A Family Affair Page 15

  ‘It amused him to play a double role, so to speak. One in Braunkopf’s shop under his own name, and one chez Praxiteles, under the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA.’ Bobby paused to light his pipe. ‘And I’ve discovered for you that it was Sansbury who valued Carrington’s pictures, and actually wanted to carry off the Stubbs on the pretext of having it cleaned. That’s about enough in itself. But now Mummy has found it was Sansbury who wrote and told Lord Canadine about the value of his statue–’

  ‘Wasn’t that a rum thing to do, if it was he who had already pinched it?’

  ‘He wanted Canadine to dig up information about its provenance. And he was just being freakish. That fits in, surely. The freakish is what turns up in this business every time.’

  ‘I certainly agree with you there. But just what have we got?

  ‘This man Sansbury – who doesn’t, by the way, strike me as all that freakish – bobs up in one or another relationship to three of these affairs. Are we to call that statistically significant?’

  ‘Of course we are.’

  ‘Suppose that there have been a good many more of these frauds and thefts and impostures than we have yet tabs on – which seems to me a probability in itself. Suppose that we did come on half a dozen others, and that Sansbury seemed unconnected with any of them. It would then simply be a matter of coincidence that we had come early upon the three he does figure in. Well, why shouldn’t he figure – quite innocently and harmlessly – in three out of nine such episodes? His professional world, after all, must be an uncommonly small one.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Judith said, ‘whether Professor Sansbury of Cambridge lives in what can be called at all a big way? There has been very considerable money in these operations – even if there have not been more in the series than we are aware of. And dons live much of a muchness, so far as economic level goes. If they don’t, all their acquaintance knows just why. One man has always been understood to possess inherited wealth, and another is recalled as having married money. That sort of thing.’

  ‘But dons can obviously have the most luscious secret lives.’ Bobby offered this contribution to the debate with confidence. ‘The humblest of them, donkeying away as college tutors and so on, need be around for just twenty-four weeks in the year. And professors and people are like our Master, and other heads of colleges. If they care to, they can be completely invisible from year’s end to year’s end. Living it up like anything, in haunts of idleness and sin.’

  ‘I hope,’ Appleby said, ‘you will not so indulge your flair for facile exaggeration when you come to write those papers in your Final Honour School. There is, nevertheless, something in what you say. It would not clear Sansbury of suspicion simply to show that, when in Cambridge, he doesn’t fling money about. Nor would it clear him if we found another and stronger suspect.’

  ‘Because there must be a gang?’

  ‘Well, something approximating to a gang. There are two very prominent features in the affair, you know. The first is that there has been continuous, or at least intermittent, operation over quite a long period of years. And the second is that some, at least, of the operations have involved considerable teamwork.’

  ‘Or at least,’ Judith said, ‘the employment of supers. Take the Praxiteles incident. Apart from Sansbury himself, who turns up in it only at the Da Vinci and merely in an ambiguous and possibly innocent way, there need only have been one person capable of sustaining more than a walking-on role. It was Sir Joshua Reynolds who did the talking to Praxiteles’ man Aleko, and who enjoyed little private jokes like the one about the Archbishop of Canterbury. The others had merely to look like moderately important persons. Like people hired by movie-directors to do background dining and wining in expensive restaurants. I’ve sometimes wondered whether real food and drink is provided.’

  ‘I think there’s a third prominent feature,’ Bobby said. ‘The whole series of frauds avoids anything that could be called the darker face of crime. Nobody has really been frightfully hurt.’

  ‘Just that has been in my head more than once.’ Appleby paused, frowning. ‘And it ought, in a way, to be reassuring. We are hunting for some very clever, but rather harmless, rogue. But one oughtn’t to be too careless. In terms of fortune on the one hand, and legal penalty on the other, the stakes are fairly high.’ Appleby stood up. ‘I think Bobby and I ought to be moving. Keynes Court, then Oxford, and then Cambridge suggests rather a long day.’

  ‘You will go to Cambridge?’ There was astonishment in Bobby’s voice.

