Appleby And Honeybath Page 5

  But had there been a body? Denver was bound to have been asking himself this. Honeybath’s story had a quite different standing from the joint story of Honeybath and Appleby. Honeybath was an artist, and therefore more or less by definition a fanciful and unreliable person. It was of course improbable that he went in for hallucinations in a big way. But he might well have come upon a man deeply asleep, and have jumped to the conclusion – this on the score of some mild temperamental quirk of his own – that it was a dead man he was looking at. And almost immediately upon his quitting the library the man might have woken up, and taken through the bogus door the shortest route to a reviving toddle in open air.

  Hither and thither dividing the swift mind, therefore, Inspector Denver must be thus thought of as he glanced round the unrewarding vacancy before him.

  ‘There isn’t much to go on,’ he then said.

  Appleby wasn’t so sure. His own first conjecture offered at least a small niche or crevice in the blank wall the Grinton affair presented as a whole. One hears of industrial espionage – and often of a highly ingenious and even outré sort. So why not learned or academic espionage? The Grinton library was an absolutely unknown quantity. A lot of it would be rubbish or near-rubbish, of no more value than the sham volumes of outmoded theology on the concealed door. As much again, or more, must consist of books which time and comparative rarity had made worth, in the aggregate, a good deal of money. But nothing of this kind was likely to be so important, or so impossible of access elsewhere, as to produce the extraordinary state of affairs which Appleby believed himself to have stumbled on. Only highly significant manuscript material would fill the bill. But, if found, why not simply make off with it? Perhaps there was a moral, conceivably also a legal, distinction between filching something and simply studying or copying it even in a clandestine and trespassing way on the spot. But perhaps it had to be searched for. Nothing was more likely than that, catalogue-wise, the Grinton library and its cellarage were a chaos.

  All this made sense in a way. But it didn’t quite make sense of a dead body. That seemed to belong with another order of activity. And in all this there was a good deal of food for thought.

  Was there anyone at Grinton who was likely really to know about the library? Terence Grinton himself was an obvious write-off from the start. He knew about the kennel books, and he believed that a certain forbear called Ambrose Grinton, who was most unlikely to have flourished more than two or three centuries ago, belonged ‘back in the Middle Ages’. Dolly Grinton was clearly a more sophisticated person, with some education and a good deal of intelligence. But Dolly’s taste in literature and the arts in general had already made itself known to Appleby as of a modish sort, and it was likely that she owned only a sketchy knowledge of the history of the family into which she had married. She was also rather Frenchified, and liked talking about Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, la nouvelle vague, and topics of that kind: no doubt noteworthy in themselves but having little to do with English squirarchal life. Appleby had noticed, however, that Judith, who kept up a little with that sort of passing show, had been getting on very well with Dolly. If anything that could be classified as mere family gossip looked like being relevant to the present mystery it could possibly be coaxed into light by this route.

  Was there anyone else? The Grintons’ daughter and son-in-law, Magda and Giles Tancock, together with their two children and a nurse, were staying at Grinton for a week. Terence Grinton had early described Tancock to Appleby as a ‘glorified auctioneer’, but had not been specific as to just where the glorification lay. Perhaps he shouted up the bids for fat cattle, or perhaps he was the kind of young pin-money aesthete who gets sucked into the proliferating departments of the great London auctioneering concerns. The latter was the more probable conjecture to the extent that Magda was what Americans call a college girl. She had got herself to Oxford – Appleby had been told – about a dozen years ago, and had there studied he didn’t know what. This murky past (as it must appear to her father) suggested strength of character, or even a masterful self-will, in a Grinton, and perhaps she knew more about the Grintons than Terence Grinton did. The frequent vagueness of the armigerous classes about their own ancestry had often struck Appleby (whose own origins were distinctly modest) as among the curiosities of the English social scene.

