Appleby And Honeybath

by Michael Innes

  The library door was open; a single low light was on; and the notoriously unfrequented room had become bewilderingly the setting of a nocturnal levee. Mrs Mustard certainly seemed to have just got out of bed; she might have been described as clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful; from a capacious woollen handbag which she carried there protruded what appeared to be a planchette and a tambourine. What she was doing here at this unholy hour defied speculation. Inspector Denver and two uniformed constables did not. It came to Appleby that he might almost have expected them. In a corner of his mind there must have lodged the knowledge that the obtrusive departure of the police from Grinton had been a thoroughly bogus affair; that the wily Denver had in fact been baiting a trap. In addition to the spiritually-minded Mrs Mustard what the trap had caught was Terence Grinton (not that Terence hadn’t a perfect right to visit at any hour this imposing part of his property), Giles Tancock, and Hallam Hillam.

  Terence held the centre of the stage. He also held a revolver – and this was plainly the weapon the discharge of which had broken in upon Appleby’s detective cogitations. But it didn’t look as if the outraged householder had positively been trying to murder – or even wing – another of the participants in the gathering. He seemed rather to have discharged the weapon warningly and wrathfully in air. There was a scattering of gilded plasterwork on the floor. And just beneath a cornice, blind but many-minded Homer had ceased to preside over the scene. Homer, at least, had been no Hellenic marble, but plaster too. Only the neck and shoulders were left of him.

  Faced by this unexpected congregation, Appleby found it to be Denver’s processes of mind that were easiest to come by. Denver had tumbled to the fact (which, after all, was fairly obvious) that the locale of the Grinton mystery was its point of cardinal significance. Things hadn’t just happened to happen in the library; they had happened because of the library. This was certain. But as well as a certainty there was something that could be guessed at. The solitude of the library was seldom intruded upon. One of the Grintons’ guests, the artist Mr Honeybath, had chanced so to intrude. He had come upon something distinctly unexpected, had hastened to seek help, and within a very short time had returned along with Sir John Appleby. These two men had in turn and together come upon another unexpected set-up; and at that point it might be said that investigation had begun. This sequence of events carried at least a suggestion of interruption. Honeybath, in fact, had conceivably broken in upon an unfinished activity. For somebody or other something in the library remained unachieved – perhaps simply unlocated. Appear to abandon the library; leave it, so to speak, to its own devices. The interested and interrupted party might seek an early opportunity to return.

  This, Appleby felt, had been good if rather speculative thinking. And it had borne fruit. Only what Denver and his nocturnal ambush had emerged upon had been an unexpected cloud of witnesses. Denver was clearly at something of a loss, but at this moment he was putting a bold face on the matter.

  ‘And will you please tell me,’ he was saying to Terence Grinton, ‘how you came to be discharging a firearm in this room in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Why the devil should I?’ This came from Grinton at his maximum bellow, and he bore every appearance of being minded to discharge the firearm all over again. ‘It’s my own room in my own house, isn’t it, confound you?’ It was detectably in considerable confusion of mind that Grinton advanced this blustering argument. He was both bewildered and scared: there could be no doubt of that. ‘And what are you doing here, anyway? Didn’t we tell you to go away, and take those fellows along with you? Do you consider yourself entitled to burgle the place simply because you have an escort of a couple of coppers? Who has issued a warrant entitling you to behave in this way? Name the magistrate, and show me what he has signed to. I’ll have your Chief Constable know about your conduct.’

  This speech, it seemed to Appleby, contrived to be at once imbecile and formidable. In a sense, the owner of Grinton undeniably had the law on his side. But it only meant that the man had to be brought to a better mind. Appleby spoke.

  ‘Grinton,’ he said peaceably, ‘I hope I don’t intrude, or speak out of turn. But I must point out that when a firearm is discharged there is always a possibility that the act has been intended to endanger human life. Until that has been cleared up, the fact that you are on your own ground is totally irrelevant. Do calm down, and try to understand that.’

  Grinton’s response to this was surprisingly sensible. He gave a brisk kick at the plaster debris at his feet, and simultaneously pointed upwards at the demolished bust of the author of the Iliad. ‘I fired the thing,’ he bellowed, ‘only to scare the lights out of that blasted woman.’ And now he pointed at Mrs Mustard. ‘One of my wife’s crackpot crowd, behaving like an imbecile while all sane people are in bed.’

  This was scarcely a courteous manner of describing a guest, but the lady herself seemed scarcely offended by it. She bore a solemn and rapt expression, like one who has become adept – Appleby thought – at attaining a state of Stodge or the Higher Indifference. And the impression of a remove from common mortals was now enhanced by Mrs Mustard’s raising a hand in air and inscribing on it with an index finger a complex if invisible hieroglyphic of what could only be the deepest mystic significance.

  ‘Spirits,’ Mrs Mustard said, ‘walk abroad at night.’

  This, after so impressive a lead-up, came as an almost banal remark, and for a moment nobody had any comment to offer. It was into silence, therefore, that a further figure now walked. It was Burrow, the learned butler. Burrow was carrying a poker. He was conservatively attired in a striped nightshirt and a nightcap with a tassel. The effect, although grotesque rather than ghostly, had come pat upon Mrs Mustard’s assertion, and its effect was to evoke from Hallam Hillam – like Giles Tancock hitherto silent – a shrill burst of hysterical laughter. Hillam – Appleby observed – was also quivering all over. What was going on around him bore every appearance of being merely ludicrous, so he was entitled to mirth of a sort. But his nervous agitation spoke of something else as well. It had the feel of extreme bafflement. He was a little chap who in any circumstances would suggest something rather simian. At present he was like a monkey that just can’t reach a peanut through the bars of its cage.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Burrow was saying placidly to his employer. He had evidently decided that the poker was not required. ‘Can I be of service in any way?’

  ‘You can bring me a large glass of brandy.’ Terence produced this in a relaxed tone, as if something reasonable could at last be said. But then abruptly he was roaring again. ‘And some chloroform for this confounded woman.’

  ‘Spirits walk abroad at night,’ Mrs Mustard reiterated, conscious of being brought back into the picture. ‘I am come to confront their questionable shapes. To establish rapport and reveal the truth. The obligation came to me in a dream.’

  Everybody gaped at Mrs Mustard. Or everybody except Burrow, who was withdrawing from the library to fetch the brandy – and presumably the chloroform if it could be found. And at this point Inspector Denver made a heroic attempt to control the situation.

  ‘Madam,’ he said to Mrs Mustard, ‘I am concerned to reveal the truth too. Am I to understand that you have made your way to the library at this hour simply because it has…has been revealed to you in a dream that this possibly criminal affair can be elucidated by…by supernatural communications?’

  ‘You are a sensible man,’ Mrs Mustard said. ‘Precisely that. But it is now in vain. The profane vulgar are around us and have shattered the possibility of revelation. Adopt your own methods. Good night.’

  With this civil salutation Mrs Mustard gathered her white samite around her, picked up her bag, and swept from the room. It wasn’t before one of the constables had made to advance upon her, apparently with some dim notion of effecting an arrest. He was checked by his superior.

  ‘Good night, madam,’ Denver said, and waited for the door to close b
ehind the lady. ‘And now, gentlemen, my own methods may be resumed.’

  But the door immediately opened again. It was by that mysterious agency known only to upper servants, since Burrow, now framed in it, was bearing in both hands a large silver salver on which were disposed a decanter and a substantial array of rummers. A rapid count of these would have revealed him as considering that in the present exceptional circumstances even police constables might be reckoned entitled to their tot.

  ‘The brandy, sir,’ Burrow said. ‘Would you wish me to remain?’

  ‘Pour it out, man, and take some yourself.’ The sight of this recruitment had at once thrown Terence into a hospitable mood. ‘Mr Denver here may want to have a word with you, blast him. Very naturally, no doubt.’ It was in some haste that Terence had added this last moderating remark. ‘Denver, go ahead and get through with it, like a good fellow. We’ve had it once already today, you know.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ Denver said.

