A Connoisseur's Case Read online

  But Judith wasn’t alarmed by the possibility of drought. She was now peering into the darkness of the tunnel.

  ‘I wonder if one can go through?’ she said. ‘You see, they haven’t fenced it off in any way. That means it must be safe, don’t you think?’

  Privately, Appleby thought that it meant just that. But he wasn’t sure that he ought to encourage Judith in thoughts of navigation. Not that there wasn’t a certain enticingness in the idea, since an adventure of this character would surely sink Scroop House for good.

  ‘I don’t see any craft,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you could wade. I doubt whether you’d be up to your waist in the canal as it is now. Of course, there would be bats.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of bats.’

  ‘Of course not – or not in the open air. But you must remember them as rather uncomfortable companions in a dark room. A three-mile tunnel might be worse. Statistically, I’d say it was almost certain that one of them would get tangled in your hair.’

  ‘Very well.’ Judith turned away, admitting defeat. ‘I shan’t go – ever.’

  Appleby laughed as they moved off in search of the pub.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t,’ he said. ‘Nor shall I.’

  2

  Although the last of the leggers must have found rest from his topsy-turvy labours many generations ago, the hostelry in which they had recruited themselves was still a going concern. The Applebys established themselves on a bench in the open air and unwrapped their sandwiches. Appleby went inside and returned with beer.

  ‘Did you ask about Scroop House?’ Judith said.

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Appleby knew very well that, had he failed to do so, he would have been sent back to make good the omission. ‘But the chap seems to know nothing about it. New to the place, he said. And he’s not the old sort of innkeeper. RAF type, with a handlebar moustache specially grown to tell you so. Put in by the brewery company, I suppose, and not very pleased that he hasn’t been given a superior little riverside hotel on the lower Thames.’

  ‘I could have told you that without going inside.’

  ‘Could you, indeed?’ Appleby thought for a moment and then turned to glance at the door of the pub. There, as the law required, was a legend informing the world that David Channing-Kennedy was licensed to sell spirits, wines and tobacco. ‘You’re quite right, of course. Truly rural innkeepers don’t run to double-barrelled names any more than to that sort of whisker. I always said you ought to be a detective.’

  ‘Elementary, my dear–’ Judith broke off and lowered her voice. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Here’s somebody much more hopeful.’

  This was certainly true. An old man had emerged from the door of the public bar, and was looking around him as if in search of a bench on which to sit. In one hand he was carrying something with care. His clothes, which were threadbare but decent, were not particularly rural. Indeed, there was something faintly foreign about them. But it was otherwise with his features. Browned and wizened, these were English and of the folk. But they had a certain fineness, too, and they had not lost sensitiveness in what now appeared to be almost extreme old age.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam.’ The old man had touched a rather battered hat as he spoke. His speech, like his clothes, was distinguishably tinged with strangeness. And now, with his freehand, he made a slight gesture towards a bench a little way from that on which the Applebys sat. He was asking permission to sit down. But this was courtesy and not servility. It gave him, somehow, the air of stepping out of a past age – an age of gentle and simple, master and man.

  ‘Good morning,’ Appleby said. ‘There’s some real warmth in this sun.’

  ‘But you won’t have found it too hot for walking. The season’s yet a kindly one for that, sir.’ The old man sat down, and set his burden carefully beside him. It revealed itself as a beautifully fashioned model of a canal barge – but battered and dusty, as if it had ceased to give anybody pleasure long ago. Judith got up and walked over to it. She had known at once that this was something that would give pleasure now.

  ‘What a lovely thing!’ she said. ‘A barge seems rather common-place, when just glanced at. But your model isn’t like that. Is it very old?’

  ‘Not older than myself, madam. For it was as a lad that I made it. Not overmuch skill had then come to me. And yet I like it well enough, and thank you for taking notice of it.’

  ‘And you’ve always had it?’ Appleby asked. He had risen and strolled over too.

