The Bloody Wood Read online

  ‘The point isn’t at all likely to escape me.’ Fell was impatient. ‘But there are limits, it seems to me. Mrs Martineau tells me that later today there will be turning up some woman who has scarcely ever been to Charne before. And only half an hour ago there were arrivals in an affair like a battleship. Martineau should have more sense. The strain on his wife is quite untimely.’

  ‘And here,’ Judith said, ‘the crew of the battleship come. Like a boarding party, one might say.’

  This was true. Round the corner of the house came the new arrivals. They were unaccompanied by their host. The Pendletons, it was to be conjectured, having arrived at Charne at a somewhat early hour, had murmured their wish to wander round without fuss. And here they were.

  It was believed by the dramatist Strindberg that professional cooks are invariably persons sanguine, fleshy and bloated through a mysterious battening upon the life-blood of those whom they are employed to nourish. A similar mechanism is sometimes asserted to operate in the case of surgeons. But Edward Pendleton was far from bearing this out. From his exquisite silver-grey hair to his wholly appropriate weekend-in-the-country brown shoes he was eminently the man who has kept his form through all the severities of an arduous calling. His figure was that of a young athlete – and a fencer’s or a wing three-quarter’s, one told oneself, rather than a forward’s or a rowing tough’s. And to this his wife Irene very adequately matched up. If she a little too clearly suggested what her own portrait would be like when encountered on the walls of the Royal Academy – for she seemed very much a product of delicately applied glazes – she was yet so nice a specimen of her particular world that one would have felt wholly churlish in thinking to scratch a lacquer so elaborately contrived for one’s delectation. The Pendletons were cordial and perhaps even kindly people; they possessed and exercised every art for putting you at your ease; it wasn’t at all their fault – you had guiltily to feel – if the total effect they projected fell a little short of the wholly sympathetic.

  The Pendletons approached the Applebys with appropriate expressions of pleasurable expectation now gratified. The Applebys, bracing themselves, responded with actual gestures of a decorous joy. Dr Fell stayed quite still – but as these ritual approaches did not concern him there was nothing out of the way in that. Dr Fell, however, had to be introduced, since it would hardly have been proper to let a professional colleague of the eminent Edward Pendleton simply fade into the background. Appleby was about to perform this office when he became aware that the two men were already known to each other.

  It wasn’t that they had broken into speech, or given each other so much as a nod. Dr Fell remained immobile, looking at Pendleton. His posture held the rigidity to which there is conventionally applied the rather violent term ‘transfixed’. Pendleton, although his own relaxed stance didn’t change, was looking straight at Fell with an expression of dispassionate scrutiny which didn’t suggest itself as a stranger’s. And then Appleby had said something, and Pendleton was stepping forward with an extended hand.

  ‘How do you do,’ he said, with brisk cordiality. He had, if ever so faintly, the air of a man making a gesture. ‘May I introduce you to my wife? Irene, this is Dr–’ Pendleton paused in the kind of polite apology of a man who has failed to pick up an unfamiliar name.

  ‘Fell,’ Fell said.

  ‘I am so sorry. Dr Fell.’

  Mrs Pendleton broke into gracious speech. She had, one felt, scores of obscure medical practitioners presented to her every week. Fell listened with a near approach to silence. When Mrs Pendleton eventually made a flicker of a pause, he bowed and walked away.

  ‘What an interesting man!’ Mrs Pendleton said. She didn’t look pleased. Interesting men, one was constrained to feel, represented a category she judged it unnecessary to approve of. ‘Judith, dear, how delightful you should be at Charne! We must have a tremendous gossip.’ The emphasis with which she said this failed, somehow, to suggest that there was much substance in the proposition. But she took Judith by the arm, and walked her away.

  ‘How splendid the place looks!’ Edward Pendleton said to Appleby. ‘I always enjoy coming to rusticate at Charne.’

  ‘It’s ceasing to be all that rustic. The town will be lapping round it in no time.’

