When Appleby got home he found his wife entertaining Mr Hildebert Braunkopf. No doubt the art dealer had been summoned. It was like Judith to guess that the particular sort of information in which he abounded might be required. At the moment she was resisting, without much difficulty, the suggestion that she should buy one of the three Littlefairs which Braunkopf was fortunate enough to have in his gallery. He now turned enthusiastically to his host.
“Three hundred kinnies, my goot Sir John Abbleby, for a puttikler early mature masterpiece this now irreplaceable dead painter.”
“My dear fellow, I haven’t got the money.”
“Or two-seven-five quiet transaction no publicities one-pount notes.”
“Look here, Braunkopf – my wife and I are meaning to drop in on you later this week and pick up a drawing or two at a reasonable price. But I certainly don’t want to buy anything by Littlefair. All I want is some information about him. He tried to get you to place things from time to time?”
“Certainly, Sir John. That marches without speaking. All the best most established high reputatious artists–”
“Quite so. Did he ever say anything about his commission for Lord Heritage?”
“But yes. It was to be exhibited at Burlington House, he said, and make great sensations in the worlt of art. When Lady Heritage decided to keep it unexhibited, Littlefair was down in the damps.”
“In the damps, was he? And when she decided on the presentation to the Comfiters?”
“Littlefair was quite applauded up again.”
Not unnaturally, Appleby took a moment to interpret this. “Did you gather there was anything out of the way about the painting?”
Braunkopf nodded. “There was somethings. Perhaps a new formula for composings of an official portrait – yes?”
“I see. Now, there’s something else. Did you ever have any dealings with Lord Heritage?”
Mr Braunkopf could be seen to hesitate. No doubt vanity prompted him to declare that he was perpetually transacting business with all the established high reputatious collectors of Europe. But something in Appleby’s eye constrained him to veracity. “Not directly, my goot Sir John. Many the largest most important buyers approach the market only through agents.”
“Quite so. And sometimes highly confidential agents? While an important negotiation is going on, it might be difficult to know who was acting for whom?”
“That is so. But most always I know, Sir John. I have big intelligence all that side the great worlt of art.”
“I know you have. Could you find out whom Heritage was employing on anything that he wanted treated as more or less top secret?”
Braunkopf made a gesture indicating large confidence. “Two – three hours, Sir John.”
“I want the fellow, whoever he is, on that mat.” And Appleby pointed to the hearth-rug. “I expect you know enough about almost anybody in the trade, my dear Braunkopf, to make them feel it healthy to pay any little call you suggest.”
“But certainly.” Braunkopf received this ambiguous testimonial with obvious gratification. “Only that takes larger time – yes?” He considered. “Tomorrow evening – at six.”
Appleby sought out Mrs Littlefair next morning, and found her in an unassuming terrace house in a dull suburb. It didn’t appear that she had been allowed much share in the prosperity attending her late husband’s more recent labours. Perhaps she had been conscientiously opposed to accepting any of the fruits of so debased an art.
“Must I really answer more questions?” Mrs Littlefair, who was handsome in a forbidding way, looked Appleby straight in the eye. “You know that your men were here yesterday evening, and even obtained my permission to search the house? I’d have thought that was about enough.”
“I certainly don’t want to attempt anything in the nature of an interrogation. It’s rather your opinion that I seek.” As he made this pacific speech, Appleby let his glance wander round Mrs Littlefair’s environment. It was austere; there was nothing in the room that Hildebert Braunkopf would have judged worth twopence; but there was an impression, nevertheless, of an absolute perfection of taste. It did seem conceivable that the spectacle of her husband accommodating himself to the world of the Heritages might drive this woman to some act of bizarre fanaticism. “I wonder what you think about the woman your husband was living with?”
“I don’t. There isn’t really a person there to think about. Julia Parnaby has good looks, and nothing else. And one can’t think about good looks.”
“If she felt any reason to suppose that Jethro Littlefair was going to throw her over, do you think she might have done anything drastic?”
