Appleby and the Ospreys (7 page)

And with this, Appleby returned to the Music Saloon.

‘My Dear Miss Minnychip,’ Appleby said soothingly, ‘I will, of course, be most happy to give you any help I can. But is your communication to be regarded as of a confidential sort?’

‘Most certainly it is.’

‘It has been my experience,’ Appleby went on more weightily, ‘that walls have ears – and particularly so where there has been any unfortunate affair, such as here at Clusters. So may I suggest that you and I take a walk through the gardens? Lady Osprey’s roses are always worth looking at, are they not?’

This proposal commended itself to Miss Minnychip at once, and to the gardens the two accordingly made their way. The rose garden, in particular, afforded an admirable setting for private talk. It occupied a substantial part of the island site not taken up by Clusters itself, and when near the centre of it they could not be approached unobserved by anything bulkier than a pigeon or squirrel. Thus secluded, Miss Minnychip spoke at once, and to a mildly surprising effect.

‘My late father,’ Miss Minnychip said, ‘collected ancient coins. And his collection is with me in my small house now.’

‘I see. So your father and Lord Osprey were, in fact, fellow collectors. Did they hold much communication with one another over this interesting pursuit?’

‘Lord Osprey came, of course, very much later into the field, and my father did advise him from time to time. And I can recall my father, in the very last year of his life, occasionally comparing notes with Lord Osprey’s brother-in-law.’

‘With Mr Broadwater? But of course.’

‘Lord Osprey, I need scarcely tell you, was a much wealthier man than my father. But his interest in numismatics was not of any well-informed sort. It was, indeed, little more than a rich man’s whim, and I think it may have been instigated in the first place by Marcus Broadwater himself. Mr Broadwater is a scholar – and my father, Sir Philip Minnychip, included scholarship among his many distinctions. My father, as a young man, had risen rapidly in the Indian Civil Service. Its members, unlike the army people, were, more often than not, persons who had pursued classical studies at school and university, and were of wide cultivation in general. It is a fact you yourself may be unaware of.’

‘Not at all,’ Appleby said. ‘I am old enough to remember the high esteem in which the ICS was held.’

‘Quite so. My father, upon his retirement, was awarded the KCSI. He may well be styled a man of many talents.’ Miss Minnychip paused on this, as if debating whether to embark upon the wealth of scriptural reference which Appleby recalled her as being addicted to. But on this occasion she kept to the point. ‘Not unnaturally, my father had interested himself in the main in the coinages of the Orient. It is in that department of the subject that his own small collection is, I understand, of considerable importance. And let me say at once that the collection is small if compared with that of Lord Osprey. It is of very substantial monetary value now, nevertheless. Since my father’s death the value of such things in the salerooms has shot up in an astonishing fashion. But fortunately my own circumstances, although straitened, have never obliged me to think of parting with my father’s collection in that way. I hope that it may eventually go to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. My father was an Eton and Christ Church man.’

‘Was he, indeed?’ Appleby said respectfully, and paused to sniff at a rose. ‘But just how, Miss Minnychip, does all this affect our present situation?’

Asked this question, Miss Minnychip was silent for a moment. It could be felt as a disapproving silence, as if the answer to it were so evident that it ought not to have been put to her.

‘We surely know,’ she then said, ‘that poor Lord Osprey has been done to death by desperate thieves who he came upon when they were attempting to make off with his collection?’

‘It is one conceivable theory, certainly,’ Appleby said. ‘Yes, I think you have hit upon something distinctly possible. In fact, I must congratulate you on putting it forward. I hadn’t thought of it. I don’t believe that Ringwood has thought of it either. And I must confess that I’ve myself been thinking of something rather different.’

Miss Minnychip received this disingenuous speech with suspicion – as indeed she was abundantly entitled to do. Appleby hoped that her response stopped short there. Even a retired Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, dragged into a thoroughly messy business, ought not to give way to an impulse of sheer mischief. Nevertheless it was on this reprehensible note that Appleby lingered for a further moment.

‘What would you say,’ he asked, ‘about the possibility of its having been, on the contrary, a hideous domestic crime?’

‘A what?’

