The Bloody Wood Read online

  ‘A fortnight – nearly three weeks. It seems much longer.’

  ‘You mean it’s rather dull?’

  ‘Yes – no. I don’t know. Martine and I ride together. And play golf. Tennis, when we can persuade Bobby and somebody else to join in.’

  ‘Is Bobby good?’

  ‘Of course not. Bobby’s a bit of a rabbit. But he’s better than nobody.’

  As Diana said this, her glance strayed to the door through which Friary had just departed, with the result that Appleby had once more to clamp down on facile conjecture.

  ‘Isn’t there much in the way of a neighbourhood, as they used to say? Young people for tennis, and so forth, not too far off?’

  ‘There must be lots of people in the town, but the Martineaus don’t seem to have much to do with them. At Weston Place – that’s the nearest house like this – there’s only a crowd of frumpy girls.’ Diana said this with a considerable effect of grievance. ‘At Feathers there’s just the one daughter, Simona, who’s frightfully stylish and deb, and does her best to monopolize any young men there are. Ronny Clandon at Proby used to be a resource. I liked Ronny. But, of course, he was binned.’

  ‘Binned? You mean the poor young man went mad?’

  ‘Oh no. Ronny just took an awful lot of drugs, and his parents got in a panic. They’re terribly square.’ Diana looked at Appleby appraisingly. ‘That means something like old-fashioned,’ she added.

  ‘Yes – I think I’ve heard the term.’

  ‘The funny thing about drugs is that they seem to be catching.’

  ‘Well, yes. I’ve heard that too.’

  ‘The same thing happened to Tim Gorham.’

  ‘And did they bin him?’

  ‘Oh, much worse. Tim was sent to Australia.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. Did Tim live near here too?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was a friend of Ronny’s. They were both frightfully rich, although hardly more than twenty-one. Tim had an Aston Martin DB5, and its windows worked by electricity. So it was a great shame.’

  ‘An absolute calamity,’ Appleby agreed gravely. ‘But shall we go back to the music room? It’s where evenings here usually end.’

  ‘Very well.’ Diana gave a final touch to her nose, and stood up. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I think they never will end.’

  5

  The music room was the largest apartment at Charne – large enough to make one keep wondering how it fitted so unobtrusively into a house the total dimensions of which appeared, from the outside, as of no more than the moderate order. It would have appeared larger still if it hadn’t been cluttered with too much furniture – the Martineaus, like many prosperous people, having been for a good many generations inclined to acquire costly and handsome objects without an answering willingness to part with existing possessions no whit inferior in these regards. If this made it a shade oppressive so too did its principal decorative feature: an almost unbroken band of large paintings by Holman Hunt, executed upon canvas but applied to the walls within a panelling rather heavily embellished in gold. The series was understood to represent Shakespeare’s Use of Song. There was Orsino, calling for more of the Food of Love. There was Desdemona, delivering herself of ‘Sing willow, willow, willow’. There was the unfortunate Christopher Sly, being assured that Apollo was playing for him. There was Jessica, never merry when she heard sweet music. There was a great deal more – and the cumulative effect, although no doubt apposite in a music room, was undeniably on the noisy side. The Pre-Raphaelites were, on the whole, lucky with their colourmen; their pigments don’t fade or tone down; these exercises of Holman Hunt’s were as pristine in their crammed detail as they had ever been. They rather commanded one, therefore, as often as one entered the room.

  They rather commanded Appleby now, as he came in with Diana Page in front of him. Indeed, he found himself actually pausing as if to consult them – or to respond, it might be, to some tiny signal which one of these scenes or characters had contrived to flash at him. In a moment the sensation was gone again. He remembered that he had experienced something very similar only a short time before.

