Free Appleby And Honeybath by Michael Innes Page A

to my murky past.’
    ‘Ah!’ It was plain that Honeybath relished this. And he was even constrained to an uncustomary colloquial note. ‘John,’ he said, ‘don’t make me laugh.’

 
     
6
    ‘I hope I guessed right,’ Denver said to Appleby. ‘About not wanting your official position brought forward, that is.’
    ‘My former official position, Mr Denver. But you were certainly right. I know very little about most of the people now at Grinton, and some of them might quite well take it into their heads that I was ready to meddle in this thing. Nothing could be further from the truth.’
    ‘Quite so, Sir John.’
    ‘And for that matter, you know, retired or not retired is all one. If the present Metropolitan Commissioner – a very nice fellow, by the way – was in this house now, he would have no special standing in the matter whatever.’
    ‘Very true, indeed, sir, speaking by the book.’
    ‘Well, let me make that statement for you. At four thirty-five this afternoon I was about to enter the drawing-room at Grinton Hall. I met my fellow guest, Mr Charles Honeybath, coming out. Mr Honeybath said, “John! There’s a dead man in the library.” I said–’
    Appleby was speaking at brisk dictation speed, so Denver had to grab his pen and make do. For two or three minutes he scribbled hard.
    ‘Read it back to me,’ Appleby then said, ‘and I’ll sign and you can get on to your next chap. Grinton himself, I suppose.’
    ‘Yes – Grinton.’ Denver didn’t seem enchanted with the professional brevity of this performance; in fact, he looked very like a man who wants to say, ‘But please don’t go away’. What he did say was, ‘Mr Honeybath tells me he’s painting his portrait. He’s rather a tetchy fellow.’
    ‘Mr Honeybath?’
    ‘No, sir. Mr Grinton.’ Denver was unruffled. ‘Would you have known him for long?’
    ‘For a good many years, in a very slight way. Through some female line or other, he’s related remotely to my wife. On two or three occasions we’ve lunched at Grinton. But this is our first regular visit.’
    ‘Have you noticed, Sir John, anything odd about Mr Grinton’s attitude to this room?’
    ‘My dear Denver, I’ve had very little time to become aware of anything of the sort. But, I suppose, in a way – yes. It’s no more than goes with a certain general eccentricity of character. Plenty of people, you know, don’t care much for book-learning. It just doesn’t enter their lives. But that perfectly common trait Grinton seems to carry a step further. He positively dislikes books, and so owns a frank antipathy to his own library.’
    ‘More than that, Sir John. He keeps people out of it. There’s something almost nervous about the thing. And progressively so.’
    ‘I’ve had no opportunity to remark that, Inspector. And I don’t see how you can have had such an opportunity either. To observe, I mean, any change of attitude or emphasis on Mr Grinton’s part.’
    ‘Well, not myself, sir. Certainly not. But I’ve had a word with the butler.’
    ‘The dickens you have!’ Appleby was impressed by this.
    ‘I got hold of him by saying I’d need him to hunt up people I wanted to talk to. It wouldn’t have been colourable, of course, to have more than five minutes’ chat with him. But I told him he mustn’t be surprised if one of my men turned up in this library with a little vacuum cleaner. It would be to collect specimens of dust for scientific purposes. There was a surprising amount of dust, I said. That touched his professional pride. Nowadays – as you must have noticed in your walk of life, Sir John – a butler is often the only upper servant even in rather grand places like this one. He doubles up as housekeeper as well, and is in charge of the entire bag of tricks, you may say. Well, the man explained to me that Mr Grinton can hardly have anybody enter this library – and he says this seems to have been particularly true of late.’ Denver glanced