Appleby And Honeybath (12 page)

‘I’ve been talking absolutely out of turn, Mr Honeybath, and nineteen to the dozen. Anything rather than get on to what you found in that library.’

‘My dear lady, it wouldn’t occur to me to broach the subject. It had much better be let sleep for a time. If possible, put clean out of mind.’

‘I find myself thinking about it a good deal. A mysterious death in the house, and policemen asking everybody questions. I suppose it’s silly to feel it rather frightening. But I do.’ Magda paused for a moment. ‘The claret seems all right to me,’ she said. And she was then almost silent for the rest of the meal.

After the claret there was a sip of port, and then Dolly Grinton gathered up the ladies and departed to the drawing-room. The gentlemen shuffled down the table towards their host, before whom Burrow, with an air of subdued prodigality, set down a fresh decanter. Those less familiar with the habits of the house waited hopefully for the appearance of cigars, but Burrow had concluded his ministrations and now disappeared – perhaps to a refection of cold pheasant and claret in his pantry.

Terence Grinton picked up the fresh decanter, and almost forgot to go through the ritual of replenishing the glass of the man to his right before applying himself liberally to the stuff on his own behalf. It was clear that he felt some formal remarks to be incumbent upon him, but that he wasn’t at all clear what they were. There was a situation requiring thought – that most vexatious and slippery of commodities. He cleared his throat – nervously, yet so explosively that it might be supposed he had found one of his numerous occasions for inordinate mirth.

‘Terribly sorry,’ he said gruffly, ‘about all that bother earlier this evening. Owe an apology to you fellows. All blown over, of course. Nothing in it at all. Silly that we sent for that policeman. Idea was to reassure the women.’

These clipped utterances were received in silence, except that one anxiously tactful guest muttered a supportive ‘Quite right’, and then nervously lit a cigarette. Terence would no doubt have done well to turn to a topic more likely to conduce to relaxed general chat. But he seemed to feel that the mystery of the library must be expanded upon.

‘We must all sympathize with Honeybath,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I owe him an apology. Honeybath, my dear fellow, I apologize. Everybody knows that somehow or other nobody happens ever to go into the library. Just one of those things. So when Honeybath went in – a perfectly natural thing to do, of course, particularly if one is of an enquiring mind – he was naturally rather put out at finding another fellow in the room. Various misunderstandings followed, but have all been cleared up. We can put it out of our heads. By the way, I believe Dolly is thinking of bridge. But if anybody is inclined to billiards, I’m his man. And she won’t mind at all.’

Honeybath – although only minutes earlier he had been recommending the ‘out of mind’ procedure to Magda Tancock – was naturally not gratified by this performance. He was, in fact, outraged – and the more so because no clear course of action was apparent to him. Apart from a slight imputation of vulgar curiosity (not unjustified, for that matter) he hadn’t been directly aspersed by his host of any unbecoming behaviour. It hadn’t been suggested that he had shuffled or told fibs or got in a funk, so he couldn’t at once rise and withdraw alike from his commission and the entire Grinton demesne. And it was Terence Grinton – the old fool – who for some reason was in a funk. He had (Honeybath felt sure) a bad conscience about the whole thing, and just couldn’t leave it alone. This was why, quite out of the blue, he had made a speech, the only intelligible content of which was to the effect that nobody must be cross with Charles Honeybath RA, who was only a harmless dotard with an unfortunate tendency to hallucinations. Grinton had even put a charitable interpretation on the thing by subscribing to the fiction that there had been ‘another fellow in the room’. Or so Honeybath interpreted those rambling remarks.

‘Silly old bastard.’ This was murmured into Honeybath’s ear, apparently by way of moral support, by a familiar voice proving to be that of Hallam Hillam. But Honeybath, although thoroughly disposed to concur in the sentiment, disapproved of its enunciation. One really ought not to say that sort of thing about a man, however tiresome, whose port one was at that moment drinking. Or certainly it shouldn’t be thus murmured by a virtual stranger. From Appleby it would have been entirely comforting. Honeybath resolved to seek out Appleby as soon as they got back to the drawing-room.

‘It’s a very trying thing,’ he said with reserve, ‘for a man to find happening in his house. So one mustn’t be censorious.’

