The Bloody Wood (21 page)

‘What do you mean?’ Diana Page was staring at Appleby, bewildered and prepared once more to be terrified.

‘Nothing alarming, Diana. But you did think that “He sings each song twice over” was said by Browning about the nightingale. And when Bobby made fun of you, do you remember what you replied? It was:
This one has sung tonight exactly as he sang last night
. Well, it was literally true. Subconsciously, I was myself aware of the fact – for of course I too had heard the song on the previous night. And that was my first signal, you see.’

‘But it’s meaningless!’ Martine, pale and round-eyed, burst out with this. ‘Why should anyone–’ She broke off, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘You mean that Uncle Charles made the nightingale sing in order to give pleasure to Aunt Grace?’

‘Yes. He couldn’t bring back the kingfishers, but he could bring back – or appear to bring back – the voice of the nightingale. It was his only deception, and a sufficiently strange one. But it brought another, and very different, deception into being. A third person, besides Diana and myself, got that tiny signal – and made much more of it. Went straight off to investigate, in fact. The recorded conversation between Charles and Grace owes its existence to that. And here let me tell you of something that Friary said. Describing that conversation as he heard it at five o’clock yesterday afternoon, he said it was
exactly as on the previous night
. His words almost echo Diana’s on the nightingale’s song.’

‘Do you mean,’ Martine asked, ‘that Friary heard a merely recorded conversation twice? Or that on the first occasion he heard a real conversation, and on the second a recording of it?’

‘The latter. Which means that when the real conversation was taking place the recording of it was made.’

‘But that takes us back, doesn’t it, to what Bobby was suggesting? If Uncle Charles made this recording on his machine–’

‘Your uncle didn’t make it, Diana. It was made by somebody else, on another machine, and without either your uncle or your aunt being aware of the fact. And now, I think, we have got to the end of the road.’

There was silence for a time, and then Bobby Angrave spoke. It was with the air of casual inconsequence which he sometimes affected.

‘You know, it’s odd about the nightingale.’ Bobby lounged to his feet. ‘I don’t say its song isn’t overrated. Still, it’s something very pleasant to hear. So why should the Greeks have made it the centre of one of their most beastly old myths? Pandion and Tereus, you know, Procne and Philomela. How loathsome! And yet I’ve put in nearly all my young years studying the stuff. In future I shall study something quite different. Will you excuse me for a moment, by the way?’ He had turned to Appleby.

‘Yes,’ Appleby said. He looked at the young man steadily. ‘Of course.’

Without haste, Bobby walked to the door and opened it. ‘But just what,’ he said, turning round for a moment, ‘shall I study, instead of all that Greek and Latin? A long silence, perhaps.’

He was gone. It was a second before Colonel Morrison, with a quick glance of astounded indignation at Appleby, rose and dashed for the door too. But the music room was too impeded for rapid movement. Before he could gain his goal there was a shout and the sound of running feet from outside – as if some of his own men, perhaps, had taken alarm. Then, within what seemed seconds, a loud report was heard from somewhere across the hall.

‘We shall meet again later,’ Appleby said presently. ‘For the moment, I think it is by the library that everybody should go out. And the gun room, perhaps, is a place to avoid.’

‘Good God, John!’ Edward Pendleton had got to his feet, pale and shaken. ‘You mean–’

‘I have no doubt that Bobby is dead. He said, I remember, that at the end of this affair there would be nobody to bring to justice. That was because he had so cunningly cast his uncle in the role of the criminal, and his uncle – he had managed to suggest – had killed himself. But now it is literally true. Bobby was the murderer. He has chosen to escape the dock.’

Appleby rose, grim and strained, and walked over to his wife.

‘Didn’t Bobby lose his nerve?’ Judith asked. The Applebys were driving back to London. ‘Could it have been brought home to him?’

‘Certainly it could. And he knew it as soon as I uttered the words
on
another machine
.’

‘I don’t follow that.’

‘It’s simple enough. You remember him driving off in the morning in his car, and talking some nonsense about visiting the good poor? It was his first move towards the murders. The night before, and just before I had my long talk with him in the garden, he had discovered Charles’ tape-recorder in the belvedere, and tumbled to the secret of the nightingale. His mind – I can now see – was in a whirl of excitement. He talked of the insane things that love, passion, even affection can make a man do. He said he
knew
. And so he did. He had been suddenly confronted by the pathos of Charles Martineau’s last gift to his wife. He talked of other things as well: euthanasia, murder, Lord knows what. But I believe his mind was working all the time. And, early in the formation of his plan, he must have seen one thing clearly. Charles’ tape-recorder, if fingerprints were to be found undisturbed on it, must be handled very carefully. He just couldn’t risk using it for
his
proposed covert recording. Hence his hurrying off, and buying a small instrument, which could easily be concealed. It was very rash, since it meant that, if he came under suspicion, his purchase would almost certainly be discovered. Only he didn’t mean to come under suspicion. It was his uncle – his uncle whom he had murdered – who was to come under suspicion. Suspicion of killing Grace, whom Bobby had in fact murdered too.’

