Appleby File Read Online Free PDF Page A

window-seat at the side of the gallery. And he began, as Appleby looked, to fumble in a pocket. He might have been hunting for a cigarette-case or a box of matches. But what he brought out was a dark, bulky pocketbook. It was familiar to Appleby already. He had seen it, through the open bedroom door, going into Jolly’s pocket earlier in the evening. Having produced it, Jolly did nothing more. He simply sat immobile, with the thing in his lap.
    Appleby turned back to the others. He was just in time to catch a swift impression of the Darien-Gore brothers, momentarily immobile, gazing into each other’s eyes. Then Jasper drew back his bow-string, and there followed the twang to which Molly Strickland took such exception. The shaft flew wide. There was a moment’s silence in the gallery. It was broken by Frape.
    ‘ Dinner is served! ’

     
     
IV
    ‘I shall be delighted to have coffee in the gallery,’ Mrs Strickland said as she re-entered it. ‘I don’t know a more charming room. But I make one condition – that those tiresome bows and arrows be put away. Judith, you agree?’
    ‘I think I do. If the men find more talk with us boring, they can go away and play billiards.’
    ‘Prunella, dear, you are hostess.’ Mrs Strickland spoke a shade sharply. ‘The onus is on you.’
    ‘But of course!’ Robert’s wife had walked into the room in an abstraction. Now she turned round with a start. ‘Only you needn’t be anxious, Molly. There’s never any archery after dinner. Jasper would as soon think to settle down to talk about money. Everything has been put in the ascham.’
    ‘The what, dear?’ The three women were alone, and Mrs Strickland was helping herself to coffee.
    ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Prunella had again started out of inattention. ‘The ascham is the name given to the cupboard where bows and things are kept. There it is.’ She indicated a tall and beautiful piece of furniture, perhaps Elizabethan in period, which stood against the wall. ‘I think it must be named after some famous archer.’
    ‘Roger Ascham,’ Judith said, a shade instructively. ‘He wrote a book called Toxophilus . He was a schoolmaster.’
    ‘I am sure he was an excessively dreary person.’ Mrs Strickland was studying a row of bottles. ‘Why, in bachelor establishments, are women of unblemished reputation invariably confronted with Crème de Menthe ? Never mind. There’s a perfectly respectable brandy too.’
    ‘I am sure there is.’ Prunella spoke rather dryly. ‘And won’t you have a cigar?’
    ‘Only at home, dear. That has always been my rule.’
    Judith, too, found herself some brandy. So far, the evening had not been a success, and it appeared unlikely that it would perk up now. Dinner, indeed, had been so constrained an affair that the tactful thing would probably be an acknowledgement of the fact, made upon a whimsical note.
    ‘John and I did our best,’ she said. ‘But we were foreign bodies, I suppose. It all didn’t seem to mix terribly well.’
    ‘One must blame that really sombre Mr Jolly,’ Mrs Strickland said. ‘He disappointed me. One so seldom has an opportunity of meeting that sort of person – unless one goes canvassing at election-time, or something of that kind. But he quite refused to be drawn out.’
    ‘I’m afraid Robert was rather silent.’ Prunella was gazing into her untasted cup of coffee. ‘But he has been depressed ever since he…he resigned his commission. Jasper is very good–’
    ‘One can see that they are devoted to each other,’ Judith said.
    ‘Yes – Jasper wants Robert to take over the running of the estate. I hope he will. It would be so much better than…than simply hanging around.’
    There was an awkward silence, resolutely broken by Mrs Strickland.
    ‘Jasper did his best with us – at dinner, I mean. He can talk so well about the history of Gore. Of course, I’ve heard parts of it before. But he told us some things that were quite new. About the ghost