Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘I’ve come to Clusters with you simply because I judged the invitation to be extremely opportune.’

  ‘So it was, my dear. Most opportune. With Adrian–’

  ‘We are not thinking, Mama, of the same opportunity. It was Lord Osprey, and not his son, who was in my head. You see, I’d been corresponding with Lord Osprey, and I wanted to establish a closer contact with him.’

  ‘Corresponding…closer contact?’ It was clear that unspeakable images had momentarily presented themselves to Lady Wimpole’s vision. But with an effort she controlled herself. ‘Honoria,’ she said, ‘just what do you mean?’

  ‘I mean for one thing, Mama, that you keep on ignoring my profession. Numismatics, Mama. Coins. It so happens that I curate them. Just as that brother of Lady Osprey’s does. Marcus Something.’

  ‘Broadwater, my dear.’ Before her daughter’s sudden vehemence, Lady Wimpole was confused and placatory. ‘And of course you have your profession. One hears nowadays of so many girls having professions. And your father and I are both very pleased about it. Only, I am sorry you have to work in that dull old museum, and not at the Mint. The Mint is the Royal Mint, you know, so I am sure it must have the nicest coins. But what has this to do with Oliver Osprey?’

  ‘I must have told you several times that he has – or had, since he’s now dead – a rather notable collection of coins which he has always been very cagey about. I wanted to learn something about them, and in particular whether he really possessed two or three unique things he’d been known to brag about. But when I wrote to him he sent me only brief replies and blank refusals. Then I happened to run into him at a party in town, and I nobbled him and chatted him up. And finally he said that the next time we came to stay with him here at Clusters, he would show me this and that. It was all slightly absurd, because the Osprey Collection certainly isn’t one of the great private collections, and yet his lordship seemed to make quite a privilege of the thing. It was rather as if the last female he’d shown the coins to had been Queen Mary. If it had been, I’ll bet she’d have possessed herself of something pretty valuable to remind her of a delightful occasion. You know what she was.’

  ‘Honoria, dear, I’ve had to tell you several times that it’s bad form to make fun of the Royal Family. Your grandfather never made fun of Dickie, although it would have been fairly easy to do sometimes.’

  ‘Who in the world was Dickie, Mama?’

  ‘He was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, Honoria. And he became, among other things, First Sea Lord, as his father had been before him.’ Lady Wimpole was clearly displeased at her daughter’s ignorance of these quasi-dynastic matters. ‘But what about those coins you were so interested in? Did poor Oliver in fact show them to you?’

  ‘No, indeed, Mama. No such luck. I think he meant to do so either today or tomorrow. But, instead, he got himself killed. It was vexatious of him, was it not? What I have to do now, of course, is to chat up Adrian. I suppose he inherits the things, along with everything else. Only – as I’ve made clear to you, Mama – he isn’t going to inherit me.’

  13

  While this conversation was going on, Appleby had sought out Ringwood, and found him in the library. Two policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were hard at work taking the books in careful handfuls from the shelves, flashing a torch into the cavity thus exposed, and then putting the books back again. They clearly found this dull and sweaty work, but were uncomplaining, nevertheless. Ringwood, on the other hand, was excited and almost triumphant.

  ‘Speed!’ he said to Appleby. ‘Impetus! It’s the royal road to successful investigation. Think of that dreadful affair in Yorkshire, Sir John. Dozens of men bogged down in front of one or another card-index, and the horror going on all the time. Get off to a flying start, and it’s likely to be different. And we’ve done it. At least, we’ve found the weapon. Or are pretty sure we have. Thanks to you, sir. The trophies, you know. We went to work on them at once – and, sure enough, there the thing was. The weapon, Sir John.’

  ‘That sounds most promising, Ringwood. Tell me about it.’

