The Silence of the Night

by Roger Ormerod

  He handed them over. I backed through the door, pocketed the gun, and collected my pint of draught on the way out. The Audi revealed nothing, no tyre lever for instance. But they’re getting rare now, with all these tubeless tyres about. I left the keys in the ignition, and the gun in the glove compartment, partly because I prefer an automatic myself, and partly because Beanie probably had half a dozen more tucked away somewhere, anyway.

  At least, I’d warned him I was around, I thought, driving away. I tried to think what I’d expected to find, and couldn’t decide on anything. I stopped for a fill-up at the local garage, and noticed, too late to go somewhere else, that it was a Vale Combine station.

  I drove fast for Killington Towers.

  There was a thin, lanky figure walking towards me down the drive. He’d nearly got to the gate posts, and was exhausted. He waved. It was Sir Edmund Fisch.

  ‘Going for a walk?’ I shouted, drawing up. Fisch was the sort who’d use his car to go to the toilet.

  He opened the door and got in beside me. ‘Came to see you,’ he gasped. ‘Elsa said you’d come this way.’

  I switched off the engine and considered him. He was distressed. Perspiration had forced its way through the dry, grey skin. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was only fair to warn you.’

  ‘I don’t need warning.’

  ‘You’ll need to know the facts. Elsa said I should be completely frank with you.’ I nodded. ‘Hold nothing back.’

  ‘You could have held it till I got there. Saved your legs.’

  ‘And have them see me speaking to you?’ He was shocked.

  ‘Them?’

  ‘The police. We’re relying on you, young man, you realise that, I’m sure. Each of us, throwing ourselves on your mercy.’

  I considered how merciful I was feeling. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’ve extracted from me — I shall write to the Home Secretary. Godfrey must know about their third degree methods — they’ve extracted the most incriminating admission.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing else all morning.’

  ‘But not this serious.’ He looked at me angrily. ‘I’m not sure I like your levity.’

  ‘Maybe you could tell me …’

  So he told me, looking distressfully ahead out of the windscreen. Sir Edmund was custodian or the like of an obscure University Library, famed for its collection of seventeenth-century erotica. There Frazer had camped, a year before it’d be, and when he’d left a pamphlet had gone missing with him. It was a dedication by somebody called Archer to Sir Thomas Walsingham, and was quite unique in that nobody had ever been able to understand it. But Fisch had wanted it back. He had written furious letters requesting it back, in modern English that everybody could understand, and had written to The Times demanding that this man be put out of harm’s way in some secluded deficiency centre, preferably in the Hebrides. Which only resulted in a libel suit from Frazer, and a few thousand pounds had happily found their way into lawyers’ accounts before Frazer fortuitously discovered the document amongst his shirts, and graciously withdrew his case. That he sent it back with a lucid interpretation only made things more annoying, particularly as it was now clear it was not erotic.

  ‘So?’ I said, when Fisch had come to a stuttering end.

  ‘I’d have killed him for that.’

  ‘And smashed the T’ang in the process?’ I asked.

  He could not speak until apoplexy withdrew from his sharp, strained face. ‘Facetious, too,’ he snapped. ‘Drive on, if you’re going to.’

  I dropped him at the side entrance and drove across to the garages. It was going to be one of those days. I felt like hitting somebody. Martin Vale was kicking moodily round the squat little Lotus. I parked and got out, wondering whether the time and place were appropriate.

  He said: ‘I’m not asking for your help, but Elsa said I could rely on you.’

  ‘Oh, you can,’ I assured him.

  ‘But I can do without your help.’

  ‘Good.’ I turned away.

  ‘Only there’s this damned motive.’

  Usually, in a murder case, you have to extract motives word by word, twisting their painful roots to expose the bone. This was different. They were being tossed at me from all directions. I turned back.

  ‘If I’d only known about the car,’ he said, giving the Lotus a kick.

  This was one of their early models, when they’d taken a standard chassis, stuck a monocoque fibreglass shell on it, made certain magical modifications, and produced a dicer’s delight.

