The Silence of the Night Read online

  ‘There’s a First Folio,’ he said, lowering his voice. I glanced at Frazer, but it was in awe that Uncle Albert had spoken. At that moment we were in front of the desk and facing the Scotsman. He saw me, raised bleak eyes beneath shaggy brows, and I said good afternoon, to which he replied: ‘Purrdy sach.’

  ‘He lip-reads,’ said Uncle Albert. ‘I wish he’d go home.’ To which Frazer made a reply I will not reproduce. Uncle Albert grinned, and nodded to him.

  I gathered that Cameron Frazer was in the way of the cataloguing. Volumes wouldn’t stay where they were put. It was most exasperating.

  ‘Sixteen twenty-three,’ said Uncle Albert.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The First Folio. The first published collection of thirty-six of Shakespeare’s plays.’

  And strangely Cameron Frazer leered, revealing shattered brown teeth.

  I decided that the library was not going to be a headache; it only needed something doing to the door. But Beanie Sloan was somewhere around, so the problem was urgent. His presence was now more than an interesting facet. I decided to begin by patrolling the grounds, that night at least.

  Uncle Albert told me they dressed for dinner. When I got down I found mine was the only dinner jacket, dressing apparently meaning that they weren’t actually nude. But the Keanes had impeccable taste, and their failure to make a show, painful as it must have been, was in deference to Uncle Albert, who was well-known to be minus anything remotely tidy. And, of course, in deference to Cameron Frazer, who might just decide to join us. He did, and another place was quickly laid. He was still wearing his Fair Isle pullover.

  By that time the last guest had arrived. He was to stay, like Elsa, only over the weekend, and had apparently come mainly for the pleasure of spending a day or two sneering at Keane’s exhibits. But he did it nicely. I knew all about his sneers. I’d had him sneer at me in the interrogation room, that time we picked him up for attempted rape. Martin Vale had money and charm, he possessed a string of garages, a number of fast cars, and an ability with women, so we’d never understood why he’d resorted to rape, and hadn’t succeeded. He also had, he claimed, the only genuine T’ang in the country. Keane was far too polite to tell him to drop dead. But I wasn’t, and I decided to, just about the time I saw him look at Elsa. And saw Elsa smile back.

  They had put me opposite Frazer, who, in spite of his sandwiches, was so busy eating that he fortunately had no time to talk. I couldn’t have made the mental effort, anyway, to interpret his accent, which was impaired both by being deaf and by having immersed himself in the seventeenth century. Fisch, next to me, told me that Frazer was involved in proving that Elizabeth I had had an illegitimate child, but by that time I was so certain that they were all insane I didn’t trouble about it.

  ‘You say it’s genuine?’ Bloome was saying.

  Vale looked round the table. ‘More genuine than the one in there.’

  Bloome looked eager, having failed to persuade Keane to sell his T’ang, but Keane caught his eye and shook his head. The American went cautious.

  We withdrew. Coffee and liqueurs and cigars and painful conversation. The young man I’d met running was steering clear of Frazer, who was bellowing something barbaric. He was Keane’s secretary, Rupert Allington, a shy but earnest refugee from a threatened career in the army.

  ‘Really,’ he said, ‘the people you meet, even here.’

  I agreed.

  Vale had got Elsa backed into a corner and was laughing about something. I’d got my own troubles, and she seemed to be enjoying it, so I could hardly break it up. We weren’t engaged or anything; I’d got no special claim. So I worried about the windows, and because I couldn’t bear to watch all the others not worrying, went out to finish my cigar on the terrace.

  It was a fine, soft night, cool now, but still not completely dark. Maybe Keane had a gun he could lend me, I thought. But if he had it’d be a matchlock or something. I worried some more.

  Then Elsa came out.

  ‘David, you’re sulking.’

  No I wasn’t. The soft light from the west bloomed on her cheeks. ‘It’s quiet out here.’

  ‘You know you’ll make an excellent job of it,’ she said.

  So she hadn’t meant Vale. ‘If I get time,’ I admitted, ‘I’ll make a good job of it.’ I was including Vale.

