‘Indeed, sir? Please continue.’
‘It was about this missing man – dead or sleeping. Sleeping, I told myself – and then disturbed by Mr Honeybath, who fumbled at the fellow, and then cleared out.’
Here Appleby interrupted.
‘I think that significantly misrepresents Mr Honeybath’s behaviour. He satisfied himself, as he believed, that the man was dead, and then very properly sought help. But you’d better go on.’
‘Thank you. I will.’ Tancock paused, distinguishably with that effect of wariness which sometimes overtook him. ‘The man comes out of a heavy slumber. He may even have had a slight stroke – something of that kind. He staggers around in a bemused condition. I know it sounds very speculative, Inspector – but I’m simply telling you of a rather irrational state of worry I got into. Particularly when I remembered that treacherous little spiral staircase. Had the police been aware of it, and investigated the basement? I couldn’t remember whether I’d heard anything about that. So I decided to come and take a look myself.’
‘So down you went,’ Denver said. ‘And remained down quite a long time. In fact, emerging only when there was the general shindy.’
‘You may express it that way. I felt a certain awkwardness in my situation.’
‘That seems not unlikely, sir. But at least you didn’t find a corpse down there, or even a still living man in a grave condition.’
‘Happily, not.’
And with this, Tancock gave an assured nod, and fell silent. He had explained himself, and that was it.
For a moment, at least, it was as if Denver showed himself baffled. It had been, in a fashion, a colourable yarn, and that it was all a shade phoney was a point that Tancock had cheerfully made himself. Very sensibly, Denver turned to his next man.
‘Mr Hillam,’ he asked, ‘can you tell me the reason for your own visit to the library? Were you suffering the same sort of anxiety as prompted Mr Tancock to drop in?’
‘Well, no – not exactly. Or rather, not at all.’ Unlike Tancock, Hillam displayed something like desperation. He hadn’t, perhaps, a particularly inventive mind. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I was very upset. It’s not what one expects when one joins friends in the country for a quiet weekend. I got rather obsessed with the situation. Perhaps I was a little like Mr Tancock in that.’ Hillam offered this hopefully, as if there might be something creditable in approximating his own condition to Tancock’s after all. ‘Morbid curiosity,’ he said. ‘It does, I suppose, sound a bit wet. But I’m afraid that’s the fact of the matter. I came in here out of morbid curiosity. And there was that dreadful woman. I rather lost my head, and we fell to shouting at each other. That was the whole story.’
‘The whole fairytale, you mean!’ Terence Grinton, who had amazingly kept silence for nearly ten minutes, now achieved one of his high-decibel performances. ‘Pilfering – that’s what the fellow was up to.’ Grinton had turned to Denver. ‘Plain as a pikestaff. This room is full of rubbish that lunatic eggheads will pay money for. Not a doubt of it. Sermons and bawdy plays and travels in China. The little brute invited himself down here – my wife told me as much – and is making away with whatever he can lay his hands on.’
‘It’s an abominable lie! It’s an insult!’ Hillam was beside himself with rage – a condition in which, if he was an honest man, he had every right to be. ‘I don’t give a damn for your rubbishing books. Not many of them would fetch sixpence on a barrow in the street, you ignorant baboon. And I shall, of course, leave your house this instant.’
‘And a bloody good riddance that will be. But it won’t happen until these coppers have had a good hunt through your suitcases.’ Grinton was breathing heavily as a result of this exchange of amenities. ‘But no you won’t either!’ he suddenly shouted. ‘I’ll give you in charge. Denver, I give this man in charge. Take him away and lock him up.’
‘Gentlemen, please compose yourselves.’ Denver spoke on a note of sharp authority. ‘Mr Grinton, you cannot, as you express it, give Mr Hillam in charge. Mr Hillam, I understand your impulse to leave Grinton Hall at once. But I advise against it. It would be inconvenient.’
What Hillam made of this was not apparent. For a moment, indeed, it was as if the contretemps had gone out of his head. He was glancing covertly round the library with what Appleby thought of as a lean and hungry look. So perhaps Grinton was right about him. But somehow Appleby doubted it. He sensed it as being, so to speak, not quite in the target area. But however that might be, this fantastic nocturne had gone on long enough.
