Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘Do you know whether this learned Marcus Broadwater lives in the house?’

  ‘Only off and on, probably. I think he’s some kind of rather peripheral Cambridge don.’ Judith was silent for a moment as she negotiated a tricky turn in the narrow country road. ‘Talk of the devil!’ she then said. ‘There he is.’

  ‘Broadwater?’

  ‘Yes, Broadwater. He has just crossed the road, and taken that field-path to the river.’

  ‘An angler, it seems. And, presumably, a keen one, to have got into those togs and all this way from that boring lunch. He must have piscatorial as well as numismatic interests. And his brother-in-law probably owns the fishing rights for a good stretch of the river.’

  ‘Broadwater certainly seems to expect a good catch. Look at the big basket he carries. And that sort of landing-net thing.’ Judith appeared amused by the spectacle of so complete an angler. ‘But, John, why do men who go fishing always wear deerstalker hats? It seems to mix things up.’

  ‘It’s to stick a good variety of their dry flies in, as you can see. All sports have their superstitions. Every seasoned angler believes that there is just one fly that the trout will currently go for, and that he has only to find it and cast it.’

  ‘And cast it, I suppose, when he is himself up to the knees in the stream. Did you notice his waders?’ Judith had been much amused by this unexpected appearance. ‘Shall we stop the car, and stroll after him, and make admiring noises when he catches anything?’

  ‘Certainly not. Broadwater might very reasonably regard it as an impertinent intrusion.’

  ‘Or we could talk to him about coins.’ This suggestion being also unfavourably received, Judith drove on silently for some minutes. ‘Coins,’ she then said, ‘must have rather the same sort of fascination for a collector as diamonds and emeralds and precious stones in general. Unlike pictures or statues or even books, they can be tucked away in a very small space and gloated over.’

  ‘Infinite riches in a little room.’

  ‘That kind of thing. And I have no doubt that a rare and very ancient coin can be worth enormously more than its original face value.’

  ‘Most certainly – and there may be a special fascination in that. Do you think, Judith, that if we had been much more prestigious guests than we were – minor royalty, say, or something like that – we might have been invited to gloat?’

  ‘It’s possible. But – do you know? – I believe I’ve heard that Lord Osprey makes something of a mystery of where the collection is kept. It won’t be in a kind of strong room with the pricier family silver. It will be somewhere more fanciful than that.’

  ‘I doubt it. Osprey doesn’t strike me as a fanciful type. In fact, my dear, you get these odd ideas as a kind of reflection from my long association with the more recherché kinds of crime.’ Appleby fell silent for some minutes after this, and when he spoke again it was in what seemed a random and inconsequential way. ‘I was a much better policeman, you know, than I am the country gentleman you’ve turned me into in my ripe old age.’

  ‘You do hanker, John – don’t you? And it isn’t for your final eminence as the top bobby in London. It’s for the position of the promising young man in the CID.’

  ‘That’s deplorably obvious, I’d say.’

  ‘And it’s why, every now and then, you still run into mysteries accidentally on purpose.’

  ‘No doubt. But I don’t think the Ospreys are a promising hunting ground. In fact they drop out of our lives here and now – until you decide it’s time to ask them to lunch or dine.’

  ‘One never knows,’ Judith Appleby said.

  One never does. Ten days later, and at an early hour, Appleby was called to the telephone.

  ‘Detective-Inspector Ringwood speaking. Sir John Appleby?’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Ringwood.’ Appleby had repressed an impulse to say something like ‘I ain’t done nuffink’, or even ‘It’s a fair cop. I done it, sure enough.’

  ‘I’m deeply sorry to have to tell you, Sir John, that his lordship is dead.’

  ‘What lordship? And why are you ringing me up about it?’

  ‘As one of his close friends, Sir John.’ The unknown Ringwood sounded cautiously reproachful. ‘At Lady Osprey’s urgent request, Sir John. She assures me you were that.’

