The Silence of the Night Page 6

  Whoever might encounter Keane would pat him on the shoulder with a: ‘Bad luck, old chap,’ and Bloome kept saying: ‘What goes on here, anyway?’, looking over his shoulder as though trying to confirm he was still in little old England. Fisch frankly would not accept that a fake had been slipped on him, and wandered round shaking his grey head, like the new owner whose Rolls Royce had broken down a hundred yards from the factory. Uncle Albert stopped me and asked who was this Dolman chappie, anyway, and did so three times before Alwright got there.

  ‘Who is this Dolman, anyway?’ said the superintendent, and Kenny nodded in support.

  I told him all about Artie Dolman, all that mattered. Alwright laughed. ‘Friend of yours, is he? I might have guessed.’

  I took it as a compliment. ‘He said any fool can tell, now it’s in pieces. He wouldn’t say that unless he was sure.’

  We were in the Grand Hall, all of us, Elaine clinging to Hillary’s arm and patting her eyes with a bit of Kleenex, Fisch rumbling angrily in the background. Uncle Albert and Alton K. Bloome were looking at some etchings, but not looking too seriously, and Rupert Allington hovered with a notebook, though what Alwright thought of people making notes of what he said I couldn’t guess. Martin Vale hadn’t returned. It was just as well.

  Hillary Keane said: ‘I’d be prepared to accept it, Superintendent. What was said about the method of identification indicates a certain knowledge.’

  ‘Then you realise what this means. If the smashed vase wasn’t yours, then yours has gone up the spout.’

  ‘I’d realised that,’ said Hillary. ‘It’s the thought that it’d been substituted ... that I was showing a fake ... My dear man, I could have gone on showing it, never realising it wasn’t mine.’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘I really don’t know. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘But it’s accepting a coincidence. That this particular vase should get smashed, just at this time! No, No, it’s not that. Obviously, somebody brought it in here, last night, on purpose to smash it, and cover the taking of the genuine one.’

  ‘Last night?’ said Hillary, looking round in dazed relief.

  ‘So you can kiss yours goodbye. For now, anyway. These days of fast transport, it could be anywhere by now,’ Alwright said cheerfully. ‘A helicopter to the airport, and off we go into the wild blue yonder, to Ecuador or Fiji or somewhere.’

  Bloome looked somewhat distressed to hear a national song taken so lightly.

  ‘I suppose,’ Alwright said hopefully, ‘nobody heard a helicopter?’

  Nobody had.

  ‘Very clever,’ said Kenny, and Alwright looked at him sharply. ‘The method, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. It’s kept us distracted for long enough.’ Alwright beamed. ‘But it’ll turn up. They do, you know. The cheek of it, though. Brings his own cheap fake to smash, and pinches the good one. Oh, he fooled us all right. We’ll have to give him that.’

  ‘And maybe,’ I suggested, ‘Frazer was murdered for the same reason — a distraction from the real issue. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Now that is really a thought,’ Alwright said admiringly, but his eyes went quickly to Kenny, and the inspector frowned back.

  So they borrowed the spare study again, to think about it in, and left us to consider it without police assistance.

  Elaine had dried her eyes, and Fisch looked infinitely less fragile. Bloome came across, smiling, and Uncle Albert actually shook Hillary’s hand. I couldn’t understand what was going on, then realised that at least this proved that the Grand Hall had not been harbouring a fake. That it also proved Keane had lost £50,000 worth of T’ang vase seemed a secondary consideration, though it was at least whole, wherever it was. Elsa joined them, and they seemed a happy little throng, whilst I stood aside and worried.

  I wondered whether Alwright appreciated that motives he would dismiss with a guffaw in criminal circles could be quite valid here in the wilderness of breeding.

  ‘David,’ Elsa called, ‘we’re having champagne on the terrace.’ But it was not to be, because just then Vale flung open one of the terrace windows and marched in, waving a brown paper bag.

  Vale lived only twenty miles the other side of the county border — hunting country, he called it — so I supposed it’d been nothing for him to pop over there, dust his Utrillos, and casually drop his T’ang into a brown paper bag. He withdrew it, held it high, and placed it deliberately on the pedestal. It looked just like the other.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Hillary, you can borrow it till you can get another.’

  I don’t suppose he intended the condescension in his voice. His eyes went to Elsa with conscious pride.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Hillary. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘But I do. You can’t open a T’angless exhibition, now can you.’

  Hillary, no doubt, had resigned himself to it. ‘I might get it back,’ he said.

  ‘Put together by some genius friend of our security expert?’ Vale asked with scorn, though which of us it was aimed at I don’t know.

  ‘But no.’ Hillary was coldly polite. ‘You haven’t heard. Mine was stolen. What was smashed was a poor fake.’

  Vale looked round, half laughing with disbelief, searching faces for confirmation. Then he decided it was a joke. ‘Well, now you’ve got a genuine one.’

  ‘I had a genuine one before. Really, Vale, I’d rather not use your vase. Somehow it doesn’t ... well, one doesn’t borrow for an exhibition like this.’

  ‘You borrowed a Canaletto, and there’s a Vermeer you didn’t have a month ago.’

  Hillary examined the ornate vaulting. He didn’t wish to be insulting, you could see, but whereas it was acceptable to put a little ticket on his Canaletto: Loaned by the Rt. Hon. Sir Dudley Ruyton, D.S.O., M.B.E., Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, it was a vastly different thing to put: Loaned by Mr Martin Vale of Vale Combines (Limousines for hire — chauffeur if required).

  ‘Friends of the family,’ Hillary murmured faintly.

  Vale got the point. A cloud crossed his face and left a shadow. ‘Oh, I get it. A closed shop. Can’t lend you anything unless I produce my union card. Then make it anonymous, for all I care. Let everybody think it’s yours. I was only thinking of your rotten show. But I suppose it wouldn’t do, putting up a genuine T’ang. People’d know it wasn’t yours.’

  ‘What’s bugging you, mister,’ said Bloome dangerously.

  ‘I could hardly make it anonymous,’ Hillary said calmly, ignoring the inference.

  ‘What,’ demanded Fisch, ‘was the meaning behind your remark?’

  ‘You heard him,’ Vale claimed. ‘The smashed one was a fake. Of course it was a fake. It was his. It was the one he’d stuck on this pedestal.’

  Elaine looked faint and murmured: ‘Really!’

  ‘No, wait!’ snapped Fisch. ‘I can’t allow this. The man’s saying Hillary’s vase was a fake. Does he suggest I can’t recognise genuine T’ang when I see it?’

  Vale did one of his best sneers. ‘Perhaps that was why it was smashed. He’d got you hanging round here, and he got nervous you’d spot it.’

  ‘I examined it only two days ago,’ said Fisch dangerously.

  ‘All right, so you were in it with him,’ Vale said negligently. ‘How many more fakes do you know about?’ And he looked round complacently at the walls.

  ‘Why, you insulting young puppy,’ Fisch cried, and I caught his arm. Fisch turned quivering to face me, nostrils flaring, eyes wild.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Be still.’

  ‘Yes, Edmund,’ said Hillary. ‘There’s really no point in getting upset. You shouldn’t take him seriously.’

  ‘Run the guy out of town on a rail,’ suggested Bloome, a proceeding that sounded rather painful.

  ‘Let me go,’ said Fisch furiously.

  ‘And have you punch his nose?’

  ‘I intend to examine that damned vase of his,’ Fisch said. ‘And nobody�
��s going to stop me.’

  I let him go. There was always the possibility that he’d crown Vale with it, and as it was Vale’s anyway I could see no harm in that. But Fisch did nothing of the sort. He whipped up the vase, snorted into Vale’s taunting face, and stalked over to the window. There he twisted and turned it and examined the glaze, filed at the base with a tiny file he had in his breast pocket, and studied the result through a magnifier. While that was going on, Hillary observed that it was getting too late for champagne.

  I’d given up guessing with these people, and was not particularly surprised when Fisch returned, replaced it on the pedestal, and said: ‘It’s genuine, Hillary.’

  Which, when you come to think of it, was interesting. Artie Dolman had said that a good fake would fool anybody, and he’d inferred that only a laboratory test was conclusive. And I’d gathered that there were two sorts of porcelain, soft paste and hard paste, and a hard paste fake would defy normal file tests and the like. So Fisch, knowing this more certainly than I, must have been aware that his opinion, expert as it was, was still open to doubt. He could quite easily have said it was a fake, if only to get back at Vale, and nobody could have challenged him. And yet he spoke quite positively, with a grudging admiration for the thing.

  ‘Well, Martin,’ said Hillary, reverting to Christian names, ‘you may as well leave it there for now.’

  Vale looked round. He was in a situation he couldn’t handle. Abruptly he was Martin again, and he couldn’t understand it, unless the genuineness of the vase indicated his personal worth. If that was the case, he’d meet them on their own ground, as polite and well-bred as anybody. He bowed stiffly.

  ‘I owe you an apology, Hillary.’

  ‘My dear fellow! Anybody can make a mistake.’

  ‘No, I insist. I’ve been insulting. The least I can do, to make amends, is offer you the loan of the T’ang for just as long as the exhibition stays open.’

  And Hillary was caught. Only by rejecting the apology could he reject the loan. ‘Too kind,’ he said softly. There was a respectful glint in his eye.

  I hung back when they drifted away, because Hillary had nodded to me. He took me to one side.

  ‘David, tell me. This friend of yours, he did say the fake was soft paste?’

  ‘He was certain.’

  ‘Hmm!’ He seemed vastly relieved, and it was a little time before I worked out why. A soft paste fake wouldn’t have fooled Fisch, wouldn’t probably have fooled Hillary, so at least this confirmed that the smashed fake had not been inside the Grand Hall before the previous night. It was a proof Hillary would accept more easily than Alwright’s happy theorising.

  But happy or not, it seemed to be correct, and that, combined with the significant glance they’d exchanged, meant I needed a word with Alwright and Kenny. They weren’t going to be receptive; they’d probably throw me out on my neck. I gave it a try, opened the study door, and Alwright said: ‘Well ... come in. We’ve been waiting for you.’

  I looked from one to the other.

  ‘Somebody’s been busy,’ said Kenny mournfully. ‘Somebody’s been dashing round feeding everybody with crazy motives. It makes things difficult.’

  ‘Not my idea.’

  ‘It was somebody’s,’ said Alwright.

  ‘It was theirs, blast it. D’you think I could invent all that?’

  ‘But it can’t be true!’

  ‘It’s only too damned true. But you don’t need a motive — do you?’

  They weren’t responding. Alwright lifted his head. ‘Why don’t we?’

  ‘If it was a murder done in the commission of a robbery.’ No response. ‘Well ... wasn’t it?’ Blank eyes, blank faces. ‘There’s something you know.’

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Alwright said plaintively. ‘He’s doing it again, Charlie. Just as we’re settling in, he’s trying to persuade us it was an outside job again.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘When it’s obvious that one of your little innocents crept down in the night, bopped you one to keep you quiet, rigged it to look like an outside job, smashed the fake vase, and sneaked back upstairs with the real one.’

  I sat down. They’d got it nicely taped. It was about the same as I’d decided.

  ‘So now all you need to discover is who’s been out today and unloaded it,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll do that.’

  ‘And find out why Frazer was killed.’

  Alwright seemed so contented that he almost purred. I wished I hadn’t said it. ‘A detail you don’t know,’ he told me. ‘Frazer had a thin skull. The path lab says it would’ve only needed a light blow to kill him. So maybe murder wasn’t intended. Just put him out — keep him quiet — only his skull was like an egg and he died.’

  Then they sat and watched me to see what I’d make of it. I knew what they were after. They were waiting for me to use it to prove it was an outside job, waiting for me to protect my friends.

  ‘There was a gun in the fist that hit me,’ I said, to keep them happy. ‘That wasn’t anybody in this house.’

  ‘We don’t know that. And why should an outsider go into the library?’

  ‘There was a line of light under the door. I remember that.’

  ‘Aha!’ cried Alwright. ‘A line of light. But why should he have gone in there to investigate? If he only wanted to break a vase and take the other, what odds was it to him that there might be somebody in the library? So they’d hear it break. So what? It’d fit in with the picture.’

  ‘But that applies to everybody else,’ I said. ‘Apart from the fact that everybody in the house knew Frazer was in there. They wouldn’t even need to go and check.’

  ‘But they knew Frazer was deaf,’ said Alwright, slapping it in front of me like a straight flush.

  ‘It’s affected you,’ I said, impatience jerking me to my feet. The view through the window looked inviting. ‘I thought they were crazy. But it’s getting at you now. What sort of an idea’s that? So what if he was deaf? Everybody knew he was deaf. All it’d mean is that he wouldn’t hear the vase being smashed. If he had been able to hear, then you could’ve said there was the chance — just a wild chance — that somebody would’ve knocked him out just to give themselves more time to get clear. You know ... so’s he wouldn’t come dashing out and see them scarpering, maybe with the thing under their arm. But he was deaf. He wouldn’t hear. He didn’t hear. So nobody in this house would’ve beaned him one to prevent him from hearing a crash. You’ve got it wrong, mate. You say he was deaf. Well he was. So that only shows it was more likely an outsider, the very fact that Frazer was attacked at all.’

  Alwright’s shoulders were shaking, and even Kenny had got a self-satisfied smile, and then I knew I’d done it after all, and I could have kicked myself.

  ‘So you’re sure it was an outside job?’ said Alwright.

  ‘Hell, no!’

  ‘But you’re so emphatic.’

  ‘I’m doing your work for you. Thinking.’

  ‘He is good,’ said Alwright in admiration. ‘Just what they told us.’

  ‘You’ve phoned Birmingham!’ I shouted. ‘Oh, that’s fine. Fine.’

  ‘Of course we phoned. Have to know the strength of the opposition.’

  And Kenny said: ‘I’m not sure they want you back.’

  ‘It’s not opposition, damn it.’

  ‘But you’re their man,’ Alwright claimed.

  ‘I’m just here. I’m on security. I can’t help it if I do some thinking.’

  ‘Conceited with it, too,’ pointed out Kenny.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Starting all your sentences with “I”. It’s a recognised indication,’ Kenny explained.

  ‘Have you finished with me?’ I demanded.

  ‘It was you wanted to see us.’ Alwright beamed.

  ‘I thought we’d consult.’

  ‘And so we have. We’ve come to the conclusion that it was an inside job, and somebody’s given himself enough
time to get rid of the vase. Do we agree?’

  I said we agreed. What else could I say?

  ‘So you won’t mind if we ask everybody where they’ve been today?’

  How could I mind?

  ‘Including you,’ Alwright said.

  I told them where we’d been today. He nodded.

  ‘We’ll see who’s been out, and who’s stayed in.’

  He suddenly chuckled at a thought, and the laughter shook him, shook the room. ‘But I suppose, working on your upside-down reasoning, I’ll need to arrest the odd one who hasn’t been out?’

  I let him enjoy his laugh. ‘You do that,’ I said sourly, and went out.

  I couldn’t find Elsa. I supposed she was somewhere obtaining advice from Vale, though it was too much effort to go down and check they weren’t messing about with the Rover. I wasn’t happy about the way Alwright had twisted me around his blasted finger. I didn’t, either, intend to hang around while he interviewed everybody, and have them weeping on my shoulder. I didn’t want to take sides. I was fed up with the lot of them and their blasted T’angs. I wanted a bit of quiet to think about my security job, so I went for a walk in the garden.

  And, blast Kenny, he was right about starting with “I”. Look at that. Seven in a row!

  My walk didn’t last long. The call of duty — I came back and got a tape measure out and started measuring up the Grand Hall. It was 120 feet long and 35 wide. Ten pairs of double opening windows. There was going to be plenty of night patrolling for Dave Mallin, only this time he’d have his own gun.

  I’d covered a dozen pages with notes when Elsa found me, dragging Uncle Albert by the arm. ‘Where have you been, David?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You weren’t here when I looked last.’

  ‘Wasn’t I?’

  Uncle Albert was trying very hard to look happy about something and distressed about something else at the same time.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘You have been somewhere if you haven’t heard. They’re asking everybody where they’ve been today.’

  ‘I know.’ She still looked disbelieving. ‘I put ’em on to it.’

  ‘Did you? Uncle Albert, it’s David’s fault.’