  I kissed her properly. The evening glowed. She held me away and looked at me with her eyes misty. ‘I’ll have to get something for my shoulders,’ she said. ‘It’s becoming quite cool.’

  I’d got something for her shoulders, but she declined, and if she found anything else I don’t know, because she didn’t come back.

  I went in after a while. Almost everybody had retired, and only Keane and Fisch remained. I didn’t tell anybody what I intended, just casually placed the guests and their rooms in my mind, in case. Frazer alone would probably not be in his room. He had stumped back to the library, angered by something Bloome had said, and in that mood might well be expected to work through the night.

  I went up to my room. It was dark by that time. I put on slacks and a zipped jacket and soft shoes, and sneaked down again. The Grand Hall was a ghostly, empty space, echoing even to my breathing, with faint moonlight just barely picking out the shapes. There was a fine line of light under the library door. I did not disturb him. The tall windows on to the terrace had locks, flimsy things, and in each the key was left. I went round locking them all and pocketing the keys, and I let myself out through one of them and locked it behind me.

  It was going to be a long night. I found a hard shadow in the lea of a pedestal, and leaned against it. No smoking, no moving, and no sleep. It had been a long day, too.

  At around three-thirty I decided I was being a fool. Beanie Sloan was a killer, a blackmailer, a smuggler, but he’d never been a burglar. Too petty for him. Just at the moment when I decided I’d had enough, a slight sound caused me to move my head. A moving shadow looked very like a gun clasped in somebody’s fist. It contacted a point just above my left ear, and for a moment the June night came alight.

  Then all was quiet and dark, and I hadn’t even noticed if the fingers round the gun were tobacco-stained. I plunged down and far away from Killington Towers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  You don’t come out of unconsciousness abruptly, with all your faculties going full blast. I was inside the Grand Hall before I realised how I’d got there.

  The moon had gone somewhere and left it very dark. I stood just inside the open window and felt around with my eyes. Nothing moved. It was very quiet. Yet the window had been open.

  I had not noticed where to locate the light switches, but the obvious place was near the door, so I fumbled my way round the outskirts and along the far wall. A whole bank of switches touched my hand, and I flooded the room with light. I stood blinking.

  There was nobody there, no satisfactory place to hide, no significant gap in the line of paintings, no apparent reason for the attack. But one absence made itself felt. The pedestal still stood inside its roped square, but no vase rested on it.

  I advanced slowly for a better look. The show cases had obscured my view of the floor, but as I came closer I saw that nobody had succeeded in stealing the T’ang. They’d certainly disturbed it, but clumsily it’d been dropped, and, I saw now, the shattered remains had dispersed in all directions to a distance of some yards. Hillary Keane’s pride was spread at my feet.

  I took a deep breath. Dave Mallin wasn’t doing too well so far. I touched nothing, just stood and looked round, and imagined Keane’s fury when he was told; or at least his cultured sorrow, which was going to be more deflating. The house was silent. I could at least defer the admission of failure.

  I wondered whether Cameron Frazer was still working. But he’d hear nothing, anyway, though a crashing vase would make quite a noise. I went to see, just on the off-chance he’d noticed something.

  The light was still on in the library, though confined to a desk lamp, and he was
still there. But he hadn’t studied through the night; he was asleep, his head down on the surface of a large, opened volume. I approached him, looked over his shoulder at the ancient English print.

  The words: ‘And fweat with the invention of fome pitiful jeft,’ I could just read, as there were only three esses. But lower down: ‘In many more fucceeding officef,’ was partly obscured by a trickle of blood. It came from a contusion in the centre of Frazer’s skull. I touched his outstretched hand. It was limp. I could detect no pulse. Then, abruptly shocked, I groped more certainly for his wrist. He was dead.

  I looked round quickly for a weapon, and saw a wide, plain fireplace I hadn’t before noticed. It was probably never used though fire-irons were there if required. The poker was not, and I found it on the pale, thin carpet, two yards from the desk. It had a heavy handgrip, which showed just a trace of blood.

