Appleby And Honeybath by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

story – the unlikely story – unfolded. Denver took it in his stride, and didn’t again apply himself to the notebook. ‘And now I’d better have a look,’ he said when it was concluded. ‘At the library, I mean. With your permission, sir.’
    Grinton grunted acquiescence in so decidedly ungracious a manner that any common policeman might have become suspicious at once. But the gracelessness – it was to be presumed – was a matter of habit and not of guilt on Grinton’s part.
    ‘Anybody in there now?’ Denver asked.
    ‘We locked it up,’ Appleby said, and immediately felt that he ought to have left this reply to Honeybath. Appleby’s line was absolute invisibility until he was, so to speak, unmasked. It had sounded as if Inspector Denver had no recollection of Scotland Yard as once having harboured a Sir John Appleby. It wasn’t likely. But it was a nice thought.
    ‘Then we’ll go along.’ Denver took the initiative in moving towards the door of the drawing-room – thereby offering a delicate indication that he was in control of the proceedings. ‘But not too many of us, since we don’t want a great deal of moving about in the place. It’s possible that I may have to bring in men to look for fingerprints, and that sort of thing. Mr Honeybath, of course, as well as yourself, Mr Grinton. And perhaps you’ll be good enough to come with us as well, Sir James.’
    ‘John,’ Appleby said.
    ‘I beg your pardon. Sir John.’ Denver was at his most wooden. ‘And, of course, we must have a look at this place in which it seems that somebody has been putting up for the night. It’s an odd one, that. If I were sceptical before improbabilities – which isn’t, you know, a detective officer’s business: far from it – I think I’d be sceptical there. After you, sir.’
    Grinton produced another grunt, and the four men left the room.
     
    The appearance of the library had changed a little. This was because the direct late afternoon sunlight was now only slanting through the three tall south windows, and creating shadows where there had been none before. There was also a fine dust dancing and eddying in its beams, as if stirred into motion by the mere opening of the door. It would be quite something, Honeybath told himself, to snare just that on a canvas. The floor was interesting, too. He noticed for the first time that the marble, where not concealed in a rather stupid way by the multicoloured rugs, was of a cold silver-grey heavily streaked with trailing strands of dark green. The effect, particularly in certain bays created by the additional book stacks jutting out into the room, was cavernous and almost subaquatic. The superannuations of sunk realms … He wondered where the quotation came from.
    ‘Is that the chair?’ Denver asked.
    It had been Appleby’s first question too. Honeybath looked at the chair, and for the first time saw the question’s prompting occasion.
    ‘Yes, it is.’
    ‘You didn’t by any chance move it, Mr Honeybath?’
    ‘Most certainly not.’
    ‘It’s a little oddly placed, isn’t it? Planted there, and directly facing the door. Not really related to what you might call the general lie of the room. Everything else is related, somehow, to whatever’s round about it. To rather a formal and unused effect, in a way.
    ‘The place is unused.’ Its owner said this with a certain morose satisfaction. ‘We’re not bookish at Grinton. I sometimes call the library the great family white elephant.’ Grinton, who hadn’t roared with laughter for some time, roared with laughter now. Then he checked himself. ‘Beg pardon,’ he said. ‘Dead man and all that.’
    ‘But there isn’t a dead man.’ Denver betrayed mild exasperation as he said this. ‘But of course there was one,’ he added hastily. ‘In that chair. Just what do you make of it, sir?’
    This appeal, being addressed abruptly to Appleby, was disconcerting. But there was no point in affecting to be