Appleby And Honeybath (15 page)

Denver, being in no doubt about this, took up the point at once.

‘Yesterday afternoon,’ he said, ‘something at present quite unaccountable took place in this room, and there was a further unaccountable event in the area one arrives in by going through that dummy door. There is a distinct possibility – to put it no higher than that – of some criminal activity being involved. So it is reasonable to investigate anything again unaccountable that takes place here in the library only a few hours later. And what I come to first, Mr Tancock, is your entering it in the middle of the night.’

‘You’ve been good enough to explain that yourself, Inspector. I couldn’t get to sleep, and I came to borrow a book.’ Tancock produced this with quite as much irony as was at all proper. ‘I called that bogus at once, and bogus it is.’

‘Then, sir, may we be favoured with the truth of the matter?’

‘Certainly – although it may sound a little odd too. Also, I must apologize in advance. It’s true I couldn’t get to sleep. I was worried about something, and it was a worry reflecting a certain lack of confidence in the police.’

‘Indeed, sir? Please continue.’

‘It was about this missing man – dead or sleeping. Sleeping, I told myself – and then disturbed by Mr Honeybath, who fumbled at the fellow, and then cleared out.’

Here Appleby interrupted.

‘I think that significantly misrepresents Mr Honeybath’s behaviour. He satisfied himself, as he believed, that the man was dead, and then very properly sought help. But you’d better go on.’

‘Thank you. I will.’ Tancock paused, distinguishably with that effect of wariness which sometimes overtook him. ‘The man comes out of a heavy slumber. He may even have had a slight stroke – something of that kind. He staggers around in a bemused condition. I know it sounds very speculative, Inspector – but I’m simply telling you of a rather irrational state of worry I got into. Particularly when I remembered that treacherous little spiral staircase. Had the police been aware of it, and investigated the basement? I couldn’t remember whether I’d heard anything about that. So I decided to come and take a look myself.’

‘So down you went,’ Denver said. ‘And remained down quite a long time. In fact, emerging only when there was the general shindy.’

‘You may express it that way. I felt a certain awkwardness in my situation.’

‘That seems not unlikely, sir. But at least you didn’t find a corpse down there, or even a still living man in a grave condition.’

‘Happily, not.’

And with this, Tancock gave an assured nod, and fell silent. He had explained himself, and that was it.

For a moment, at least, it was as if Denver showed himself baffled. It had been, in a fashion, a colourable yarn, and that it was all a shade phoney was a point that Tancock had cheerfully made himself. Very sensibly, Denver turned to his next man.

‘Mr Hillam,’ he asked, ‘can you tell me the reason for your own visit to the library? Were you suffering the same sort of anxiety as prompted Mr Tancock to drop in?’

‘Well, no – not exactly. Or rather, not at all.’ Unlike Tancock, Hillam displayed something like desperation. He hadn’t, perhaps, a particularly inventive mind. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I was very upset. It’s not what one expects when one joins friends in the country for a quiet weekend. I got rather obsessed with the situation. Perhaps I
was
a little like Mr Tancock in that.’ Hillam offered this hopefully, as if there might be something creditable in approximating his own condition to Tancock’s after all. ‘Morbid curiosity,’ he said. ‘It does, I suppose, sound a bit wet. But I’m afraid that’s the fact of the matter. I came in here out of morbid curiosity. And there was that dreadful woman. I rather lost my head, and we fell to shouting at each other. That was the whole story.’

‘The whole fairytale, you mean!’ Terence Grinton, who had amazingly kept silence for nearly ten minutes, now achieved one of his high-decibel performances. ‘Pilfering – that’s what the fellow was up to.’ Grinton had turned to Denver. ‘Plain as a pikestaff. This room is full of rubbish that lunatic eggheads will pay money for. Not a doubt of it. Sermons and bawdy plays and travels in China. The little brute invited himself down here – my wife told me as much – and is making away with whatever he can lay his hands on.’

‘It’s an abominable lie! It’s an insult!’ Hillam was beside himself with rage – a condition in which, if he was an honest man, he had every right to be. ‘I don’t give a damn for your rubbishing books. Not many of them would fetch sixpence on a barrow in the street, you ignorant baboon. And I shall, of course, leave your house this instant.’