  I went out into the Grand Hall. Keane had two phones in there, one at each end, but I used neither. I went on into the entrance hall and called the police from there, then set about waking the others, starting with Keane.

  He took it very well, I thought, his sorrows vying for prominence between the T’ang vase and Frazer. I think the vase won. Sir Edmund Fisch suffered more. He was dryly and bitterly angry, and when Elsa clung to my arm with protective commiseration I was unsure whether to welcome her or not. If there was anything I didn’t want it was sympathy. And I didn’t want them all trooping in there disturbing things either. Even a foot in a wrong place could do harm, and I had to bring out my police sergeant voice and throw it around a little. But I managed to keep them in the drawing-room until the police arrived from County HQ.

  Not that I stayed in there myself. I set the chauffeur-gardener, whose name was Henry Merridew, on guard at the door into the Grand Hall, and then went out on the terrace. Somebody had to stand guard there, hadn’t they? And anyway, I wanted a closer look at that open window.

  By that time I’d had an opportunity to think about it, and one or two points had occurred to me. For one thing, the blow that had put me out had definitely been a professional job. My memory of a gun, too, was quite positive, and ordinary burglars don’t carry guns. But such a man would realise that if I was out there on the terrace I’d have had to get there somehow, and the most likely guess would be that I’d used one of the Grand Hall windows. So he’d know that I’d either left it open or I’d got the key in my pocket. And yet I’d not, obviously, been searched, because there were still a dozen or so tinkling away inside there. So the breaking open of the window was a contradiction of personality, and this was particularly evident when I came to examine it. A pro would have slid that catch back with barely a scratch to show for it, yet this was a tyre lever and brute force job, the wood indented, the metal bent.

  I touched the tender skin above my left ear. Yes, definitely professional, enough to put me out, and not enough to crack my skull. I had been treated with care.

  So I stood and smoked — my pipe now — until the police came, then I relinquished the duty to a bleary-eyed constable, who eyed me with suspicion.

  At four-thirty, a uniformed sergeant and two constables were about as much as anybody could expect, and they confined themselves to a formal listing of names and a quick check on Cameron Frazer, who was most definitely dead.

  That was another peculiar thing; I had been knocked out carefully and precisely, but Frazer’s skull had been smashed in with a heavy blow from an object a darned sight heavier than a gun. I left that consideration to the big boys, when they arrived.

  By that time Mrs Pohlman, the Keanes’ cook-housekeeper, had got together an early breakfast, and we were all more or less dressed. The confusion was wearing off as the grim facts sank home. Nobody seemed sorry that Frazer had gone, except Elsa, who thought he’d been a dear old thing. She had bathed my bump, and I was feeling as well as could be expected, which was rotten.

  They came in force, three cars with the whole of the crime squad. It was all in charge of a Det. Supt. Alwright, a huge, jocular and flabby man, who tried to keep everything happy and not too depressing. But he obviously depressed his assistant, Det. Ins. Kenny, who’d probably had a lot of it and didn’t see the point, other than that the attitude at least lowered defences. After the preliminaries, and after they’d taken away Frazer’s body, they set a squad on fingerprinting the Grand Hall, which was enough to send anybody insane. I mean, what dabs did they expect?

  Then they had me in, to start things rolling.

  Keane had allocated them a study he wasn’t using, and Alwright was quaking behind its desk, squeezed into a chair with its arm creaking. Kenny was watching and taking notes.

  ‘Pity about your head,’ said Alwright happily. He’d had their doctor look at it, in case I’d faked it. ‘Lucky he didn’t brain you — like Frazer.’

  ‘Yes. Lucky.’

  ‘Let’s see ... you’re a guest here?’

  ‘Not really. I’m a sergeant from Birmingham CID.’

  ‘Here professionally?’ His eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Not quite. I’m on suspension.’

  ‘All ... yes.’ He sat back, one hand hiding his mouth. ‘Mallin. I remember now. You had yourself quite a time, roughing-up coppers, frightening your superintendent to death.’ He removed his hand to permit a small bark of laughter. ‘So now you’re here.’

