Appleby Talking Read Free

Arbuthnot will be very late.”
    George Arbuthnot flicked off the lights and left the living-room in darkness.

 
     
2
    “A fellow called Slade,” said the Sergeant. With a sense of subdued drama he gestured in the air. “Just hit hard on the back of the head with a poker. The resourceful old blunt instrument. A very simple and fairly certain manner of killing.” The Sergeant’s voice indicated a sort of qualified professional approval. “And no fingerprints either. Here we are.”
    A smoothly accelerating lift whirled them upwards. The door of the Arbuthnot apartment, by which a constable stood guard, was handsome and enamelled in a delicate cream. The sort of place, Detective-Inspector John Appleby reflected, which ate money and bred nervy folk… They entered the living-room, and he glanced curiously about him. “Arbuthnot the novelist?” he asked.
    The room gave at a first appearance the impression of gracious and civilised standards. The walls were lined with books – for the most part either new or very old – in French and English. A large late Matisse displayed its salmon pinks and acid greens on the wall opposite the window. But the whole place had been efficiently decorated and furnished in terms of some delicately-considered scheme, and nothing was visible that did not almost ostentatiously blend with the whole.
    “A sterile room, Sergeant, for sterile people living by the laws of cocktail-bars and arty magazines. Have you any kids? Imagine them let loose in a place like this.” Appleby took off his hat. “And who,” he asked unprofessionally, “cares which of them killed whom? Still, no doubt we’d better find out.”
    Slade’s body still lay prone on the carpet, covered with a sheet. Appleby twitched this away and looked down on the sprawled figure in evening-clothes which was revealed to him. It was just possible to distinguish that on the back of the dead man’s head there had been a bald patch which would have made a very fair target even in virtual darkness. And the blow had been terrific. Blood, brains, and shivered glass lay around. There was a faint smell of whisky. It looked as if the assailant had struck while Slade was standing beside a small table having a drink. Decanters and siphon were still disposed where they had been set the night before.
    “Nasty,” said the Sergeant. “Doesn’t have the appearance of something that happened in the heat of a quarrel. Nothing face to face about it. Matter of stepping up softly from behind while the poor devil was believing himself hospitably entertained. Unmanly, I call it.”
    “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