A Connoisseur's Case

by Michael Innes

  ‘And how is it going?’ Judith was delighted that the old man should have a name so appropriate to his rustic character. ‘Have you been back to the big house yet?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. It was only this morning that I ventured there.’

  ‘Did you find it much changed?’

  Seth Crabtree took time to consider this, and a shadow as of perplexity or caution came over his face as he did so.

  ‘Well, as to the house, my lady, I had but a glimpse of it. I went to the front door, which was perhaps no proper thing for one in my place. But there are small matters that one forgets after long living among other customs in other countries.’ Seth Crabtree paused again on this, which represented perhaps the first shade of irony to have entered his studiously respectful speech. And the effect was to suggest some entirely hidden dimension in the man. ‘So it came about,’ he went on, ‘that the door was opened to me by Mr Hollywood himself.’

  ‘Mr Hollywood?’ Judith, for some reason, found this name rather odd. The owner is called–?’

  ‘No, indeed. It’s a Mr Bertram Coulson, who has always been the owner, who is in residence now.’

  ‘But of course. You explained that to us. And Mr Hollywood is–?’

  ‘The butler, my lady – although it was early in the day for the butler himself to be performing that duty. It makes me think that perhaps the big house is not staffed as it ought to be.’

  ‘I see.’ Judith was properly impressed. ‘And you recognized this Mr Hollywood? He is the same butler as in the old days?’

  ‘He is, my lady. And I am told that he is the only man or woman – manservant or maidservant, I should say – who has never left the place.’

  ‘And he, on his part, recognized you?’

  Again Seth Crabtree showed a shade of perplexity – and perhaps of some less identifiable emotion as well.

  ‘As to that, it would be hard to say. Mr Hollywood gave no sign.’

  ‘But when you told him your name?’

  ‘He was unresponsive, my lady. Perhaps it was natural and to be expected. I was never, remember, more than an outdoor servant about Scroop House. Or but that, at least, in name.’ Crabtree fell abruptly silent, as if something had slipped from him without his intending it. At the same time he sheathed his knife and showed some disposition to take his leave.

  Judith nipped this intention in the bud.

  ‘But Mr Coulson?’ she said. ‘You asked for him?’

  ‘He was not at home, my lady, but out and about on the business of the estate – a proper thing, that I was glad to hear of. So there I was, with but a glimpse of the hall and its grand staircase, noble places, the same as I remembered them. And yet there was a strangeness that must have come of all those absent years.’ Crabtree shook his head broodingly – a perplexed rural philosopher. ‘Tempus fugit, my lady.’

  ‘I expect everything would have rather a strange look for a while. And in fact you have never met the present Mr Coulson?’

  ‘Never, my lady – since I left the big house, as I explained to you, in Mr Binns’ time. Or never until today. For I did, after all, meet Mr Coulson – less than a couple of hours ago, and as I was walking across the park, thinking to cross the canal and come to this inn. There the gentleman was, my lady, and he stopped me and spoke to me.’

  ‘And what did you think of him, Mr Crabtree?’

  Seth Crabtree now had a more notable hesitation. Perhaps he was only registering a feeling that this was not a wholly proper question to address to one of humble station. Perhaps – on the other hand – he was really in doubt as to how to answer.

  ‘Affable, my lady,’ he presently said. ‘An affable gentleman. Open and conversable. But not, my lady, what you might call a gentleman after the old style, if you follow me.’

  Judith did follow. Seth Crabtree had, in fact, pronounced against the present owner of Scroop House the very terrible verdict that he was not quite as other gentry are. And this was puzzling.

  ‘But surely, Mr Crabtree, even a cousin of old Mrs Coulson’s–’

  ‘A distant cousin, my lady, as I remarked. And I believe he has lived much in foreign parts. And I would guess – if the liberty may be taken – not in the best society. He would scarcely have fitted into one of the mistress’ house parties in times gone by. Not that Scroop House was not open to talent. Very much so, it was. Actresses would come, my lady, and Parliament people from the Labour Party. Yes, indeed. But there would always be about them–’ Seth Crabtree had one of his sudden silences. And this time he got to his feet. ‘But Mr Coulson was very kind,’ he said. ‘He had no occasion to take notice of me. But when I told him how I’d been about the place long ago, he said I was to come and see him at the big house tomorrow, and that he was doing great things around the estate, and that he would see whether there might be work for me.’