  ‘It was there, sir.’ And Ringwood pointed to one of the elaborate trophies flanking the fire. ‘You can see the vacant space. It was back in the position it came from, but the webbing holding it there was half cut through – as if it had been snatched out, or shoved back in a great hurry. That alerted us – was enough to alert us.’ Ringwood paused, as if to receive due commendation for this highly efficient exercise. ‘No blood on it, Sir John, or none visible to the naked eye. But I remembered about that wash-place, and what you said about hot and cold water. And, in there, we found what was certainly a minute spot of blood on a tile. We got up the tile, and I sent both off instantly to the forensic people. If they do detect blood on the blade, they’ll ring through in about an hour’s time.’

  ‘Good work,’ Appleby said briskly. ‘What sort of a weapon was it?’

  ‘I’d call it a dagger halfway to becoming a sword. Ugly affair, and with an Eastern look to it. More than that, I couldn’t say, not having made a study of such things.’

  ‘Perhaps an Osprey brought it back from some verge of our far-flung empire, Ringwood, about a hundred years ago. Have you tried to think just how it could have done its job? Somebody unknown used it to kill Lord Osprey – or so manipulated it that Lord Osprey died as a result. For us it comes to the same thing, but they wrangle over such points at a criminal trial. There’s more to it than that, however. Just before dinner last night, there was the alarming business of the unknown intruder out there on the terrace. Suppose that, much later, Lord Osprey was somehow prompted to return, very much on his own, to this room. It must have been in a wary or apprehensive state of mind, wouldn’t you say? When he did encounter somebody – as he certainly did, or he’d be alive today – he would be very much on his guard, would he not?’

  ‘Certainly, Sir John. Unless, of course, the person he encountered had what you may call a reassuring identity.’

  ‘Quite so. But now, Ringwood, imagine yourself to be that reassuring person. Then imagine some sort of more or less unexpected dispute or quarrel. Lord Osprey, so thoroughly scared earlier in the evening, would surely be speedily on the qui vive now. And you have to wrench this dagger from its place on the wall and cut his lordship’s throat with it. From in front? From behind? Try to imagine yourself going to work, Ringwood.’

  ‘It’s not too easy an exercise, Sir John.’ Although a serious man, the Detective-Inspector allowed himself a brief smile. ‘But one thing’s certain. The murder must have happened very quickly. There can’t have been much of a face-to-face struggle, or not of a kind that would leave any signs on the corpse. And the killer must have known what was to hand, there on the wall. The library was familiar to him.’

  ‘You may have a point there.’ Appleby thought for a moment. ‘I wonder whether Lord Osprey ever did business in this room – interviewed tenants: that sort of thing?’

  ‘Inquiries can be made, sir. But, at a guess, I’d say not. There’s a room they call his lordship’s private office in another part of the building. And a quick-witted man, although a stranger to this library, might glance at the wall there, and tumble to the fact that there was an abundance of weapons pretty well within arm’s reach.’

  ‘Don’t touch it, George, for the love of Mike!’

  This urgent injunction, delivered at the far end of the library by the sergeant of police to the constable, had the effect of cutting short what was becoming a somewhat speculative conversation. And then the sergeant called out to his superior officer from across the room.

  ‘Something odd here, sir. It’s a key.’

  The shelving in the library at Clusters was not of any newfangled adjustable sort. It marched all round the chamber in severe straight lines, regardless of whether it was supporting folios, quartos, octavos, or even duodecimos. And it was behind a row
of uniformly diminutive books that the officers had made their discovery. It was certainly a key: neither very big nor very small; a middling sort of key such as might be found in any door. It was quite a plain key, but somehow intimated that it wasn’t a plebeian key. It seemed, in fact, to belong to a time in which even utilitarian objects had to own a certain elegance if they were to aspire to use among the upper ranges of society.

  ‘The dust,’ Appleby said.

  The area (and it was of considerable depth) behind that on which the small books had been ranged certainly lay beneath a substantial film of dust: much more dust than a self-respecting librarian would have been at all inclined to tolerate. But Clusters had no librarian; had probably never had a librarian; was not a nobleman’s country seat of quite that order of grandeur. No doubt the flat nozzle of a vacuum cleaner was run over the tops of the books in a perfunctory way by a bored housemaid, but beyond that the dust was undisturbed except by an occasional mouse.

