A Connoisseur's Case Page 5

Then there was Aeschylus – Appleby continued to reflect. When the eminent dramatist was at an even more advanced age than Seth Crabtree, an eagle dropped a tortoise on his cranium, with fatal results. But although tortoises were no doubt to be found here and there as pets among the children of the peasantry, the concurrent presence of an eagle in the neighbourhood was in the highest degree unlikely. Could there be any other accidental cause of Crabtree’s death?

  It was not remotely possible that the discharge of a shotgun could produce such a wound as the dead man’s head had suffered. Such a weapon can, indeed, do something very nasty to a skull – but it has to be deliberately applied thereto for the purpose. A rifle bullet was a more conceivable agent – but rifles are seldom so employed as to produce accidental slaughter. A strong boy playing with a powerful catapult was a hypothesis not to be neglected. Such a boy could hardly be unaware of what he had achieved. But he might, of course, have fled in panic.

  I am going to have nothing to do with this – Appleby repeated to himself, as the inn came in sight and he increased his pace. Nothing at all.

  But now suppose – his mind ran on – that Crabtree, despite his years, had for some reason been running at breakneck speed. Had he then stumbled on the lock gate, with the consequence of some impact to the force of which that breakneck speed contributed its additional impetus? Would any very special fragility of bone be needed to account for the damage sustained? I think it still would, he answered himself. And he strode into the inn and demanded the telephone.

  And the following two hours found Appleby realizing that, after all, old habit was too strong for him. If only in the quietest way, he was going to be in on the Crabtree mystery. A certain Inspector Hilliard, a taciturn and clearly capable officer who had appeared with commendable promptitude from police headquarters in the county town, was indisposed to regard as other than a satisfactory circumstance that it happened to be Sir John Appleby who had come upon the body. What little he said implied that he would be grateful for any assistance he received. This being so, Appleby couldn’t very well withdraw in haste as soon as he had offered what might be called a lay statement of his own knowledge of the affair. He was constrained – as he later put it to Judith to do a little pottering around in a professional manner. And, as a consequence of this, the two of them didn’t get back to Pryde Park until shortly before dinner.

  They found Colonel Julius Raven, who had been rather crusty that morning, restored to good humour. His twinge of gout, he explained, had departed abruptly in the middle of the morning, and he had been able to go out and about upon various piscatorial occasions. These having been discharged, he now turned to what he probably regarded as the only other important duty in life – the proper exercise of hospitality. He liked to treat Appleby both as a member of the family and as a guest of some honour. There was to be a burgundy which he hoped John would just a little take notice of. If his people weren’t absolute fools it ought to be breathing comfortably in the dining-room now. Meantime, here was a glass of not precisely what the glorified grocers calling themselves wine merchants were pleased to sell as a sound dry sherry nowadays.

  All this was comfortable. And Appleby felt that, if he himself stood in no particular need of anything of that order, Judith did. Standing guard over Crabtree’s body with a pistol in her hand had not, perhaps, especially troubled her. But the brute fact of the old man’s death really had affected her. She had taken a fancy to Crabtree – or perhaps (Appleby thought) rather to the turn which that rather dubious and enigmatical person had put on. He himself had felt doubts about the fellow. And these had now been stepped up simply as a consequence of the fact that Crabtree had been murdered. Estimable people are, of course, murdered from time to time. But to be murdered is by no means to be advanced in moral rating in the regard of anybody long experienced in crime. More often than not, the lives of murderees turn out to have been far from salubrious.

  Appleby sipped his sherry, and found no difficulty in having something to say about it. What did strike him as not altogether easy was the explaining to Judith’s uncle that a rather nasty deed of violence had been perpetrated on the fringes of a neighbouring estate. But it was Judith who broached the matter. She did it with that sort of obliqueness which, although it would be poor form in a man, is for some reason held admissible in a woman.

  ‘Uncle Julius,’ she said, ‘do you remember, long ago, an old man called Seth Crabtree?’

  Colonel Raven shook his head.

  ‘An old man called Crabtree? No, I can’t say that I do. No old man called Crabtree.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have been old long ago,’ Appleby interposed.