“Certainly not. She would simply have sat back and worked out the stiffest terms she could safely demand.”
“You would call her mercenary?”
“She’d do a good deal for hard cash.”
Appleby smiled. “Unfortunately,” he said, “that’s true of so many of us.”
“It’s not true of me.”
This had come from the lady like a flash. And Appleby nodded soberly. “I believe that’s so. You, Mrs Littlefair, conduct your life on other principles.”
It hadn’t, Appleby thought, been a very rewarding little expedition. He was standing in Mrs Littlefair’s narrow hall, and preparing to take his leave. But his eye was still active. There was a telephone on a small table, and in addition to the directory there were five or six smaller volumes. One was the handbook of a motoring organisation. “You run a car?” Appleby asked.
Mrs Littlefair appeared surprised. “Yes – a very old one.”
“Awkward – isn’t it? – a house in a row like this. No garage.”
“Yes. But I have the use of a shed in the next road.”
“I see. Did those tiresome police who visited you yesterday search that?”
“They did not. They didn’t inquire about it.”
“Ah.” Appleby put a certain grimness into this. “Would you mind walking round there with me now, Mrs Littlefair?”
“Not in the slightest.” But Mrs Littlefair’s looks – Appleby thought – belied her words. She might have been suddenly frightened. Or she might have just been out of patience and very, very angry.
The shed was a ramshackle affair – decidedly not what is called a private lock-up. But then the car it sheltered was ramshackle too, and nobody could conceivably be prompted to make off with it. There was a pile of sacking and old cardboard boxes at the back. And it was behind these that Appleby found the portrait.
The canvas had been slashed to ribbons, and bits were missing. But it was unquestionably Jethro Littlefair’s ill-starred Lord Heritage. There were the tankers coming up the estuary. One could even distinguish the cigar. When Charles Ozanne declared that Appleby would never see the portrait, he had been wrong.
Mrs Littlefair was very pale. But she remained true to her principles. She touched the ripped surface of the painting, and then drew back in revulsion, as if the very texture was physically intolerable to her. “Horrible,” she said, and fainted away.
On the following evening Hildebert Braunkopf arrived punctually with a man called Carabine. He also brought a large portfolio of drawings; and with these he withdrew to seek Judith Appleby as soon as he had handed over the late Lord Heritage’s agent to Appleby himself.
Carabine was scarcely a willing guest. But, although sullen and evasive, there was a good deal to which he appeared to realise that he must own up. In forming his collection, he maintained, his employer had relished secrecy and devious courses. Heritage had belonged essentially to big business – the very biggest business – and it had been second nature to him to enjoy discomfiting a rival by coming out suddenly with this or that fait accompli. And of course the world of art dealing had its own peculiar standards and conventions. Some of them might look a bit queer to an outsider. But he, Carabine, had certainly done nothing that wasn’t quite the proper thing.
“I suppose,” Appleby asked, “that you fixed up the
commission with Littlefair?”
“Yes.”
“That was just one of the jobs for which you received a regular salary from Lord Heritage?”
“Of course I had a salary.”
“Nevertheless, you no doubt got Littlefair the job on the condition that he let you have 20% of it back as a rake-off?”
“Only 15%. That’s very usual and moderate.”
“Perhaps it is, Mr Carabine. But did Lord Heritage know?”
“I can’t tell you. No – I suppose he didn’t.”
“I understand that Mr Ozanne, Lady Heritage’s brother, has taken charge of this side of Lord Heritage’s affairs. What would have happened if Littlefair had for any reason felt prompted to speak up about that rake-off? Mr Ozanne would probably have investigated some other of your dealings for his late brother-in-law?”
Carabine moistened his lips nervously. “Perhaps.”
“And Lord Heritage’s fondness for secrecy and so forth gave you a good deal of scope – shall we say to advance your own monetary interests in ways unknown to him. It is very much in your interest that there should be no inquiry?”
