Appleby and the Ospreys (6 page)

Broadwater was not to be eliminated, all the same. He might have advanced a wholly implausible motive for killing his brother-in-law by way of getting himself dismissed as a harmless eccentric when in fact he was nothing of the sort and had killed Osprey for some totally different reason.

Appleby paced moodily round the library. Why, near midnight or in the small hours, had Osprey been here at all? It could hardly have been to edify himself by reading eighteenth-century sermons or to shed his cares by chuckling over back numbers of
Punch
. Had he a known habit of nocturnal prowling through this vast travesty of a dwelling place? Was it conceivable that he occasionally kept disreputable trysts in this unfrequented apartment?

Appleby paused at the window through which – as he had idly remarked to Ringwood – there was an almost Venetian effect. It was a French window, beyond which was a small patch of paving, surrounded on its other sides by the area of stagnant water they called the moat. So it was just possible to imagine moonlight, and a courtesan stepping swiftly from a gondola into the arms of an expectant grandee waiting within the shadow of his palazzo. Something of this silly fancy – Appleby recalled with discomfort – he had actually offered to Ringwood. Into any such picture Lord Osprey didn’t seem to fit at all well, anyway.

And now this unprofitable reverie on Appleby’s part was interrupted by the sound of a considerable altercation in the corridor outside the library.

‘I tell you I’m the owner of this whole bloody dump, and I’ll go where I like in it!’

The door had been flung open, and now a young man burst into the library. He was followed by a red-faced constable who gave every appearance of having been thumped violently in the chest, and of being minded to do something thoroughly effective in reply.

Appleby strode rapidly across the room.

‘All right, officer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mr Osprey and I can usefully have a quiet talk. But one of you get back to that Music Saloon and report the fact to the Detective-Inspector.’

This, of course, marked a further stage in Sir John Appleby’s admitting involvement in the Osprey affair. The constable, relieved rather than perplexed, took himself off as instructed, and Appleby turned to Adrian Osprey.

‘Are you, perhaps, looking for me?’ he asked.

‘Certainly I am. And it’s to ask you what the devil you are doing here. And to tell you to clear out.’

‘I am here on the invitation of your mother, sir. But I must add that, having once had some part in criminal investigation myself, I have felt bound to give Detective-Inspector Ringwood any assistance and advice that I can.’

It was thus that Appleby (who had only been up to his ankles so far) definitely crossed his Rubicon into the Clusters mystery. But who was his adversary; who, so to speak, his Pompey? Could it conceivably be the young man who had thus rudely burst in on him, and who was the heir to the whole place?

But Adrian Osprey now changed his note abruptly. He wasn’t exactly polite. Politeness was perhaps something he simply didn’t go in for. At a pinch he could manage civility, and it was this that he turned on.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I withdraw. About, I mean, ordering you to withdraw. I’ve heard, Sir John, that you’ve been a dab hand at this sort of thing in your time. So stay on. Stay the night, if you’ve a mind to it. I’ll tell Bagot, or the housekeeper or somebody, to find you a room. We could put up the whole of Scotland Yard in this warren of a place without noticing it. Except, perhaps, by the smell. Sorry. Remarks of that sort are rather my thing.’

‘It is a disadvantageous proclivity, sir, so far as any sort of career is concerned. You would do well to go after wit of a less offensive sort.’ Appleby said this with the instant authority of a very senior man. ‘As for staying the night, I am, of course, grateful for your offer of hospitality. But I am unlikely to have to avail myself of it. What is mysterious about your father’s death is likely to be resolved quite soon. Contrary, no doubt, to popular belief, it is so with the majority of crimes.’

Not unnaturally, this speech disconcerted Adrian.

‘You mean,’ he demanded, ‘that this beastly murder of my father will be cleared up
today
? Why, that fellow Ringwood in the Music Saloon seems determined to set up a kind of permanent secretariat. It’s as if he were going to be here till Christmas.’

‘For a good many years I was much involved in that sort of approach myself. Shall we sit down?’

‘Sorry, again.’ Adrian Osprey grabbed a chair and thrust it at Appleby. ‘My mother does a lot of fussing about getting people a pew. So I come rather short on it.’ With this handsome apology, the heir of Clusters sat down too. ‘But you gave it up? The sort of circus, I mean, that this chap Ringwood carries round with him.’

‘It gave me up. I retired – so now I have to rely simply on the little grey cells.’

‘Cells?’ It appeared that Adrian was puzzled by this. ‘Locking people up in quod?’

‘I have been involved in a certain amount of that too.’ The young man, Appleby saw, had the true Osprey innocence of the pleasures of literature, even in one of its lighter manifestations. ‘But don’t,’ he said, ‘underestimate Ringwood’s regiment. The fingerprint wallahs, for instance. It’s my bet that they’ll arrive any time now in a big way. They’ll dust through this whole room pretty thoroughly. Incidentally, they’ll certainly want
your
fingerprints. And, I suppose, mine too.’

‘Why ever should they do that?’ It was in something like alarm that Adrian asked this question. ‘I don’t see–’

‘Simply to eliminate us, my dear young man. As it’s so evident that neither of us murdered your father, they’ll want to ignore our fingerprints wherever they turn up.’

‘Yes, of course.’ It was perhaps a shade suspiciously that Adrian glanced at Appleby for a moment. Then he laughed abruptly. ‘They’ll have a job,’ he said. ‘All those bloody books, for instance! I doubt whether they’ll turn out to be what are called well-thumbed volumes.’

Appleby received this joke with concurring jocularity. It was the first indication, he reflected, that the new Lord Osprey might have a steak of cleverness in him. And the momentary relaxation ought to be seized upon.

‘Would you mind,’ he asked, ‘if I put a few questions to you?’

‘Not a bit.’ And Adrian sat back in his chair. ‘Fire away, Sir John.’

‘I don’t doubt that you are a pretty observant young man. So what I’d ask first is whether – over, say, the last few days – you have been aware of anything out of the way going on here at Clusters?’

‘I’d say not.’ Adrian’s features at once took on a look of pronounced perspicacity. ‘It wouldn’t be too much to say that nothing out of the way ever does take place at Clusters. It would be dead against the grain of the place, you know. It’s why I don’t spend much time in the old home. Home, sweet home, of course. But damned dull. Dull as ditchwater. Or as that bloody moat.’

‘But you intend to change that a bit? As the new owner, I mean.’

‘It would be an uphill job, Sir John. And I don’t know that I intend, just because my father has gone, to plant my bottom any more frequently in the family seat. Peers, of course, do have seats. It’s undeniable. The country seat of the young Lord Osprey! Balls to it.’

This was clearly a dismissive remark, and Appleby moved on.

‘I am thinking, in particular, of the past twenty-four hours. Nothing occurred in them that strikes you as worth mentioning?’

‘Nothing at all. Or only the business of the lurking intruder, I suppose. You’d have to ask Jane Minnychip about that. The old cat came to dinner, you know. And, because of the fuss Ringwood is making about coming and going, she’s here still.’

‘I remember Miss Minnychip. Tell me about her, please.’

‘She’s a useful guest, who lives not far away. In a little house a couple of miles from what we call the dower house. Yesterday my mother found she’d muddled our dinner party – as she often does. We were a woman short, so the chaste Jane was summoned at short notice. She often is. And because the short notice is a bit against the polite rule book in such matters, she’s always asked to stay the night. That’s why she’s here still. Because of that, and then because of this Ringwood’s wanting everybody to stop on for a bit. The whole rotten little house-party is in a sort of deep freeze. All, that is, except my uncle Marcus. He’s gone fishing.’

‘I know he has. I met him on his way, and we had a word together. But go on telling me about Miss Minnychip and the lurking intruder.’

‘It’s really about my father and the lurking intruder. But
he
can’t tell you, and
she
did have a glimpse. We were all, or nearly all, in this room, drinking that eternal sherry. It was already dusk, of course, and the lights were on, but nobody had closed the curtains on that big French window. It was something, you see, that my father rather liked to do himself. He liked to stare out at that glorified puddle of ours in the dusk, probably taking satisfaction in thinking about generations of Ospreys having done the same thing. Which was rot, anyway. There’s nothing mediaeval or Tudor or what have you in this whole part of the dump. It’s what they call late Georgian. Somewhere or other there’s a date carved on it. 1815, I think.’

‘A notable year.’

‘Is it? I wouldn’t know. I don’t much care for history.’

‘And history may conceivably return the compliment. But go on. We’ve got to your father liking to close those curtains himself. He did so last night?’

‘Yes – but not without this odd spot of brouhaha.’

‘Of what? But never mind. Go on.’

‘He’d put out his hand to that tassel-thing you pull down to do the job. And the Minnychip was following him, jabbering. She’s that sort of female.’

‘No doubt. But then?’

‘My father – who has been a bit nervy of late – gave an odd sort of exclamation. It might have been of mere surprise, or it might have been of straight funk. And the Minnychip let off a yelp of her own. Between them they may be said rather to have startled the nobility and gentry waiting to be fed. Only my Uncle Marcus – Marcus Broadwater, you know – made a dash for the window. Marcus is only a bloody Cambridge don, but he does have some guts to him. My father, however, had given a vigorous tug, and the curtains took the hint. End of episode. Or not quite. My father turned and said, “Some damned intruder out there”, and the Minnychip chirped, “I had a glimpse of him, too.” She seemed to feel that she’d distinguished herself.’

‘Was there an immediate investigation?’

‘Lord, yes. Quite a fuss for a time. Bagot was going round with a decanter, topping people up with that tepid muck. My father told him to put it down, and go and investigate. Dear old Daddy was in a regular stew.’

‘Frightened, you mean?’

‘Just that. The Osprey blood in me was quite ashamed of him.’

‘And just how could Bagot have investigated?’ Appleby had walked over to the window and glanced through it. ‘There’s nothing out there except an odd sort of platform, and then the moat. Did Bagot part the curtains again and go outside?’

‘No, he didn’t. He was probably in a tizzy himself. He just bolted from the room – and came back after a time to say nothing had been discovered. Meanwhile, my father had come to his senses and played the thing down. He had several guests, you know, and I suppose he felt he was in danger of acting the poltroon before them. Rather a good word, poltroon.’

‘Just what did he
say
?’

‘He said he must have made a mistake. I don’t think he believed he had. But then we all went in to dinner.’

‘Has Ringwood been told about this? It’s possibly highly significant.’

‘I haven’t a clue, Sir John. I certainly didn’t tell him myself.’

‘Then you ought to have.’ Appleby snapped this out. ‘I must see Miss Minnychip. She may have noticed whether the intruder, as she glimpsed him, appeared wringing wet. He could only have swum, or waded, across the moat. Or is there a boat?’

‘There’s certainly a small boat that people plouter about in. It’s kept in a shed on the other side of the moat.’

‘It must be examined at once. Thank you for telling me about it.’ And Appleby called in one of the constables and left the library.

Back in the Music Saloon, he found Ringwood in conversation with a lady. But this is a somewhat neutral and uninformative description of what was going forward. The lady was Miss Jane Minnychip, and she was haranguing a Ringwood who, if not positively discomfited, was visibly nearer to that condition than was at all seemly in a senior officer of the police. Nor was Ringwood’s small cohort on the platform at the end of the room – although, doubtless, entirely in command of the computers and other gadgetry they had brought along with them – at all qualified to advance and support their commanding officer in an altercation with an indignant and vociferous gentlewoman. So the Detective-Inspector hailed Appleby with the mingled relief and deference which a hard-pressed field-commander might accord to a general turning up in a timely way at the head of something like an entire imperial guard.

‘Sir John,’ he said, ‘this is Miss Minnychip, one of Lord Osprey’s – of Lady Osprey’s, I ought to say – guests. Miss Minnychip lives in the next parish. And she is asking – demanding might express it better – police protection for herself and her property. But what the reason is, I just haven’t been able to get hold of. It’s almost as if she is apprehensive of suffering the same fate as Lord Osprey, and on similar grounds – whatever those grounds may be. Miss Minnychip’ – and Ringwood turned to the lady – ‘is that what you are saying? And perhaps you can make the matter clearer to Sir John than to me.’

‘I don’t doubt I can,’ Miss Minnychip said. ‘And much more appropriately. Sir John, good morning. Mr Ringwood, you may withdraw.’

To this sudden assumption of grandeur the Detective-Inspector might have been expected to produce some distinctly crisp rejoinder, but at the ghost of a nod from Appleby he did turn to leave the room. And Appleby spoke at once.

‘Miss Minnychip, may I tax your patience by speaking for a couple of minutes to Mr Ringwood?’ Then, without waiting for a reply, he followed Ringwood from the room, and shut the door behind him. ‘An odd piece of information,’ he then said, ‘which may turn out to be important. It seems that there is a little boat kept in a shed somewhere on the other side of the moat. Have it found, will you? What we want to know is whether there are any signs that it has been in the water quite recently. I’ll explain later. At the moment, I’d better not keep that woman waiting. She may have something important to say.’