‘A hideous domestic crime, Miss Minnychip. They do happen, do they not? Even in the Bible. The ball was sent rolling when Cain killed Abel. And in modern times psychologists have had much to say about patricide, matricide, uxoricide, fratricide, infanticide, and so on. Again, some of the greatest modern novels turn on that kind of thing. For example,
The Brothers
Karamazov
–’

‘Sir John, pray cease from inappropriate levity.’ Miss Minnychip, having thus found her bearings, was suddenly formidable. And at once she turned to one of the rose beds. ‘Bessie Browns,’ she said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘And Mildred Grants. I think they are my favourite Hybrid Teas.’

‘Miss Minnychip, I do apologize. It’s simply that I’ve spent my entire working life jostling with crimes, and that I resent having my nose rubbed in another one in my old age.’

‘But you have come to Clusters, have you not, quite of your own free will, because of what has happened to poor Oliver Osprey?’

‘Yes, of course – and I do promise to be serious. I’ll try to find out who killed him. I’ll stick on the job until – until all those late roses droop and die, if need be.’

‘Will it take that long?’ There was now a hint almost of challenge in Miss Minnychip’s voice.

‘I hope not. Perhaps a couple of days.’ Appleby said this with some gravity, and it was with gravity that he looked at Miss Minnychip as he said it. ‘And, now, may we go back to Osprey’s collection – and conceivably to your father’s collection, as well? I’ve gathered that what has happened here has made you more than a little apprehensive that something equally out of the way may occur in your own house. And that is reasonable enough. If the Osprey Collection of coins has been under threat, so may the neighbouring Minnychip Collection well be.’

‘Exactly so, Sir John. It is why I feel that some police protection ought to be afforded to me in my own modest dwelling. But, now, please tell me. Have Lord Osprey’s coins been successfully stolen, or have they not?’

‘At this stage, Miss Minnychip, that question can’t be answered. We simply don’t know.’

‘Don’t know!’

‘It certainly sounds absurd. But nobody seems to know just where Lord Osprey kept this very compendious treasure. Have you yourself ever seen it, by the way?’

‘Definitely not. I used to hear a good deal about it in my father’s time, of course. But I have never seen it, and have no idea where Oliver kept it. Marcus must know – Marcus Broadwater. He virtually looked after the things.’

‘But he
doesn’t
know. He has told me so, earlier this morning. When he and Lord Osprey had occasion to inspect the collection together, Lord Osprey simply wheeled it in. That is Mr Broadwater’s expression.’

‘Wheeled it in!’

‘It sounds extremely absurd, I agree. Absurd but not inconceivable.’

‘But if Oliver was killed in the library as the result of coming upon a thief there, it must surely be somewhere in the library that–’

‘That the collection has its home? Not necessarily. And here we come to that mysterious intruder. At dusk yesterday evening, when you yourself and several other people were in the library, Lord Osprey made to close the curtains over the big French window. It was apparently his habit to do so himself. But on this occasion he suddenly saw someone lurking just outside. He at once drew the curtains to, and told Bagot to investigate. Is that correct? I gather from Lord Osprey’s son, Adrian, that you had just a glimpse of this lurking person yourself.’

‘Yes. That was precisely what happened.’

‘Would you be able to pick out the intruder in an identity parade?’

‘Dear me, no, Sir John. It was all too momentary for that.’

‘Was it a man, or a woman?’

‘I suppose it was a man. But no doubt one would somehow suppose a lurking figure to be that of a man. I really don’t know. It was, as I say, all over in a couple of seconds.’

‘But now, Miss Minnychip, consider. It has been discovered that there is a perfectly practicable means of getting across the moat and up to the small and isolated terrace on the other side of the window. It becomes, so to speak, a vulnerable point in Clusters’ defences. So Lord Osprey may have become uneasy about it a good deal later last night, come down here to reassure himself, and actually encountered an intruder. His murder may have been a direct consequence of that. But that the thief, or intending thief, made his entry by way of the library is only a weak indication that the collection was kept in – or indeed near – it. Supposing a thief to have informed himself in one way or another where the coins were actually kept (in which case it seems that he would have decidedly the advantage of the rest of us) he may have been encountered by Lord Osprey when he was already in possession of the collection – in which case he has it now. Or he may have been so encountered when beginning to make his way to it – in which case he may have been unnerved by his own bloody deed, and fled without seeking out his booty.’

