A Connoisseur's Case (6 page)

Judith did as she was told.

‘No go,' she called, almost at once. ‘There isn't a handle to crank the thing with.'

‘Just cast around. It may have been chucked aside and be covered with grass or something.'

‘You're right.' Judith spoke again almost at once. ‘I've found it. And it fits. And it's working.' She paused, and Appleby could hear her winding vigorously. ‘The water's going out, all right. But there may be too much mud on the bottom for me to budge the gate. Can you come and tug at it while I shove.'

‘Yes – but I'll have to bring Crabtree with me. And rust may beat us, as well as mud. If the hinges are stuck fast, then you'll just have to go for help. Delay won't harm me. But it will spoil any slim chance this poor devil may have.'

Judith felt that John's tone conveyed a fuller knowledge about Seth Crabtree than his words did. And the grim task of extrication went on. The gates did move – surprisingly easily. And the inert body was eventually got up on the bank. It oughtn't, they knew, to have been manhandled at all before medical aid was summoned. But in the circumstances there seemed no help for it.

‘If the man who passed us on the towpath was really the local doctor,' Judith said, ‘perhaps one of us ought to go after him.'

‘And perhaps it ought to be me.' Appleby was kneeling beside Crabtree as he spoke. ‘At the moment I represent the law, after all.'

Judith glanced swiftly at her husband.

‘John! You don't mean–?'

‘I mean that the fellow was coming straight from this spot. He may have been the last person to see Crabtree alive. And that's to put it – well, cautiously.'

For a moment Judith didn't take this in.

‘Oughtn't we to get the water out of his lungs, and try artificial respiration? I can do the breath technique.'

Appleby shook his head gently. Then, equally gently, he turned Crabtree's head as it lay on the ground. And Judith momentarily recoiled.

‘Could it have happened' – she asked in a controlled voice – ‘by his striking against something as he fell? I mean, it could be an accident, surely?'

‘Yes – upon one condition.' Expertly, Appleby had been feeling for pulse and heart. ‘Some pathological fragility of the skull. But it's only a remote possibility. The police surgeon will be able, I imagine, to tell at once. But I can't see
that
' – and Appleby brought out a handkerchief and laid it over the dead man's head – ‘as anything other than a deliberate and crushing blow.'

 

Appleby stood up. He looked at the body. He looked at the open lock gates and frowned. He looked at the line of the disused canal, with its foot or two of water scummed with green. He crossed it again by the still closed gates at the east end, and stepped delicately up and down the towpath, scanning the ground. He returned and did the same on the other bank.

‘As I thought,' he said, ‘there's a track in the direction of the wharf or shed or whatever it is, farther along.'

Judith didn't seem to hear.

‘That we should have stumbled on this,' she said. ‘That
you
should.'

‘Yes – that
I
should.' And Appleby smiled grimly. ‘The local people may feel it to be distinctly off my beat. A kind of gatecrashing – like our proposed pleasant tea with the Bertram Coulsons. That's off, I'm afraid.' Again he looked down at the body. ‘The little barge, Judith. It's vanished.'

‘Probably it's at the bottom of the lock,'

‘It can scarcely be. It would float.'

‘Crabtree threw it away. He remembered the girl again with some sudden pain or vividness. And, in a revulsion, he threw away the old love token.'

‘It's a romantic thought. But I think it more probable that somebody has made off with it.'

‘Why should anybody do that? Isn't it more mystery-mongering?'

Appleby shook his head.

‘My dear – let's face it. This old man, whom we were talking to an hour ago, has been murdered – and by an unknown hand. Would you mind waiting here beside the body?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then I'll go back to the inn, and telephone the police.' Appleby picked up his rucksack and produced what seemed to be a second sandwich tin. He opened it and handed a small automatic pistol to his wife. ‘A touch of melodrama,' he said. ‘But you never know. What the newspapers call a homicidal maniac may be concerned. And may turn up again.'

Judith took the weapon without comment. She had seen such things before.

