Appleby and the Ospreys (10 page)

But now a second spider (so to speak) appeared in the form of an elderly man, silvery-haired and slightly stooped, but over six feet tall all the same. And this superior spider came to a halt before him and spoke with grave courtesy.

‘Sir John Appleby?’ the superior spider said.

‘Yes, I am Appleby.’

‘My name is Rupert Quickfall, Sir John. I am a barrister, and a friend – or, perhaps better, an acquaintance – of the late Lord Osprey. I have never been to Clusters before, and now it is fairly certain that I shall never be here again. You may have heard of me as the man who has insisted that, at least for the time, poor Osprey’s household and guests should all stay put.’

‘And quite rightly,’ Appleby said. ‘This sensible man, Detective-Inspector Ringwood, can get statements from everybody straight away.’

‘And you yourself can at least take a look at us.’

‘I am glad, Mr Quickfall, that you express it just so. There is no question of my having been, as it were, called out of retirement to poke around. I happen to live not far away, and have come over to afford Lady Osprey what support I can.’ Appleby produced this piece of humbug (as it had now undeniably become) quite unblushingly.

‘How very good of you! We understand one another perfectly, do we not? There is equally no question of my becoming professionally involved, although it so happens that I work at the criminal bar. Ah, retirement! It is a magical word with me. But I can’t afford it: positively not. I have to devil away. I couldn’t afford even to accept the leisure of the bench, should so unlikely a notion as promoting me to it enter the Lord Chancellor’s head. And coping with endless stupid crimes! It hasn’t even the intellectual appeal that eases the lot of my colleagues in chancery. But, as I was saying, here at Clusters you and I are simply knowledgeable lookers-on, like fellows who have once batted for England but now merely sit in the pavilion, sucking their pipes.’

‘Some of them, of course, have to watch the form closely, in order to pick the right men for the next test match. But, Mr Quickfall, I don’t know that the sporting analogy is at all an appropriate one. Here is murder.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Quickfall made an elegant and no doubt practised forensic gesture. ‘But there is likely to be – we must certainly hope there will be – a criminal trial arising out of this abominable affair. I might even be called upon to examine you in the witness-box.’

‘I think not, Mr Quickfall. Having been in at the death, so to speak, you surely couldn’t with any propriety accept a brief in the matter.’

‘But of course not! How right you are. But we can, at least, discuss the affair informally, here and now. Each of us is an expert after his fashion, is he not?’

‘Certainly we can exchange information. And I’ve told you how I come to be at Clusters. What about yourself? You say you have never been here before, and are unlikely to be here again. So you don’t consider yourself to be a friend of the Osprey family. What has brought you here on this sole occasion?’

‘What I was trying to convey, Sir John, was that I am in no sense a
family
friend of the Ospreys. But poor Osprey himself I have known for many years. Or, rather, I knew for many years.’ Quickfall paused fractionally on this, and Appleby reflected that here was a man well accustomed to thinking rapidly on his feet. ‘One’s tenses are apt to go wrong, are they not,’ Quickfall then continued, ‘when something so sudden as this has happened? But it is my point that I did know the dead man himself over a long period of years. We were at school together near Windsor’ – and again Quickfall made a momentary pause, as if to let the magnificence of this modest periphrasis sink in – ‘and belonged to the same club. Indeed, we lunched together there not infrequently. So my coming down to Clusters on what must be called a rather delicate and confidential occasion was entirely in order. But I will not, of course, let that confidentiality interfere with what I tell you, my dear Appleby.’ This swift move from ‘Sir John’ belonged to the same order of rhetoric as had the avoidance of ‘Eton’. ‘I came down to size up – and give what advice I could on – what was distinctly a family crisis. The trouble, as I understood it, concerned the Lord Osprey who now is.’

‘Adrian?’

‘I had little doubt about that, although Lord Osprey rather tended to confusion and self-contradiction. The fact that he was talking to me over a telephone line seemed to make him uneasy. But I concluded that Adrian had got mixed up with a young woman in what may be termed a different sphere of society. There had, it seems, been a suggestion – and a suggestion accompanied by threats and demands – that the young woman had been obstinately uncompliant. I was at least able to gather that as being the nub of the matter.’