  ‘Lady Osprey overstates the case, Mr Ringwood. She could hardly overstate it more. If Lord Osprey has hanged himself, or been strangled by a demented butler, or anything of that sort, of course I’m sorry to hear of it. But I don’t see that you have any occasion to communicate with me. Distraught women – or men, for that matter – frequently make senseless suggestions to the police. An officer of your experience, Mr Ringwood’ – Appleby had decided that Ringwood was probably a decent copper but a little confused as well – ‘must have come across that sort of thing often enough.’

  ‘I don’t know that I have, sir. But if you don’t feel you have any concern in the matter, I must just apologize for troubling you.’

  ‘There’s no occasion for an apology, Mr Ringwood. What has actually happened?’

  ‘Stabbed in the throat, Sir John. And killed outright. It’s the way you might treat a pig, if you ask me.’

  ‘I keep a few pigs, Mr Ringwood, to beguile the tedium of old age. But I haven’t, as it happens, had to do my own slaughtering of them.’

  ‘Of course not, Sir John. But it’s right to tell you that Lady Osprey is much overwrought.’

  ‘Naturally. But are you telling me merely that something horrible has occurred, or is it that an element of mystery is involved?’

  ‘Definitely a mystery. The perpetrator must be said to have left no clue.’

  ‘Can you mean more, Mr Ringwood, than that, so far, you haven’t found one?’ This was an ungracious question, and Appleby repented of it at once. ‘And Lady Osprey,’ he continued, ‘wants you – well, to consult with me in the matter?’

  ‘It appears to be what is in her mind, Sir John. And I would, of course, be very grateful–’

  ‘I simply can’t do anything of the kind. You know that as well as I do. It’s no less impossible than if I happened still to be Commissioner of Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Quite so, sir. I fully realize that. But the lady also thinks of you as a personal friend of the deceased, as I’ve said.’

  ‘I tell you I am nothing of the kind. Just something more than a nodding acquaintance. My wife and I, as it happens, lunched with those people about a fortnight ago. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Am I to communicate to Lady Osprey that you see it in that way, Sir John?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Appleby thought for a moment. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ he said – and this time it was aloud.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I mean that it will be only the decent thing to turn up. To condole with Lady Osprey, that is. Are you yourself, Mr Ringwood, at Clusters now?’

  ‘Yes, I am – and the police surgeon too. We are in Lord Osprey’s library, where the body was found.’

  ‘The venue must be said to be a little lacking in originality, Mr Ringwood.’

  ‘And, of course, there are those house-party people milling around.’

  ‘Those what?’

  ‘It’s Lady Osprey’s name for them. Weekend guests. There are half-a-dozen of them.’

  ‘And the wretched people haven’t had the decency to pack up and leave quietly?’

  ‘I thought it best, Sir John, to ask them to stay on for a bit. They haven’t all been too pleased. One of them – some sort of a high-up lawyer, he seems to be – asked me in a dry way whether he was supposed to be helping the police with their inquiries. I said it was just that, and he was quite amused by my reply. Amusement didn’t seem to me altogether right in the circumstances–’

  ‘No more it was, Mr Ringwood. Bu
t go on.’

  ‘Quickfall, his name is. Outlandish, it seems to me.’

  ‘Rupert Quickfall, would it be?’

  ‘Quite right, Sir John. You’d be knowing him, would you?’

  ‘Only by reputation. I’ve never met him. But he’s a QC flourishing at the criminal bar.’

  ‘Well, Sir John, Mr Quickfall may find himself in a novel part of the court. But so may any of the others. So far, I must say I’m obliged to him. As things stand, I have no right to ask any of them to stay put for as much as half an hour. But Quickfall went round and persuaded them – or all except a brother of Lady Osprey’s.’

  ‘And you say Lord Osprey’s body is staying put too?’

  ‘Certainly, Sir John. Our doctor and the local GP have stirred it around a bit – but that’s only to be expected. As I said, it’s here in the library, which is where the thing seems to have happened. Except for Lady Osprey herself, I’ve allowed nobody to come in. But I can’t yet answer for just what occurred earlier.’

