The Silence of the Night

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Now Elsa,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it.’

  I carefully rolled up my tape measure. ‘What have I done that I didn’t mean?’

  ‘Well ... everybody’s been out today,’ said Elsa. ‘Just everybody. Sir Edmund into town ...’

  ‘To get a new file?’

  ‘What? Why should it matter? Do listen, David. And Mr Bloome had to take his car in for something, and Elaine and Hillary have been to somebody in Upper Killington who’s ill ...’

  ‘And we know where Vale’s been, don’t we?’

  ‘Everybody except me,’ said Uncle Albert proudly.

  ‘Allington?’ I asked.

  ‘Went to see his girl or something,’ she said.

  ‘He’s got a girl?’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘What I see is that everybody’s gone insane,’ I said. ‘It was some sort of joke. Now what possible harm could your uncle do by being here on his own?’

  ‘He could plan things,’ said Elsa vaguely. ‘He could hide ... things.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Well, he could. In a place like this. Or somebody could come and see him, save him going out, and he could hand it over —’

  ‘Hand what over?’ I demanded. ‘The vase? Is that what you’re saying? Your uncle brained Frazer, smashed a fake vase, pinched a genuine one. Oh, come on. What idea’s that?’

  ‘Then why are you accusing him?’

  ‘I’m not —’

  ‘Your lot. You’re in with them. You said so, yourself.’

  Elsa’s apt to go off on these wild claims, and sometimes all you can do is beat her to it, take the fantasy to such lengths that in the end she concedes, laughing.

  ‘So all right,’ I said violently. ‘So we’re accusing him. Sit down, Uncle Albert, and we’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Don’t shout at him.’

  ‘It’s known as grilling,’ I said. ‘Sit down, I said. Right. Look at me.’ I glanced round. ‘You see, Elsa — shifty eyes. Now, you stole the vase. It was all carefully worked out. Who did you hire to knock me out and fake the break-in?’

  ‘I don’t know anybody who could do that.’

  ‘Of course you do. You know Bloome, for instance. There’s a crook, if I ever saw one.’

  ‘He’s quite respectable, David,’ said Uncle Albert. ‘I assure you.’

  ‘But you heard him yourself. He reverted to type. Run him out of town on a rail, he said. That’s tough talk, Uncle Albert. Right. You’re in it with Bloome. He’s got some sort of racket over there. Top man. Knows all the best hoods. And he did want that vase. We know that much.’

  ‘That’s enough, David,’ Elsa said, but she wasn’t anywhere near laughing, so I went straight on.

  ‘But he picks you as the fall-guy.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s the one who takes the rap. He picks you, and then he dangles a carrot under your nose. Chief Librarian in Minneapolis.’

  ‘Minnesota.’

  ‘Right. You see, you’ve got it in mind. Suit you down to the ground, he says. And then he goes cool on it, gets you in suspense. Didn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t remember him going cool.’

  ‘Ah, clever. But he hints. He wants the T’ang. He wants it all right. Another hint. And Uncle Albert falls. Because Uncle Albert can pinch the T’ang and bring it to Minnesota, and then the job’s yours.’

  Uncle Albert licked his lips. He looked from Elsa back to me. ‘He does make it sound real, Elsa.’

  ‘But Bloome couldn’t take it out of the country,’ I said, elaborating on it. ‘Bloome would be searched, an American who was at Killington Towers. But not Uncle Albert perhaps, because he looks so innocent. But you deny it. Go on, deny it.’

  His face crumpled. His whole body crumpled. I looked at Elsa. I’d gone as far as I could in fantasy, and it wasn’t working. And Elsa wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ she said. ‘What are you saying? You’re being hateful.’

  ‘I’m telling him what they’re going to be throwing at him. Some theory or other like that.’

  ‘Your theory,’ she said, her eyes wild.

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’ I looked round. Uncle Albert was watching me with terror. ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s only talking.’

  ‘It wasn’t the T’ang he wanted,’ said Uncle Albert quietly.

  ‘It sounded to me like he did.’

  ‘It was the First Folio he’d have liked. For his library.’

