A Connoisseur's Case

by Michael Innes

  ‘Really, John, I don’t, if I may say so, care for this at all. My fault, clearly. Talking out of turn in the most shocking way. Can I have had a glass too much of that burgundy, would you say? But I think we’ll drop the subject, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘But I do mind.’ Appleby was inexorable. ‘I repeat my question. Have you, just lately, come upon Mrs Coulson in any relation or situation that might have prompted what slipped from you about her last night?’

  ‘My dear John, you surprise me.’ The Colonel said this in evident distress. At the same time he got to his feet with a decision that somehow suggested a very senior man’s severe rebuke. ‘Coffee will be in the library, I think.’

  ‘But please consider, sir.’ Appleby sat tight. Judith, he saw, was watching this unexpected collision with detached interest. ‘My question might not, in normal circumstances, be one which it would be decent to press if you considered it improper. But remember its present context. A context of murder. Flat murder. Make no mistake about that. Has Seth Crabtree gone out of your head?’

  ‘Crabtree?’ From being severe, Colonel Raven appeared to have relapsed upon being confused. ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten Crabtree. Crabtree may have been the figure that I–’ He checked himself, stiffened, and then spoke with an entirely regained composure. ‘It won’t do, John. There are things a gentleman doesn’t tell.’

  Appleby again felt himself taking a deep breath. A gentleman, he was thinking, had to be both a gentleman and in his later seventies in order to speak about a gentleman in quite this grand manner. And certainly Colonel Raven didn’t make a habit of it. He had said something which he might live to be ninety without ever saying again.

  ‘Thank you,’ Appleby said. He gave Judith a glance which was a semi-comic acknowledgement of defeat. ‘And coffee in the library, of course.’

  ‘He routed you,’ Judith said with mild malice, as they took an afternoon walk. ‘Uncle Julius routed you. You were enjoying the Stilton. But you left a chunk of it on your plate.’

  ‘You always were observant in these small domestic matters.’ Appleby paused to light his pipe. ‘But did you keep your eye on your uncle as well? What was our little contretemps all about?’

  ‘It was about being a gentleman.’

  ‘Yes, I rather gathered that. What gentlemen do do, and what they don’t do. They may say something about a woman being a bit of a girl, but will draw back from anything one might call an actual aspersion on her character. We had all that last night. Today we had something further and different. A gentleman won’t tell of seeing something it wasn’t his business to see. Even if it was something that ended in murder.’

  Judith was startled.

  ‘John, you’re letting your imagination run away with you. Uncle Julius has no notion of anything he may have seen as ending in murder. He doesn’t, for one thing, put two and two together all that quickly. Not now. He sees one thing at a time. I think he saw Mrs Coulson – perhaps actually yesterday – in what he judged was a compromising situation. And that prompted him to speak rather unguardedly last night. But actual telling tales is something he’s incapable of – even with a top policeman booming away at him over his own table about a context of murder. That’s all.’

  ‘I admit the booming.’ It wasn’t wholly amiably that Appleby did this. ‘As to its being all – well, I hope it is. Do you remember that, earlier today, you were wondering whether it was perhaps your uncle who had killed Crabtree? I wasn’t very sympathetic to the speculation. It seemed an example of a peculiar sense of humour that comes over you from time to time.’

  ‘Did it, indeed. Well?’

  ‘Your idea was, I think, that your uncle had taken a sudden swipe at Crabtree because he remembered him as a damned scoundrel of a poacher. I thought it implausible. But I’m more prepared to entertain the notion of Uncle Julius as a homicide now.’

  ‘John!’ Judith had stopped in her tracks. She was really alarmed. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I haven’t said anything very positive, you know. Your uncle still lies well back in the race. It’s just that he’s put on a bit of a spurt since lunch.’

  ‘I’d like to know how.’

  ‘Very well. Can you imagine Mrs Coulson – the present Mrs Coulson – as keeping what they call an assignation?’

  ‘An assignation?’ Judith considered this seriously. ‘Yes, I can. With a very young man.’

  ‘A very young man?’ Appleby frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure. But only as the likeliest thing. Women of that age and with that temperament and in that situation–’

  ‘That situation?’