  ‘I know, I know! Terrible, isn’t it? It was Hitler’s war that did it, wouldn’t you say? Producing, I mean, as a kind of undesigned by-product, the first true dawn of scientific medicine. And that – my own trade, and all those wretched moulds and antibiotics – ensuring the survival and proliferation of millions of totally unnecessary little people. Sad, sad!’

  Edward Pendleton, in fact, had his own kind of chat. Appleby listened to it for some time, and then asked a question.

  ‘That chap Fell,’ he said. ‘I rather got the impression you’d met him before?’

  ‘Fell?’ Pendleton looked blank.

  ‘The Martineaus’ GP – whom we met a minute ago.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I’m not aware of ever having spoken to him. What a splendid oak that is, straight ahead! I envy Charles his timber. It’s something one can’t summon round oneself in a hurry. Now, tell me about the family, my dear fellow.’

  Appleby told Edward Pendleton about the family. But he wondered why he had been so firmly shut up.

  8

  Grace Martineau now no longer appeared at lunch time, but when she was well enough she liked one or another member of the household to join her for this meal in her room. On the present occasion this distinction fell to Mrs Gillingham, who had arrived just after noon. It was impossible not to be impressed by Mrs Gillingham, or even to impugn her entire suitability for the difficult role which her hostess was conjectured as being minded to assign her. She had driven herself up in a car which, although less splendid than the Pendleton battleship, seemed to speak of rather more than modest competence. It was not to be conjectured, therefore, that she had an eye on Charne – if, so far, she could be said to have an eye on it at all – out of any pressing sense of material necessity. Again, Mrs Gillingham had, it appeared, a daughter, and this child could be viewed as offering reassurance in two ways. She was conveniently tucked away in a suitably expensive boarding school, and the circumstances of her existing at all proved her mother to have passed an apprenticeship in the crucial power of bearing children.

  Perhaps these facts in themselves would not have taken Barbara Gillingham very far in any mature regard. But there had to be added to them the evident circumstance of her being a very nice woman. Moreover her good looks – for she had good looks – suggested themselves as of a kind that would continue into an autumnal phase, and her cultivation – which one similarly couldn’t doubt – seemed of a kind less showy than hard-wearing. But, above all, Mrs Gillingham incontestably had the gift of repose. She wasn’t stodgy; it would have been misleading and unfair even to describe her as placid; and if she was equally remote from being sprightly – which had been Martine’s derogatory word – there was no reason to apprehend that she would be without her moments of exhilarating vivacity. All in all, she was formidable. Martine’s eyes might be said to have narrowed on her – and Bobby Angrave’s, correspondingly, to have rounded – the moment she entered the house.

  Nor – and this was unusual – did Mrs Martineau appear at tea. This consequently was dispensed by Martine in a small drawing-room not much frequented except for the purpose. Many people, habituated to a great deal of space around them, never enter one room or another for weeks on end. The Martineaus, however, led an almost nomadic existence at Charne, so that if one visited there for only a short time one was apt to carry away the impression that one had seldom encountered one’s hosts twice in the same spot. Judith Appleby had a theory – probably a perfectly valid one – that this slightly restless habit had been formed out of consideration for the servants, who might have considered it discouraging continually to dust, polish and burnish spaces a
nd objects upon which their employers’ glances or persons seldom reposed. Thus tomorrow at this hour Friary might be rounding people up with the murmured information that tea was being served in the Old Orangery. Appleby found himself already wondering whether the former Mrs Gillingham would continue this odd expression of a social conscience.

  Mrs Gillingham was being attended to mainly by Bobby – Bobby’s uncle appearing to be in no particular hurry to single her out for any more distinction than she might properly expect. Perhaps Bobby would really be indifferent to the bizarre plan conjectured to be getting under way at Charne. Perhaps he judged that an appearance of indifference would be politic. Perhaps he would fall for Mrs Gillingham himself; she would make a very suitable maternal mistress – at least a dream one – for a young man of Bobby Angrave’s mingled cleverness and emotional immaturity. Or yet again – and this was how one would develop the situation if one were writing a novel – Bobby would conduct an actual whirlwind courtship of the lady, and marry her while Grace Martineau’s funeral baked meats were still on the board – thus thwarting his deceased aunt’s shade. Having arrived at this not altogether agreeable fantasy, Appleby decided that he had better turn to thinking about something else.

