Appleby and the Ospreys (21 page)

Detective-Inspector Ringwood had listened to this exposition with gloom.

‘It’s nine parts speculation,’ he said, ‘and one part dead certainty. We know that Broadwater killed his brother-in-law, and we conjecture how it happened. In fact, we’re sketching what the French police used to be so fond of: a reconstruction of the crime. Do you see any way ahead, Sir John?’

‘You can certainly make a summary arrest, Ringwood, and get a warrant from a magistrate which will take him before a bench of magistrates who will almost certainly commit him to the jurisdiction of a Crown Court. The fun will begin there. And what a judge and jury will make of what we’ve just been dreaming up, I don’t at all know.’

‘And that’s a fact,’ Ringwood said. ‘There’s no escaping it.’

It was a couple of hours later. Bagot’s collation had been consumed and the guests had departed. Outside, dusk was giving way to darkness, there was a fitful moon behind slowly drifting clouds; occasionally an owl hooted; a child – but certainly not an adult – might have heard now and then the squeak of a bat. Viewed from a balloon, Clusters would have loomed up as an impressive pile rather than an architectural curiosity.

Appleby, Ringwood and the new Lord Osprey were alone in the marble-sheathed hall. Although each was standing at a comfortable remove from the other, they could all three look straight through one of the enormous windows that gave upon the courtyard, the causeway, and the shadowy ground beyond.

‘What’s the manpower position?’ Adrian Osprey asked. ‘A lot of your people have packed up and been sent away.’

‘A couple of constables still in the house,’ Ringwood replied. ‘And, out there, a couple more with a van. All ready for action at a moment’s notice.’

Adrian said nothing further. He had, indeed, been largely silent since being taken into the confidence of the police. He had made no reference to what must be overpoweringly in his mind: the shock that would be felt by his mother when the facts of the situation were revealed to her. But to Appleby and Ringwood he was undeviatingly polite. It had come to him that he was now their host, after all.

‘Does anybody go on fly-fishing to this hour?’ Ringwood asked. Ringwood had become a shade nervous, and occasionally betrayed the fact. ‘Can he have tumbled to the state of play, and made a bolt for it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Appleby said. ‘He had sandwiches with him – and a flask of brandy. Of course he may well suspect he’s in a tight place, and be taking his time on the way back to Clusters.’

‘We can’t be quite sure he isn’t armed,’ Ringwood muttered. ‘He mayn’t have chucked away that revolver we’re crediting his victim with. It would be natural enough for him to hold on to it, thinking it might be useful.’

‘What about this side of the fence?’ Adrian asked suddenly. ‘Is there a single firearm among the lot of us?’

‘Certainly not among the police,’ Ringwood snapped. ‘Such things aren’t issued at all readily. I suppose, my lord, that you could raise a shot-gun from somewhere in the house, if you wanted to.’

‘It would be a bit thick,’ Adrian said. And he added as if to clarify this obscure remark: ‘The bastard’s my uncle, after all.’

There was silence again for quite a time, and then Appleby spoke quietly.

‘Here he is,’ Appleby said.

Marcus Broadwater had indeed appeared on the causeway, his rod over one shoulder and his creel depending from the other. But, even as the three men at the window watched, his progress revealed itself as uncertain, as almost stumbling.

‘It isn’t all that dark,’ Ringwood said. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘The brandy,’ Appleby replied dryly.

It was true that Broadwater had begun to stagger like a drunken man – now near to one and now to the other verge of the causeway. And then, almost instantly, a further explanation of his uncertain progress appeared. With his free arm he was gesturing violently in air, and dark shadows were flitting and darting round his head. The sinister shapes, the momentarily inexplicable congregation of aggressors, grew. Broadwater had thrown down his rod and had both arms in air, his hands vainly attempting some defence of himself.

‘The bats,’ Adrian said softly. ‘Scores of them. But they can’t do him any harm – and why are they interested in him, anyway?’

‘The dry-fly in his deerstalker hat.’ It had come to Appleby instantly. ‘The creatures hope to make a meal of them… Good God! Outside – all of us! Ringwood, whistle up your men!’

There was very adequate cause for these sudden shouts on the part of Sir John Appleby. Marcus Broadwater, staggering yet more wildly than before, and with the bats still assailing him at every angle, had gone over the edge of the causeway and into the moat. He was quite dead when they fished him up. Not exactly drowned, the doctor was to affirm. Rather, suffocated in mud. As Adrian might have said, it was a bit thick.

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President’s Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at ‘St Anthony’s College’, Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby’s taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980’s.

In
Appleby’s End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels