A Connoisseur's Case (3 page)

‘You've certainly come a long way home. And you've always been a carpenter by trade?'

‘Never, sir, in a proper manner of speaking, seeing that I was never rightly apprenticed to the trade. Odd lad and handyman I was – that and no more until the sad fancy to emigrate laid hold on me. Yet that there were things above that that I could do is a word to be spoken without overmuch boasting.'

‘Would it have been at the big house that you were first employed?' It was with a sudden quickening of interest that Judith asked this.

‘Yes, indeed, madam. At Scroop House, and in the old mistress' time.'

‘There have been changes since then?'

‘Changes more than one, madam – as is but to be expected with time flowing by.' The old man was now busily employed on his piece of cedarwood, using with a fine dexterity a single slender blade. His employment, Appleby reflected, had the odd effect of rendering entirely agreeable the rather sententious vein of talk he seemed to favour. Conceivably, since he had been away for so long, he was making a conscious effort to recover an almost forgotten manner of speaking. ‘Changes there have been, and changes there must be.' It was almost as if the old man were obligingly confirming Appleby in this speculation. ‘But those to come will not be of my seeing.' For a moment he put down his knife in order to touch with sensitive fingers the little barge on the bench beside him. ‘For as I was saying, sir, it's the craft that's long.'

‘We must learn more from him,' Judith said firmly. The Applebys had strolled away again to take another look at the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Do you think, if we had another drink ourselves, we might offer him one too?'

‘I think we might – and that he would no doubt accept it. His seems to be a case of a rather odd form of nostalgia. He once had something that was known as his place. Now he wants to have it again, just as part of the old days he's come home in search of. If I fetched him out a tankard he'd stand up and ask leave to drink your health in it. And you, of course, would comport yourself in a highly becoming way. Then, quite casually, you would refer to me as “Sir John”, fondly supposing that the old chap would become more communicative once he could start saying “my lady” or “your ladyship”.'

‘Fondly?' Lady Appleby, thus taxed, was entirely unabashed.

‘Almost certainly. He's a sensitive old person – a rustic endowed with some undeveloped artistry or the like – and he'll close up at once if he suspects that you're trying to buy something from him for a casual pint, or to come it over him on the strength of being nothing more than London gentry.'

‘But he seems quite communicative.'

‘My guess is that you deceive yourself, if you think so. As a matter of fact, the venerable old man has something to hide.'

‘Something to hide, John? What on earth makes you think that?'

‘Thirty years as a policeman. At least he's uncertain about something. And it's not merely that he hasn't yet shaken down into an old environment he's largely forgotten about. There's something more. Perhaps he's even aware that he's been spied on.'

‘Spied on? What an outrageous interpretation to put on my quite natural–'

‘No, no – I don't mean your mere fishing for information about your blessed Scroop House. You can go on some way farther there before he closes down – although eventually close down he will. He really
is
being spied on. You see the path we came by, and how it goes on behind that outbuilding?'

‘Yes. It looks like an old stable.'

‘Just that. Well, while we were talking, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye somebody slip rapidly behind it. Whoever it was must then have got inside the stable, because the door facing this way was pushed open just a fraction. The spy was peering out at us.'

‘Exactly, John. At
us
.' Judith was laughing. ‘We're quite reasonable objects of rural curiosity – probably on the part of a child.'

Appleby shook his head.

‘I don't think it was a child – although I couldn't say whether it was man or woman. And I doubt whether a child would spy like that. He would simply stand at a safe distance and openly gape.'

‘Well, if it was a grown-up, I rather agree that it would be our old man who was being peered at. This is a pretty quiet part of the world, and any former inhabitant returning from foreign parts is bound to cause quite a stir.'

‘That's true enough, and I don't suppose we're in contact with anything sinister. Heaven forbid. I've no taste for a busman's holiday. The thing was oddly furtive, all the same. I think we'll walk round and take a look at that stable.'

This didn't prove difficult. There was an open door at the back. They went in, paused to accustom their eyes to a half-darkness, and then crossed over to another door that Appleby indicated. He gave it a gentle push, so that a tiny crack of light appeared.