  ‘He would?’

  ‘He said if I could get him that ...’ His eyes fell and his voice was almost inaudible. ‘... then I could have the job.’

  He must have meant for Uncle Albert to persuade Keane to sell. But there was such a despairing look in his eyes ... ‘You mean steal it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I suppose ...’ He shook his head. ‘How else could I get it for him? But I couldn’t do it.’ He looked helpless. ‘It’s too big.’

  ‘You see,’ said Elsa. ‘You see what you’ve done.’

  ‘And that awful Frazer,’ said Albert, ‘he went and got blood on it.’

  The Grand Hall swung round me madly. I wanted to turn and run.

  ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ said Elsa. ‘Never. Now Uncle Albert, don’t you worry. He’s not in his right mind. You come with me ...’

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Didn’t you hear what he said. Uncle Albert — how did you know he’d got blood on it?’

  Nobody had got into that library after I’d roused the household. But he looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes, slightly watering, his mouth drooping.

  ‘Because I saw it.’

  ‘When, for God’s sake?’

  ‘When I came down last night. I knew Frazer was in there, but he wouldn’t be able to hear me, and the last time I’d seen it the First Folio was on a shelf behind him. David, I really intended to steal it. If I could hide it somewhere, that is. I’m ... I’m not rich. I’m very poor. You may not believe it.’

  ‘I do. Go on, man.’

  ‘And that appointment in America! The idea of it turned my head. I would have stolen it last night, but Frazer had it out on the desk, and he was dead. I couldn’t ... touch it. Not with that blood ...’

  ‘Uncle Albert,’ I said carefully, ‘I couldn’t have been unconscious for long. Frazer was killed during that time. Not long. A minute or two. And in that time, you’re saying, you crept down, found Frazer, and got away again?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were there, David, and knocked unconscious, otherwise I’d have come to your assistance.’

  ‘I’m sure you would. But don’t you understand? A vase was smashed. You couldn’t have been far away.’

  ‘I suppose I couldn’t.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you rouse the household when you heard it? Or do something? Why just ignore it?’

  ‘I didn’t ignore it.’

  ‘Then what the hell did you do?’

  ‘But I didn’t hear it.’

  ‘You must have done.’

  ‘There was no sound, David. The house was silent.’

  I looked at him carefully. Why was he lying? Elsa touched my sleeve. I turned. She was worried.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Oh hell ... I don’t know.’

  Nothing ever goes right for me. It should have ended with Elsa laughing, everybody laughing. It ended with Elsa taking Uncle Albert away, without one backward glance, and a cool breeze through the Grand Hall in the hot June evening.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nothing had arrived by half past ten the next morning, in spite of the promises of French and Greene, and though you don’t expect much from promises it’s always annoying, just the same. And I’d stressed the urgency.

  I was very tired, having spent half the night on patrol outside and the other half asleep on the terrace. Elsa hadn’t been down for breakfast, and I hadn’t seen her all morning. It’s a horribl
e feeling, wanting to avoid the person you love. But I knew what it’d be, all wide-eyed protestations, and pressuring to do something I didn’t want to do. Which was to keep quiet about Uncle Albert.

  All the same, I hadn’t said anything to Alwright. My neck was already stuck out quite a bit, with not mentioning Beanie Sloan being in the area, but keeping dark about Uncle Albert was going very close to a chargeable offence. Suppression of evidence. But I comforted myself with the fact that I could always claim his evidence to be more confusing than useful, seeing it was so self-contradictory.

  Something was missing somewhere, and as I couldn’t see where, I went and had a look at Elsa’s Rover. Fortunately I’d left it unlocked and with the key in — a gesture of confidence in Hillary’s hospitable reliability — so that I didn’t have to go to Elsa. On the way there I noticed that we now had visitors, odd, strained-looking men, wandering round the grounds as though preoccupied in sad reflections. Alwright had his men on the job, watching us.

  Watching me, I realised, when I got the bonnet up.

  ‘That your car, sir?’ he said from behind me.

