Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘I’d scarcely suppose anything of the kind,’ he then said. ‘And she has never, by the way, invited me to take a look at what she has. That is perhaps a shade odd. And yet, why should she? Have you, incidentally, talked at all to Honoria Wimpole?’

  ‘Not so far. But I take her to be the young woman standing by the fireplace.’

  ‘Quite right. Now she is a numismatist. Another ten years, and she will be one of the leading authorities in our field. Curious, in a way. Her mother – talking to Quickfall, over there – is an uncommonly silly woman. Even as women go.’

  Appleby made no comment on Broadwater’s final remark here. But after another moment he asked a further question.

  ‘Will Miss Wimpole have seen the Osprey Collection?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I imagine not. She may have come to Clusters in the hope of doing so.’

  ‘The police still don’t know where the Osprey Collection is kept. And you told me earlier this morning that you don’t know either. That struck me as most extraordinary, and it still does. Ringwood was equally surprised when I passed on your information. And rather perturbed, really. Because it does seem not altogether unlikely that there is some link between your brother-in-law’s death and this uncommonly elusive collection. It’s almost as if – and you must forgive me for putting the point in this way – with that death, you are the only person who knows positively that the coins exist.’

  ‘That, Sir John – and now you must forgive me – is total nonsense. Over the years, a number of scholars of undeniable integrity have enjoyed the privilege of examining the Osprey Collection.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment, Mr Broadwater. And I must emend the point I was trying to make. You are now the only person who can possibly tell whether the Osprey Collection still exists in its integrity.’

  ‘Only a couple of years ago my brother-in-law and I compiled and printed for private circulation a catalogue of the Osprey Collection. When the coins are found – as I hope they soon will be – the continued integrity of the collection can be checked against it.’

  ‘The degree of collaboration between you which that entails seems to make all the odder the fact that you don’t know the collection’s whereabouts. It will have to be found, you know – if only for the probate people. Of course, there’s that key.’

  ‘Key?’ Broadwater repeated sharply. His tone perhaps indicated a growing knowledge that this was scarcely a friendly interrogation.

  ‘Ringwood and I found a key, rather oddly sited, in the library only an hour ago. I have taken it into my head that it may be the key to whatever secure place Lord Osprey kept his coins in. A small room or a cupboard: that sort of thing. Ringwood has a man going round with the key now – and instructions to try it wherever he sees a keyhole.’

  ‘An unoccupied keyhole, I presume.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose the fellow will take much for granted. But – for a start, at least – he’ll stick to the ground floor, because of Osprey’s habit of parading his coins on a trolley. You must recall telling me about that this morning. By the way, did anybody else ever see him so oddly engaged?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But it would be reasonable to suppose that Bagot did. Bagot sees everything.’

  ‘Even where the trolley and the collection came from?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to assert that, Sir John. Poor Oliver had a certain cunning to him. He was always something of an eccentric, you know. And that sort of thing was growing on him with the years. You must have noticed it yourself?’

  ‘I scarcely knew your brother-in-law, Mr Broadwater. But I certainly never thought of him as cunning, or even eccentric.’

  ‘In fact, Sir John, you only thought of him as slightly pompous and slightly boring. Well, the poor old chap was those things as well. But de mortuis nil nisi bonum. May I get you a glass of wine?’

  Appleby accepted the wine. It turned out to be burgundy – the same, presumably, that Bagot in his pantry had set to breathe earlier that morning. Appleby retired with his glass to a corner of the room, and there, undisturbed for a few minutes, achieved a synoptic view of the whole company. It depressed him, and he wondered why. Was it perhaps because he suddenly sensed all these people as starkly irrelevant to the problem on hand? Was the Osprey Collection itself a kind of mute irrelevance? It had first surfaced as a fragment of quite idle talk between Judith and himself on their way home from Clusters a few days previously. He had himself mentioned it to Ringwood in the course of his telephone conversation that morning, saying that its existence perhaps enhanced the possibility that attempted theft or burglary might be a factor in the mystery. Almost immediately after that it had figured prominently in the course of his bizarre encounter with Marcus Broadwater when he was obeying Lady Osprey’s summons to Clusters. Immediately after that again there had been his meeting with the local clergyman, Mr Bradley; and with Bradley he had himself at once raised the topic of the coins. It might almost be said that they had now become an obsession with him: since the moment of his arrival at Clusters they had never for long been out of his head.