  ‘To be sure – yesterday.’ Terence had now managed a considerable gulp of brandy. ‘I’m damned if I knew what I was letting myself in for. It goes to show that you never can tell.’

  Perhaps only Appleby and Denver found this rather a strange remark. The two constables were occupied in making it conscientiously clear that they didn’t drink on duty; Giles Tancock had withdrawn into a kind of wary reserve; Hillam was still in his obscure fever of bafflement or impatience; Burrow, although perhaps a man whom very little escaped, could not be detected as doing other than attend to the duties of his station.

  ‘It should perhaps be made clear,’ Denver said, ‘that a standard police procedure has been in operation. Placing under continued surveillance the site of a crime or suspected crime. Hence the presence of these officers and myself, concealed in the farthest alcove here in the library. Not ideal, since the position doesn’t command the other alcoves. But better than nothing. And the measure is a perfectly normal one. I have no doubt Sir John will support me in that.’

  Appleby said nothing, but did venture on a slightly ambiguous nod. It was his private opinion that Denver had gone decidedly out on a limb. It was Terence Grinton who spoke.

  ‘Dash it all, Denver,’ he said, ‘that’s simply not good enough. I ought to have been – what’s the blasted word? – apprised of your intention. You’ve been high-handed – very high-handed indeed.’

  ‘Well, sir, it has been this way.’ Denver seemed concerned to be conciliatory. ‘I’ve had to consider the possibility that Mr Honeybath’s discovery in this room, and the events immediately following upon that, in some fashion got in the way of something else. I have to admit it sounds rather an obscure idea, but somehow it stays with me. A matter of untransacted business, as it were.’

  ‘Untransacted fiddlesticks!’ It was definitely as one of his roars that Grinton produced this: rather an alarmed and startled roar, Appleby felt. And Appleby felt, too, that Inspector Denver was showing considerable intellectual resource. It might even be that he had a grasp on the root of the matter.

  ‘Well, sir, that’s as may be.’ Denver was quite unperturbed. ‘But grant that I have this idea in my head, and you will see that if I had mentioned my intention to you, you would have been put at a disadvantage, in a manner of speaking. You would have been the one person in this household in a position to avoid walking into what might be called an ambush. Because you knew it was there, you see.’

  This ingenious sophistry, although it would scarcely have stood up to cross-examination, served its purpose of confusing Terence Grinton, who mumbled something to the effect that Denver had better get on.

  ‘Quite so, sir. And we must take the sequence of events. Here we are – three policemen hiding none too comfortably in an alcove and in total darkness. Then a light flicks on – a single light – and we see that Mr Tancock has entered the library. Mr Tancock, would that be right?’

  ‘Of course it’s right. I entered the library.’

  ‘Just so, Mr Tancock. And why not? Mr Grinton’s son-in-law, perhaps experiencing a sleepless night, drops in to find a book to take him through the small hours. Nothing in it.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Tancock said. ‘As good a perhaps as any other chatter you could invent.’ Tancock had fixed on Denver the eye of a duellist. ‘Only it sounds bogus, and is meant to.’

  ‘But not the first book to come to hand,’ Denver continued. ‘Over there in a corner there’s an unobtrusive little circular staircase leading down to a very large storage space beneath the library. No end of further books down there. And down Mr Tancock goes.’

  ‘Perfectly true,’ Tancock said. ‘Down I go.’

  ‘And stay there for quite some time. We don’t take any action, these two constables and myself. There’s no way out from down there. You have to come up into the library again. So we can converse with Mr Tancock later. But now somebody else arrives. Mrs Mustard. Now, we know about Mrs Mustard. If there’s anybody in this house I’m confident about it’s Mrs Mustard.’ Denver paused on this surprising remark, and then appealed to Appleby. ‘Wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Appleby was not very sure how to express himself. ‘Mrs Mustard goes in for the mysterious, or at least the mystic, in a big way. But transparently, so to speak.’

