Appleby and the Ospreys

by Michael Innes

  ‘May I ask how you came by it, Sir John?’

  ‘We found it in the library,’ Appleby said – and now he was speaking rather casually. ‘I have a notion that the Osprey Collection may lie, so to speak, on the other side of it. But I believe I’ve failed to convince Mr Ringwood here, so let me pass to something else. It’s about that fellow Trumfitt. I gather you spend a good deal of time at Clusters, so perhaps you know something about him. Has he, would you say, a bit of a reputation for violence?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Broadwater now sounded slightly impatient. ‘I suppose he gave something of that impression when he favoured us with that visit a little time ago. I’ve seen him, when I took a walk near his pub, hard at work drowning some kittens. But that’s a common enough rural pursuit. As for the yarn about his daughter, I suspect he was trumping up a good deal out of very little.’

  ‘But out of something, nevertheless?’

  ‘My dear Sir John, I am not prepared to discuss my late brother-in-law’s character. It would be a most unseemly thing.’

  ‘Even if it were to help to elucidate his murder?’

  ‘Even then. It is something that close relatives ought never to be catechized about.’

  And having delivered himself of this high-minded remark, Broadwater gave a curt nod and walked away. It was with evident displeasure that Detective-Inspector Ringwood watched him go.

  ‘I can’t make that fellow out at all, Sir John,’ he said. ‘Accosts you, one might say, with a mass of fluent jabber – and when that dries up, he just walks out on you. A regular play-acting type.’

  ‘Perfectly true, Ringwood. I had it all from him when on my way here this morning. An actor in search of a role, you might say. And perhaps that is a role in itself.’

  Ringwood received this cryptic remark in silence, as if its logic required thought.

  ‘Histrionic,’ he then said. ‘That’s the word for him. But it applies equally, if you ask me, to some of the rest of them. There’s that high-up lawyer, for example.’

  ‘Quickfall? I suppose that’s true. But Quickfall is rather different. He has a real stage, and makes his living on it. Actors and barristers flock together. There’s a London club that’s pretty well full of them.’

  ‘There’s the bench and there’s the bar, sir. But for a bit of real drama, you have to add the dock. And it’s the dock we have to be thinking of.’

  ‘You are right there, Ringwood. And if we’re to get somebody into it – figuratively speaking – before this day is out, we must keep moving.’

  ‘Are you really thinking, Sir John, that we can get this whole messy mystery tied up before nightfall?’

  ‘Round about then, I’d rather hope. And we can begin by going back to your incident room. I think that’s what you call it nowadays.’

  ‘You’d be meaning the Music Saloon?’

  ‘Just that. I’ve a notion it’s the other place in which some key to this affair may lie.’

  20

  There was a constable on duty outside the Music Saloon, but the interior was untenanted except for a single policewoman brooding over a telephone on the platform. She was the same young person on whose good looks Appleby had commented to Ringwood earlier in the day. Ringwood, he felt, had disapproved, so perhaps some convention obtained in the matter. When Appleby had first found himself in the Metropolitan Police it had still been virtually a one-gender affair.

  ‘What made you decide to pitch your tent here?’ he asked Ringwood, glancing round the enormous chamber. ‘It’s impressive in its way, I suppose, and dates from a period in which conspicuous expenditure was still largely the perquisite of an aristocracy.’

  ‘No doubt. And I chose it as the place seemingly least likely to inconvenience the household. It’s clear that in the normal course of things nobody ever comes near it.’

  ‘But even a single person needn’t feel exactly lonesome – not with all this proliferation of out-size looking-glasses. Dozens of you visible to yourself wherever you stand. Multiplying monotony in a wilderness of mirrors.’ Appleby paused on this ingenious misquotation, which was, however, lost on his companion. ‘I wonder how long it is? Promenade round it two or three times, and you’ll have managed a healthy before-dinner walk.’

  Having offered this idle remark, Appleby embarked on a perambulation that might have been suggested by it. And when he had been twice round the room, scanning the walls as he moved, he came to a halt.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed. Parallax, Ringwood. Have you ever reflected on parallax?’

  ‘Parallax?’ Ringwood was displeased – and justifiably so. It is undeniable that John Appleby, when excited, is a little given to teasing remarks. ‘It sounds like something you get from the chemist.’

  ‘It’s the apparent movement of one object in relation to another when the eye is moved. Think of looking out through the window of a railway-train as it hurtles along – hurtles your eye along. Everything seems to be scampering past everything else, with only the horizon in something near repose. That’s parallax. And it’s the great enemy of illusionism in art – or in life, for that matter. Shift your stance only a little, and you know at once whether what’s in front of you exists in three dimensions or only in two: whether it’s an actual landscape, say, or simply a painting of one. What’s in front of our noses now?’

  ‘A half-open door, with a little lobby beyond it. And in the wall beyond that there’s a second door, which is closed.’

  ‘Move on a pace, Ringwood. Parallax is operating, remember. So the farther door ought to have begun to edge out of view, ought it not? Well, has it?’

  ‘Of course it hasn’t.’ Ringwood, although now far from at sea, accepted good-humouredly this note of catechism. ‘It hasn’t because the whole thing is a silly fake. It’s the blessed trompe-l’oeil, as they call it. There’s really hardly any lobby at all, and the farther door, together with the harp perched in front of it, is much nearer than it appears to be, and no more than paint on canvas.’

  ‘I agree that there’s hardly any real lobby there. But the second door is a real door, although the harp, indeed, is no more than pigment, skilfully applied. In fact, Ringwood, the Clusters trompe-l’oeil is a trompe-l’oeil trompe-l’oeil.’

  ‘Or a trompe-l’oeil with knobs on.’ Ringwood was rather pleased with this. ‘And are you suggesting, Sir John…?’

  ‘Of course I am. The door supposed to be no more than canvas has a keyhole, hasn’t it?’ For the second time in half an hour Appleby’s hand went to a pocket. ‘So here’s our blessed key again,’ he said. ‘Try it, Ringwood.’

  And Inspector-Detective Ringwood put the solid key in the keyhole of an equally solid door. He turned a solid door-knob, and the door swung open.

  ‘The bloody coins!’ he said.

  Senior officers of police, when on duty, commonly refrain from improper language. But on this occasion, Appleby felt, Ringwood was decidedly to be excused.

  ‘Almost certainly so,’ he said. ‘And there’s what that chap Broadwater told me was like a trolley in a restaurant. That scarcely does the affair justice, would you say? Trundle it out, Ringwood. It doesn’t look as if it trundled, but I’ll be surprised if it fails to.’

  Ringwood did as he was told – and without great effort, although the entire Osprey Collection was under his hand.

  ‘Moves like a high-class kid’s pram,’ he said. ‘And all those shallow drawers! I’ll bet they move like a dream. If Louis Quatorze or somebody of that sort had ordered a filing cabinet, this is what would have been respectfully delivered to him. Worth a mint of money in itself, I’d say. You can imagine it in one of those grand auctioneer’s catalogues.’

  ‘Quite so. Beautifully sprung, and with its wheels concealed behind exquisite joinery. A veritable Cadillac of a filing cabinet. Mr Rackstraw himself would be impressed by i
t.’ Appleby’s enthusiasm was perhaps tinged with irony. ‘One positively hesitates to explore further. But pull out one of those drawers, Ringwood.’

  Ringwood did so.

  ‘The coins, all right,’ he said. ‘Not all that impressive, this lot. Rather like old halfpennies and farthings. But each of them snug in a little velvet berth.’

  ‘Try another one.’

  The second drawer opened to reveal a blaze of gold. And for a few moments Appleby and Ringwood gazed at one another, much as a couple of conquistadores might have done if suddenly confronted with some treasure of the Incas.

  ‘We can’t keep this to ourselves,’ Appleby said abruptly. ‘Under present circumstances, the whole caboodle ought to be lodged in the strong-room of a bank. And the first thing to do is to call in Lord Osprey.’

  ‘Lord Osprey, Sir John?’ Ringwood spoke rather as if supposing that Appleby was proposing to summon up the dead.

  ‘The new Lord Osprey, Ringwood. Young Adrian. Until the family lawyers do their stuff, it must be presumed that he is the owner of the things.’

  ‘No doubt you are right, sir. Shall I go and hunt him out?’

  ‘I think better not. Give a hail to that young woman up on the platform. She’s already goggling at us. Nobody should be left alone with this eminently pocketable stuff until Adrian has been brought in on it. If valuable coins turn out to be missing from it, heaven knows what a chap like our friend Quickfall might get up to asking about in open court. But he’d scarcely get round to suggesting sudden criminal collusion between the two of us.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’ Ringwood was already beckoning to the young policewoman. He was clearly impressed, even if slightly shocked by this swift – if no doubt routine – professional prudence. ‘What about Broadwater – if he hasn’t gone off to his fishing again? He’s a numismatist, I gather, and has actually worked on the stuff.’

  ‘So he has – but I don’t think we need trouble him at present, all the same. Get your girl to say, however, that we suggest Lord Osprey bring Miss Wimpole along with him. She’s a numismatist too, and shaping to be a good deal involved with this place.’

  ‘How would that be, Sir John?’

  ‘As the next Lady Osprey, Ringwood. It’s as plain as a pikestaff. Not that either of them is as yet quite aware of the fact.’ And John Appleby (who had a weakness for being pleased with his own sagacity) laughed softly. ‘It’s the only reasonably cheerful thing,’ he added, ‘that’s likely to emerge from this mess.’

  So presently Adrian and Honoria appeared, and Appleby explained what he shamelessly called Mr Ringwood’s discovery.

  ‘Did you know of the existence of this hiding-place?’ he asked the young man.

  ‘I hadn’t a clue. But I did know that my father was rather given to tucking small sums of money oddly away. Five-pound notes in matchboxes. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Adrian,’ Honoria said, ‘has the misfortune of being the son of a pathological miser. As a consequence, he’s no doubt likely to turn into a spendthrift.’

  ‘Shut up, Honoria. Your sense of humour would disgrace a kindergarten.’

  ‘An old folk’s home, you ought to say. I’m a great deal older than you are, young man.’

  ‘Three years and four weeks,’ Adrian answered with surprising speed. And at this Appleby gave Ringwood a swift and almost imperceptible nod. Here, it seemed to say, was incontrovertible evidence of his late assertion.

  ‘The first thing to insist on the importance of,’ Appleby said to Adrian, ‘is getting this very valuable collection of coins into a place of greater security than that afforded by Clusters’ celebrated, if not fully understood, trompe-l’oeil affair. It was an eccentric choice, to say the least, on your father’s part. But another matter is urgent, too, and I hope Miss Wimpole will be good enough to help us with it. What is the present state of the Osprey Collection? Is everything that should be there, there? What is obviously a copy of the fairly recently published catalogue is lying on the top of the cabinet, or whatever it is to be called. Perhaps that may be useful.’

  Honoria turned to Adrian.

  ‘Shall I?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. Go ahead. Clusters is turning into a sort of Treasure Island. Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight!’ Adrian was pretending to be Long John Silver’s parrot. ‘Eight what, Honoria?’

  ‘Reales, Adrian. Spanish dollars. Sir John, here, has read about them in Don Quixote. I’ll find you one to play with presently. If you’d lived in Rambang in the earlier eighteenth century, you could have bought a cow for two of them.’

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t.’

  ‘Just be quiet, and let me get some sort of grip on the stuff.’ Having said this – and having said it, by implication, both to Detective-Inspector Ringwood and Sir John Appleby – Honoria Wimpole studied the Osprey Collection for some time. The catalogue, she consulted only occasionally. But she pulled out every one of the little drawers in turn, surveyed the contents with care, and every now and then picked out a single coin and scrutinized it carefully. Finally, and when she had closed the last of the drawers, she sat back in silence for several minutes, clearly putting in order what she could most usefully say.

