Appleby and the Ospreys Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Appleby & The Ospreys

  First published in 1986

  Copyright: Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1986-2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AU, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842327194 9781842327197 Print

  0755114027 9780755114023 Pdf

  0755119568 9780755119561 Mobi/Kindle

  0755120760 9780755120765 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

  After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

  By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

  After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.

  Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

  His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

  1

  ‘Reflect, my dear,’ Lord Osprey said to his wife. ‘Or merely think. Better still, think twice.’

  It was a mannerism of Lord Osprey’s to be thus emphatic in his speech. One almost saw words and phrases in italic type as one listened to him. John Appleby, who along with his wife had just sat through a rather large luncheon-party given by the Ospreys, recalled how, one evening not long before, he had idly flicked a switch on a television set, and as a consequence found himself listening to his present host delivering a speech in the House of Lords. Not a maiden speech, or none of the scattering of peers present would have been so discourteous as to go to sleep. As it was, they had suffered Osprey through numerous sessions, and knew their man. So not only were some of them genuinely slumbering; here and there one of them – man or woman – was feigning slumber in the interest of providing more quiet fun for the BBC’s cameras. It is proverbial that an Englishman loves a lord, and a gaggle of lords or ladies sleeping their way through parliamentary debates is probably more lovable still. Not – Appleby told himself – that they overdo the quaintness attaching to their labours as legislators. Only the Lord Chancellor on his woolsack is habitually addicted to fancy dress. And the woolsack itself – according to the high theory of the thing – is not inside but just outside their lordships’ Chamber.

  ‘Or for that matter,’ said Lord Osprey, ‘consult Sir John.’

  This was slightly awkward, since Appleby had failed to follow whatever topic the Ospreys were at issue over.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Judith Appleby said, ‘that my husband has withdrawn his attention and is thinking about Tom Thumb.’

  This ought to have gone down well with Lord Osprey, since it was from an eminent statesman, Charles James Fox, while discoursing on Catiline’s Conspiracy, that Dr Johnson had licensed his mind to wander to such odd effect. But Lord Osprey, who had certainly never heard of Catiline’s Conspiracy, and hardly of Samuel Johnson either, was merely perplexed, so that a moment’s silence succeeded.

  ‘I would be so grateful for advice,’ Lady Osprey then said unconvincingly. ‘Bats in the belfry! And people being disturbed by it.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Appleby said. ‘One can only sympathize.’ This was a reasonable shot in the dark. Perhaps Lady Osprey had been confiding to the company in the matter of some relative undeniably off his head.

  ‘And you feel,’ Judith asked quickly, ‘a particular responsibility? As leading parishioners, that is to say.’

  Appleby glanced at his wife in some alarm. Judith’s sense of humour occasionally took a slightly malicious turn. And, after all, parishes do have leading parishioners. Particularly in the countryside. It can be made to sound comical, but is one of the facts of English rural life.

  ‘Just so,’ Lady Osprey said. ‘And, indeed, a little more than simply that. Oliver, you see,’ – Oliver was Lord Osprey’s Christian name – ‘is the vicar’s churchwarden. And a very delightful old village shopkeeper is the incumbent’s.’ Lady Osprey paused on this, as if to mark its robustly democratic ring. ‘So Oliver, and to some extent I myself, have a responsibility to give a lead in the matter. And, of course, Mr Brackley too. Mr Brackley is the incumbent. One couldn’t have a more delightful parson than Mr Brackley. But he is sometimes a little slow when a decision has to be taken.’

  ‘I think Brackley is quite right not to bother his head over anything so rubbishing.’

  This came from a darkly frowning young man understood by Appleby to be the Ospreys’ only son, the Honourable Adrian Osprey. (The Ospreys, although they had been barons through several centuries, had never contrived to yank themselves into an earldom – so Adrian, during his father’s lifetime, was just a mere Hon. It was possible to wonder whether Adrian Osprey, whose temperament seemed to be distinctly saturnine, contrived to manufacture a grievance out of this lowly status.)

  ‘So the matter of the bats in the belfry is a little hanging fire?’ Appleby asked. He was now tolerably assured that the bats were actual bats, and not metaphorical ones in the head of some other difficult relative. ‘The bats up there have become really troublesome?’