  ‘Just so, sir. Harmlessly off her head. Like dancing or howling dervishes. They do turn up on the fringes of things from time to time. But not as really having a finger in the pie.’ Denver seemed unconscious of having plunged into a wealth of imagery. ‘She wanders around for quite some time, now within observation, and now poking into one alcove or another. For a moment it looks as if she is going to discover more than she bargains for, in the shape of those two constables and myself. But then in comes Mr Hillam.’

  ‘In comes Mr Hillam,’ Hillam said. It was at once clear that Hillam proposed taking a leaf out of Tancock’s book and presenting an imperturbable front to the world. But perhaps he wasn’t going to be so successful. He licked his lips. ‘Certainly I come in. So what?’

  ‘More insomnia, perhaps,’ Denver said. ‘After all, it had been a disturbing day. But Mr Hillam scarcely gets a chance to find a book. Discovering a light on seems to have disconcerted him a little, and perhaps he hasn’t got his bearings in the library quite as Mr Tancock has. He makes an indecisive move or two, and then becomes aware of Mrs Mustard. Of course Mrs Mustard wasn’t pleased to encounter Mr Hillam. He would disturb the aura, or the like. And Mr Hillam, for some reason, wasn’t at all pleased either. Within seconds, these two were ordering one another out of the room. It became a regular shindy. And in no time it was clear that Mrs Mustard was winning.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ Hillam said. ‘I deny it.’

  ‘There was Mr Hillam,’ Denver went on implacably, ‘backing right into that great fireplace, and the lady waving her spiritualism or whatever right under his nose. And then he tripped up among all those mediaeval fire irons and firedogs and the like with a most unholy clatter. That shook both of them a bit, and they began to sort themselves out. And arguing again. Then in came Mr Grinton, roused by the din and brandishing a revolver. He says it was Mrs Mustard made him really mad, but it seemed to me it was Mr Hillam too. He fired the thing at the ceiling – I suppose with the idea of scaring the lights out of the two of them.’ Denver hesitated for a moment, perhaps conscious of having deviated into unofficial language. ‘Then up bobs Mr Tancock from the basement, and out we come from our alcove. Sir John comes in. Mr Burrow comes in with his poker. It’s like an old play.’

  It seemed to Appleby an accurate comparison, although it would have been a little more specific if instead of ‘play’ Denver had said ‘farce’ or even ‘bedroom comedy’: the sort of entertainment in which, through a sufficient variety of doors and even windows, people tumble inconveniently and surprisingly into one another’s company. But reflection showed it to be a little simpler than that. The general effect had been crowded and bizarre, but the majority of the characters involved had turned up in the
library with at least some colouring of a sober occasion. Denver and his constables had their duty to perform, although a night-long lurking in a house unbeknown to its owner was perhaps a shade over the odds. That Terence Grinton, having heard an unaccountable clangour in his library, should have hastened to investigate it, was entirely in order, except that then proceeding to fire off a revolver was indisputably to overreact to the situation. And that Mrs Mustard, granted the pervasive weirdness of the universe she inhabited, should have thought to invocate spirits in a chamber from which a dead body had achieved a feat of bilocation was explicable after a fashion. Appleby himself was in roughly the same category as his host – as indeed was Burrow with his poker and his brandy. It was only Hillam and Tancock who had yet, as it were, to explain themselves.

  Denver, being in no doubt about this, took up the point at once.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ he said, ‘something at present quite unaccountable took place in this room, and there was a further unaccountable event in the area one arrives in by going through that dummy door. There is a distinct possibility – to put it no higher than that – of some criminal activity being involved. So it is reasonable to investigate anything again unaccountable that takes place here in the library only a few hours later. And what I come to first, Mr Tancock, is your entering it in the middle of the night.’

  ‘You’ve been good enough to explain that yourself, Inspector. I couldn’t get to sleep, and I came to borrow a book.’ Tancock produced this with quite as much irony as was at all proper. ‘I called that bogus at once, and bogus it is.’

  ‘Then, sir, may we be favoured with the truth of the matter?’

  ‘Certainly – although it may sound a little odd too. Also, I must apologize in advance. It’s true I couldn’t get to sleep. I was worried about something, and it was a worry reflecting a certain lack of confidence in the police.’