A Connoisseur's Case

by Michael Innes

It was John’s voice, sounding peculiarly hollow. And it so sounded, of course, because it came from the recesses of the tunnel.

  ‘For pity’s sake, John!’ Judith took a careful glance around as she spoke. ‘No Channing-Kennedy. No sign of anybody.’

  ‘Splendid. Only don’t let your modesty be offended. I’ve left my clothes behind that gate.’ In the murk of the tunnel a dimly luminous figure appeared, almost waist-deep in the stagnant water. And it was certainly John. He scrambled blithely to the bank – stark naked, as far as she could see, and very muddy indeed. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I can get much of it off. But probably it’s healthy. It will dry on under my clothes as we walk home. Very similar things are endured in a medicinal way.’

  ‘And just what prompted you to plunge in there? ‘Judith watched her husband seek the exiguous shelter of a ragged hedge and there begin shaking himself like a spaniel. ‘Have you made away with poor Mr Binns, and have you been concealing a body?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a bad place for such a purpose. As a matter of fact, the tunnel is stuffing with bodies. They put them in there to petrify. But perhaps they’re very old ones. Leggers, probably. I noticed they had well developed legs.’

  ‘Don’t be so idiotic. John. I’ve just had a most painful interview with that wretched Mrs Coulson, who’s been making a frightfully bad job of adultery or near-adultery. And then you must fool like this.’

  ‘Well, well! With that fellow West, I suppose? You can look now. I’ve put on my trousers.’

  ‘You’re quite intolerable. And due for a frightful chill. Don’t you know that you’re a man in late middle age?’

  ‘Middle middle age. How difficult wet flies are.’

  ‘And now there’s a village maiden coming – which serves you right.’ Suddenly Judith’s voice changed. ‘John, it’s not a village maiden. It’s Daphne Binns. She must know her father’s here.’

  ‘But not that we are. We can have a very timely little talk.’

  ‘I had a telephone message,’ Daphne Binns said. ‘It seems my father is here.’ She frankly stared at Appleby, whose person still bore some evidence of his recent exploit – and who, even in open air, probably smelt of something like ditchwater. ‘Have you been diving for more corpses?’

  ‘Something of that sort, Miss Binns. And I’ve persuaded your father to go for a walk. He’s been worrying a good deal. I thought you and I might clear the air a little.’

  Daphne wrinkled her nose.

  ‘You might well do that,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. And I promise to have a good scrubbing before our meeting tonight.’

  ‘Our meeting? I don’t know anything about a meeting.’

  ‘There has been no general announcement of it yet. But I somehow think that everybody will be able to attend. It will be at Scroop after dinner. And we shall clear up this unfortunate affair for good. In fact, we shall clear up quite a lot. To my mind, everybody will be the better for it.’

  ‘I don’t in the least know what you mean. But I think you are a terribly interfering person.’

  Appleby gave a decided nod.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s true. But – this time at least – it’s been a matter of fate casting me for the role. I’m the unexpected turn in the story, Miss Binns.’

  Judith had climbed up on a gate. It was her favourite rural posture.

  ‘What they call the deus ex machina,’ she interjected with mild malice. ‘Or ex whatever the Latin is for a canal.’

  Daphne turned towards the tunnel and stared at it.

  ‘Are we going to have a preliminary chat here?’ she asked. ‘I always disliked this place. I used to dream of having to swim through that tunnel.’

  ‘We can go into the inn, if you like,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Go ahead here. I don’t mind.’ Daphne found a stump and sat down on it. ‘But if everything is going to be cleared up’ – she hesitated – ‘does that mean that you know who killed the – the old man?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Then I can’t see–’

  ‘But I can make a good many eliminations. You see, I know why he was killed. As you may imagine, that helps a good deal.’

  ‘Well, then – why was he killed?’ Daphne spoke almost pertly, but Appleby saw that she was trembling.

  ‘It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and I’m very sorry that I don’t think I should say anything more at the moment, Miss Binns. There are several points that require some thinking about.’