  I glanced round. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t they lock up anything around here?’ he asked plaintively.

  I ignored him, and the next time I looked round he’d gone.

  The idea with solenoid switches is that you can reach them to operate the starter motor from inside the bonnet. This means they’re usually in reach. It doesn’t have to mean that you can find enough room to get a spanner to them. I went and got my tools from the Oxford — which I found I’d also left unlocked — because Elsa would not, under any circumstances, own such a thing as a tool. Then I went back and took some skin off my knuckles and cursed a bit, but didn’t get anywhere. As far as I could see, I’d need to make room by removing something else, which couldn’t be shifted because another something was in the way, only you couldn’t shift that without lifting the whole engine from the car. You know the sort of thing. And though I might have sounded confident enough to Elsa, I’m not really much good at it.

  That was when I looked round to find the CID man gone, and Elsa in his place.

  ‘I hope you’re not taking it all to bits,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t undone a nut,’ I assured her. ‘How’s your uncle?’

  ‘You frightened him.’

  ‘He’s frightened me. Has he been to see Alwright?’

  She’d got a light linen suit on, and she’d done something different to her hair. The sun was behind her, and her face was in shadow, and I couldn’t be sure of her antagonism.

  ‘We hardly thought it necessary,’ she said in a flat little voice. ‘Seeing you’d go running to him.’

  ‘I haven’t done that.’

  ‘David ... does that mean you believe what Uncle Albert said?’

  I looked away from one problem and down into the other. ‘If I believed him, I wouldn’t dare repeat it.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was silent a while. I skinned another knuckle. ‘Just look at your hands, David.’

  I looked at them. They seemed all right to me.

  ‘Nobody would believe me,’ I said.

  ‘Not believe a policeman?’

  I laughed. ‘Believe that he heard nothing in the night.’ She was silent. I held up my hands. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

  ‘They’re filthy!’

  ‘It’s all right. The grease acts as an antiseptic, and it stops the bleeding.’ A spot of blood fell on to the plug leads, and she shuddered.

  ‘They can see you from the house,’ she said, and I was lost again. She saw my puzzlement. ‘You’re a guest.’

  I got it. ‘I suppose it’s not done for a guest to soil his hands with honest dirt, but it’s acceptable for a guest to lift £50,000 worth of vase. Somebody’s values are getting distorted.’

  ‘It’s not what I mean.’ She bit her lip, because it was. ‘And you know it couldn’t have been anybody in the house.’

  ‘My opinion doesn’t happen to matter.’

  ‘It does to me.’ She said it in such a lost, little voice that I looked at her sharply. Damn it, she was nearly in tears.

  ‘Now Elsa!’

  I nearly put an arm round her lovely shoulders, then remembered my hands, looked at them ruefully, and she was right in there on the inference, because she came and put her arms round my waist and leaned her head on my chest, and her hair tasted wonderful.

  We stood a moment, then she released me, looked up blinking, and smiled. ‘You are an idiot, David,’ she said, and before I could take her up on it she changed the subject. She looked down into the daunting bonnet.

  ‘Have you done anything to it?’

  ‘Tightened a lead a bit.’

  ‘Well then!’ she said proudly. ‘Let’s try it, shall we.’

  So we got in, me in the driver’s seat. The engine started first touch. ‘There,’ she said. But once isn’t enough. It started six times in a row.

  ‘You are clever, David.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘But you are. If you’d only make more effort.’

  ‘I try as hard as I can.’

  ‘I mean effort to look the part,’ she explained fondly, touching my flying shirt collar, smoothing my lapels.

  ‘You mean I don’t look like a detective?’

  ‘You look so ordinary.’

  ‘A detective has to make an effort to look ordinary,’ I pointed out.

  ‘But you don’t inspire confidence.’

  Ah! I was wondering what it was. ‘You mean, if I made the right effort in the right direction, and inspired the correct degree of confidence in the desirable type of client, I might become the ideal detective?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  I was willing to concede a lot. A principle, even, here and there. ‘I could try.’

  ‘Because really you’re so good at it. The way you frightened Uncle Albert. It was very well done.’