‘There’s been a happening, all right,’ Hillam went on – undeterred and in a louder voice. ‘So it’s absurd to think to huff and puff it away. And I don’t like it. It worries me. It upsets things.’

‘It is very generally upsetting, of course.’ Honeybath was conscious of feeling puzzled. It was almost as if this man Hillam was angry as well as at a loss before the mystery, and had spoken in an unguarded way. ‘Have you ever taken a glance into that library yourself?’

Honeybath had asked this question quite thoughtlessly: simply because a further word or two seemed necessary before shaking the fellow off. But Hillam was disconcerted by it, much as if it had been the pouncing kind of thing that Inspector Denver might have fired off at him.

‘I don’t know Grinton at all well,’ Hillam said. ‘This is my first visit here. Mrs G. was very keen I should come down.’

This was scarcely an answer. It was in fact evasive. So Honeybath concluded that Hillam was another who, in the last couple of days, had taken a peep at the confounded room, but without any such disconcerting experience as had attended his own indiscretion. And now Hillam was well-established in the chair next to him; no general talk was getting underway; it seemed necessary to continue some sort of tête-à-tête.

‘I gather’ – Honeybath said by way of at least changing the subject – ‘that Indian antiquities are your particular thing: a field I’m sadly ignorant of.’

‘Well, not exactly.’ Hillam hesitated oddly: it was almost as if he would have been glad to claim that this was indeed so. ‘I suppose I ought to be called an art historian.’

This was awkward. The man
was
, in some way, persistently awkward. But the present awkwardness was intelligible. Honeybath must at least in a general way know his way about among art historians. So not already knowing that this curating Hallam Hillam was among them rendered a slightly injurious effect. Of course this was a common liability when moving around in learned and academic circles. The crude way of dealing with the thing was to ejaculate something like, ‘What,
the
Hillam!’ and hope for the best. But Charles Honeybath wasn’t good at dealing in such parlour subterfuges. So he was relieved that at this point Terence Grinton got reluctantly to his feet and suggested joining the ladies. Honeybath, however, joined Appleby – winking him (it might be said) into a corner of the drawing-room.

‘John,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you can advise me? It seems to me, you know, that I find myself in rather an awkward position.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Appleby reflected that Charles was rather prone to finding himself – or perhaps feeling himself – to be in an awkward position. Although a person both of philosophical mind and very adequate social aplomb, he exposed to the world a considerable area of vulnerability in all things connected with his art.

‘It’s this fellow Grinton,’ Honeybath said. ‘I’m here on a purely professional engagement, and know next to nothing about him. Whereas you are an old family friend, as I understand the matter. So of course I hesitate to say anything disparaging about him.’

‘My dear Charles, “old family friend” is inaccurate. He’s not even an old family friend of Judith’s: just a distant relation she feels ought to be given a nod to from time to time. It’s one of those tedious upper class things.’

‘Well, yes.’ Honeybath nodded understandingly. Although, as a boy, chance had taken him to Eton, it no more occurred to him that he belonged to an upper class than that he belonged to an aristocracy. He was just a painter. ‘But what troubles me, you see, is what he said or implied about me at his wife’s dinner table. He told the company at large – wouldn’t you agree? – that I am virtually a loony.’

‘It was perhaps a little lacking in address. But the man is clearly uneasy for some reason about this whole affair, and says anything that comes into his not exactly thin head. If it really bothers you, you might yourself be charged with owning a thin skin. Forget it.’

‘Yes. But it’s the business, you see, of my being commissioned to take the chap’s likeness. Ought I, in the circumstances, to pocket the money of his subscribers – ingenuous souls, I imagine, just like himself? He can’t very well get out of it when a thing like that has been fixed up. But he may very reasonably resent having to sit to a man he has decided sees things. That’s how he’d put it. So I might see heaven knows what in him.’

‘Why not? It’s your job. And it’s as near to objective fact as makes no matter that you did veritably see something. Precisely what, may be not quite certain. But that’s no matter. There
is
a mystery, I assure you. And you happened to be the first to stumble on it.’

‘What about the police? They seem simply to have cleared out. Washed their hands discreetly of the whole load of rubbish – which of course is how Grinton judges it.’