  ‘Nay – that I haven’t. It was for the innkeeper’s lass that I fashioned it, and with love-liking enough in the making. But was she Bess or was she Kate? That, now, I disremember – although I well remember the working of the wood. It’s the craft that is long in this life, surely, and not how a boy’s fancy is moved for a girl.’ The old man was now dusting his barge with a clean but frayed and ancient handkerchief. ‘But the lass was careless of it, and set it straightway on tin chimney-piece in the public bar. So by that I knew she was not for me.’

  ‘But you didn’t take back your love token?’ Judith asked. Appleby could see that his wife was much impressed by this Thomas Hardy-like rural character. ‘You let it be?’

  ‘Yes, madam, I let it be. And there it rested, it seems, come many a year, while I myself was wandering. Yet some must have handled it – and let it fall too, which can’t, in a public, be thought of as surprising. The rudder is broken, as you can see, and I’d best fashion a new one.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. But have you the right sort of wood?’

  ‘There’s always something in a man’s pocket, madam, if his fancy is for work of that kind.’ And at once the old man substantiated this claim by producing both a piece of wood and a pocket knife of the many-bladed variety. ‘Cedar, madam, will answer very well. And, by your leave, I’ll begin straightway. For there’s always hurt in the sight of a broken thing.’

  ‘But you haven’t thought of mending it before now?’ Appleby asked.

  For a moment the old man seemed to hesitate, so that Appleby wondered whether he had been too curious. Then he spoke frankly enough.

  ‘It was but yesterday, sir, that I returned to these parts – my native parts, as you’ll have gathered — on account of having a fancy to lay my bones here. Fifteen years I’ve been from home, working as a carpenter in the city of Spokane – which one of your knowledge won’t fail to know is in the state of Washington, and as far across America as a man may travel.’

  ‘You’ve certainly come a long way home. And you’ve always been a carpenter by trade?’

  ‘Never, sir, in a proper manner of speaking, seeing that I was never rightly apprenticed to the trade. Odd lad and handyman I was – that and no more until the sad fancy to emigrate laid hold on me. Yet that there were things above that that I could do is a word to be spoken without overmuch boasting.’

  ‘Would it have been at the big house that you were first employed?’ It was with a sudden quickening of interest that Judith asked this.

  ‘Yes, indeed, madam. At Scroop House, and in the old mistress’ time.’

  ‘There have been changes since then?’

  ‘Changes more than one, madam – as is but to be expected with time flowing by.’ The old man was now busily employed on his piece of cedarwood, using with a fine dexterity a single slender blade. His employment, Appleby reflected, had the odd effect of rendering entirely agreeable the rather sententious vein of talk he seemed to favour. Conceivably, since he had been away for so long, he was making a conscious effort to recover an almost forgotten manner of speaking. ‘Changes there have been, and changes there must be.’ It was almost as if the old man were obligingly confirming Appleby in this speculation. ‘But those to come will not be of my seeing.’ For a moment he put down his knife in order to touch with sensitive fingers the little barge on the bench beside him. ‘For as I was saying, sir, it’s the craft that’s long.’

  ‘We must learn more from him,’ Judith said firmly. The Appleby
s had strolled away again to take another look at the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Do you think, if we had another drink ourselves, we might offer him one too?’

  ‘I think we might – and that he would no doubt accept it. His seems to be a case of a rather odd form of nostalgia. He once had something that was known as his place. Now he wants to have it again, just as part of the old days he’s come home in search of. If I fetched him out a tankard he’d stand up and ask leave to drink your health in it. And you, of course, would comport yourself in a highly becoming way. Then, quite casually, you would refer to me as “Sir John”, fondly supposing that the old chap would become more communicative once he could start saying “my lady” or “your ladyship”.’

  ‘Fondly?’ Lady Appleby, thus taxed, was entirely unabashed.

