A Connoisseur's Case (10 page)

‘Will it, indeed.' Appleby judged this last remark of West's impertinent. But he gave no sign of this. ‘Crabtree,' he said, ‘was a villager here who went overseas about fifteen years ago, and had apparently only just come back. Perhaps your own acquaintance with the district is of more recent date?'

‘Decidedly. I came from quite another part of the country to take over the practice here only three years ago.'

‘Ah. Then I'm afraid, Dr West, that you may get missed out in the general epidemic of suspicions you have been predicting. Crabtree, you see, can have had only a few hours in which to get seriously across anybody for the first time here. So unless we are to imagine that he had been followed to this part of the world by somebody with whom he had developed bad relations fairly recently, we seem obliged to view his murder – for murder it certainly was – as a matter of the settling of some very old score indeed.'

‘I can see some force in that train of reasoning.' West spoke as a man who doesn't, in fact, think any too highly of the proposition being put to him. ‘But one can surely imagine a motive generating itself, so to speak, more or less on the spot. Robbery, for example.'

‘Yes, that is true. But there is no sign that this unfortunate fellow had much to be robbed of.'

‘He had returned, you say, from foreign parts. He might have had savings – and, if so, they were probably on his person. Even if his appearance was shabby, as you seem to suggest, that might hold. And he may have been observed fingering them over. Or he may have confided rashly in some stranger, or former acquaintance. Isn't robbery the commonest motive in the category of crime you appear to be dealing with?'

‘Probably it is.' Appleby was reflecting that this was, at least, a clear-headed man. At the same time he was remembering the curious impression that West had made upon him on the occasion of his brushing past on the towpath. ‘Crabtree had a few shillings in his pocket, no more. And nothing to give any line on his recent movements.'

‘A few shillings?' Dr West had found his hat, and seemed about to show himself out into the night. The interest he was taking in the death of Crabtree, if intelligent, was very far from being absorbed. ‘Doesn't that suggest robbery? He may have returned to England far from prosperous. But he would scarcely be destitute.'

‘That is true. But a criminal of any astuteness, having killed Crabtree upon some motive other than that of immediate financial gain, would be likely to take his wallet, pocketbook or whatever before throwing the book into the lock. It would set the police on a false trail.'

‘No doubt.' West's attitude was again approaching indifference as he moved towards the front door.

‘As a matter of fact, there is one suggestion of robbery in the affair. Crabtree was in possession of something when I myself encountered him at the Jolly Leggers that had disappeared when we found the body. But it was of no conceivable value.'

‘Is that so?' West's hand was on the door. ‘You'll forgive me if I get off to bed. On my job, one has to go rather short of sleep from time to time.'

‘I'd hate to cause you a single sleepless hour, Dr West. Good night.'

 

 

On the following morning the Applebys went walking again. This time their objective was avowedly Scroop House. Colonel Raven had rung up Bertram Coulson and announced the proposed call. That the Crabtree affair was, so to speak, in its hinterland had been left as well-understood.

‘Do you think it may have been Uncle Julius?' Judith asked, as they walked down the drive. She put the question with a great air of comfortable chat.

‘It's no doubt a possibility that should be inquired into,' Appleby said a trifle shortly. ‘And Tarbox. And the cook. She must be severely questioned as soon as they've had her appendix out. And, for that matter, the whole blessed neighbourhood. The vicar. The vet. The district nurse. The delightful fellow who was anxious to deliver a piano. And Channing-Kennedy, who refused to have one.'

‘Channing-Kennedy?' Judith seemed to take this last suggestion seriously and almost hopefully. She must really have taken a most particular dislike to the landlord of the Jolly Leggers. ‘But surely Channing-Kennedy almost has an alibi provided by ourselves?'

‘I think not. A bicycle along that secondary road, south of the canal, would have done the trick. The road, incidentally, which was being graced by the progress of Mr Alfred Binns' Phantom V at an hour when Mr Binns would like it to be believed that he was a couple of counties away. There's not going to be any shortage of suspects in this business. So you needn't begin by talking nonsense about your uncle.'