  ‘You seem to have been doing plenty of that.’

  ‘So has everybody else, I imagine. It’s almost certain that everybody – everybody who didn’t kill Crabtree, that is – has by now a pretty fixed notion of who did.’

  Daphne was startled.

  ‘You mean there’s somebody we all suspect?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’d say that each of you, by this time, has his or her own favourite suspect. Yourself for instance. Haven’t you got a suspect?’

  ‘Not all the time. But sometimes – yes. Sometimes I think that I must have killed Crabtree.’ Daphne Binns had produced this strange statement with a sudden and explosive violence which she must have recognized as odd. For at once she added: ‘My God, the ghastly Binnses!’

  ‘Have you dreamt you killed him – as you’ve dreamt of having to swim through that tunnel?’

  ‘This is a silly conversation, and you’re making me say any silly thing that comes into my head.’ Daphne was showing signs of the familiar junior Binns’ panic. ‘I think we should stop it.’

  ‘Before we do that, Miss Binns, what about trying again? Have you an also-ran? If you discovered that you yourself hadn’t killed Crabtree, who would be the person you would think of next?’

  Daphne Binns produced a cigarette case and took out a cigarette with an unsteady hand. As an afterthought she offered one to Judith.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said.

  ‘Your brother, by any chance?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Daphne looked round about her rather desperately. ‘Peter is – he’s far too damned feeble. I’d say it was – well, I’d say it was Hollywood.’

  ‘That interests me very much. You judge Hollywood to be a sinister character?’

  ‘He’s been at Scroop House a long time. He was there when – when Crabtree was there. And I’ve heard that very bad things were said of him. Perhaps he had committed horrible crimes that Crabtree knew about. So he killed Crabtree as soon as Crabtree came back.’

  ‘Have you any other reason for suspecting Hollywood?’

  ‘No…yes.’ Daphne had hesitated. ‘He told a lie. About where he was when it happened.’

  ‘Certainly he did. But how do you know about it?’

  ‘Oh, damn!’ Daphne came out with this admission of incompetence naively. ‘You’ll have to guess, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That isn’t terribly difficult. I think that you and Mrs Coulson are a good deal in one another’s confidence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The lie worked two ways, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But I won’t talk about it.’

  ‘Very well. Let us just take it that Daphne Binns is your first suspect, Hollywood your second – and that your brother doesn’t come in at all. By the way, would you say that you and Peter are in one another’s confidence?’

  ‘There’s not much we don’t know about each other, I suppose.’

  ‘You know about Peter and the money?’

  ‘The money?’ Daphne’s eyes rounded. ‘He’s owned up?’

  ‘Put it that the facts have owned up for him. Do you think that Crabtree deliberately showed him the hiding place, or that he discovered it for himself by spying?’

  ‘Crabtree showed it to him. Crabtree was–’ Daphne broke off. ‘It’s no good my saying anything about Crabtree. I never set eyes on him.’

  ‘Come, come – that is quite inaccurate.’ Appleby looked attentively at the confused girl crouched on the stump i
n front of him. ‘You mean that you don’t remember much about him, which is quite a different thing. Actually, you have quite strong feelings about him, haven’t you? Is that because you know of your father’s regarding him as a bad influence on your brother?’

  ‘I haven’t any feelings. Except that I’m sure he came back here for some bad reason. He wanted to – to make trouble somehow.’

  ‘Very well. But let us go back to the money. Either because he was thoughtless, or because he was wicked, Crabtree showed Peter some little place of concealment which he had constructed for old Mrs Coulson, and where she had hidden a large sum of money. Peter helped himself to small sums from time to time, and I think this became a kind of guilty secret between him and Crabtree – whom it doesn’t, incidentally, exhibit in a very amiable light. An eight- or nine-year-old boy would naturally pilfer from the hoard in a small way, since large sums would be of no use to him. As Peter grew older, he went on pilfering; and as you grew older, you came to know about it. I expect that’s right?’

  Daphne said nothing, but she nodded slightly.