‘Do you mean that Adrian Osprey raped the girl?’ Appleby uttered this sharply. The question was among the nastier of the many uncomfortable questions he had been obliged to ask in the course of his career.

‘Precisely so. And I have been hoping to establish that the allegation is stuff and nonsense.’

‘Is the girl known to be habitually lax in sexual behaviour?’

‘It’s a point undetermined so far. But, if it be so, there would in no sense be an absolute end to the matter. In law, as you no doubt know, a proven drab may suffer rape as definitely as a duchess.’

‘No doubt. And there is clear evidence that Adrian was, as you put it, a little rough with this uncompliant partner?’

‘Her father apparently took her straight to a doctor, who is asserted to have found a good deal of bruising on her. Osprey’s main point was that the father might be coped with.’

‘Coped
with, Quickfall?’

‘He felt that the man judged there was money in it.’

So here was something much more clear-cut than indeterminate skulduggeries in the field of numismatics. And what it required, for a start, was an appraisal of human character. Appleby’s first impression had been of a violent young man, of a door flung open and a constable showing some evidence of having been shoved or thumped vigorously aside. Adrian Osprey had then advanced upon Appleby with an uncivil injunction to clear out. He had subsequently offered some less disobliging remarks, but immediately followed them with the assertion that policemen in general have a nasty smell. After that, he had settled down to supplying a fair amount of useful information on the sensational event of the previous evening – but always with a hint of violence in his choice of phrase. As an exhibition of character, it all added up to very little. It was quite possible, indeed, to imagine the new Lord Osprey being ‘a little rough’ (as Quickfall had cautiously expressed it) with a village girl. Such girls often led such young men on in that way, and then got frightened – at which point the young men got frightened too, reflected that beyond a certain point that sort of thing simply wasn’t on, and desisted with apologies and awkward laughter. The Adrian Osprey of Appleby’s slender acquaintance fitted into that sort of picture easily enough. Beyond that, it was at present impossible to go.

‘What about the father of this girl?’ Appleby asked. ‘He turned up on Osprey Senior, did he, and demanded monetary compensation?’

‘Dear me, no. Osprey rang me up at once, but I only got here yesterday morning. We hadn’t yet discussed it when he was murdered.’

Perhaps unreasonably, Appleby felt this to be astonishing information.

‘But at least,’ he said, ‘you’ve had some cautious conversation with Adrian about the thing?’

‘By no means, Appleby. I had decided to begin some serious inquiry today. But last night’s extraordinary events – first that affair at the window, and later Osprey’s shocking death – have left me, I confess, something at a loss. Hence my seeking this discussion with you.’

‘Have you told Detective-Inspector Ringwood about this?’

‘Not yet. But it is of course incumbent on me to do so. Having now talked it over with you, I’ll seek him out at once.’ Quickfall hesitated for a moment. ‘It is an extremely serious matter, is it not?’

‘Certainly it is.’

‘And we shan’t, my dear Appleby, hear any more about your being at Clusters merely to condole with Lady Osprey?’

For a moment Appleby felt this to be an impertinence, but then he decided it was fair enough.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You will not.’

The gentle reader may have observed that, halfway through this narrative of untoward events at Clusters, several female characters have yet to make their bow. Mrs Purvis is one of them: the wife of that accountant from whom – such is the vanity of human wishes – the now deceased Lord Osprey had been hoping to receive a few useful tips on how to raise a more or less modest sum of ready money. But since Lord Osprey has been murdered – and unless Mr Purvis turns out to be the unlikely criminal – Mrs Purvis seems destined to remain more or less in the wings.

Miss Jane Minnychip, indeed, has appeared and has had a good deal to say: both about bats in the scheme of divine providence, and as herself the guardian of a collection of ancient coins brought together by her deceased father, Sir Philip Minnychip, an eminent Indian Civil Servant. Miss Minnychip, moreover, is on the record as having glimpsed the person descried by Lord Osprey through that problematical French window. It seems likely, therefore, that Miss Minnychip will again take the centre of the stage a little later on.