  ‘It seems so,’ Lady Osprey said. ‘I am myself quite fond of bats in their proper place. We have them in the park, you know; and they have perfectly adequate roosting areas – if that’s the proper term – in a disused barn at the home farm. In the dusk they come quite near to us here, and they particularly like the moat.’ Lady Osprey paused on this, and it was clear that sh
e conscientiously took satisfaction in the Ospreys’ having such a mediaeval appurtenance to their dwelling. ‘The moat has some quite deep pools in places, but in others it is simply rather soggy – and no doubt breeds the midges and things the bats feed on. Everything in its place, I say, and I don’t even object to picnickers in the park if they keep their distance. But I feel that bats are not quite in their right place in churches. And in our church the creatures appear to wake up at the wrong time, and come down so that they frighten the village children in the choir. And the children are the choir. I don’t know why it is – but there are now no grown-ups left in it.’

  These rambling remarks failing to elicit comment from the guests at large, Lord Osprey had to take up the tale.

  ‘At first it seemed simple enough,’ he said. ‘Bat the belfry bats. Go after them as if they were so many deathwatch beetles. But then some confounded woman came and upset Brackley. Well-connected and so on, and from the Cruelty to Animals. I subscribe to them, as a matter of fact. So you might think they would leave us alone. But not a bit of it. Bats, it seems, are a threatened species. Like badgers and foxes. It seems there would be no foxes left, if one didn’t have hunts to go chasing and hallooing after them. I have to subscribe there too, you know, even although I don’t at all regard myself as a landowner. A dozen farms to keep an eye on, of course. But you have to go back a good many generations to find any Ospreys as landed proprietors in a big way.’

  Nobody in the small group of guests who had lingered to a civil three o’clock found any remark with which to follow up this genealogical information, so Judith Appleby returned firmly to the bats.

  ‘There is a great deal of misconception about bats,’ she said. ‘Hardly anyone knows, for example, that they make excellent pets. Those village children ought to be told about that. A bat in a good home responds quickly to affection. And it doesn’t need to be fed from expensive tins.’

  ‘Very true,’ an elderly woman called Miss Minnychip said. ‘If the children ceased to be scared of them, the bats as they drop down at matins might join in the Benedicite. “O all ye Fowls of the Air, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him for ever.” Ananias, Azarias, and Misael oughtn’t to be left to do all the work.’ Miss Minnychip reflected for a moment. ‘And more simply,’ she then added, ‘recall that blessed are they that dwell in Thy house. The psalm explicitly mentions sparrows and swallows, but it says nothing about excluding bats.’

  Not unnaturally, this speech occasioned general bewilderment. One or two people, realizing that Miss Minnychip had been quoting scripture, looked actively disapproving. Lord Osprey, although not perhaps a very observant man, did observe this and firmly wound up the topic.

  ‘A tricky matter for Brackley,’ he said. ‘Either action or inaction is sure to offend some worthy people round about. Nevertheless something must be done, and with our authority behind it. I leave it to my wife, who sees more of our neighbours than I do. Only, she must reflect; must give her mind to it. Would anyone care to stroll through the gardens?’

  This invitation was Lord Osprey’s customary form of au revoir, and a sufficient number of his guests were aware of the fact for the party to break up at once. There wasn’t, of course, a stampede. Everybody, that is to say, punctiliously murmured their regrets at being unable to accept so agreeable a suggestion, because of one pressing afternoon engagement or another; and the departure of the remaining guests in their cars fell decently short of a cavalcade.

  ‘Roses,’ Judith Appleby said as she took her place at the wheel of the ancient Rover. ‘It would have been roses – and Lady Osprey would have known nothing about them.’

  ‘She didn’t seem to know much about bats either. Nor did her husband, for that matter. By the way, shall we take a look at the church? There it is, in a corner of the park. A convenient Sunday morning stroll from the big house in fine weather, and in foul no more than eight or nine minutes in a carriage. Inside, there will be a family pew for Ospreys, and three or four other pews hired for various grades of retainers.’

  ‘I don’t think it will be quite like that any longer. Very few of the retainers, as you call them, will think of themselves as obliged to go to church if they’re to earn their keep. As for their children, those of them that sing in the choir – or that sing in the choir when not scared by an occasional bat – they no doubt have to have various treats and outings laid on for them. But let’s take a look, as you suggest.’

  2

  The church proved to be – unlike Clusters, the ancestral seat of the Ospreys – unassuming and not in the best repair. Over the crossing there was a squat tower with crockets, and at the west end the belfry was a box-like structure with narrow unglazed lancets. Once inside, one had only to stand beneath the belfry and look upwards to see both the bell itself and a small colony of bats depending from the rafters.

