Appleby and the Ospreys Read Free Page B

Except for Lady Osprey herself, I’ve allowed nobody to come in. But I can’t yet answer for just what occurred earlier.’
    ‘Obviously not. Are any other of Lord Osprey’s relations in the picture?’
    ‘The brother-in-law, Sir John.’
    ‘Mr Broadwater. I know about him. Anybody else?’
    ‘The heir, sir. Mr Adrian Osprey. No other relation, I think.’
    ‘I see. Is there any suggestion, by the way, of something like burglary or theft being involved?’
    ‘Nothing of the kind has been brought to my notice, Sir John. But it’s early days yet. Lord Osprey may have come upon a burglar or thief, and lost his life as a result. But it doesn’t seem very probable.’
    ‘I suppose not. And I only ask, Inspector, because I happen to know that somewhere in Clusters there is – or was – what is almost certainly a very valuable collection of old coins. Thoroughly portable, it’s likely to be. Very much more portable than mere bullion of the same value. That brother of Lady Osprey’s, Mr Broadwater, will be able to tell you about the collection.’
    ‘I’ll make a note of it, Sir John. And old coins could be put on the market here and there and now and then without much risk of detection, I imagine. So it would be an attractive haul.’
    ‘Perfectly true. But one further question, Inspector. Can you rule out, out of hand, Lord Osprey’s having slit his own throat? In that event, of course, there would be no crime involved.’
    ‘It’s certainly no longer a crime to try to do away with oneself. Or to succeed, for that matter. But a criminal charge, sir, may lie against somebody who has facilitated or urged a suicidal act.’
    ‘Deep water there, Inspector.’ Appleby decided that he had underestimated Ringwood. The man he was speaking to was a competent officer.
    ‘Not that we mayn’t find ourselves in deep water of some other sort, sir. That moat: we may find ourselves dragging it.’
    ‘That may well be. I’ll be with you…’ Appleby corrected himself. ‘I’ll be with Lady Osprey in twenty minutes.’
     

3
    Strictly speaking, and pace Lady Osprey and Ringwood, Clusters didn’t have a moat at all. The baronial dwelling, which century by century had grown larger and larger through random additions judged suitably imposing in their day, now covered the greater part of a small island in the middle of a small lake or big pond. Contact with what may be termed the mainland was achieved by substantial causeways running respectively from the main façade of the dwelling, and at the back from various offices. Both causeways, although broad enough to admit of a couple of carriages passing one another without hazard on either side, were without rail or parapet, but had been embellished from time to time with chunks of masonry judged to be in the mediaeval taste, including miniature bastions from behind which equally miniature archers might have operated. The lake or pond itself, as if offended by this tomfoolery, had absented itself at least to the extent of shrinking here and there into a condition of puddle or mere sludge. In places, however, it remained quite deep, so that a small rowing boat maintained for the purpose could be potteringly propelled in a zigzag fashion to one or another vantage-point from which guests of the Ospreys might view to the best advantage Clusters as a whole.
    Why was the place called Clusters? The late Lord Osprey (as he must now be termed) had been fond of explaining that the original building was a monastery; that an ancestor of his had come by it at the time of the suppression and spoliation of such institutions in the sixteenth century; and that chance had preserved as Clusters what had been cloisters at an earlier period. Extensive cloisters, in fact, had been torn down – reprehensibly according to some ways of thinking – and Clusters had been built out of the abundant stone thus provided. Historians and philologists from time to time professed a certain scepticism about