The Open House Read Free Page B

comfortable bed.
    But this wasn’t happening. And in front of him was this open door, this opulent and seemingly unprotected mansion. Action of some sort was incumbent upon him. Perhaps the proper initial step was to circumambulate the exterior of the whole house, seeking somewhere in its obscurer offices a lurking caretaker who might explain the mystery. But he didn’t really think much of this. He was a Justice of the Peace, and the Queen’s commission ought surely to justify a little mild trespass in face of the untoward circumstances confronting him. Appleby walked through the open door.
    He had an instant sense of being observed. So strong was this that he halted at once, and in a voice not pitched above that of normal conversation asked: ‘Is there anybody at home here?’ Only a faint echo answered him. But in a colonnaded chamber like this as many people as there were columns could play at a kind of hide-and-seek. He took a couple of paces forward, and glanced between the first two pale honey-coloured shafts. He was indeed being observed, and in a further moment he saw that it was by a whole company. Sightlessly, however, and by a double row of marble statues set in niches in either wall. They were an incongruous assemblage of undraped Greek divinities and of English gentlemen – some in huge tie wigs and some in hunting perukes. It seemed improbable that any information could be extracted from them – except, indeed, that they further attested to the general consequence of their invisible owner.
    There was at least nothing much – Appleby noted with professional approval – that a nefariously disposed person could walk away with. Anything that could be called furniture in this vast space was confined to marble benches and elaborately inlaid marble tables for which substantial machinery would be required if they were to be budged an inch. Appleby walked the full length of the hall, and opened the door at the end. The saloon – a square chamber rendered semi-octagonal by the presence of large statue-filled niches in each corner – was in much the same formally bleak condition, except that here the benches and tables (which he guessed to be Spanish) were in ancient wood, and were disposed on and around a Persian carpet which was certainly beautiful and probably very valuable indeed. Appleby surveyed this, frowning. He turned back, found another door, and opened it upon what proved to be a drawing-room. There was only a low light here, but it was quite good enough to reveal a pilferer’s paradise. Within fragile cabinets, or disposed upon the finely polished surface of sundry tables and escritoires, were innumerable objects of virtu – good, bad and largely indifferent – of the sort that silt up over the generations in a house of this kind. But Appleby’s eye didn’t linger on these; it had been attracted to a painting over the mantelshelf. He crossed the room and studied this with attention. He was left in very little doubt that the painter had been Claude. It was decidedly not the sort of possession that ought to be left hanging around.
    Newspapers and magazines, of course, were another matter. There would be no great disaster in some dishonest person’s making off with the Times , the Field , or Country Life… Appleby found that he had paused before a neatly ordered pile of these. He picked up a daily paper. It bore the date of the previous day.
    And now a satisfactory idea came to Appleby at last. There was nothing unique about this place. Several score of such lay scattered about England. Unlived in, but given a contrary appearance for the better satisfaction of the curious, they were open daily to anybody who cared to pay half-a-crown at the door. There wouldn’t even be a former owner lurking in a private wing, as was the case in many houses of the kind. Ownership was vested in some trust or society dedicated to thus preserving the tokens of what was popularly (and erroneously) regarded as a