A Family Affair (25 page)

‘I’ve never heard of a twenty-year-old fingerprint. You must – yet once more, my dear fellow – have made criminological history. Canadine was the equerry in the bogus royal visit to Keynes?’

‘Undoubtedly he was. He wasn’t personally known to the Lywards at that time. The affair may well have been planned as a genuine joke – and then Canadine glimpsed that there was, as it were, a career in it.’

‘I’m surprised he lasted so long. In this last business he appears to have been utterly reckless. How did you set him on it, anyway?’

‘By having Cockayne ask him to lunch, and having Cockayne’s youngest son, Oswyn, chatter about the rag he was organizing for his friend who was being sent down, and of the part to be played in it by the sarcophagus. A love of the really freakish was Canadine’s Achilles heel, poor fellow. He fell for it instantly. And his organization was once more superb, you know. He was behind British Railways’ withdrawing their agreement to provide a van. I suppose as an amateur of railways he had a pull with them. And look how he managed the funeral barge, or whatever it’s to be called. He diverted the real one by a false message to some wharf higher up the river. And there he was – together with that wretched Sansbury – at the appointed spot with his own.’

‘How was he proposing to make his effective getaway? Surely he’d have been held up at – what’s it called? – Iffley Lock.’

‘Ah, your Oxford topography isn’t up to date.’ Appleby chuckled. ‘There’s a bridge now, you see, half a mile short of that – Donnington Bridge. It carries something like a whacking great motorway across the Isis. He had only to run ashore there, have a lorry with a hoist waiting – ’

‘But he never made it. He had a shade too much respect for young lives.’ The Commissioner fiddled with a paperweight. ‘I’m bound to say, the fellow had a sense of style. A peer of the realm in quod for that sort of thing would be awfully awkward. Hardly fair on the screws.’

‘I don’t think he meant to commit suicide. He just took an instantaneous big risk because he disliked the idea of manslaughter.’

‘That’s how one has to look at it, no doubt. And it was Sansbury who got the raw deal. In that second of crisis, he had no say in the matter. He wasn’t at the tiller. For that matter, he wasn’t at the tiller all through.’

‘Indeed, he wasn’t. A weak character, if ever there was one. Plenty of cleverness, plenty of conceit. But he certainly got shoved around. Or call it deeper and deeper in. For long, of course, there was no single affair in which his part, viewed in isolation, could not be interpreted as more or less innocent. He was probably slow to see that the eventual addition sum, as one may call it, would be damning. Canadine must have had some ugly hold on him, to make him progressively expose himself as he did. He had the role in a crisis of what Bobby calls the fall guy, poor devil.’

‘It wouldn’t have saved Canadine.’ The Commissioner appeared to recall that some civil inquiry should here be made. ‘And how is Bobby? I hope this business won’t upset him, so shortly before those important final exams.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Appleby glanced at his watch. ‘As a matter of fact he’ll be waiting for me down below with the car.’

‘You ought to have told him to come up.’ But the Commissioner was looking at his watch too. ‘Awfully good of you to have come in,’ he said. ‘We must have that lunch together soon. Get your secretary to ring up my secretary any time. My dear fellow, goodbye.’

‘Shall we be put inside: Oswyn and Paddy and me?’ As he piloted the Rover round Parliament Square, Bobby Appleby asked this question casually enough.

‘Definitely not. And the odd thing is that
nobody
is likely to be put inside. In all these affairs, various minor villains must have been involved. But I don’t think anybody’s going to catch up with them.’

‘Not you?’

‘Decidedly not me.’

‘Calling it a day, Daddy?’

‘Just that.’ The car was heading for the Great West Road, and Appleby was silent for the whole length of Victoria Street. ‘Straight to college, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I drop you, and drive home.’

‘Yes.’

‘Give my regards to the Master, if you run across him in the quad.’

‘Of course.’

‘Your mother is likely to feel that the supervision of Hoobin, and the apple trees, and my mythical apiculture – ’

‘What’s that? Oh, bee-keeping, of course.’

‘She is likely to feel that these should be my principal occupation for some time.’

‘Yes,’ Bobby said. ‘I’m afraid that’s true.’

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President’s Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at ‘St Anthony’s College’, Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby’s taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980’s.

In
Appleby’s End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

Published by House of Stratus

The Ampersand Papers While Appleby is strolling along a Cornish beach, he narrowly escapes being struck by a body falling down a cliff. The body is that of Dr Sutch, an archivist, and he has fallen from the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle, home of Lord Ampersand. Two possible motivations present themselves to Appleby – the Ampersand gold, treasure from an Armada galleon; and the Ampersand papers, valuable family documents that have associations with Wordsworth and Shelley.

Appleby and Honeybath Every English mansion has a locked room, and Grinton Hall is no exception – the library has hidden doors and passages…and a corpse. But when the corpse goes missing, Sir John Appleby and Charles Honeybath have an even more perplexing case on their hands – just how did it disappear when the doors and windows were securely locked? A bevy of helpful houseguests offer endless assistance, but the two detectives suspect that they are concealing vital information. Could the treasures on the library shelves be so valuable that someone would murder for them?