Appleby And Honeybath (16 page)

Winter approaching, Mr
Grinton
next made his way to
Naples…

‘God bless my soul!’ Still holding
Reliquiae Grintonianae
open in his hand, Honeybath jumped to his feet, crossed the drawing-room, and stared again at the little Claude. Then he sat down on a sofa and composed himself. ‘John,’ he asked soberly, ‘just what does this mean?’

‘It means that anybody acquainted with that book – including its owner, the admirable Burrow – could see there was a sporting chance that the chaos of the Grinton library harbours somewhere quite a number of drawings and the like by Claude Lorrain. If he came upon that one, framed and casually disposed among innumerable mediocre amateur watercolours in this room, he would feel confirmed in that view of the prospect. Of course I’ve heard of Claude’s
Liber Veritatis
. How many drawings does it run to?’

‘A hundred and ninety-five, I think, plus another five that are not related to known paintings. The whole lot were tucked away at Chatsworth for I don’t know how long. But now, of course, they’re in the British Museum. Incidentally, I don’t think Claude can have got going very seriously on the
Liber
Veritatis
idea until after this rascally Ambrose Grinton’s time. And it isn’t likely that the Reverend Simon Upcott was much of an art historian. But in general his yarn sounds likely enough.’

‘Supposing,’ Judith asked, ‘there really are say a dozen
schizzi
or whatever by Claude hidden away there in the library, what, approximately, might they be worth?’

‘The moon. No other possible answer.’ Honeybath spoke firmly. ‘That fellow Tancock would tell you the market for such things has gone completely mad. Claude is important, and will always be important. And he’s dead. So the theory of scarcity value operates. Buy him, lock him up in a vault, and the theory guarantees you won’t lose your money.’

‘I’m not quite certain about the guarantee,’ Appleby said. He was somewhat sceptical of his friend’s command of political economy. ‘But it’s certain that the value of such a group of drawings would make the value of anything else hidden away in that library look simply silly. Short, say, of the manuscript of
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
.’

‘Surely,’ Honeybath asked, ‘it has been irresponsible of this man Burrow to have been possessed of this information and not to have informed his employer?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Judith said. Judith seemed to have a sense of Terence Grinton’s butler as under her own protection. ‘Burrow is very much an autodidact, and when he read about that stuff lying around a studio floor the penny mightn’t drop with him. I suggest we go to breakfast.’

They moved towards the door, but Honeybath came to a halt beside the little display cabinet containing the Indian divinities.

‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’

‘You have a talent for it, Charles.’ Appleby halted too. ‘What is it, this time? Not more about that dead man’s clothes?’

‘No, no. An incident in this room, yesterday evening. What has put me in mind of it is those little bronzes. It may be nothing very significant. Disturbing all the same.’

‘Out with it.’

‘Well, it was when I noticed the little watercolour by Varley. It was a surprising discovery, lost in the middle of all this family art. I was with Tancock and Hillam, you know. And I was quite excited. I said to them something like, ‘Let’s see if there’s anything more of the same sort,’ and walked on down the room. But Hillam called out to me to have a look at those Indian things, and I saw at once that they are interesting. Hillam started giving names to them, and then that bell went to tell us to wash and brush up for dinner.’

‘And your previous movement had been such,’ Appleby asked, ‘that continuing it would have brought you face to face with Claude’s Tivoli?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘So you think that perhaps Hillam didn’t want you to see it?’

‘Well, I do now. But there wasn’t the slightest impression of anything of the sort at the time. I mean anything like the man being flustered or alerted, or speaking abruptly. So my suspecting anything is a matter of hindsight.’

‘The question seems to be,’ Judith said, ‘what might have succeeded upon your noticing such an unexpected thing in this room. Suppose that Hillam is acquainted with
Reliquiae Grintonianae
, and got himself invited here to Grinton as a consequence. He can’t know who else is, or is not, similarly acquainted with it. Its very suggestive information may just conceivably be latent, as it were, in somebody’s mind; and if on the strength of your indeed spotting the drawing you start talking about Claude and asking questions here and there, the subject may gain a prominence inimical to the success of Hillam’s dark design. If he has a dark design. John, do you think he has a dark design?’

‘Yes,’ Appleby said. ‘I do. Or, if he hasn’t, he has had. A complex situation may have got out of hand from his point of view, and he is thinking twice about remaining in the fray. That’s just one possibility. There are others. And now for breakfast.’

A complex situation, Appleby repeated to himself over his bacon and egg. Commonplace in its elements, possibly, but unusual in what might be called its concatenations, and distractingly bizarre in some of its trimmings. Quite a handful for Inspector Denver.

The Grinton library as subject to two independent if confusingly interwoven schemes of depredation. A long-term one and a short- term one.

Giles Tancock, the auctioneer who knows the right price for a rare book. Who, although Terence Grinton’s son-in-law, has no great expectations in that quarter. Who is hard-up, likely enough, since his wife has expensive and rather silly plans for their children. Tancock no doubt visits his parents-in-law frequently; he knows all about the library and its history; he knows how completely neglected and unfrequented it is. So he falls into the way of quietly tracking down and abstracting such fairly valuable books as are likely to be scattered around amid its chaos. Quite soon he is being thoroughly systematic about this. He brings in the catalogues of antiquarian booksellers as a kind of
aide-mémoire
, and tackles the enormous quantity of stuff down in the cellarage.

Then one day (yesterday in fact) something distinctly awkward happens in the library – although whether he is directly implicated in it or not is at present an unsolved question. And suddenly in the night he realizes that he must have left one of those catalogues behind him. A very recent catalogue, as its number will at once betray. Probably carrying his fingerprints. Awkward. He gets out of bed and steals down to retrieve it. While he is down below, first Mrs Mustard arrives, and then Hillam. Fracas! Enter Terence, who promptly fires his pistol. Tancock decides to emerge, and when he does so makes the discomfiting discovery that police have been lurking around all the time. Finally he spins them a yarn that has at least a certain ingenuity to recommend it.

But the yarn involves the missing body. And the missing body is the crux. And this conjectural history of Giles Tancock affords no explanation of it. No place for the body. Checkmate.

Appleby got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.

Second scheme of depredation: the short-term one, and susceptible of being outlined very succinctly. Hallam Hillam, some sort of art historian. Probably from
Reliquiae Grintonianae
, but perhaps through other professional researches, he learns about Ambrose – or Autolycus – Grinton and his thieved Claudes. Cadges an invitation to Grinton. Spots the Claude in the drawing-room and knows he isn’t on a fool’s errand. Like Tancock, is under some sufficiently powerful impulse to risk a nocturnal visit to the library despite the afternoon’s startling episode there and the subsequent visit of police. It doesn’t seem possible that he has any precise information about where the drawings may be found. There is, of course, nothing about that in the Reverend Simon Upcott’s book. Nevertheless, Hillam contrives to feel himself on the very brink of success. He renders an irritated and thwarted impression, all the same. A jumpy chap. But if this is the whole of his story, the dead man is again left out in the cold. So once more checkmate is the last word.

Appleby had arrived at this bleak conclusion when he became aware of Burrow’s voice murmuring discreetly in his ear.

‘The telephone, Sir John. Mr Denver the policeman.’

‘Appleby here.’

‘Denver speaking. We’ve found the body, Sir John.’

‘Dear me!’ Appleby was constrained to this almost Honeybathlike response by a feeling of something ominous in the air. This chap Denver was reporting to him precisely as if he, Appleby, were in charge of the case. It was absurd and most irregular. Nevertheless, Appleby succumbed at once to what his wife was so fond of borrowing from
Love’s Labour’s Lost
to describe.
A trick of
the old rage
… ‘An American’s body, I take it?’

‘Sir!’

‘Keen observation, Inspector. But Mr Honeybath’s, not mine. Where has it turned up?’

‘At the parish church, Sir John. Or, rather, in its graveyard.’

‘Do you mean somebody has been burying it in the night?’

‘Not exactly that. I’m wondering whether you would care to’ – Denver hesitated for a moment, and then plunged at a bold word – ‘investigate?’

‘Yes.’ (Honesty, after all, is the best policy.)

‘I’ll send a car at once. If, perhaps, you’d care just to take a stroll down the drive.’

‘Why the dickens should I do that?’

‘Well, sir, I think we oughtn’t to advertise too much – not just at the moment we shouldn’t – to the Grintons and their other guests.’