  ‘Ah! That’s another matter.’ Colonel Raven’s expression changed. ‘A damned scoundrel called Seth Crabtree, no older than myself. Yes, of course.’

  ‘He would certainly be a contemporary of yours, more or less,’ Judith agreed. ‘What do you remember of him, Uncle Julius?’

  ‘Remember of him?’ Colonel Raven considered. ‘Well, I can remember being minded to take a crack at the fellow’s thick skull. More sherry, John?’

  Quite steadily, Appleby accepted more sherry. The moment had been a startling one – the more so as a definitely alarming glint had come into Colonel Raven’s usually mild eye. It was true that the Colonel’s speech was, more often than not, far from an answering mildness. Knaves, fools and even damned scoundrels – if his conversation was to be trusted – were unnaturally abundant in his neighbourhood and even in his household. But this, Appleby had always supposed, was a harmless mannerism, answering to nothing in the Colonel’s actual disposition towards any fellow human being. But, at the moment, the old gentleman didn’t look like that.

  There was a short silence, which Colonel Raven occupied by providing Judith with a second glass of sherry too. To carry on the conversation wasn’t exactly easy. The announcement that somebody had taken a crack at Seth Crabtree’s thick – or fragile – skull would have seemed, in the circumstances, a trifle bald. On the other hand, since the information had to be communicated sooner or later, to shy away from it was equally awkward.

  ‘Crabtree is dead,’ Appleby said. ‘As a matter of fact, I want to tell you something about his death in a moment. But would I be right in thinking that, in his earlier years, he was a bit of a poacher?’

  ‘A poacher!’ Colonel Raven suddenly raised the decanter he was carrying in a gesture suggesting that he was about to perform some dreadful deed with it – instead of which, however, he merely studied its contents critically against the light. ‘The fellow was as voracious as a pike – and a damned sight more cunning. There were times when I could have murdered him – cheerfully.’

  There was again a somewhat noticeable silence.

  ‘But’ – Judith said, rather feebly – ‘he went away?’

  ‘Went away? They transported him.’ Colonel Raven offered this surprising information with complete conviction.

  ‘But, Uncle Julius, wasn’t it only rather earlier that people were transported for poaching?’

  ‘Was it? The more’s the pity.’ Colonel Raven put down the decanter, picked up a plate of small cocktail biscuits which had been set on the tray beside it, carried these over to the hearth, and there emptied them into the low fire burning in it. ‘My people are all dunderheads,’ he said. ‘Impossible to get them out of these damned vulgar habits. Got hold of them in London hotels, I suppose. What did you say, my dear?’

  ‘I was saying that this man Crabtree couldn’t have been transported – sent to Botany Bay or Tasmania or somewhere. All that was stopped some time in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Was it?’ Colonel Raven sounded faintly disappointed. ‘But quite right, of course. Shockingly inhumane, and all that. Poachers, though, are another matter.’

  Appleby took a moment off from this mad conversation to glance round the Colonel’s library. The few engravings on the walls, and the many more engravings which he knew to be stacked away in portfolios, must represent as fine
a collection of ichthyography as existed in the country. And the same went for the books. Wherever you looked, they were about fish or fishing, and nothing else. There was Badham’s Prose Halieutics and the Marquis of Granby’s The Trout. There was The Papers of the Piscatorial Society, and Super Flumina and Cholmondeley Pennel’s Fishing Gossip (which contained, Appleby remembered, that masterly discussion of ‘Fishing and Fish-Hooks of the Earliest Date’). There was Irish Salmonidae, and General Burton’s Trouting in Norway, and Thomas’ The Rod in India (which suggested, Appleby thought, Kipling in one of his sadistic moods). There was Mason’s Guide to Ichthyophagy, and there was Bibliotheca Piscatoria, and there was Kennedy’s Thirty Seasons in Scandinavia. In fact there was everything. And it all added up to the proposition that Colonel Raven was very much a man of one idea. He had a mania, one might say, for the whole finny tribe.

  ‘Anyway,’ Colonel Raven was saying, ‘the fellow Crabtree was packed off to the colonies.’

  ‘Well,’ Judith said, ‘he went to some place in the west of the United States.’

