The Long Farewell Read Online Free PDF Page B

by Packford’s physician that our friend had no rational occasion to fear for his health. And, knowing him as I did, I cannot believe that he had any irrational prompting that way, either. No morbid fears about his interior economy, or anything of that sort.’
    Appleby nodded. ‘I should be inclined to agree with you. As it happens, I paid him a visit in Italy not long ago. He appeared to be in excellent health, and enjoying life. But it’s my experience that, unless one is really intimate with a man, one may be entirely deceived about – well, his emotional constitution and underlying nervous condition. But perhaps you were an intimate?’
    Rood, who during this speech had changed his position in the cab and was now eyeing Appleby attentively, shook his head slightly. ‘Dear me, no. Nothing of the sort. Our association, it is true, extended beyond my professional services to him. I have, as it happens, a modest interest in certain of the subjects upon which he was so distinguished an authority. We even collaborated two or three times in papers on bibliographical and palaeographical topics. But I cannot claim much acquaintance with poor Packford’s personal life. I speak from a very general impression. Still, it surprises me, I repeat, that he should take a revolver and blow his brains out.’
    ‘You mean, Mr Rood, that the circumstance appears to you to deserve a good deal of investigation?’
    Rather unexpectedly – but in a fashion that was entirely grim – Rood smiled. ‘It will be proper for me to say,’ he said with august formality, ‘that I should not now be opening the subject at all, had not your being good enough to mention your name put me, Sir John, in full possession of your identity.’
    ‘Ah.’ Appleby was slightly disconcerted. ‘But I have no official slant on this, you know. Although Packford has for some reason been buried in London, I understand he died in the country. It’s very unlikely to be brought to me.’
    ‘Quite so, quite so.’ Rood spoke as one man who has adequate subordinates does to another. ‘I had no thought of anything of the sort. And you will not think, Sir John, that one with a good deal of experience, however humdrum, as a family solicitor is at all likely to judge a respectable client’s sudden suicide as a propitious occasion for detective investigation. Far from it. Ten to one, it is highly desirable that any such incident, however mysterious, should pass unexplored into oblivion.’
    ‘I’m afraid that, professionally, it would be a little hard for me to agree to that.’ Appleby smiled. ‘But I see what you mean.’
    ‘If the dead man were being blackmailed – well, he can be blackmailed no longer, and the last thing that his shade could desire would be a scandal. And to other common probabilities, similar considerations apply. But with poor Packford, I am in some little difficulty.’
    ‘Difficulty?’ Appleby asked.
    ‘I cannot feel very confident that he did take his own life.’ Rood delivered himself of this opinion entirely without emphasis or excitement. ‘In fact, I should suppose it highly probable that he was murdered.’
     
    Appleby was to reflect afterwards that he had been too hastily and baselessly sceptical about the surprising notion which had thus erupted in the mind of Mr Rood. The solicitor had undoubtedly a vein of conceit which might lead him to evolve and push pet theories. But he didn’t appear hare-brained. And Appleby at this stage knew very little about the actual circumstances of Packford’s death and presumed suicide; he had no facts with which instantly to controvert his casually acquired companion of the taxi-cab. But he knew from long experience that almost every suicide, however transparent, starts talk of foul play somewhere; and that it is not always in the temperamentally obvious individuals that such fantasies of homicide are found to have originated. The present probability, he instantly judged, was simply that