Appleby And Honeybath

by Michael Innes

  ‘Yes, Sir John, we’ve just taken account of that – and it was you yourself who had a cautionary word about alibis. It’s no more than that I feel Mr Grinton is somehow keeping something or other in the bag. And it might be quite natural that his wife should know about it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dispute the general proposition that husbands and wives have a tendency to share secrets. If you are a married man yourself, you know that very well.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, sir. And would you be inclined to say that of those two it’s the lady who is the brighter by some way?’

  ‘Perhaps so.’ Appleby wasn’t quite comfortable before this turn in the discussion of the persons whose hospitality he was enjoying. But the feeling was one it would be quite wrong to give weight to. ‘Estimating intelligence is a tricky thing, Inspector, as you know very well. Mrs Grinton is certainly clever, but I’m not at all clear that Mr Grinton is stupid.’

  ‘Cunning, perhaps?’

  This looked like the idée fixe again, and Appleby paused before coping with it.

  ‘When intelligence and lack of information go together,’ he said, ‘an effect of cunning is sometimes the result. And I would say of Grinton – without in the least wanting to disparage the man – that he is quite surprisingly ignorant about a great deal.’

  ‘And the sort that, if he can get something wrong, will get it wrong?’

  ‘An extreme view, perhaps – and I don’t really know him anything like well enough to say. But I certainly wouldn’t – well – trust him with the conduct of my affairs. And now, Inspector, you’d better have your own little chat with him.’

  Charles Honeybath, meanwhile, had wandered back to the drawing-room. It was the violet hour, when – as the poet says – the eyes and back turn upward from the desk. Honeybath had no desk, and at the moment not even an easel. He was finding the violet hour unsatisfactory – as it can often be in an English country house in what is still late winter rather than early spring. Women talk about gardening, but without conviction; men grumble because they are no longer allowed to shoot things – unless, indeed, there are duck around; children, bundled out of school on the pretext of a ‘half-term’ exeat, are troublesome presences. It may be more than an hour before a bell rings by way of telling you to get out of one set of clothes and into another: a ritual pleasing to the female sex but rather boring to the male. And quite often you are lucky if you so much as get a drink in advance of the announcement that dinner is served.

  Honeybath had missed his tea, and although nothing of the sort was still likely to be going on, there might yet be a stray uncleared sandwich to nibble. It turned out there was a little more: a teapot on a stand, and a tiny blue flame under a kettle. Nor was the drawing-room entirely untenanted. Two other guests were in possession: the man called Hallam Hillam, and Grinton’s son-in-law, Giles Tancock. They seemed to have been conferring together as Honeybath entered the room. The afternoon’s sensational event must by now be known throughout the household, and no doubt there was much to be conjectured about it. Honeybath himself had in a sense been the hero of the occasion, so perhaps these two men would question him about it. He didn’t want this. He didn’t feel he knew either at all well, and he had an uncertain sense of their owning some common world only in a tenuous relationship with his own. It seemed necessary to make an attempt at conversation.

  ‘How did it go with the rabbits?’ he asked Tancock.

  ‘The rabbits?’ For a moment Tancock stared at him vacantly. ‘Oh, that! I left them to it, with their mum to make sure the boy didn’t blow his sister’s brains out, and I just prowled around. In the dirt, you know – for dirt’s the right word for most of the Grinton land. Not even muck, for which there’s something to be said. Just dirt. How any rent at all can be raised from it is beyond me. Of course there are those louts with motorbikes and bashed up stock cars. They could drive all over the estate having rallies and things, and perhaps drop a copper or two into the kitty. It would all help.’

  Honeybath, because he judged this to be a disobliging and indeed graceless speech, left it without rejoinder. But he remembered Denver’s suggestion that the Grintons were hard up. This chatter about worthless or neglected land seemed to be in the same area. He devoted himself to peering into the teapot, pouring out an experimental cup of what it contained, and picking up a biscuit. He glanced at Hillam, and found that nothing came into his head to say to the man. He remembered that earlier in the afternoon Hillam had in some trifling way been uncivil to him, and also that the fellow had come out with a rather lewd joke. But these recollections failed to prompt to conversation, and it was Hillam who now spoke.

