The Open House by Michael Innes

Some pretender has only to persuade the old Professor that he is Adrian, and he’s likely to be able to get away with a great deal.’
    ‘It’s an ingenious idea. But I doubt, Sir John, whether you are any more disposed to believe in it than I am. Still, we’ll both have to believe it if one very simple condition holds.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘If that dead body proves not to have parted with its appendix. I remember sending Adrian into a nursing-home for an appendicectomy quite thirty years ago. It was uncommonly fashionable at that time. Shall we go back and have a look? I didn’t strip the poor chap down to his tummy.’
    ‘Not while that bobby’s on the beat, thank you. But if the body has had its appendix out…’
    ‘That doesn’t advance the matter? I quite agree. And I don’t suppose Adrian’s fingerprints have ever been collected by the police. Or not in this country.’
    ‘Ah?’
    ‘So it may be the dentist or nothing, if a coroner at his inquest gets sceptical. But I increasingly feel, Sir John, that we’re on a wild-goose chase. Dash it all, the features aren’t all that mutilated. No, it’s Adrian. I’m sure of it.’
    ‘What about it being some other Snodgrass, with a close resemblance to the young man you remember?’
    ‘Is there such a person?’ Plumridge looked puzzled. ‘I can’t think of one.’
    ‘Of course I haven’t a notion, Doctor. It’s simply that one has to think of all those possibilities. It’s a kind of routine.’ Appleby paused. ‘But you said something interesting a moment ago. About fingerprints. “Or not in this country”. What do you know about Adrian Snodgrass in other countries? And about the Snodgrasses in general, for that matter? This business of a South American connection, for example. I’m quite curious about that.’
    ‘My dear sir, it would take a little leisure to put you at all fully in the picture there.’
    ‘Then why not sit down?’ As he spoke Appleby moved towards the fire, which was still by no means extinguished. ‘They’ll rout us out when they want to.’ He paused. ‘But what about that Mrs Anglebury? Perhaps you feel you ought to have an eye on her? Particularly if the police…’
    ‘Not necessary.’ Dr Plumridge had sat down, and was stretching his limbs in frank fatigue. ‘I’ve given her what will by now have knocked her out for some hours. Remarkable privileges, we medical characters have. The police mayn’t be pleased, but I simply say my patient’s interest comes first. And now, let me tell you anything I usefully can about the person we’ll agree to identify with the dead man.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Appleby said. ‘Thank you very much.’
     
    ‘I don’t know the details,’ Plumridge began, ‘of what may be called the South American background of these people. But the outline is clear enough. The Snodgrasses have been a good deal intermarried with the Beddoeses, who are another family of the same sort.’
    ‘There was a Beddoes Beddoes who was called the Liberator,’ Appleby said.
    ‘Ah, I see you know something about them. I don’t think the two families were of the same sort back in the Liberator’s time. The Liberator was an adventurer – although he might just as well be called a thug – with nothing much behind him, whereas there had been prosperous Snodgrasses in the Argentine and elsewhere for quite some time before he bobbed up. The man who built this distinctly ambitious house, Augustus Snodgrass, did so largely on the strength of properties in the West Indies; and from there other Snodgrasses had already been taking up land, and so on, on the South American continent for some time. Particularly in Azuera. They seem to have been clever enough, and wealthy enough, to hold their own through a great deal of political turmoil of one sort and another – partly, I believe, on the strength of further judicious marriages which gained them the support of banking interests in the United States.
    ‘The