Appleby And Honeybath Read Online Free

the lock.
    ‘Now, just what lies beyond that?’ Appleby was bringing a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘The library occupies the entire breadth of the wing, so it must simply be open air. A bolt hole from learning back to nature. Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet. Don’t touch the handle, Charles. Fingerprints, you know.’
    Gingerly, and using the handkerchief, Appleby opened this second door upon what, according to his reckoning, ought to have been afternoon sunshine. But it wasn’t.
    ‘My dear Charles!’ he exclaimed. ‘Just what do you make of that?’
    And at this Honeybath was inspired to a little quotation-dropping on his own account.
    ‘Hellish dark,’ he said, ‘and smells of cheese.’

 
     
2
    The smell of cheese was undeniable. It was a smell, indeed, of toasted cheese, as if somebody had lately been indulging in the humble but delectable dish facetiously known as Welsh rabbit. At half past four in the afternoon it was an unexpected smell in a dignified country house, but the explanation of this might well have lain in the fact that what Appleby and Honeybath now confronted was a seeming maze of unassuming domestic offices. If Grinton ran to anyone as archaic as a bootboy or a buttons, it was conceivable that this lowly and juvenile servitor was recruiting himself with a snack in the privacy of his own obscure quarters.
    That our explorers could arrive at any such speculation was due to the fact that ‘hellish dark’ was an exaggeration on Honeybath’s part. He had expected bright sunlight; what he had come upon was merely gloomy and crepuscular. There lay ahead a narrow and ill-lit corridor, with what appeared to be a considerable number of small rooms opening off it on either hand.
    ‘But of course!’ Honeybath said. ‘I remember now. I took a stroll round the outside of the house yesterday, and came on all this. It makes hay of poor James Gibbs’ subdued Palladian design, you know. An entire little shanty town tucked into the angle between the library wing and the main building. Quarters for garden boys and stable lads by the dozen, I suppose. A monument, my dear John, to the inexpugnable philistinism – vandalism, if you like – of the English lesser landed gentry.’
    ‘It does seem a shade dismal.’ Appleby wondered whether Terence Grinton would care to hear himself as coming from this precise social class.
    ‘And all entirely unused and deserted now. Nothing but an occasional rat stirring.’ Honeybath shook his head gloomily, but then brightened a little. ‘I wonder whether we could persuade the fellow to knock it all down?’
    ‘I doubt it. And one must look ahead. The accommodation may come in handy when Grinton is turned into a dump for the delinquent young. And meanwhile we must be said to have other work on hand.’
    ‘Yes of course. The corpse.’ Honeybath opened a door at random, and peered into a small empty room. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘these quarters can’t be quite deserted. There’s this smell.’
    ‘A clinging sort of smell. But it can’t be lingering from eighty years back, or thereabout. Try the next room, Charles.’
    The next room proved to be larger, and not quite unfurnished. It contained a folding table and chair, a camp bed, several cardboard boxes, and a cooking stove fed from a small cylinder of butane gas.
    ‘What might be called a holiday home,’ Appleby said. ‘And simple holiday fare. Observe the plate.’
    Honeybath observed the plate. It stood on the folding table, and on it lay a knife and fork and a substantial slice of toasted cheese. There was also a glass of water, and a small medicine bottle, unlabelled, and half full of pills.
    ‘I suppose they’re really there?’ Appleby asked with an effect of mild humour. ‘We’re not just dreaming something up?’
    ‘They’re there, all right.’ As if to reassure himself of this, Honeybath advanced and poked the plate with a cautious