  Of the house party as it had assembled in the loggia, only Mrs Martineau was no longer in evidence. Her husband, erect and spare, stood in front of the fireplace; above his head Lear’s Fool, a wisp of motley on the darkening heath, regaled his master and the faithful Kent on the theme: he that has and a little tiny wit. Bobby Angrave was certainly right in saying that his uncle had another twenty years in him. Many men similarly circumstanced, it occurred to Appleby, if looking forward to such a span of time, would judge it proper that a place like Charne should not be without a mistress. It was hard to imagine Charles Martineau married again. And it was harder, somehow, to imagine Charne without Grace, who had simply come to it as a bride, than without Charles, who had inherited it. But women sometimes do grow into a house in that way, and take on the main burden of guarding and expressing its continuity. It would be Mrs Martineau who would be chiefly horrified if, say, it were suggested that the Holman Hunts be detached from the walls for despatch to a museum, or even that a little more room be made here for simple moving about.

  How much Mrs Martineau did stand for Charne was emphasized at the moment by the mere fact that, since she had gone to bed, Martine Rivière was in some slight manner acting as hostess during these last social exchanges of the evening. Martine was a very different sort of person from her aunt. As Mrs Martineau’s niece, it seemed unlikely that she would ever inherit the property, although Appleby rather understood that Charne was in no way tied up or entailed. But suppose she married her cousin Bobby Angrave, who did seem a likely heir – what would happen then? In the fullness of time poor Holman Hunt would certainly vanish in favour of whatever might be held in vogue in that particular future; the place would be given a new and contemporary note; there would be a good deal of entertaining of the sort that reflects less a play of personal sympathies and attractions than a policy or line in some chosen field of manoeuvre – political, literary, artistic, or whatever. No harm in that. And whether, in these circumstances, Charne would continue to be a barren house was an open question. Appleby found he couldn’t imagine Martine Rivière’s children by Bobby Angrave. But this didn’t mean that they mightn’t, one day, be swarming all over the place. Dimly, one rather saw them as little eggheads – and chilly ones at that. But at least Charne would give them a chance. They could first paddle and then swim in those great stone basins; they could be Cherokees or Martians in Charne Wood.

  Meanwhile, Charne was rather massively as it had been for a long time. The ‘improvements’ about which the young husband and wife had talked in the little belvedere long ago must themselves have been of a conservative order. It was true that the house now preserved an even temperature, summer and winter, throughout; true that water, hot and cold, ran into its every corner, true that it displayed that proliferation of elegant ivory telephones convenient in an age in which it is politic to converse with servants rather than baldly summon them. But these were superficial changes. Essentially, two wars, each with its succeeding peace, had left Charne very much as it had been.

  Abandoning Diana – which seemed the tactful thing to do – Appleby moved over to Martine. She was very far from being a charmless person. Indeed, Nature had formed her perfect – as a statue may be perfect, for she had a figure from which one could almost imagine the most lusty bachelor as stripping the garments with an aesthetic rather than an erotic intent. On the other hand, she didn’t suggest herself as a creature without passion; it was simply that she rather left one wondering under just what circumstances this marble Galatea would spring to life.

  ‘My aunt has made her excuses,’ Martine said, a shade formally. ‘She has gone to bed. How much she likes to have her friends around her! But it tires her, all the same.’ She pointed to a table. ‘Won’t you get yourself some whisk
y, Sir John? Friary is locking up.’

  ‘Thank you. Is Friary keen on security? It’s a quality commending itself to a policeman.’

  ‘I think he is. And quite a lot could be carried off by enterprising burglars, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Well, yes. One hardly sees them getting away with the Holman Hunts.’

  ‘No. But the spoils of Charne are very considerable, all the same.’

  ‘I’m sure they are. The burglars could fill several sacks with Georgian silver alone.’ Appleby hoped be wasn’t looking at Martine Rivière too curiously. He had a notion that burglars were not very much in her head. ‘If they succeeded,’ he went on, ‘I believe your aunt would be more upset than your uncle.’

  ‘In a way, yes. Aunt Grace doesn’t greatly prize material things in themselves. But she would certainly see the Martineau silver – although much of it is quite ugly – as part of an order it would be very dreadful to see violated.’