  ‘Obviously not. Are any other of Lord Osprey’s relations in the picture?’

  ‘The brother-in-law, Sir John.’

  ‘Mr Broadwater. I know about him. Anybody else?’

  ‘The heir, sir. Mr Adrian Osprey. No other relation, I think.’

  ‘I see. Is there any suggestion, by the way, of something like burglary or theft being involved?’

  ‘Nothing of the kind has been brought to my notice, Sir John. But it’s early days yet. Lord Osprey may have come upon a burglar or thief, and lost his life as a result. But it doesn’t seem very probable.’

  ‘I suppose not. And I only ask, Inspector, because I happen to know that somewhere in Clusters there is – or was – what is almost certainly a very valuable collection of old coins. Thoroughly portable, it’s likely to be. Very much more portable than mere bullion of the same value. That brother of Lady Osprey’s, Mr Broadwater, will be able to tell you about the collection.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it, Sir John. And old coins could be put on the market here and there and now and then without much risk of detection, I imagine. So it would be an attractive haul.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But one further question, Inspector. Can you rule out, out of hand, Lord Osprey’s having slit his own throat? In that event, of course, there would be no crime involved.’

  ‘It’s certainly no longer a crime to try to do away with oneself. Or to succeed, for that matter. But a criminal charge, sir, may lie against somebody who has facilitated or urged a suicidal act.’

  ‘Deep water there, Inspector.’ Appleby decided that he had underestimated Ringwood. The man he was speaking to was a competent officer.

  ‘Not that we mayn’t find ourselves in deep water of some other sort, sir. That moat: we may find ourselves dragging it.’

  ‘That may well be. I’ll be with you…’ Appleby corrected himself. ‘I’ll be with Lady Osprey in twenty minutes.’

  3

  Strictly speaking, and pace Lady Osprey and Ringwood, Clusters didn’t have a moat at all. The baronial dwelling, which century by century had grown larger and larger through random additions judged suitably imposing in their day, now covered the greater part of a small island in the middle of a small lake or big pond. Contact with what may be termed the mainland was achieved by substantial causeways running respectively from the main façade of the dwelling, and at the back from various offices. Both causeways, although broad enough to admit of a couple of carriages passing one another without hazard on either side, were without rail or parapet, but had been embellished from time to time with chunks of masonry judged to be in the mediaeval taste, including miniature bastions from behind which equally miniature archers might have operated. The lake or pond itself, as if offended by this tomfoolery, had absented itself at least to the extent of shrinking here and there into a condition of puddle or mere sludge. In places, however, it remained quite deep, so that a small rowing boat maintained for the purpose could be potteringly propelled in a zigzag fashion to one or another vantage-point from which guests of the Ospreys might view to the best advantage Clusters as a whole.

  Why was the place called Clusters? The late Lord Osprey (as he must now be termed) had been fond of explaining that the original building was a monastery; that an ancestor of his had come by it at the time of the suppression and spoliation of such institutions in the sixteenth century; and that chance had preserved as Clusters what had been cloisters at an earlier period. Extensive cloisters, in fact, had been torn down – reprehensibly according to some ways of thinking – and Clusters had been built out of the abundant stone thus provided. Historians and philologists from time to time professed a certain scepticism about some of this, but no Osprey had been at all discomposed by them. Moreover, every Osprey knew about the family motto as it appeared cut in stone above an out-size fireplace in the mansion’s billiard room. It was:

  I prey

  The charm of this was that it sounded pious, but that when you took a look at it a different sense appeared. If you happened to have preserved a Latin dictionary from your schooldays, and looked up praeda, you tumbled to the pun (or whatever it is to be called) at once. And the osprey, of course, is so named because it preys upon fish. It is pre-eminently the bird that does that. As Shakespeare’s Aufidius tells us, it takes the fish by sovereignty of nature.