  ‘Your father ceased being Bertram Coulson’s tenant, and you all left Scroop House, when Peter was about fifteen. It is a five- or ten-pound note that is useful to a fifteen year-old. But then you and he began coming back on visits. Much of the money was still there, and for Peter the money was the main attraction of a visit to Scroop. Right again?’

  ‘Absolutely right.’ Daphne flashed this out. ‘And it was meaner, somehow, stealing when a guest here, than it had been when the place seemed to be ours.’

  ‘Perhaps so. But possibly you can answer one question. When Peter was grown up, or felt himself to be grown up, why didn’t he take the whole of whatever remained? He could have used it with discreet gradualness.’

  ‘Peter would never do anything in a large way. Small-scale operations are always his line. Didn’t I tell you that pinching or slapping the–’

  ‘Yes, but we mustn’t go off into irrelevancies.’

  ‘Very well. The largest sum he ever lifted was £300, not terribly long ago, when he badly wanted a better car.

  ‘Do you think that the news that Crabtree was coming back would put him in a panic?’

  ‘I know it would. I saw it did.’ Daphne lifted her chin scornfully. ‘And such a little thing!’

  ‘People have come back out of the past to a much graver effect, Miss Binns, I agree.’

  ‘Yes, they have.’

  ‘Would Peter’s panic make him desperate?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’d soon begin – well, begin ignoble calculations. That there might be a bit of a row, but that he wouldn’t be put in jug. That sort of thing. Peter has rather a worm’s mind. I’m afraid I don’t sound a very nice kid sister. But I’m quite fond of him, really.’

  ‘I’m not disposed to disbelieve that. Now, may I come back for a moment to Hollywood? We needn’t discuss why his lie was convenient to Mrs Coulson. But why was it convenient to him? He may be an innocent man, who followed an ill-judged impulse to make doubly sure he wasn’t suspected. Or he may have had some more substantial reason. Mrs Coulson herself seems to think there is something mysterious about him, and even that he may be in the same sort of danger that Crabtree was. Have you any opinion on that?’

  ‘None at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You can’t see anything that might serve to connect Hollywood and Crabtree?’

  ‘No, I can’t. Unless–’ Daphne broke off.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They were both womanisers, rather – weren’t they?’

  ‘Well, that might be a link.’ Appleby spoke absently, as if the conversation had drifted in a direction of no great moment. He took a pace or two towards the canal, looked thoughtfully at the water, and turned back. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘Do you think that there is much, or any, of that £2,000 still there?’

  ‘Yes, quite a lot. I suppose old Sara Coulson was a bit of a miser to hide it away. But Peter is really a bit of a miser too. I think he would hate the idea of not having this hoard to go to secretly when he is at Scroop.’

  ‘I see. And he’s not afraid that somebody else may find it?’ Appleby seemed suddenly struck by another thought. ‘By the way, can we be certain that old Sara Coulson didn’t establish other hiding places as well? The gossip seems to be that Crabtree, in her last years, made quite a habit of constructing such things for her. If she hid money or valuables once, mightn’t she do it several times?’

  ‘I suppose she might. But I don’t see–’

  ‘Rightly or wrongly, some people might conclude from the gossip that Scroop is full of such hoards. They might spend years hunting for them. You’ve never come on anything suspicious in that way? Hollywood, say, crawling around tapping the woodwork?’

  Daphne Binns laughed for the first time.

  ‘I’d put nothing beyond him. But I’ve never seen him on the job. Nor anybody else.’

  ‘And you haven’t heard anything, either? It would be a form of exploration carried on stealthily in the night, one imagines. You’ve never heard strange nocturnal tappings and bumpings and breathings?’

  ‘Well, yes – I have. But it’s probably ghosts. Scroop is pretty old.’

  Appleby laughed in his turn – for Daphne appeared to have been speaking quite seriously.

  ‘It didn’t even terrify you when you were a child?’ he asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t remember anything of the sort then. I’m thinking of much later – just during some of our visits to the Coulsons.’