  ‘Almost certainly. He’s a sensitive old person – a rustic endowed with some undeveloped artistry or the like – and he’ll close up at once if he suspects that you’re trying to buy something from him for a casual pint, or to come it over him on the strength of being nothing more than London gentry.’

  ‘But he seems quite communicative.’

  ‘My guess is that you deceive yourself, if you think so. As a matter of fact, the venerable old man has something to hide.’

  ‘Something to hide, John? What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘Thirty years as a policeman. At least he’s uncertain about something. And it’s not merely that he hasn’t yet shaken down into an old environment he’s largely forgotten about. There’s something more. Perhaps he’s even aware that he’s been spied on.’

  ‘Spied on? What an outrageous interpretation to put on my quite natural–’

  ‘No, no – I don’t mean your mere fishing for information about your blessed Scroop House. You can go on some way farther there before he closes down – although eventually close down he will. He really is being spied on. You see the path we came by, and how it goes on behind that outbuilding?’

  ‘Yes. It looks like an old stable.’

  ‘Just that. Well, while we were talking, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye somebody slip rapidly behind it. Whoever it was must then have got inside the stable, because the door facing this way was pushed open just a fraction. The spy was peering out at us.’

  ‘Exactly, John. At us.’ Judith was laughing. ‘We’re quite reasonable objects of rural curiosity – probably on the part of a child.’

  Appleby shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think it was a child – although I couldn’t say whether it was man or woman. And I doubt whether a child would spy like that. He would simply stand at a safe distance and openly gape.’

  ‘Well, if it was a grown-up, I rather agree that it would be our old man who was being peered at. This is a pretty quiet part of the world, and any former inhabitant returning from foreign parts is bound to cause quite a stir.’

  ‘That’s true enough, and I don’t suppose we’re in contact with anything sinister. Heaven forbid. I’ve no taste for a busman’s holiday. The thing was oddly furtive, all the same. I think we’ll walk round and take a look at that stable.’

  This didn’t prove difficult. There was an open door at the back. They went in, paused to accustom their eyes to a half-darkness, and then crossed over to another door that Appleby indicated. He gave it a gentle push, so that a tiny crack of light appeared.

  ‘Have a look,’ he said.

  Judith had a look. And there, sure enough, neatly framed and in bright sunshine, was the old man, absorbed in his task. It was an entirely peaceful and harmless sight. Yet something about it made her draw back.

  ‘He looks rather helpless,’ she said. Or unsuspecting. But what could there really be that he ought to be suspicious of? You’re making me imagine things. Let’s go back and talk to him. And then go back along the canal, cross it at the first lock, and walk up to the big house.’

  They returned to the front of the inn. Judith sat down beside the old man, and for some time watched him at work in silence.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said casually, ‘you know Colonel Raven of Pryde Park?’

  ‘Yes, madam. He has been a prominent man in these parts these many years. And a famous fisherman.’

  ‘We have walked over from Pryde Park. Colonel Raven is my uncle. I want you to tell me more about Scroop House.’

  For a moment the old man ignored this. He had ducked his head in the rural equivalent of a polite bow.

  ‘It wouldn’t by any chance,’ he said, ‘be Miss Judith Raven I’m speaking to – the lady that married the great policeman?’

  Judith was startled. When young she had frequently visited her Uncle Julius. But to be enshrined in local memory in a countryside not her own was altogether surprising.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My name is Appleby now. And this is my husband, Sir John. But I don’t think many people round about here would recall me.’

  ‘Happen not, my lady. But I’m a remembering man. I remember much about Scroop House in the old days, and a little about Pryde Park too. But the Park, asking your pardon, was of little mark compared with the House. Ravens, I know well, have never been common folk, but their uncommonness has been most by way of strangeness, more often than not.’

  ‘Quite true,’ Appleby broke in with some emphasis. ‘My wife’s people are an eccentric crowd. But in rather a distinguished way. Scroop House must have been quite a place in those old days, if it cast the Colonel and his remarkable activities into the shade. What was so striking about it?’

