Appleby handed Judith her sherry. ‘Better ring her up and tell her so.’
    ‘There isn’t a new kitchen-maid. In fact kitchen-maids are no longer heard of.’
    ‘In the kind of household your Aunt Jessica runs to I’ll bet they are, although there may be a new name for them. In any event, what the old lady must look out for is an adolescent girl – preferably of worse than indifferent education, and necessarily of hysterical temperament. If poltergeists exist, it’s almost invariably when some such young person is around that they get busy toppling the furniture and chucking the china about the house. If they don’t exist, one has to conclude that dotty girls can develop surprising skill in putting on such turns themselves. The subject is a perplexed one. Para-psychologists are by no means in agreement about it.’
    ‘Isn’t that because there’s often such a mix-up of straight fraud and genuinely inexplicable happenings?’ Judith felt she was at least getting John’s mind off bank robberies and rapes and muggings. ‘For instance, a man finds he can make billiard balls roll about the table simply by glaring at them. Then he is investigated by professors and people who turn out to be an unsympathetic crowd. His powers begin to desert him in these new conditions, and soon he is doing it with magnets or something hidden up his shirt-sleeves.’
    ‘I’ve never heard of the billiard-balls man.’
    ‘No more have I. I’ve made him up. But that sort of thing.’
    ‘I agree that there have been plenty of such cases. The