Appleby Talking (3 page)

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.

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.”

“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.”

“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 brilliance 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.

“It became clear to me that the solicitors were right, and that we were facing a real crisis. In the first place, the missing manuscript was a blackmailer’s dream; anyone well up in that line of business could make a large fortune out of its ownership. In the second place, it contained a mass of stuff that could be fed dispersedly into the sensational Press without any acknowledgement as to its source. And in the third place, a great many threatened parties must have had a strong motive to get hold of the thing and destroy or suppress it. I travelled down to Benison that night.”

“A beautiful place.” The Vicar had shamelessly turned his attention to an éclair. “One of the most mellow of the great English houses. I hope you saw the orangery and the great fountain.”

“My dear Vicar, I had other things to think about. For instance, finding a room.”

“Finding a room?”

“I preferred not to stop at Benison Court itself. And the local inn was full.”

“Ah – the tourist season.”

“Not a bit of it. This was in mid-November. So I was rather surprised to see old Lord Whimbrel crouching over a smoky fire in the lounge, and Sir Giles Throstle gossiping in the bar with Sharky Lee.”

“Sharky Lee? What an odd name.”

“Sharky is one of the smartest blackmailers in England. There were also the Duke and Duchess of Ringouzel, who had been obliged to put up with an attic; and in a yard at the back there was Lady Agatha Oriole, who had arrived with a caravan. I drove on to Benison Magna and then to Abbot’s Benison. It was like a monstrous dream. The entire nobility and gentry of these islands, my dear Vicar, were encamped round Benison Court – and the only escape from this uncanny social elevation was into the society of an answering abundance of notorious criminals. They had begun to arrive in the district before noon on the day on which
The Times
had announced that Lord Claud Spendlove was sinking. Some of the more resolute of them – mostly members of the peerage – had openly imported house-breaking implements and high explosives. With the usual resourcefulness of their class, they had contacted the charitable organisations for assisting reformed cracksmen, and had taken the most skilled professional advice.”

The Vicar looked thoughtful. “Lord Scattergood,” he ventured presently, “must have felt some cause for alarm.”

“I don’t think he did. The Marquis, as I have mentioned, was a very old man; and when I saw him next morning he seemed to have the unruffled confidence that sometimes goes with old age. He took me to his late brother’s sitting-room himself and showed me what had happened. A window giving on a terrace had been forced open, and so had a handsome bureau in the middle of the room. Splintered wood and disordered papers were all over the place, and one capacious drawer was entirely empty. The Scattergood Papers, roughly ordered into
A Candid Chronicle
, had been in that.

“I asked a number of questions – pretty discreetly, for Lord Scattergood had held, as you know, all but the highest office in the realm, and was a person of decidedly august and intimidating presence. He answered with the unflawed courtesy one would expect, and very coherently in the main. If his years showed at all, it was in the way that a certain malice – what one might call the hitherto suppressed family malice – peeped through the chinks of his great statesman’s manner. And he was decidedly frank about his younger brother’s proposed book. Claud had never acknowledged the responsibilities proper in a Spendlove; his incursion into the Cabinet had been a fiasco; and while he, the elder brother, had toiled through a long lifetime to sustain the family tradition of public service, Claud had done nothing but amass low scandal in high places, and acquire the ability to adorn and perpetuate it with what was undoubtedly a sufficient literary grace. To this last point Lord Scattergood recurred more than once. But I see, Vicar, that you have guessed the end of my story.”