Appleby Talking Read Free Page A

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