Appleby And Honeybath Read Online Free Page B

again?’
    ‘Yes.’ Honeybath, although a little distrustful of the philosophical embellishment given to this series of propositions, could only agree. ‘Do we now hunt around further on our own, or do we call in assistance first?’
    ‘An immediate alarm, and sending for the police and so forth, would be the proper thing. But we can give ourselves another ten minutes or so of impropriety. Fossick around this odd set-up a little.’
    ‘There may be a lurking miscreant – or miscreants.’ Honeybath is not to be charged with offering this observation apprehensively. He was necessarily an imaginative man, or he wouldn’t have succeeded as a fashionable portrait painter. But although he could conjure up risks and horrors with some facility, he was by nature a courageous person. Nevertheless, he thought to ask a question.
    ‘John, are you armed?’
    ‘Armed?’
    ‘Carrying a gun, or something of the sort.’
    ‘Good lord!’ Appleby refrained from laughter. ‘Guns and sealed rooms go together, my dear chap. Their natural home is in your story books. And now we’ll take a look at the other rooms in this abandoned Grinton slum.’
    They looked at half a dozen rooms. The disagreeable accretions to the library’s north front proved to be, after all, not strikingly extensive. Here and there were a few sticks of abandoned furniture, but apart from these the rooms harboured nothing except dust and cobweb.
    ‘Not even a bat, owl, or temple-haunting martlet,’ Appleby said. ‘Let’s find our way into the open air. The approach to these aedes liberae may be instructive.’
    ‘You’re being devilish learned,’ Honeybath said – peevishly but not unreasonably.
    ‘It happens with detectives, in a sporadic way. Your pal Sherlock Holmes, for instance. On one page his knowledge of literature is pronounced to be nil. On another you find him quoting Goethe or Flaubert in the original.’
    ‘Bother Sherlock Holmes! And he’s not my pal. It’s years since…’ Honeybath fell silent, aware of something childish in his attitude. And he realized that his friend (like some further Holmeses, come to think of it) was given to talking nonsense while he thought hard. ‘Here’s the outside door, John. And it’s not locked. There’s not even a key.’
    They emerged into a space having the character of a small stable yard. It had a forlorn air, and it was clear that nothing much happened in it. An abandoned piece of agricultural machinery stood in a corner, and in another was what appeared to be a snowplough. There was an empty shed which might have housed a car or small van.
    ‘There’s a kind of cart track straight ahead,’ Appleby said.
    ‘Yes, I noticed it yesterday. I think it joins a secondary drive: not the grand one through the park, but a humble one leading by a short route to the village and the church. The equivalent of the suburban tradesmen’s entrance, one may say.’
    ‘No doubt. But, Charles, here’s the important thing. Some fairly recent Grinton has had the grace to be ashamed of this mess, and has managed that enormous hedge. Positively Italian, isn’t it? And in very good trim.’
    ‘Your important point being that it entirely screens all this from the main building?’
    ‘Just that – or almost that. If one walked straight across this yard one might be overseen from the top windows. But not if one skirted it on the house side. I believe it would even be possible to bring in a car or van. Risky, of course. But it could be done.’
    ‘Particularly at night.’
    ‘Particularly at night.’ Appleby nodded gravely, as if in tribute to this sagacious remark. ‘And, of course, if there was no moon.’
    ‘But people like the Grintons go in for dogs in a big way. Indeed, I believe Grinton receives superannuated fox hounds within his domestic circle. I’ve already been sniffed at by several such creatures. And the dogs might bark.’
    ‘Or not bark, Charles. That is the really significant thing. The