Appleby Talking

by Michael Innes

  “Unmanly?” Appleby frowned. “That blow looks like the work of a blacksmith. But perhaps…”

  The Sergeant nodded. “Just so, sir. It seems there are skulls and skulls. And this one was of the egg-shell kind. So it seems to be quite possible that the lady–”

  “I see.” And Appleby once more drew the sheet over Slade’s body. “The lady first.”

  And Mrs Arbuthnot was brought in. A striking woman with haunted eyes, she strode forward in uncontrollable nervous agitation. “My diamonds!” she exclaimed. “They have been stolen from the wall-safe in my dressing-room. Often I forget to lock it, and now they have simply disappeared.”

  Appleby’s glance moved from Mrs Arbuthnot to the sheeted figure on the floor. “Loss upon loss,” he said dryly.

  Mrs Arbuthnot flushed. “But you don’t understand! The disappearance of the diamonds explains this horrible thing.”

  “I see. In fact, you suppose them to have been stolen by the man who killed your – who killed Mr Slade?”

  “But of course! So it is idiotic to think that the murderer could have been George – my husband, that is.”

  Appleby received this in silence for a moment. “But husbands,” he said presently, “do sometimes kill – well, lovers?”

  Mrs Arbuthnot looked him straight in the eyes, and he saw that she was a woman oversexed to the point of nymphomania. “No doubt they do,” she answered steadily. “But they don’t steal their wives’ diamonds.”

  Behind Appleby the Sergeant sighed heavily, as one who has heard these childish urgings before. “That,” he said with irony, “settles the matter, no doubt.”

  But Appleby himself was looking at Mrs Arbuthnot with a good deal of curiosity. “Perhaps,” he asked mildly, “you will give me your own account of what happened last night?”

  With a movement at once sinuous and weary, Mrs Arbuthnot sank into a chair. “Very well – although your colleagues have heard it all already. Rupert – Mr Slade, that is – brought me home. It was late and both my husband and our two servants – a man and wife named Roper – had gone to bed. I asked Rupert in. I thought it quite likely, you see, that my husband would still be up, for often he writes into the small hours of the morning.”

  Appleby nodded. “Quite so,” he murmured. “But it just happened that on this occasion you had to continue entertaining Mr Slade alone.”

  “I gave him a drink. We decided we were hungry, and I went to the kitchen to cut sandwiches. It was while I was away–” Suddenly Mrs Arbuthnot’s voice choked on a sob. “It was while I was away that this horrible thing happened.”

  “I see. And while you were in the kitchen making those sandwiches just what, if anything, did you hear?”

  Mrs Arbuthnot hesitated, and Appleby had a fleeting impression of fear and intense calculation. “I did hear voices,” she said. “Rupert’s and – and that of another man: a totally strange voice. Do you understand? A strange voice. It was only a few words, short and sharp. And when I came back into this room Rupert was lying on the floor and I saw that he must be dead. I roused my husband. No doubt I ought to have thought of robbery at once. But the shock was too great for coherent thinking, and it was only much later that I found my diamonds had been stolen.” Mrs Arbuthnot paused. “I blame myself terribly. You see, I had left the main door of the flat on the latch behind us. The thief had only to step in.”

  “No doubt.” Appleby looked searchingly at Mrs Arbuthnot. “He was rather lucky to be on the spot, was he not? And you think that he stole your diamonds and then brained Mr Slade just by way of finishing off the evening strongly?”

  “I think the thief must have stolen the diamonds and then ventured to explore this room, hoping to find something else that was valuable – perhaps he had heard of the Matisse. When he found Rupert barring his way he killed him and made his escape.”

  3

  And this was the story to which Mrs Arbuthnot stuck. It was not, Appleby reflected, without some faint colour of possibility. But one major difficulty was evident. Slade had been struck from behind – to all appearance an unsuspecting man. And he was in no sense cutting off the supposed thief’s retreat; the whole geography of the apartment negatived this. To say, therefore, that Slade was barring his way to safety was manifestly unsound.

  Was Mrs Arbuthnot, then, shielding her husband with this tale of stolen diamonds? Had the two of them concocted the tale together? Suppose Arbuthnot had killed his wife’s lover. Was it not very likely that, faced by this frightful fact, husband and wife had got together to present the most convincing lie that occurred to them?

  Arbuthnot himself was brought in. He was a man, it struck Appleby, who either as witness or accused would make a poor impression on a jury. He was obviously clever and almost as obviously insincere – a man wavering, perhaps, between incompatible attitudes to life, indecisive and therefore unreliable and possibly dangerous. And now he was in an awkward situation enough, for his wife’s lover had been found murdered beneath his roof. Nevertheless, at first he faced things confidently.

  “I went to bed early and read,” he said. “I never really go to sleep until my wife gets home.”

  “And of late that has frequently been in the small hours?”

  The man flushed, hesitated, and then ignored the question. “But I did eventually doze off, and all I can say is that I heard three distinct voices. Not what they said, but just the sound of them.”

  “That’s it!” Mrs Arbuthnot broke in anxiously. “My voice, Rupert’s voice, and then the voice of the thief and murderer. He must have tried to bluff when he blundered in on Rupert.”

  Appleby ignored this. “You mean,” he asked Arbuthnot, “that you heard three voices engaged in conversation?”

  “I couldn’t say that. And I can’t be sure that the third voice said very much. But the other two were Slade’s and my wife’s, all right. So I suppose her explanation fits well enough.”

  “Do you, indeed?” Appleby spoke dryly. “By the way, was this third voice a cultivated voice?”

  Arbuthnot hesitated. “Well, yes; I’m pretty sure it was. I sleepily felt something rather disconcerting about it, as a matter of fact.”

  “A gentleman cracksman. And one, incidentally, who turned with some facility and abruptness to murder.” Appleby paused. “Mr Arbuthnot,” he continued abruptly, “you must be very aware of one likely hypothesis in this case. Are you prepared to swear – in a criminal court, if need be – that last night you didn’t get out of bed, enter this room while your wife was making sandwiches in the kitchen, and here – well, encounter the dead man?”

  Arbuthnot had gone pale. “I did not,” he said.

  “And you are sure that this story of a third voice, and of stolen diamonds, has not been concocted between your wife and yourself?”

  “I am certain that it has not.”

  Appleby turned to the Sergeant. “There are two servants – the Ropers. Are they in a position to corroborate this story in any way?”

  The Sergeant fumbled with a notebook. And Arbuthnot gloomily cut in. “Not a chance of it, I’m afraid. I told them to go to bed. And they sleep like logs. It’s been a regular joke between my wife and myself.”

  Mrs Arbuthnot nodded. “They wouldn’t hear a thing,” she declared confidently.

  Appleby moved to the bell. “We’ll have them in,” he said. “And the whole dramatis personae will then be present for the conclusion of the play.”

  Arbuthnot started. “The conclusion, did you say?”

  And Appleby nodded. “Yes, Mr Arbuthnot. Just that.”

  The Sergeant buried his nose in his notebook. He was thinking that he had heard his superiors employ that sort of easy bluff before.

  4

  The Ropers sprang a surprise. They had, after all, been very much awake, for a crash in the kitchen had aroused them. And at this Mrs Arbuthnot’s hand flew to her throat and she gave a little choking gasp. “The bread bin!” she said. “I knocked it from the shelf.”

>   “Ah.” Appleby turned to the man Roper, a quiet, wary fellow with the ability to stand absolutely still. “And, once aroused, will you tell us what you heard, either from this room or from any other room in the apartment?”

  “We heard three people talking in here: Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot and the dead man, Mr Slade.”

  “It’s a lie!” Arbuthnot had sprung to his feet.

  And his wife too sprang up, quivering. “How dare you,” she gasped, facing the servants. “How dare you tell such a wicked untruth.”

  But Roper merely looked very grim. “There’s no lie in it,” he said quietly. “It’s true we both quickly fell asleep again, perhaps before the murder happened. But your three voices we can swear to. So it is Mr Arbuthnot who is lying when he says he never left his bed.”

  There was a silence. Appleby turned to Mrs Roper, a pale, nervous woman who was softly wringing her hands. “You have heard what your husband has just said. Do you corroborate it in every detail?”

  Mrs Roper nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it’s true – God help them.”

  “Do you know anything that you believe it would be useful to add?”

  But Mrs Roper shook her head. “No, sir. There isn’t anything more.”

  Arbuthnot was now pale to the lips. “There were three voices,” he said hoarsely. “But not mine. I didn’t stir.”

  Suddenly Mrs Arbuthnot gave a shrill, hysterical laugh and turned to her husband. “George,” she said, “it’s no good. They heard you. My fibs about burglars and diamonds are useless. There’s nothing for it but to confess that you came out of the bedroom and – and quarrelled with Rupert as you did.” Again she laughed wildly. “You had reason enough, God knows. And I will admit it – admit it openly in court. Perhaps that will save you.”

  Arbuthnot was staring at his wife with dilated eyes. “For God’s sake–” he began.

  But the Sergeant closed upon him. “George Arbuthnot, I arrest you on the charge of the wilful murder of Rupert Slade. And it is my duty to warn you–”

  Appleby, who had been making a quick tour of the room, intervened. “No,” he said. “Mr Arbuthnot is entirely innocent. It was his wife who killed Slade.”

  5

  “She wanted to get rid of both of them – her husband and Slade,” Appleby explained later. “Heaven knows why – probably some uncontrolled passion for another man.”

  The Sergeant nodded dubiously. “Well, sir, I must admit she looks a bit that sort.”

  “Sex-crazy, no doubt. But she has brains as well. She planned the whole thing. And there was more to it than you might think.”

  “There was more to it than I can make head or tail of.” The Sergeant was slightly aggrieved. “For instance – ”

  “Take it quite simply, and step by step. Mrs Arbuthnot brought Slade home with her at an hour to suit herself. Her husband never really slept before she returned, and so she knew that he would be awake or dozing and hear the sound of voices. She knew that by knocking down the bread bin she could arouse the Ropers and ensure that they heard the sound of voices too. And in that way she would gain the conflicting – and damning – testimony she desired.”

  The Sergeant looked increasingly perplexed. “But that’s just where the puzzle lies! The evidence on the voices is conflicting, and you appear to be accepting Arbuthnot’s story. But why disbelieve the Ropers? You haven’t shaken their evidence in the least. And they both swear that the third voice–”

  “Was Arbuthnot’s. Well, so it was. But it came from a disk on the gramophone. I found it there before Mrs Arbuthnot had any chance to remove it.”

  “Oh, come, sir.” The Sergeant was expostulatory. “That’s an old trick enough. But here it simply doesn’t fit the facts. For Arbuthnot himself, whom it appears we are to believe, swears that he stopped in bed, that from there he heard this third voice, and that it was a strange voice.”

  Appleby nodded. “Precisely so. But you will find that the trick does fit the facts. And that it’s not an old trick, but a very new one.

  “Consider what Mrs Arbuthnot wanted to contrive: that the Ropers should hear a voice which they knew to be Arbuthnot’s, and that Arbuthnot should hear a strange voice. Once Arbuthnot had told his story, and it appeared to be disproved on the evidence of the unexpectedly wide-awake servants, and she had turned round upon him with her devil’s trick of appearing to see the uselessness of shielding him further and urging him to confess – once she had got him there it would seem there was only the gallows before him. She would be rid of both husband and discarded lover at a stroke. She and the public executioner would have shared the job between them.”

  Appleby paused and gazed sombrely round the room. Slade’s body had been lugged away; Arbuthnot had made off to some country retreat; beyond the kitchen the Ropers could be heard packing their trunks. In this expensive setting life had dried up and come to a stop.

  “On what, then, did Mrs Arbuthnot’s plan turn? On a very simple psychological fact, well known to anybody who has recorded for broadcasting and had the result played back at him. Under these circumstances a man is utterly unable to recognise his own voice – although, of course, everybody else does so. People have even been known indignantly to deny that these noises could possibly be theirs! Now, Arbuthnot had recently taken to broadcasting, and his wife got hold of a recorded talk – conceivably through Slade himself who had some sort of connection with that sort of thing.

