Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘Isn’t that what is called a hypothetical question, Sir John?’

  ‘No doubt it is, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t answer it.’

  ‘You know very well why I don’t much care for it. It introduces the question of whether Lord Osprey himself hadn’t been doing what you call the milking. If he had been selling off one or two very valuable coins in a quiet way, and artlessly dropping mediocre substitutes in their place, I might well have hesitated to pounce on the thing. It wouldn’t have been exactly tactful. And as what I’d detected could only be called a childish or muddle-headed foible, with nothing of real deceit about it, my speaking up could quite fairly be considered as impertinent as well.’

  ‘But, Miss Wimpole, consider the context in which we now have to consider all this. Lord Osprey has been murdered, and we have to do our best to decide whether or not the Osprey Collection has been some sort of motivating factor. That the coins have nothing to do with the case is a tenable view. The fellow who burst in on us so angrily at lunch-time will no doubt come into your head there. But he may well be totally irrelevant to our real concern, and both Mr Ringwood and I incline to the view that the coins are indeed central to the case. You have now inspected them at leisure, and have yourself raised the possibility that Lord Osprey had himself been quietly parting with some of the most valuable things and replacing them with coins of altogether inferior worth. Obviously it is a possibility. But are you inclined to view that state of the case as probable? That’s what I’d like to get at.’

  ‘Definitely not.’ Honoria gave this reply without hesitation. ‘And for two reasons. The first is simply that half sovereign. Substituting that for a coin of the third century BC was a freakish act that doesn’t at all fit in with my conception of Lord Osprey’s character. But my second reason is much more substantial. Lord Osprey definitely led me to feel that I was going to be shown his collection either today or tomorrow. And he knew perfectly well that my interest in it would be informed and professional.’

  ‘So you are driven to suppose that he was unaware of what had happened to his collection. If it had been happening slowly over a considerable period of time, could his ignorance – call it his numismatic innocence – have been such that he might not notice something amiss?’

  ‘I think so. The substitutions, so far as I have spotted them during this brief rummage, are not startling at a mere glance. Where a coin of considerable antiquity has been abstracted, it is generally a coin of some antiquity – but of very little value today – that has been put in its place.’

  ‘That half sovereign,’ Ringwood interrupted. ‘You can’t say that of it?’

  ‘No, indeed. It’s almost like a joke. Or not so much a joke as a dare. A hostage given to fortune.’

  ‘A what?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘Or somebody saying “Catch who catch can”. I find it distinctly odd.’

  ‘It’s all distinctly odd,’ Adrian complained. ‘I can’t get to the bottom of it, at all. I knew there were a lot of old coins my father was interested in, but not anything about all this hiding them away. It’s the sort of thing misers do, all right. At Harrow they made me read a book about one. Silas somebody. It’s by a woman.’

  ‘Women do sometimes write books, Adrian.’

  It seemed to Appleby that there was more of affection than mockery in this remark. But that was by the way. More important was his sense that the Osprey mystery was now moving. And Ringwood, he knew, had the same feeling. But Ringwood still saw a difficulty that Appleby didn’t.

  Because of that chime of a single word.

  21

  But Appleby had schooled himself to distrust hunches and flashes of inspiration. Often enough they had proved to be false lights leading either nowhere or into embarrassing situations which it had required a good deal of skill to get out of. Perhaps it might be so now. He was on the verge, as it were, of standing the entire Osprey affair on its head, and this on the strength of an odd association of ideas which would distinctly cut no ice in a court of law. He could almost hear the accents in which some criminal barrister like the fellow Quickfall might hold it up to ridicule before a judge and jury.

  Before sharing his hazardous new perception even with Ringwood, it would be wise to find some sort of concrete evidence – or, failing that, at least some concurring opinion. And here Appleby thought of Bagot. It seemed to be a general opinion at Clusters that Bagot should be consulted about this, or would know all about that. So Appleby decided to have another go at Bagot, and that on this occasion it should be a téte-à-téte affair, without the support of Ringwood. Bagot and Ringwood hadn’t got along together too well.