  ‘I see. Do you think the searcher might be Bertram Coulson himself – searching for the hiding place not of money but of something else?’

  ‘What a queer idea. It would never have come into my head.’

  ‘No doubt you are right. And you have been very kind, Miss Binns, in discussing the affair with me for so long. I mustn’t detain you.’

  Daphne stood up.

  ‘Do you know, Sir John, I like you better when you’re not making polite speeches? Aren’t we rather shying away from things? And are you going to get hold of Peter, and start fishing after me with him, as you’ve been fishing after him with me?’

  ‘It is a police technique, I confess. But I see no need to discuss you with your brother.’

  ‘Because you know all the answers already?’

  ‘The relevant ones – yes.’

  Daphne Binns had gone pale. Now, suddenly, her colour rose.

  ‘You know the filthy truth?’ she said. ‘You know that, if I killed Crabtree, it was because I couldn’t stick the thought of his presenting himself at Scroop – of his walking into my life – as my father?’

  Judith Appleby got off her gate, walked over to Daphne, and shared her stump with her. John, she felt, had managed this turn in the affair rather well. It was much better that Daphne should, in a sense, have come forward with this melancholy piece of family history than that it should have emerged with the effect of being badgered out of her.

  ‘I know,’ Appleby was saying quietly, ‘that Crabtree may well have been your father. And I know that, whether sensibly or not, the fact was one which you couldn’t bear to think of as coming to light. It seemed very large and dreadful to you. And I think it has seemed that, too, to the man whom the law regards as your father today. That father – Alfred Binns – has no notion that any inkling of the story has ever come your way.’

  ‘I pieced it together from hints. Or rather Peter and I did.’

  ‘So I have supposed. And the fact will make Mr Binns’ task the easier now. When he heard of Crabtree’s return, he was perhaps – as he first told me – a little uneasy on Peter’s account. But his real anxiety – which he wouldn’t disclose to me – was on account of this other thing. He felt that you must be told the truth, and he came down yesterday to do so. He hesitated – and fate stepped strangely in. That is his story.’

  ‘His story, Sir John?’

  ‘For the moment we had better call it that. He h
as his story, you have your story, everybody has a story. Tonight, as I have said, we shall get them sorted out. Go on to the inn now. Your father will have returned there.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘My dear child, it would be folly – and cruel as well – to begin calling him anything else now.’

  The Applebys walked back to Pryde in the late afternoon, and Judith described her interview with Mrs Coulson in the church.

  ‘No wonder,’ Appleby said, ‘that the poor lady was anxious to see Crabtree’s death explained in terms of the remote past. She was afraid that West might have done it, simply to protect his professional status.’

  ‘Yes. But in some fantastic corner of her mind she would almost have liked to think that he had done it. It would have given him a sort of status as a demon lover that he is a good deal short of measuring up to. As for hoping that Crabtree’s death would be explained as resulting from events long ago, I don’t think she has been quite wholehearted. They might somehow touch her husband rather nearly – and I imagine she is very fond of him still. Again, she is clearly fond of Daphne. And it may well be that she knows the child’s secret.’ Judith paused. ‘By the way, how did you tumble to it?’

  ‘As so often, the truth just built itself up. When we first saw Peter and Daphne, I recognized Alfred Binns in Peter at once. Daphne, on the other hand, puzzled me. I had a vague feeling that I had seen her before, and the fact stuck in my head. Then again, when the two children were savaging each other, Daphne said that Crabtree had “shown Peter all sorts of things”, and Peter presently retorted that Crabtree “had got in a lot of places where he shouldn’t”. He was plainly saying something not very nice, and again the thing stuck in my head. But the point at which the truth became inescapable was when I learnt that Alfred Binns had actually paid Crabtree – Crabtree, who had been a great one with the ladies – a substantial sum of money to depart overseas. When I made it clear to Binns that the outline of the affair wasn’t mysterious to me, he told me the final truth of the matter. When Mrs Binns eventually vanished, it was for the purpose of joining her former lover Crabtree in America. But she died soon after.’