The Bloody Wood (18 page)

‘Well, perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he bequeathed his wife only a life interest in Charne, with Bobby Angrave as the eventual proprietor. But he would quite certainly leave a great deal to his wife absolutely – and damn death duties. So my point, of course, is this. If Grace had survived Charles, it would be as the owner of substantial wealth, the eventual disposition of which could be determined in terms of an existing will. If Grace’s will, say, left everything to Martine Rivière, who was her favourite, then Martine would get everything that had passed into Grace’s estate at the time of her death. Roughly, it may be put this way: it was to Bobby Angrave’s interest that Grace should die before Charles, and to Martine Rivière’s interest that Charles should die before Grace. And Bobby won.’

‘Perhaps there was a hitch,’ Judith said.

‘It’s possible.’ Appleby laughed shortly. ‘But I doubt whether Martine is the sort that goes in for hitches.’

Colonel Morrison had produced a silk handkerchief, and with this he mopped his brow. The day, it was true, was already turning warm; nevertheless there was a faint hint of the theatrical in his gesture.

‘Now for Martineau’s office,’ he said. ‘And I can only hope there’s to be no hitch, my dear Appleby, in what you’ve pretty well promised me before midnight.’

‘It’s unlikely. I can’t say more than that.’

‘John is intolerable.’ Judith took her husband’s arm. ‘Quite, quite intolerable. But he commonly brings these things off all the same.’

‘I have faith in him,’ Morrison said. ‘When backed up by you.’ He hesitated. ‘By the way, perhaps I should mention…well…in Mr Martineau’s office–’

‘The body’s still there?’

‘Yes. The photographs have been taken, and the fingerprint work done, and so forth. But the matter of posture and so on is so crucial–’

‘Yes, of course. And you won’t want a crowd.’ Judith was not in the least unwilling to be thus dismissed. ‘I think I see Martine in the loggia. I’ll go and join her.’

It was with evident relief that Morrison watched Judith move away.

‘Face anything, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘But no reason to shove just this at her – eh? Don’t mind telling you, it gave me a bit of a turn myself.’

Bobby Angrave stood in the hall. He was watching several plain-clothes policemen packing miscellaneous equipment in boxes. There were two police cars and a van in front of the house, and several uniformed constables were also visible. Bobby turned away from this spectacle and advanced towards Morrison and Appleby. Although his manner made no parade of owning the place, he had in some way taken on an air of authority. This was partly evident in a careful courtesy.

‘If it isn’t holding you up,’ he said, ‘may I have a word with both of you?’

‘Most certainly.’ Morrison’s reply was brisk. ‘Anything you have to say, Mr Angrave, is material. It will be considered carefully. Very carefully, indeed.’

‘There’s nobody in the library.’ Bobby led the way there, let the others enter before him, and then shut the door. ‘I suppose,’ he asked politely, ‘that if one is proved to have committed suicide one is cast into prison at once?’

‘Your question is meaningless, sir.’ Not surprisingly, the Chief Constable’s reception of this frivolity was stony. ‘The act of suicide is illegal, and the attempt is therefore illegal too. But, as you know perfectly well, at the present day it is seldom followed by the institution of criminal proceedings – unless there has been a suicide pact, or something of that sort.’

‘So it’s very probable that your activities at Charne are not directed at finding a criminal?’

‘They may well do so.’

‘That’s just what I’m afraid of.’ Bobby Angrave produced this astonishing remark prefectly naturally. ‘Rather to your surprise, you may, in a sense, come upon a criminal. I wonder whether it’s a good idea?’

‘Mr Angrave, it is hard for me to follow you. You cannot expect comment on the strength of such cryptic remarks.’

‘I’m only saying that it seems to me you might reasonably leave well alone.’

‘My dear Bobby’ – Appleby thought he had better interrupt – ‘it isn’t easy to describe as “well” a state of affairs involving two unexplained unnatural deaths. It’s the Chief Constable’s concern to establish the truth, whether it leads to finding a criminal or not.’

‘And it seems to be your concern too, sir, since you’ve started mucking in.’ Bobby said this in a cheerful tone apparently designed to render the words tolerably inoffensive. ‘My point is, you know, that I don’t believe you are going to find anybody to jug. I suspect that a stage will come when you both realize that. There won’t be any justice to execute – and, if that’s so, will it be all that sage and sensible to feel there’s nevertheless a truth to vindicate? I know you both have a professional character, and all that. But I put it to you simply as between gentlemen.’

