Appleby Talking by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

Chingford, where he lived by himself in a cottage standing by itself on the south bank of the stream. He lived there for years, a great recluse, and it seems that all sorts of odd yarns were told about him. Even when one discounts the greater number, it is evident that he was becoming very eccentric. And then he got married.”
    The Doctor nodded. “With what might be called a composing and normalising effect? I thought so. It’s a not uncommon result – for a time.”
    “Bandertree married a war-widow called Agnes Mole. That must have been in 1943; and for a couple of years all went well. They were a devoted pair, despite the lady’s being a completely commonplace person, incapable of telling a Picasso from a Modigliani. What you might call a thoroughly successful, thoroughly carnal marriage.”
    Cautiously the Doctor tested his claret with a silver spoon. “And with rocks ahead.”
    “It might be better to say a single submerged reef. For what the couple presently ran up against was something thoroughly unexpected and treacherous. Mrs Bandertree proved not to have been a widow after all.”
    “This being, in fact, one of those Back-from-the-Dead yarns?”
    “Just that. Rupert Mole had been captured, not killed; and for some reason no news of him had ever come through. It was partly, I believe, because he had done one of those brilliant escapes that were apt simply to land a man in hiding with friendly folk in enemy-occupied territory. Anyway, at the end of the war Rupert Mole came home, and presently traced Agnes to Bandertree’s cottage.
    “Just what happened at first, I never got fully sorted out. Probably – as so often with such predicaments in real life – it was nothing very clear-cut. I suppose a tug of emotions, of appetites, memories, decencies, loyalties now one way and now another – and, as a result, a state of pure muddle and misery for all three of those people, such as would have taken some powerful external authority to straighten out. But in the end the jam did look like having some sort of decisive issue. The woman said she was going to stick to Bandertree; Bandertree agreed to keep her; and both of them told Mole to clear off. Only he didn’t. He took a cottage just on the other side of the Ching and began a policy of hanging around. It couldn’t be called very wise.”
    “Nor very noble.” The Doctor poured out his concoction deftly and sat down again. “But of course it might produce results.”
    “What it produced was an abomination. Bandertree began to go queer again. Agnes alternated between clinging to him passionately and moods of guilt and revulsion. And Mole went about pubs and talked.
    “This state of affairs continued for some months, and one consequence was that Bandertree could no longer face the world, and ceased absolutely from ever leaving his cottage. He wouldn’t so much as go out into the garden. Only when Agnes did her shopping in the village, he could be seen staring out of the window after her in a sort of bestial fear. Mole, remember, was lurking not much more than a stone’s throw away, across the stream.
    “Well, Mole might be driving Bandertree crazy, but for a long time he didn’t seem to be getting much out of the situation himself. He’d sit sullen and silent in a bar parlour of an evening, and then on a third beer he’d open up and curse his wife for her obstinate faithlessness. He was becoming a recognised bore in this way, when there appeared a sudden change in him. For about a week he became strained and utterly secretive. And then one evening he turned up darkly exultant, but taciturn still. It was on gin – something like a bottle of it – that they got him to talk that night. What he had to say was simple. Agnes had promised to return to him next day, and had agreed to their leaving the country together. And she had told Bandertree that she had made up her mind to this.
    “And the next day, sure enough, Mole’s cottage was seen to be shut