  At the moment Appleby pursued this line of thought no further. Instead, he fell to wondering how the capable but evidently perplexed Inspector Denver was now going to handle the thing. However little there was ‘to go on’, the chap couldn’t very well wash his hands of it – writing in that notebook something like, ‘No further action required’. On the other hand he would be chary of mounting at Grinton the kind of performance which would lead to newspapers enthusiastically announcing that the police ‘suspected foul play’, or even that they were ‘treating the matter as a case of murder’. That way lay a quite horrific jamboree: a mobile control centre; police dogs with handlers; frogmen from the underwater search unit hunting hopefully for ponds to plunge into; files of perspiring officers apparently grazing on the lawns like transmogrified sheep, but really scrabbling after non-existent spent bullets or abandoned cigarette ends. No sensible policeman wants that sort of circus if it can possibly be avoided.

  And here was a small problem for Appleby – of an ethical order, if that wasn’t too elevated a term. When – in the words of the song – constabulary duty’s to be done, what is the proper comportment on the part of an unconfessed constable? Appleby had sketched that provisional theory of espionage to Honeybath. Ought he at once to favour Denver with it as well? Denver hadn’t asked for anything of the kind. He had scarcely had an opportunity to do so. If he had really failed to tumble to Appleby’s identity, there was no particular reason for his asking questions in any case. If he had done so, and was making a species of solemn game out of pretending the penny hadn’t dropped, perhaps he ought to be let play the thing his own way. For the time being, at least, Appleby resolved to continue lying low.

  ‘I think we might return to the house,’ Denver said. ‘Then I’d better take formal statements from those who have been more immediately involved.’ He paused on this. ‘And see if anybody has any ideas about the thing. About just what has happened. We know that something has happened. And we don’t know much more than that.’

  ‘Not even whether the affair’s one for the police,’ Terence Grinton said rather surprisingly. ‘If there was a dead body around, you know, it would be another matter. But devil there is – unless it has been stuffed up a chimney.’

  ‘A chimney!’ Honeybath exclaimed – startled by this approximation to a previous conjecture of his own.

  ‘Or taken out and fed to the pigs.’ It was with a sudden and not uncharacteristic violence that Grinton loudly added this senseless conjecture. ‘What else, in heaven’s name?’

  ‘Well, sir, burglary, in a manner of speaking.’ Denver spoke in a deadpan respectful voice. ‘It’s my understanding that a bed, and a table, and a cooking stove–’

  ‘It’s an interesting point.’ Appleby interrupted with what he judged to be a layman’s innocent remark. ‘Does a man commit burglary by removing or proposing to remove from another man’s house what he has previously planted there himself? I can imagine a whole line of magistrates urgently consulting their clerk over an issue like that.’

  ‘We can imagine a lot of things,’ Denver said. ‘It’s a good deal easier than digging out facts.’

  This was undeniable, and produced a general silence. It prompted Appleby to a further observation.

  ‘Or relevant facts,’ he said. ‘I rather suppose that to be the hardest task of detective officers.’

  ‘As you say, sir.’ Denver was again at his most wooden as he offered this concurrence. And he then led the way out of the bleakly empty room.

  5

  It was now five p.m. on the seventh of February, and an almanac would have provided the information that the sun was due to set in four minutes. Th
e library at Grinton Hall seemed to be aware of something of the sort; it was turning dusky in the corners, and almost dark in those contracted spaces in which towering rows of books, monumental rather than edifying or learned in suggestion, squared up one to another in a series of bays along the north wall. Here and there in the meagre gap between these and the ceiling’s gilded and convoluted cornice perched yellowed and dusty busts: Homer, Julius Caesar, obscure classical gods and goddesses. It all suddenly struck Honeybath, as the four men paused again in the middle of the room, as rather effectively sinister. He thought of those illustrations which Hablot Browne – ‘Phiz’ to the world – could cook up for the gloomier moments in novels like Little Dorrit and Bleak House. Accusing fingers, painted or in plasterwork or marble, pointing down at sprawled and lifeless figures on shadowy floors. Generically, that kind of thing. Honeybath thought again of his projected portrait in such a grotesquely incongruous setting as that.