  ‘To begin with,’ she then began, ‘I ought perhaps to explain that the collection is basically what used to be thought of as a gentleman’s cabinet, a polite accessory to a polite education. No particular emphasis; just a general assembly of coins, slanted on the whole to the classical field – which is, of course, quite enormous in itself. It’s that sort of collection on a pretty grand scale. There is, however, the beginning of a sensible concentration on one important field or another – and in that we can perhaps see the influence of Adrian’s Uncle Marcus. I could have told you all this without ever entering this room. And what I have now discovered, any qualified person could have discovered simply by looking at the collection with adequate care.’

  Saying this, Honoria pulled out one of the drawers, and pointed to a small coin near the middle of it.

  ‘Mr Ringwood,’ she then said, ‘will you just take a straight glance at this one, and tell us whose head is on it?’

  Not without a shade of reluctance, Ringwood obeyed this behest.

  ‘It’s Edward VII,’ he then said. ‘And the coin must be something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It’s a half sovereign.’

  ‘Exactly. And, according to the catalogue, it ought to be a gold coin of rather more antiquity: a stater of Demetrius Poliorcetes, King of Macedon, round about 250 BC.’

  Ringwood being rendered momentarily speechless before this mystery, it fell to Appleby to say something.

  ‘In other words, Miss Wimpole, the Osprey Collection has been – well, milked?’

  ‘Just that – although nowhere else, so far as I’ve yet discovered, with quite that degree of impudence. It’s a matter of a good many rare, and therefore very valuable, coins being removed, and there being set in their place other old coins of no particular rarity or value. An ignoramus simply wouldn’t notice.’ Having said this, Honoria Wimpole sat back abruptly, and when she spoke again, it was on quite a different note. ‘So, in God’s name,’ she said, ‘whatever do we do?’

  ‘Ask Bagot. Bagot knows everything.’

  This attempt, on Adrian’s part, to import a certain lightness of air into the sudden crisis signally failed. Appleby, indeed, may scarcely have heard it. He was reflecting that he had himself called Lord Osprey an ignoramus – but that had been to Judith ten days before.

  ‘So,’ he asked, ‘it might have been quite some time before Lord Osprey tumbled to the thing?’

  And at this Honoria, although not normally at all a hesitant person, did hesitate.

  ‘I suppose that is undeniably true,’ she then said.

  After this, there was a long silence. The young polic
ewoman, back on her dais, had become ostentatiously absorbed in some clerkly activity. The counsels of princes, she may have felt, are not prudently to be overheard.

  ‘It’s beginning to come clear,’ Ringwood eventually said, and looked doubtfully at Appleby.

  But Appleby remained silent. He had suddenly seen himself as knowing something probably not known to anybody else, except conceivably to Lord Osprey’s murderer. It was as if a voice had spoken from the dead. It was as if such a voice had spoken very briefly; had uttered, indeed, but a single word – a single word, however, of portentous effect.

  Appleby’s first impulse was to communicate his discovery – if discovery it was – to his companions there and then. He felt that he had almost a duty to do so. For if he himself happened to be murdered by a bullet from afar here and now, or even to suffer some lethal seizure as he sat, neither Ringwood nor anybody else was by any means certain to arrive at knowledge perhaps crucial to the elucidation of the Clusters mystery.

  But was it knowledge? Or was it, on the contrary, a mere ingenious fantasy, prompted by the odd chime of a word? Appleby decided, for the time being at least, to hold his hand – or his tongue. It wasn’t merely early days with the Osprey enigma; almost, it was early hours. A good deal had happened – or, rather, had been talked about – and it wasn’t yet quite tea-time for the Ospreys and their guests. So the present talk might reasonably be carried a little further. Something might emerge from it. But caution was required. What to Ringwood was ‘beginning to come clear’ had best be kept under wraps for the moment.

  ‘I rather gather,’ he said to Honoria, ‘that you were hoping that Lord Osprey might himself show you this collection either today or tomorrow. Had that happened, you could hardly have failed to make then the discovery you have made now. Is that right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Had that happened – had you, for example, noticed that half sovereign masquerading as something uttered by Demetrius Poliorcetes – would you have drawn Lord Osprey’s attention to it?’