‘Have a look,' he said.

Judith had a look. And there, sure enough, neatly framed and in bright sunshine, was the old man, absorbed in his task. It was an entirely peaceful and harmless sight. Yet something about it made her draw back.

‘He looks rather helpless,' she said. Or unsuspecting. But what could there really be that he ought to be suspicious of? You're making me imagine things. Let's go back and talk to him. And then go back along the canal, cross it at the first lock, and walk up to the big house.'

They returned to the front of the inn. Judith sat down beside the old man, and for some time watched him at work in silence.

‘Perhaps,' she said casually, ‘you know Colonel Raven of Pryde Park?'

‘Yes, madam. He has been a prominent man in these parts these many years. And a famous fisherman.'

‘We have walked over from Pryde Park. Colonel Raven is my uncle. I want you to tell me more about Scroop House.'

For a moment the old man ignored this. He had ducked his head in the rural equivalent of a polite bow.

‘It wouldn't by any chance,' he said, ‘be Miss Judith Raven I'm speaking to – the lady that married the great policeman?'

Judith was startled. When young she had frequently visited her Uncle Julius. But to be enshrined in local memory in a countryside not her own was altogether surprising.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘My name is Appleby now. And this is my husband, Sir John. But I don't think many people round about here would recall me.'

‘Happen not, my lady. But I'm a remembering man. I remember much about Scroop House in the old days, and a little about Pryde Park too. But the Park, asking your pardon, was of little mark compared with the House. Ravens, I know well, have never been common folk, but their uncommonness has been most by way of strangeness, more often than not.'

‘Quite true,' Appleby broke in with some emphasis. ‘My wife's people are an eccentric crowd. But in rather a distinguished way. Scroop House must have been quite a place in those old days, if it cast the Colonel and his remarkable activities into the shade. What was so striking about it?'

‘Mrs Coulson herself, sir.' The old man's voice had turned oddly vibrant, as if years had dropped from him as he spoke. ‘There are few fine ladies like her nowadays. And in the big house, my lady, everything from cellar to attic of a fineness that answered to her. And the house parties, my lady! They were no matter merely of county folk. No – there was far more than mere gentry eager to gather round Mrs Coulson. Great men from Parliament came. And others above them, again. Poets, my lady, and great artists and deep philosophers. They called Mrs Coulson – her friends did – the Grand Collector. And it was a joke that was meant all in an admiring way. For Mrs Coulson had nowise to go out and gather people in. Thronging they came to her, the most brilliant in the land. Beautiful women, my lady, and handsome men – and all in a setting she had made worthy of them. Perhaps there were many other such houses in England then, such as a poor man like myself had no knowledge of. But Scroop House was enough for me, and proud I was to serve it.'

‘It does sound very splendid.' Judith spoke gently after a pause. She knew that there must be some exaggeration in the old man's picture, since otherwise she would have heard of these neighbouring glories at some time from her uncle. But of the genuineness of the enthusiasm behind the description there could be no doubt. The finely carved little barge now lay neglected on the bench. The old man was sitting with kindled face and idle hands.

‘But at Mrs Coulson's death' – Appleby asked – ‘all the glory departed? And you departed too?'

‘That is true, sir. Scroop went to a distant cousin of the mistress – a stranger who never so much as came to look at it, but instantly rented it out, all fine as it was, to a mere moneyed man from London, a Mr Binns – to whom William Chambers, my lady, who your ladyship will know built Scroop, meant no more than some common name. I stayed on for a time – no more than an outside man as I was – and then the heartbreak of it was too much for me, and to America, my lady, I departed.'

‘But what a shame!'