‘Grinton,’ Appleby said, ‘we must all be grateful for Mr Denver’s vigilance, and in my opinion he has this difficult situation well in hand. I suggest we all go back to bed, and start in again with clearer heads in the morning. Everybody, I am sure, is anxious to see this uncomfortable mystery resolved.’
These pacificatory noises (for they weren’t much more than that) were offered with sufficient assurance to be of immediate effect. Burrow gathered up his rummers, and within five minutes the library was once more in darkness. Whether long-suffering constables were to continue lurking in it through the short remainder of the night was something nobody inquired about.
10
The Applebys, coming down to breakfast, met Charles Honeybath emerging from the drawing-room.
‘Nobody feeding yet,’ Honeybath said – and it was immediately apparent that, somewhat unaccountably, he was in an almost buoyant mood. ‘They seem to keep latish hours. By the way, was there some sort of disturbance in the night? I thought I heard something.’
‘There was indeed,’ Appleby said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we’ve had our coffee and feel a bit stronger.’
‘I thought I’d wait until somebody else appeared. One always has a sense of being greedy if one presents oneself in an empty room. So I thought I’d have another look round in there.’ And Honeybath nodded towards the drawing-room. ‘It produced a real surprise. I must show you. Come along.’
Mildly astonished by this enthusiasm, Appleby and his wife did as they were told. The curtains had been drawn back in the drawing-room, and there had already been a tidy-round. Nevertheless, the place seemed to disapprove of their presence at this inappropriate hour.
‘All those watercolours,’ Honeybath said. ‘I have a weakness for that kind of thing, and was wandering around them yesterday evening. I came on a little watercolour by John Varley. Think of that! I wonder how a Grinton once possessed himself of it. Here it is! Isn’t it tiptop?’
The Applebys admired the Varley.
‘So in the night I found myself wondering whether there might be anything else out-of-the-way: meaning not by deceased Grinton ladies. That’s what brought me in ten minutes ago. And you’ll never guess what I found.’ Honeybath was now in a state of great enjoyment. ‘So blessedly remote from that bothersome body! Come and look.’
Obediently, the Applebys looked.
‘Almost,’ Appleby said cautiously, ‘Chinese.’
‘Absolutely true!’ Honeybath was delighted by this act of connoisseurship. ‘But of course it’s by Claude. Just a wash drawing of what I take to be Tivoli. There’s one very like it in the BM. But the light, Judith, the light! Whenever I’m told that the Impressionists first really captured the stuff, I think of Claude. And here it happens in eight inches by six. However did those Grinton creatures come by that?’
‘I think I can tell you,’ Judith Appleby said. ‘Or this book can.’ And she held up an octavo volume in aged but well-waxed leather. ‘John has just been reading it, and I’m returning it to its owner, Terence’s Mr Burrow. But you must have a look at the relevant place first, Charles. Here and now.’
And thus Charles Honeybath became acquainted with Reliquiae Grintonianae.
From Paris it would appear that Mr Grinton travelled direct to Rome, not by Genoa and the Ligurian Sea, but always in his own carriage as before, and with his own servants about him. It is a thing curious to remark that a man by nature so acquisitive as t
his Ambrose Grinton was yet regardless of the pitch of his quotidian expenses, and would live or journey, as the opportunity afforded him, in the style rather of a nobleman than a private gentleman. His route, which in all occupied many days, was by the Colle del Moncenisio, then still very horrid, since it pleased him to believe that he was thus following in the steps of Hannibal. The persuasion, although not puerile, was erroneous, since historiographers do now with one voice assert that the Col du Clapier, and not this of Mont Cenis, was the pass to tremble beneath the tread of the Carthaginians and their monstrous Elephantes. If disabused in this, he might have assuaged himself with the knowledge, little hidden from many schoolboys, one would suppose, that his path had assuredly been traversed by Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and Charles the Bald. At least he had taken his own commodious carriage where no carriage road was, and this achievement may have contented him when, upon his arrival in the Eternal City, the vehicle had to be broken up incontinent.