‘Charles, I doubt whether he does anything of the kind. And certainly the police don’t. I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s my opinion that our friend Denver is up to something.’

Honeybath was silent for a moment. He was clearly impressed and a little disposed to be comforted.

‘You mean, John, that Denver has some sort of clue?’

‘That I don’t know at all. But I have. It’s in the pocket of my dinner jacket at this moment.’

‘My dear Holmes, you amaze me!’ Honeybath was sufficiently heartened to decline upon this piece of ancient facetiousness.

‘Something very little remarkable in itself, but remarkably so as having turned up decidedly in the wrong place.’ Appleby loyally preserved an oracular note. ‘You remember my dodging down into the library’s cellarage? Absolute chaos, and I was in it no time at all. One might expect to find almost anything. But not what I did find.’

‘Which was?’

‘A copy of a quite recent bookseller’s catalogue. To be precise,
Blackwell’s Rare Books
:
Catalogue A27
. It’s called “Antiquarian Books on Travel & Topography”. Here it is. Look at it. Item 269, where someone has made a pencil mark in the margin. Read it right through. It’s a model of exact bibliographical record.’

So Honeybath – with an occasional wary glance at the rest of the company – read it.

269 Shaw (Revd Stebbing) The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire. Compiled from the Manuscripts of Huntback, Loxdale, Bishop Lyttelton, and other Collections of Dr Wilkes, the Revd T Feilde &c. Including Erdwick’s Survey of the County, and Approved Parts of Dr Plot’s Natural History. The Whole brought down to the Present Time, interspersed with Pedigrees and Anecdotes of Families; Observations on Agriculture, Commerce, Mines and Manufactories, and Illustrated with a very full and correct New Map of the County. Agri Staffordiensis Icon, and many other Plates and Tables. 2 vols.
Printed by and for J Nichols
, 1798–1801, LARGE PAPER (?),
with 82 plates, 2 large folding maps, and some 32 illustrations printed in the text, in both the full-page and smaller illustrations extensive use has been made of the aquatint process, as well as the usual copper engraving, the pagination is erratic throughout, folio, contemporary paper boards, somewhat rubbed and worn, paper backstrips repaired, all edges uncut, contained in two solander cases, in brown cloth
, size 20 ins x 12 ins. (Upcott 1176) £650.00

‘And 270,’ Appleby said, ‘is more or less the same work, and is marked with a pencil too. It would cost you a hundred pounds less.’

‘I see.’ In fact, Honeybath didn’t see at all. ‘What’s a solander case?’

‘I believe it’s a box made in the form of a book: a kind of little brother to that dummy door. But you see the point; why, I mean, this catalogue can be called a clue. Clearly it was left behind fairly recently by somebody rummaging down there. So it ties in – or to some extent it ties in – with a notion I sketched out for you at the start. Clandestine investigation of the riches, or supposed riches, of the Grinton library. But not quite the sort of investigation I had in mind. The academic pernoctationist, you remember, avid for the advancement of learning. This isn’t Staffordshire, and nobody is likely to be prompted to ransack Grinton specifically in search of Staffordshire antiquities for their own sake. I see this chap as having had half a dozen or more catalogues of this sort, and ticking off in them any particularly costly items that he came upon here. Or that general idea. There are lots of possibilities. For example, he gradually gets together a pile of such things – a cache of them, you may say – and proposes to remove them en bloc on some favourable occasion. Anyway, a money-making rather than a knowledge-making ploy. In fact, a straight criminal enterprise, probably on a fairly small scale, but conceivably on a moderately large one. It’s interesting. As such, it lends a little support to the conjecture that one kind of crime led – through some untimely discovery, or the like – to a much graver one. But I’d need a good deal of stronger evidence before I put my own money on that.’

‘There’s stuff in this description’ – and Honeybath tapped the catalogue – ‘on aquatints and copper engraving.’ It had come into Honeybath’s head that he had perhaps something to contribute to this impressive detective process. He glanced once more cautiously round the drawing-room. ‘Might a special interest in these arts be involved? I ask because I’ve discovered something about that chap Hillam – whom for some reason I rather distrust. Indian religions and so on are his hobby. But he told me in the dining-room that by profession he’s an art historian.’