  ‘Tancock and I have been talking about this extraordinary affair in the library,’ he said. ‘It begins to look as if it was right to regard it as an affair for the police. I’m afraid I treated it with a certain levity earlier on.’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing that can throw one off one’s stride for a time.’ Honeybath made this rather meaningless remark by way of acknowledging that Hillam had been offering some kind of amende honorable. ‘There’s no easy sense to be made of it. Appleby and that local police chief are chewing over it in the library now.’

  ‘From what I hear,’ Tancock said, ‘the only explanation seems to be that there has been some sort of lunatic around the place. A particularly crazy variety of recluse. Quartering himself in some corner of the house nobody ever goes near, and varying that with spells in the library. Of course nobody ever goes near the library either. But how would a wandering zany know that? The thing’s senseless.’

  ‘What you describe would be senseless in itself,’ Honeybath said. ‘But there’s more to it than that. It looks like two unaccountable presences rather than one.’ He drank his tepid tea. ‘And it rather looks as if–’ He broke off and reached hastily for another biscuit. Appleby’s theory of clandestine literary research was much in his mind, and he had been within an ace of embarking upon it in the way of mere gossip with these two almost unknown men. ‘It looks rather as if the explanation of the mystery may be hard to seek.’

  ‘And be best left to the professionals,’ Hillam said helpfully. It was as if Hillam, although by nature disagreeable, had decided that in the present state of affairs at Grinton some sort of amenity of address was the prudent thing.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know as to that.’ Giles Tancock was now lounging in front of a bright fire, but at the same time shifting his weight restlessly from foot to foot. ‘God knows, this house is uncommonly dull. Dolly does her best – and I make Magda back her up – to press-gang into Grinton an occasional character with something between the ears other than solid bone. But it’s hard going. So an incident in the briskly criminal way might liven us up. Just reflect on my father-in-law’s common conversation. He’s a decent old ruffian, I don’t deny, and even quite endearing in his way. But his talk – well, God save my whiskers!’ Upon this unusual pious ejaculation, Tancock turned to Honeybath. ‘Have you heard him on his rates and taxes?’

  Honeybath had, in fact, heard Terence Grinton on this theme – already more than once. Nevertheless he said instantly, ‘No, I have not.’ It seemed to him the best means of marking his strong disapproval of the tone in which Grinton’s son-in-law spoke.

  ‘There’s a kind of persecution mania at the bottom of it,’ Tancock said confidently. ‘I happen to know that Terence has a perfectly competent accountant. In fact, I made Magda find him for the old boy. But he still believes that he’s put upon by villainous and faceless creatures in the Inland Revenue.’

  ‘It’s a very common attitude,’ Hillam said on his new composing note. ‘A very easy persuasion to fall into. But it’s true that Grinton does talk about it rather a lot. So the mysterious affair in the library may be a welcome change, I agree. I do wonder, however, whether one ought perhaps to go away.’

  ‘What do you mean – go away?’

  ‘Well, of course, you’re a member of the family, Tancock, and that’s different. But I have a notio
n that when there’s been a fatality in a household – or anything serious, you know, of that kind – it’s perhaps the proper thing for mere casual guests to terminate their visit as unobtrusively as may be.’

  ‘Unobtrusively? Packing a bag and levanting in the middle of the night? You’d have the fuzz after you in no time.’ Tancock backed this up with a contemptuous laugh, as if Hillam were an absurd person who went about with a book on etiquette in his baggage. Honeybath’s sympathies were rather with Hillam, who had raised an issue not wholly without substance. Imagine, for example, Terence Grinton breaking his neck (which he might do on any three or four days out of seven) and it would surely be incumbent upon persons congregated in the dead man’s house for mere routine jollification to mutter appropriate words and clear out. On the other hand it would be absurd to do anything of the kind if – say – the body of some unfortunate mendicant had been found in a wood shed. The status of what had been found (and quickly lost) at Grinton was still an entirely unknown quantity.