  But was the Osprey Collection a mere will-o’-the-wisp – not as simply being without substantial existence (although, indeed, he was still without solid proof that it did exist) but as bearing the character of a small, delusive flame the sole effect of which was to lead one hopelessly astray? Had the murder of Lord Osprey (for that he had been murdered was – except indeed for Bagot with his absurd notion of an accident – the one solid fact in the affair so far) been the consequence of some situation with which the unfortunate man’s hoard of ancient coins had no connection?

  Appleby paused on this, as his training had taught him to do. When in doubt or at a stand, step back and attempt a little radical rethinking, a totally fresh approach. Above all, when you have a murdered man on your hands, find out about him.

  So what did he know about Lord Osprey? What sort of picture of the owner of Clusters had he brought to Clusters with him, and in what particulars had he added to it since? The answers to these questions proved, on scrutiny, to be thoroughly unsatisfactory. On some fairly recent occasion television had given him a glimpse of Lord Osprey making a speech in the House of Lords, and had even afforded him a brief snippet of it. On the strength of this he had concluded that nature had not intended the man to be a legislator, and he had even described him to Judith as a political ignoramus. This had been hasty and intolerant, and it was possible to see another side to the picture. Osprey was a hereditary peer, not one of those citizens who have become ‘life’ peers as the result of a long frequentation of public affairs. And a majority of hereditary peers seldom or never go near the House of Lords, believing it to be an obsolete or at least tiresome institution. A few may attend and speak there out of vanity – but not many, since the majority have ample means of satisfying vanity in other directions. Those who do attend and take part in the work of the House are, on the whole, to be described as conscientious if sometimes not particularly talented persons. Osprey had probably belonged with these. What could be said with some certainty was that he had not been a highly intelligent man: to pursue, as he appeared to have done, a hobby of which he had gained very little command was surely definitive on the point.

  But what about him in his social relations, and as a family man? Here, Appleby realized that he knew almost nothing. There had been that luncheon party, with its talk of bats in the belfry. He had carried away from it an impression of the Ospreys as not much interested in their guests, nor in one another, either. Osprey had been a little inclined to brow-beat his wife, but this didn’t seem to have bothered her. There was no sort of tension between them, and perhaps there never had been. It was possible to wonder how they had ever come to get married, particularly as they seemed to stem from somewhat disparate backgrounds. This morning, what might be called the blankness of Lady Osprey’s response to her sudden and
shocking widowhood suggested that the relationship between husband and wife wasn’t and never had been other than on the shallow side. Nor did Adrian, their only child, seem to set much store on family ties. He was perhaps a little more attached to his mother than to his father, but he hadn’t struck Appleby as a young man who had grown up much nourished by the domestic affections. The entire picture was rather dull, with no strong accent anywhere to be discerned in it. Perhaps there was somewhere such an accent, but of a kind kept by general consent distinctly under drapes.

  This was all very unsatisfactory and vague, and it would perhaps be best to keep the Osprey Collection and its riddle at, as it were, the centre of the composition. Appleby had almost arrived at this conclusion when the preserved decorum of Bagot’s buffet was broken in upon by a sudden and totally unexpected occasion of scandal and confusion.

  15

  The disturbance began with a clamour emanating from the main Entrance Hall of Clusters which has already been described, and the effect was of that lofty and marble sheathed oval as abruptly given over to disgrace and spoliation at the hands of an insurgent mob. Just so might some great cathedral have resounded to the destructive frenzy of a wandering barbarian horde. One might have imagined the non-existent statues in their vacant niches as looking on helpless and aghast at mounting chaos. Much of this was acoustic delusion, but what immediately succeeded upon it was even more alarming. The bivalvular doors of the apartment in which the assembled gentlefolk were recruiting themselves burst open, and, almost filling the wide space thus created, there appeared an enormous man, red-faced, glaring, and bellowing furiously. For a moment he stood motionless, confronting the company. Then he turned half round, seized a young woman who had been cowering behind him, and propelled her in front of him into the room.