‘Sound policy, Denver. I’ll set out in five minutes.’

So Appleby had to acknowledge to himself, once more, that Denver was a thoroughly good officer. With an uncommon puzzle on his hands, he was only acting sensibly in tapping a considerable fund of experience in such matters when it came his way. Appleby returned to the breakfast-room, murmured to Judith, got into his overcoat, and set off in search of his unnecessary conveyance. The church could be no distance away – and indeed he recalled Honeybath as telling him there was a short cut to it from the back of the house. But no doubt it was a matter of punctilio with Denver that he should arrive in style at this new seat of the inquiry. There was a young uniformed constable in the driver’s seat, and on Appleby’s approach he leapt from it with parade ground smartness. He had clearly been told that he was going to act as chauffeur to a very great man indeed.

‘Well now,’ Appleby said cheerfully as he got into the front seat, ‘have you been involved in this discovery of a dead man?’

‘Yes, sir. I found him, as a matter of fact. A bit of a shock, really.’

‘It comes to us all, sooner or later. Sooner, with me. I hadn’t been on the beat a week when there suddenly was my first corpse. Outside a pub. A pool of blood. Now tell me about this one.’

‘As I drive, sir?’

‘Certainly not. Now, and giving your whole mind to it.’

‘Very good, sir.’ The young man had taken this well. ‘I live in the village – marrying into it, you may say.’

‘You got married to a girl from here, so they found you a house at once and told you to be the village bobby.’

‘About that sir, although the term now seems to be neighbourhood policeman.’

‘Encouraged to be friendly all round.’

‘Just that, sir. With some of them it can be a bit of a strain. But I like talking to the kids. And it’s why, once a week or thereabout, I go into the Grinton Arms for a pint and a chat.’

‘Without your funny hat.’

‘Oh yes, sir, of course. Off-duty kit. And yesterday evening I got talking to an old chap called Bill Mace – or he got talking to me. He has a cottage near the church, and since ever anybody can remember he’s been saying he has lived in it for eighty-seven years. It’s the only dwelling that has a view of the churchyard. He’s an unreliable old gossip is Bill Mace – particularly once a month, which is as often as he can afford to get drunk. But when he starts talking to me I always try to listen. You never know.’

‘A great truth in our walk of life, constable. Yes?’

‘Earlier in the evening, he said, he’d seen a funny thing: a gent going into the church. He said a gent, but may have meant actually a gentleman.’

‘I see.’ Appleby received this mysterious remark seriously as an attempt at precision. ‘There doesn’t seem anything particularly funny in a man going into a church.’

‘It’s more commonly women nowadays.’

‘I suppose that’s true. Devotion has become women’s work. But what arrested the attention of this Bill Mace?’

‘He was carrying a kettle and a frying pan.’

‘Mace was?’

‘No, sir. The gent. Presently he came out again, but returned within a couple of minutes carrying a bed. He took that into the church too. A folding bed, it was.’

‘And then?’

‘Mace says he drew down his blind. He says he was afraid he was seeing things. It’s a trouble with him now and then.’

‘So he took no further action?’

‘No, sir. But I did.’

‘Good. Go on.’

‘I downed the remainder of my pint – it wouldn’t have looked right if I hadn’t – and went straight over to the church. There was nothing out of the way in it – so it looked as if Mace had been seeing things, just as he said. But I tried the vestry, which leads off one side of the chancel. The vicar never locks it up, although I’ve warned him more than once. Well, there the bed was – and the kettle and frying pan and a fold-up table and a chair I knew didn’t belong there as well. It wasn’t very accountable.’

‘Clearly not.’ Appleby paused. ‘And what, constable, did you do then?’

‘I’ve been taught that when you come on one unaccountable thing you should lose no time before looking for others. So I cast around. That’s how I came to look into the charnel-house.’

‘Into the
what
?’

‘It’s what the vicar calls it, although it’s no more than the shed where the man who looks after the churchyard and digs the graves keeps his tools and things. Except that when he turns up bones – and once or twice a skull, I believe – he stores them there. Thinking of them as curiosities, I suppose. They ought to be buried again at once. And perhaps with the vicar saying a prayer over them. I wouldn’t know. But there the body was.’