  ‘Mrs Coulson herself, sir.’ The old man’s voice had turned oddly vibrant, as if years had dropped from him as he spoke. ‘There are few fine ladies like her nowadays. And in the big house, my lady, everything from cellar to attic of a fineness that answered to her. And the house parties, my lady! They were no matter merely of county folk. No – there was far more than mere gentry eager to gather round Mrs Coulson. Great men from Parliament came. And others above them, again. Poets, my lady, and great artists and deep philosophers. They called Mrs Coulson – her friends did – the Grand Collector. And it was a joke that was meant all in an admiring way. For Mrs Coulson had nowise to go out and gather people in. Thronging they came to her, the most brilliant in the land. Beautiful women, my lady, and handsome men – and all in a setting she had made worthy of them. Perhaps there were many other such houses in England then, such as a poor man like myself had no knowledge of. But Scroop House was enough for me, and proud I was to serve it.’

  ‘It does sound very splendid.’ Judith spoke gently after a pause. She knew that there must be some exaggeration in the old man’s picture, since otherwise she would have heard of these neighbouring glories at some time from her uncle. But of the genuineness of the enthusiasm behind the description there could be no doubt. The finely carved little barge now lay neglected on the bench. The old man was sitting with kindled face and idle hands.

  ‘But at Mrs Coulson’s death’ – Appleby asked – ‘all the glory departed? And you departed too?’

  ‘That is true, sir. Scroop went to a distant cousin of the mistress – a stranger who never so much as came to look at it, but instantly rented it out, all fine as it was, to a mere moneyed man from London, a Mr Binns – to whom William Chambers, my lady, who your ladyship will know built Scroop, meant no more than some common name. I stayed on for a time – no more than an outside man as I was – and then the heartbreak of it was too much for me, and to America, my lady, I departed.’

  ‘But what a shame!’

  Judith Appleby expressed this sentiment with great conviction. Her husband said nothing. Ever so slightly, this old person puzzled him. Judith, clearly, was accepting him as a mute, inglorious Milton – an artist manqué. And Appleby told himself that it was only his own long career as an inglorious Sherlock Holmes, a professional sifter of every sort of knavery, that disposed him to the feeling that the old man was playing some sort of part. Either he was doing that – Appleby said to himself – or he was perhaps covering up something t
hat had recently disconcerted him. There was, indeed, almost nothing in what the old man had said, that could be adduced in support of either of these suppositions. It was simply – as again Appleby told himself – that a lifetime of criminal investigation, even when blunted by a few years of mere high-level police administration, left one at the mercy of hunches, of obscure intimations that here was a little more than met the eye or ear.

  ‘But perhaps’ – he said – ‘there has now been another change at Scroop House? And that is why you have returned here?’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then the old man again picked up the little barge, studied it, put it down, and returned to delicately carving the new rudder. When he spoke, it was cautiously and with obvious reserve.

  ‘Well, sir, I wouldn’t say it’s not so. For there is a Coulson back at Scroop. He is the same gentleman, mark you, that once let the place – lock, stock and barrel – to the Mr Binns that I was telling you of. Mr Bertram Coulson, his name is. And when I heard sir, that he had returned to the old house, just as Mrs Coulson left it, it seemed to me that a change of heart might have come upon him, and that his thought might be to cherish his inheritance, and that I should come home and see for myself.’

  ‘You thought, perhaps, that you might even find employment again under the new owner?’

  ‘Well, sir, I am too old for such to be other than a bold thought in me. But I won’t say that it has been altogether absent from my mind.’ The old man paused. ‘I’d dearly like to settle back here for the short remainder of my days, turning my hand to what I can. For there have been Crabtrees hereabouts for a power of years.’

  ‘You are Mr Crabtree?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Yes, my lady. Seth Crabtree.’