A Family Affair by Michael Innes Page A

I’m looking for knows his way around such matters very well indeed. By the way, would you call the man we’re talking about young or old?’
    ‘Between young and youngish. Probably not much more than thirty. Which would rule him out, as far as Keynes Court goes.’
    ‘Perfectly true.’ Appleby again reflected that Professor Sansbury was one whom not much got by. ‘If I really am in contact with a single group of frauds, it isn’t your Da Vinci friend who has masterminded the lot. Did he strike you as potentially a mastermind?’
    ‘I can’t think any such idea came into my head.’ Sansbury was amused. ‘As far as I can remember, he said very little.’
    ‘Should you recognize him again?’
    ‘Oh, yes – I imagine so. Unless he were in some way disguised.’
    ‘Should you recognize his mere voice?’
    ‘That’s rather more difficult to say. But probably not.’
    ‘There was nothing peculiar or characteristic about it?’
    ‘Nothing at all. It was an ordinary upper-class English voice.’
    ‘That sounds rather important to me, Professor. In fact, he was a gentleman?’
    ‘He wasn’t anxious to suggest the air of one.’ Sansbury was speaking with care. ‘Now that you mention it, I was struck by that at the time. But it’s hard to express. It was rather as if he was playing a part. A little too many “Sirs” in his talk, and that sort of thing. Wanted to suggest himself as out of a lower social drawer than in fact he was. Funny how sensitive we English are to all that.’
    ‘No doubt. But we seem to have arrived at something, even if it’s nothing much. This fellow was performing a mere henchman’s role, and it didn’t come quite naturally to him. And we may suppose that the head of the gang – if there is a gang – had nobody more verisimilar to assign the job to.’
    ‘It reminds me of books I used to read as a boy.’ Sansbury’s amusement had grown. ‘Crooks who were at the same time great social swells. Somebody-or-other the Amateur Something.’
    ‘Raffles, Professor. And Cracksman.’

 
     
8
     
    Left to himself, Appleby let his mind continue to dwell for a few minutes on Nanna and Pippa, or rather on the problem of which they were the centre. He knew more about this affair than about any of the others, but he still didn’t know very much. It was clearly desirable that he should meet Mr Praxiteles, now the owner of these ladies only in what might be termed the shadow of a shadow. For an erotic painting, one had to assume, must be rather a frustrating object in itself. A mere replica of it must appear yet more remote from the real thing.
    Mr Praxiteles might not be easy to meet. Appleby had a notion that persons of his kidney put in a good deal of their time cruising in the Mediterranean on board rather notably well-appointed private yachts. No doubt they kept an eye on their mercantile interests that way.
    On the other hand Mr Praxiteles, if encountered, might be persuaded to converse. There was something about that quite small fragment of his history now known to Appleby which suggested that his fibre might not be all that tough. He seemed not to have put up much of a show against the unblushing blackmail of Hildebert Braunkopf. For Braunkopf had got away with exactly that. He had threatened Praxiteles with highly inconvenient publicity if he refused to exchange an extremely valuable object for a worthless one. Braunkopf must have known that Praxiteles could be intimidated.
    But meeting Mr Praxiteles – even if he were on terra firma and in England – required a little thinking out. Appleby had no standing in his affair whatever. It was only with Lord Cockayne that he had anything of the kind. Or rather – he was visited by a sudden thought – with Lord Cockayne by invitation, and with Sir Thomas Carrington (the Stubbs man) and Mr Meatyard(the Sir Joshua Reynolds man) by a species of indirect association. When their misfortunes had come the way of Scotland Yard Appleby had,