‘Presumably as a result of his exciting meeting with Mr Burrow,’ Appleby resumed, ‘Professor Hagberg returned to Grinton on the following day, and had what appears to have been a more fruitful discussion with Mr Grinton. But to just what effect, I confess myself to being a little in the dark. So it will be very helpful to us if, at this stage, Mr Grinton will tell us about it. Terence, would that be agreeable to you?’
For a moment it didn’t look as if it would be at all agreeable. Terence muttered something about confounded nonsense and sending for his solicitor. Appleby murmured in turn his conviction that all this was merely a family affair and a private one at that.
‘Oh, very well,’ Terence said. ‘Great confidence in you, John. Vast experience, and all that. So here it is.’
‘Hagberg,’ Terence Grinton said, ‘appeared out of the blue. He knew nothing about this satire-thing we’ve been hearing about. What he was after was letters. Letters written in historical times, at that. Did you ever hear such nonsense? Who would keep letters about the Spanish Armada and the Norman Conquest and so forth? And he was on about this Pope – so where were they? Hagberg seemed to think I’d have them right at hand, like the bills Burrow brings along from the butcher and baker. Of course, John, I was completely civil, as you rightly say. I just told him to bugger off.’
‘And he did?’ Appleby asked.
‘Yes – and I knew nothing about his having a little chat with Burrow. No reason why he should not, if he had a fancy that way. But the next day he was back again, and singing to a different tune. Switched scents, you might say. He said he had a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the English landed classes, and that he had an ancestor who knew George Washington. It seems that Washington came of very decent people in Northamptonshire. Getting on for the best of the Shires, to my mind. Tiptop hunting country.’
At this point Terence seemed in some danger of losing his thread, and had to be prompted by Appleby.
‘And just what,’ Appleby asked, ‘did Hagberg propose to do about the plight of the landed classes?’
‘He said that if you were hard up you looked around for this and that to sell in an unobtrusive way. I knew what he meant, of course. Capital Gains Tax. I have some piece of rubbish – say an old Chinese chamber pot or the like – and you flog it to some lunatic for thousands of pounds. Then along comes a tax blighter and filches the cash from you. So softly, softly was the thing, he said. And particularly with books. There was probably no end of books scattered around this library that were worth a packet. He quite surprised me.’
‘And he offered to find them and feed them quietly on the market?’ Appleby thought it injudicious to modify Terence’s view on the operations of the tax man. ‘Perhaps for a trifling commission?’
‘Just that. Quite a businesslike chap, really. But it all had to be thoroughly hush-hush. He oughtn’t to be seen regularly coming and going at Grinton. So he thought of this ploy. Camping on the scene of operations, you might say. Ingenious idea, eh? And with quite a bit of spunk to it. I liked that.’ At this point Terence chuckled happily. ‘Not even Burrow would know about it. And Burrow knows about damn nearly everything. That right, Burrow?’
‘I endeavour to keep in touch, sir.’
‘Well, there you are. It would all take time, Hagberg said. A lot of poking around to do.’
‘Decidedly,’ Appleby said.
‘And the next thing, the blasted man has gone dead on us. And what he has been after all the time is this confounded satire. Found it, too, if I understand what you’ve been saying, John. And I’ve been following you very closely – very closely indeed. It needs a clear head. But I’ve never been short of that, thank God.’
Terence Grinton sat back, having manfully done his duty. Either because impressed or because stupefied, the assembled company was momentarily silent. And then Appleby spoke again.
‘So far as the satire goes,’ he said, ‘– but don’t forget about Claude – there is only one other preliminary trail to follow. It concerns Mr Grinton’s son-in-law, Mr Giles Tancock. What nobody had any notion of, except perhaps in a dim way Mr Grinton himself, is that Mr Tancock too was interested in the books in this library. Just as a matter of family entitlement, you might say, he had fallen into the habit of removing a useful-looking volume every now and then. As a matter of fact, it appears that he became quite systematic about it. He knows about books; all the antiquarian booksellers’ catalogues come to him; he found them useful as a guide to what to look out for. Mr Tancock, would you care to confirm me in this?’
