Appleby's End by Michael Innes Page B

really persuade themselves they’ve seen. Ineffectiveness is their hallmark.” Appleby spoke absently; the country dropped away on their left, and was widely visible under a moon over which small clouds were drifting; as he gazed across it he could have imagined that it was itself peopled by ineffective but gigantic spectres – so strange was the procession of faint cloud-shadows over the snow. “I should be most surprised to hear that Ranulph’s ghost had effected anything really startling. By the way, are you a Ranulph expert?”
    â€œI’ve done what we told the blind man we’d done then: read him all through. There’s something rather fascinating about the extreme badness of Ranulph’s prose. Facetious and polysyllabic – and clearly he thought it just the cat’s whiskers. An awful warning, I should say, to cultivated persons who believe themselves to have a talent for writing in a popular and condescending way. And yet he was in fact very widely read – for his matter, I suppose. And I believe you’ve hit on the truth of that. His stories are just like the rubbishing adventures one sometimes invents for oneself when bored. Though with the erotic bits left out – or just hinted in a sentence of uncharacteristic spareness and restraint.”
    Appleby laughed. “His great-niece – isn’t that what you are? – has rather a nice sense of words herself. But they keep on leading her away from the point. I think you said that Ranulph went in for the supernatural in his tales?”
    â€œQuite a lot – but in the stupid way in which it always turns out to be a mistake. Grandfather’s ghost is universally believed to stalk about the cellarage, and then in the last chapter it turns out to be one of the footmen stealing port. Fancy having a big, devoted public and getting away with that.”
    â€œJust fancy. But the question seems to be: what is Ranulph – or his ghost – getting away with now?” Appleby looked soberly at Judith. “Are you suggesting that the ghost tries to arrange things so that some of his hoary old stories start coming true – forty years on?”
    â€œSomething like that. And here’s an example. There’s a story of Ranulph’s called The Coach of Cacus . As you’re fond of quoting Latin, you’ll remember that Cacus–”
    â€œWas the son of Vulcan, and a cattle-thief. He confused people of my profession who might be around by hauling cattle about backwards by their tails.”
    â€œQuite so. And this was just one of Ranulph’s stupider, pot-boiling stories, which appeared first in something called the Household Magazine in 1887, and later in the second series of his Tales: Chiefly Imaginative or Grotesque.”
    â€œGood lord!”
    â€œEverard’s title, actually; those two volumes were posthumously collected, and he’s literary executor. A bit of a flop, I think they were, for Ranulph’s public died before him. Anyway, this yarn is about a coachman who got away with something nasty by harnessing his horse head-first into the shafts and making it back away through the snow or mud or something. Tracks appearing to lead in the wrong direction and throwing people off the scent. Cacus-business, in fact. What do you think of that?”
    â€œSingularly little, I’m afraid. The carriage wouldn’t go straight, and anyone knowing horses would only have to glance at the tracks–”
    â€œThis is where we turn off.” Judith had stopped and now pointed to a stile on the farther side of the snow-filled ditch. Beyond was a narrow ribbon of path, gleaming white, which disappeared through a plantation of young, thickly planted pines. “Not our land,” she said. “But the owner doesn’t mind. Dreadful that he should plant this stuff instead of real trees. Soon the whole countryside will be looking like some ghastly bit of