A Connoisseur's Case (15 page)

‘It may be so, sir. Down these steps, if you please.'

‘Nothing impairs the good order of such a household more than its mistress' making an injudicious favourite or confidant of somebody with very little standing in it.'

Hollywood said nothing. He merely opened a gate and stood aside for Appleby to pass through. Appleby did so – and came firmly to a halt.

‘Mr Hollywood, just what was this threat that you supposed Crabtree to be turning up with?'

‘I spoke only of a very vague impression, sir.'

‘You don't strike me as being a vague person. I think there was something definite in your mind. Aren't you being secretive?'

‘The word is an interesting one, sir. In the connection we are considering.'

Appleby in his turn said nothing. It almost looked as if Hollywood were coming unstuck.

‘The late Mrs Coulson was secretive. At least in her later years, when I entered her service. And this is not itself a secret. You may have heard it. The left-hand path, sir.

‘One moment. Crabtree had some place in this secretive habit of hers?'

There was a moment's silence. For the first time, Hollywood had hesitated. He might have been regretting the course upon which he had embarked. Appleby tried prompting.

‘Mrs Coulson's fondness for herbaceous borders – in which you say she relied upon Crabtree's taste – can scarcely have been a secret indulgence?'

‘No, sir. The truth is that Crabtree had something else, as well as skill in such matters. Although untrained, he was a good working carpenter.'

‘And what was the significance of that?'

Again Hollywood took a moment to reply.

‘Well, sir, it is matter upon which you are bound to come. It was gossiped about. The present Scroop is not an ancient house – not as the country houses of the older gentry go. But it does offer scope. It is extensive.'

‘Scope?'

‘For hiding things away, sir. This became something of a mania with the late Mrs Coulson. Crabtree constructed hiding places.'

 

Appleby took time to digest this. It certainly opened up surprising possibilities.

‘And you connect this,' he asked, ‘with a certain sense of threat in Crabtree's bearing when he presented himself yesterday?'

‘It is a possible line of thought, sir.'

‘Mr Coulson appears to have been aware of nothing of the sort. So if Crabtree did arrive armed with some dangerous knowledge and the disposition to use it, Mr Coulson himself was not the object of his designs.'

‘It may be so, sir. There are other possibilities, no doubt.'

‘Quite so. We all have pasts, have we not?'

If this in any way went home to the conscience of Hollywood, he gave no sign of it – or no sign, perhaps, other than a further drop in the temperature of the chill air he seemed to inhabit.

‘Yes, sir. But pasts, in the sense you suggest, cannot be hidden away in small cupboards. Only physical objects can be so hidden.'

‘That's very true. Small objects in small cupboards, and large objects in large ones. For that matter, middling objects in middling ones. I've known a human body hidden in a surprisingly modest cupboard.'

This bizarre remark at least had some effect, since it caused a flicker of unidentifiable emotion to pass over the impassive features of Hollywood.

‘No doubt, sir. But not, I hope, in a good family. One associates crimes and expedients of that order with the lower classes, does one not?'

Appleby found himself wondering whether, in former years, Colonel Raven's Tarbox had associated a little more with Mrs Coulson's Hollywood than he was now disposed to admit. Hollywood, when forced or persuaded to utter, discovered a rather similar vein of formal speech.

‘Do I understand,' Appleby asked, ‘that Crabtree actually constructed a number of small hiding places for Mrs Coulson's use? Behind panels and under floors – that sort of thing?'

‘Gossip said so, sir.'

‘But what about your own certain knowledge? After all, you had the freedom of the whole house. Could you lead me – or lead your employer – to one of these supposed hiding places now?'

For a fraction of a second Hollywood hesitated, so that Appleby had a sudden sharp sense of the man as choosing between two answers one of which, in the nature of the case, must be a flat lie.

‘No, sir. Certainly not. I speak of gossip, and have perhaps been wrong to do so. But, naturally, I am anxious to help the law. You must understand that Mrs Coulson's private apartments were not always accessible to me. Again, there were occasions upon which the house was closed and the servants put upon board wages. Crabtree may have had the run of the place then.'

