But it wasn’t my fault that one of them had committed murder. I wanted to shout that out, but nobody was looking at me any more.
‘Mr Keane,’ said Alwright, ‘the library,’ and Hillary sighed. ‘Of course.’
We all trooped along to the Grand Hall and through into the library, me last. Whatever happened, I was going to lose out. A negative result would leave me with an unresolved and unpleasant theory.
The room was dusty, the must of calf bindings and old print in the air. A hint of death hung in the atmosphere.
It didn’t have to take long. Wherever this container had been hidden, it would have had to be in sight of Frazer. There was only a third of the room in front of the desk, and in that third only one place for hiding things. Behind the books was unlikely; a bag of vase pieces would be that much too bulky. But the lower three feet or so of that bank of bookcases was in the form of drawers, where Hillary kept the manuscripts, original letters, and that sort of thing. They weren’t deep drawers, deep enough only for something reasonably flat, such as a briefcase.
It was a briefcase that Kenny produced. He held it up for Alwright to see. Nobody said anything.
The dust was the only thing that moved, that and Kenny as he brought out a handful of papers. He peered inside it, reached down, and fished out a piece of porcelain, around an inch across, triangular shaped.
Elsa gave a gasp that was very near to a scream.
‘Be careful with those papers,’ said Uncle Albert. ‘They’re my notes, and there’s a lot of work there.’
Alwright touched him on the shoulder. ‘Albert Smallbridge,’ he said, and it was the first time I’d heard his name, ‘I am arresting you on a charge of murder and larceny, and I must warn you ...’
I didn’t hear any more. Elsa had moved. I reached out but she swept past me, her face white, and her eyes so staring that she’d have walked into the door if Vale hadn’t got there first.
Uncle Albert slowly sat down in the seat Frazer had used to die in.
CHAPTER NINE
Elsa was packing, most definitely packing. It was Monday morning and I stood in her open doorway watching her. She’d come for only the weekend, anyway, but you’d have thought from her cases she’d come for the season.
She had said goodbye to Elaine and Hillary, and thank you she’d enjoyed her stay. She hadn’t said anything to me.
‘Can I help you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I’ll carry them down for you.’
‘Henry will do that.’
There was silence for a few minutes.
‘I don’t want to put any strain on you,’ she said eventually. ‘We mustn’t tax that brain of yours, must we. Leave it clear for more of your exciting efforts.’
It was most unusual for Elsa to resort to sarcasm. I didn’t like what it did to her mouth. She’d either started using eye-shadow or had had no sleep.
‘Elsa, it was just —’
‘Never mind.’
She’d got all the bags locked.
‘Here, let me have those.’
‘You can’t manage them all.’
‘I brought them up here, didn’t I?’
‘Please yourself,’ she said negligently. She was looking round for the odd dropped handkerchief or earring. ‘You’d make an argument over nothing.’
I marched out with a load of luggage, leaving Elsa to carry her toilet case. She was a way behind me on the upper landing.
‘You’re in a hurry to get rid of me,’ she said.
‘No hurry.’ I waited for her.
We got halfway down the magnificent staircase. I stopped again. ‘Elsa, it was simply that —’
‘You had bad luck. I know.’
One foot on a lower tread, two cases balanced on the other raised knee, I looked back at her. ‘Not bad luck. You can see what happened.’
‘What happened,’ she said tartly, ‘was that you were showing off again. You’d got an audience, and you’d had a bit too much to drink, and the cheers were dying. So you had to go into your clever little act again.’
Will you please look —’
She cut in angrily, her desperate distress bursting out. ‘Do you know what you’ve done to him! Can you have any idea of the way that poor old man will be suffering? You don’t know. You don’t care.’ Then the anger had gone and left her pale but composed.
I tried again. Will you please look ahead of you, down a bit, past the suit of armour. What d’you see?’
‘The telephone table,’ she said distantly. ‘Does it really matter?’
‘I think so. We made that phone call from there. Now just supposing someone, up here, saw me about to dial the call, nipped back to his room, and overheard what we said to Alwright, on his extension.’
‘Suppose, suppose. You’re scratching my best case against the rail.’
I eased the pigskin away. The original owner would probably have enjoyed it.
‘Then that person would have searched his own luggage, found the missing bit, and planted it in your Uncle Albert’s briefcase.’
I watched her hopefully. What I was really doing was a great sacrifice, though she could not have realised that. It was just a mitigation I was dangling in front of her, but of course it destroyed my beautiful theory about why Frazer had been attacked. It was only if the container of pieces had been hidden somewhere within sight of Frazer that I’d been able to demonstrate why he had been attacked. Without that, I had nothing.
‘I’m not going to listen to any more of it,’ she decided. ‘If you don’t intend to take them any further, just leave them there and I’ll find Henry.’
So I had no alternative but to heft the cases again and continue on our way, out through the side entrance into the blinding glare of the courtyard.
I stopped. ‘I admit I made a mistake. We should have driven away from here and made that call from a phone box.’
‘We?’
‘It’d have been a squeeze, I admit. But in view of what happened, that wouldn’t have been a snag.’
She tossed her head. She can make her hair dance in a most scornful way.