‘Not in so far as it suggests a misrepresentation.’ Tancock, who had gone pale, said this very carefully. ‘You ought to have stressed that my father-in-law knew about it. I suppose he was aware that I am as hard-up as he is. And – to put it crudely – he didn’t want a rumpus. He’s scared of the women, you know. He’s that sort of chap.’
‘It’s not, perhaps, a line of inquiry we need pursue further at the moment.’ Appleby said this a shade grimly. ‘For we have arrived at a crucial moment yesterday afternoon. Mr Tancock makes one of his predatory visits to this room. He finds Professor Hagberg – of whose existence he has known nothing – in it. The professor has Pope’s satire – of which, again, Mr Tancock knows nothing – in his hands. And the professor is dead.’
This time, the silence was prolonged. It was Appleby himself who broke it.
‘And now,’ Appleby said, ‘we can turn to Claude Lorrain. Two of the present small house party at Grinton are here solely because of him. In fact they got themselves severally invited down simply in the hope of getting a sight of Ambrose Grinton’s little collection. Or at least let us express it like that just for the moment. And remember that the continued existence here at Grinton of these valuable works of art might be inferred by anybody who had happened upon one of those rare copies of Reliquiae Grintonianae. One of the two was Mr Hallam Hillam.’
‘It’s a lie!’ Hillam said – or, rather, shouted. ‘It’s a disgusting fabrication, and most certainly an actionable slander.’
‘Mr Hillam,’ Appleby continued, unheeding, ‘is by profession an art historian. He presumably came on the book in the course of research into connoisseurship in England in the seventeenth century. To act on the information it gave was decidedly to take a long shot, and Mr Hillam may well have been rather despondent about his enterprise. But then he came upon a little Claude watercolour hanging amazingly on the drawing-room wall. That must have cheered him up no end. But of course he can have had very little notion how to proceed. He knew about the deserted and disorganized state of this library, and if the bulk of the drawings were anywhere they were probably here. But as to just where, he had no information at all. It was otherwise with Mrs Mustard.
‘Mrs Mustard, incidentally, is an actress.’ Appleby hadn’t paused. ‘She has retired from the stage – although whether it has really been in favour of spiritual pursuits, I don’t know. In the theatre, I can hardly doubt that she had a distinguished career. Her profession, however, is of less significance than that of her husband. For here another professor enters our story. Professor Mustard’s subject is the history of English architecture, and in the course of his researches he undoubtedly came upon James Gibbs’ working drawings for a library at Grinton Hall. Gibbs was a Classical man. He believed in symmetry – not fearful, as in William Blake’s celebrated poem, but comfortable and at times unobtrusive. Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, as Pope himself somewhere has it. And the same thing should go even for concealed doors. So we can be sure that his drawing for this library reveals just what you are looking at now. There, in fact, in that masked cupboard, was a convenient repository either for junk or treasure. Just where the Claudes had knocked around in Ambrose’s time, we don’t know. But it wasn’t a bad bet that this was where they now reposed. Jonathan Grinton, for example, may have been a little uncomfortable about his grandfather’s depredations in Rome, and may have shoved some of his loot into this whimsical hidey-hole.
So you can see that Mrs Mustard was a long way ahead of Mr Hillam.’
After this long speech, Appleby, very reasonably, paused to take breath. This gave Mrs Mustard, hitherto silent, an opportunity to participate in the discussion.
‘Woe!’ Mrs Mustard cried aloud. ‘Woe to profane inquirers into forbidden things!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Appleby said. ‘A good deal of discomfort is likely to result. And I must apologize for the tedium of this preliminary exposition. But at least we are arrived at the point at which action begins.’
16
During these explanations, Charles Honeybath had found himself glancing from time to time at the fire now blazing on the hearth. He had been visited by a new and rather wonderful idea. That vision of depicting the proprietor of Grinton as posed before a towering array of books had been entirely fantastic. Terence wouldn’t have stood for it for a moment. But here was the library in comfortable (or perhaps uncomfortable) use again. So why not have him toasting his behind in front of this cheerful conflagration? It was the technical aspect of this that was extremely alluring. That hunting pink – and then the flickering crimson and orange and gold and mere incandescence behind it: would it be possible to bring that off? Honeybath felt impatient – anxious that Appleby would hasten his winding up of the tiresome business of the disappearing Professor Hagberg and permit more serious business to get going. Fortunately Appleby did now seem to be proposing a brisk pace.
