Free The Bloody Wood by Michael Innes Page B

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.
    The game of croquet hadn’t lasted long – which was, perhaps, not surprising, since it had only been begun more or less under orders. It is said to be an amusement that has a useful function in providing a harmless and ritual discharge of irritation and uncharitable feeling. Certainly it appeared to have given Bobby Angrave time to reflect. When he returned to his elders it was to be quite as agreeable to Mrs Gillingham as his uncle could have wished. Or – for that matter – his aunt. For Grace Martineau had now appeared – tranquil, and with the small clear stream of vitality that could still rise in her seeming to be running freely. It wasn’t often, Appleby had noticed, that she looked at Bobby with any appearance of other than a strictly temperate pleasure. But his behaviour to Mrs Gillingham plainly pleased her – or did so until it might almost have been described as getting out