The Appleby File by Michael Innes

Author:Michael Innes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Appleby File
ISBN: 9780755120789
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Appleby offered explanations on the following afternoon.

‘It has been my experience that the cleverest criminals are often prone to doing some one, isolated stupid thing – particularly when under pressure, and driven to improvise. In this case it lay in the decision to post that letter to Litter, instead of just leaving it around. The idea was to achieve a delaying tactic, and there was a sense in which a typewritten address would be safer than one which forged Vandervell’s hand. But it introduced at once what was at least a small implausibility. Vandervell while obsessed with suicide may well have prepared a dozen such letters, and without getting round to either addressing or dating them. But if he later decided that one of them was really to be delivered – and delivered through the post – the natural thing would simply be to pick up an envelope and address it by hand.’

‘Was that the chap’s only bad slip-up?’

‘Not exactly. The crime must be called one of calculation and premeditation, I suppose, since the idea was to get the perpetrator out of a tough spot. But its actual commission was rash and unthinking, so that it left him in a tougher spot still. Consider, for a start, the several steps that led to it. Charles Vandervell’s supposed financial reverses and stringencies were entirely a consequence of sustained and ingenious speculations on Truebody’s part. They didn’t, as a matter of fact, need to be all that ingenious, since our eminent philosopher’s practical sense of such matters was about zero. But then Mrs Mountmorris enters the story. She is a very different proposition. Truebody is suddenly in extreme danger, and knows it. His client’s attitude stiffens; in fact you may say the worm turns. Truebody is summoned to Pentallon, and appears on Tuesday morning. He is given only until the next day to show, if he can, that everything has been fair and above board, after all. But Charles Vandervell has a certain instinct for privacy. If there is to be a row, he doesn’t want it bruited abroad. When Truebody comes back on Wednesday afternoon there is nobody else around. And I suppose that puts ideas in his head.’

‘So he waits his chance?’ Fabian Vandervell asked.

‘Not exactly that. Imagine the two of them, walking around the gardens. Your uncle is a new man; he has this dishonest rascal cornered, and is showing grim satisfaction in the fact. He says roundly that he’ll have Truebody prosecuted and gaoled. And, at that, Truebody simply hits out at him. He’s a powerful fellow; and, for the moment at least, your uncle is knocked unconscious. It has all happened beside one of those small ponds with the tropical fish. So it is now that Truebody sees – or thinks he sees – his chance. He will stage some sort of accident, he tells himself. In a moment he has shoved your uncle into the pool. And there he holds him down until he drowns.

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