‘I see. And what do you suppose that Mrs Coulson – the former Mrs Coulson – was disposed to hide in these places?'

‘I have never conjectured, sir. It was not my place.'

‘Rubbish, man!' Appleby was suddenly briskly impatient. ‘You must have thought about it, even if you didn't discuss it with others.'

‘It may be so, sir.'

‘Well – what was your guess?'

‘I had thought of improper books, sir.'

‘Had you, indeed?' Appleby found that he couldn't at all decide whether this strange suggestion proceeded from nastiness of mind or from covert mockery. ‘But Crabtree could hardly have hoped to make much capital, after all those years, out of a minor depravity of that sort?'

‘One would suppose not, sir. But the present Mr Coulson is a man very jealous of the honour of his family.'

‘So he is.' Appleby was rather struck by the cogency of this.

‘And I have thought of stolen property, to which the same consideration would apply. It is said that persons of substance, and particularly ladies, are sometimes given to petty theft in a quite irrational way. There is a word for it.'

‘Kleptomania, I suppose.'

‘Thank you, sir. And stolen property, if retained, must be secreted.'

‘Certainly it must. But were you, in fact, ever aware of Mrs Coulson's stealing anything from anybody?'

‘Dear me, no, sir. I could scarcely have remained in her employment, if I had become aware of anything of the sort. It would have been injudicious. Where mysterious disappearances occur, it is servants that commonly get the blame of it. These are only conjectures that I have been putting forward. I fear I may have been talking at random, sir.

‘I don't think so.' Appleby turned to look keenly at Hollywood. ‘No – I don't think so, at all.'

‘Thank you, sir. And the farm is now in front of you.'

Hollywood gave his little bow. The effect was rather as of a refrigerator taking a sudden kink in the middle. He turned and walked away.

 

It proved unnecessary to explore the farmyard. Bertram Coulson and Judith emerged from it just as Appleby approached.

‘I'm so sorry that my wife has had to go and lie down,' Coulson said. ‘She suffers from a slight migraine from time to time, but fortunately it never stays for long. She was most anxious that you should stay to lunch. I hope you will. Daphne will preside, if Edith is still on the sick list.'

The Applebys excused themselves in proper form.

‘Then you must come another day. And I hope Lady Appleby has enjoyed looking over the old place as much as I have enjoyed showing it to her. She will have seen that I am absurdly fond of Scroop. It must be partly because it came to me so unexpectedly.'

‘You weren't the evident heir?' Appleby looked curiously at his host. Coulson was speaking not quite spontaneously. It was as if he has resolved upon steering the remainder of the conversation upon a determined course. He could be felt as a man anxious to get something off his chest.

‘There was no very evident heir. And Sara Coulson – although, of course, not herself a Coulson – had the entire property at her disposal. It was a slightly unusual situation, in the case of a place like this – wouldn't you say? I think the county felt it to be so. Yes, I think they did.'

Appleby found himself doubting whether the county had much bothered in the matter. But it was evident that, from the first, Bertram Coulson had seen himself as very much in the eye of the gentry to whom he had been recruited.

‘Was there anybody else who might have inherited?' Judith asked.

‘Yes, indeed. There was my cousin Miles. A younger man – and, of course, one of the English Coulsons. Old Sara was thought to be very fond of him. But her choice fell on me.'

‘And what happened to Miles?' Judith asked. ‘Is he still alive?'

‘Alive?' Bertram Coulson seemed startled. ‘Dear me, yes. A younger man, as I said.'

‘He used to come and stay here in the old lady's time?'

‘Indeed he did. So what actually happened was a disappointment to him, I'm afraid.'

‘Did he survive it?' Judith continued to speak rather lightly. ‘I mean, has he got on all right in the world, in spite of not having become a landowner?'

‘I'm afraid not.' Bertram Coulson now spoke slowly and as if with reluctance. ‘Miles hasn't, I'm afraid, made much of a job of life.'

Appleby took this up.