  ‘At least Honeybath can’t pack his bag,’ Tancock said to Hillam, seemingly with intent to continue in a humorous vein. ‘He has a job to do, and a cheque to collect. But where shall the thing hang? Honeybath, have you tackled my mother-in-law about that? She’ll decide, you know. You must have noticed already that Dolly runs the Grinton circus.’

  ‘I’ve had no discussion about it with Mrs Grinton or anybody else,’ Honeybath said. ‘There are former Grintons here and there around the house. Some of them are rather good – although none that I’ve noticed is by a painter of any great celebrity. I expect a niche for my effort will be found somewhere.’

  ‘But not in here,’ Hillam said. ‘Anything of the kind would look uncommonly odd.’

  ‘True enough.’ Tancock glanced not very attentively round the room. ‘It’s a curious thing about drawing-rooms in a house like this. The lady’s word is law in it – and generation by generation a new lady arrives who has at least a slightly different background behind her. But she sets no fresh mark on the place. And Dolly isn’t an exception. Long ago, she created a room for herself upstairs, then all very new and à la mode. But this drawing-room has remained as undisturbed – well – as the library itself. Those silhouette things festooning the fireplace. And all the watercolour sketches perpetrated by all the Grinton females that ever were. And there are thousands of similar family mausoleums all over England. Terrifying.’

  Charles Honeybath, who believed that any setting of brush or pencil to paper whether by man, woman or child partook of the sanctity of creation, was not disposed to feel terrified. On the contrary, he was prompted to circle the room and inspect the artistic labours of the ladies invoked. They were certainly daunting in quantity, and in quality most of them were, of course, insipid enough. Grinton Hall, its perspectives very shakily perceived, figured in a good many. So did approved ‘beauty spots’ in Scotland and Switzerland. In fact you might say that there was much social history on the walls.

  ‘As always,’ Honeybath said, ‘it’s possible to spot one or two ladies in whom untutored talent lurks. Somebody was obsessed by an oak tree struck by lightning, and goes at it again and again. And – by Jove! – here she brings it off.’ Honeybath was as pleased as if this success had been achieved by his own daughter. ‘But here’s something different. Quite different. Not the Grinton atelier at all. Look, Tancock! Just a cottage and a tree and a boat on a stream – as unassuming a little thing as you please. But it’s certainly by John Varley, and both Blake and Palmer are hovering in it. Wouldn’t you say?’ Honeybath was quite unconscious of the fact that Tancock might know nothing of these things. ‘The tub is floating past on invisible water. That’s time. And the tree is just coming into leaf again. Life eternal. A wonderful little thing.’

  ‘Nobody would give more than a couple of hundred pounds for it,’ Hillam said.

  ‘I suppose not.’ Honeybath was still too pleased by the small sketch to be bothered by this tasteless remark. ‘Odd that it should turn up in the middle of all this family piety. Let’s see if there’s anything else.’

  Honeybath moved on. Tancock, who had approached and looked at the Varley with civil interest, turned back and took up his position before the fire again, apparently feeling that an adequate polite gesture had been made. Hillam made to follow Honeybath, but paused suddenly in the middle of the room.

  ‘I say, Honeybath!’ he said. ‘Just come and look at these – in this glass-topped affair. There must have been a nabob among the Grintons at one time or other. And with an eye for such things. Superb little bronzes. Just look at that high-kicking Nataraja. And the Pattini Devi. It’s as fine as the larger one in the BM. Good Lord! A Swat Valley figure of Tathagata Aksobhya. Ninth century, I’d say.’

  Honeybath examined the small collection of Indian divinities with respect. It certainly made an odd outcrop of the exotic in this commonplace English drawing-room. And odd, too, was Hillam’s sudden enthusiasm – apparently an informed enthusiasm. He was scarcely the same man who had offered some merely crass remark before the Varley. And then Honeybath remembered that the man curated something. Perhaps it was Eastern Antiquities. Honeybath didn’t know much about that field, and would have said that he preferred a single George Stubbs horse (even if being devoured by a lion) to a whole troop of sacred elephants. But one ought always to be willing to learn, and it is pleasant suddenly to discover in a favourable light somebody whom one has been tempted to regard as rather a tiresome fellow. So for some minutes he listened to instructive remarks about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And then that bell went to tell people to go and dress.