  “She brought her victim – her first victim – home and gave him a drink. She went to the kitchen and made enough row to waken the Ropers. She knew that her husband, too, would hear any voices in this room. Then she invited Slade to listen to a bit of the record – perhaps as some particularly choice idiocy of her husband’s. So the Ropers were sure they heard Arbuthnot in this room, and Arbuthnot was equally sure he heard a stranger. Nothing more was required. The moment had come, and she hit Slade hard on the head.”

  Appleby paused. “How did I tumble to it? Well, Arbuthnot mentioned that the strange voice had some rather disconcerting quality, and I chewed on that. But the first step was earlier. It was when I saw that we had to do with a premeditated crime, and not with the result of some flare-up of passion on the spot. The poker, you know, must have been thoughtfully provided beforehand, since this room has nothing but that electric radiator.”

  And Appleby reached for his hat. “A beastly sterile room, Sergeant, as I said at the start.”

  THE SPENDLOVE PAPERS

  “Two novels and a detective story.” The Vicar’s tone was disconsolate, and he set down with every appearance of distaste the three books he had been carrying. “I don’t know what our local library is coming to. Again and again I have impressed upon the committee that in biographies and memoirs is to be found an inexhaustible store of edification and pleasure.”

  “But they keep on ordering fiction, all the same?” Appleby drew a second chair to the fire in the club smoking-room. “I agree with you on the pleasure to be had from memoirs, but I’m not so sure about the edification. Consider the case of the Spendlove Papers.”

  “The Spendlove Papers?” The Vicar shook his head as he sat down. “The title seems familiar to me. But I doubt whether I ever set eyes on them.”

  “You never did. In point of fact, they have remained unpublished. And thereby hangs a tale.”

  “Splendid!” A man transformed, the Vicar gave his library books a shove into further darkness, and beamed happily on the steward who advanced to set down a tea-tray in their place. “Pray let me hear it, my dear fellow.”

  “Very well. Lord Claud Spendlove never gained the political eminence customary in his family. In state affairs he was much overshadowed by his elder brother, the Marquis of Scattergood, and he never attained more than minor rank in the Cabinet. When it came to social life, however, it was another matter. For more than fifty years Claud Spendlove went everywhere and knew everybody; his persistence in the field of fashion eventually more than made up for any lack of positive bril
liance in it; and he had one marked endowment which was never in dispute. Lord Claud was the most malicious man in England.”

  The Vicar looked doubtful. “It may be so, my dear Appleby – although one day you must let me tell you about Archdeacon Stoat. But proceed.”

  “Moreover, Spendlove was known to be a diarist in a big way, and it was confidently expected that eventually he would put all the masters in the kind – Greville, Creevey, and the rest – wholly in the shade. There was a good deal of speculation as to just how scandalous his revelations would be. Some declared that the book would be so shocking that publication would be impossible for at least fifty years after his death. Others maintained that such a concession to decency was alien to the man’s whole cast of mind, and that he would see to it that his memoirs were just printable pretty well as soon as he was in his grave. In the end it appeared that this second opinion was the right one. On his seventy-fifth birthday Spendlove announced that his book was ready for the press and would go to his publisher on the day of his funeral. He had decided to call it A Candid Chronicle of My Life and Times.”

  With a fragment of crumpet poised before him, the Vicar shook his head. “It must have had for some an ominous sound.”

  “Decidedly. And presently Spendlove died. He was staying with his aged brother the Marquis at Benison Court at the time, and there was a quiet country funeral at Benison Parva. I myself knew nothing about all this until, on the following day, an urgent message reached me at New Scotland Yard. Fogg and Gale, the dead man’s solicitors, were in a panic. The manuscript of A Candid Chronicle had vanished.

  “At first, I couldn’t see that it was particularly serious. But they explained that through the length and breadth of England there was scarcely a Family – old Gale enunciated the word with a wonderful emphasis on that capital letter – that might not be outraged and humiliated by some revelation in the book. Spendlove had let himself go from the first page to the last, but had agreed to some arrangement for pretty stiff editing of what would, in fact, be offered to the first generation or two of his readers.