Another, and much younger, woman has just been heard of. She is a publican’s daughter, and nameless so far. This latter fact is in itself suspicious – but suspicious, as it were, the wrong way on. She may well be taken, that is to say, as no more than a red herring, who will drop out unobtrusively in the sequel. But, of course, one never can tell.

Two other women have been mentioned, but still linger in the wings. They are Lady Wimpole (whose husband, the Admiral, is at sea) and her daughter, Honoria. And here they are. Both have made statements to Detective-Inspector Ringwood, and they are now in Lady Wimpole’s bedroom, waiting to be called to luncheon, and meanwhile packing suitcases in a desultory way. They hope to leave Clusters in the course of the afternoon, but are resigned to spend another night in the place, if it is required of them.

What is immediately interesting in these ladies is their evident appearance of having little in common. Both, indeed, suggest membership of the same upper or middling order of society, but any similarity ends there. Viewed sitting side by side in a railway carriage, they would quite fail to hint any connection one with the other. Lady Wimpole (although in an unobtrusive way conformable with her years) is very well groomed and turned out. Her attire, indeed, is so comprehensively correct for one who is spending a weekend in the country that you are at once aware of it as coming from an expensive establishment in London. Honoria, on the other hand, is dressed rather at random in what might be termed a functional and slightly mannish way, but this somehow makes more evident the fact of her being a strikingly good-looking young woman. Even horn-rimmed spectacles of a round and distinctly utilitarian sort fail to disguise this very important fact.

What mother and daughter do share is something by its nature not immediately apparent to the view. They are both women of strong character, and each sets considerable store on getting a good deal of her own way in the world. Their ambitions, however, differ widely.

Lady Wimpole is determined that her husband shall become First Sea Lord, and on the strategy and tactics requisite for this she manages to keep surprisingly up-to-date. When she was a girl, a sailor of her husband’s present seniority would have been well poised for this ultimate promotion were he in command of the Mediterranean Fleet.

It isn’t quite like that now. The Mediterranean Fleet – some disagreeably plain-speaking persons are given to asserting – has fallen within a notional rather than an actual category. Certainly it hangs much in the dusty rear (to employ a markedly dissonant metaphor) of American Armadas in that region. Northern Approaches are another matter. Their importance is the reason for Lady Wimpole’s seeing to it that Admiral Wimpole has to spend quite a lot of time not all that far away from the North Pole.

But nothing of all this accounts for the Wimpole ladies’ presence at Clusters now. An obscure backwoods peer is not likely to have much influence at the Admiralty, or on the cabinet or a prime minister. But Lady Wimpole is ambitious for her daughter as well as for her husband. This is why she accepted poor Lady Osprey’s weekend invitation when it came along. Why Honoria very readily agreed to accompany her will appear quite soon.

‘And so unexpected!’ Lady Wimpole said.

‘Of course it was that, Mama.’ Honoria Wimpole wedged rather a bulky book into a corner of her dressing-case. ‘You almost speak as if you were surprised at the thing’s surprisingness. Of course it was unexpected. Nobody expected Lord Osprey to be so disagreeably murdered – or, indeed, murdered at all. Unless, I suppose, the man who did the murder. And perhaps he didn’t expect it, either. We haven’t been told much, but it does sound as if it had been rather an impromptu affair.’

‘One can’t help reflecting that it changes Adrian’s future dramatically. Now, can we, dear?’

‘It certainly changes the young man’s situation. About his future, one just doesn’t know.’

‘I fail to see any real distinction, Honoria. You are rather too fond of drawing distinctions, it seems to me. I put it down to Oxford and that absurd fellowship at your college there. Who ever heard of a woman being a fellow? Of course, I quite acknowledge that
that
was a distinction, and a credit to the family, and so on. Your father was extremely pleased. But there
are
other sides of life that have to be considered.’

‘Birth, and copulation, and death.’

‘My dear Honoria!’ Lady Wimpole, unaware that this summation of things had been offered by an extremely high Anglican, was greatly shocked.

‘And just what was absurd about that fellowship?’

‘Of course nothing at all, dear. I spoke too hastily. Only, for a woman to be called a fellow does sound a little odd. When one talks about a jolly good fellow one means something the same as calling a man a nice chap.’