‘And a bloody good riddance that will be. But it won’t happen until these coppers have had a good hunt through your suitcases.’ Grinton was breathing heavily as a result of this exchange of amenities. ‘But no you won’t either!’ he suddenly shouted. ‘I’ll give you in charge. Denver, I give this man in charge. Take him away and lock him up.’

‘Gentlemen, please compose yourselves.’ Denver spoke on a note of sharp authority. ‘Mr Grinton, you cannot, as you express it, give Mr Hillam in charge. Mr Hillam, I understand your impulse to leave Grinton Hall at once. But I advise against it. It would be inconvenient.’

What Hillam made of this was not apparent. For a moment, indeed, it was as if the contretemps had gone out of his head. He was glancing covertly round the library with what Appleby thought of as a lean and hungry look. So perhaps Grinton was right about him. But somehow Appleby doubted it. He sensed it as being, so to speak, not quite in the target area. But however that might be, this fantastic nocturne had gone on long enough.

‘Grinton,’ Appleby said, ‘we must all be grateful for Mr Denver’s vigilance, and in my opinion he has this difficult situation well in hand. I suggest we all go back to bed, and start in again with clearer heads in the morning. Everybody, I am sure, is anxious to see this uncomfortable mystery resolved.’

These pacificatory noises (for they weren’t much more than that) were offered with sufficient assurance to be of immediate effect. Burrow gathered up his rummers, and within five minutes the library was once more in darkness. Whether long-suffering constables were to continue lurking in it through the short remainder of the night was something nobody inquired about.

The Applebys, coming down to breakfast, met Charles Honeybath emerging from the drawing-room.

‘Nobody feeding yet,’ Honeybath said – and it was immediately apparent that, somewhat unaccountably, he was in an almost buoyant mood. ‘They seem to keep latish hours. By the way, was there some sort of disturbance in the night? I thought I heard something.’

‘There was indeed,’ Appleby said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we’ve had our coffee and feel a bit stronger.’

‘I thought I’d wait until somebody else appeared. One always has a sense of being greedy if one presents oneself in an empty room. So I thought I’d have another look round in there.’ And Honeybath nodded towards the drawing-room. ‘It produced a real surprise. I must show you. Come along.’

Mildly astonished by this enthusiasm, Appleby and his wife did as they were told. The curtains had been drawn back in the drawing-room, and there had already been a tidy-round. Nevertheless, the place seemed to disapprove of their presence at this inappropriate hour.

‘All those watercolours,’ Honeybath said. ‘I have a weakness for that kind of thing, and was wandering around them yesterday evening. I came on a little watercolour by John Varley. Think of that! I wonder how a Grinton once possessed himself of it. Here it is! Isn’t it tiptop?’

The Applebys admired the Varley.

‘So in the night I found myself wondering whether there might be anything else out-of-the-way: meaning not by deceased Grinton ladies. That’s what brought me in ten minutes ago. And you’ll never guess what I found.’ Honeybath was now in a state of great enjoyment. ‘So blessedly remote from that bothersome body! Come and look.’

Obediently, the Applebys looked.

‘Almost,’ Appleby said cautiously, ‘Chinese.’

‘Absolutely true!’ Honeybath was delighted by this act of connoisseurship. ‘But of course it’s by Claude. Just a wash drawing of what I take to be Tivoli. There’s one very like it in the BM. But the light, Judith, the light! Whenever I’m told that the Impressionists first really captured the stuff, I think of Claude. And here it happens in eight inches by six. However did those Grinton creatures come by
that?
’

‘I think I can tell you,’ Judith Appleby said. ‘Or this book can.’ And she held up an octavo volume in aged but well-waxed leather. ‘John has just been reading it, and I’m returning it to its owner, Terence’s Mr Burrow. But you must have a look at the relevant place first, Charles. Here and now.’

And thus Charles Honeybath became acquainted with
Reliquiae Grintonianae
.