‘So there are two perfectly definite occasions to cope with,’ Appleby was saying. ‘The first concerns what happened in this library and elsewhere yesterday afternoon, and the second what happened here in the middle of the night.
‘Let me begin with the bizarrely squatting Hagberg. Here he is, pretending to be assembling likely books for the improving of Mr Grinton’s bank balance, but actually on the hunt for Alexander Pope’s satire. Remember that he hasn’t a clue as to where it may be lurking. He has been down in the basement – where he has presumably been often enough before – and the only result has been his getting smothered in dust and cobweb. He retires to that little room for modest physical recruitment. And then, halfway through the discussion of a Welsh rabbit, and like the boy in Browning’s poem, he is stung by the splendour of a sudden thought. It is a moment of tremendous excitement. He, too, is a Classical man. And there has come to him, more or less intuitively, the probability – the near necessity – of the existence of that symmetrical door and hiding place.’ And here Appleby paused, and pointed with a muted dramatic gesture. ‘There it is, and within minutes he has spotted it and opened it. He rummages, perhaps for quite some time. And then Pope’s satire is in his hands.
‘He shuts the door – if door it’s to be called – and stands there reading the thing. It’s tremendous. As sheer malign attack, it’s tremendous. He rejoices in it, and his features betray the fact. Then, quite suddenly, he is dead. He suffers from what his compatriots call a condition – meaning a disease. He’s taking pills for it. But it strikes, and there he is: dead as a doornail, huddled on the floor. No more than a few minutes pass, and Mr Tancock enters the library.’
It was decidedly a shocked silence this time. Terence Grinton stood up, moved across the room, and actually placed himself with his back to the fire, as if a chill sense of mortality could be mitigated that way.
‘Mr Tancock’s resulting behaviour,’ Appleby went on, ‘is distinctly interesting. Simultaneously, or at least in rapid alternation, he may be said to keep his head and lose it. He doesn’t know Hagberg from Adam. The thing is totally inexplicable. But then he picks up Pope’s manuscript – which we may suppose to be on several sheets scattered on the floor – and discovers what it is almost at once. Here is something of high literary interest, and of considerable value as well.’
‘Considerable?’ Rather surprisingly, Miss Arne found herself with a contribution to make. ‘A few months ago, fifty-seven lines of The Revolt of Islam in Shelley’s own hand was sold at Sotheby’s for over nine thousand pounds.’
‘Nine thousand pounds!’ This came from Terence in a kind of agonized shout. ‘For a wretched piece of scribbling: nine thousand pounds!’
‘A complete work by Pope, in his own hand and hitherto unknown,’ Miss Arne said crisply, ‘would certainly fetch much more than that.’
‘So you will see,’ Appleby resumed, ‘how things stood. Mr Tancock had no notion that Hagberg was in the library with his father-in-law’s connivance. He supposed him to be a simple thief’ but one whose sudden death could decidedly be put to account. In short, Mr Tancock pocketed the manuscript. It was not for nothing, we may say, that he had married into the family of Autolycus Grinton. So now he was in high spirits, and prompted to do a singularly freakish thing. He emptied the dead man’s pockets, perched the body on a chair, and left the library as he had entered it; by the door, that is to say, by which we have ourselves come in. He may thereby narrowly have escaped encountering Mr Honeybath, who himself entered the room a few minutes later.
‘It will be convenient to continue following Mr Tancock for the moment. Retreating, perhaps to his own room, he examines the personal belongings of the dead man he has brought away with him. He thus discovers the dead man’s name, and at once his position is transformed. He knows that a Professor Hagberg is an authority on Pope, and that if his identity is discovered much inquiry must follow. So it is essential to remove the body. He returns to the library – this time unobtrusively by the bogus door from the rear of the building – carts the body out to his car, and makes off with it to what he conceives of as a brilliant temporary hiding place. It is now that Mr Honeybath returns to the library, accompanied by myself. To Mr Honeybath’s considerable confusion, there is no dead body to be found.