‘Which probably means, doesn't it, that he wouldn't have made much of a job of Scroop? I suspect that old Mrs Coulson was chiefly anxious about the future of the place, and made her choice in the light of that anxiety. She looked round among the surviving Coulsons in search of the competent man for the job.'

‘I've certainly never managed to think of it in that light.' Bertram Coulson had flushed faintly. ‘And she knew me merely by repute. But at least I've tried not to let the place down.'

For some paces the Applebys walked with their host in silence.

‘I ought to tell you,' Appleby said suddenly, ‘that I've had some rather curious talk with your butler. As a policeman, you understand, and not as your guest. Once more, you must forgive the awkwardness.'

‘Not a bit. You know I'm only anxious to see that sad business cleared up. If any of my people can help you, they must.'

‘Thank you. Hollywood's story is a very odd one. And it convicts him of having been disingenuous when he declared that old Mrs Coulson prized Crabtree simply because he had some taste in gardens. The story is that Crabtree was a good enough carpenter to contrive various hiding places about Scroop and that in these Mrs Coulson secreted things in some more or less pathological way.'

‘Hollywood came out with that?' Coulson was clearly startled. ‘How extremely odd!'

‘It's entirely news to you?'

Coulson made no immediate reply – perhaps because, with no great appropriateness to the moment, he had been suddenly prompted to offer Judith a cigarette.

‘Hollywood,' Appleby went on, ‘has no positive evidence of his own to offer. He speaks simply of gossip in Mrs Coulson's last years. Perhaps it had died away before you came to live here?'

‘Yes – no.' Coulson was perplexed and almost confused. ‘Gossip – perhaps. Of the old lady's secreting things. But not this of Crabtree's helping. That, no.'

‘It seems to be Hollywood's view that Crabtree, when he turned up yesterday, was thinking to profit in some way from this ancient business of these hiding places.'

‘How extraordinary! How extraordinary that Hollywood should come out with such ideas!' Whether it was precisely by this thought or not, Bertram Coulson was unmistakably upset. ‘It's true, of course, that in her last years the old lady had her eccentric side. And there was the mystery of the money. That does look as if it might fit.'

‘The money?' Appleby asked.

‘More than £2,000. It was a little awkward because of probate and death duties and so on. Of course this was a large household in those days. But it was a larger sum than one might have expected to disappear without record in so short a time.'

‘Just how did it disappear?'

‘I'm sorry. I'm not being at all lucid.' Coulson was still disturbed. ‘During the last months of her life, Sara drew this large sum in cash from her bank. Not at one go, I believe, but in a number of smaller sums. And at her death there was no trace of it. Her solicitors, I gathered, were a good deal worried. They had a notion that it might in some way have been extorted from her – even, perhaps, by way of blackmail. That, of course, was absurd. She was a high-minded woman of the most unblemished character. But certainly touched, in those last months, by the beginnings of a senile dementia. She might have given the money away very irresponsibly. In the end it was decided that we had better be content with the supposition that she had managed to make some large charitable disbursements in cash. The sum was just not so big that it need really be a matter of large anxiety. But what if it ties up with this strange story of Hollywood's? What if Sara had turned at the end into a real miser, and had Crabtree fix her up a cache for all that money?' Coulson turned to Appleby. ‘Would that fit?'

‘It would fit better than some of Hollywood's notions of what the old lady might have been concerned to conceal. But it doesn't fit with the notion that, yesterday, Crabtree turned up here with something like blackmail in his head.'

‘But that's nonsense, anyway!' Coulson was impatient. ‘Whatever notion Hollywood may have formed, the old fellow wasn't like that in the least. I'm not an idiot, Appleby. And I can't be mistaken there.'

‘Very well. Suppose that Crabtree knew of £2,000 in cash hidden somewhere in your house. He might be proposing simply to tell you about it – with or without some notion of a reward. Alternatively, he might be proposing to gain access to Scroop and quietly make off with it. But, in that case, why didn't he do so in the years that he was employed here after old Mrs Coulson's death? Had he turned less honest in old age? Had his imagination – out there in America – played more and more upon this hidden hoard until he had resolved to go for it? It's a possibility. But there's a lot that it doesn't explain.'