  ‘I’m waiting while they get the enquiry set up,’ I told him. ‘Maybe I won’t wait that long. Anyway, I came here to advise on security.’

  ‘Not too successfully.’

  ‘I’ve been here less than a day.’

  ‘You are unlucky,’ he said. ‘Now tell me all about it.’

  I told him. He allowed me to get on with it in my own way, moving only now and then to ease his bulk, his hand forever touching his mouth, fingers tugging his lower lip. For the moment I left Beanie Sloan out of it. There was something personal between Beanie and myself.

  ‘You’ve examined the window?’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your opinion?’

  ‘Faked,’ I said. ‘Either that or a clumsy oaf who mangled the window lock, then couldn’t get a good grip on the vase and dropped it. But it wasn’t a clumsy oaf who hit me.’

  Alwright and Kenny examined each other’s thoughts, and seemed to agree.

  ‘An inside job, then?’ Alwright asked.

  I didn’t like that idea at all, but you just couldn’t ignore the possibility. ‘The snag is,’ I said: ‘Which was the job, the murder or the burglary? Was the intention to kill Frazer, and the vase got broken somehow or other, or was it to pinch the T’ang vase, and Frazer got bashed in the process? Whichever one you guess at, you come across some snags.’

  ‘Do I? Tell me some.’ He grinned at Kenny. ‘We love snags, don’t we Charlie?’

  Kenny said: ‘Who’d want to kill this man Frazer anyway?’

  ‘Now there I think you’ll strike gold,’ I said encouragingly. ‘I don’t know any of the details, but I get the impression that’d include most everybody. That is, of course, if you decide it’s an inside job.’

  I waited for him to say something, but he only nodded. ‘But if the idea was to kill Frazer, then how did the vase get busted? I mean ... was it a panic rush from the library door to the window on to the terrace? The vase’d be in a direct line. But if it was an inside job, why a panic rush in that direction? It assumes the window was already open, and me knocked cold. So I was knocked out before it happened, in which case the attacker came from outside, not inside.’

  He considered me carefully. Then he smiled. ‘You’re good, Mallin. I can see why they had trouble with you. Now you’re trying to persuade me it was an outside job.’

  ‘I’m simply giving you the background. Try another way of looking at it. The man’s murdered, say. Somebody decides it’d look better as an outside job. No panic rushes, you see. They slip round the outside and bop me one — assuming they knew I was there, that is — and then fake a robbery. Oh sure, they would
n’t actually take anything, that’d be too risky. So they simply smashed the vase.’

  ‘I like it. Yes, I like it.’

  ‘You won’t in a minute, because you’ve got a houseful of art experts, and every one would give his life rather than smash a T’ang vase.’

  ‘Would they?’

  I was warming to it, happier now that his affability had evaporated. ‘They’d have done something different to fake a burglary — smashed a show case or something. But they’d never, under any circumstances, have smashed a T’ang.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Alwright murmured. ‘Interesting how you persistently protect your friends. And what if robbery was intended, and the vase was smashed by accident?’

  ‘There’s snags there too.’

  ‘It’d explain why Frazer was killed. The smashing of the vase — the noise. Frazer was there, it’d be dangerous, his attention attracted.’

  ‘That’s the snag,’ I said. ‘He was deaf. And anyway, his attention wasn’t attracted, because he was still at his desk. So why? I mean ... I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’ Alwright recovered his good humour from somewhere. ‘He’s been helpful, hasn’t he Charlie?’

  Kenny agreed, and after they’d explored any more background help I could offer, they sent me away.

  Keane and his guests were still in a group, in the morning-room, subconsciously seeking company. Elsa came quickly to me and asked did they know who’d done it, and I said they didn’t seem to, watching Keane heading towards the study for his interview in a dignified daze. When he came out again there was no change in his bearing. It was unlikely they’d accuse him of either smashing his own T’ang, or of braining his own guest, especially as he’d probably never even known which end of a poker was which. It did turn out, though, that Frazer was not exactly a guest, and after all the murderer had grabbed the wrong end of the poker.