  ‘Mildly disillusioned as wives and very much deprived as not being mothers. It’s very young men they usually fall for. Maternal mistresses. And sometimes with a terrible passion.’

  ‘In which case it works?’

  ‘In a way. And for a time. It may end in tragedy but it hasn’t been merely a mess. Because something that’s really there has, after a fashion, been satisfied.’

  ‘Say, Mrs Coulson and Peter Binns?’

  ‘In theory, yes.’ Judith was frowning. ‘But I doubt whether women often become the maternal mistresses of boys they’ve really mothered.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s an idea. Not one I’d thought of. Not one I like.’

  ‘What about a mature man?’

  ‘A middle-aged man? Of course that happens too. But there’s a higher proportion of mess and a quicker disillusionment.’ Judith paused to look about her. ‘Where are we going, John?’

  ‘Just for a stroll. Say four miles there and four miles back. Say to the tunnel. And the Jolly Leggers.’

  ‘I see.’ Judith glanced curiously at her husband. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘In all that psychology of sex? Absolutely. It holds from Le Rouge et le Noir to Havelock Ellis.’

  ‘I’d have thought it might hold a bit beyond poor old Havelock Ellis. He’s a terrible antique.’

  ‘Is he? Let’s talk sense.’ Appleby’s pipe had gone out, and he stopped to light it again. ‘We have a general situation. Edith Coulson – isn’t that her name? – keeping an assignation with a lover, or with some postulant for that position. A younger man turned to in passion, or an older man turned to in muddle. We don’t know. But suppose something of the sort. And then suppose a peeping Tom.’

  ‘John, you have the most revolting notions.’

  ‘Suppose even a peeping Tom who shows some disposition to be a blackmailer as well. And then suppose your Uncle Julius coming on the scene. What would he do?’

  Judith had gone pale.

  ‘Hit out.’

  ‘Very conceivably that. Which is why I say that he has put on a spurt.’ Appleby paused. ‘What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think it’s about as nasty an explanation of the Crabtree affair as can be conceived.’

  ‘If a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.’

  Judith stopped and stared.

  ‘Is that more Kipling, John?’

  ‘No. It’s Thomas Hardy. And it makes quite good policeman’s sense. If you’re going to find a really satisfactory solution to a problem, you’d better consider all the unsatisfactory ones in turn. None of them may be right, but they may all contribute something. Play around with this general notion of Mrs Coulson, a lover, Crabtree and your uncle, and – well, something may click into place.’

  ‘I see.’ Judith shook her head with something less than her usual satisfaction in facing up to things. ‘You know, it’s all not very nice.’

  ‘That’s true, I’m afraid. And – do you know? – talking of things that aren’t very nice, I think we might pay a call on our friend at the Jolly Leggers.’

  ‘That awful Channing-Kennedy? He can’t really be involved, can he?’

  ‘You might call him a contact. The dead man – I mean, the dead man to be – swam into our ken when emerging from his pub.’

  ‘And was being spied on there, too.’

>   ‘Precisely. I think we’d better say that Channing-Kennedy deserves a visit.’

  The tunnel yawned as it had yawned before. Appleby paused to stare at it.

  ‘Symbolical, wouldn’t you say?’ he asked Judith. ‘All that classical ornament – just like the exterior decorum and seemliness of Scroop House. But framing darkness and mystery. And daylight perhaps a long way ahead.’

  ‘You mean this Crabtree business may go on and on? I don’t think that’s a good idea, at all. Clear it up, for goodness sake, and let’s spend the rest of our time down here in a reasonable way. Getting a few decent walks, and drinking that burgundy without peeping over the wine glass to decide whether Uncle Julius is a homicidal maniac.’

  ‘Very well, my dear.’ If Appleby regarded these as highly irrational remarks on Judith’s part, he didn’t show it. ‘Will you give me till midnight?’

  ‘Certainly – and to the last stroke of the hour.’

  ‘Very well. And meantime we’ll go into the pub. But the bar won’t be open. Shall we ask Channing-Kennedy to give us tea?’

  ‘What you’ll have to ask him, I suppose, is whether he had any actual communication with Crabtree.’

  ‘Exactly. But we’ll do it over his toasted teacake. Come along.’

