A Private View

by Michael Innes

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Perhaps two other gangs?’

  For a moment old Moe’s unprepossessing features expressed incredulity and complete bewilderment. Then he gave a gasp of relief. ‘Hark to him,’ he said, and looked round as if to command the attention of all in his dingy office. ‘He’s said it, and you’re witnesses. The police have reason to believe that a gang of criminals is after that Vermeer. That lets me and my associates out on anything that happened to Limbert. There’s been known desperate criminals on the job – quite a different matter from quiet operators on the picture market like ourselves. Or didn’t you say two gangs? That’s it. Gang warfare. People get killed in that. A shocking thing that the police should be powerless to prevent such outrages. Not English, it isn’t. The blood boils.’

  And old Moe, having achieved this brilliant return to form, surveyed Cadover and his subordinates with all the disapproval of an ill-requited taxpayer.

  ‘You’re quite right in saying they’re a thoroughly desperate lot, Steptoe. Altogether too tough for you and your friends, I can promise you.’

  ‘That may well be, sir – that may very well be.’ Cunning was now discernible as working somewhere in the mind of old Moe. ‘I was never one for violence, I assure you – nor any of my friends either.’

  ‘Would you call them your friends? Haven’t they left you rather in the lurch?’

  ‘I was never censorious, sir.’ Old Moe produced this learned word with a good deal of pride. ‘I wouldn’t blame them for doing the best they can. And I wouldn’t go back on them. Not but what’ – this afterthought old Moe delivered in some haste – ‘I wouldn’t tell you where they were, if I had any idea of it. For I’ve seen the error of my ways, and trust my former good character will get me off lightly.’

  Cadover gave a grunt of disgust. ‘You certainly hope to get off lightly – with the help of that smart lawyer representing you as what you call a tool. And you hope that your precious friends will get clean away with the Vermeer. And you expect that your fifty pounds – which is much more likely to be five thousand – will be quietly waiting for you somewhere when you come out of prison. Isn’t that it? But you’re reckoning without your rivals, my friend. If you think they’ve lost the scent of that picture, you’re wrong. Whether two gangs or one, they’re hot on top of it now. One lot, if you want to know, is close behind your van at this moment, in a green Humber.’

  ‘The green Humber!’ Old Moe was startled.

  ‘Means something to you, does it?’

  ‘I saw a green Humber cruising round when I was shutting up the shop. It seemed a bit queer, in a part like this.’

  ‘It was a bit queer. They’d worked it out that the Vermeer must be back in your possession, Steptoe. And they were waiting for a nice, quiet time of night to break in, cut your throat, and walk off with it. As it was, your friends and their van cut in too early for them. But not too early for them to be after it. And when they find a good lonely stretch of road, they’ll act. It’s likely enough that they’ve done so by now, and that your confederates are no more than charred corpses in a burnt-out van… You needn’t look so scared, man. You’re going to be thoroughly safe with us for quite a long time.’

  Old Moe certainly looked scared; his face showed the sort of terror one might expect to see on a drowning man. Very decidedly, he was now out of his depth. ‘It’s outrageous,’ he gasped. ‘Nobody safe…the police–’

  ‘The police need information which, as you perfectly well know, you can give them here and now. Withholding it will do you not an atom of good, because your friends are inevitably going to lose that picture. But if you speak up, the judge may regard it as a point in your favour one day. I don’t say that he will – I merely mention it as a consideration that may well occur to you.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘You know very well what I want to know. First, what happened to Sir John Appleby?’

  ‘I’ve told you – I haven’t an idea. He knocked me silly, and then I suppose he went after those friends of mine while they were getting the picture out of my shed. And if they didn’t slug him – which mind you they wouldn’t do, since we none of us hold with violence – he’s probably after them still. Chasing the green Humber in a bleeding Black Maria.’

  ‘That’s what we have to inquire into. And now, Steptoe – out with it. Where were your friends making for?’

  For a moment old Moe was silent. ‘You’re not kidding me about those gangs?’ The question had a sudden artlessness that was almost ludicrous.

  ‘No, I’m not. And you saw the green Humber for yourself.’

  Old Moe nodded, relaxed, and suddenly looked merely dejected and glum. ‘A4,’ he said. ‘As far as Reading. And then across country to a place north of Fawley on the Berkshire Downs. We decided that in an emergency we must risk trying to fly the picture straight out of the country. There’s a man up there with a crate who’s willing to take on the job.’