“Naturally one doesn’t want a lot of fuss.”
“Moreover it would be your impulse to keep mum, if you came upon funny business by anybody else, since one exposure might lead to another?”
Carabine took a moment to consider this. “You put it all deuced unfairly,” he said.
“Never mind how I put it. Just reflect that Littlefair is dead – and that the police are by no means satisfied as to how he died. That, Mr Carabine, takes this affair quite outside your comfortable territory as a common-or-garden shady person. That being so, I wonder if you have anything more to say?”
Reluctantly, Carabine admitted that he had.
It was half an hour later that Appleby rejoined his wife. Rather to his surprise, she was alone. “Hullo,” he said, “what’s happened to Braunkopf? Has he sold you the whole lot?”
Judith shook her head. “He’s gone after higher game. Lady Heritage.”
“She doesn’t know the top of a painting from the bottom. And she’ll certainly be tired of the whole subject at the moment. I don’t know why she should agree to see him.”
“Braunkopf is very enterprising. He’s made an appointment with her. He had a sort of lever.”
“A lever?”
“This job he’s just done for you: digging out Carabine’s association with her husband.”
Appleby jumped to his feet. “Braunkopf’s told her I’ve got on to that?” He strode across the room to the telephone.
“My dear John, what’s the matter?”
“Action stations, Judith. Get out the car.”
Inspector Chugg was waiting on Westminster Bridge. He jumped in before Appleby had drawn to a halt. “A Mercedes,” he said. “And it has an hour’s start for the coast. We’ve got everything out, sir. But it’s always tricky at night. A driver who knows the country really well might just get through.”
“Get through to where, Inspector?” Judith, who was sitting beside her husband in front, turned round. “Can’t you have something uncomfortable waiting at the other end?”
“The other end is a motor-cruiser, your ladyship. But we don’t know just where she’s lying. The difficulty’s there.” Chugg paused, fiddling with a mechanism beside him. “Your short-wave’s all correct, sir.”
Judith said no more. Even the fact that this was John’s private car hardly made her presence very regular. They swept through south London in the early darkness and out along one of the arterial roads. Voices murmured in the back as messages came in from all over the southern counties. Judith got the impression that two or three times the Mercedes had been spotted, but on no occasion by police who were in a position to give immediate chase. Once they halted for a rapid consultation over a map. When they went on, it was as if John had taken some confident guess. She remembered that he had got to know the south coast pretty well during the war. She knew that he and Chugg were directing and co-ordinating a vast search. Suddenly it came to her that perhaps they were going to do something more. Perhaps they were themselves going to be in at the death – if it came to a death. A long time seemed to pass. Judith dozed, and woke up. She saw they had reached the sea – or rather they had reached a cliff road, high above it. There was an alarming moment when their head-lights appeared to reveal nothing but an abyss before them. Then they swung abruptly to the right, and Judith realised that they were rounding a deep cove. At the next bend the windscreen took a sudden dangerous lunge at her face. John had brought the car to a dead stop. There was another car – stationary and without lights – straight in front of them. Chugg gave a shout – it might have been of excitement or of recognition – and in a moment the two men were out and running. Judith followed.
And then it all happened in seconds – or so it seemed to her afterwards. There was dark water far below, and from somewhere out on its invisible surface the brief flash of a signal. There was a crazy path down the face of the cliff, and there was a figure running yet more crazily down it, caught every now and then in the beam of Chugg’s powerful torch. The figure was staggering under some obscure but crippling burden, and the two pursuers gained rapidly as Judith watched. Chugg was shouting – a summons, a warning – when his voice was drowned by a single ghastly scream. The fugitive had slipped, recovered, slipped again, dropped the burden in a final effort to regain balance, and then plunged headlong down the face of the cliff.
They drove back to London in the very early morning. Judith felt numb. “A better death than being hanged,” she said – and then tapped the stout wooden box beside her. “John – what is it, anyway?”
“It’s the Grandoni Apollo.”