  ‘But of course. Professor Sansbury must at least be invited to explain himself.’

  ‘Then, couldn’t you make it Keynes Court, Cambridge, and Oxford? I’d rather like to be–’

  ‘Definitely not, Bobby. I drop you in college, and drive on.’

  ‘As you please, of course.’ Bobby Appleby was annoyed. ‘But if you really feel that I shall be failing to keep up with their simple academic exercises merely because I’m not in lecture rooms for an odd–’

  ‘Absolutely nothing of the kind.’ Appleby turned quickly to his son. ‘You can be off to Kamchatka, if you please, and it won’t affect my guess that you’ll be all right on the day. It’s simply that I don’t want to arrive in Cambridge accompanied by an Oxford undergraduate son. Is that obscure?’

  ‘It’s not exactly luminous,’ Judith said. She was stacking cups and saucers on a trolley. ‘But I do see a glimmer. Has it something to do with not being careless?’

  ‘Yes, it has. Bobby, did you tell that chap Carrington a lot about yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m all that the adolescent egocentric.’ This time, Bobby was not offended. ‘But I didn’t have a chance, really. He knew a good deal about me already – Rugger-wise, you understand.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Fame has its penalties. Judith, what about the Canadines? Did you tell them all about the present doings of our young?’

  ‘While exhibiting the family snapshots? I didn’t, as a matter of fact. It was pretty well alpines and aquatics all the time.’ Judith pushed the trolley soothingly towards Mrs Colpoys, who had appeared with the obvious intention of making stiff representations about the inertia of the aged Hoobin. ‘And now, do go away, both of you. I have quite a long day’s work, too.’

  Bobby rather enjoyed being driven by his father in the solid and by no means pristine Rover. The vehicle, too, was very much a family affair; one felt there ought to be a scramble of children in the back and a picnic basket tucked away behind. With his father at the wheel, one didn’t exactly drink the wind of one’s own speed; on the other hand their progress wasn’t an irritating dawdle. It was reasonable to suppose that, when younger, Sir John Appleby (Inspector Appleby, as he had no doubt been called) had driven faster – as fast as Bobby Appleby (Scrum-half Appleby, one might say) was prone to do. Bobby wondered whether his father had solved mysteries faster, as well. But of course one had to remember that the business on hand was not just one mystery but a whole little crop of them, and that the first (which was the one they were after now) dated from a time when Oswyn Lyward – a person whose notable maturity of manner impressed Bobby very much – had been more or less biting his own toes in his modestly coronetted cradle. Oswyn’s father – Bobby’s father had divulged with delight – was in the expectation that the perplexed episode of the spurious royal visit was now to be briskly solved by a quick hunt for fingerprints. These would have to leap Bobby told himself with the poet – from hiding places ten years deep. Or rather twenty years deep. And so would any other clues which Keynes Court was likely to harbour. So it would be naive to expect, with Lord Cockayne, really quick results.

  Bobby glanced sideways at his father, and received a strong impression of great concentration. It was possible, of course, that his father had merely assumed the expression proper in an elderly man when driving a staid 3-litre Rover along an empty country road. On the other hand, perhaps the mystery was being sorted out. So Bobby forbore to converse.

  ‘Did y
ou bring The Times?’ Appleby asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes. You told me to.’

  ‘Then read out the clues.’

  ‘The clues?’ For a moment, Bobby was bewildered. Then he said ‘All right,’ resignedly, and turned to the back page.

  ‘Look at your watch,’ Appleby said. ‘No fun without that. Begin.’

  ‘Tutor has a crib, the hearing is lengthy. Six.’

  ‘There’s usually an easy start,’ Appleby said, and braked carefully before a corner. ‘Donkey.’

  ‘Of course.’ Bobby sighed, and fished for a pencil. ‘Begins with D. Army arithmetic. Eight.’

  ‘Division.’ Appleby had been obliged to think for a moment. ‘We’ll speed up soon.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Bobby said, and let his eye stray to a milestone. ‘Here’s one I can do at once. Pater’s art? Four. That’s Dada.’