  ‘Don’t ruin it,’ I said, and he snorted.

  ‘It was his — Frazer’s.’

  My image of the Scottish reprobate turned cartwheels. But then again, I could imagine him belting round the countryside in enthusiastic disregard for the traffic regulations.

  ‘Have another kick, then,’ I offered.

  ‘He bought a car from us,’ said Vale. ‘A couple of years back.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘But they know.’

  I sighed. ‘So all right. He bought a car.’ From one of the hundred or so Vale garages, I supposed.

  ‘Just an ordinary saloon. You know. And inside a week he’d pushed a con-rod through the crank-case. So we put another engine in. Then he burnt a hole in a piston. So we put another engine in. Well ... you can’t keep putting engines in, and I mean, you’d expect such a man to be driving like a sedate old lady. Then it was the main bearings. Hell, he just about melted the engines, and we just had to put a stop to it. Told him he’d had his last engine. I mean ... and nobody guessed.’

  ‘That he drove like a madman?’

  ‘No. No ... the reason he drove like a madman. Anyway, he started a campaign. Parked it outside the factory. Wrote letters to The Times, had himself interviewed outside one of my garages. Hell — the name in full view. I had hundreds of cancellations. It just about cost me a fortune, and in the end I sent him a cheque for a new car, and told him to go somewhere else.’

  ‘Which he seems to have done.’

  This Lotus was yellow. The racing wheel just yearned for eager hands. The engine was, no doubt, in an unmelted condition.

  ‘But I mean ... he couldn’t hear the engine. You can see why he hasn’t ruined this. And we never guessed!’

  I followed his eyes. The Lotus had a tachometer, the red portion indicating when the revs were too high. Frazer hadn’t needed ears, not even for the pursuing sirens of police cars.

  ‘You can rely on me,’ I said.

  ‘To do what?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘To play it down. To hint to the superintendent that the loss of a few thousand quid here and there is nothing to Martin Vale. Maybe you only had to forgo the odd Utrillo.’

  He said: ‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned it.’

  ‘Me too.’

  I walked over to the house. Just in case any more motives were lurking in the shadows, I sneaked in quietly, and though there was a mumble of voices from the drawing-room, I slipped past it.

  Supt. Alwright was in the Grand Hall. They were packing-up disconsolately, having found nothing of interest anywhere.

  ‘We’ll clear up the mess,’ he said helpfully.

  They had managed to move nothing, having gone to the lengths of printing each separate piece of the broken vase, and returning it to its place on the floor.

  ‘No.’ I had my own ideas for the smashed T’ang. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Make yourself useful.’

  So when they’d left I got a paper bag and a broom and carefully got all the pieces together. Just in case any had flown that far, I covered the far corners of the room and worked inwards. I got them all, and put all the pieces, even the tiniest, into the bag. I’d just about finished when I noticed a pair of two-tone brogues waiting patiently. I raised my eyes.

  ‘Tamburlaine,’ said Bloome morosely. ‘That’s the main clue, sir.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Tamburlaine a
nd Hero and Leander.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  ‘But now they know.’ He looked at me with consideration. ‘They tell me you’re one of their cops.’

  ‘Very nearly retired.’

  ‘So you’re on their side.’

  ‘I’m not on anybody’s.’

  ‘Then I shan’t spill to you.’ He thought better of it. ‘Haven’t you read my book?’ He surveyed my blank expression. ‘Marlowe is Shakespeare. Published in New York, 1970. Jesus, man, you can’t be that ignorant. I proved Marlowe wrote Shakespeare. “On glorious days outfacing face,”’ he declaimed. ‘That’s Christopher Marlowe in Hero and Leander. And: “We have given thee faces, but you have outfaced them all.” That’s Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost. I proved it. Nobody can be sure that Marlowe died in 1593. And it was just after that the first play by William Shakespeare appeared.’

  It seemed I was in a world of moribund theories. I looked into his flabby and desolate face. ‘It’s very interesting. But I doubt they’ll change it now.’

