Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘What a pity.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The old war-horse neighs at the sound of the trumpet, does he not? I am inclined to think, Sir John, that my brother-in-law’s sudden death may be an uncommonly seductive trumpet. And you have already responded to it, I may reasonably assert, by deferring your consolation of my sister in order to confront – shall we say to size up? – one promising suspect. He stands before you.’

  ‘Mr Broadwater, you are now talking nonsense, or at least indulging in unseasonable whimsy. What your precise relations with your brother-in-law were, I don’t know. But your sister has suffered a particularly painful and brutal bereavement, in the face of which levity – or an affectation of levity – ill becomes you. I think I had better drive on.’

  ‘Come, come, my dear Sir John, don’t be a prig. I don’t know whether killing a brother-in-law rates as fratricide, but I do know that you will be quite wrong not to listen to a brief exposition of the manner in which something of that order may have occurred. I tell you I am a capital suspect. Are you, by the way, in the Queen’s commission in this county?’

  ‘If you are talking about being a JP – yes, I am.’

  ‘Then is it not positively a dereliction of duty on your part not to listen to me?’

  ‘I don’t refuse to listen to you, Mr Broadwater. It was I who initiated our encounter, and I suppose I ought not to break it off.’ Appleby realized that in this bizarre conversation he had been lured into something like a false position. ‘If you really want to present a case against yourself, I must no doubt hear it – and pass on to Mr Ringwood whatever you have to say.’

  ‘Capital, Sir John! I hope you will do exactly that. And I will begin by sketching what you have called my precise relationship to Oliver. I am a scholar by trade, and numismatics is my field of study. I pursue it at Cambridge, where I think I may say I am regarded as tolerably competent at my job. Oliver, who probably hoarded half-crowns and sixpences as a small boy, is now – or, rather, was until his death – the owner of a significant – and, of course, very valuable – collection of ancient coins.’

  ‘Which you have been looking after for him?’

  ‘I have been keeping the catalogue up to date, and advising upon acquisitions: that sort of thing. And I do a little cleaning from time to time. As you might imagine, that can quite often be a delicate operation.’

  ‘I see. And where, Mr Broadwater, is the collection kept?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘My dear sir! That is a most extraordinary statement.’

  ‘I am well aware of the fact. But even a large collection of coins can be tucked away in a very small space. The Osprey Collection, as it may be called, is just like that. Oliver simply wheeled it in.’

  ‘Wheeled it in!’

  ‘On a trolley. The kind of affair you see in restaurants for taking round the puddings and cheeses.’

  ‘And you are telling me that, year after year, you have remained ignorant about the collection’s normal place of security?’

  ‘Just that. Or, at least, that’s what I am asserting. But it will only be prudent not necessarily to believe anything I say.’

  ‘You labour the point, Mr Broadwater. Would your sister have known where the coins were kept?’

  ‘I much doubt it. I have never observed her take the slightest interest in the matter.’

  ‘Are you going to claim that you had designs on the Osprey Collection; that you would have made off with it if you could?’

  ‘Oh, most decidedly. And I’d have presented it to the appropriate museum at once.’

  ‘And you ask me to believe that this situation is intimately related to the mystery of your brother-in-law’s death?’

  ‘Not quite that. I am merely outlining circumstances which must prompt you to place me firmly on your list – or on Ringwood’s list – of suspected persons.’

  ‘But does it, in fact, do that? I can see that, at times, Lord Osprey’s secretiveness over his collection may have been extremely irritating to you. But is it in the least likely that, as a consequence of that irritation, you suddenly, and to no practical effect so far as the collection is concerned, stabbed the man to death in his own library?’

  ‘That is very much the question, Sir John, to which I feel your Mr Ringwood should address himself.’