From
Paris
it would appear that Mr
Grinton
travelled direct to
Rome
, not by
Genoa
and the
Ligurian Sea
, but always in his own carriage as before, and with his own servants about him. It is a thing curious to remark that a man by nature so acquisitive as this
Ambrose
Grinton
was yet regardless of the pitch of his quotidian expenses, and would live or journey, as the opportunity afforded him, in the style rather of a nobleman than a private gentleman. His route, which in all occupied many days, was by the
Colle del Moncenisio
, then still very horrid, since it pleased him to believe that he was thus following in the steps of
Hannibal
. The persuasion, although not puerile, was erroneous, since historiographers do now with one voice assert that the
Col du Clapier
, and not this of
Mont Cenis
, was the pass to tremble beneath the tread of the
Carthaginians
and their monstrous
Elephantes
. If disabused in this, he might have assuaged himself with the knowledge, little hidden from many schoolboys, one would suppose, that his path had assuredly been traversed by
Pepin
the Short
,
Charlemagne
, and
Charles the Bald
. At least he had taken his own commodious carriage where no carriage road was, and this achievement may have contented him when, upon his arrival in the
Eternal City
, the vehicle had to be broken up incontinent.

Mr
Grinton
had taken due care to provide himself with sundry letters introductory to good society in his new abiding place, and notably to M.
Béthune
, then French Ambassador to the Court of the Bp. of
Rome
. Although at home ever one decently attentive to his religious duties according to our Established Church, in Rome
he did as the Romans did
, entering with very little scruple into the highest
papistical
circles open to him. Thus by M.
Béthune
he was presented alike to Cardinals
Crescenzio
and
Bentivoglio
, and indeed to one
Maffeo Barberini
, who styled himself
Urban VIII
and claimed to occupy the throne of S.
Peter
himself.

It was a time at which such prelatical personages as these evinced much concern to exhibit themselves judicious
curiosi
, well-seen alike in the arts of antiquity and this
modern
age. Limners and statuaries, although no longer commanding the exalted regard and remuneration of a
Sanzio
or a
Buonarotti
, found ready patrons still among them. The purse of Mr
Grinton
, although seldom entirely empty, was inadequate to compete in this market with any amplitude. But he was ever on the alert to benefit as he could, and moreover it will be recalled that among his familiars he was jestingly referred to as
Autolycus Grinton
, after that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles created by the immortal
Shagsper
. This proclivity is well exhibited, and that to some effect of diversion, by his traffic with one
Gellée
, a
Frenchman
by extraction, and in
Rome
graduated painter from the less uncertain trade of pastry-cook.

The Cardinals and the Bp. alike stood patrons to
Gellée
(a name, Mr
Grinton
gamesomely averred, well becoming one habituated to concocting kickshaws in a kitchen), known also as Le Lorrain, so that by the time of our
Autolycus’
visit he had become supereminent among such painters as devoted their genius to the limning of landscapes in the Campagna of
Rome
, being in this more various, rich and rare than all others. Two characteristicks were remarked in him. He worked much in the very face of what he painted, sometimes in oils but more commonly with simpler materials, as if holding up to nature a mirror more faithful than the retirement of a
studio
could provide. He thus accumulated a wealth of
schizzi
(as the
Italians
say) to which he would turn when compositions of more magnitude were required of him, so that the floors of his dwelling were declared at times thick with these rapid starts not indeed of
fancy
, but of
observation
. Again, as his fame was augmented with the years, and that he might not be practised upon by counterfeiters of his own labours, he had the custom to take with pencil or with pen or the like drawings of his larger or elaborated works, thereby creating an ordered record of his authentic achievements. But in the pursuit of this design, eventually to be styled by him the
Libri di verità
, he by no means always satisfied himself at a first or even a second endeavour. So from this characteristick there also arose a fine prodigality of
parerga
(as they may be styled) not very vigilantly guarded by their author. And it was the jest of many in
Rome
that England’s Autolycus, who much frequented the
studio
of this jumpt-up kitchen-boy, seldom departed therefrom without having stuffed his pockets (which were capacious, following the fashion of that time) with sundry of these strays or waifs of art.