Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes

reflection. It might be quite a useful exercise.
    So far, there were two strands visible in this affair, and they were not of a sort to come together readily into a pattern. In the first of these strands he was himself, it might be said, a tenuous thread. A couple of years ago there had been some not very spectacular art theft at Elvedon; quite recently the deprived owner, Maurice Tytherton, had taken it into his head that he would like to make the acquaintance of Sir John Appleby, a celebrated authority on such matters; the said Sir John had presented himself at Elvedon (this as a consequence of a rather childish stratagem on the part of Colonel Pride) to find that Tytherton had just met a violent end – and to find, too, that an old adversary of his, the not too reputable art-dealer Egon Raffaello, had been staying there as the dead man’s guest. All this might, or might not, add up; and it was certainly desirable to obtain much more specific information about the theft than stood at the beginning of the series.
    What had tended to obscure this strand in the affair, and to obtrude the other, was really what might be called the moralism of Tommy Pride. Pride had a bad conscience about not having been quite frank about the occasion of his taking Appleby over to Elvedon, and this was sharpened by his perhaps obsessive sense that the place was a haunt of vice. Or at least that it was full of people who exhibited the most rotten bad form – as Tytherton had done, most strikingly, by bringing his mistress into his wife’s house. But at least it seemed true that there was this strand to the mystery; that the house party at Elvedon – not to speak of the expatriate son, quartered in this pub, and either seen or not seen at a compromising time of night by Mr Voysey when looking for badgers – did hint a state of affairs which might generate some species of crime passionnel .
    Brooding over this, there suddenly came into Appleby’s head the totally incongruous figure of Miss Jane Kentwell, celebrated as having found the body. Que diable allait-elle faire dans cette galère ? She had very little appearance of being likely to find herself at home in raffish society, any more than she had of connoisseurship in the arts. Perhaps she really did make something of a profession as a seeker out of charitable gifts and bequests – but had she been admitted to Elvedon on that ticket? One had no sense of it as a place in which any philanthropic bounty was likely at all notably to flow. There was a small note of the enigmatic, Appleby told himself, about Miss Kentwell.
    It was at this point in his meditation that Appleby noticed he was no longer alone in the public bar of the Hanged Man. A person of superior appearance had entered, been provided with a tankard, and modestly retreated to an unobtrusive corner. Appleby took another look at this superior person, and saw that he was none other than Catmull the butler.
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    There is no prescribed etiquette for casual rencontre between butlers and retired Commissioners of Police. The thing has to be played by ear. Appleby’s manner of coping now was dictated by a lively sense of something interesting that must lurk in Catmull’s having made a break from Elvedon at the present hour. The man had either served his buffet luncheon and immediately downed tools, or deputed the whole operation to some subordinate menial. Perhaps like Appleby himself he had felt a strong compulsion to withdraw and think matters out. Reflecting thus, Appleby risked an intrusive move. He picked up his own tankard and crossed over to Catmull’s corner.
    â€˜May I join you?’ he asked. ‘It seems pretty quiet here today.’
    Catmull nodded. The gesture indicated at once that when he stepped outside the Elvedon ring-fence it was into a position of equality with all men. Appleby approved of this, although he wasn’t sure that he approved of Catmull. And if Catmull was