  He drew himself up. ‘In the face of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine? “As did Paris with the Grecian dame.” And Henry VI, part I: “As did the youthful Paris once to Greece.” It’s conclusive.’

  I sighed. ‘Maybe Shakespeare pinched it.’ Then, when he’d cooled down: ‘Come and tell me all about it.’ I was resigned to lunacy by then.

  We went and sat at one of the bench seats. Alton K. Bloome, he claimed, had a certain authority in his own country, where the works of Shakespeare are revered. He’d written his book after years of research, published it, only to have all his arguments scathingly demolished from across the Atlantic by Cameron Frazer, with such scholarly erudition that Bloome had found himself a laughing-stock in his own academic circles. It was to off-set the poor standing, in which he now found himself, that he’d recently endowed a new library, to bear his own name, at the university in his home town. Where, I understood, he was hoping that Elsa’s Uncle Albert would join him, bringing his baggy trousers and his expert knowledge, and a string of degrees I hadn’t known Uncle Albert possessed.

  I worked out that this should just about be the last of the zany motives, assured Bloome that he could probably go home without the fear of extradition, and set off to find Hillary Keane.

  But it wasn’t the last. A young man came running in a reminiscent way down the corridor, and when I stepped aside politely, failed to run on.

  ‘I’m in terrible trouble,’ said Rupert Allington.

  ‘Frazer?’ I guessed.

  ‘They know.’ He was almost in tears. ‘You saw it yourself. He took a stick to me.’

  ‘So you took a poker?’

  ‘Mr Mallin! Please!’

  ‘So all right. Maybe he didn’t like you.’

  ‘They found my fingerprints in his room.’

  ‘That’s easily explained. Maybe you went there.’

  ‘Oh I did.’ He clutched at my arm. ‘Most assuredly I did. You must understand, as Mr Keane’s secretary it’s part of my duty to protect his interests. And when that ... creature came here ... Well, I’d heard about that business of Sir Edmund and I was quite determined to stop him pinching any of our stuff. Naturally.’

  ‘We can’t talk here.’

  ‘But listen. I searched his room. I found something, and then he came in and caught me. That was just before you arrived.’

  ‘It explains it. What did you find?’

  ‘It was a copy of Mr Bloome’s Marlowe is Shakespeare. But I mean, it was annotated quite fully. I never knew a Gaelic gentleman would use such Anglo-Saxon words. It was obviously not from our library. So disappointing.’ He paused. ‘Can you help me, Mr Mallin?’

  ‘Help you what? Help you prove Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare?’

  ‘Oh no. Quite clearly he did not.’

  I asked him: ‘When’re they coming to take you away?’

  He pawed at my arm. ‘They wouldn’t put me in prison! I couldn’t stand that, Mr Mallin.’

  ‘You’ll like it. They’ve got libraries, you know, and you could quite easily find yourself a friend.’ I freed my arm. ‘Quite easily.’

  I left him somewhat relieved. Both of us.

  I’d got a fistful of them, all spread out in my hand. One more for the set, and I’d be able to swap ’em for a tumbler.

  ‘Elsa,’ I said, ‘how’d you like an afternoon away from this madhouse?’

  ‘We’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘I’ve got business in Brum.’

  I’d found her wandering on the terrace, alone.

  ‘And how can you call it a madhouse ...’

  ‘We can go after lunch.’

  So we went after lunch, and after I’d obtained Keane’s permission.

  ‘I know a chap who can stick it all together again,’ I said.

  He raised his eyes from his plate, the idea of a stuck-together T’ang not exciting him. ‘By all means, my dear fellow.’ He poised his fork and eyed it admiringly. ‘Mrs Pohlman will not be leaving us.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

  I was relieved to hear that that was all he had to say on the matter, as there was a distinct possibility that Mrs Pohlman herself could have threatened Frazer at one time or another. It was, after all, her kitchen he’d been invading, and Mrs Pohlman probably had more suitable weapons available than anybody.

  Elsa came out dressed in a flowered summer dress with white accessories and we strolled over to the garages. Henry Merridew was no longer polishing the Bentley, he was polishing the Lotus, insofar as you can polish fibreglass. I told him he was wasting his time, as the owner was no longer with us.

  He straightened to his six feet two, a strong, tough young man, that chauffeur. ‘I did want to see you, sir.’

  ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

  ‘I may not be around when you come back.’

  ‘Henry!’ said Elsa. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Don’t try skipping the country,’ I said, then, feeling his hurt eyes on me I added: ‘All right then. Let’s have it.’

  He said: ‘Come here, sir. Have a look at this.’ He took me over to the Bentley, bent, and pointed a finger.

  By concentrating, getting the light right, I could just detect a slight scratch on the rear wing.

  ‘He did that. Mr Frazer. With that car of his. He never used to look back when he was reversing.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ I could understand now. I’d got the set. ‘And they know?’

  ‘They’re cunning, sir. They know everything.’

  I patted his shoulder, told him I’d heard worse provocation, and left him staring at the scratch as though he could not accept it.

  I turned back. ‘Henry ... then why are you working on the Lotus?’

  ‘Well ... I did think ...’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I wondered if there was a chance ... I might buy it, sir.’

  Considering the tangle of Frazer’s existence, it was unlikely that the sorting out of his will would be a simple thing.

  ‘In time, Henry,’ I said. ‘Maybe you can.’

  Then I cursed him for wasting my time. But I did it silently. Martin Vale had had time to join us, and was idly watching, a slight smile on his lips.

  And just when I’d hoped to get clear away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We had decided to take the Rover, partly because Elsa liked it, and partly because I enjoyed driving it. Before I could free myself entirely from Henry, Vale was standing beside the Rover, chatting to Elsa, and looking miserable and lost. But he’s the sort who can conjure up the correct expression for watching a beautiful woman about to drive away from him.

  He’d be about forty, I reckoned, and seeing he’d got through three marriages he was wearing well. Tall and dark ... you know ... teeth good, clothes immaculate. They’d scramble for him. He’d started at twenty in a small wooden shed, urging more power into Triumph 500s for the lads, and more into his technique for the girls, and had gone from success to triumph. Maybe the
three wives had helped, but he had certainly climbed to the top of a useful empire.

  The snag was, he still remembered his engineering. Elsa was telling him about the ignition fault.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ he said, with the superior smile they use for other people’s opinions.

  We got in. I put the paper bag of T’ang fragments on the back seat and Elsa sat a moment, her door open, listening to his claims about his own art collection. It was a pity, he was explaining, that he was wifeless at the moment, and had no one to share it ...

  I tried the starter. The engine fired smoothly. ‘I seem to have cured it,’ I said.

  If we could have driven away there and then, everything would have been fine. But he went on and on, and the devil of it was that he knew that I knew all about his reputation, and he was just waiting for me to do something. You can’t go on, sitting with an engine ticking over. A 3 1/2 litre Rover engine sounds so damned patient, and seemed to express the wrong mood, so I cut in. Which was a mistake.

  ‘Aren’t we going, David?’ she said, and of course it wouldn’t start again.

  Eventually I got out and we had the bonnet up, our heads close. He smelt all sexy with manly cologne.

  ‘Not under here,’ he said. ‘It’s the ignition switch.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The solenoid switch.’

  ‘It’s murder to get at,’ he told me with satisfaction.

  I sneered at him. Elsa said we could use the Oxford, which meant she’d detected the electrical fault that was sparking between us, and was getting anxious.

  I tried the engine a few more times, and got no results, so the Oxford it had to be. A pity, that.

  ‘I’ll have it towed in,’ Vale suggested.

  ‘No,’ I snarled. ‘I’ll have a look at it later.’

  We drove away in the Oxford, and for some minutes Elsa was very silent.

  ‘David,’ she said at last. ‘You’re not thinking of doing it yourself?’

  Elsa comes from a few generations that never did anything, always paid for it, whereas I was brought up to understand that if I couldn’t do it on the cheap it didn’t get done.

  ‘Of course.’