Appleby and the Ospreys Read Online Free Page A

to relax further. ‘But, my dear Sir John, if you are interrupting me, isn’t it correspondingly true that I am delaying you? For you are clearly hurrying to bring your professional skill to bear upon the circumstances of poor Oliver’s death. Is it not so?’
    ‘Your sister, Mr Broadwater, has sent a message asking me to come over to Clusters, and of course I have complied with her wish. I’ll say what I can.’
    Marcus Broadwater appeared amused by this evasive speech – as Appleby, indeed, felt the man was justified in being.
    ‘Will it be only to my sister, Sir John, that you will say what you can? And not also to the fellow called, I think, Ringwood – who keeps on taking down what people say in a notebook?’
    ‘I have never met Detective-Inspector Ringwood. But it was he who transmitted on the telephone your sister’s invitation to me, and he struck me as a capable officer.’ Appleby said this with some severity. ‘And as I am visiting Clusters anyway, it will perhaps be natural that he should have a word with me about this sad affair he has the duty of investigating. But I have no official standing in the matter at all, and I have no intention of poking around, solving a mystery, building up a case, or anything of the kind.’
    ‘What a pity.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘The old war-horse neighs at the sound of the trumpet, does he not? I am inclined to think, Sir John, that my brother-in-law’s sudden death may be an uncommonly seductive trumpet. And you have already responded to it, I may reasonably assert, by deferring your consolation of my sister in order to confront – shall we say to size up? – one promising suspect. He stands before you.’
    ‘Mr Broadwater, you are now talking nonsense, or at least indulging in unseasonable whimsy. What your precise relations with your brother-in-law were, I don’t know. But your sister has suffered a particularly painful and brutal bereavement, in the face of which levity – or an affectation of levity – ill becomes you. I think I had better drive on.’
    ‘Come, come, my dear Sir John, don’t be a prig. I don’t know whether killing a brother-in-law rates as fratricide, but I do know that you will be quite wrong not to listen to a brief exposition of the manner in which something of that order may have occurred. I tell you I am a capital suspect. Are you, by the way, in the Queen’s commission in this county?’
    ‘If you are talking about being a JP – yes, I am.’
    ‘Then is it not positively a dereliction of duty on your part not to listen to me?’
    ‘I don’t refuse to listen to you, Mr Broadwater. It was I who initiated our encounter, and I suppose I ought not to break it off.’ Appleby realized that in this bizarre conversation he had been lured into something like a false position. ‘If you really want to present a case against yourself, I must no doubt hear it – and pass on to Mr Ringwood whatever you have to say.’
    ‘Capital, Sir John! I hope you will do exactly that. And I will begin by sketching what you have called my precise relationship to Oliver. I am a scholar by trade, and numismatics is my field of study. I pursue it at Cambridge, where I think I may say I am regarded as tolerably competent at my job. Oliver, who probably hoarded half-crowns and sixpences as a small boy, is now – or, rather, was until his death – the owner of a significant – and, of course, very valuable – collection of ancient coins.’
    ‘Which you have been looking after for him?’
    ‘I have been keeping the catalogue up to date, and advising upon acquisitions: that sort of thing. And I do a little cleaning from time to time. As you might imagine, that can quite often be a delicate operation.’
    ‘I see. And where, Mr Broadwater, is the collection kept?’
    ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘My dear sir! That is a most extraordinary statement.’
    ‘I am well aware of the fact. But even a large collection of coins can be tucked away in a