  ‘He is not my Mr Ringwood. He is in a sense, I suppose, your Chief Constable’s Mr Ringwood.’ Appleby paused on this, and saw that, although true, it was disingenuous as well. He must pull up on that insistent distancing himself from what could be called the Clusters Case. But he needn’t pull up on thinking about Marcus Broadwater merely because the man had talked a certain amount of nonsense. Had he offered himself as a promising ‘suspect’ not as the consequence of more or less harmless eccentricity, but with some ulterior motive at present wholly obscure? Asking himself this, Appleby decided that it was time to end the encounter. ‘A most interesting conversation,’ he said. ‘But to continue it further would be to keep you most unwarrantably from the trout. And I undertook to be with your sister nearly half an hour ago. So I must drive on.’

  ‘Then good day to you for the present, Sir John.’ And with some formality Broadwater doffed his deerstalker (at some hazard since it was so thick with dry flies) and, with a slightly ironical bow, picked up his rod and walked away.

  Although he was already late for his appointment, Appleby found himself driving more slowly as Clusters came in view. Ahead of him was a man with his throat cut. And dead. He tried to remember whether just that had ever confronted him before. He had waged a long war against crime – and against the crime of murder often enough. But slit throats had somehow escaped him. Perhaps it was because his bosses had early taped him as the man to despatch when it had seemed a question of recherché crime. He had offered that phrase to Judith, he remembered, only a few days ago.

  In the dictionary there was a singularly unpleasant word. Jugulate. To sever the blood vessels between heart and brain. In former days, when ‘cut-throat’ razors had abounded, suicides occasionally went about their task that way. Earlier still, when soldiers wore armour, the coup de grâce was sometimes delivered in the same manner: you pulled off a helmet and stabbed. Under any circumstances it was bound to be a pretty messy business. And there seemed to be a peculiarly bizarre incongruity in its happening in a library. Not that the library at Clusters was all that distinguished. At that lunch-party the guests had been offered a glass of sherry in it before going into a dining-room. It was the kind of library, Appleby had noticed, that moved abruptly from eighteenth-century sermons to bound copies of Punch from 1841 onwards. A significant cultural, shift, Appleby had reflected. So, for that matter, was the invention of the safety razor – which had perhaps been furthered by the career of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.

  At this point in his wool-gathering Appleby became aware of a cyclist coming towards him. It was Mr Brackley, vicar of the bat-infested church. Brackley raised a hand as if in greeting – and then, as if on a second thought, rotated the hand in a manner suggesting a summons to stop. Appleby did so, and reversed a little. Brackley had dismounted.

  ‘Good morning, Sir John,’ he said. ‘I think you must be making your way to the big house?’ It was thus that Clusters must be spoken of locally.

  ‘Yes, Mr Brackley. I am.’

  ‘Then I think I ought to tell you–’

  ‘Yes, I know. Osprey has met a violent death, and his wife has asked me to come over. The poor lady is under some absurd misapprehension about my position in these parts. She supposes me to be, not exactly its chief constable, but at least its Dupin or Mycroft Holmes.’

  ‘Absurd, indeed.’ Brackley spoke dryly. ‘My own summons has been less idiosyncratic, but perhaps similarly tinged with oddity. I endeavoured to advance the comforts of religion, and I
hope not wholly without effect. But the poor woman seemed to confuse me at times with the undertaker. Not that she isn’t sensible and collected, after a fashion. There is to be a quiet burial here, witnessed only by the family, and later a memorial service in town, conducted by members of the higher clergy, and in the presence of numerous persons of quality.’

  ‘That seems reasonable enough.’ Appleby had been aware of a certain acrid quality in Brackley’s speech. The Ospreys, he suspected, had been a little inclined to treat their vicar less as a beneficed clergyman than a domestic chaplain. ‘There’s something to be said for fixing one’s mind on such matters when in a state of shock. And the shock must have been horrific. To have one’s husband’s throat slit in his own house! Think of it, Brackley.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The manner of the thing suggests a desperate malignity. Think of Laertes, Sir John.’

  ‘Laertes?’

  ‘Learning that Hamlet has killed his father, he is prepared to cut his throat in the church.’

  ‘It hasn’t been quite like that – has it? Not a church, but a library. So not even bats to witness the thing.’ Appleby was displeased at hearing himself produce this strained quip. ‘By the way,’ he continued abruptly, ‘do you happen to know where Osprey kept that collection of coins?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Brackley’s features expressed surprise. ‘But Lady Osprey’s brother should know – Marcus Broadwater.’