  ‘Precisely, my dear girl. It’s what I was saying.’ The Colonel appeared to meditate offering a third glass of sherry, and to think better of it. ‘But why, by the way, are we talking about Crabtree? He had a job with the people over at a place called Scroop House, I seem to remember. But of course I haven’t heard his name mentioned for years. Tickling other people’s trout in Alaska, I should imagine.’ Colonel Raven was very pleased with this joke.

  ‘He came back.’ Judith hesitated. ‘He came back, only the other day. And John and I happened to meet him, and have some talk with him, in a pub called the Jolly Leggers. Only this morning, that was. And – well, he’s been murdered.’

  ‘My dear child!’ Colonel Raven was shocked. ‘Nothing of that sort could possibly happen round here. Just how do you suppose him to have been murdered?’

  ‘Somebody took a crack at his skull.’

  ‘You astound me, Judith. Who could possibly think of doing such a thing?’

  ‘Who indeed, Uncle Julius.’ Judith glanced across at Appleby almost in alarm. ‘Strangely enough, it was John and I who came on the body.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Now Colonel Raven was really upset. He seemed at once to feel that the neighbourhood, in treating his guests to such an experience, had badly let him down. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ he said. ‘But I’m glad you mentioned it straight away. Not a subject for the dinner table. Did I say something about the burgundy?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Julius. And we’re looking forward to it. But I felt I had to mention what had happened, because probably the local police will be coming after John to get his help.’

  ‘John’s sort of thing, to be sure.’ The Colonel had brightened again. ‘I hope it’s an interesting – um – case of its kind. I’m only sorry it wasn’t Stevenage.’

  ‘Stevenage?’ Judith was puzzled.

  ‘Our local bigwig, Lord Stevenage. Murder of an earl would give John more scope, I mean. And none of us would miss old Stevenage. Not that anybody is going to miss old Crabapple, either, I suppose.’

  ‘Crabtree.’

  ‘Crabtree, then. They must have let him come back. Ticket-of-leave business, no doubt. Injudicious. Look at the consequences for the poor devil.’

  ‘But, Uncle Julius, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that Crabtree was a criminal.’

  ‘A criminal?’ Colonel Raven stood up as his butler announced dinner. ‘You can’t have heard me, my dear. The man wasn’t merely a criminal. He used to take my trout.’

  ‘And do you think he took old Mrs Coulson’s trout, too?’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Colonel Raven was amused. ‘I don’t believe you ever met the Grand Collector when you used to come to Pryde as a kid.’

  ‘I’m fairly sure I never even heard of her.’

  ‘Well, well!’ The Colonel made a gesture indicating that he and Judith should go in to dinner together, and that Appleby might go before or after them as he chose. ‘There used to be a mixed crowd there in the old lady’s day. Not our simple country set from around here at all, you know. Stevenage, for example. I don’t suppose poor Tommy was ever invited to Scroop in his life. But I did occasionally go myself. The old lady liked hearing about my rather special way of tackling the mahseer. I’ll tell you about that – just a matter, you know, of studying the way they took their ordinary feed – while we pick at whatever those dolts have provided for us.’

  ‘We must hear that, of course, Uncle Julius. But over the coffee, please, when we can really attend. At dinner you must tell us about old Mrs Coulson and her mixed crowd. I feel cheated at never having heard all about her before.’

  ‘It’s no good,’ Appleby said over Colonel Raven’s shoulder. ‘Judith isn’t being honest. She wants people, and the local legends, and what sort of chinoiseries William Chambers did for the original Coulson – if that was his name. She prefers that – and let’s be frank about it – to anything about fish.’

  ‘It isn’t true,’ Judith said. ‘But I can’t deny that it is really John who has a passion for the fishy. Anything of that sort he pounces on at once.’

  ‘To be sure, my dear.’ Colonel Raven answered a shade absently. Arrived in his dining-room, he was giving a sharp eye to the dispositions that the dolts had contrived for his guests. ‘But I can certainly tell you about the folk at Scroop. The house is one of those new-fangled places that retired merchants and their kind began running up in the 1770s and 1780s. But people of that sort have their merits, one oughtn’t to deny. As for old Sara Coulson I’ll tell you all I know.’

  5

  ‘Reasonable family, and all that,’ Colonel Raven presently said, as he peered with some severity at a sauceboat. ‘Daughter of old Freddie Crispin, who was the brainiest of that lot.’