  Mr Channing-Kennedy, although he must have remembered the Applebys as a not wholly sympathetic pair, was entirely willing to hover over the fare his hostelry was able to provide.

  ‘Delighted to see you again,’ he said. ‘I gather you’re staying in the district. Raven Park – eh? Old Colonel Pryde. Fine place. Splendid old aristocratic type.’

  ‘Colonel Raven,’ Judith said. ‘Pryde Park.’ She offered these corrections as nicely as she could. John, presumably, was anxious that Channing-Kennedy should produce a vein of relaxed talk.

  ‘Quite so. I haven’t, as a matter of fact, had the pleasure of meeting the Colonel. When I came down here, no end of chaps wanted to give me introductions to one local family or another. But I was never one to push. Channing-Kennedys have never pushed. Had no need to, to be quite frank. Have our own little niche, you know.’ He turned to Appleby. ‘Acquainted with Herefordshire?’

  ‘Hardly at all.’

  ‘In Herefordshire,’ Channing-Kennedy said firmly, ‘there’s a church pretty well full of us. Elizabethan Channings in the chancel. Jacobean Kennedys in the aisles. Eighteenth-century Channing-Kennedys in the – um…’ The landlord of the Jolly Leggers appeared momentarily at a loss.

  ‘Transepts?’ Judith suggested.

  ‘Just that. Army, Navy, Bar, Church – the whole thing. Sobering. Makes a fellow feel he has something to live up to – eh?’

  ‘Yes, it must do.’ Judith wondered whether the present Channing-Kennedy had to keep his end up too, as the last of a long line of pathological liars. ‘And you were in the Army yourself?’

  ‘Not the Army. The dear old RAF. Couple of crates pretty well shot away from under me – I don’t mind telling you – and twice in the big drink. Ah, those were the days!’

  ‘I’m afraid you must find it a dull life down here, Mr Channing-Kennedy. But there was rather a grim piece of excitement yesterday, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Excitement?’ For a moment Channing-Kennedy looked blank. ‘Oh, you mean the old fellow who was drowned. I can’t say it pushed up my pulse rate, you know.’ The landlord of the Jolly Leggers gave his sudden bellow of unbeautiful laughter. Then he looked guardedly round the little lounge in which tea had been provided. It was deserted. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard any talk,’ he said. ‘But the police are interested. They suspect foul play. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they turned out to be right.’

  Appleby put down his teacup.

  ‘You mean,’ he asked, ‘that you have some evidence which would support that view?’

  ‘Well, it was coming to him, if you ask me. Not, mind you, that I know anything about him, or as much as what his name was. I’d never set eyes on him until the evening before last. He came into the public bar not long after opening time, and he was there when I went in to relieve my barman. He’d had a pint or two over the mark, I saw at once, and I made up my mind he wasn’t going to have any more. One can’t expect, you know, to pull up a place like this, if one allows any trouble in the public.’

  ‘I suppose not. But do you mean that this old man was being rowdy or quarrelsome?’

  ‘Threatening. That would be the word.’

  ‘But it doesn’t sound at all like him.’ Judith struck in with this. ‘We talked to him, you see – here, outside the inn – yesterday. He seemed rather a gentle person.’

  ‘Ah, you never know them – not till they’re in liquor. Not that class.’ Channing-Kennedy shook his head – a gentleman whose modest means of livelihood constrained him to a wide knowledge of the lower orders. ‘They can’t hold it, you know. Not like you and me.’

  ‘Just whom was Crabtree threatening?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘Crabtree?’

  ‘That was his name. I’d have thought you might have heard it by this time. Was he threatening somebody in the bar?’

  ‘Not exactly that. He was arguing with some yokel about the past in these parts. I have a notion he was native here but had only just returned. And he was claiming some sort of consequence about the place in golden times gone by. That sort of thing. I was too busy with a brisk trade to pay much attention to him. And that reminds me.’ Channing-Kennedy, who had sat down while thus familiarly discoursing, got to his feet again. ‘I’ve one or two things to attend to. Got a guest stopping in the inn, as a matter of fact. Turned up without notice last night. Wealthy, if you ask me. Must find a bottle of wine for his dinner. Anything more I can have them fetch you?’

