A Family Affair (21 page)

‘You must forgive my curiosity,’ he said urbanely. ‘One of my interests – an old professional interest, you will understand – is what may be called the limits of coincidence. How thick on the ground must coincidences be before one is obliged to admit that something
not
coincidental is involved? I don’t presume to ask myself this in terms of the theory of probability. I’m neither a mathematician nor a philosopher, but just a plain retired policeman. Can I give you a match?’

It was true that Professor Sansbury was making rather an ineffective business of lighting his pipe. Appleby paused long enough to allow ample time for the operation, and then went on.

‘And you are, if I may say so, a most interesting case in point. I’m not unaware – indeed, I was remarking on it to somebody the other day – that yours must be quite a small world. Smaller, say, than my own, or than that of the professional criminal. So, in matters relating to your calling, my dear Professor, it would be quite natural to find your name – a most distinguished name – bobbing up quite a lot. That’s certainly what I’ve been finding.’

‘You really talk in riddles, Sir John. A trick of the trade, no doubt.’

‘I think you know Sir Thomas Carrington?’

‘Carrington? Sir
Thomas
Carrington? The name does seem to ring a bell.

‘The name ringing a bell is that of a gentleman who was ingeniously robbed of a picture by George Stubbs.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’ Sansbury’s smile might have been intended as urbane, but in fact rendered a slightly strained effect. ‘Why ingeniously, Sir John?’

‘I suspect that the Stubbs could have been stolen in a much more straightforward fashion. The ingenuity seems to have been partly the consequence of a perverted sense of fun – an impulse to do things the play way, as it were. But it was partly a matter of making Carrington feel ridiculous, and so indisposed to create a fuss.’

‘How very curious. And now I do recollect. I valued the man’s pictures. A routine job, not leaving much mark on the mind.’

‘Did coming on a Stubbs leave no mark on your mind? At the time, at least, you were sufficiently interested to offer to take the picture away and have it cleaned.’

‘An obvious civility. Yes, the incident does come back to me.’

‘Does your correspondence with Lord Canadine come back to you?’

‘Good Lord, yes! The affair of the outraged statue. Who could forget a thing like that? When I heard that it had gone, I thought I ought to write to him, letting him know how valuable it was. He hadn’t a clue, and it seemed a plain public duty. Of course I ought to have let him know – or found out whether he
did
know – the moment I saw the thing so vulnerably disposed in his garden. But it would have been awkward, in view of the indelicate manner in which it had been treated.’

‘I see. But I think I’m right in saying that, once you had, so to speak, broken the ice, you
continued
to correspond with Canadine?’

‘I did, indeed. I wanted to discover where the stolen statue had come from, and so forth. Its story would have a distinct place in the history of taste.’

There was now a pause in this curious catechism. Sansbury was being told nothing that it had been particularly difficult to find out – yet what he was dissimulating was quite as much surprise as alarm. He had remarked that Lord Cockayne was a little shaky about the passing of time; it was perhaps something that might be called the telescoping of time that was shaking him in his turn. And Appleby felt that he had now been sufficiently perturbed; that, if possible, he ought to be, as it were, left gently toasting. Appleby glanced at his watch.

‘I must find Cockayne, and take my leave,’ he said. ‘He has a touching faith in my detective powers, but it isn’t really reasonable to expect much in the way of results after all these years. But I’m glad that you and I have had this chat. It really is curious that you should have been on the periphery of quite a bunch of these affairs. But it has been over a considerable period of time, which makes the coincidence we were speaking of a good deal less striking.’

‘Quite so.’ Sansbury took a more confident puff at his pipe. It was nevertheless improbable – Appleby thought – that he could imagine it was more than a truce that was being declared.

‘And, of course,’ Appleby pursued, ‘I came in on Cockayne’s ancient problem only in the most casual way. I believe I mentioned it to you at our first meeting. His youngest son is an acquaintance of my youngest son.’

‘Ah, yes – Oswyn. A nice lad. They are at Oxford together?’

‘Oh, no.’ Appleby’s tone was entirely indifferent. ‘My boy is at Cambridge. He has heard some of your lectures, if I may mention the fact, with great satisfaction. He and Oswyn Lyward were simply at the same prep school.’