Mr Grinton had taken due care to provide himself with sundry letters introductory to good society in his new abiding place, and notably to M. Béthune, then French Ambassador to the Court of the Bp. of Rome. Although at home ever one decently attentive to his religious duties according to our Established Church, in Rome he did as the Romans did, entering with very little scruple into the highest papistical circles open to him. Thus by M. Béthune he was presented alike to Cardinals Crescenzio and Bentivoglio, and indeed to one Maffeo Barberini, who styled himself Urban VIII and claimed to occupy the throne of S. Peter himself.
It was a time at which such prelatical personages as these evinced much concern to exhibit themselves judicious curiosi, well-seen alike in the arts of antiquity and this modern age. Limners and statuaries, although no longer commanding the exalted regard and remuneration of a Sanzio or a Buonarotti, found ready patrons still among them. The purse of Mr Grinton, although seldom entirely empty, was inadequate to compete in this market with any amplitude. But he was ever on the alert to benefit as he could, and moreover it will be recalled that among his familiars he was jestingly referred to as Autolycus Grinton, after that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles created by the immortal Shagsper. This proclivity is well exhibited, and that to some effect of diversion, by his traffic with one Gellée, a Frenchman by extraction, and in Rome graduated painter from the less uncertain trade of pastry-cook.
The Cardinals and the Bp. alike stood patrons to Gellée (a name, Mr Grinton gamesomely averred, well becoming one habituated to concocting kickshaws in a kitchen), known also as Le Lorrain, so that by the time of our Autolycus’ visit he had become supereminent among such painters as devoted their genius to the limning of landscapes in the Campagna of Rome, being in this more various, rich and rare than all others. Two characteristicks were remarked in him. He worked much in the very face of what he painted, sometimes in oils but more commonly with simpler materials, as if holding up to nature a mirror more faithful than the retirement of a studio could provide. He thus accumulated a wealth of schizzi (as the Italians say) to which he would turn when compositions of more magnitude were required of him, so that the floors of his dwelling were declared at times thick with these rapid starts not indeed of fancy, but of observation. Again, as his fame was augmented with the years, and that he might not be practised upon by counterfeiters of his own labours, he had the custom to take with pencil or with pen or the like drawings of his larger or elaborated works, thereby creating an ordered record of his authentic achievements. But in the pursuit of this design, eventually to be styled by him the Libri di verità, he by no means always satisfied himself at a first or even a second endeavour. So from this characteristick there also arose a fine prodigality of parerga (as they may be styled) not very vigilantly guarded by their author. And it was the jest of many in Rome that England’s Autolycus, who much frequented the studio of this jumpt-up kitchen-boy, seldom departed therefrom without having stuffed his pockets (which were capacious, following the fashion of that time) with sundry of these strays or waifs of art.
Winter approaching, Mr Grinton next made his way to Naples…
‘God bless my soul!’ Still holding Reliquiae Grintonianae open in his hand, Honeybath jumped to his feet, crossed the drawing-room, and stared again at the little Claude. Then he sat down on a sofa and composed himself. ‘John,’ he asked soberly, ‘just what does this mean?’
‘It means that anybody acquainted with that book – including its owner, the admirable Burrow – could see there was a sporting chance that the chaos of the Grinton library harbours somewhere quite a number of drawings and the like by Claude Lorrain. If he came upon that one, framed and casually disposed among innumerable mediocre amateur watercolours in this room, he would feel confirmed in that view of the prospect. Of course I’ve heard of Claude’s Liber Veritatis. How many drawings does it run to?’
‘A hundred and ninety-five, I think, plus another five that are not related to known paintings. The whole lot were tucked away at Chatsworth for I don’t know how long. But now, of course, they’re in the British Museum. Incidentally, I don’t think Claude can have got going very seriously on the Liber Veritatis idea until after this rascally Ambrose Grinton’s time. And it isn’t likely that the Reverend Simon Upcott was much of an art historian. But in general his yarn sounds likely enough.’
‘Supposing,’ Judith asked, ‘there really are say a dozen schizzi or whatever by Claude hidden away there in the library, what, approximately, might they be worth?’