 

Aeroplanes – Appleby said to himself as he walked rapidly back to the Jolly Leggers. Aeroplanes are nowadays extremely elaborate affairs, made up of a great many bits and pieces. Conceivably they shed chunks of metal from time to time, without anybody much noticing. Or again, there are still some quite small aeroplanes, the occupants of which are not hermetically encapsulated, and out of one of these some careless person might simply drop something. So the mud at the bottom of the lock must be searched for anything of the sort. Not that he himself proposed to venture any advice in the matter. The Crabtree affair was very much something he proposed to keep out of. For one thing, he was on holiday. And, for another thing, it would look just too silly in the newspapers. Commissioners of Police simply do not come upon corpses during rural walks. It was another of the things that just aren't done.

Then there was Aeschylus – Appleby continued to reflect. When the eminent dramatist was at an even more advanced age than Seth Crabtree, an eagle dropped a tortoise on his cranium, with fatal results. But although tortoises were no doubt to be found here and there as pets among the children of the peasantry, the concurrent presence of an eagle in the neighbourhood was in the highest degree unlikely. Could there be any other accidental cause of Crabtree's death?

It was not remotely possible that the discharge of a shotgun could produce such a wound as the dead man's head had suffered. Such a weapon can, indeed, do something very nasty to a skull – but it has to be deliberately applied thereto for the purpose. A rifle bullet was a more conceivable agent – but rifles are seldom so employed as to produce accidental slaughter. A strong boy playing with a powerful catapult was a hypothesis not to be neglected. Such a boy could hardly be unaware of what he had achieved. But he might, of course, have fled in panic.

I am going to have nothing to do with this – Appleby repeated to himself, as the inn came in sight and he increased his pace. Nothing at all.

But now suppose – his mind ran on – that Crabtree, despite his years, had for some reason been running at breakneck speed. Had he then stumbled on the lock gate, with the consequence of some impact to the force of which that breakneck speed contributed its additional impetus? Would any very special fragility of bone be needed to account for the damage sustained? I think it still would, he answered himself. And he strode into the inn and demanded the telephone.

 

And the following two hours found Appleby realizing that, after all, old habit was too strong for him. If only in the quietest way, he was going to be in on the Crabtree mystery. A certain Inspector Hilliard, a taciturn and clearly capable officer who had appeared with commendable promptitude from police headquarters in the county town, was indisposed to regard as other than a satisfactory circumstance that it happened to be Sir John Appleby who had come upon the body. What little he said implied that he would be grateful for any assistance he received. This being so, Appleby couldn't very well withdraw in haste as soon as he had offered what might be called a lay statement of his own knowledge of the affair. He was constrained – as he later put it to Judith to do a little pottering around in a professional manner. And, as a consequence of this, the two of them didn't get back to Pryde Park until shortly before dinner.

They found Colonel Julius Raven, who had been rather crusty that morning, restored to good humour. His twinge of gout, he explained, had departed abruptly in the middle of the morning, and he had been able to go out and about upon various piscatorial occasions. These having been discharged, he now turned to what he probably regarded as the only other important duty in life – the proper exercise of hospitality. He liked to treat Appleby both as a member of the family and as a guest of some honour. There was to be a burgundy which he hoped John would just a little take notice of. If his people weren't absolute fools it ought to be breathing comfortably in the dining-room now. Meantime, here was a glass of not precisely what the glorified grocers calling themselves wine merchants were pleased to sell as a sound dry sherry nowadays.

All this was comfortable. And Appleby felt that, if he himself stood in no particular need of anything of that order, Judith did. Standing guard over Crabtree's body with a pistol in her hand had not, perhaps, especially troubled her. But the brute fact of the old man's death really had affected her. She had taken a fancy to Crabtree – or perhaps (Appleby thought) rather to the turn which that rather dubious and enigmatical person had put on. He himself had felt doubts about the fellow. And these had now been stepped up simply as a consequence of the fact that Crabtree had been murdered. Estimable people are, of course, murdered from time to time. But to be murdered is by no means to be advanced in moral rating in the regard of anybody long experienced in crime. More often than not, the lives of murderees turn out to have been far from salubrious.

Appleby sipped his sherry, and found no difficulty in having something to say about it. What did strike him as not altogether easy was the explaining to Judith's uncle that a rather nasty deed of violence had been perpetrated on the fringes of a neighbouring estate. But it was Judith who broached the matter. She did it with that sort of obliqueness which, although it would be poor form in a man, is for some reason held admissible in a woman.

