Appleby And Honeybath Read Online Free PDF Page A

sedge is withered from the lake, and no dogs woof.’
    With this peculiarly extravagant perversion of Keats and Conan Doyle, Appleby led the way back to the library.
    But then – rather to Honeybath’s surprise – he lingered there. It might almost have been said that the retired Commissioner lingered there wistfully. And, as if aware of betraying this oddity of feeling, he explained himself.
    ‘It’s the police, all right,’ he said. ‘A simple dead body can be coped with, at least in the first instance, by the family doctor. He arrives with his little black bag, pronounces life to be extinct, and then conceivably has to wonder whether establishing the cause of death requires a p-m. An autopsy, as the jargon has it nowadays. But, Charles, a missing dead body is quite another matter. You report it to your local police station; uniformed men turn up in a miraculous ten minutes; as soon as they’re satisfied that the affair isn’t nonsense they get on the blower; and the plain clothes chaps from their detective branch are likely to be with you ten minutes after that again. And all this in the sleepiest part of the country you care to choose. The Fire Brigade just isn’t in it. The speed of the operation can be very disconcerting.’
    ‘I suppose that must be so.’ Honeybath looked doubtfully at his friend.
    ‘I myself shall be in danger of becoming irritated. They won’t let me in, you know. Not into this library again. It would be dead against all policemanly etiquette. Not like all those fairy tales you have in your head, with the thick-headed Inspector hurrying forward and crying out “Thank God you’re here, sir”.’
    ‘John, don’t be idiotic. I have no such…’
    ‘But it’s you, Charles, that I’m thinking of.’ Appleby pressed on – heedlessly and handsomely. ‘You have such an extraordinary yarn to tell them, you see. A vanishing corpse! They’ll be conscientiously bound to assume that you’re either off your head or having them on. Probably the latter. They have a kind of folklore about houses like this and their inhabitants. Wild carouses and crazy wagers. A bets B he can persuade C to plunge the telephone into a bucket of water. That kind of thing. So this vanishing corpse is nonsense, they’ll tell each other, and agree that their uniformed colleagues were right thickies to suppose anything else. And they’ll interrogate you on that basis. Three or four of them, all gathered round.’
    ‘John, I really think this kind of fun…’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ Appleby was perhaps genuinely abashed. ‘But I’m serious, in a way. You will find the whole routine trying, I’m afraid. But others may find it more trying still. There’s a fair-sized party at Grinton this weekend. I’ve no reason to suppose there’s much in the way of dubious goings-on. But people don’t like having their movements inquired into in an alibi -seeking way. Of course it mayn’t come to all that. But it very well may.’
    ‘Aren’t you being a bit portentous, my dear chap?’ Honeybath was rallying. ‘My own story is rather macabre but quite simple, and I shan’t in the least mind being questioned by your policemen.’
    ‘Good. But, by the way, don’t start offering them conjectures.’
    ‘Conjectures?’
    ‘Well, take this. Remember our brief exchange about the pose or posture of the body? Slumped or perched? That sort of thing. “If a sitter sat like that, I’d beg him to relax.” I think you said that to me. Repeat it to a competent detective officer, and he’ll be on to something at once. Rigor mortis . Did the appearance of the body, he’ll ask, suggest that well-known post-mortem condition to you? Did you by any chance feel a joint or limb? Well, it’s an important point, of course, in attempting to determine the time of death. But I imagine it was just not in your head – and you’ll do no good cudgelling it for what was never there, or starting to say things of the “I rather think”