A Connoisseur's Case (14 page)

‘You forget, sir, that I did not serve luncheon yesterday. I instructed Evans to do so. I was engaged in checking over the table linen, since the mistress and I were to consider replacements.'

‘By yourself?' Appleby asked.

‘Certainly, sir. But I was joined by the mistress at half past one, and we were then in the linen room together until a little after two o'clock.' Hollywood turned to Mrs Coulson. ‘That, madam, I think would be correct?'

For a moment Mrs Coulson, who had returned to studying space, made no reply.

‘You would confirm the hour, madam?' There was no trace of urgency or anxiety in Hollywood's voice.

‘Yes, Hollywood – of course.'

Mrs Coulson, too, spoke without excitement. But she was looking at her husband's butler, Appleby thought, as if she had never seen him before.

 

‘That takes us some way, then,' Bertram Coulson said. And he in his turn spoke calmly. It came to Appleby that Mrs Coulson's having established an alibi – or her having an alibi established for her – meant absolutely nothing to her husband. And this was not because of indifference. It was because it would never have occurred to him to suspect her for a moment of complicity in anything resembling crime. ‘And now,' Coulson went on, ‘it really is only the children whom Sir John may want to talk to. Unless, that is, all the servants are to be considered as in the picture.'

‘They'll be in Hilliard's picture,' Appleby said. ‘I don't think they need be in mine.' He paused. There had been something in the way Coulson had said ‘the children' making it clear that Alfred Binns' not wholly engaging son and daughter enjoyed almost an adoptive position here at Scroop. ‘Peter and Daphne,' he asked, ‘come here a good deal?'

‘Yes – and we are always glad to have them. They are, you know, motherless. Edith' – Coulson glanced at his wife – ‘has always tried to do what she could, particularly for the girl. But it was the boy who, at first, used to be keener on coming back here.'

‘He enjoys country life and sports?' Judith asked.

‘I don't know that one could say that.' Bertram Coulson sounded faintly puzzled. ‘He likes a little shooting. In fact there he is, going after the pigeons again now.'

The figure of Peter Binns had appeared at a corner of the house. He was carrying a gun and making for the wood.

‘Do you know,' Appleby said casually, ‘that I think I'll go and try to mend my acquaintance with him? Would that be all right?'

‘By all means.' Bertram Coulson rose. ‘And perhaps Lady Appleby would care to see the house?' He turned to Judith. ‘Edith and I will be delighted to show it to you.'

Appleby saw Judith react most favourably to this suggestion. It was in unexpected circumstances, he reflected, that she was fulfilling her ambition of inspecting the interior of Scroop. He had a notion that he ought perhaps to inspect it too. But that would keep. So he made some polite remark to Mrs Coulson and descended from the terrace on the trail of young Binns.

But for some minutes it was Mrs Coulson who stuck in his head. Outwardly she was composed enough: a woman poised over and in control of a familiar environment – an environment acknowledged in her heart, perhaps, to be irksome or inadequate, but an environment accepted and made the best of, nevertheless. That was certainly the normal Edith Coulson, for many years the mistress of Scroop House. But, beneath this, was there another woman – one who had lately, and to her own bewilderment, visited a different world? Appleby didn't know. He could only take note that something indefinable about Bertram Coulson's wife had raised this speculation in his mind.

 

‘It's you, is it?' Peter Binns had delivered himself of this on swinging round and discovering Appleby behind him.

‘Yes – and I must really apologize. But it is the hunter's instinct, Mr Binns' – and Appleby glanced at the weapon in Peter Binns' hands – ‘so perhaps you will forgive me. It's true I'm not after pigeons. I'm after a killer.'

‘I don't believe this old man was murdered.'

‘I'm afraid I do. And I want to find the murderer. I begin by ruling people out. I know when Crabtree died. So I check up on people's movements and whereabouts at that time. You see?'

Not perhaps without justification, Peter Binns took offence at this question.

‘Look,' he said, ‘I'm not utterly a moron – although you seem to have me typed as that. I suppose it's because of the way you heard Daphne talking to me.'