‘It isn't nonsense.' With some surprise, Appleby saw that Judith was speaking seriously now. ‘You know that all my family are mad.'

‘That's perfectly true – in a popular manner of speaking. My own experience of Ravens includes one or two bizarre episodes, I must confess.'

‘Very well. And at least part of what Uncle Julius had to say about Seth Crabtree last night was pretty mad, wasn't it? All that about poaching.'

‘It certainly doesn't quite knit with your uncle's generally amiable character. He talks about poachers and so on rather like an eighteenth-century comic squire in a novel. But I take it to be some sort of private joke or affectation, like his calling all those old servants he dotes on dunderheads and rascals.'

‘He did get out and about yesterday, although he wasn't expected to. Suppose he met Crabtree by the lock, recognized him, said something like “You damned scoundrel!” and gave him a whack on the head. What then?'

‘What then?' Appleby considered this fantastic-seeming question soberly. ‘Well, your uncle would have walked back to Pryde and said something like “Tarbox, I've taken a crack at an atrocious ruffian and knocked him into the canal. He's probably dead.”' Appleby glanced at Judith. ‘Wouldn't something like that be the way of it?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Dash it all, girl, you can't imagine your uncle embarking on an elaborate course of deceit, can you? We're not in a whodunnit, you know, with everybody capable of anything.'

‘But, John, Uncle Julius
is
rather mad. And don't mad people do things and then just forget about them?'

‘A good many crimes of violence, impulsive in nature, are only imperfectly preserved in the conscious memories of those who commit them. But it takes a rare and absolute mania blankly to lose all recollection of such a thing. If we had dinner last night in the company of a homicidal maniac, we shall make quite a name for ourselves, believe me, in the annals of psychiatry. Hullo, here's the lock again.'

‘Yes,' Judith said. ‘And some morbid persons peering at it.'

 

The police had concluded such investigations of the spot as they judged might be useful, and there was now no trace of what had happened there. The gates on the down-falling side were open, as Appleby and Judith had managed to drag them. The other gates were, of course, closed, and a young man and woman were standing on them, staring gloomily at the water.

‘Not villagers,' Judith said. ‘Hikers? Not that, either. There aren't any young Coulsons, are there?'

‘I gather not. And my guess is that these are the young Binnses, who stay with the Coulsons from time to time. You know, I had several ideas about the call of Binns
père
at Pryde last night. And one of them was that he came fishing for information as to the whereabouts of his progeny.'

‘He can't be very trustful of them.'

‘At the moment, the young people don't look very trustful of each other.'

This was true. The girl and youth on the gates did now seem to be in attitudes suggesting that they were at odds with one another. At this moment, however, they became aware of the Applebys. And it was possible to feel them as joining forces immediately.

‘Good morning,' Appleby said, when he had come up with them. ‘Am I right in thinking that, if we walk east along the other side of the canal, we shall come on a track leading up to Scroop House?'

Without much suggesting pleasure at being thus appealed to, the young man nodded. He was about twenty-four, and Appleby saw at once that he was a young Binns. Thirty years on, he would be the image of his father. The girl, who was perhaps five years younger, was of a different type. And for a moment he wondered whether he had seen her somewhere before. But the slight air of familiarity she suggested was of the sort that is commonly illusory.

‘Quite right,' the young man said – and gave Appleby a frank scowl. ‘You come to a small wharf and a boathouse. The track goes up from there through the park. It used to be quite a road. You can't miss it.

‘We came down that way ourselves,' the girl said. This was plainly by way of continuing the conversation and making up for something approaching incivility in her brother. ‘We are staying at Scroop House. As a matter of fact, we lived there once.'

‘In fact, you are Daphne and Peter Binns.' Appleby shook hands, gave his name, and introduced the young people to Judith. ‘If you are returning to the house,' he went on, ‘perhaps we may walk up together. Colonel Raven has sent us to pay a call.' He smiled at the young Binnses – very much a courteous elderly man, accustomed to authority. ‘As it happens, I feel not entirely a stranger to you. For I met your father last night.'

There was no mistaking the startled character of the swift glance the young Binnses exchanged on hearing this news.