  ‘But that’s splendid,’ Judith said.

  ‘Yes, my lady – even if the work is not Mrs Coulson’s work.’ Seth Crabtree had been looking critically at his half-carved rudder. Now he slipped it into a pocket and put the model barge under his arm. ‘There’s nobody will mind my borrowing this,’ he said. ‘And, when the repair’s made, it may as well go back to the chimney piece where it’s stood for so long. And now, sir and my lady, I’ll take my leave, after having been burdening you overlong with my story. But your interest was kindly, and has been kindly taken.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll see you again soon,’ Judith said. ‘I hope we do.’

  ‘Thank you kindly again, my lady. And it may be so, for life has many chances.’

  And at this, Seth Crabtree gave his bob of a bow and walked away. He had concluded the meeting, Appleby reflected, very deliberately on the note of the rural sage.

  3

  ‘We shan’t, in fact, see him again,’ Appleby said. ‘So we’ll never quite know about him.’

  ‘Or why he was being spied on. But we shall meet Mr Bertram Coulson. An affable gentleman, even if not quite in the old style. Open and conversable. Mark that, John. We only have to go up to Scroop House, announce that the work of William Chambers fascinates us, and sit down in the middle of it. Hollywood will then be summoned, and the cake and Madeira will appear. We’ll go now.’

  It hadn’t occurred to Appleby that Judith would thus see as a green light Seth Crabtree’s description of the owner of the big house. But now, to his satisfaction, what was at least a momentary distraction turned up. It took the form of the appearance from the inn of that Mr David Channing-Kennedy who advertised himself as licensed to sell spirits, wines, beers and tobacco in its interior. He was of a muscular frame beginning to run to flesh; his complexion was florid; his huge handlebar moustache, presumably the cherished symbol of a martial past, was of a bright ginger hue. His clothes would have been best described as sporty, their elements being so mingled that their owner might with equal propriety have been about to jump on a horse, lurk behind a butt, pant after a pack of beagles, or wade in quest of trout or salmon deep into the flood.

  ‘Good afternoon.’ Mr Channing-Kennedy addressed Judith with the confidence proper in an equal, and the cordiality – at once measured and easy – of a hotelier skilled in the higher reaches of his trade. At the same time he gave Appleby, rather oddly, a glance a good deal sharper than he had favoured him with on their earlier encounter in the inn. ‘A splendid day for walking, is it not? Can I get you anything more? Coffee, perhaps? We do manage rather tolerable coffee, although it seems not much in demand in these parts.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Judith said. And she added: ‘You haven’t been here long?’

  ‘No, no – not for long. Terrible blighters, you know, the chaps who run chains of pubs like this. But even they wouldn’t keep me on a permanent assignment down here. The idea is that the place should be pulled together. That it should be worked up, you know, in the direction of a better class of trade. There’s accommodation for the night, of course, although only in a small way. I’m working that up too. We rather hope for tourist
s in the season. The Company is putting out publicity about the canal and the tunnel. The tunnel’s rather unique in its way. Constructed in the medieval period or thereabouts’ – and Mr Channing-Kennedy waved a hand as if to excuse himself from the pursuit of any pedantic chronological nicety – ‘and over three miles long. Wonderful what those old chaps could do. Cathedrals, and so forth. All by hand. Flint arrows and stone axes, now. Remarkable things, eh? Small brains, and all that, as the pundits can tell by the shape of the skulls. Puny too, in a way. Look at the suits of armour in the museums. The outfits of famous knights, eh? And yet you could hardly get an undersized Pay Corps boy into one of them today. All because we’re tolerably well provided at the trough nowadays. Even the plebs – eh? Live like lords. Live a damned sight too high, if you ask me. And not even content with it. Reds at heart, the whole lot of them. Need discipline. And another big show would bring that fast enough, whatever else it brought. What they call a balance of advantages. A loud bang or two, but the whole unruly crowd put on parade.’