  ‘Where is he?’ the enormous man shouted. ‘Show me the ruddy bastard! I’ll learn him, I will. I’ll leave him so that he won’t want to do it again – or be able to, if I get my hands on him you know where. Bloody aristocratic ripper!’

  From behind this volcanically eruptive person there appeared the pale face of Bagot. Bagot was clearly frightened out of his wits – but even so, his duty to uphold the covenances momentarily sustained him.

  ‘Mr Trumfitt and Miss Trumfitt, my lady,’ he announced, and thereupon bolted from view.

  Mr Trumfitt pausing to take breath, there was a moment’s stupefied silence – into which, however, snivelling noises were interjected by his daughter. So here – Appleby thought – were the outraged publican from a local village and his ravished daughter. Obscurely, he drew a certain encouragement from this. For some little time the situation had been unpromisingly static. Here at least was development. It was, of course, awkward for Adrian. But you can’t be a bit rough with village girls and expect always to get away with it.

  ‘Where’s his lordship?’ Trumfitt yelled. ‘Where’s that bloody Lord Osprey? I’ll put my hands on him, I will. You’ll all see if I won’t.’ He glared round the company. ‘Crawled into the woodwork, has he? I’ll have him out of it.’

  There was another moment’s silence, and then Adrian stepped forward.

  ‘I am Lord Osprey,’ he said. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘You bloody little brat, get back to school!’ Trumfitt shouted. And he turned to his daughter. ‘Avice,’ he said, ‘tell them all it wasn’t the young one.’

  ‘No more it weren’t,’ Avice said. ‘And he’s not a lord yet, he isn’t.’ And with a certain dramatic sense, Avice turned to the company at large. ‘It were the old un,’ she said. ‘And where is he? My dad has promised to hold him down while I get my nails in him.’

  At this point several of the guests had sufficiently recovered from their surprise – and fright – to utter disapproving noises. But the first to speak was Rupert Quickfall.

  ‘This is most unseemly,’ he said. ‘Why have these persons been admitted to the house – let alone allowed to pass half a dozen policemen?’

  ‘But I think that some explanation should be given us.’ Lady Wimpole, although obviously much confused in mind, spoke with surprising emphasis. ‘Certainly those horrible people ought to be taken away. But what does the young woman mean by saying that Adrian isn’t yet a peer? And what does this disgusting man mean by demanding to see Adrian’s father?’ Alarm now sounded in Lady Wimpole’s voice. ‘Poor Oliver is dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Really, Mama, this is too absurd.’ It was Honoria who now spoke. ‘Of course Lord Osprey is dead – only this man, who seems to have some grudge against him, hasn’t heard of the fact.’

  ‘Dead!’ shouted Trumfitt on a note of outraged incredulity. ‘Of course he isn’t dead – not yet, he isn’t. It’s a trick. Smuggling him out of the country to escape appearing in the dock. That’s what they’re up to. I’ll have the law on the lot of them.’

  ‘The law is sometimes an ass,’ Appleby said. ‘But not quite to that extent, perhaps. Quickfall, have you anything to say about all this?’

  ‘My dear Appleby, if a touch of the facetious weren’t out of place before a mess-up of the present sort, I’d be inclined to say that I reserve my defence. Clearly I got things a little the wrong way round on the telephone. The generations got themselves slightly mixed up. For the moment, I’ll rest on that.’

  ‘I don’t think anybody ought to rest.’ This came from a lady whom Appleby identified provisionally as the shadowy Mrs Purvis, wife of one of the Purvises of Purvis, Purvis and Purvis. ‘We are in a perfectly shocking situation,’ Mrs Purvis went on. ‘No sooner is Lord Osprey brutally murdered than we are publicly confronted with some disgusting aspersion upon him. We ought all to bestir ourselves, and begin by supporting Lady Osprey and her son in any way we can.’