  ‘Bobby – do you see much of Dr Fell?’

  This sharp and sudden question from Charles Martineau diverted Appleby’s mind effectively enough. It had occurred during a lull in conversation, and against a background only of the drinking of tea and the eating of tomato sandwiches – activities in themselves almost noiseless in polite society. Bobby Angrave appeared to find it surprising.

  ‘Fell, Uncle Charles? I don’t see him at all, except to pass the time of day when he visits here. Except once, that is, when I was staying with you last vac. I went over and consulted him about writer’s cramp.’

  ‘Writer’s cramp? Bobby would suffer from that!’ Diana Page broke in with this; to scoff at Bobby was becoming rather compulsive with her. ‘I suppose it’s what they call an occupational disease. You can’t imagine Bobby catching a useful one – say, housemaid’s knee.’

  ‘I’d read somewhere that writer’s cramp is terribly psychosomatic, like stammering and bed-wetting.’ Bobby seemed to say this out of a sudden impulse to give wild offence. ‘So I went and saw Fell. He treated my sufferings lightly, I’m sorry to say. But why do you ask, Uncle Charles?’

  Charles Martineau made no reply; instead, he preoccupied himself with picking up the plate of sandwiches and offering it somewhat at random to Mrs Gillingham. Mrs Gillingham, although she had moved on to a cake and was making little headway with it, accepted a sandwich at once. She was a tactful woman. She even shifted a little on her sofa, so that Martineau was constrained to sit down beside her.

  ‘After lunch,’ she said, ‘I took a walk in the wood. It is most delightful, a great joy. And I found some Alpine Woundwort. I am sure you will have noticed it. Isn’t it very rare – except perhaps in Denbighshire? At first, of course, one may mistake it for Wood Woundwort, which is common enough. But not at a second glance, because the bracteoles exceed the pedicels.’

  Charles Martineau received this with grave attention. He even found something to say about Field Woundwort, which was to be found near the river, just beyond the park. He hoped that Mrs Gillingham would take a stroll with him in that direction, one day.

  Appleby, although the Woundworts scarcely constituted one of his passions, had listened to this exchange with interest. It was his impression that Martineau was without any inner disposition to give Mrs Gillingham a serious thought, one way or another. From this there appeared to follow the conclusion that if Grace Martineau really nourished the strange design which Martine imputed to her she had not yet offered any hint of it to her husband. It was not a consciousness of that design, therefore, that could be the occasion in Martineau of some new species of anxiety which was to be sensed in him.

  Appleby’s feeling here seemed at first to make no sense. A dreadful cloud hung over Martineau’s every hour, and if his sky now seemed even darker the explanation must surely lie in a further lowering in the same direction. Yet this seemed not quite to fit. Martineau was much like a man freshly conscious of some lesser evil treading hard upon the heels of a greater. And Bobby Angrave was somehow involved in this; there had been an edge to that odd and inconsequent question about Fell that pointed to something of the sort. It was conceivable that Martineau had fallen into some sudden and morbid anxiety about his nephew’s health – an attempted displacement of stress which would puzzle no psychologist. Certainly anything of the sort must surely be fanciful. Bobby, although he had the appearance of a sedentary creature, more at home with Greek participles than tennis balls, obviously enjoyed the rude and regardless health of his years.

  You could look at Charles Martineau twice, Appleby reflected, without concluding yourself to be in the presence of anything out of the way; a standard sort of breeding and a standard sort of reticence appeared to sum him up. But his gentleness was a product of real sensibility. He was of a type to suffer acutely in and for others. It is something in which there is a kind of softness, Appleby told himself; a stoical man can be too little resistant to pain and unhappiness in those he loves – and the result is a personality not well tempered against some of the common exigencies of life.