  ‘Do you sympathize with that – I mean in a general way? I think of you, Martine, as rather avant-garde, and not terribly impressed with the virtue of walking in the ancient ways, just for their own sake. Is that wrong?’

  ‘In the light of one’s own needs, one should make a rational use of what comes to one.’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes, I suppose I’ve always tried to do that myself.’ Appleby studied the small splash of whisky in his glass. Again he didn’t want to stare at this young woman as if she were an enigma. Just this sentiment, it had occurred to him, might have been expressed by her cousin Bobby. In fact he recalled that ‘rational’ was one of Bobby’s pet words. ‘I imagine,’ he said casually, ‘that you and Bobby have seen a good deal of each other since childhood. Do you find that you have much in common?’

  ‘There are things that we are both interested in. I wouldn’t call us natural allies. I don’t think we’ve ever been much prompted to form a common front. Uncle Charles, you know, wants us to get married. Do you think it would be a good idea?’

  ‘I think it would be very rash to give an opinion.’ Appleby, who thought of himself as an elderly person of conventional mind, had been a little surprised by this bald question. ‘No doubt,’ he added demurely, ‘you will yourself give the matter thought.’

  ‘Oh, but I have. And Bobby too, of course. It does represent one possible solution.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Appleby wasn’t very clear what this was about – or why this normally reticent girl should be entering upon the subject merely, it seemed, for the sake of making conversation. Her tone hardly suggested that what a ‘solution’ had to be found for was any very passionate involvement of human hearts. Presumably what was in question was the disposition of property – and, in particular, Charne itself. Appleby had been thinking about this only a few minutes before. But he saw no reason to enter further into the topic now, and his next words were intended to dismiss it lightly. ‘Well, you both have a little time to think about it. It isn’t as if the years were beginning to pass very noticeably over either of you.’

  ‘I’m two years older than Bobby. Don’t you think it shows?’

  ‘Looking at both of you, I shouldn’t have an idea, either way.’ Appleby reflected that this was quite true, as far as any guessing at birthdays went. On the other hand, Martine struck him as more mature than her cousin, by a long way. It is often so, when one sets a twenty-year-old young woman beside a male contemporary almost straight from an English public school. Bobby Angrave, of course, carried around a lot of precocious intellectual sophistication. But this only served to make the point more evident.

  ‘Then I must be very well preserved,’ Martine said. ‘So is Uncle Charles, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Everybody says that.’

  ‘Aunt Grace is against it.’

  ‘Against your Uncle Charles’ being–?’ Appleby was astray before this inconsequence.

  ‘No, no.’ Martine shook her head with an impatience very like Bobby’s. ‘Aunt Grace is against the idea of marriage. She would like me to do better.’

  ‘You mean that she would like you to marry a millionaire or a nobleman?’ Appleby was coming not at all to care for this conversation.

  ‘Not necessarily. But she thinks Bobby is no good.’

  Appleby put down his glass, and looked round for his wife. But Judith was at the other end of the room with Diana Page, with whom she seemed to be in rather more than casual talk. And Charles Martineau had moved into a window embrasure with Bobby. The two men were studying some map or plan laid out on a large table there. The picture, Appleby suddenly saw, was very much that of a landed proprietor, anxious to do nothing on his estate without canvassing the interest and approval of his heir. It did seem as if the Martineaus, in most things so profoundly at one, differed in this one area of their concern.

  ‘In that particular relation,’ Martine said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby supposed that his attention must have strayed.

  ‘I don’t mean that Aunt Grace supposes Bobby to be a frightful cad or anything.’ Martine appeared to perceive that her conversation had been unamiable. ‘She just doesn’t see him at Charne. And I don’t think she sees me at Charne – although, of course, it is only the marriage that could make that a possibility. Even, you see, although she is much fonder of me than I deserve.’

