The stranger – who had thus appeared to Appleby’s notably astonished gaze pat like the catastrophe of the old comedy – was best to be described as well-groomed. Like the lord who annoyed young Hotspur in the aftermath of battle, he was neat and trimly dressed; and if not positively perfumed like a milliner, he did faintly exude a hint of expensive soaps and lotions as in some glossy advertisement for masculine chic. Appleby found all this untimely – perhaps for no better reason that that he himself had been up throughout the night, and was for various reasons (including a great deal of charging around and one quite stiff fight) feeling in a somewhat Hotspur-like disarray.
‘My name is Basil Snodgrass,’ the stranger said to Appleby. ‘And if you are the stray London detective I’ve just been told about, I’ve no doubt you have heard of me.’
‘I have done nothing of the kind.’ Appleby (although the description wasn’t wholly unjust) had taken no pleasure in hearing himself described as a stray London detective. ‘If I had, I should not have been asking Mr Anglebury for information the nature of which you seem to have overheard while listening on the other side of that door.’
‘Well, it’s my own door, after all.’ Basil Snodgrass appeared amused. ‘As for what you were asking this young man, I took that to have been just some police dodge or other. But has Beddoes really not mentioned me? I find that very odd. At least it must have been he who told his butler to ring me up with this shocking news.’
‘Leonidas rang you up?’
‘Leonidas? That may have been his name, although it sounds a deuced odd one. Not that I couldn’t cap it. I once had a handyman called Pneumaticos.’ Basil Snodgrass offered this useless information with an air of wishing to modify a certain acerbity which had so far marked his tone. ‘It wouldn’t be easy to beat that, eh? But, as I was saying, this fellow got me out of bed in the small hours, and told me about Adrian’s death. He wasn’t at all civil about it. He seemed to feel that butlers in decent houses are not required to make such communications.’
‘As a matter of fact, Leonidas is understood to have left Professor Snodgrass’ employment on much that score.’
‘A good riddance, no doubt. And we could do with a rather more general exodus from Ledward, if you ask me. Clumping coppers all over the place.’
‘I am afraid, Mr Snodgrass, that as things stand at the moment there would be little point in attempting to order the police off the premises. But as soon as the obscurity surrounding the late Mr Snodgrass’ death is cleared up – and I expect it to be quite soon – they will certainly depart gladly enough. Certainly I shall.’
‘My dear sir, I have no wish to be inhospitable.’ Basil Snodgrass was again conciliatory. ‘Not even to this young man, who is totally unknown to me.’
‘My name is David Anglebury.’ David was looking angry. ‘And this is Sir John Appleby, and I think it may be rather lucky that he has turned up.’
‘Anglebury? Ah, yes. Well, we are now known to each other, all three.’
‘Am I correct,’ Appleby asked, ‘in supposing you to be a brother of Adrian Snodgrass?’
‘A half-brother. There are now no surviving children or descendants of our father’s first marriage, and I am the only child of his second. So there is nothing at all complicated about me.’ Basil Snodgrass suddenly produced what could not in fairness have been called other than a charming smile; some mechanism of social appraisal, it was to be presumed, had prompted him to modify his attitude to Appleby. ‘And I’m sorry to have announced myself as I did. Considering the situation in this house, it was in rather indifferent taste, no doubt. I’m afraid I have something of a theatrical streak about me. Perhaps I oughtn’t even to have hurried over, really. But I thought I might give poor old Beddoes a bit of support. Not that we’ve ever been in the least intimate. There’s something there, indeed, that may puzzle you: my giving the effect of having so much dropped out of the blue.’
‘Or the black,’ Appleby said. ‘It’s still quite some time till dawn.’
‘Quite so. I live, I ought to say, about fifty miles off – but my contacts with the Ledward Snodgrasses have been tenuous, all the same. No malice; it has just happened like that. Ages ago, my father made a totally new life for himself with his new marriage, and the families have continued that way.’
‘It’s not uncommon, where there have been two marriages.’
‘Quite so. And, of course, I’ve been abroad a great deal. I’m just back from Brazil, as a matter of fact.’
‘Brazil? Then I take it you are another of the Snodgrasses with South American connections?’
‘Oh, yes. It’s a family thing, you might say. Even old Beddoes, who has nothing either political or commercial about him. He has published text-books about some of the beastly wars over there.’
‘I’m not sure how much you will have learnt from the police, Mr Snodgrass. Did they tell you that we appear to have had South American callers at Ledward tonight?’
‘Yes, they did – and I’m bound to say I think it a thoroughly unlikely story. This business of a Poussin…’
‘A Claude.’
‘Ah, yes. It has never much occurred to me to find out about the Ledward treasures. There has been no particular reason, after all, to suppose that I would outlive Adrian. But, as I say, this picture-stealing affair just doesn’t square with notions of political assassination, or whatever it’s supposed to have been. You might be caught stealing a picture, and shoot the man who jumped at you. But you wouldn’t kill a man because you disliked his politics, or because he knew inconveniently much about yours, and then walk off with his Claude as a kind of luck-penny.’
‘That is true. It seems almost necessary to believe that your half-brother’s return to Ledward precipitated several operations not very intimately connected with one another.’
‘Several?’
‘Well, say a couple that embodied some criminal intention’ – Appleby glanced at David Anglebury – ‘and one other that might best be described as idle and inconsequent. Or at least eccentric and a little mad.’
‘I can’t say I have quite got my bearings on all this.’ As he spoke, Basil Snodgrass strolled forward into the corridor. He was a spare and loose-limbed man, who moved with an easy negligence which, even in the middle of this strange conversation, seemed wholly unaffected. ‘There are a good many odd people around. A respectable female domestic, for instance, who seems to belong to Beddoes’ stable, and who is said to have been rather roughly handled. Do you know whom I mean? She has some absurd name. Mrs Scrabblecoke, or something of that sort.’
‘Mrs Gathercoal.’
‘Ah, yes. And then there is the local doctor. It was natural to send for him. But there is the local parson as well. There can’t have been much occasion for his offices – not with Adrian so absolutely and instantly killed.’
‘The Professor had invited Dr Absolon to join him earlier. The idea was that he should be present to welcome your half-brother should he turn up.’
‘Which he did – but to a welcome of a very different sort. And why ever should Adrian be expected – suddenly and in the middle of the night?’
‘That might almost be called a long story.’ There was a hint of impatience in Appleby’s voice. ‘Professor Snodgrass and Adrian Snodgrass had a kind of compact. May I say that there are one or two more important matters to get clear?’
‘I’m very sure there are.’
‘Then may I ask you one rather vital question?’
‘Certainly you may.’ For a moment Basil Snodgrass had looked startled. ‘Fire ahead.’
‘Good. Can you tell me, please, whether your half-brother was left-handed?’
A brief silence was produced by this totally unexpected question. It was as if Basil Snodgrass felt some obscure necessity to take its measure. But when he did reply it was emphatically enough.
‘My dear sir, I haven’t the slightest idea. Curious as it may seem, we scarcely knew each other.’
‘But I can tell you!’ David Anglebury, who had been silent again during these exchanges, broke in almost eagerly. ‘You will think it strange that I can, since it’s such a long time since I met my…since I met Mr Snodgrass. But I told you how nice he was. He played with me for a bit: cricket, and a few minutes’ knock-up at tennis. I remember it all pretty vividly, as it happens.’
‘That is most interesting.’ Appleby gave the young man a quick smile. ‘Well?’
‘He was definitely left-handed. I am quite sure of it.’
‘Oddly enough, I am quite sure of it too.’