  ‘I wonder whether the nightingales will sing again tonight?’ Martine asked. She turned to Mrs Gillingham. ‘I am sure you will be interested in our nightingales, as well as in our toadstools.’

  ‘Toadstools?’ It was naturally not without surprise that Mrs Gillingham repeated the word.

  ‘Weren’t you speaking to Uncle Charles about toadstools? And so learnedly, we all thought.’

  This had the appearance of a declaration of war. Mrs Gillingham didn’t seem other than merely puzzled by it. But Charles Martineau was sufficiently attentive to be displeased – and this he expressed with a kind of gentle severity.

  ‘Martine, dear, if you can’t distinguish between flora and fungi it will really be best that you don’t embark upon botanical discussion.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Martine was immediately graceful. ‘But what I meant to embark upon was ornithology – the nightingales. Or is it just one nightingale? Again, I’m shockingly ignorant. Is the nightingale a solitary bird?’

  ‘The poets–’ Bobby began.

  ‘Not the poets again, for goodness sake!’ It was, of course, Diana who broke in with this.

  ‘It’s my impression,’ Charles Martineau said, ‘that at present there are two male birds, although last night we heard only one. Perhaps we’ll hear both tonight.’ He turned politely to Irene Pendleton. ‘But if you would like to hear a chorus of them, we could all drive over to Proby Copse. They haven’t yet begun to be driven from there.’

  ‘That would be most delightful. Only this evening, Charles, let us be loyal to your own diminished band, whether solo or duet.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Mrs Gillingham corroborated. ‘Grace would like that best too. At lunch time she was talking about the kingfishers.’

  ‘She loved the kingfishers.’ Charles Martineau’s voice was not quite under control. ‘But as we were saying last night, they have taken their departure.’

  ‘But Grace has a plan.’ Mrs Gillingham, having finished her cake, paused to make a token attack upon her second sandwich, so that something like a tiny current of suspense seemed to generate itself for a moment in the small drawing-room. ‘It is for deepening the stream a little, and sanding it in some places, but with stretches of pebble and stone. Then it could be stocked with suitable small fish which are bred at a place somewhere in Gloucestershire. Grace gave me the name. And then, she thinks, the kingfishers may come back – although it may only be after a season or two.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘That is certainly to look splendidly ahead,’ Martine said. ‘If it ever happens, you must come
back and see if it has been a success.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Again it seemed to Appleby that Mrs Gillingham was no more than puzzled.

  ‘How sad,’ Bobby Angrave said, ‘that it is in the nature of plans to go wrong. Yes – how very, very sad.’

  Charles Martineau stirred uneasily.

  ‘Diana,’ he said, ‘Martine and Bobby are tired of polite conversation. Take them away, please, and play croquet with them.’ Although his tone had been merely whimsical, the three young people, rather to Appleby’s surprise, rose and obeyed like children. They went out through a French window, and their voices faded across the lawn. ‘And now,’ Martineau went on, ‘we have sacrificed the possibility of a game of our own! But I wonder whether you would care to walk round the rose garden?’ He had addressed this question courteously to Mrs Gillingham, so that to the others the invitation was no more than implied. ‘Grace will be joining us, I think, quite soon. And there are a number of things there that she would like to show you.’

  A moment later he was leading Mrs Gillingham from the room. It was obvious that he had become aware of his nephew and niece as hostile to her. He was displeased – and, like Mrs Gillingham herself, he was puzzled. Perhaps, Appleby thought, he wouldn’t be puzzled for long. So far today, Grace Martineau had been husbanding her strength. It seemed not improbable that it was because she felt she had a big effort to make.

  9

  Searching his recollection of this evening shortly afterwards – and it was something he was rather grimly to be constrained to do – Appleby found himself recalling it as restless with a sense of obscure manoeuvre. The effect scarcely built up to the ominous – although retrospectively, and after the catastrophe, it was easy to imagine it as having done so. Charne was, of course, a place where a raised voice, an impatient tone, an ill-chosen phrase tended to reverberate – this simply because the house itself gave the impression of having been murmuring for generations that the paramount duty of its inhabitants was to consult the social ease of their fellows.