Mr Patrick Moyle (distinguished authority on practical jokes) and Mr Robert Appleby (scrum-half, retired) were both shortly to address themselves to the Final Honour School of
Literae Humaniores
. It might therefore be expected that, when confabulating together in the latter’s digs in Holywell, the topic engrossing them would be – such is the curious constitution of that celebrated Oxford curriculum – either very ancient history or very modern philosophy.

But at the moment this seemed not to be the case. Signs of Bobby’s studious disposition, indeed, were thick on the ground – literally so in the form of books rapidly consulted and then tossed ungratefully on the floor, crumpled notes, abandoned cups of black coffee, tumbled ashtrays, empty gin bottles, half gnawed bars of chocolate, and sundry other common indications of undergraduate addiction to learning. But for the moment, at least, neither young man appeared to have provided himself with useful employment of any sort. Mr Moyle was lying supine on the carpet, softly whistling to the ceiling. Now and then he would vary this posture and pastime by turning over on his tummy and cocking either a foot or a grotesquely clutching hand in air – the idea being to suggest that he was the worsted party in some desperate gunfight, and now in
articulo
mortis
. Mr Appleby, properly enough, was paying no attention to this childish mime; instead, he prowled moodily about the room, and every now and then stuck his head out of the window, uttered an exclamation of gloomy impatience, and flung himself on a sofa before at once jumping up again and resuming his perambulation. Presently he varied this routine by going over to Mr Moyle and digging a toe hard into his ribs.

‘You beetle off!’ Mr Moyle said indignantly.

‘You want attention, don’t you? And I’m simply seeing if you’re a stiff yet. I don’t believe you are. So here’s to make sure.’ Bobby engaged in motions suggestive of spraying Mr Moyle with bullets from some automatic weapon. ‘Paddy,’ he said – suddenly forgetting about this – ‘you don’t think Oswyn will have made a muck of it? I told my father he was to be relied on.’

‘So he is, I think.’ Paddy Moyle sat up. ‘Oswyn’s virtually decerebrate, of course. But he possesses that aristocratic
je ne sais quoi
that brings things off. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he gets a degree. In Agriculture, isn’t it? I’m told the hen merchants are particularly susceptible to blue blood. Anyway, they do degrees on the battery system, no doubt.’

‘I don’t care twopence whether Oswyn gets some ludicrous degree. I just want to know–’ Bobby broke off to perform his ritual at the window. But Holywell was deserted. ‘Is he driving back?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Then he’s probably in an ambulance – or already in a morgue. Or he’s been nabbed for speeding.’

‘Dicks don’t nab lords.’

‘Absolute rot!’ Bobby was most indignant. ‘They booked a duke only a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Do you think your dad is going to book a marquis or a baron or a baronet, Bobby? Or will it just be a plebeian professor?’

‘It won’t be anybody at all, if Oswyn’s made an ass of himself.’ Bobby swung round. ‘But there he is.’

It was certainly the peculiarly hideous horn on Oswyn Lyward’s car which had sounded – very incongruously – from the direction of the Holywell Music Room. And a moment later there was a screech of brakes and the bang of a door thrust cheerfully open and shut again.

‘You can tell he doesn’t
think
he’s made an ass of himself,’ Paddy Moyle said encouragingly.

‘Hullo, chaps.’ Oswyn – who, like Bobby, made an instinctive ducking motion in going through anything other than an outsize in doorways – was in the room. ‘The bleatin’ of the kid excites the tiger.’

‘The biznai prospers?’ Bobby demanded.

‘It does.
Jamais j’ai gloaté comme je gloaterai aujourd’hui
.’

Paddy groaned. He regarded playing
Stalky & Co
. as extremely childish.

‘The guest turned up?’ he asked.

‘He turned up all right. Guests always do at Keynes.’

‘You remembered you weren’t to be in too much of a hurry with your stuff?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘And to be light and allusive – not to plug the thing?’

‘My dear learned idiot, all that is going to be my
métier
. A lifetime of finesse stretches ahead of me.’

‘When Oswyn,’ Bobby said pedantically, ‘is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.’

‘I say, that’s rather good. As a definition, I mean.’ Oswyn was interested. ‘Have you made it up?’

‘One Sir Henry Wotton. He was also capable of more elevated sentiments.

