Appleby Talking by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

up and deserted – nor did anybody ever set eyes on Agnes again. Bandertree was still to be glimpsed occasionally at a window, but his look was now wandering, and he appeared quite demented. He continued never to leave the house, and lived on supplies which he had persuaded some old woman to leave two or three times a week on his doorstep.
    “It was only after about a couple of months that people began the talking – the really sinister talking – that I was speaking of. Eventually it reached the Chief Constable down there – a fellow who is something of a connoisseur in the macabre, and who decided to investigate himself. Bandertree proved to be in sober truth the next thing to crazy. But his story was quite simple. Agnes had simply vanished, and he had no doubt that Mole was responsible.
    “So the Chief Constable went after Mole. He was eventually found in Dublin – and alone. His story, too, was simple. Agnes had failed to keep her promise; had simply not turned up. Whereupon he had decided he had had enough, and cleared out.
    “There was one plain fact in this tangle: a woman had disappeared, and must be accounted for. The Chief Constable returned to Bandertree’s cottage – and as well as an inquiring mind he took with him a sharp eye. In the middle of the sitting-room the floor seemed to have sunk slightly, as if there had been a subsidence. So he got a search-warrant, had the floorboards up, and dug. Need I tell you any more?”
    The Doctor considered, and then smiled grimly. “My dear Appleby, if I know anything of you, the answer is decidedly Yes.”
    “Very well. They dug, and found the woman’s body. The question that arose was whether Bandertree would be considered fit to plead. For he was certainly uncommonly strange, and the discovery, as you may imagine, didn’t do him any good.
    “It was about getting hold of the right medical line on this that I was consulted, and eventually I reviewed the whole case. There is something to be said for being thorough, even in the dullest and most routine way. I got Bandertree’s whole history in all the detail I could. Then I got Mole’s, and as soon as I read it I went down to Chingford and found what I expected to find. Four months later Mole was hanged.”
    “I don’t see it.”
    “You would have, if you had learnt from the report on him that as a prisoner of war he had become one of the finest tunnel-diggers on record. He burrowed his way under the Ching and beneath Bandertree’s house. Then he killed the woman, got her body where he wanted it, and sealed that end of the tunnel with what must have been astounding technical skill. After that he had only to wait a bit, and then from a distance somehow contrive to set rumour going in Chingford. He planned, you see, to be revenged on both his wife and her lover. Didn’t I say the story wasn’t pretty? Let’s forget it in this remarkable brew.”

 
     
THE KEY
    “There must be some key to the affair.” Inspector Cadover turned from the window and stared at his former colleague. But his eyes retained their distant focus, so that Appleby had the sensation of being some remote and inanimate object, just visible on the horizon commanded from this eyrie high in New Scotland Yard. “There’s a key to every murder, after all.”
    “Undoubtedly there is.” Appleby’s agreement was placid. “Only sometimes it gets buried with the corpse.”
    “Rubbish!” Cadover’s nerves were frayed. “And the corpse isn’t buried yet, anyhow. They’re still on a rather elaborate PM.
    “You see, this Honoria Clodd had been dead at least three days when they found her, and I’m anxious to narrow down the time all I can.
    “Of course, it mayn’t be murder at all. Superficially it looked just like another dismal head-in-the-oven affair.
    “But if that’s so, then Honoria was a much more economically-minded girl than one would take her for, all other facts considered. There she was in the kitchen of this