  ‘Quite right!’ Miss Minnychip spoke in her turn. ‘Poor Oliver is dead, and – so far as the law goes – he can, I suppose, be slandered with impunity. But of slander we can at least express our detestation. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’ Lady Osprey, in order to utter these very proper words, appeared to have to contend with a certain absence of mind. She was still sitting on the chair Adrian had provided for her, and she had perhaps been reflecting, Appleby thought, on the disposition of articles of furniture in the dower house. For one whose husband had been murdered and then within twenty-four hours apparently aspersed as a ravisher Lady Osprey seemed to own just the right temperament.

  ‘What about having in those policemen?’ Mr Purvis asked abruptly. ‘Sir John, wouldn’t they be just right for dealing with our unwelcome visitors?’

  ‘I think I’d rather have Mr Trumfitt and his daughter leave quietly and of their own free will,’ Appleby said. ‘Mr Broadwater, what do you think about that?’

  ‘I rather agree, Sir John.’ Marcus Broadwater had been the only one of the company not to speak so far. ‘It’s my opinion that they are conceivably not being wholly candid with us. But if they are willing to go, let them go. For one thing – but I defer to Quickfall here – once an intruder has gained entry to a private property, the law about getting him out again is surprisingly tricky. He has to be guilty of threatening behaviour, or something of that sort, before the police can bundle him out of the door and into a van.’

  ‘But we’ve all heard Mr Trumfitt going for threatening behaviour in a big way. Emasculation, and nothing short of it, was what he appears to have been envisaging.’

  ‘But that threat, Sir John, was directed against a man who is in fact dead: the late Lord Osprey. The present Lord Osprey was merely enjoined to go back to school. That was what the law is, no doubt, prepared to call vulgar abuse. But I doubt whether it can be construed as a threat.’

  These learned exchanges were interrupted by Mr Trumfitt himself. He had been surprisingly silent for more than five minutes. Now he began roaring again. His daughter, a
s if taking a cue from this, resumed her snivelling. Appleby failed to discern in her any suggestion of a maidenhood but lately wronged. He had to remind himself of Quickfall’s undeniably valid assertion that a drab is as entitled as a duchess to resist the violent embraces of a male.

  And then, if only briefly, Adrian Osprey took charge of the situation, directly confronting the enraged publican.

  ‘Mr Trumfitt,’ he said, ‘my father is dead. There is every reason to believe that he has been murdered. And you are creating a disgraceful scene. Please go away, and take your daughter with you.’

  This firm speech was surprisingly effective. Mr Trumfitt grabbed the blubbering Avice and dragged her to the door. But there he turned, and gave a final shout at the company.

  ‘I’ll be even with the whole pack of you!’ he roared. After which – and presumably unaware that he had thus closely paraphrased a celebrated line in Shakespeare – he bundled both Avice and himself out of the room.

  16

  It speaks well for the resilience of the upper reaches of English society that after this vulgar irruption upon Bagot’s buffet the company picked itself up at once and assumed every appearance of undisturbed polite life. Bagot himself assisted this recovery by bringing in coffee and gravely handing it round with the assistance of a parlour maid. And Appleby assisted too – at least to the extent of deftly grabbing a sugar basin and crossing the room in order to offer it to Honoria Wimpole, introducing himself as he did so. Honoria was amused.

  ‘I know about you,’ she said, ‘and believe you want to pump me. Pump away.’

  ‘I want to know about coins, really, Miss Wimpole. Apart from Mr Broadwater – with whom I have already had a good deal of talk – you are the only numismatist here.’

  ‘Not really. There’s Miss Minnychip, Sir John.’

  ‘She is a guardian of such things, but I don’t think she knows – or claims to know – a great deal about them. She simply treasures a collection made by her father. I mustn’t tell you where she keeps it – although I can say that its whereabouts reflect a keen sense of its worth. Is the Minnychip Collection, as it may be called, really of the first importance?’