A Connoisseur's Case by Michael Innes Page B

man.’
    Appleby nodded.
    â€˜Yes, he told me as much himself. Have you any idea of just what may have recommended him to the old lady?’
    â€˜None whatever, sir, I am sorry to say. Of course he was a great one with the ladies.’
    â€˜Old Crabtree was a great one with the ladles!’ Appleby stared. ‘You surprise me very much.’
    â€˜You must not let it escape your recollection, sir, that Crabtree was scarcely old Crabtree at that time – neither during Mrs Coulson’s life nor when Mr Binns began his tenancy of Scroop. He was middle-aged, of course. But men of the world, sir, are cognizant – are they not? – of the powerful attraction which some males exercise over the fair sex at that period of life.’ Tarbox paused. ‘Favoured males,’ he added, a shade unexpectedly.
    â€˜Yes, to be sure. But you don’t suggest that Mrs Coulson–?’
    â€˜Certainly not, sir. Honi soit qui mal y pense , if the old adage may be allowed me. Mrs Coulson, although highly eccentric, was even more highly virtuous.’
    â€˜She was eccentric?’ Appleby jumped at this. ‘Not merely as having a passion for knowing great people, and that sort of thing?’
    â€˜No, sir. That, if I may venture the thought, is somewhat too widely diffused a foible to be felicitously subsumed within the concept of eccentricity. Mrs Coulson was otherwise odd.’
    â€˜I see. But just how otherwise?’
    â€˜I am afraid I cannot help you to further definition, sir. It was common averment, no more. And I was not myself much in the habit of frequenting the society at Scroop. An occasional cup of tea in the housekeeper’s room – yes. But any confabulation with the man Hollywood in the butler’s pantry – no.’
    â€˜Ah, yes – Hollywood.’ Appleby had got to his feet and was leaning against the chimney piece. It seemed a more companionable way of continuing what Tarbox would have called this colloquy. ‘You don’t care for Hollywood?’
    â€˜Well, sir, there is the name, to begin with. I confess to a certain sensitiveness in the matter of nomenclature. And “Hollywood”, to my mind, is a name in the highest degree absurd.’
    â€˜I don’t quite chime in about the degree, Tarbox. But I give it to you that it’s a silly name. Have you no other reason for objecting to the butler over there?’
    For the first time, Tarbox hesitated. A butler – Appleby felt – is a butler, after all. And it is not lightly that one denounces one of one’s peers.
    â€˜One must be allowed one’s intuitive responses, sir.’ Suddenly Tarbox hesitated no longer. ‘No villainy would surprise me in the man Hollywood. A veritable Tarquin, that man might be.’
    â€˜Good heavens!’ Appleby was properly startled by this. ‘But Crabtree would have no need to be a Tarquin?’
    â€˜Very true, sir. Crabtree had a way with him, as I ventured to intimate. Even with the ladies, it may be. And certainly with the – um – wenches.’
    â€˜I see.’ This eighteenth-century species of discrimination again properly impressed Appleby.
    â€˜It was observed by an eminent historian, sir, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And it is not so very long ago that the butler in a great establishment – or at least a large establishment, since we must not exaggerate the consequence of Scroop House – was in something like that position in regard to a number of young persons.’
    â€˜What you have to tell me interests me very much.’ As he said this, Appleby found himself wondering whether the respectable and polysyllabic Tarbox was the victim of some sexual obsession. The unknown Hollywood might well be a Tarquin, but the conception of the late Seth Crabtree as a Don Juan was a difficult one. Yet it might be perfectly valid. Appleby retained a vivid impression of how he had himself