  ‘No dust on the key,’ Ringwood said. ‘It hasn’t been hidden there long.’

  ‘It is, in one sense, hidden,’ Appleby said. ‘But not in another. I mean that it hasn’t been intentionally hidden there by anyone. Or I don’t think it has.’

  ‘Just how do you make that out, sir?’ The Detective-Inspector was not one for concealing his perplexities and looking wise. ‘It seems to me as if somebody has been standing just here, holding the key. And he hasn’t wanted to acknowledge the fact. So, standing with his back to the shelving and his hands behind him, he has slipped the thing over the top of these little books, and let it drop.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that be an awkward manoeuvre to carry out, Ringwood? You might have a shot at it and see. And there’s another point. The key doesn’t seem to me to have dropped. It can only be said to have skidded – and for rather a long way on a diagonal line from just behind the books to almost the back of the shelf. If it were a boat, it might be spoken of as leaving a small wake behind it – only, instead of disturbed water, there’s disturbed dust. It’s a pretty minute effect, but perfectly perceptible. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I think I do. But what’s the inference, sir?’

  ‘A sudden and alarming situation at the other end of the room, near the French window. Possibly this end is in something like darkness. Darkness may suggest security to a man in a panic. Osprey has the key, but doesn’t want it discovered. He panics, and hurls it away from him into that saving darkness. By sheer chance it skims across the top of these little books on a diagonal line, and comes to rest where your men have now spotted it. What do you think?’

  ‘It sounds a bit far-fetched to me, Sir John.’

  ‘So it is.’ Appleby approved at once of this forthright speech on Ringwood’s part. ‘But let’s think about the key itself. Whether dropped or chucked, it remains a definite problem. Where does it fit?’

  ‘Where, indeed.’ Ringwood permitted himself a chuckle at the ambiguity of this question. ‘At a guess, it’s the key to a room or cupboard in this unnatural warren of a place.’

  ‘It’s a good guess – but, still, a guess. We must test it out. Try it. In every lock.’

  ‘Good God, Sir John!’ The Detective-Inspector was aghast. ‘It would take one can’t say how many hours to do anything of the sort. It’s not as if one could set a dozen men on the job. Or not unless one could have a locksmith cut as many replicas.’

  ‘Quite so. And, of course, the key may be to something not here at Clusters, at all. But I doubt that. I think it probably fits a lock here on the ground floor of Clusters.’

  ‘The ground floor, sir? How do you make that out?’

  ‘Another guess, I’m afraid. I’m supposing that the key gives access to that collection.’

  ‘Collection, Sir John?’

  ‘The Osprey Collection of coins, Ringwood. We know that Lord Osprey was idiosyncratically cagey on the numismatic front. And we know that he produced his hoard for his brother-in-law, Marcus Broadwater, on a trolley. Broadwater, you know, is a professional numismatist, who advised him – cataloguing the things, and so forth.’

  ‘He must have been off his rocker – Lord Osprey must. A trolley, you say!’

  ‘Quite so. But the point is that, since Clusters doesn’t seem to run to any lifts or hoists, the coins were kept in concealment here on the ground floor. And it’s possible that this key may lead to them.’

  ‘So you think, sir, that the collection of coins is near the heart of the matter?’

  ‘It’s no more than a conjecture at this stage, Ringwood. I’ve come across one or two elements that don’t seem to fit into any such notion. But here is this mysterious key, which does fit. And it must, literally, fit some lock or other. We’ve got to find it.’

  ‘The point is one you need scarcely reiterate, Sir John.’ It was clear that these two policemen – active and retired – were not getting on very well together. ‘The sergeant here can begin going round with the key at once. Only we’d better have a photograph of the thing here on the shelf before disturbing it. And let the finger-print people see it’s quite without a surface they could work on.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Appleby said. ‘Never miss out on the routine. Hard-won experience has created it.’

  Ringwood received this with a moment’s silence – possibly as detecting a hint of mockery in it. And then, suddenly, he smiled.