  ‘The Viceroy?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘That’s the chap. Shot with him once, when I was a lad. Rather a set affair. Had to perch on a great elephant, and all that. But quite fun. Unassuming for a bigwig. Freddie, I mean. Not the elephant.’

  ‘So old Mrs Coulson,’ Judith said, ‘was an Hon? I’m surprised Seth Crabtree didn’t make that point.’

  ‘Yes, of course. She was the Honourable Mrs Coulson, for what the point’s worth. But rather distinguished, bless her, as well. All sorts of people congregated. Arthur Balfour, and that crowd. Sara might have been called a tuft-hunter, if she hadn’t been quite a tuft herself. But mad – quite mad. Do you know, mad folk have always interested me? Something that rather appeals in them. I don’t know what.’

  ‘And she was called the Grand Collector?’

  ‘So she was. And so she did. Religions and reptiles, pottery and prima donnas, ormolu and OMs.’ Colonel Raven smiled happily – whether at his own wit or because the sauce was right, it would have been hard to say.

  ‘I’m sure Arthur Balfour had the OM. And was well up in a variety of religions as well.’

  ‘Not a doubt of it, my dear – all credit to him. Always found one religion a pretty full ration, myself. Keeping up with it, and all that. And going in and reading one of the lessons for the parson. Morning on your knees in the family pew – and knowing, perhaps, that the mayfly are on the water. Hard.’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Julius. But tell us more about Sara Coulson.’

  ‘Some money of her own. And then, of course, this fellow Coulson had pots. It always helps.’

  ‘She survived her husband?’

  ‘Dear me, yes. By a good many years. And was left the place absolutely. No entail, or trust, or anything of that sort. No children, you see – and next-of-kin Coulsons only out on rather a remote line.’

  ‘But there’s a Coulson at Scroop House now?’

  ‘Certainly. A very nice chap. Always anxious to do the right thing in the county. Too anxious, in a way. Place not quite native to him.’

  ‘I see. But how did he come there?’

  ‘Bless me if I ever thought to inquire. Never been on more than nodding terms with Scroop, y
ou see. But I suppose the old lady must have made a will handing it back to the Coulson who was next in succession. Her own fortune too, perhaps – since she was certainly anxious that the place should be kept up in the grand manner.’

  ‘And the new Coulson let her down there?’

  ‘It seems to me you know all about this story already.’ The Colonel frowned in some displeasure. But this may have been only because his butler was showing signs of handling the burgundy as only a dolt would do.

  ‘The late Seth Crabtree,’ Appleby explained, ‘gave us a glimpse of life in the big house long ago. He seems to have had some position of privilege with the old lady. Did something or other for her. It was all a little obscure.’

  ‘Perhaps he provided her kitchens with my trout. He’d have been quite capable of it, the atrocious rascal. But – by Jove! – I’ve remembered something. About this very decent fellow, Bertram Coulson, coming into the place. People were surprised at it. You see, although he was the nearest of kin, old Sara had never set eyes on him. And there was some other Coulson – a younger man – whom she was said to have rather a fancy for. And the house and money were, as I’ve said, hers to do what she liked with. So people thought it odd. And it’s odd that this should come back to me. The story hasn’t been in my head for years. But then, so many things haven’t.’ Colonel Raven, who was sniffing warily at a drop of burgundy, looked momentarily perplexed. ‘I’m sure I don’t know why.’

  ‘But about when old Mrs Coulson died?’ Judith prompted. ‘Bertram Coulson failed to take over?’

  ‘Oh, entirely. Never so much as came to look at the place at that time. Shoved it on the market as a furnished property, with shooting, fishing and all, with the result that it was rented by a commercial chap called Binns. Later on, when Bertram Coulson thought better of it and came into residence after all, his former conduct took some living down in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘How did his change of heart come about?’

  ‘I don’t know at all, my dear. But it was deuced sudden. Perhaps it would never have happened, but for the bust-up in the Binns ménage. Mrs Binns cleared out. Indeed, as she cleared out, they say, without so much as paying her milliner, she may be said to have levanted. Immoral woman, as a matter of fact.’