‘We search the library, discover the bogus door, discover the little room with its unaccountable temporary furnishings, return to the library, lock it up, and withdraw. Mr Tancock meanwhile returns from the churchyard, proposing to re-enter the house through the deserted domestic offices. He chances to glance into the little room, and realizes the purpose to which it has been put. But he still, you must remember, believes that nobody knows anything about the whole affair except himself. So these further traces of mysterious activity must be removed too. He bundles the camp bed and everything else into his car, returns to the church with them, dumps them in the vestry, and drives back to Grinton. We are not yet quite finished with Mr Tancock, since there is something he has been careless about. We are finished, however, with the events of the afternoon. The events of the night are to follow.’
‘But quite a lot more happened yesterday afternoon.’ Dolly Grinton broke in with this rather as if accused of having provided insufficient entertainment for her guests. ‘We all heard about Mr Honeybath finding a body, and Terence told me to send for Mr Denver, and statements were taken, and goodness knows what.’
‘Perfectly true,’ Appleby said. ‘But the next active moves came from Mr Hillam and Mrs Mustard when the rest of us had all gone to bed. Not that “the rest of us” includes Mr Denver and his men. They were lurking in this library and very much awake.
‘So consider Mr Hillam and Mrs Mustard a little more closely. They know nothing about Pope. But they are competing, as it were, for the Claudes, each ignorant of the designs of the other. But it isn’t a competition on equal terms. Mr Hillam has only a vague notion that the booty is probably somewhere here in the library. Come to think of it, his is rather a forlorn hope. He is here merely for a long weekend, and what can he really do about it? The Claude he has detected hanging in the drawing-room makes his position only the more tantalizing. One almost sympathizes with Mr Hillam and his ill-concealed irritation and bafflement. However, he is a predatory person, betraying the hospitality extended to him. And that goes for Mrs Mustard too.’
‘I declare Sir John Appleby,’ Mrs Mustard said firmly, ‘to be diabolically possessed. His is one of the most striking cases with which I have met.’
‘Mrs Mustard holds a big advan
tage over Mr Hillam. She knows about that capacious secret cupboard, into which anything awkward or inconvenient or even confidential is likely to have been stuffed from time to time. Mrs Mustard is simply waiting for a good opportunity to explore it.
‘But now circumstances have suddenly altered: the mysterious body, policemen all over the place. Mrs Mustard decides she must act. So does Mr Hillam. And so – to come back to him – does Mr Tancock. It has been Mr Tancock’s habit to pursue his researches in the library with the help of a batch of antiquarian bookseller’s catalogues. But one of these he finds to be missing. He decides he must have left it in the basement (where, in fact, I myself came on it earlier in the day) and that the situation is a dodgy one. The catalogue may well be found and occasion undesirable speculation. He may even imagine his own fingerprints as on it: that sort of thing. Fingerprints are much in the minds of the laity when criminal matters are in question. And now it becomes known – or, rather, believed – that the police have vacated the library. So Mr Tancock comes downstairs in the small hours and descends into that basement.
‘Then comes Mrs Mustard. She brings with her in a bag some of the standard paraphernalia of spiritualistic séances: they will serve for obfuscation should she be detected. The lurking police are invisible. So, as she moves about, is she for appreciable periods to the police. She finds that massively disguised cupboard, opens it, rummages, quickly comes on the small portfolio containing the Claudes, stuffs it in her bag, and closes the door. It is in that very moment, I imagine, that in comes Mr Hillam. Mr Hillam is, you know, rather an ineffective person. He starts a useless and dangerous row with the lady. And at this point Mr Tancock – if one may so express it – surfaces.
‘One can, incidentally, a little enter into Mr Tancock’s state of mind. He hasn’t found the catalogue, so that remains a minor worry. A far bigger one is the fact that his plan to remove all trace of Professor Hagberg’s presence has miscarried, and that he has, quite crazily, landed himself with a very awkward situation at the church. On the other hand he has the unexpected windfall of the satire and no notion that it is in anybody else’s mind. A big reward for his efforts is, therefore, still possible. But he will need all his wits if he is to extricate himself from the fix in which he finds himself.
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