“Impossible!”
“One of the finest Greek bronze heads ever discovered. And, as you know, it disappeared again about a couple of centuries ago. There have been plenty of copies and engravings to tell one what it was like. But the head itself had vanished – until Carabine found it and bought it on the quiet for Heritage. Then Heritage hit on the notion of the portrait. Cigar, tankers, refinery, an Old Master or two – and the Grandoni Apollo. Think of the sensation when the thing was recognised at the Royal Academy exhibition. But Heritage died. And Lady Heritage, having no notion of what was afoot, simply shoved the portrait into her bedroom. And there it was presently seen by her brother Charles Ozanne, who had some artistic cultivation. He tumbled to the truth, rummaged round, and found the actual Apollo.”
“If he hadn’t, he’d be alive today.” Judith shivered.
“Quite so. Well, there was a vast temptation to steal the bronze. Because of Heritage’s close ways, there was a chance that his estate could be wound up without this big purchase ever coming to light – and particularly, of course, if Ozanne himself moved in and negotiated the tricky corners. He decided to take the risk. And all went well – until his sister decided to give the portrait to the Comfiters. Immediately it was unveiled, and glimpsed by a competent art historian, Ozanne was done for. And Littlefair was another risk. He mayn’t have been more than vaguely aware of the importance of the Apollo. But if the portrait simply vanished unaccountably, he might begin groping for a reason – and find it. Actually, as we know, he very nearly got there in the last fifteen minutes of his life.”
“So the Mammon-business wasn’t any sort of demonstration.”
“It was designed by Ozanne to look like one – and so to obscure the practical motive involved. It was also neatly calculated to throw Littlefair into a state of mind – later cleverly exacerbated by Ozanne – in which suicide would seem plausible. Ozanne was a little quick to plug the suicide theory, I noticed.”
“And he tried to plant the thing, very much as a demonstration, on Littlefair’s wife?”
“Exactly. And by slashing the canvas to ribbons before planting it in her shed, he was able to remove the vital area with the Apollo. The only remaining danger was Carabine. But it was entirely in Carabine
’s interest to remain quiet, and Ozanne had no reason to suppose that we should ever hear of him. But when Braunkopf went off and prattled to Lady Heritage, she naturally passed on his talk to her brother. The game was up, and Ozanne made his last move – the move that ended on that nasty bit of cliff.”
MURDER ON THE 7.16
Appleby looked at the railway carriage for a moment in silence. “You couldn’t call it rolling-stock,” he said.
This was true. The carriage stood not on wheels but on trestles. And it had other peculiarities. On the far side of the corridor all was in order; sliding doors, plenty of plate glass, and compartments with what appeared to be comfortably upholstered seats. But the corridor itself was simply a broad platform ending in air. Mechanically propelled contrivances could manoeuvre on it easily. That, of course, was the idea.
Appleby swung himself up and peered through one of the compartments at what lay beyond. He saw nothing but a large white concave surface. “Monotonous view,” he murmured. “Not for lovers of the picturesque.”
The Producer laughed shortly. “You should see it when we’re shooting the damned thing. The diorama, you know. Project whole landscapes on that, we do. They hurtle past. And rock gently. It’s terrific.” Realising that his enthusiasm was unseemly, he checked himself and frowned. “Well, you’d better view the body. Several of your people on the job already, I may say.”
Appleby nodded, and moved along the hypertrophied corridor. “What are you filming?” he asked.
“It’s a thriller. I’ve no use for trains, if they’re not in a thriller – or for thrillers, if there isn’t a train.” The Producer didn’t pause on this generalisation. “Just cast your mind back a bit, Sir John. Cast it back to September, 1955.”
Appleby considered. “The tail end of a hot, dry summer.”
“Quite so. But there was something else. Do you remember one of the evening papers running a series of short mystery stories, each called ‘Murder on the 7.16’?”
“Yes. Oddly enough, I think I do.”
Appleby Talks Again Page 13