Appleby and the Ospreys Read Online Free PDF

the bulky side: Italian cassoni , full-length Van Dycks, and so on. Quite a large collection of coins could pretty well be carried off in a man’s pockets. Are you interested in coins?’
    This sharp question – part of a technique Appleby had commanded long ago – did take Brackley by surprise. But he answered easily enough.
    ‘Oh, most decidedly! But not in the sense you intend, Sir John. On a vicar’s stipend one has to take care of the pennies. Hence, for example, this bicycle. And I must speed home on it now. As you may imagine, there’s rather a tricky sermon to concoct for this coming Sunday. Should you happen to be over here again then, it would be a great pleasure to see you in the congregation. And, meantime, please give Lady Appleby my regards.’ Brackley swung a leg over his machine, and then appeared to have an afterthought. ‘The butler up there might know something useful,’ he said. ‘He’s an uncommonly knowing man. Name of Bagot.’
    ‘I’ll remember that,’ Appleby said, and watched the Vicar of Little Clusters pedal away. Then he himself drove on.
     

4
    Appleby was received by a tall and cadaverous man who was undoubtedly Bagot. Years had probably elapsed since the Ospreys had run to footmen. Bagot was dressed in ever so slightly greasy morning clothes. Like his betters, he would no doubt change into a dinner-jacket when a bell rang in Clusters at seven o’clock. He carried a small silver salver on which he was presumably prepared to receive a visiting card if it was offered to him. Appleby asked for Lady Osprey.
    ‘Certainly, Sir John. Her ladyship is in her sitting-room, and is expecting you. She relies upon you to clear up this horrible affair.’
    Appleby might have come down on this like a brisk ton of bricks. He said nothing, however, and followed Bagot down long corridors oppressively hung with a jumble of small paintings and engravings and photographs which it was impossible to imagine anybody ever pausing to glance at. They were broad corridors, but seemed narrow because each as it was entered stretched into a middle distance as if situated in some vast ocean liner. Clusters really was an enormous place. Life, other than that of mice from the cellarage and midges from the moat, was confined to what was called the Georgian Wing, which was itself a very large mansion, confidently rather than arrogantly regardless of incongruity with the more modest achievements of Elizabethan and Jacobean builders. Looking for some scores of ancient coins in such a higgledy-piggledy museum would be – Appleby thought – as daunting an enterprise as setting sail in quest of the Golden Fleece.
    The doors on the particular corridor down which he was now being conducted were of the duplex or bivalvular sort the ceremonious operation of which requires the regular attendance of a couple of lackeys at each. A practised hand, however, can make quite a show of the business on his own, and Bagot was accomplished at this. Without pausing in his measured pace, he thrust open both halves of such a door, stepped forward, said ‘Sir John Appleby’ in a subdued and almost casual tone. He then stepped aside to let Appleby past, reversed this movement, walked out backwards, and shut the door more or less on his nose. The low key of his announcement, Appleby concluded, had been designed to match the apartment into which he had introduced the visitor. It was large, but it wasn’t at all grand. Lady Osprey’s sitting-room – a term unassuming in itself – was furnished and equipped on what might be called a homely note. Appleby felt at once that he had discovered something about the social background of the Broadwaters. Marcus Broadwater was no doubt a highly cultivated Cambridge don, as well as a distinctly eccentric one. But neither he nor his sister belonged to what might be called the authentic Osprey world. Lady Osprey had developed a kind of patter which fitted Clusters after a fashion. But she had