  ‘A breeding roost,’ Judith said knowledgeably. ‘And I rather think they’re the greater horseshoe variety, which is distinctly uncommon in this part of the country.’

  ‘Shall we give them a shout, or sing a hymn, and see what the effect is?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, sir.’

  This remark or remonstrance came from behind the Applebys, who turned round and saw at once that they were being addressed by the vicar, Mr Brackley. In the Anglican world a sense of trespass always attends upon being detected in a church other than for devotional purposes at some prescribed hour. And if one’s demeanour is in any degree frivolous or even merely cheerful one is apt to feel the impropriety of one’s intrusion all the more keenly.

  ‘I apologize,’ Appleby said. ‘My suggestions weren’t very seriously intended. It so happens that my wife and I have been hearing about the belfry bats, and we thought we’d come and take a look.’

  ‘Ah, yes! Yes, indeed. You have been visiting the Ospreys possibly? Excellent parishioners, but they have perhaps allowed themselves a shade too much concern about the harmless creatures. I am myself for a little delay, so that an undisturbed accouchement be achieved. Until their brood is born, that is to say. But perhaps I may introduce myself? I am Charles Brackley, the vicar of this parish.’

  ‘Our name is Appleby,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Ah, yes! How do you do?’ Mr Brackley turned to Judith. ‘Lady Appleby,’ he said, ‘do you take an interest in bats?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never made a study of them,’ Judith said. She was a good deal impressed by this deftness in identification. ‘But I know one species from another. And it rather surprises me that this lot drop down in a disturbing way into the church – and in daylight too. Normally, bats are surely the most crepuscular of creatures.’

  ‘It is quite an infrequent performance, as a matter of fact. But some of the children find it alarming. What troubles them, I think, is the appearance the bats give of darting around in a helpless and aimless fashion. It is, of course, an appearance only. The truth of the matter is that they fly with a precision that astronauts might envy. Not a single one but has an inbuilt sonar system of the utmost delicacy. The direction, speed, distance of the smallest insect, they command through an ability to measure what to us are inconceivably minute fractions of time – and they communicate by a system of squeaks that few, if any, human ears are attuned to hear.’

  ‘Nature in rather an elaborative mood,’ Appleby said.

  ‘It may be so regarded. But theologians, I believe, would account for all the endless diversity of created things by evoking the doctrine of what they call the Divine Abundance.’ It was clear that the Reverend Charles Brackley didn’t presume to reckon himself a theologian.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve heard of the Divine Abundance,’ Judith said. ‘Is it at all readily made intelligible?’

  ‘I believe it is. God, having all eternity both behind him and in front of him, is always in danger of getting bored. So he occupies himself ceaselessly in thinking thi
ngs up. Ceaselessly he creates diversity. But whether or not also for our instruction or entertainment, it would be hard to say.’

  Thus edified, the Applebys made suitable remarks, and presently went on their way. And Appleby’s mind reverted to Lord Osprey.

  ‘So much for the Church’s problem,’ he said. ‘But why should Osprey shove it – for what it’s worth – at his wife? He’s the churchwarden, not she.’

  ‘Perhaps he has to think about Bills and Budgets and things.’

  ‘Nonsense. The man’s a legislative ignoramus. What do you imagine he does with his time? He has to fill it, I suppose. Rather like that parson’s God.’

  ‘I’ve heard that Lord Osprey has a hobby.’

  ‘Judith, I sometimes wonder whether there’s anything you haven’t heard about anybody in this entire county.’

  ‘It’s simply because information, however useless, tends to stick in my head. Lord Osprey has a hobby. What could be more useless than knowing that?’

  ‘One never can tell. It certainly isn’t very startling information in itself. But perhaps the nature of the man’s hobby is a little out of the way. Just what is it?’

  ‘Numismatics.’

  ‘He collects old coins? I do find that slightly odd. I imagine anybody with enough money, and with time on his hands, can form a collection of such things. But it’s rather a learned field, I’d suppose – or is if one’s going to get much satisfaction out of it. One has to be an ancient historian, and a more or less modern one too, to rank as any sort of numismatist. Does Osprey employ some harmless drudge as a curator or secretary or something?’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. Osprey has a brother-in-law who provides the necessary erudition. He was there, as a matter of fact, but I suppose you weren’t introduced to him. He was the man who sat in absolute silence next to Miss Minnychip. It seems his name is Marcus Broadwater. So Lady Osprey must have been a Broadwater. The family’s not from this part of the world, and I don’t know anything about them.’