  This proved easy. Hard upon the conference with Honoria Wimpole the Detective-Inspector had been called away to the telephone to give some complicated instructions about matters unrelated to the Osprey enquiry. And it was a little after five o’clock; a tea-drinking in the drawing-room was drawing to a close; but this was without the attendance of Bagot, for whose superintendence it was too trivial an occasion. Bagot, in fact, was having tea served to him in his pantry by a nervous junior parlour maid, and Appleby found him there. Bagot was good enough to intimate to his underling that a cup should be provided for Sir John.

  ‘It has occurred to me, Mr Bagot,’ Appleby said, ‘that you and I might usefully have another word together. Of a confidential character, you understand. There is the question, for instance, of Lord Osprey’s nervous tone – I think that is the best expression – during the few days leading up to this terrible occasion. Would you, who are a keen observer, describe it as wholly normal?’

  ‘A most interesting question, Sir John.’ For some moments Bagot was silent, probably thinking of himself as making a weighty pause. ‘To my mind, his lordship was disturbed. Or perturbed. I think that on the whole, perturbed might be the better word.’

  ‘I see. Have you any notion of what he might have been perturbed about? Could it have been, for instance, a matter of money worries?’

  ‘I think not. Financial embarrassments incline to exercise a depressing effect, do they not? And his lordship was not depressed. And now I have thought of a better word still. His lordship was jumpy.’

  ‘Jumpy, was he?’ Appleby found this sudden drop into vernacular expression on the ponderous Bagot’s part worthy of note. ‘Had you any feeling that he had to be handled carefully?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. In some degree it is always a necessity, of course, in my profession. Employers of upper servants are in general a kittle crowd.’

  ‘I suppose that to be true.’ Appleby felt that a new Bagot was beginning to emerge. ‘What would Lord Osprey be jumpy about?’

  ‘Well, Sir John, there was that man – and his allegations. His lordship may have scented trouble there some time before the man’s scandalous irruption today.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby wondered whether he might venture to enquire if it was Bagot’s belief that his late employer had valid cause to feel jumpy in what might be termed the general Avice region. But he decided to refrain. ‘You felt you had to handle Lord Osprey carefully,’ he said. ‘Even, perhaps, to the point of occasional – well, equivocation?’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’ Bagot was quite unperturbed by this admission.

  ‘Allow me to recur, Mr Bagot, to the incident in the library before dinner last night. It seems to me to call for careful analysis.’

  ‘Does it indeed, Sir John?’ Bagot seemed suddenly wary. ‘I think I may say that I agree.’ The wariness increased. ‘In the sense, that is, that the whole shocking affair requires careful handling.’

  ‘No doubt it does. But now, Mr Bagot, I want to confide in you. To confide in you and place a high degree of confidence in your judgement. Nothing has more impressed me at Clusters than the general – indeed, the universal – regard in which that is held.’ This was perhaps to carry the buttering up technique rather far,
and Appleby made no pause. ‘I want to tell you of something which I have come to relate closely to the episode at the window.’ At this Appleby thought he saw the butler’s gaunt form stiffen slightly. And he hurried on. ‘It will be within your recollection that my wife and I had the pleasure of lunching here about ten days ago. There was some talk about bats in the parish church, and Lord Osprey appeared to feel that Lady Osprey had not given adequate thought to the matter. He begged her to reflect. That was his word, uttered with his frequent odd emphasis. And he repeated it later. Reflect.’

  ‘I think, Sir John, that we are getting on delicate ground.’

  ‘Of course we are.’ Appleby was suddenly brusque. ‘Just keep on listening to me for a little. The word, and its derivatives, may be used in several senses. One may reflect on something. Or one may see oneself reflected in a mirror.’

  ‘And if one is in a well-lit room, and one advances to a window when it is dusk outside’ – Bagot paused with a full sense of drama on this – ‘one sees what is in fact one’s own reflection approaching one. It is idle, Sir John, to deny that we are on common ground here.’

