Appleby and the Ospreys by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

– Appleby recalled with discomfort – he had actually offered to Ringwood. Into any such picture Lord Osprey didn’t seem to fit at all well, anyway.
    And now this unprofitable reverie on Appleby’s part was interrupted by the sound of a considerable altercation in the corridor outside the library.
    ‘I tell you I’m the owner of this whole bloody dump, and I’ll go where I like in it!’
    The door had been flung open, and now a young man burst into the library. He was followed by a red-faced constable who gave every appearance of having been thumped violently in the chest, and of being minded to do something thoroughly effective in reply.
    Appleby strode rapidly across the room.
    ‘All right, officer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mr Osprey and I can usefully have a quiet talk. But one of you get back to that Music Saloon and report the fact to the Detective-Inspector.’
    This, of course, marked a further stage in Sir John Appleby’s admitting involvement in the Osprey affair. The constable, relieved rather than perplexed, took himself off as instructed, and Appleby turned to Adrian Osprey.
    ‘Are you, perhaps, looking for me?’ he asked.
    ‘Certainly I am. And it’s to ask you what the devil you are doing here. And to tell you to clear out.’
    ‘I am here on the invitation of your mother, sir. But I must add that, having once had some part in criminal investigation myself, I have felt bound to give Detective-Inspector Ringwood any assistance and advice that I can.’
    It was thus that Appleby (who had only been up to his ankles so far) definitely crossed his Rubicon into the Clusters mystery. But who was his adversary; who, so to speak, his Pompey? Could it conceivably be the young man who had thus rudely burst in on him, and who was the heir to the whole place?
    But Adrian Osprey now changed his note abruptly. He wasn’t exactly polite. Politeness was perhaps something he simply didn’t go in for. At a pinch he could manage civility, and it was this that he turned on.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I withdraw. About, I mean, ordering you to withdraw. I’ve heard, Sir John, that you’ve been a dab hand at this sort of thing in your time. So stay on. Stay the night, if you’ve a mind to it. I’ll tell Bagot, or the housekeeper or somebody, to find you a room. We could put up the whole of Scotland Yard in this warren of a place without noticing it. Except, perhaps, by the smell. Sorry. Remarks of that sort are rather my thing.’
    ‘It is a disadvantageous proclivity, sir, so far as any sort of career is concerned. You would do well to go after wit of a less offensive sort.’ Appleby said this with the instant authority of a very senior man. ‘As for staying the night, I am, of course, grateful for your offer of hospitality. But I am unlikely to have to avail myself of it. What is mysterious about your father’s death is likely to be resolved quite soon. Contrary, no doubt, to popular belief, it is so with the majority of crimes.’
    Not unnaturally, this speech disconcerted Adrian.
    ‘You mean,’ he demanded, ‘that this beastly murder of my father will be cleared up today ? Why, that fellow Ringwood in the Music Saloon seems determined to set up a kind of permanent secretariat. It’s as if he were going to be here till Christmas.’
    ‘For a good many years I was much involved in that sort of approach myself. Shall we sit down?’
    ‘Sorry, again.’ Adrian Osprey grabbed a chair and thrust it at Appleby. ‘My mother does a lot of fussing about getting people a pew. So I come rather short on it.’ With this handsome apology, the heir of Clusters sat down too. ‘But you gave it up? The sort of circus, I mean, that this chap Ringwood carries round with him.’
    ‘It gave me up. I retired – so now I have to rely simply on the little grey cells.’
    ‘Cells?’ It appeared that Adrian was puzzled by this. ‘Locking people up in quod?’
    ‘I have been involved in a certain amount of that too.’