  ‘He doesn’t – or he professes not to. I’ve just had an encounter with him, and I brought the matter up. He’s gone off fishing.’

  ‘Dear me! How slightly odd. Taking the thing, one may say, literally in his stride. I’m surprised the senior policeman up there – a fellow called Ringwood – let him go.’

  ‘Ringwood could do no more than make a request, and he was backed by a barrister called Quickfall. I’ve gathered most of the house-party – for there has been a small house-party, as you must have noticed – have stayed put. But Broadwater collected his gear and went off.’

  ‘Perhaps to think the thing out in solitude? Anglers, after all, are supposed to be given to meditating on the mutability of human affairs.’ Brackley paused for a moment on this. ‘Those coins,’ he then said abruptly. ‘Are you thinking that Lord Osprey’s death may have followed upon a robbery or burglary?’

  ‘It does seem to me a possibility. Clusters is, of course, full of what are called priceless things. But most of them are on the bulky side: Italian cassoni, full-length Van Dycks, and so on. Quite a large collection of coins could pretty well be carried off in a man’s pockets. Are you interested in coins?’

  This sharp question – part of a technique Appleby had commanded long ago – did take Brackley by surprise. But he answered easily enough.

  ‘Oh, most decidedly! But not in the sense you intend, Sir John. On a vicar’s stipend one has to take care of the pennies. Hence, for example, this bicycle. And I must speed home on it now. As you may imagine, there’s rather a tricky sermon to concoct for this coming Sunday. Should you happen to be over here again then, it would be a great pleasure to see you in the congregation. And, meantime, please give Lady Appleby my regards.’ Brackley swung a leg over his machine, and then appeared to have an afterthought. ‘The butler up there might know something useful,’ he said. ‘He’s an uncommonly knowing man. Name of Bagot.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Appleby said, and watched the Vicar of Little Clusters pedal away. Then he himself drove on.

  4

  Appleby was received by a tall and cadaverous man who was undoubtedly Bagot. Years had probably elapsed since the Ospreys had run to footmen. Bagot was dressed in ever so slightly greasy morning clothes. Like his betters, he would no doubt change into a dinner-jacket when a bell rang in Clusters at seven o’clock. He carried a small silver salver on which he was presumably prepared to receive a visiting card if it was offered to him. Appleby asked for Lady Osprey.

  ‘Certainly, Sir John. Her ladyship is in her sitting-room, and is expecting you. She relies upon you to clear up this horrible affair.’

  Appleby might have come down on this like a brisk ton of bricks. He said nothing, however, and followed Bagot down long corridors oppressively hung with a jumble of small paintings and engravings and photographs which it was impossible to imagine anybody ever pausing to glance at. They were broad corridors, but seemed narrow because each as it was entered stretched into a middle distance as if situated in some vast ocean liner. Clusters really was an enormous place. Life, other than that of mice from the cellarage and midges from the moat, was confined to what was called the Georgian Wing, which was itself a very large mansion, confidently rather than arrogantly regardless of incongruity with the more modest achievements of Elizabethan and Jacobean builders. Looking for some scores of ancient coins in such a higgledy-piggledy museum would be – Appleby thought – as daunting an enterprise as setting sail in quest of the Golden Fleece.

  The doors on the particular corridor down which he was now being conducted were of the duplex or bivalvular sort the ceremonious operation of which requires the regular attendance of a couple of lackeys at each. A practised hand, however, can make quite a show of the business on his own, and Bagot was accomplished at this. Without pausing in his measured pace, he thrust open both halves of such a door, stepped forward, said ‘Sir John Appleby’ in a subdued and almost casual tone. He then stepped aside to let Appleby past, reversed this movement, walked out backwards, and shut the door more or less on his nose. The low key of his announcement, Appleby concluded, had been designed to match the apartment into which he had introduced the visitor. It was large, but it wasn’t at all grand. Lady Osprey’s sitting-room – a term unassuming in itself – was furnished and equipped on what might be called a homely note. Appleby felt at once that he had discovered something about the social background of the Broadwaters. Marcus Broadwater was no doubt a highly cultivated Cambridge don, as well as a distinctly eccentric one. But neither he nor his sister belonged to what might be called the authentic Osprey world. Lady Osprey had developed a kind of patter which fitted Clusters after a fashion. But she had furnished this more or less private boudoir as something snug and nostalgic to retire to when thinking of simpler times.