  7

  In spite of the agitations of the afternoon at Grinton, there turned out to be a properly attended quarter of an hour for the purpose of drinking sherry before dinner. For some reason it was a ritual somewhat formally conceived – the stuff being taken round by Burrow on a salver rather than simply being poured out by Terence Crinton or by oneself. The method, it struck Appleby, had a certain effect of controlling the amount consumed, and might have been devised by Dolly Grinton in the interest either of sobriety or economy. Perhaps her husband or her son-in-law inclined to the bad habit of sitting down at table already well lit up. Or perhaps quite small expenditures had to be kept an eye on throughout the entire Grinton economy. Appleby had recently read that it cost eighty pounds a week to feed an elephant in the zoo. If the Nether Barset was conducted on somewhat old-fashioned lines – which he didn’t at all know – and its Master expected to provide most of the board and lodging for a large pack of hounds, it might well be that Dolly had to own a constant regard for the res angusta domi.

  If so, it certainly didn’t get her down. After her own fashion – an extremely cheerful one – she was almost as assertive as her husband. She was advancing on Appleby now, holding up her little sherry glass as extravagantly as if it had been a beaker full of the warm South.

  ‘John,’ she said familiarly, ‘you are the exception. I declare you to be the sole exception. You may sleep in the house or spend the night prowling through the house, but you will be the only policeman to do so. I told that Mr Denver to go away.’

  ‘And he went?’

  ‘Indeed he went, and took his small change – his junior coppers, that is – with him.’ Perhaps through long cohabitation with Terence, Dolly had the habit of elucidating her own jokes as she went along. ‘Of course I told him very nicely, and he made no fuss at all.’

  ‘I see. And just what has he done about the library?’

  ‘Done about the library? Why nothing at all. Why should he?’

  ‘I thought it possible he might want to lock it up – just in case his back-room boys want to give it a go-through tomorrow.’

  ‘A go-through? Don’t be absurd, John. It would take the entire county constabulary a month to do anything of the sort.’

  ‘Well, in one sense – yes. But considering that Charles Honeybath…’ Appleby was about to add something like, ‘found a dead man there,’ but w
asn’t given the chance.

  ‘Dear Mr Honeybath!’ Dolly broke in – with something like a Terence laugh in a minor mode. ‘He ought to have been a visionary painter, like poor dear Marc Chagall. What fun his Terence would be then.’

  Appleby made no reply to this – and indeed any rational response wouldn’t have been easy. That the library at Grinton had returned in pristinum statum – to wit, a room into which it just so happened one didn’t go – struck him as a shade unaccountable. But he was far from feeling that Inspector Denver didn’t know his business, and police methods had no doubt refined themselves since his own day. As for Dolly Grinton, she had apparently decided to believe that Honeybath’s report of finding a corpse was akin to the discovery by occasional disordered persons that little green men had arrived from the moon. And to this view Appleby ventured on an oblique challenge.

  ‘I hope,’ he said seriously, ‘you’re not going to miss the articles of furniture that Honeybath and I came on in that room beyond the library, and that disappeared so rapidly thereafter.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ For a moment Dolly Grinton was a little at a loss, since she could not very directly suggest that Appleby was in the habit of spotting little green men too. ‘The servants are always shifting their own bits and pieces around. Something of that kind. Will you have another glass of sherry? But – how very tiresome! – Burrow has gone away. He’ll be giving us his shout at any moment. I do hope there’s a decent meal. Terence is less disagreeable when he has been well fed. Just like the hounds.’ Dolly set down her glass on the showcase sheltering the Indian divinities, and they perhaps prompted her next remark. ‘Hallam Hillam,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ve had some conversation with him by this time. Don’t you find him a quite fascinating man?’