‘You seem to be suggesting conspiracy,’ Morrison said grimly.

‘I suppose you can put it in that stuffy way, if you choose. But you know perfectly well that I mean.’ Bobby had walked to a window, and was surveying the terrace. ‘All those Black Marias, and big-bottomed bloodhounds straining at their leashes–’

‘Mr Angrave, I will not listen to offensive language about the men under my command.’

‘All right, Colonel, all right.’ Bobby allowed himself a flash of impertinence. ‘But you understand me perfectly well. Martineaus have been around this place for quite a long time. I’d have supposed the dossier could be closed without bringing in the Sunday reading of the folk. Or even the BBC. You know the kind of thing. A fellow with a disagreeable accent standing at the lodge gates and talking into the cameras about the dark mystery lying up the drive behind him.’

There was a moment’s silence. This was because Colonel Morrison had been reduced to speechlessness. He would have been less speechless, perhaps, if this outrageous old-school-tie stuff hadn’t in fact touched some chord in him.

‘I’d have supposed we could all be trusted,’ Bobby said. ‘If it came to the crunch, I mean.’ He turned round and looked straight at Appleby. ‘I appeal to you,’ he said. ‘My aunt drowned herself, because her few remaining weeks of life were not worth bearing. My uncle shot himself, because he had no wish to continue living.’

‘Bobby, are you stating what you believe to be the truth, or simply what you have a notion it’s right and gentlemanlike to accept?’

‘You know the answer to that one, perfectly well.’ Bobby turned to Morrison. ‘I’m right in believing,’ he asked, ‘that drowning is the method of suicide more commonly adopted by women than any other?’

‘No, you are not.’

‘But among my Aunt Grace’s age group it is true?’

‘Yes – in the sense that drowning headed the statistics until not so very long ago.’

‘Men, on the other hand, don’t reject methods involving bloodshed and disfigurement?’

‘That is true. Mr Angrave, you appear curiously in command of the technicalities of this subject.’

‘I’ve been reading the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
– my uncle’s copy, which is rather an old one. So you must forgive me if I’m a little out of date. My point is that everything has happened–’

‘By the book?’ Appleby asked.

‘You can put it that way. I was going to say, simply, in a perfectly natural manner.’ Bobby paused, and eyed the two elderly men before him. He appeared to determine that he had effected nothing. ‘You must go ahead,’ he said abruptly. ‘You must go ahead, and unearth your pain and scandal. I don’t want to exaggerate, you know. It won’t prove all that awful.’

‘We shall certainly go ahead.’ Morrison spoke stiffly. ‘At the moment, and for a start, we are going into your uncle’s office. I understand that Sir John would like to see the butler, Friary, there. May I ask you to be so very kind as to send him to us?’

‘Very well. And, no doubt, you must follow your own lights. I go on record as thinking it a pity. That’s all.’

Bobby Angrave turned and left the room. Morrison watched him go in silence, and then turned to Appleby.

‘I can’t make that young man out at all. What was he after? Have you any idea?’

‘Well, yes – I think I have. There may come a point at which we have a lurking feeling he was right.’

‘Good God, Appleby! You don’t mean you think we should drop the thing, and let the coroner have his jury bring in their two harmless verdicts?’

‘Far from it. And now we’ll view Charles Martineau’s body.’

‘One can see why he would come straight in here,’ Appleby said, when the body had been covered up again. ‘It would be the natural place from which to telephone for help.’

‘Martineau did just that. He called Fell.’

‘And Fell was at home?’

‘No, but he got back from some call or other fifteen minutes later.’

‘I suppose Fell could walk straight into the house if he wanted to?’

‘I’m sure he could. And it’s a habit busy doctors have.’

‘So while Martineau was in the act of telephoning for Fell, Fell could have walked in here and killed him?’

‘Not a doubt of it.’ Colonel Morrison produced his silk handkerchief again. ‘But I’m not sure he would know about the gun. And I think the gun would have had to be secured beforehand. It was kept, loaded, in the top drawer of that desk.’

‘Locked up there?’