“How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another’s will;

Whose armour is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill.”

Moreover–’

‘You two shut up!’ Paddy shouted. ‘Incidentally, why should I be kept half in the dark, and fobbed off with this anonymous guest stuff? If almost all the Patriarchs are to be put on parade, we might at least be told–’

‘Orders from HQ,’ Oswyn said briskly. ‘To wit, Sir John Appleby. Yours not to reason why. That’s left to Bobby and me, who
have
to know. If all those average young imbeciles were let in on the classified information–’

‘OK, OK.’ Paddy – who was now wandering round Bobby’s room apparently in the vague hope of finding something to drink – made a resigned gesture. ‘Ours but to do and die. Do you think, by the way, there might be a chance of that sort of development?’ Paddy was suddenly hopeful. ‘A real free-for-all, I mean. When desperate criminals are cornered–’

‘Paddy’s mind is filled with the imagination of violence,’ Bobby said. ‘Our young intellectual lives in a reverie of gangsterdom. You should have seen him a few minutes ago. I had to shoot him up on the hearthrug just to keep him quiet and happy. As for the criminals, they’re not desperate, at all. And high-class tricksters don’t pull guns on you.’

‘You ought to know.’ Paddy was disappointed. ‘Is there a whole bevy of them?’

‘Your guess is about as good as mine. It may be a matter of a closely integrated team. Or there may just be a mastermind, plus some stooges and front men and fall guys.’

‘Our Robert,’ Paddy said, ‘is not his father’s son. He gets the terminology muddled. But never mind. This thing is on? Oswyn, you came away from home feeling it will be on?’

‘No reason why it shouldn’t be. But it depends on what may be called the improvisation factor. The quarry has to be jumped or bounced into it. They have to make a snap decision whether or not to go ahead. Are they prepared to play on those terms? That’s the question. Bobby – wouldn’t you say?’

‘It’s something like that. And there are adverse factors. The record so far suggests deliberation and careful planning, with long latent periods between operations. But they may go into action on an opportunist basis from time to time.’

‘Why not
give
them more time?’ Paddy asked.

‘Because they might smell out a rat, I imagine. As I say, it’s bouncing or nothing.’

‘Mayn’t they–’

‘Or he. We just don’t know.’

‘All right. Mayn’t he smell a rat already? About this place, for instance, and its harbouring Appleby
fils
?’

‘That’s one of the hazards,’ Bobby said. ‘But Appleby
père
has cracked down on his Oxonian son pretty hard. I had to hitch-hike half across England as a result.’

‘It must be so bracing to have an absolutely ruthless daddy.’ Mr Moyle, whose contribution to the debate had been made from his favourite position flat on the floor, suddenly sat up. ‘I say,’ he said. ‘Talking about daddies. What if the villain turns out to be Oswyn’s daddy? Will he have to be tried by the House of Lords?’

‘My father is a little past affairs of this sort.’ Oswyn spoke casually, but with a dangerous glance.

‘Paddy’s father,’ Bobby said hastily, ‘under the pretence of keeping a bawdy house, is a receiver of stolen goods. Shall we go out and get some lunch?’

‘On the river somewhere.’ Paddy scrambled to his feet. ‘My confidence in all Lywards is absolute. I’m even prepared to go in Oswyn’s lethal car.’

‘The Trout,’ said Oswyn.

‘The Perch,’ Bobby said.

‘The Rose Revived,’ Paddy said. ‘But I’m prepared to toss for it. And for paying, as well.’

Tossing up between three people always takes a little working out, and the young men addressed themselves to the operation with gravity.

‘Was there just one tiger?’ Paddy asked Oswyn suddenly, when the issue had been determined.

‘What do you mean?’

‘At this lunch at Keynes yesterday. Did the kid – which I suppose was you – do his bleating to excite just one tiger, or several of them?’

‘That would be telling,’ Oswyn said. ‘You’ll be well briefed later.’

The Master looked with approval at the two silver tankards on his table, and at the bread and butter and cheese.

‘Commons,’ he said. ‘As you very well remember, forty years ago nobody had anything else. Or not unless they were giving a luncheon party of a consciously extravagant kind. This was what your scout brought to your rooms, and this is what you ate and drank with entire satisfaction six or seven days a week for eight weeks on end.’