  Appleby again found himself wondering why all this was being thrown at him. There was nothing impulsive about Martine. But he ranked, he supposed, as an old friend of the family – and with the family, too, Judith had that tenuous actual relationship. So perhaps the proposal was to enlist the Applebys’ support for some plot which Martine was hatching. Appleby was far from thinking this a good idea. He was about to find some form of words to make this clear when Martine went off at another tangent.

  ‘Do you know Barbara Gillingham?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her.’

  ‘She’s coming tomorrow. Aunt Grace has asked her. She’s a sprightly widow.’

  ‘Really?’ Appleby looked at his watch, not much concerned that this wasn’t wholly polite. ‘By Jove! It’s getting quite late.’

  ‘Aren’t you interested in Mrs Gillingham?’

  ‘Well, no – or not greatly, just at the moment. I’ve no doubt she’s a charming woman, whom it will be a pleasure to meet.’

  ‘How stuffy of you, Sir John! Or is it, rather, just how discreet? You don’t even want to know her age?’

  ‘My dear Martine, I’ve no objection to being told her age. Indeed, I’ll ask you, if you like. How old is this Mrs Gillingham?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’ It seemed to amuse Martine to give this answer. ‘Perhaps she’s what they call of uncertain age. Or perhaps she’s precisely not that. She’s definitely not beyond child-bearing.’ Martine Rivière paused on this. She was looking serious again. ‘And that is why she interests my aunt.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t why she interests your uncle – if she does interest him.’

  ‘Not at present, Sir John. But my Aunt Grace is a far-sighted woman.’

  6

  ‘The Pendletons are coming for the weekend,’ Judith Appleby said. She and her husband were walking on the terrace after breakfast next morning.

  ‘The young ones – or Edward and Irene?’

  ‘Edward and Irene.’

  ‘Oh, dear! Well, that won’t be much more fun for the bored young people on the spot. They don’t seem too pleased with each other, would you say? Incidentally, Mrs Gillingham is coming too.’

  ‘Who on earth is Mrs Gillingham?’

  ‘I thought you might know. If she’s who, or what, Martine says she is, then I can tell you why the Pendletons are coming. And, for that matter, why we’ve come. When Grace, I mean, is so very ill.’ Appleby glanced up at the house. ‘Let’s go a bit farther afield,’ he s
aid. ‘Into the wood.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ Judith walked for some paces in silence. ‘You think it’s odd having guests at all?’

  ‘Not really – although some people wouldn’t. But it would be odd to have only Mrs Gillingham. Hence our larger gathering.’

  ‘Whatever has Martine been telling you?’

  ‘Chiefly that this Mrs Gillingham – Barbara Gillingham – is a sprightly widow, well able to bear children.’

  ‘Let’s take this path.’ Judith pointed. ‘It goes up by the stream to the belvedere. But I can’t believe it – what you seem to mean, or make Martine mean.’

  ‘It may well be just a bad guess. But she was quite explicit.’

  ‘It was some kind of hard, tasteless joke. What they call a sick joke.’

  ‘Give the poor child a little credit. It wasn’t that.’

  ‘Besides, I’ve rather supposed that Charles would be happy if Bobby and Martine were to–’

  ‘Quite so. And Bobby and Martine know it. They’re even considering it, in a bloodless kind of way – or so I seemed to gather.’

  ‘Surely Grace should approve of that? It would provide for Martine, who is her sister’s child, as well as for Bobby, who is the child of Charles’ sister.’

  ‘Yes, but I think the point is – or one point is – that they are both a little far out. Not born for Charne, and not really quite fitted for it.’

  ‘How deep this pool is!’

  They had now climbed about halfway to the crown of the wood, and were pausing by the largest of the pools through which the little stream passed. It was reed-fringed, and showed as dark brown except for a few bars of gold where the morning sun caught it. At its farther side a broad archipelago of water-lilies was opening. Everything around was quite still.

  ‘Is it deep? I don’t see how you can tell.’