‘Surely, Sir John, it is improbable that the intending thief would make a merely preliminary foray across the moat and to that window simply to peer into a crowded room?’

‘It’s a good point.’ Appleby was coming to have a considerable respect for Miss Minnychip’s intelligence. Ringwood, indeed, would have spotted this difficulty at once. But Ringwood, after all, was a professional. ‘I suppose it conceivable,’ Appleby went on, ‘that the lurker’s first intention was to make his way into the library while everybody was at dinner, and to stay doggo just outside until then.’ Appleby thought for a moment. ‘By the way,’ he then said, ‘just where do you keep what I’m sure must be called the Minnychip Collection in your own house? Or would you rather not divulge that even to a respectable retired policeman?’

‘Sir John, you persist in making fun of me. It is, I suppose, a spinster’s destiny. But at least I remain alert to sign or sound of it. The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. I try to use them as I may.’

‘Now it is you who are making fun of me, Miss Minnychip. But mayn’t I have an answer? It’s a question, after all, that Ringwood is bound to put to you if you insist on his providing you with a guardian bobby or two.’

‘If you must know,’ Miss Minnychip said, ‘I keep my father’s coins under my bed.’

‘An excellent place.’ Appleby appeared struck by something. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether Lord Osprey too did precisely that?’

Having returned indoors with Miss Minnychip, and thanked her for her assistance, Appleby was making his way back to the Music Saloon when he became aware of the measured approach of Bagot, the late Lord Osprey’s butler. Bagot had the appearance of one who would regard all haste as unseemly, so that Appleby wondered what sort of speed he had contrived to make when sent to investigate the mystery of that mysterious intruder on the previous evening. And now Bagot halted before him.

‘Sir John,’ he then asked with some solemnity, ‘would it be convenient to have a word with you?’

‘Of course. Fire away.’

If Bagot’s eyebrows failed faintly to elevate themselves before this brusquerie it was evident that some effort had been required to ensure that they stayed put.

‘First, then, I am instructed by her ladyship to ask you whether Mr Ringwood will take luncheon.’

‘I suppose so, Mr Bagot. Most people have something at that time of day.’

‘You do not quite understand me, sir.’

‘Of course I do. But Lady Osprey can’t be very clear about my relationship with Mr Ringwood. It is not for me to advise her on whether or not to ask the Detective-Inspector to lunch. I can, however, tell you at once what his answer will be should you be sent to him direct. He is at Clusters in an official capacity which precludes him from anything of the kind. You yourself must understand that.’

‘The thought has certainly been in my mind, Sir John.’

‘Then that’s that. But would it be stretching a point too far to propose that you and I have a further short talk?’

‘Most willingly, Sir John. May I suggest that we step into my pantry? It affords all proper privacy. His late lordship occasionally dropped in on me there for a brief chat. But nobody else comes near it. Not, so far, even the Detective-Inspector.’

‘Capital. That will suit most admirably.’

So they made their way to Bagot’s secluded citadel. It contained a small desk, an enormous safe, a sink, and a couple of chairs. On a shelf near a low radiator, uncorked, stood several bottles of burgundy. Appleby recalled that all good butlers believe that burgundy must breathe.

‘Do sit down,’ Bagot said briskly.

So Appleby sat down. Bagot, who remained standing, surveyed his domain with satisfaction.

‘Nowadays,’ he said, ‘I have to leave the silver to the women. But I continue, of course, to look after the decanters, and most of the better crystal. Will you take a glass of Madeira?’

‘Most willingly,’ Appleby said.

Bagot poured a glass of Madeira, but without venturing to pour another for himself. He did, however, sit down.

‘There will be speculation,’ he said. ‘And gossip. And – I fear – scandal.’

‘I don’t know about scandal. But speculation and gossip are sure starters in an affair like this. Have you any theory about it all, Mr Bagot?’

‘Not a theory, Sir John. It would be somewhat presumptuous to have exactly that. And idea or two: no more.’