‘Unlocked. It’s amazing what people will do. Martineau doesn’t even appear to have troubled me for a licence for the damned thing.’ Morrison paused broodingly. ‘It doesn’t seem to me likely that Fell would know about it.’

‘I rather agree. But any member of the household might. Friary, for example, is a type who would poke about in drawers. And either of the young people might know.’

‘Yes – but not Mrs Gillingham. Not that that’s relevant.’ Morrison was faintly ironical. ‘She’s supposed only to have eliminated Martineau’s wife, and not Martineau himself as well… Come in.’ There had been a knock at the door. Friary entered. And Appleby tackled him at once.

‘Friary, I suppose you keep a general eye on this room?’

‘Certainly, sir. I have regarded its oversight as a regular part of my duties.’ It couldn’t be said that Friary’s nervous tone was improving; indeed, he had now taken to glancing apprehensively about him. But there was still something faintly contemptuous in his bearing. It emerged, Appleby reflected, in his manner of speech. Friary talked like a stage butler, one had to suppose, because he was inwardly unreconciled to being a real one.

‘Very well. Will you be good enough to tell me whether you notice anything unusual about the room now?’

‘The presence of Mr Martineau’s body might be so described, sir.’

This produced an impatient exclamation from Colonel Morrison, as well it might. But Appleby was unmoved.

‘That, of course, is true. But look about you carefully. Are you aware of anything missing, or anything disarranged?’

Friary obeyed this instruction. He even made a circuit of the small room, giving the dead man under his sheet a wide berth.

‘I am not conscious of anything out of the way, sir.’

‘Thank you. But would you mind looking at the writing table beside the fireplace? It has, I think, fairly recently had a new leather top?’

‘That is so.’

‘Look at the surface. Do you see four very slight circular depressions, which form a square, and are set about a foot apart?’

‘I believe I can just distinguish what you refer to, sir.’

‘Of course you can.’ Appleby’s tone was suddenly sharp. ‘What is it that commonly stands there, and isn’t there now?’

‘I am afraid I cannot say.’ Friary, who had been scrutinizing the leather surface of the table with exaggerated care, looked up with a wooden face. ‘Possibly Mr Martineau’s typewriter.’

‘That is on the desk, and its dimensions are quite different. I am afraid I must press you about this. It can’t you know, really be beyond your recollection.’

There was a moment’s silence. It would have been hard to tell whether Friary was uneasy before the particular point at issue, or whether he was simply ceasing to stand up well to the total situation. He licked his lips.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. You are quite right. It has come back to me. What usually stands there is Mr Martineau’s tape-recorder.’

‘A tape-recorder?’ Morrison, who had been staring gloomily out of the window, turned round and stared at Appleby instead.

‘I see,’ Appleby said. ‘And where is this tape-recorder now?’

‘Undergoing repair, I believe, sir. Mr Martineau mentioned to me a week or two ago that he had taken it into town for that purpose. Presumably he had not picked it up again. And it has certainly not been delivered at Charne.’

‘Do you happen to know where he took it?’

‘Yes, sir. He was specific about it. Curtis and Redpath, in High Street.’

‘Thank you. We needn’t detain you longer now.’

Morrison waited until the door had closed behind Friary.

‘I suppose it’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘But – do you know? – I never hear of a tape-recorder without remembering some mystery story or other. By one of those dashed clever women who concoct such things. Frightfully good. Only, of course, I don’t remember how it was brought in… Sorry.’ Morrison had become aware that Appleby was at the telephone.

The call took only a couple of minutes.

‘Well,’ Appleby said, as he put down the receiver, ‘–you heard
that
. Just what do you make of it?’

‘You’re sure you were actually speaking to Curtis and Whatever?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Martineau must have changed his mind. Taken the thing somewhere else.’

‘It’s a possibility, of course. But it doesn’t quite fit with what the fellow in the shop said. Martineau always took his electrical gadgets of all sorts there. He’d done so for years.’

‘In that case our friend Friary is a damned liar – which is something that I take it we’re pretty sure of already. Pinched the thing himself, I suppose. But what would he have done that for?’

‘Curtis and Redpath sold it to Martineau. You heard me ask about that. They say that, although not bulky, it’s a very high-class instrument. You may laugh at your dashed clever women, Morrison. But there’s almost no limit to the tricks that can be played with such a thing.’