  ‘Lord Osprey is in what you have called a “jumpy” condition. He makes to close those curtains, imagines he sees an intruder, closes them abruptly, and cries out that an intruder is there. Miss Minnychip, an impressionable woman, believes herself to have seen what Lord Osprey believes himself to have seen – and the episode is over. Or not quite, Mr Bagot. There remains your own part in it. And that might be viewed unsympathetically by anyone not cognisant of the excellence of your motive. Its devotion, as it may justly be termed.’ Appleby had taken his fence boldly, and the ball (slightly to vary the metaphor) was now in Bagot’s court. And Bagot responded with admirable candour.

  ‘Everything you say is true, Sir John.’

  ‘And you were the only person in the room, Mr Bagot, with sufficient intelligence instantly to see the plain fact of the matter. You then went through – and you will forgive me the expression – something of a charade. You felt that Lord Osprey’s nervous balance was in jeopardy, and you had the chauffeur join you in hunting for somebody you knew didn’t exist. I am obliged to say that your failing to explain the matter of the reflection there and then seems to me to have been an error of judgement – as has been your reluctance to come forward with the truth of the matter later. But your motive was admirable. I wholly commend it.’ Appleby was silent for a moment after telling this monstrous fib. ‘But, at the same time, I must point out what very serious consequences have followed.’

  ‘Serious consequences, Sir John?’

  ‘Circumstances have conspired to persuade us all that there really was an intruder, and that he returned later by the same route and murdered Lord Osprey. This, once accepted at least as a hypothesis, eliminated an entire group of people from our enquiry. Everybody, in fact, who was in the library at the time of the first appearance of our supposed murderer. Once admit that that appearance was a figment – a mere trick of optics, one may say – and the entire field is wide open again.’

  ‘I think it was that Trumfitt,’ Bagot said obstinately. ‘Killing a man that way just wasn’t refined. None of the family, and none of the guests either, would have done it just so. We’ve heard tell, I believe, of Trumfitt drowning kittens, and that’s not far from killing pigs. And it’s one that would do that might slit a human throat the way his lordship was.’ Bagot’s conviction here was obviously sincere. The collapse of his elegant English witnessed to the fact.

  ‘I must go and have a word with the Detective-Inspector,’ Appleby said. ‘And with some of the family and guests too. Nobody has departed yet, I take it?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir. But I detect a certain mood of impatience to be abroad.’

  ‘Do you indeed, Mr Bagot? I’m not sure I don’t feel that way inclined myself.’

  ‘There is talk of the late train from Great Clusters. It presents us with a small difficulty. A huddled dinner is always an uncomfortable affair. The cook and I have conferred on the matter, and our inclination is towards a light collation at seven o’clock.’

  ‘That will be the best thing, no doubt.’ Appleby, who didn’t feel that he had anything to contribute to this particular problem, had moved towards the door of Bagot’s pantry.

  ‘And Mr Broadwater has taken sandwiches.’

  ‘The dickens he has!’ Appleby had come to a halt. ‘Do you mean he has gone off fishing again?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Sir John. Mr Broadwater’s devotion to rod and line is notorious among us. And he asked me to fill his pocket-flask with cognac, saying something about the treacherous evening vapours.’

  ‘They are to be guarded against, no doubt – as all treachery has to be. Neglect that, and you may walk straight into danger.’

  In the corridor, Appleby encountered Miss Minnychip. She stopped him.

  ‘My dear Sir John! Such a curious thing. My housekeeper has just rung up to tell me.’

  ‘Has she, indeed?’ Appleby reflected that at Clusters he was decidedly encountering the moneyed classes. Even this maiden lady, who so clearly regarded herself as living on a shoe-string, employed a housekeeper. ‘I hope the message was an agreeable one.’

  ‘I don’t think it was of practical interest. But gratifying, all the same. It was about a Mr Rackstraw. I think that was the name, although it sounds rather an odd one. He had paid a call, but without writing ahead. Rather on the informal side, that. But one knows what Americans are.’

