Appleby And Honeybath by Michael Innes Page B

involved. Of course such a minor literary trouvaille would have – Appleby supposed – considerable pecuniary value; put up at the right sort of sale, it would be knocked down for quite a comfortable sum. But surely not for anything astronomical. In fact, it seemed unlikely to be for reward of this kind that an elaborate and chancy operation would be mounted. If the solution of the Grinton mystery lay in any such area, enthusiasm rather than cupidity must be the mainspring of the action. And it was extremely unlikely to be enthusiasm of a character prompting the doing of anybody to death.
    But all this remained merely perplexing. If one suddenly finds that one has been sufficiently ill-advised to murder somebody, one is quite likely – either immediately or very soon thereafter – to judge it prudent to do something about the body. Drop it down a disused well, or something of that kind. But if one merely comes upon somebody who has died – or who, conceivably, has been inexplicably murdered by somebody else – it is very improbable that any such trafficking with the corpse can have anything to recommend it. One simply hurries off (as Honeybath had done) in search of help.
    The circumstances of the moment, however, did not admit of prolonged brooding over the enigma. Miss Arne had presumably finished off with Appleby for the duration of the meal, but the lady on his other hand had been waiting her turn. She was a Mrs Mustard. So much, and no more, Appleby knew about her. The principal garment encasing her person appeared to be contrived out of a complexity of diaphanous veils, abundantly adequate for decency, the interrelationship of which would have baffled a couturier. Within, she seemed to be of substantial build and mature years. Without, she was further adorned with numerous enormous bangles and two enormous rings. She suggested, if the thought be a conceivable one, a bourgeois version of the late Dame Edith Sitwell. She must be one of Dolly Grinton’s queerer fish. So much had Appleby time to observe and conjecture, and then Mrs Mustard spoke.
    ‘I don’t know whether you have heard,’ she said. ‘But a most remarkable thing has happened at Grinton this afternoon.’
    ‘Indeed?’ Appleby took it into his head to speak as one politely expectant before a commonplace remark. ‘Grinton doesn’t strike me as a likely milieu for remarkable happenings.’
    ‘Your eyes are sealed.’ Mrs Mustard offered this derogatory information with great solemnity. ‘It is often in the most banal surroundings that we come closest to the heart of the mystery. It is often in lineaments wholly unpurged that we discern the impress of beatitude. Look at Terence Grinton.’
    Obediently, Appleby looked at Terence Grinton. There was conceivably an elusive sense in which ‘unpurged’ was applicable to what he saw. But this didn’t mean that Mrs Mustard was other than an embarrassing conversationalist. She was going to discourse on New Thought or something of that kind. She probably frequented an ashram and swore by a favourite Swami as more certainly in touch with the infinite than any other in the whole swarm of Swamis that now raved and recited and maddened round the land. Was it possible to hold her down to earth?
    ‘Here at Grinton, you were saying,’ Appleby said firmly. ‘A remarkable happening. Just what?’
    ‘A clear instance of bilocation. Not that bilocation is especially remarkable in itself. In India – I am sure you adore India, Sir John – it is quite common for sacred persons to enjoy the power of instantaneously transporting themselves from one place to another.’
    ‘Yes, of course. But now a sacred person has done this here at Grinton, Mrs Mustard?’
    ‘Not exactly that. And, unfortunately, the higher bilocation appears not to be in question.’
    ‘I fear I am terribly ignorant. There are two sorts of bilocation?’
    ‘Certainly – but in a subtle relationship the one with the other. Common bilocation