  Mr Channing-Kennedy, as he talked this disagreeable nonsense, was still favouring Appleby from time to time with an appraising glance. And the appraisal struck Appleby as of an order cooler and more collected than was altogether congruous with Mr Channing-Kennedy’s woolly talk. In part, moreover, it was a kind of glance with which Appleby, like other men of a mild celebrity, was familiar: the kind of glance that is comparing a living and present image with a recollected photograph. Since serving Appleby with beer it had occurred to Mr Channing-Kennedy that here was a face somehow familiar to him. He had even perhaps identified it. But this scarcely seemed to justify something wary in his rather covert scrutiny. Perhaps Mr Channing-Kennedy did not possess the comfort of an entirely clear conscience in minor matters of the law. But – although he scarcely seemed a very intelligent man – he could hardly suppose that he was being run to earth by London’s Commissioner of Metropolitan Police in person.

  Talk now seemed likely to languish, since Appleby was not one largely given to casual conversation and Judith was distinctly unsympathetic to the philosophical propositions to which this dubiously déclassé publican adhered. But for a further minute or two Mr Channing-Kennedy talked on – although with so little encouragement that Appleby found himself wondering whether the fellow had some motive for detaining them. Was he proposing to fish for information? Was he – conceivably – anxious that Seth Crabtree should be well out of the way before his late interlocutors should be free to trail him? These were fantastic conjectures. They were a throwback – Appleby found himself reflecting – to his old CID days, when a large part of his waking life had been dominated by the supposition that there was a crook in every second citizen he encountered. This Channing-Kennedy was a vulgar and rather offensive fellow, but there was not the slightest real reason to believe that he was in any such category – any more than there had been any real reason to believe that there was more in Seth Crabtree than Judith had been disposed to remark in him.

  And yet there was another queer thing about the unengaging Channing-Kennedy. Half his mind was on what might be called his lines of communication. The canal was no longer a real artery; nothing arrived at or departed from the inn by this route any more. Wayfarers, indeed, might come along the towpath, as Appleby himself and Judith had done. But this would be at the cost of laddered stockings and muddy trousers. As Appleby had remarked, in a motorized age people were no longer disposed to potter along the bank of a canal. The normal approach to the inn was now by a lane at the back: a narrow and winding affair, barely adequate for vehicular traffic, which presumably led to some more commodious highway along which Channing-Kennedy’s anticipated cohorts of tourists would advance. Conceivably his uneasily divided attention at this moment was to be attributed to the expectation that the great moment had come. Alternatively, he might simply be afraid that something awkward was due to turn up. Perhaps he ran a sideline, unknown to the respectable firm of brewers that employed him, in the purveying of illicit liquors. This retired spot was at some remove from the sea – although the canal had, indeed, once led to it directly. But perhaps it was known to Channing-Kennedy that a band of confederate smugglers was even now approaching, roaring profane and bawdy songs as they convoyed to the inn whole hogsheads of rum.

  Involved in this fantasy, Appleby was by a few seconds tardy in realizing that a vehicle was now approaching the inn in sober fact. There was indeed a rumble, a screech of brakes, and the shutting off of a rather noisy engine before he turned and saw what had arrived. It was less a large van than a young pantechnicon, and it could certainly be carrying enough rum to inebriate the whole county. And the driver, as he climbed from the cab and came forward, did reveal himself as one who would have made a highly convincing smuggler in some melodrama or opéra bouffe of the seaboard. He was hairy and ill-favoured, and he wore a scowl which darkened to deep suspicion as he stared at Appleby. Then he turned to Channing-Kennedy and stared at him too. Channing-Kennedy stared back at him. Appleby had an impression that for a second both men were at a loss.

  ‘I’ve brought yer pianer,’ the sullen man said ferociously. He jerked a thumb at his van. ‘Crated, it is. Got a couple of men to give a hand with a bleeding crated pianer? Weighs a bleeding ton. Sending out a man single-handed with a bleeding pianer! I asks yer.’

  ‘A piano, you great fool?’ Channing-Kennedy appeared to be highly indignant. His complexion, growing even more florid, glowed like a bonfire behind the enormous ginger moustache. And Appleby glanced at him curiously. His uncompromising disapproval of the plebs had, of course, already declared itself. But it seemed odd that he should venture to address a particularly hulking stranger from among them in so brutally opprobrious a way.