Judith Appleby expressed this sentiment with great conviction. Her husband said nothing. Ever so slightly, this old person puzzled him. Judith, clearly, was accepting him as a mute, inglorious Milton – an artist
manqué
. And Appleby told himself that it was only his own long career as an inglorious Sherlock Holmes, a professional sifter of every sort of knavery, that disposed him to the feeling that the old man was playing some sort of part. Either he was doing that – Appleby said to himself – or he was perhaps covering up something that had recently disconcerted him. There was, indeed, almost nothing in what the old man had said, that could be adduced in support of either of these suppositions. It was simply – as again Appleby told himself – that a lifetime of criminal investigation, even when blunted by a few years of mere high-level police administration, left one at the mercy of hunches, of obscure intimations that here was a little more than met the eye or ear.

‘But perhaps' – he said – ‘there has now been another change at Scroop House? And that is why you have returned here?'

There was a moment's silence. Then the old man again picked up the little barge, studied it, put it down, and returned to delicately carving the new rudder. When he spoke, it was cautiously and with obvious reserve.

‘Well, sir, I wouldn't say it's not so. For there is a Coulson back at Scroop. He is the same gentleman, mark you, that once let the place – lock, stock and barrel – to the Mr Binns that I was telling you of. Mr Bertram Coulson, his name is. And when I heard sir, that he had returned to the old house, just as Mrs Coulson left it, it seemed to me that a change of heart might have come upon him, and that his thought might be to cherish his inheritance, and that I should come home and see for myself.'

‘You thought, perhaps, that you might even find employment again under the new owner?'

‘Well, sir, I am too old for such to be other than a bold thought in me. But I won't say that it has been altogether absent from my mind.' The old man paused. ‘I'd dearly like to settle back here for the short remainder of my days, turning my hand to what I can. For there have been Crabtrees hereabouts for a power of years.'

‘You are Mr Crabtree?' Judith asked.

‘Yes, my lady. Seth Crabtree.'

‘And how is it going?' Judith was delighted that the old man should have a name so appropriate to his rustic character. ‘Have you been back to the big house yet?'

‘Yes, my lady. It was only this morning that I ventured there.'

‘Did you find it much changed?'

Seth Crabtree took time to consider this, and a shadow as of perplexity or caution came over his face as he did so.

‘Well, as to the house, my lady, I had but a glimpse of it. I went to the front door, which was perhaps no proper thing for one in my place. But there are small matters that one forgets after long living among other customs in other countries.' Seth Crabtree paused again on this, which represented perhaps the first shade of irony to have entered his studiously respectful speech. And the effect was to suggest some entirely hidden dimension in the man. ‘So it came about,' he went on, ‘that the door was opened to me by Mr Hollywood himself.'

‘Mr Hollywood?' Judith, for some reason, found this name rather odd. The owner is called–?'

‘No, indeed. It's a Mr Bertram Coulson, who has always been the owner, who is in residence now.'

‘But of course. You explained that to us. And Mr Hollywood is–?'

‘The butler, my lady – although it was early in the day for the butler himself to be performing that duty. It makes me think that perhaps the big house is not staffed as it ought to be.'

‘I see.' Judith was properly impressed. ‘And you recognized this Mr Hollywood? He is the same butler as in the old days?'

‘He is, my lady. And I am told that he is the only man or woman – manservant or maidservant, I should say – who has never left the place.'

‘And he, on his part, recognized you?'

Again Seth Crabtree showed a shade of perplexity – and perhaps of some less identifiable emotion as well.

‘As to that, it would be hard to say. Mr Hollywood gave no sign.'

‘But when you told him your name?'

‘He was unresponsive, my lady. Perhaps it was natural and to be expected. I was never, remember, more than an outdoor servant about Scroop House. Or but that, at least, in name.' Crabtree fell abruptly silent, as if something had slipped from him without his intending it. At the same time he sheathed his knife and showed some disposition to take his leave.

Judith nipped this intention in the bud.

‘But Mr Coulson?' she said. ‘You asked for him?'

‘He was not at home, my lady, but out and about on the business of the estate – a proper thing, that I was glad to hear of. So there I was, with but a glimpse of the hall and its grand staircase, noble places, the same as I remembered them. And yet there was a strangeness that must have come of all those absent years.' Crabtree shook his head broodingly – a perplexed rural philosopher. ‘
Tempus fugit
, my lady.'