  But this was frivolous, and he ought to be attending to what Inspector Denver was now judging it proper to say.

  ‘Would this room be much used, sir, by your household and guests?’ Denver was asking the proprietor of Grinton.

  ‘Used?’ What might be called Terence Grinton’s King Charles’ head (to continue with Dickens) was instantly touched off by the question. ‘Who would want to use a bloody morgue? And a morgue it has just been, according to one cock-and-bull yarn we’ve been listening to.’

  This, as uttered in Honeybath’s presence, was scarcely urbane. But Denver gave no sign of disapproval – which wouldn’t, indeed, have been his place. He did, however, appear interested. To Appleby, whose resolve to be unobtrusive didn’t prevent his being other than a keen observer of whatever was going on, it had already seemed that Denver was distinctly interested in the violent Terence. He had been shooting keen sidelong glances at him from time to time.

  ‘And we’d better get out of the place,’ Grinton said, and moved towards the door.

  But Denver didn’t budge. It was something he would be good at, Appleby thought, when still uncertain of any direction in which to move.

  ‘Just so,’ Denver said – much as if something prosaically sensible had just been said. ‘And it occurs to me that this library, being not otherwise required, may be the best place for me to set up in.’

  ‘To set up in?’ Grinton might have been listening to astounding words. ‘What the devil do you mean?’ That Inspector Denver had performed meritorious services in marching off those pestilent yatterers on cruel blood sports was now far from the mind of the Master of the Nether Barset Hunt. ‘If you ask me, Denver, you’d better cut off and turn in a report to the Chief Constable. Something of that kind.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not exactly the position, sir. You called in the police–’

  ‘The deuce I did!’ Grinton spoke with every appearance of honest indignation. That it was he who had directed his wife to ask for the meritorious Denver might have been as remote from his consciousness as was the present political situation in Kamchatka.

  ‘And very properly, sir, in my judgement. The situation is certainly a little obscure, but there is at least some reason to believe that there has been a theft of your property.’

  ‘A theft of my property!’ Grinton looked extremely startled. ‘What the deuce do you mean, Denver?’

  ‘A table, chair, and other effects. It is reasonable to suppose that what Sir John Appleby and Mr Honeybath came upon in there formed part of your household goods. I noticed one or two similar articles through the open door of another of those small rooms. But now these particular articles have been removed without the knowledge of their owner – to wit, yourself, sir. So burglary must be suspected. Burglary is a serious offence in itself, irrespective of the scale of the felony envisaged. Police investigation is essential.’

  Honeybath, whose profession rendered him perforce a student of character, felt instructed by his prospective sitter’s reception of this not altogether plausible speech. Grinton was perceiving that it required thought. And Grinton resented this. He was not a thoughtful man. Thought was an activity which, steadily over the years, he had been addressing himself with some success to doing without. So he naturally resented any sudden call for its employment. This state of mind (if the expression was appropriate) struck Honeybath as an interesting one to pursue on the part of a portrait painter. For the first time at Grinton he felt a strong impulse to get to work. Thus he too rather resented Denver as now an obstinate presence in the place. Unlike John Appleby, he was coming to regard the whole business of the corpse and its vanishing trick as vexatious rather than interesting. It was not the less vexatious for having been hinted to him by Appleby as something that was going to occasion him a good deal of harassment at the hands of this conscientious officer.

  ‘Look here!’ Grinton was saying violently. ‘If you were sent for, it certainly wasn’t on account of some confounded tables and chairs. There are more than enough of the damned things about the house, and if a few have been pinched by some prowling prole I couldn’t care less.’ Terence Grinton paused on these reflections, and seemed faintly aware of them as a little lacking in relevance. ‘It’s what Mr Honeybath here saw, or thought he saw, that has brought you in on us, Denver. You know that perfectly well. So if you can just clear up that bit of twaddle, and then take yourself off, I’ll be grateful to you.’