  ‘Ought to be Gaga,’ Appleby said cheerfully. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Bobby said half an hour later, and when the puzzle had been completed, ‘that that’s what you call resting your mind.’

  ‘Why should I rest my mind? It’s not in a state of convalescence.’ Appleby laughed. ‘Or why shouldn’t I, for that matter? Ought it to be obsessed with something?’

  ‘Of course it should. With this sleuthing we’re busying over. With the mystery.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say there was a mystery, you know. Is that Keynes across the valley?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Terrific, isn’t it? Not so much a country seat as a country sofa. What do you mean that there isn’t a mystery?’

  ‘I mean that the chain of events is all pretty clear. But one link is likely to be bogus. Have you thought of that? Find a bogus link, and the whole thing is tied up. Not, of course, that there isn’t a real snag. We have to reckon on submerged links, so to speak. We were noting that at breakfast. There may well have been a number of other operations during the long period of years since the Keynes Court one. They just haven’t come our way. They are on the record, as being known to the parties immediately concerned, but they’re not on the police record. The bogus link may be one of these submerged ones. It’s not a probability, but it’s a possibility. Do we go over the bridge?’

  ‘Yes. It was built by Oswyn’s great-grandpapa. I don’t understand this about a bogus link. Explain.’

  ‘I don’t say that its existence is a certainty, by any means. But put it like this, Bobby. Suppose you are planning for yourself not just a single highly remunerative crime, but a long sequence of highly remunerative crimes. What sort of person are you likely to be?’

  ‘An optimist, I suppose. The more crimes you carry out, the more likely you are to get nabbed in the end. Of course, it depends on the sort of crime. We’re confining ourselves to this picture-pilfering business and the like, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And you certainly have to reckon on an increasing chance of being nabbed in the end, as you say. But you also have to reckon on suspicion. As the operations go on, there is bound to be a hunt for the operator. The police may eventually establish a category of suspected persons. What’s the best way of ensuring that you won’t find yourself in it?’

  ‘I see. It’s an easy one. Get yourself fixed up in the other category – that of the victims. Which is what you mean by a bogus link. How simple these things are, when one gives one’s mind to them.’

  ‘Most sham robberies and so forth are insurance rackets. The kind I’m thinking of would be an insurance racket of a special sort.’ Appleby had slowed to a decorous thirty miles an hour. ‘This seems to be the sort of park that has whole villages tucked away in corners of it.’

  ‘In about half a mile you cross the river by an Irish bridge–’

  ‘Whatever is that?’

  ‘It’s just a bridge, but built under the water instead of over it.’

  ‘Extremely sensible.’

  ‘So it’s really a reliable sort of ford, and supposed to be picturesque. A bit after that, you go over a cattle grid, and are in the deer park. And then you run along the side of the lake and come to the house. All the gardens are on the other side.’

  ‘Not very populous is it?’ Appleby said as they splashed over the Irish bridge. ‘The peasants cower in their hovels until summoned to perform their corvée for their feudal lord. And I don’t see any deer either.’ The Rover had rattled over the cattle grid. But one has to admire the trees.’

  ‘Somebody coming now,’ Bobby said. ‘But not a plodding hind.’

  ‘A wanderer from the great house, I think, out for a meditative stroll.’

  This was evidently correct; the figure they were about to pass on the drive was very much that of a gentleman at leisure.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a member of the family,’ Bobby said. ‘But shall we give him a wave? Perhaps it’s–’

  ‘Bobby – duck!’

  It was probably the memories of Cowboys and Indians played with his parents and brothers long ago that was responsible for Bobby Appleby’s obeying this startling injunction instantly. He vanished beneath the dashboard rather as if he had been ignominiously engulfed by one of his own scrums. Once there, he doubtless expected some dramatic development – perhaps the crack of a pistol shot in the near vicinity. But nothing of the kind occurred, and after two or three hundred yards the car came to a stop.