‘Uncle Julius,' she said, ‘do you remember, long ago, an old man called Seth Crabtree?'

Colonel Raven shook his head.

‘An old man called Crabtree? No, I can't say that I do. No old man called Crabtree.'

‘He wouldn't have been old long ago,' Appleby interposed.

‘Ah! That's another matter.' Colonel Raven's expression changed. ‘A damned scoundrel called Seth Crabtree, no older than myself. Yes, of course.'

‘He would certainly be a contemporary of yours, more or less,' Judith agreed. ‘What do you remember of him, Uncle Julius?'

‘Remember of him?' Colonel Raven considered. ‘Well, I can remember being minded to take a crack at the fellow's thick skull. More sherry, John?'

Quite steadily, Appleby accepted more sherry. The moment had been a startling one – the more so as a definitely alarming glint had come into Colonel Raven's usually mild eye. It was true that the Colonel's speech was, more often than not, far from an answering mildness. Knaves, fools and even damned scoundrels – if his conversation was to be trusted – were unnaturally abundant in his neighbourhood and even in his household. But this, Appleby had always supposed, was a harmless mannerism, answering to nothing in the Colonel's actual disposition towards any fellow human being. But, at the moment, the old gentleman didn't look like that.

There was a short silence, which Colonel Raven occupied by providing Judith with a second glass of sherry too. To carry on the conversation wasn't exactly easy. The announcement that somebody
had
taken a crack at Seth Crabtree's thick – or fragile – skull would have seemed, in the circumstances, a trifle bald. On the other hand, since the information had to be communicated sooner or later, to shy away from it was equally awkward.

‘Crabtree is dead,' Appleby said. ‘As a matter of fact, I want to tell you something about his death in a moment. But would I be right in thinking that, in his earlier years, he was a bit of a poacher?'

‘A poacher!' Colonel Raven suddenly raised the decanter he was carrying in a gesture suggesting that he was about to perform some dreadful deed with it – instead of which, however, he merely studied its contents critically against the light. ‘The fellow was as voracious as a pike – and a damned sight more cunning. There were times when I could have murdered him – cheerfully.'

There was again a somewhat noticeable silence.

‘But' – Judith said, rather feebly – ‘he went away?'

‘Went away? They transported him.' Colonel Raven offered this surprising information with complete conviction.

‘But, Uncle Julius, wasn't it only rather
earlier
that people were transported for poaching?'

‘Was it? The more's the pity.' Colonel Raven put down the decanter, picked up a plate of small cocktail biscuits which had been set on the tray beside it, carried these over to the hearth, and there emptied them into the low fire burning in it. ‘My people are all dunderheads,' he said. ‘Impossible to get them out of these damned vulgar habits. Got hold of them in London hotels, I suppose. What did you say, my dear?'

‘I was saying that this man Crabtree couldn't have been
transported
– sent to Botany Bay or Tasmania or somewhere. All that was stopped some time in the nineteenth century.'

‘Was it?' Colonel Raven sounded faintly disappointed. ‘But quite right, of course. Shockingly inhumane, and all that. Poachers, though, are another matter.'

Appleby took a moment off from this mad conversation to glance round the Colonel's library. The few engravings on the walls, and the many more engravings which he knew to be stacked away in portfolios, must represent as fine a collection of ichthyography as existed in the country. And the same went for the books. Wherever you looked, they were about fish or fishing, and nothing else. There was Badham's
Prose Halieutics
and the Marquis of Granby's
The Trout
. There was
The Papers of the Piscatorial Society
, and
Super Flumina
and
Cholmondeley Pennel's
Fishing Gossip
(which contained, Appleby remembered, that masterly discussion of ‘Fishing and Fish-Hooks of the Earliest Date'). There was
Irish Salmonidae
, and General Burton's
Trouting in
Norway
, and Thomas'
The Rod in India
(which suggested, Appleby thought, Kipling in one of his sadistic moods). There was Mason's
Guide to Ichthyophagy
, and there was
Bibliotheca Piscatoria
, and there was Kennedy's
Thirty Seasons in Scandinavia
. In fact there was everything. And it all added up to the proposition that Colonel Raven was very much a man of one idea. He had a mania, one might say, for the whole finny tribe.