  This was undoubtedly a very rude speech, yet not without a gleam of reason. And Denver received it without any token of offence.

  ‘Quite so, sir. Only you see, dealing with that aspect of the situation may take a little time. A start, however, can be made at once. My officers will have arrived by now.’

  ‘Your officers! Who the hell are they?’

  ‘Two experienced and reliable men, I’m glad to say. They will act as unobtrusively as may be – only you must understand that they may have to do a good deal of ferreting around. That is unavoidable.’

  ‘Ferreting, you say?’ The word had the unexpected effect of appearing to bring Grinton within familiar and therefore comprehensible territory. He was perhaps recalling that his son-in-law and grandchildren were out with a ferret at that moment. ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it. And here in the library, if that’s your fancy. You’ll want to question the servants, no doubt.’

  ‘That may come in time, sir. But it will be best to begin with your family and guests – asking everybody in an orderly way, you know, if they have any light to throw on the situation. And taking evidence, as I’ve said, from those more evidently involved. Preferably one by one, and dictating statements which can then be read over and signed. Entirely a matter of voluntary cooperation at this stage, I need hardly say. And I’ll begin with Mr Honeybath, if he will oblige.’

  Unavoidably, Mr Honeybath obliged – and thus found himself alone with Denver in no time at all.

  ‘A difficult man,’ Denver said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Mr Grinton. A tetchy chap.’

  Honeybath found he didn’t at all know how to respond to this familiar note. It was scarcely proper to concur enthusiastically in such a verdict upon one’s host. On the other hand, ‘tetchy’ was an expressive English word of which he approved, and there could be no doubt whatever as to its applicability.

  ‘True enough,’ he said. ‘And something I have to take an interest in. I’m here to paint his portrait.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’ Denver opened his notebook and brought out his pen, as if formal proceedings were now to begin. ‘Mr Charles Honeybath,’ he said – and appeared to write down the name. ‘RA, I think it would be?’

  ‘Yes.’ Honeybath, whose boyhood had been lived amid dreams of artistic glory, took no particular pride in the indubitable distinction of being a Royal Academician.

  ‘Interesting. They say, you know, that the Grintons are uncommonly hard up. Vanity, would you say?’

  It took Honeybath a moment to catch on to the sense of this. It was simply that Terence Grinton’s financi
al situation was such as to render a portrait an injudicious luxury, and that vanity was perhaps the explanation. Honeybath was quite clear that it would be wholly improper to volunteer the information that the portrait was to be paid for by subscription – a fact which couldn’t possibly be of any relevance to the messsy business of the vanishing corpse.

  ‘I don’t think I’d call Mr Grinton vain,’ he said briefly. But he did wonder whether it might be true that the family was short of money. Terence couldn’t conceivably be earning money; the company didn’t exist that would pay him a fee to sit on its board. And there was no positive reason to suppose that behind him there any longer stood substantial inherited wealth. He probably blundered along as a landowner, and that was it. But here again was something irrelevant to that corpse.

  ‘And now to get down to it,’ Denver said comfortably. ‘It seems to me, sir, that we are on rather surer ground through that dummy door than we are here in the library. It’s not that I don’t judge your evidence to be reliable in every way. But you were on your own when you came upon this seemingly dead man. And you came away fairly quickly. I can imagine you in a witness box, Mr Honeybath, being cross-examined by counsel defending some villain or other. He might get some way in persuading a jury that there wasn’t all that evidence that the dead man wasn’t presently able to get up and walk. But it’s different when we get through that fake door. Sir John Appleby is with you when you are on the other side of it. Of course it’s quite irrelevant that Sir John has been the Metropolitan Commissioner.’ Denver said this positively airily. ‘It’s simply that two are better than one when a witness box is in prospect. I hope, sir, you follow me.’