  ‘An American, is he – this Mr Rackstraw?’ Appleby’s small dissimulation here was automatic; irony in its strictest Socratic sense had long been habitual with him. ‘Did he leave word of what his business was?’

  ‘It appeared that he wants to buy my late father’s collection of coins. Just think of that! Dealing in such things is Mr Rackstraw’s regular line of business, it appears. And he is touring the country in pursuit of it.’

  ‘That is most interesting.’ Rackstraw, Appleby judged, when approaching a really major prize such as the Osprey Collection, presumably found it advantageous to convey the impression of enormous independent wealth. ‘Are you going to be tempted by him?’

  ‘Certainly not. Upon my death, all my property is to go to a great nephew, a thoroughly reliable young man. I have suggested to him that he present the Minnychip Collection to the University of Oxford, which he will no doubt do.’

  ‘That is very proper, no doubt.’ Appleby found himself hoping that the great-nephew, faced with this presumably unexpected windfall, would indeed prove to be reliable. ‘There is much to be said for moderation in collections of one sort or another. It is the really whopping ones that tend to bring trouble.’

  ‘I suppose that to be so.’ Miss Minnychip appeared slightly perplexed. ‘Whopping’ was perhaps a vulgarism outside her vocabulary. ‘How hardly shall they that have riches,’ she said, ‘enter into the kingdom of God. And the rich he hath sent empty away. I hope that nothing of the kind befalls dear Adrian, now that he has entered upon so large a patrimony. Happily, Honoria Wimpole is a thoroughly sensible girl.’

  This last remark startled Appleby a good deal, since he had believed himself alone in spotting which way the wind was blowing in that quarter.

  ‘And I hope, Sir John, that this horrible murder is about to be cleared up.’ Miss Minnychip had returned to practical matters. ‘People are beginning to wonder about that last train. I myself simply drove over to Clusters, and have no problem. One knows, of course, what dreadful things can happen to motorists nowadays. But my journey, happily, is very short.’

  ‘I am sure it will be entirely uneventful, Miss Minnychip. As for the mystery of Lord Osprey’s death, it is now going to be cleared up in no time at all. There is nothing complicated about it.’

  And with this drastic assessment of a day’s work, Appleby took leave of Miss Minnychip, and went on his way
to find Detective-Inspector Ringwood.

  But first he found himself having to converse with Rupert Quickfall. The barrister was standing in a relaxed attitude, hands in pockets, before one of the two enormous windows flanking the main entrance to Clusters. He seemed to be eyeing with some displeasure the view thus afforded of the causeway with the moat on either side of it.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Appleby. A bit of a mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, not really, Quickfall. I rather think it’s beginning to clear up a little.’

  ‘Oh, that! I didn’t mean the mystery of our host’s nasty end. I meant merely its physical setting: this ridiculous agglomeration they call Clusters. Actually, it isn’t a bad name for it, if it comes to that. A cluster of disparate architectural styles owning no kinship each with another. Walk around, and you don’t know within half-a-dozen centuries just where you’re perambulating. Naturally, nothing can be done about it now. But at least our deceased friend could have got rid of his absurd moat. Drained it, and filled it in, and brought his park right up to his windows as advocated long ago by dear old Capability Brown.’

  ‘No doubt.’ Appleby found this topic singularly uninteresting, and had no inclination to disguise the fact.

  ‘Dreary prospect,’ Quickfall said, nodding towards the window. ‘Tiresome time of year – and hour. Dusk beginning to gather already, but in an indecisive sort of way. A few bats around, and presently there will be a good many more. Did I hear you say the murder is due to solve itself soon?’

  ‘It won’t exactly do that. Not without a bit of a shove, you know. But there can be little doubt, to my mind, about the identity of the perpetrator.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘That’s rather a different matter. Just how things fell out as they did is, so far, distinctly to seek.’

  ‘Not an unfamiliar state of the case, my dear Appleby. If you were a barrister, and had been in practice as long as I have, you’d know that the streets are crowded by men and women known with complete assurance to be homicides, but in whose particular case there just hadn’t been anything like adequate evidence to take into court.’