‘The moon. No other possible answer.’ Honeybath spoke firmly. ‘That fellow Tancock would tell you the market for such things has gone completely mad. Claude is important, and will always be important. And he’s dead. So the theory of scarcity value operates. Buy him, lock him up in a vault, and the theory guarantees you won’t lose your money.’
‘I’m not quite certain about the guarantee,’ Appleby said. He was somewhat sceptical of his friend’s command of political economy. ‘But it’s certain that the value of such a group of drawings would make the value of anything else hidden away in that library look simply silly. Short, say, of the manuscript of Hamlet Prince of Denmark.’
‘Surely,’ Honeybath asked, ‘it has been irresponsible of this man Burrow to have been possessed of this information and not to have informed his employer?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Judith said. Judith seemed to have a sense of Terence Grinton’s butler as under her own protection. ‘Burrow is very much an autodidact, and when he read about that stuff lying around a studio floor the penny mightn’t drop with him. I suggest we go to breakfast.’
They moved towards the door, but Honeybath came to a halt beside the little display cabinet containing the Indian divinities.
‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’
‘You have a talent for it, Charles.’ Appleby halted too. ‘What is it, this time? Not more about that dead man’s clothes?’
‘No, no. An incident in this room, yesterday evening. What has put me in mind of it is those little bronzes. It may be nothing very significant. Disturbing all the same.’
‘Out with it.’
‘Well, it was when I noticed the little watercolour by Varley. It was a surprising discovery, lost in the middle of all this family art. I was with Tancock and Hillam, you know. And I was quite excited. I said to them something like, ‘Let’s see if there’s anything more of the same sort,’ and walked on down the room. But Hillam called out to me to have a look at those Indian things, and I saw at once that they are interesting. Hillam started giving names to them, and then that bell went to tell us to wash and brush up for dinner.’
‘And your previous movement had been such,’ Appleby asked, ‘that continuing it would have brought you face to face with Claude’s Tivoli?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘So you think that perhaps Hillam didn’t want you to see it?’
‘Well, I do now. But there wasn’t the slightest impression of anything of the sort at the time.
I mean anything like the man being flustered or alerted, or speaking abruptly. So my suspecting anything is a matter of hindsight.’
‘The question seems to be,’ Judith said, ‘what might have succeeded upon your noticing such an unexpected thing in this room. Suppose that Hillam is acquainted with Reliquiae Grintonianae, and got himself invited here to Grinton as a consequence. He can’t know who else is, or is not, similarly acquainted with it. Its very suggestive information may just conceivably be latent, as it were, in somebody’s mind; and if on the strength of your indeed spotting the drawing you start talking about Claude and asking questions here and there, the subject may gain a prominence inimical to the success of Hillam’s dark design. If he has a dark design. John, do you think he has a dark design?’
‘Yes,’ Appleby said. ‘I do. Or, if he hasn’t, he has had. A complex situation may have got out of hand from his point of view, and he is thinking twice about remaining in the fray. That’s just one possibility. There are others. And now for breakfast.’
11
A complex situation, Appleby repeated to himself over his bacon and egg. Commonplace in its elements, possibly, but unusual in what might be called its concatenations, and distractingly bizarre in some of its trimmings. Quite a handful for Inspector Denver.
The Grinton library as subject to two independent if confusingly interwoven schemes of depredation. A long-term one and a short- term one.
Giles Tancock, the auctioneer who knows the right price for a rare book. Who, although Terence Grinton’s son-in-law, has no great expectations in that quarter. Who is hard-up, likely enough, since his wife has expensive and rather silly plans for their children. Tancock no doubt visits his parents-in-law frequently; he knows all about the library and its history; he knows how completely neglected and unfrequented it is. So he falls into the way of quietly tracking down and abstracting such fairly valuable books as are likely to be scattered around amid its chaos. Quite soon he is being thoroughly systematic about this. He brings in the catalogues of antiquarian booksellers as a kind of aide-mémoire, and tackles the enormous quantity of stuff down in the cellarage.
Appleby And Honeybath Page 12