‘You took advantage of my relief. If I’d known what you intended to do later ...’
‘I didn’t know myself.’
We began walking again.
‘Was it inspiration?’ she asked from behind me. ‘The general effect was that you’d deliberately planned to get Uncle Albert into trouble.’
Some words that come immediately to mind are best suppressed. I managed to say nothing all the way to the Rover, opened the doors, and dumped the cases on the back seat.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I intend to get a good lawyer for Uncle Albert. I shall take advice, and follow it. Somebody’s got to do something for him.’
‘I know a good man.’
‘Really, David? Now please let me get in.’
I stood aside from the door. ‘It probably won’t start.’
She slid her behind on to the seat, lifted her legs trimly inside.
‘I’m quite sure it will. When we were out yesterday, trying to do something for my uncle, Martin picked up an ignition switch at one of his garages. He changed it while we were waiting for the cars to arrive. In a few minutes.’
An ignition switch is reasonably easy. Not like a solenoid switch. Not a dirty job. Vale needn’t have even soiled his hands.
‘It’s not the ignition switch.’
She smiled. ‘Some people are competent, David. A man who’s worked his way up from nothing ... You don’t think he’d make mistakes! Now please stand clear.’
I looked round wildly. There was no sign of the Porsche.
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Why, home of course.’
Then I knew with infuriating clarity where Elsa was intending to go for her advice. I knew the competent hands in which she was about to place herself. And like a ridiculous oaf, seeing her reaching for the ignition key, I did the only thing I could t
hink about. I galloped round to the front of the car and put my hands on the bonnet.
‘Now wait!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, David. Get out of the way.’
‘I forbid you to go —’
‘Forbid!’ she shouted. ‘What right have you to forbid me anything?’
‘You’re not going away from here in that mood.’
‘Get out of my way!’ she shrieked, and reached forward again.
I didn’t know how far she would take it. I’d never seen Elsa in a blind rage, never encountered those wild, flaming eyes. She looked quite capable of driving straight over me. Fantastically, furious myself now, I braced my legs and leaned against the bonnet, as though I could oppose 3 1/2 litres of beautiful engine. The starter whirred, but the engine did not fire.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ she wailed.
I straightened up, my hands on my hips, and I just couldn’t help it. I grinned. She tried it some more. Not a tickle. She sat and considered it.
Then the window came down and her head came out of it. She was frowning, concentrating on the correct tone of admonition tempered with entreaty.
‘David, you’ll have to lend me your car.’
Now, how could I say go to hell? Those sudden reversals of mood, adapting herself to the circumstances, were just the sort of thing that I found so endearing in her, and suddenly my anger was way in the past.
‘The keys are in.’
You’d have thought my uncomplicated agreement would have softened her, and maybe we could have taken a sensible look at the situation. But no. The frown was still there, the vexation at the backsliding Rover, the annoyance of finding herself about to cope with my stupid gear box and inconsiderate clutch pedal. She scrambled out, went over to my Oxford, opened it up, and went back for her cases.
‘You might just help me with these,’ she said.
I helped her with the cases.
‘Elsa, I do think we ought to talk this out.’
‘I’m late as it is. Which is first gear?’
‘It’s marked on the top of the lever. You’ll see. Why don’t you just go to your place, if you’ve got to go somewhere?’
‘I haven’t decided yet. And Shropshire’s a long way away. I hope yours starts.’
‘Oh, it will,’ I said in disgust. It did. This time there was no nonsense about standing in the way. To be run over by one’s own car is a bit too much.
She drove out into the courtyard, mangling my gears. It’s not her fault; she’s so used to an automatic box. She didn’t wave or anything, but I don’t suppose she had a free hand. The winkers came on, first one then the other, as she experimented, then she found second, blasted the horn for no reason at all, and swung out into the drive.
It was only then that I remembered my thirty-two automatic in the glove compartment.
Some time elapsed before I recalled that I was at Killington Towers to do a specific job, and the stuff from French and Greene still hadn’t arrived. Keane asked about it in a worried tone he tried to suppress, and it did seem he blamed me for the delay, so I was in just the mood to roust them good and proper when I picked up the phone in the library. But Bloome was on one of the other extensions, and though I quickly hung up I heard enough to realise he was trying to book an early flight back to the States.
Bloome’s interest in art had abruptly evaporated.
A few minutes later I got through and told French and Greene that if I didn’t get their security equipment that very day I’d be down there for it myself, if I had to break in to get it. He hung up with a promise and an uncertain sort of snigger.
The trouble was that I’d got nothing to do, and nowhere to go with only a faulty Rover to go in, and all I could do was wander unhappily in the grounds, and think.
I stood and contemplated a Japanese maple that they’d got beside a small, ornamental pool, and worried about those tiny bits Artie Dolman had wanted me to find. There was just a lingering hope that they, or the absence of them, would assist Uncle Albert.
There had been nothing like that in the briefcase. Kenny had found only the one piece, and no dusty bits of glaze. He’d inverted the briefcase and nothing had come out. And a most careful examination of the floor in the Grand Hall had revealed nothing. But how did that help Uncle Albert? The obvious police theory was going to be that he’d smashed a fake T’ang somewhere far away, before he’d even come here, picked all the bits up and dumped them in his case, and then come along to Killington Towers with it all safely hidden.