  ‘Dear Sir John, how kind of you to come. Do sit down.’ Lady Osprey waved in an indicative manner at several chairs in quick succession. ‘Poor Oliver – such a shocking thing! And quite unlooked for, too. I simply don’t know where to turn. My brother Marcus is still with us, and he might be expected to take matters in hand a little. But Marcus has simply gone out to shoot things.’

  ‘To fish things, Lady Osprey. I have just run into him fully equipped as a fisherman. But your son is at home, I take it, and must be a support to you in this very sad situation. May I say at once how much I feel for you. And my wife has asked me to say how grieved she is.’ Appleby, who was genuinely sorry for this – as he felt – wholly unremarkable woman, got through these formal expressions without difficulty. He remained a little wary of Lady Osprey, all the same. It seemed not improbable that she would expect him to whip out a magnifying-glass and fall at once to scrutinizing the carpet with it, or something like that. ‘But you have your son,’ he repeated a shade hastily. ‘He must be a great comfort to you.’

  ‘But Adrian knows so little. And that is true, too, of the people now visiting us at Clusters. There is almost a house-party at present. Oliver, you known, liked that sort of thing. He was brought up to it. But that’s true of Adrian too, I suppose. Yet Adrian doesn’t like it a bit, either. His friends are in quite a different set, he says. It’s an odd expression, and I think he must have picked it up from an old-fashioned novel. But I understand what it means. It means, among other things, that he will be barely civil to his parents’ guests.’ Lady Osprey managed a flash of spirit as she said this, but immediately afterwards her tone became plaintive again. ‘Of course there is always Bagot,’ she said. ‘Bago
t is a man who can be useful in all sorts of ways. But I have to confess I am always a little uneasy with Bagot. So, Sir John, I do very much hope that you can help me.’

  ‘Anything I can appropriately do, I’ll certainly do,’ Appleby said – and at once felt that the speech had been unnecessarily wary: almost, indeed, ungracious. But at least it hadn’t been unnecessary. Lady Osprey, he supposed, was firmly convinced that he was a kind of superior bobby who was happily in the neighbourhood at the right time, and the misconception must be cleared up at the start. ‘Fortunately,’ he went on, ‘Detective-Inspector Ringwood appears to be a thoroughly able and conscientious–’

  ‘Furniture-removers,’ Lady Osprey interrupted. ‘I am sure, Sir John, that you can help me there. It won’t be a large undertaking, but some of the things are rather valuable, and a little fragile as well. And you know what most removal men are.’

  John Appleby, who is not on record as easily stupefied, came close to being so now.

  ‘Do you mean,’ he asked, ‘that hard upon Lord Osprey’s sudden death, you are giving thought to packing up and leaving Clusters?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Sir John. I have never liked this overgrown place – nor a lot that goes with it. All those dinner-parties and luncheon-parties and long weekends! Chatter, chatter about anything one can think of. Bats in the belfry, and heaven knows what.’

  ‘And people bringing picnics into unsuitable parts of the park.’ Appleby had now recovered himself. ‘Do you intend to go far? It’s long-distance removals, I take it, that can be rather tricky.’

  ‘Only to the dower house.’ Lady Osprey said this with a touch of grandeur: there was something to be said for a dower house, just as there was for a moat. ‘The dower house, which is no more than a mile away, has of course been in the hands of tenants. But – most conveniently, isn’t it? – their lease has just run out. Bagot – I’ve discussed it with Bagot – says that my moving there at once would be a little unusual. Because of Adrian’s still being unmarried, he means. Unmarried eldest sons seldom want to have great houses all to themselves. Bagot says they usually have other ideas; that it would be much too much like settling down. One understands what he means.’