The Bloody Wood Read Free

withdrawal at an hour at which butlers are commonly required to buttle.’
    ‘I think it very nice of you,’ Judith said. ‘It’s not as if Friary can be regarded as in a category of indulged because ancient retainers. He’s surprisingly young. And he’s good-looking, too.’
    ‘Ah – I see the direction in which your mind is moving.’ Charles Martineau glanced at his wife, and laughed quite gaily. ‘It appears very likely that Friary may have affairs of the heart in the village. But we prefer to suppose – just to avoid anxious thoughts – that the sole purpose of his vespertine pilgrimage is brief relaxation within some favoured circle of superior habitués in the village pub.’
    ‘And if he is a wooer,’ Grace Martineau said, ‘he is certainly a brisk one. I’ve never known him not be back in the music room before anybody’s bed-time, and very much in command of his decanters and syphons.’
    ‘He comes back through the wood?’ Judith asked.
    ‘Oh, certainly. It is what I was going to say. You know the little belvedere? Well, I must confess to an absurd habit, if Charles will let me. Charles, may I tell?’
    ‘You may.’ Charles Martineau leant forward and lightly touched his wife’s hand where it lay, emaciated and fine-boned, on the arm of her chair. It was a gesture too unselfconsciously tender to be embarrassing.
    ‘It was our favourite place in the grounds in the early days of our marriage. We used to sit in it of an evening and gossip famously – about our reading, and the improvements we were going to carry out at Charne, and all our neighbours for thirty miles around. They were quite new to me, for the most part, because I had been brought up in another county.’
    ‘The belvedere was just the right place.’ Appleby, perhaps because amused by this last territorial touch, put in this cheerfully. ‘Seclusion – and at the same time a marvellous vista.’
    ‘Yes,’ Mrs Martineau smiled with pleasure, and nodded gently. Whatever county she had been bred in, it was evident that her present part of this one was very dear to her. ‘Well, we have been taking, Charles and I, to going there again sometimes, just at about this time in the evening. You must none of you be offended if we vanish, perhaps tomorrow evening, perhaps the evening after. You will at least be in our thoughts.’
    ‘Grace means,’ Charles Martineau said, ‘that we shall be gossiping about you all quite shamelessly.’
    ‘As soon, that is, as we have got our breath – for the climb is a little hard. And it is only Friary who will stop us.’
    ‘Friary has instructions?’ Judith asked.
    ‘Oh, no. We like to think he knows nothing about it. But we see him pass – quite close by – and so punctually that it is like having a clock in the belvedere. Which is what I was saying when I started rambling. And then, you see, we come away, Charles and I. Usually together, but sometimes first one and then the other. For we like to show that we can be a little independent of each other still.’
    Grace Martineau stopped speaking – and upon her last words there succeeded a silence it might not have been easy to break. Tactfully, the nightingale ended it with another burst of song. They listened until there came a pause.
    ‘You know, until quite lately, we used to have kingfishers by the stream.’ Mrs Martineau spoke, this time, in a low voice, as if for Judith Appleby’s ear alone. ‘I am afraid we shan’t see them again. But the nightingales have come back, as I have longed for them to do.’ She leant forward, and touched Judith’s arm. ‘There…you see?’
    On one of the grassy paths issuing from the wood there had appeared the figure of Friary. His coat could certainly be distinguished as sitting well on him. He moved briskly and with a light tread. He might have been a son of the house, Appleby thought, who had been out and about some necessary business on the estate. One rather expected a hail from him or a