But think about it, and that produces a mental picture which is not too convincing. Could you see him, in his little room back in London, carefully bouncing a vase on the floor, then scrambling around for all the pieces? Or putting it on a table and smashing it with a hammer? In either case he’d get the same results, and either would explain a failure to sweep up the tiny bits that were still missing. They wouldn’t seem to be important.
But would it not have been easier, and more logical, to put the vase, whole, into some sort of bag — a bit stronger, perhaps, than a paper one — and just drop the whole thing from a good height? Then you’d have it all nicely smashed, and already in a container. Oh yes, I decided, much more likely.
And that did assist Uncle Albert, because if he’d done the smashing he wouldn’t then have transferred the lot loose into his briefcase, where anyway they’d have made a tinkling sound every time he moved it. No. He’d have put the bag intact into his briefcase. So how, in that event, had one single piece escaped from the bag into the briefcase? And where was this bag, or whatever it was, right at this moment? Not in the house, you could bet on that, because Alwright’s men would never have missed it. Probably dumped somewhere.
Oh well, it was just another theory. If I could have produced the bag, with the tiny bits tucked down in a corner, then maybe it would’ve meant something. Something, at least, that would’ve eased the pressure on Uncle Albert.
And the pressure was there, you could tell that. The poor little bugger was cracking, must have been, because they seemed to have got on to his splendid idea of lifting the First Folio for Alton K. Bloome. In any event, Alwright and Kenny came for Bloome just after lunch. Or of course it could’ve been that they had the phone tapped, and they were reluctant to permit Bloome to leave the country. Whatever it was, they arrived in a large car, and it did just cross my mind to wonder why they’d not simply sent a constable or two to fetch Bloome.
They’d got him backed into a corner of the drawing-room when I came across them, Hillary protesting feebly in the background.
I said: ‘Have you got a minute?’
Alwright looked interested. ‘He’s at it again,’ he said to Kenny.
‘Somebody put the finger on me!’ Bloome hooted.
‘Do you want to try and help another friend?’ Alwright asked me. ‘The man seems to think we’re going to belt him with rubber hoses.’
‘It’s just that I’ve been thinking of something.’
‘He never gives up, Charlie,’ he said with admiration. ‘Come on, let’s have it. Might as well.’
‘Not here.’ And I led him into the Grand Hall. Hillary must have been upset by that, but I was past caring.
I told Alwright and Kenny about the theory of the vase having been smashed inside some sort of bag. They listened carefully, but I didn’t like the glances they exchanged from time to time. I came to the end of it. Alwright rubbed his vast jaw thoughtfully.
‘Come down here,’ he said. ‘Something I want to show you.’
He led the way to the far end, and we stood in front of the set of etchings and engravings, the Dürers, the Rembrandts, the da Vinci sketches.
‘Nice set,’ he said.
‘There’s a notable absence.’
‘I know. Mallin, you don’t have to imagine you’re the only one who ever does any thinking. Sometimes I sit and think.’ He chuckled. ‘And sometimes I sit and realise just what has happened in this case. You know what’s the most significant thing in
all this?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s the very useful assistance we’ve had from a certain Dave Mallin. And what has been the result of that assistance? Twice now you’ve got us to take in Albert Smallbridge for questioning. Once you’ve got him out. Now you’re at it again. And are we getting anything from him? We are not. Daft talk about smuggling some frowsy old book out of the country! I mean, what is there to shout about? So we’re getting nowhere, and we’re getting there with your help.’
‘I do my best,’ I said, and I was beginning to realise that they’d not come to see Bloome, they’d come for me.
‘And what exactly have your efforts brought about? Just think about it. We’ve now searched the house, and found nothing. You’ve persuaded us that the substitution of a smashed fake vase was to give time for the real one to get itself smuggled well clear. But well clear to where? Tell me that.’
‘I wish I could.’
‘But who was it who took the smashed vase all the way to Birmingham? And why? Nobody asked him to. Nobody said they wanted to have it all put back together. You took that on yourself. As an excuse. An excuse to go to Birmingham. Isn’t that so, Charlie?’
Kenny grunted. He was eyeing me with stolid indifference, not enjoying it as much as Alwright. ‘I had to see a security firm,’ I offered.
‘Did you? But you could’ve done all that over the phone. And did your journey produce any more than a phone call would? Not a bit. Where’s their van? I haven’t seen any vans.’
‘You could easily check.’
‘Of course I could. Of course you went there. Make it look good. And you took the opportunity to call in at your flat.’
I felt a small nudge of uncertainty. ‘How d’you know that?’
‘Two cups and saucers, dried coffee inside. Two, Mallin, and you went with Mrs Forbes.’
‘We played a record.’
‘The Brahms 4th Symphony. It was still on the turntable.’
‘You’ve been there,’ I said hollowly.
‘Search warrant. All legal and correct. We had to break the lock. Put in a claim, and we’ll pay for a new one.’
The Silence of the Night Page 11