  I looked sideways at her. She was smiling. ‘He wasn’t difficult.’ I played with the tab on the ignition key. ‘Elsa ... I mean, assuming I could work it like that, get going on my own ...’

  ‘With a little capital behind you.’

  ‘On my own. There’s something I wanted to say. Of course, I’d need to keep the flat going ...’

  ‘That place!’

  ‘Just to have it there. You know. Not live there.’

  ‘It sounds splendid. What were you saying?’

  I toyed with the key. I’d never done that sort of thing before. Did one have to go into all that business about how much I loved her? She knew that. Must do. Or did I come right out with it?

  I switched on the engine — a nervous reaction. It didn’t start. She was silent. I tried it again.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘I’ll get Martin to have it towed into one of his places.’

  I clenched the wheel firmly.

  ‘He’d get it there and back in an hour or two,’ she assured me. ‘He’d do anything for me. What were you saying, David?’

  ‘I’ll tear the bloody thing to pieces!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll have that engine all over the yard.’

  And I scrambled out again, dived furiously into the engine, and when I looked up again she’d gone.

  But I did not tear anything to pieces, except my character. Making a great effort I calmly put the tools away, remembered to wipe Elsa’s steering wheel and went to find Henry to see if he’d got something that fetched grease off hands.

  I found him in the kitchen, dreaming over a book of the Lotus and memorising the Le Mans circuit. Mrs Pohlman emerged from the far distance and asked: ‘Iss dat polissman schtaying for lonch?’, but as I hadn’t even known he was there I couldn’t tell her. And as I didn’t wish to meet him I sneaked in the domestic way and lurked in the library, where it was Alton K. Bloome who cornered me.

  Having already fostered the illusion that he could be a mobster, it was now very easy to see I was probably correct. He was menacing. The schol
ar who had unearthed the after-life of Chris Marlowe was big and broad, and his wide, scholastic brow had a wide, uneducated frown. Those eyes, too, sunk in dark trenches, were wary and measuring.

  ‘Your sort,’ he said, ‘down my way we lynch.’

  I backed away from the desk. There was nothing but calf binding behind me, ceiling to waist level, drawers beneath. No retreat.

  ‘I’m on your side,’ I told him.

  ‘Don’t come that with me,’ he said. ‘What’ve you been throwing at my friend?’

  I assured him that Uncle Albert was quite recovered. Bloome was a big man, but he was too old to hit.

  ‘Frightening the little guy,’ he said plaintively. ‘Putting the fear in him. Let me put you right, buster. There’s gonna be some changes made round here. You watch me. You people over here, you get this poor little punk, and you can’t see what you’ve got. Genius. That’s what he is. And do you pin medals on him, do you give him a grant and let him work? Not you Britishers. But you just see what we do for him back home. We’ll have the ticker tapes out ... we’ll set him down in his own little den ...’

  ‘Surrounded by First Folios, I suppose, that he’s smuggled out for you?’

  ‘Now why didya have to say that?’ he complained. ‘If I want ‘em, I buy ‘em. A.K.B. doesn’t have to smuggle, friend. A.K.B. writes a cheque.’

  ‘That wasn’t what Uncle Albert said.’

  Then abruptly he was affable, reached out a beefy hand and thumped my shoulder, and bellowed: ‘You got it wrong, boy! Sure, I said I’d like this, I’d like that. They got some good stuff here. But not hi-jack it. I was stringing him along. Twitting the little guy. You know.’

  He punched the knowledge into my shoulder, and left, laughing at my ignorance of the measure of his friendship.

  It was Bloome who must have told Allington where to find me. The young man slid in and said: ‘There’s somebody wants you on the phone.’ He paused, glanced at me sideways. ‘It’s a man.’

  ‘Can I take it in here?’

  He showed me how to work it, and Artie Dolman came through as clear as a local call.

  ‘Dave,’ he said, ‘can you come in and see me?’

  ‘Can’t you tell me over the phone?’

  ‘I’ll need to show you.’

  ‘Show me what, Artie? What’re you being so secretive about?’