‘I don't know that I concluded much from that. Are you fond of your sister?'

Again with justification, Peter Binns was outraged.

‘What the hell do you mean?' he demanded. And then, curiously, he added: ‘I wouldn't want the young idiot to have too rough a spin.'

‘No, of course not.' Appleby took this smoothly. ‘By the way, I suppose you were out after the pigeons during this half hour or so that I'm interested in?'

‘If you mean just after lunch yesterday, sir, you're quite right. I was.'

‘And lunch ended rather early?'

‘Yes. It was a dismal sort of meal. Everybody feeling glum.'

‘Because of Crabtree?'

Peter Binns' face took on its panic-stricken look.

‘What do you mean – because of Crabtree?'

‘I think you'd all heard that this old man had just turned up out of the past, so to speak. Would that be why you were all glum?'

‘Do you mean that we all had secrets which this old man might tell about?'

‘That is a possibility. Or perhaps just one secret which was of some concern to all of you. What did your sister do after this glum lunch?'

‘She said she was going to her room to write a letter.'

‘Was that quite usual?'

‘I don't think Daphne often writes letters. You're too interested in Daphne, by a long way. She's nineteen. You don't think that a girl like that suddenly walked out and killed somebody, do you?'

‘Put like that, Mr Binns, it sounds most improbable. It's even mildly improbable that
you
did, you know. I shouldn't say that large and uncontrollable passions are your line. But perhaps you have a stock of little ones.'

‘Didn't you say that you didn't like my manners? I don't like yours.' Peter Binns had flushed. ‘And they're not even natural to you – as mine, for what they're worth, are to me. You're putting on this bloody turn because you think I'll blurt out something if I can be made to lose my temper. Rule number something or other for detectives: If they're stupid, rile them, and they'll come clean. Isn't that it? I'd have nothing against it in an up and coming police sergeant from the village. But from a Sir Tom-noddy, nicely grey at the well-groomed temples, and turning up just in time to be in on that Madeira, I call it a bit steep.'

‘I see your point.' Appleby was looking at young Peter with what might have been called new eyes. The remarks offered to him were not merely appallingly just; they were crisply phrased. Peter Binns no doubt remained an unsatisfactory character. But it seemed very possible that Appleby had got his IQ quite wrong. And this decidedly didn't make him the less worthy of study. ‘I see your point,' Appleby repeated. ‘But the thing does work, wouldn't you admit? You are – aren't you? prodded into speaking out? We're almost within hail of understanding each other.'

‘This is all rot – shooting those bloody harmless birds.' Peter had leant his gun against a tree as he thus went off at a tangent. ‘Every now and then Uncle Bertram – we call him that – gets in a lot of bloodthirsty old gents who go banging away at the creatures. It's considered virtuous. Carrion crows, too. What rubbish! Do you remember getting at me about being the young squire? And how I responded like an absolute sucker? Christ! It makes me sick.'

‘Then what are you doing here?'

‘I got into the habit. And I got into the habit because I hadn't the guts for a clean–' Peter checked himself, and his intermittent look of panic returned. ‘Your technique works, all right,' he said sullenly.

‘Clean break, Mr Binns? Or clean sweep?'

‘You don't miss a trick, do you? The retired high-grade professional, still with all his old cunning at his command. Why can't you apply it, damn you, the right way on?'

‘I'm not sure that I quite follow that.'

‘Didn't you say I was talking sense when I said that here was a perfectly commonplace crime? It's true that this old man had just returned to England. But there's no more than mere coincidence in that. He's old and unprotected and in a lonely place. And some thug bashes him in order to take his petty cash.'

‘There's no evidence of that. But something
was
taken. You remember that Crabtree once made you a sledge. Did he make other things too? Model yachts, say? Was he a bit of a craftsman in that way?'

Peter Binns stared.

‘Yes, he was. But you're merely confusing the matter again. It's miles less likely that Crabtree was killed by the sort of people who
don't
go about killing people, than that he was killed by the sort of people who
do
. That's not terribly elegant English, but I expect you see what I mean.'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Then why not start at the right end? Why not go after whatever tramps and vagrants are around? Why come bothering us?'