  ‘Nothing more, thank you. It’s been an excellent tea.’ Appleby bit with disingenuous appreciation into a small cake of displeasing antiquity. ‘But you haven’t told us just where the threats came in.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Channing-Kennedy now seemed indisposed to linger. Perhaps he had recalled that the consumers of two three-and-sixpenny teas were of much less account than a wealthy resident. ‘It seemed to tie up with the place you were asking me about yesterday – Scroop House, on the other side of the canal. I gathered that this old man had once been employed there. And he was proposing to turn up and be welcomed home. That sort of thing. And this yokel–’

  ‘Whom you could identify?’

  Appleby had flashed this out with a suddenness that brought Channing-Kennedy to a standstill.

  ‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘Probably not. I was pretty busy, as I was saying. And all these clodhoppers look pretty much the same to me. But he must have got this old Crabnose–’

  ‘Crabtree.’

  ‘He must have got Crabtree – who was half seas over, as I said – pretty well riled. Because the next thing I hear the old fellow say was, that if they did him dirt at Scroop House – he could bring red ruin on the place.’

  ‘That would be just idle talk, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, old boy, I don’t know that I’d care to say.’ Channing-Kennedy – easy equal of all old boys, and a man of judicious mind – shook his head. ‘Reported as I’m reporting it, it does sound just like that. He could dig out of Scroop, he said, what would send Bertie Coulson–’

  ‘Bertram Coulson?’

  ‘Perhaps so. I wasn’t, as I’ve said, paying all that attention. He could dig up what would send some Coulson or other packing. And more talk of that sort. If he meant business, he was asking for it.’

  ‘Asking for business?’ Judith said.

  Channing-Kennedy gave his coarse bellow.

  ‘Asking to be hit on the head,’ he said, ‘Or hit wherever he was hit. If he was hit at all, that’s to say. For I know nothing about it, as I said. And now I must be getting along. Delighted you dropped in. If you think to mention my tunnel to any of your touring friends, I’ll be grateful. Perhaps I told you I want to work up a little in the tourist line? Show some decent returns to my bloody brewe
ry, you know, and they may shunt me up their rotten little ladder. Poor sort of ambition, eh? I don’t know what old Lord Gervase would have thought of it.’

  ‘Lord Gervase?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Oh, just a great-grandfather of mine. He might think keeping a pothouse a bit off, wouldn’t you say? But let’s face it. Hard times these for gentlefolk, eh? Well, chin-chin.’

  12

  The departure of Mr Channing-Kennedy was succeeded by a sober silence. However often they encountered him, Judith was thinking, he would leave this effect behind him.

  ‘How frightful,’ she presently said. ‘Do we – do you and I – really consent to belong to a social system that produces such an awful little man?’

  Appleby laughed. He commonly did this when Judith was surprised into admitting the horrors of English life.

  ‘But what do you make of him?’ he asked. ‘Is he just a comic turn? What did you think of his story?’

  ‘It doesn’t fit the Crabtree we know.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But it does fit some other things.’

  ‘And he’s a shocking liar. All that about Channings and Kennedys positively crowding out the living in some country church. And Lord Gervase. Nobody was ever called Lord Gervase except in a novel.’

  ‘Do you know that you are very much given to rash generalizations? But about his being a liar. I just don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t mean that you believe in Lord Gervase?’

  ‘Of course not. He was telling a great many lies, I agree. But I just wonder whether his telling lies was itself a kind of lie.’

  ‘If I go in for generalizations, John, you go in for conundrums.’

  ‘Well now, suppose he wasn’t inventing this stuff about Crabtree. Suppose that Crabtree, having got tight, did make that rash speech to some nameless rustic. And suppose yet again that, in doing so, Crabtree in his turn wasn’t inventing things. How could he, if admitted to Scroop House, dig up what would send Bertram Coulson packing?’

  ‘A will.’ Judith produced this solution with a promptitude which was, perhaps, unsurprising. ‘Old Mrs Coulson was undecided about an heir. Eventually she decided upon Bertram Coulson, and she fixed it up with solicitors and people in the regular way. But later, being a bit gaga, she changed her mind and settled on somebody else – probably on her earlier favourite – the one who was an actor and eventually went to the bad.’