‘Would there have been any other proof?’

‘Bobby’s own fingerprints were on the box that we found the recording of the nightingale in. And it was hidden in his room.’

‘Then he did have to handle Charles’ recorder to the extent of removing the nightingale tape and substituting the one he had secured of his uncle and aunt talking?’

‘Of course.’

‘But why on earth didn’t he then destroy the nightingale tape?’

‘Conceit. It was to be a secret trophy. Do you know – I believe that if we hadn’t gone to Charne all this might never have happened?’

‘Isn’t that rather a morbid thought, John?’

‘Perhaps it is. But you understand what I mean. My being there – the top sleuth in all England, as Bobby might romantically conceive me – was a challenge he just couldn’t resist. All the way through, he believed he was playing me like a trout in a stream; leading me on to discover and accept the fantastic sham of the case against his uncle.’

‘He reckoned that the machine, with its substituted tape, was bound to be discovered, and that the case against Charles would then build itself up inexorably?’

‘Yes – and he was right in the first supposition, even if he was uncommonly sanguine about the second. The business of the blown fuse was the really tricky part. You see, he had no power to contrive, for the benefit of the passing Friary, what may be called the
real thing
. He couldn’t, I mean, have Charles enact the sinister role he’d invented for him: the recorded conversation going on, coming to an end, being succeeded by Charles’ coming out of the belvedere, as if straight from talk with Grace, and joining Friary. So Bobby had to invent a hitch in Charles’ supposed plan: the unsuspected blown fuse. It can’t be said that Bobby Angrave was deficient in ingenuity.’ Appleby drew the car to the side of the road, and brought it to a halt. ‘Look,’ he said.

They had been climbing steadily, and were now looking back over wooded and gently undulating country in the direction of Charne. The house was clearly visible; and it was possible to suppose that a tiny dot, just distinguishable by the naked eye, was the belvedere itself. Behind that, a fine haze of smoke marked the town; and out from this obscurity there seemed to thrust, like reddish tentacles, the roofs of its advancing suburbs.

‘I doubt whether it has long to go,’ Appleby said. ‘It will become an expensive private school – or an almost equally expensive establishment for young criminals in the making. I hope they won’t be told about the associations of that bloody wood.’

‘It’s very strange. Bobby’s doing just what he did there remains unthinkable.’

‘At least a good deal of thinking went to it – on Bobby’s own part.’

‘I’ve thought of something. Why did he go and play the thing over at five o’clock yesterday afternoon? It must have occurred to him that he
might
be overheard – as in fact he was by Friary – and with some awkward consequence.’

‘Partly, I think, it was just his conceit over again; he couldn’t keep away from this thing he’d contrived so cleverly. Partly it was
folie de doute
, like getting up in the middle of the night to make sure you have turned off the gas tap. Would the machine play back properly, when eventually it was discovered? So he tested it once more, before putting in the blown fuse. The discovery that Friary had been within earshot must have been a nasty shock to him.’

‘The whole thing can’t really be called clever.’

‘Of course not. It was precisely lacking in what Bobby believed that he himself set store by.’

‘Rationality?’

‘Just that. That excellent fellow Morrison remarked to me at one point that it’s lucky people don’t get round to murdering one another all that frequently. It’s just too easy. Bobby could have drowned his aunt without leaving the faintest mark on her, so that no suspicion was occasioned. In contriving the signs of possible violence, he was already passing from calculated crime to fantasy. Even as it was, if he had simply gone on to kill Charles exactly as he did, it would probably have been impossible to bring the crime home to him. We’d have tried to make a case, because the sudden disfavour into which the revelation of his drug-peddling had brought him enormously increased his motive. But it’s my guess we’d have got nowhere. It was the elaboration of his plan that dished him.’

‘He must have enjoyed risks for their own sake.’

‘At least he enjoyed bringing things off. Getting Grace into the wood by herself last night, keeping Charles away, reckoning on that dash of Charles’ to the telephone in his office: in all these things he was gambling like mad.’

The car was in motion again, and presently Appleby swung it out on the high road and pressed the accelerator.

‘Like
mad?’ Judith said. ‘He was mad.’

‘Perhaps so. Perhaps it’s charitable to say that his plan was even madder than it was wicked. But the only dispassionate verdict is that Bobby Angrave was too pleased with his own cleverness, poor young devil.’

‘John, he was a double murderer – and of people to whom he owed a great deal. He had no future in society whatever. But ought you to have let him get out of the music room, grab that shot-gun, and kill himself?’

‘Morrison certainly didn’t think so. He has a feeling that the conclusion of the affair reflects on the efficiency of his men. But in the end he spoke to me very decently. He’s a good chap.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, have you? Ought you to have let Bobby take that way out?’

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President's Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at 'St Anthony's College', Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby's taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980's.

In
Appleby's End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels