The Silence of the Night Read online

  Elaine had no opportunity to sympathise with him. She’d barely touched his arm and smiled into his eyes before she was summoned herself.

  ‘Martin’s got some wonderful ideas,’ said Elsa.

  I didn’t ask what Vale’s ideas were.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t wear that horrible tie,’ she told me, touching it. ‘We’ll have to get you something better.’

  As though I hadn’t got enough to think about. That was another thing: I did wish she’d stop buying me things. People with money ought to learn how to use it.

  I said: ‘Vale won’t ask you up to see his etchings, he’ll ask you to see his Utrillos.’

  She frowned, worrying the thought. Unless you’re actually smiling when you say it, Elsa takes you seriously. ‘I expect he can afford Utrillos,’ she decided. ‘But I would like to see them.’

  I had imagined this weekend as something idyllic, Elsa and I wandering the gardens in the gentle evenings, and maybe Dave Mallin rousting up his courage enough to propose, always assuming of course that he could forget the money disadvantage for long enough. All that seemed to have faded, and I was caught in the middle of another investigation. I couldn’t see any chance arising.

  ‘I’ve got an engraving,’ I said.

  ‘Have you, David. I’ve never seen it.’

  It’d cost me a quid. ‘It’s in a drawer. A Dürer.’

  She looked startled, but didn’t take it up, and as the conversation didn’t seem to be heading in any useful direction I was glad when there was a distraction. Elaine returned in tears.

  I could not imagine that Alwright would have bullied her, and it soon became apparent that the tears were more self-induced than anything. Elaine had decided that she had a motive for killing Frazer. She’d actually been heard to say that she’d like to.

  ‘You must tell Mr Mallin,’ said Hillary, because after all I was their tame detective, and they sat her down for her to do so. Then they all gathered round — except Vale, who was on his way to the study — and it was difficult to make sense out of anything, because I didn’t know the background. Uncle Albert realised my difficulty, and helped me out.

  ‘Frazer was quite crazy, you know. Ask anybody. He’d been working years on this idea he’d got, that Elizabeth I had an illegitimate child. I can’t see, myself, that it matters now, but he said it explained a lot of things. The Cumnor Hall business ... You know ...’

  I shook my head. I didn’t.

  ‘There was a period, you see, when Elizabeth, when she was a princess, kind of went out of circulation for a while. Frazer said she had the child then, and later she met Lord Robert Dudley in the Tower. The idea is that they fixed it up then, for him to look after the child at his home at Cumnor Hall. But he had this affair with her, when she was queen, and he’d got his own wife back at Cumnor — well, the wife died, and in strange circumstances that’ve never been explained, and Frazer said somebody kidnapped the child.’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Albert,’ I said, ‘but what —’

  ‘It’s an intriguing idea,’ he went on contentedly, his eyes shining, ‘because it explains why Elizabeth never married Robert, the scandal, you see, though she gave him an earldom — Leicester, he was. And it explains why Elizabeth made such a fuss over the succession, insisting on leaving in the possibility of an illegitimate child coming to the throne.’

  He was obviously taken with the idea himself. I said, patiently: ‘What’s this got to do with motives?’

  ‘Well, the poor chap, it got to be an obsession.’

  ‘Understandable,’ said Hillary gently.

  ‘And he’s spent the last few years in libraries, chasing it up. Looking for anything — letters, memoranda, folios, manuscripts.’ Uncle Albert blinked. ‘I mean — every library.’

  Nobody knew just when Frazer had drifted from eccentricity to insanity. It had to be more than eccentricity when he completely forgot, or ignored, the fact that some libraries are not public. But he’d driven wildly here and there, blissfully assuming that each library’s fund of learning was open to his inspection. And nobody had had the heart to throw him out. They’d watched him settle in, nervous of his furies, had provided him with a room to lay his head, fed him, and prayed for the day when he would decamp to some other book-lined haven. And so, he had entrenched himself into a legend, from which he emerged into the outside world only occasionally, usually to pour scorn on to some other idiot’s theories, or engage in a little relaxing litigation, and country homes trembled in case he might hear that they owned anything written earlier than 1700.

  But he’d heard of Killington Towers, and he’d arrived. They’d reluctantly provided him with a room, and he’d accepted it all as his due. Some day, maybe, they’d put up a notice: Frazer studied here. Even if they couldn’t boast that Elizabeth became pregnant there.

  Which brought us to Elaine’s motive.

  ‘We were on the very verge of losing Mrs Pohlman,’ she explained, and the air was tense with the possibility.

  ‘Surely not,’ I said, sounding as appalled as I could.

  ‘But yes. He ... Frazer ... oh, that terrible man, you couldn’t keep him out of the kitchen. Why, I daren’t go in there. And he’d help himself! Oh, when I think of it. The way that poor woman suffered! She told me plainly, Mrs Keane, she said, I really cannot continue in this manner.’

  Elaine was obviously paraphrasing. Mrs Pohlman, whose English was severely limited, would have used different words. But I gathered the general idea. Mrs Pohlman was a jewel. She’d been a refugee, or something, and had fallen into this position quite fortuitously. That she was so superb was important; that her English was limited made her indispensable. Understanding so little of the English world around her, she was unaware that her talents would have attracted so much more reward, and no little fame, elsewhere. So ... an inexpensive treasure. And to have her continued services threatened!

  ‘I said I’d kill him first,’ said Elaine breathlessly. ‘I promised her that.’

  ‘With a poker?’ I asked.

  ‘Was that how it was done?’

  I said it was. She thought for a moment. ‘But all the same, I would.’ She nodded.

  Serious faces stared at me. No one commented on the possibility that Alwright might just be a little doubtful as to its importance as a motive.

  ‘And poor Hillary,’ she went on. ‘I’ve suffered for him. He hasn’t been able to dress for dinner. That ... person was so unpredictable. He’d appear without warning at the table, and in that atrocious fragile pullover ...’

  ‘Fair Isle,’ I said.

  ‘Is it? Well anyway, Hillary could hardly dress when a guest might appear ...’ She seemed quite faint. ‘Oh dear, it’s been so upsetting.’

  ‘We’ll dress tonight, my dear,’ he said comfortingly, and she brightened immediately.

  I glanced at Uncle Albert, who seemed happily unaware that he might easily spoil this happy anticipation.

  ‘They won’t touch her, David, will they?’ said Elsa.

  ‘They’d already have rushed her away in a plain van,’ I assured her.

  I was wondering about Hillary Keane, who’d said nothing about the danger to his exhibition that Frazer must have presented. The thought of that monster, wandering like a demented squatter amongst the visitors with a jam butty in his fist, must have appalled him. But he didn’t look appalled. Though I was, suddenly realising that I was seriously considering such motives.

  At about that time Martin Vale returned from his interrogation. He didn’t say what his motive was, but he was in time to hear that at least the house was planning a return to normality.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said grandly. ‘I’ll let you borrow my T’ang, for the show.’

  Hillary turned and looked at him. ‘I couldn’t do that, my dear chap.’

  ‘Nonsense. At least it’s genuine.’ He gave a little laugh as he said it, kind of taking the poor taste out of the remark, but his eyes weren’t laughing.

  Someth
ing like an oath came from Sir Edmund Fisch. Hillary tutted. Bloome said: ‘We’d all like to see that, you can be sure.’

  And the moment passed in a sudden burst of embarrassed chat.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of staying in that room, waiting while each one returned from the study, proud in the possession of some classic motive, so I went out for a walk. I’d intended it should be alone, but Elsa was beside me as we stepped out into the gardens.

  ‘It’s as I said, David,’ she murmured after a few minutes, tugging gently on my arm.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘About this insistence on finding work you can do.’

  I smoked for a while. For one thing, there I was, wondering how I’d ever manage to propose, and she kept coming out with such remarks, assuming blandly that not only were we to be married, but also that I’d give up all employment. And for another, there was the suggestion that this, my failure, was evidence that I wasn’t capable.

  ‘I think I could make a go of it,’ I said at last. ‘On my own.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘You don’t imagine I could stay in the Force, do you?’

  ‘You should make yourself more clear,’ she told me, heavy on my arm.

  I smiled down at her. Now? Was this the time to make my intentions clear?

  ‘And obviously, you’d never make a success of it,’ she told me kindly.

  I smoked a little longer. Then I said: ‘I think I’ll take a run into the village.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘They won’t be needing me. Nobody will.’

  She pouted, but walked round with me into the courtyard. We went across to the cars.

  ‘I could come with you.’

  ‘I’ll need to be alone,’ I said, and she frowned.

  We were standing in front of a row of assorted cars. The Bentley, I knew, was Keane’s. But whose was the old Lotus? And that Porsche! I went over to it. I’ve always fancied Porsches.

  ‘I wonder whose this is,’ I said, patting it with affection.

  ‘It’s Martin’s.’

  It would be! I took my hand away quickly, and suddenly the sight of the Oxford wasn’t pleasing. Elsa read my thoughts.

  ‘We must get you a decent car, David.’

  I kicked the front offside tyre. ‘It suits me.’

  ‘It’s so old,’ she protested.

  ‘But at least it starts,’ I said savagely, starting it. Then I cut it again, because Uncle Albert was running across to us, waving his arms.

  So I was unable to get away without having to listen to another of those desperate motives.

  ‘I think they’re going to arrest me,’ he panted.

  I calmed him, and asked him to take it from scratch. It was Frazer’s eccentricity again. There Uncle Albert had been, desperately trying to catalogue the library, and earn himself enough for a new suit and a couple of shirts, and Frazer had been making his job almost impossible by scattering stuff everywhere.

  ‘Even used the desk,’ said Uncle Albert, ‘and I had to put my stuff in the drawers.’

  It had all ended up in a verbal battle, which I would have like to have heard, in old English and medieval Gaelic, with Uncle Albert tossing in four-letter Latin for good measure.

  ‘But I actually struck him,’ Uncle Albert pleaded.

  ‘I was so upset that I struck him with a calf-bound 1716 Bible.’ He must have been upset. ‘On the head,’ said Uncle Albert, ‘and split the spine.’

  I told him very calmly that his motive was paltry and rather childish. I was running out of patience.

  ‘You’re not to say that,’ Elsa said. ‘It’s as good a motive as anybody’s.’

  ‘As good as I’ve heard so far,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘This is murder. A man had his head smashed in with a poker. That’s serious business, and it needs a serious reason. A damned good one.’

  ‘Now you’re angry.’

  ‘I’m angry,’ I agreed. ‘Just say I’m disappointed in your uncle for not having a good enough motive.’

  And somebody laughed. I turned my head. Martin Vale had a possessive hand resting negligently on his Porsche.

  ‘Something funny?’ I asked.

  ‘You should hear mine,’ he said. Not just then, thank you. ‘Albert, you’ve got nothing — just nothing — to worry about, old friend.’

  Elsa turned gratefully towards the source of comfort, and I got into the Oxford again. I didn’t start at once because I was stabbing angrily at the throttle.

  When I drove away, Martin Vale had one arm round Uncle Albert’s shoulders, the other round Elsa’s waist. I couldn’t tell whom he was comforting most.

  I should have turned back there and then and punched him on the nose. But I’ve got my pride. I cursed my pride, because it’d stopped me from hearing that excellent motive of his.

  Maybe, I decided, I’d get to punch him later.

  I drove down to the village, hoping I might find Beanie Sloan.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Interviewing Beanie Sloan always involved a number of tiresome preliminaries. He didn’t like it. I was assuming he’d be unaware that I’d seen him, and counting on that fact to keep the preliminaries to a minimum. There was no reason for him to have made a rapid withdrawal, if, in fact, he was staying in the area at all.

  The obvious guess was Upper Killington, a village large enough, I’d heard, to have at least two pubs that would take paying guests. Probably more, because a trout stream ran beside the main street, and it was a fishing paradise.

  I drifted through it in second. You come over a humped bridge and turn beside the stream, which is separated from you by a few yards of grass and a low wooden fence, and most of the buildings are lined up opposite. It helps, when you only have to search in one direction. Further on the stream ambles away into the fields, and there’s a small square with an old pumping building in the centre. The Stag is just on the edge of the square, its view splendid, its beer matching it. In the yard at the side was a white Audi.

  It was still early in the morning and I had no difficulty in parking, nose in to the pumping thing. I walked back, carefully because Beanie always keeps an instinctive eye professionally on the approaches.

  I entered the yard, skirted a mountain of crates, and found an open side door.

  It brought me out beside the bar. A man was polishing glasses in the dim interior. He seemed unsurprised to see me.

  ‘Not open yet, sir,’ he said pleasantly, just for the show of it, and reached for a pint tankard.

  I had noticed the staircase in the corner, and turned towards it. ‘Just visiting a friend,’ I told him. ‘Mr Sloan. Up on the right, is it?’

  ‘Second on the left. Call in on the way down.’

  I said I would.

  It was that easy. I found myself in a corridor, the noise of a vacuum cleaner coming from one end. There was a smell of hops, a shaft of sunlight nudging my feet. I tapped on Beanie’s door.

  ‘What is it?’

  I was counting on the fact that they wouldn’t have phones in the rooms. ‘You’re wanted on the telephone, sir.’

  He could have said anything, such as take a message. I stood back, as far as I could get, and he opened the door.

  Beanie’s weakness has always been his feet, because he can’t see them. I threw myself forward in one of those sliding tackles that the professional footballers use to sweep their opponents down, in the pretence they’re going for the ball. I got his ankles. The door flew open under the impact of my head, and we went back into the room. The trick is to get on your feet first, before he’s got time to get his gun out, but this time, although he’d gone pitching on his face to the far wall, I had the disadvantage of having opened the door with my head. I did not recover as quickly as I usually do. He’s good, Beanie is. In spite of the fact that he was almost upside down, I found myself diving forward into the open end of a thirty-eight Smith and Wesson.

  ‘Hold it,’ h
e said. His eyes were as empty as the hole in the gun, and the same size.

  There was no point in holding it. He’d hesitate to fire there, in that place, hesitate long enough anyway ... I kept going. Mainly because I couldn’t stop. The rug went from under my feet and I finished up with my behind in his face, the gun fortunately in the clear. I bit his thumb, and he dropped it. Then I got away fast, because he’s usually got a shiv in reserve, and his arm was at full stretch, the blade pointed at my guts, when I scrambled round, the gun in my left fist, my right reaching out to intercept.

  Then we were both very still.

  ‘I wanted a word,’ I said, when the balance of power was quite definite. We had disposed of the preliminaries.

  He unwound and stood up. He was fully dressed, checked jacket and all, because he has them specially tailored for the armoury. ‘Mr Mallin,’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting you.’

  I kicked the door shut, then sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Toss that thing in the corner,’ I said, and he did. I glanced at the gun. No sign of Mallin skin or hair on it. ‘Cleaned it, have you?’

  ‘There was no need ...’

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘Here, of course.’

  The bumptious smile was creeping back. What could I prove?

  ‘There was some action last night, out at Killington Towers.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘And it had your trademark. And you’re here.’

  ‘Mr Mallin!’ He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘A man’s entitled to a holiday.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I’m on a fishing trip.’

  I looked round, and there was no sign of fishing tackle. ‘You’re out of season — fish shooting doesn’t start till August. The Glorious Twelfth.’

  He gave me an uncertain leer. I told him to back up against the wall, and with one eye on him, one hand waving the gun, I searched his room. Only once did he try and jump me, when I opened his case, but after I’d clipped him to keep him quiet all I found was some dirty books. Beanie was the comic strip type.

  I looked at him. The obvious next stage was to lay into him with the gun, being careful to leave enough mouth for him to talk. But I’ve no stomach for that sort of thing before lunch. ‘Your keys,’ I said.