  In the present set-up at Clusters it was a Broadwater, not an Osprey, who appeared to go after fish in a dedicated fashion. John Appleby – on his way, as he told himself, to condole with Lady Osprey on the untimely death of her husband – was made aware of this to a distinctly perplexing effect. As he approached Clusters, and close to the spot at which Judith and he had seen the man a few days before, he became aware of Lady Osprey’s brother advancing towards him – and in his attire and all his piscatory paraphernalia he presented precisely the appearance that Appleby recalled from that previous occasion. But what was striking now was the evident fact of Marcus Broadwater’s proposing to indulge himself in his favourite sport hard upon the violent death of his brother-in-law. Angling is declared in a famous place to be the contemplative man’s recreation, and conceivably Broadwater had decided that casting his fly at elusive trout might conduce to the state of mind required for – as it were – bringing the current mystery at Clusters successfully to dry land. But however that might be, there remained something distinctly odd in the man’s thus deserting his own sister on what could scarcely be other than the most calamitous day of her life.

  Upon the retired John Appleby this whiff of mystery had what was perhaps a predictable effect. He was moved to break in upon Broadwater’s solitude forthwith, and to this end he brought his car to a halt immediately beside the field-path into which he guessed the fisherman would turn. When the man came within two or three yards of him he got out and spoke.

  ‘Mr Broadwater, I think?’ he said.

  ‘You have the advantage of me, sir.’ Broadwater’s tone was distinctly chilly – but that, Appleby told himself, was fair enough from one who had been accosted in a most unwarrantable manner while going about his entirely peaceful occasions.

  ‘My name is Appleby, and I was at that luncheon-party at Clusters a few days ago. I hadn’t the pleasure of being introduced to you, but your identity was mentioned to me by my wife. She described you as the man who sat in absolute silence next to Miss Minnychip.’

  This was far from polite, and presumably intended to be just that. There is much to be said for losing no time in irritating a witness. But if this was Appleby’s proposal, it failed entirely. Broadwater’s chilliness departed; he set his creel on the ground, leaned his rod casually across the bonnet of Appleby’s car, and spoke with gentle amusement.

  ‘Ah yes! Miss Minnychip. It is positively unkind to venture on a remark to her. She is one of nature’s monologuists, and conversation upsets her. You must have known people of that sor
t, Sir John. Some Home Secretaries, for example.’

  Thus identified – as by Mr Brackley in his church – Appleby was obliged to fall back on civility.

  ‘I must apologize for accosting you,’ he said, ‘on your way to what will be, no doubt, a capital day’s sport. I’ve been told that, next after the Test, it’s the best trout-stream in England.’

  ‘It comes high on the list, certainly. We could talk about it for some time. A pleasant Curiosity of Fish and Fishing, you know.’ Thus invoking Izaak Walton’s ghost, Broadwater appeared to relax further. ‘But, my dear Sir John, if you are interrupting me, isn’t it correspondingly true that I am delaying you? For you are clearly hurrying to bring your professional skill to bear upon the circumstances of poor Oliver’s death. Is it not so?’

  ‘Your sister, Mr Broadwater, has sent a message asking me to come over to Clusters, and of course I have complied with her wish. I’ll say what I can.’

  Marcus Broadwater appeared amused by this evasive speech – as Appleby, indeed, felt the man was justified in being.

  ‘Will it be only to my sister, Sir John, that you will say what you can? And not also to the fellow called, I think, Ringwood – who keeps on taking down what people say in a notebook?’

  ‘I have never met Detective-Inspector Ringwood. But it was he who transmitted on the telephone your sister’s invitation to me, and he struck me as a capable officer.’ Appleby said this with some severity. ‘And as I am visiting Clusters anyway, it will perhaps be natural that he should have a word with me about this sad affair he has the duty of investigating. But I have no official standing in the matter at all, and I have no intention of poking around, solving a mystery, building up a case, or anything of the kind.’