  ‘Do you recall, sir,’ he asked, ‘saying a true word about this not a long time back? A kind of metaphor, I think they’d call it.’

  ‘And now, Ringwood, you’re producing a kind of riddle. What did I say?’

  ‘You said, Sir John, that the key to the mystery lay in this confounded library.’

  14

  Bagot – perhaps after some token consultation with the bereaved Lady Osprey – had decided that luncheon should be a buffet affair. It was probably his view that, whatever the police might think, the house-party at Clusters had lasted long enough, and that a hint of imminent dispersal was in order. Such a hint might be given if the guests were required to remain on their feet as they munched, unless they were willing to perch on chairs ranged round the circumference of the room as at a ball. As this latter disposition would have been absurd, everybody remained perpendicular, including Lady Osprey herself in a slightly bewildered way – until, indeed, her son, furiously scowling, dragged forward one of the ranked chairs and made her sit on it.

  Sir John Appleby, gnawing the while at a smoked salmon sandwich of the more obstinately stringy sort, didn’t fail to remark this filial attention on Adrian Osprey’s part, and he had a sense of it as obscurely significant. The young man’s temperament appeared to be such that he might have been a little more than a shade rough with a girl, but he didn’t somehow seem likely to have behind him the role of a patricide.

  But Appleby faced another and less speculative consideration. Given that Lord Osprey’s murder had been committed by the mysterious and alarming intruder at the French window of the library not many hours before the fatality, nobody now in the enjoyment of Bagot’s buffet could qualify as the perpetrator. For when the intruder had briefly revealed himself to Lord Osprey and Miss Minnychip, the entire company had been congregated on the wrong side of the window, having gathered in the library for the purpose of imbibing what Adrian clearly regarded as the strikingly unsatisfactory family sherry.

  And now the company was complete once more, since Marcus Broadwater had turned up from his river. Entering a little late, he had addressed a word or two to his sister – of too casual a sort, Appleby felt, to be quite appropriate to the occasion. And now he had turned to Appleby himself.

  ‘Uncommonly annoying,’ he said. ‘Everything upset as a result of last night’s revolting butchery. They even forgot to put a bite to eat in my basket. But, as it happened, the trout haven’t been rising, anyway. Too much bright sunlight, I expect. Probably I’ll go bac
k and flog the water for an hour or two in the late afternoon. Perhaps I’ll try a Poly May Dun. Any progress here?’

  ‘You must ask the police,’ Appleby said, and then abandoned so patently disingenuous a response. ‘Ringwood has sent one or two things for forensic investigation, but I don’t myself expect the results to be much of a surprise. Your brother-in-law was killed with a weapon snatched from one of those trophies on the library wall. That doesn’t, to my own mind, suggest much in the way of premeditation. And we find that somebody has had out a little boat from the shed on the other side of the moat. That seems to tie in with the fellow fleetingly seen last night through the French window in the library. I don’t know that there’s anything more concrete than that.’

  ‘Such as your information is, Sir John, it is good of you to give me word of it. And I am afraid I spoke to you rather foolishly this morning. Perhaps I was taken a little by surprise, my mind being already on the fish. I mean about being a good suspect, and so on.’

  ‘I don’t know that I took you very seriously, Mr Broadwater. By the way, does the name Minnychip count for much in the numismatic world?’

  ‘Meaning our friend’s late father?’ Broadwater laughed good-naturedly. ‘He was an Anglo-Indian of some sort, who interested himself in coinage from that point of vantage. I know that he contributed a number of well-informed articles to scholarly journals. And according to his daughter – as you have no doubt heard from the lady – he formed his own collection of coins from the Orient.’

  ‘Would it be as important as the Osprey Collection?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ Broadwater was amused.

  ‘Do you think Miss Minnychip herself knows much about coins in any sort of learned way? Or continues her father’s interest by dealing in them – anything of that sort? Or ever betrays what might be regarded as an obsession with the subject?’

  Broadwater accorded this string of questions a moment’s thought.