‘I'm quite sure that the local police can be trusted to go after the tramps and vagrants.'

‘That's no answer. And barging in like this on any household is a damned irresponsible thing.'

‘No, Mr Binns – not irresponsible. A responsibility – yes. You mean – don't you? – that when a strong wind of inquiry happens to blow through any respectable family the skeletons are likely to begin rattling in the cupboards.'

‘Yes, that's what I mean. And it's unfair. The Coulsons are decent people. Daphne's all right – although I tell her she's a ghastly little bitch. My father – who, you say, was down here yesterday – is just an ordinary worried sort of father, I'd suppose. I'm not a totally hopeless little cad myself. But everybody's got
something
. Don't you see?'

‘Yes, I do see. But the question, Mr Binns, is whether one of you has something that somehow hitches on to Seth Crabtree. I have no interest in any of you, apart from that.'

‘But you might have.' Peter Binns was obstinate. ‘You might, while looking for a crime that isn't there, hit on quite a different crime that is. What then?'

‘Ah – what then.' Appleby looked at the young man curiously, and didn't for a moment reply. It was a real question, and he rather respected the boy for coming out with it. When he spoke, it was gravely. ‘That would depend, you know, on the size of the crime. On its gravity.'

‘But that's not very logical, is it, in a policeman?'

‘No, Mr Binns, it isn't logical – or even consonant with one's responsibilities under the law. But I give you my word that it represents my own attitude.'

‘I see. But what you grub up with your snooping mayn't be crime at all. It may merely be scandal, mayn't it? Just pain and humiliation and hurts that can't be mended.'

‘I'm afraid that that's true.' Appleby's glance at Peter Binns was now of real surprise. For the boy was talking from some depth of feeling that one wouldn't have suspected in him.

‘Or both.' Peter picked up his gun again. ‘Petty crime here and deep scandal there. A mess all round. And just because this old idiot got himself killed at our back door.'

‘I repeat that I see your point. But does it occur to you that you are presenting rather a lurid picture of Scroop House? More skeletons in the cupboards than it's natural to suppose would have accumulated since a mere 1786?'

‘1786?' For a moment Peter Binns was at a loss. Then, for the first time, something like the flicker of a smile appeared on his face. ‘You don't know us,' he said. ‘And, although you're so bloody clever, there's still a chance you never will.'

‘That's true enough.' Appleby nodded soberly. ‘It will be a matter of – well, of the fortune of war.'

 

 

When Appleby got back to the terrace, he found it occupied only by Hollywood. The butler greeted him with respectful indifference.

‘Mr Coulson and Lady Appleby have walked over to the farm, sir. Lady Appleby expressed an interest in the milking parlour. I am to direct you there, if I may.'

‘Ah, yes. And Mrs Coulson?' Appleby thought that this was the point at which he might take leave of his hostess.

‘Mrs Coulson has unfortunately been taken a little unwell, and has had to retire. She wished me to give you her apologies.'

‘I am very sorry. Now, if you will just point out the direction of the home farm, I shall find it easily enough.'

‘Yes, sir. But I had better guide you through the gardens. It is the quicker route. If you will come this way.'

Appleby, being thus constrained to Hollywood's society, judged that he might as well try to improve the occasion.

‘I have been thinking,' he said, ‘of what you told me – or didn't tell me – about your recollections of Crabtree.'

‘Indeed, sir?'

‘The question in my mind is really this: were you quite frank in the matter? Don't, please, misunderstand me. One who has been long in your responsible position in a household like this – particularly a household such as the former Mrs Coulson's was – naturally develops a good deal of reticence, particularly in the presence of strangers. That is entirely proper.'

Hollywood gave his remote bow in acknowledgement of this civil speech. He was a chilly person. Appleby wondered whether, if Tarbox's account of his vicious past were true, he had commonly begun by freezing the young persons he proposed to ravish.