  ‘All right,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Just what was that in aid of, please?’ As he dusted himself down, Bobby allowed himself a very natural indignation.

  ‘You can think it out as you go on your way. It will do instead of another crossword puzzle.’

  ‘What do you mean – on my way?’

  ‘On your way to Oxford, my dear boy. I suppose you’re capable of getting out of this park without being seen?’

  ‘I suppose so, if I try.’

  ‘Then try quite hard, and oblige your ageing parent.’ Appleby chuckled. ‘Bobby, I’m terribly sorry. But clear out.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Bobby, who could be almost alarmingly a paragon of filial duty, grinned cheerfully, and clambered from the car. ‘The Lywards had their own private railway station, but I believe it has been closed down. However, there’s a nice little market town not much more than twenty miles away. Just right for stretching one’s legs. And it’s rather flattering to have become a dark secret. Or am I the family skeleton?’

  ‘Neither the one nor the other, I’m afraid. You’re just my youngest son, and currently up at Oxford. By the way, will your friend Oswyn Lyward be at Keynes now?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s terribly tied up with some essays.’

  ‘Good. Do you think his father is likely to recall your existence, without Oswyn there to jog his memory?’

  ‘Most improbable, I’m afraid. Well, the unmentionable Appleby Junior vanishes. Over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier.’

  ‘Over park, over pale, thorough flood, thorough fire. I hope it won’t come quite to that. By the way, have you enough money?’

  ‘Plenty, thanks.’ Bobby was amused by this agreeable paternal solicitude. ‘I say, can I have one guess at who that chap was we passed?’

  ‘One guess is fair enough.’

  ‘Your Cambridge friend, Professor Sansbury.’

  ‘You get a clear alpha on that,’ Appleby said. And he let in the clutch and drove on.

  Part Three

  The Trap

  16

  ‘Most kind of you to come down,’ Lord Cockayne said politely. Perhaps out of absence of mind, or perhaps by way of lending force to his words, he shook hands with Appleby a second time. He had received his visitor in a sombrely panelled great hall, hung with darkened family portraits to which only a greenish and subaqueous light penetrated through heavily mullioned windows. This milieu its proprietor had evidently thought to enliven by importing sundry memorials of his own life and career. The Indian carpet had certainly been woven in the gaols of Agra. On each side of the chimney piece – and flanking Lord Cockayne now – sto
od a stuffed Bengal tiger. The effect would have been strikingly heraldic but for the fact that the creatures’ architectural surroundings reduced them to the proportions of those twinned china dogs which doubtless occupied a corresponding position by the hearths of many of Lord Cockayne’s humbler tenants.

  ‘Delighted to have your expert help,’ Lord Cockayne said. ‘I expect you’ve brought your plan?’

  ‘I certainly have something in mind.’ Appleby looked at his host in some surprise.

  ‘Well, we must go and have a look. But I ought to tell you that there are bats. You don’t mind bats?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Capital, my dear sir, capital. And they’re where one ought to expect them, after all. Bats in the belfry, eh? Ha ha!’ Lord Cockayne set out on a somewhat wandering course across the vast Jacobean hall. ‘I don’t want to hurry you – in India I made a point of never hurrying anyone, and it was a policy that was very well received – but, of course, we shall require the thing in time for the actual anniversary. They’ll want to fool around with it on the occasion.’

  ‘The anniversary?’

  ‘Ah, I see you haven’t been told. Well, I’ve been looking into my family history, of which there is really a surprising amount, and I can’t find any record of the thing having happened before. To a son here or a brother there, maybe. But never to a holder of the title. So I felt, you know, that it had to be thought about. The tenantry will come along with goodness knows what, and there ought to be a quid pro quo for the village. I ran through all the commonplace things: cricket pavilion, new hall for the Women’s Institute, swings and so forth for the children. And then this came to me. You don’t mind a short walk through the park?’

  ‘Not in the least. But you mean that there came to you, by way of celebrating some anniversary, the notion of presenting the village with a picture – a missing picture, which may be very valuable, or may be worth nothing at all?’