  ‘A piano, you idiot?’ Channing-Kennedy seemed to throw this in for good measure. ‘I’m not expecting a piano. What should I want a piano for? To play myself to sleep with Mozart and that crowd?’ Channing-Kennedy gave a short, sharp bellow of laughter on this, so that one had to suppose he considered it a considerable witticism. ‘What place do you take this for, anyway? The Royal Albert Hall?’ Channing-Kennedy gave another bellow of laughter. But his glance, Appleby thought, was curiously hard.

  The smuggler had produced a grubby sheet of paper which was presumably a waybill. He studied it. He was breathing hard – perhaps out of justified indignation, perhaps merely as a consequence of having to bring an uncertain degree of literacy to bear on the document. He mumbled something in which the word ‘House’ could just be distinguished.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Channing-Kennedy said. ‘Can’t you see that this is an inn? Don’t they give you a map? You’re miles out of your way. Go back to the village and ask the old woman in the post office. She’s as deaf as a post.’ Once more, Channing-Kennedy bellowed with laughter. ‘You can play her a sonata by one of those rotten old Krauts. Beethoven, eh? Now, be off with you. And see you do no damage when you turn in my yard.’

  The smuggler said nothing more. He was still breathing stertorously. He just gave Channing-Kennedy a long look – and received a long look in return. He lumbered over to his van, climbed in, and manoeuvred it, to the accompaniment of much clashing of gears, in the confined space before the inn. Then he departed as he had come. The lane was narrow and its surface deplorable. The piano must have been suffering badly.

  Appleby had picked up his rucksack. Mr Channing-Kennedy, he felt, was a person to whom it would be rather nice to say goodbye. But the sight of the van making its way with difficulty up the narrow lane prompted Judith to a question.

  ‘I suppose,’ she asked, ‘it was the canal that was the chief approach to your inn at one time?’

  ‘That was the jolly old idea, of course.’ And Channing-Kennedy nodded in rather a distracted manner. ‘There were coaching inns, you know, and there were canal inns as well. The coaching inns got a second innings’ – and Channing-Kennedy bellowed in tribute to this striking pun – ‘when the motor car came along. But most of the canal inns were kn
ocked out by the railways. A few just kept going, and this is one of them. Not that this one wasn’t shut down for a good many years. Something bogus about it, if you ask me.’ Channing-Kennedy said this with the large severity of one to whom the spurious is abhorrent in every way. ‘It’s name, for instance. Invented by my damned brewery company no time ago at all. The sign’s away being painted’ – he had followed Judith’s glance – ‘so you wouldn’t know. But it’s called the Jolly Leggers. Silly, eh? Precious little they had to be jolly about – lying on their backs on the bally barges and doing their treadmill turn on the roof of the tunnel. Not that they’d be other than a sort of scum fit for nothing else. Plenty of that sort nowadays, too – eh?’

  Judith ignored this appeal, but still sought information.

  ‘Does anybody use parts of the canal any longer? There seems to be a certain amount of water in this section still. And the last lock we passed seemed almost in working order.’

  ‘Anybody use it? Good Lord, no! You could get a punt or dinghy along stretches of it, I suppose. But who’d want to do that? Dreary thing a canal, I’d say. Of course the tunnel is different.’ Channing-Kennedy appeared to recollect this suddenly. ‘Historical interest, and all that – as I was saying. Tourists sure to come along when the publicity boys do their stuff.’

  ‘Are you going to take them for trips in the tunnel? Can one go through?’

  ‘Through the tunnel?’ The landlord of the Jolly Leggers was horrified. ‘Lord, no! Damned dangerous place. Falling masonry. Foul air. Death trap, absolutely.’

  ‘But I see it’s not shut off in any way. Are the local children never tempted to explore it?’

  Channing-Kennedy chuckled unpleasantly.

  ‘I’d take the hide off their bottoms if they tried. The place is my Company’s property now, you see. But, in fact, the brats don’t go near it. Got a bad name. Haunted, the locals think. Some legend or old wives’ tale about it, I believe. Ignorant crowd, the yokels round about here. But uppish, too. Think they know a thing or two about beer.’