Appleby And Honeybath Read Online Free PDF Page B

Honeybath, Appleby insisted, who must tell Terence Grinton what had happened. He had made an abortive attempt to do so already, and it was in his court that the ball still bounced. To be led by the hand, so to speak, into his host’s presence, and there to stand silent while his disturbing discovery was recounted by a third person, would be altogether undignified. That Appleby happened to be a retired policeman, and so more habituated to talking about corpses, was neither here nor there.
    Appleby didn’t precisely articulate these remarks, but he conveyed the sense of them, all the same. So thus it had to be. Honeybath felt the occasion to be awkward, but didn’t really take much account of the fact. The one thing not doubtful about the whole affair was its gravity. Embarrassments, therefore, didn’t much matter.
    They found that Grinton and his wife were now alone in the drawing-room, except for the presence of a guest called Hillam. Hillam, a middle-aged man of no considerable presence whether physical or otherwise, was understood to be a Curator of something somewhere, and a recent acquisition to Dolly Grinton’s circle of acquaintance. Nobody had been paying much attention to him, and nobody paid any attention to him now.
    ‘Grinton,’ Honeybath said firmly, ‘I am afraid I have something most unpleasant to tell you about. Less than an hour ago, I went into your library.
    ‘The devil you did!’ Grinton said. He didn’t say this rudely, but he did say it violently, and his achieving this combination of effects was disconcerting. Mrs Grinton was cheerfully amused – which was frequently her line.
    ‘I hope it wasn’t intrusive,’ Honeybath said, thus momentarily shying away from his proper business. ‘As a matter of fact, I had the thought that it might provide not a bad setting for our portrait.’
    ‘God bless my soul!’ Grinton was receiving this information as a joke – a joke perhaps in rather poor taste, but which it was incumbent on a host to take in good part. ‘The portrait? My dear chap!’
    ‘I found a dead man there.’
    ‘You found a dead man!’ Grinton allowed himself to be checked for a second before this surprising information – just as he might have been on recollecting that beyond rather a high hedge lay a distinctly wide and deep ditch. ‘The library is crammed with dead men. Acres of them on every wall. Dead as doornails, but all still thinking themselves entitled to be taken down and listened to. Go on.’
    Honeybath found some difficulty in going on. Here was something he had to paint, and hadn’t yet taken the measure of: a rip-roaring roast-beef-and-ale kind of philistine who yet possessed certain odd qualities of mind.
    ‘He was simply sitting in a chair in the middle of the room,’ Honeybath managed to articulate. ‘He was somebody I’d certainly never seen before.’
    ‘Whether alive or dead – eh?’ Almost predictably, Grinton judged this question deserving of brief but loud mirth. ‘Appleby, were you in on this artistic reconnaissance?’
    ‘No, I was not. But I’ve been in the library with Honeybath again since.’
    ‘And viewed the body?’
    ‘No. The body has now disappeared.’
    ‘Disappeared!’ It was as if here at last was something about which a just indignation must be expressed. ‘A dead body has disappeared from my library? It’s monstrous! I’ll send for the police. Dolly, get on the telephone and tell them we’ve all gone mad. Insist on speaking to a man called Denver. A capable chap. Dealt very well with those demonstrators who tried to bugger up the meet at Starveacre Cross. Beg pardon, my dear.’ This apology for improper language was addressed to his wife. ‘Disappeared, my arse!’ he then added as an afterthought.
    ‘Ought you really to do that?’ Unexpectedly, the little man called Hillam intervened with this, laying down a copy of Country Life at which he had been glancing as he did so. ‘Hadn’t we better let Mr Honeybath