‘In London?' Peter Binns asked abruptly.

‘At Pryde. Your father dropped in on Colonel Raven while motoring through. It was his first visit, I gathered, for some time. And he was in too much of a hurry to go on to Scroop.'

‘Daddy never–' Daphne Binns had begun to say something which she thought better of. She checked herself – but only to plunge at something else. ‘Wasn't it awful,' she said, ‘about that old man – here, in the lock?'

‘Tight, I expect. And fell and bashed his head.' Peter Binns broke in with this roughly. ‘But the police are making a stink about it. Earn their keep that way, I suppose.'

‘And how do you earn your keep, Mr Binns?' Appleby asked this question in a tone sufficiently whimsical to make it inoffensive enough. But it put Peter Binns on his dignity.

‘I have a position in my father's firm, sir,' he said.

‘Gained,' Daphne Binns put in, ‘by native merit and honest application. Signed, Daphne Binns.'

‘You shut up,' Peter Binns said.

The Applebys, had they been the sort of people provided with eyebrows for such occasions, would no doubt have raised them. The manners of the young Binnses were unpolished. It was impossible to feel that the Grand Collector would have approved of them.

‘Aren't you from the police?' Peter Binns suddenly demanded.

Appleby glanced at the young man in amusement. It was a fair enough question, although the manner of its being put was again not engaging. But Peter Binns was nervous as well as truculent. He was glancing sidelong at Appleby in a curiously uncertain way.

‘Yes, I suppose I am – after a fashion, Mr Binns. But how did you know?'

‘Oh, just the skivvies.'

‘I beg your pardon?' It was so long since Appleby had heard this displeasing term used that he had actually failed to get hold of it.

‘The servants, up at the house. Kitchen gossip. It's said that you're some sort of police inspector from London, and that just by chance you found this body. Have a nose for that sort of thing, I suppose.'

The Applebys could receive this only in silence. But Daphne Binns spoke up.

‘The shocking thing is,' she said, ‘that Peter doesn't mean to be offensive. I mean, not more than usual. He's been to a public school, he's been to Cambridge, he held a commission during his National Service, and yet he's like this.'

‘At least I'm not
pert
,' Peter said. ‘And that's how I overheard the vicar describing you to Dr West. A pert girl. So there. Signed, Peter Binns.'

After these exchanges, the party proceeded along the canal bank in silence. Appleby was wondering how it came about that Bertram Coulson, if indeed a romantic idealist as Colonel Raven had declared, came to have these young people apparently as frequent guests. But he abandoned this speculation when he found himself on the small wharf which he had noticed earlier on the map.

‘This is where Scroop House originally got its supplies,' he said to Judith. Then he turned to Peter Binns. ‘Do you ever try the canal?' he asked. ‘There seems to be a foot or so of water in this stretch. Do you keep any sort of craft in that boathouse?' And he nodded towards a small structure at the farther end of the wharf.

‘Go on the canal?' Peter was surprised. ‘The rotten old thing stinks, doesn't it? Even without having corpses dumped in it. As to whether there's anything in the boathouse, snoop for yourself. I never have.'

‘I've peered in.' Daphne volunteered this in an almost conciliatory tone. ‘There seems to be a big old punt, and I believe it's floating. But Mr Coulson or somebody keeps the place locked. Peter' – Daphne turned to challenge her brother – ‘why do you keep on in that filthy way about the corpse? After all, you must remember the old man. I don't.'

‘Your brother must certainly remember Crabtree.' Appleby interposed with this gravely. ‘He would have been about nine when Crabtree went to America. Which means that you, Miss Binns, would have been three or four. Some people have quite a number of memories from that age. But you don't remember Seth Crabtree at all?'

‘I certainly don't. I remember my nurse at that time. But this man was only somebody working out in the gardens or the stables, and naturally I wouldn't remember him. But Peter was always hanging around the servants' quarters. As a matter of fact, it's his thing now. Nothing really spectacular. He wouldn't have the nerve for that. Just pinching the bottoms of Mrs Coulson's maids, and thinking he's the hell of a dog.'