  Cadover produced his scribbling-pad. ‘I’ll just have full directions,’ he said. ‘And then you can settle down. You’ll be taking it quietly for some time.’

  12

  They were back in the big police car and it was racing through empty London streets. Judith didn’t dare to look at her watch, but she knew that it must now be in the small hours. Nor did she want to fire off nervous questions at Cadover. He had done a wonderful job with old Moe. And probably he felt – for he was, Judith knew, a great purist in these matters – that he had skirted the verge of bullying the rascal in order to get the information he had to have. That was an index of his own anxiety about John. So Judith kept her mouth shut.

  And presently Cadover spoke. ‘He must have sailed right in, Lady Appleby.’

  ‘I think he must.’

  ‘Like him. And I’ve never known him not to come out on top yet.’

  ‘I gather he’s often been lucky.’

  ‘You can call it that. But it’s really that he always has in reserve one more punch than they expect. That will be the position at this moment, if you ask me.’

  It was just what Judith had wanted to ask. But she hated questions that were a disguised appeal for emotional reassurance. The car had reached the Embankment and now gathered further speed. There were a few moving lights from craft on Chelsea Reach, and ahead she could hear the long clank and rumble of a freight train crossing the river from Victoria. They turned up Millbank and slowed for a scattering of cars and taxis in Parliament Square. ‘Late sitting,’ Judith said mechanically.

  Cadover nodded. ‘When the House rises, they turn off a light on top of the clock tower.’ He spoke instructively, as if to a child, and Judith knew that he was trying to plan ahead. The car was coming to a halt before he spoke again. ‘I’ve got messages out already, I need hardly say. But it will be worth while putting in fifteen minutes organizing a better hunt from here. Then I shall go out on that route myself, Lady Appleby, and take over the radio control. This car will take you home. I’ll call you up as soon as I hear anything – anything at all.’ He opened the door and jumped out. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten Mary Arrow.’ Judith too was out of the car. On either side of her the two great buildings of Scotland Yard – penny-plain and twopence-coloured – were like the walls of a canyon.

  ‘I’m trying not to forget anything.’ Cadover had a moment to spare for mild irony.

  ‘I’m sorry. I mean, you’ve forgotten it was agreed that I should go to her. May I come in?’

  ‘We’ll go and find her – almost first thing. This door, please.’

  Uniformed men were handing Cadover messages almost before he stepped across the threshold. Some he received in silence; others elicited curt orders; and meanwhile he was striding up a long corridor. Judith followed. The place was unfamiliar at this hour. There was a smell of soap and water; she glanced down a side corridor and saw a squad of men at work with buckets and mops. So that’s how it�
�s done, she thought. It would be useful in the home. But noisy… Her stomach gave a jump and she realized that she was moving upwards in a lift.

  She knew Cadover’s room, having once or twice been received in it with some ceremony. But for a moment it seemed wholly strange. Bleak, untinted fluorescent lighting flooded it, and made the four or five persons present look like so many animated corpses. The largest wall, commonly embellished with a scatter of current police notices headed Lost or Wanted for Murder or £100 Reward cheek by jowl with signed photographs of departed Home Secretaries, had disappeared behind an enormous map. Before the map was a long table with a battery of telephones. Now on one and now on another of these a red light glowed. Three constables were receiving and jotting down messages. Receiving these at a desk was a young man with a public-school face, keyed-up and nervous, who read them and at the same time talked continuously into a microphone. It was not spectacular, but Judith judged that its efficiency was deadly. When battles are being fought, she thought, there are always places like this. And always with that young man. John, she supposed, must have begun like that… She found a chair and sat down. A ship’s siren wailed, far down the river. And, just outside, someone went past with a clanking pail and mop.

  Cadover spent what must have been ten minutes without taking his eyes from the big map. He appeared to be laying down the broad lines of some proposed operation to another detective-inspector who stood beside him making an occasional note. Judith knew that it would be useless to attempt to follow this. She was excited and she was anxious. But she was also tired out, so that she wondered how long she could sit unregarded here without slipping off to sleep. It wasn’t much of a chair; if she did doze off, she would probably come down with a bump. And that wouldn’t do at all… She raised her head with a jerk, and saw that Cadover was approaching her. She jumped up. And although she had resolved to ask no questions she found herself saying, ‘Is there any news?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘I hardly expected anything – yet.’

  ‘We make a bit of progress – in a negative way. But there’s only one certainty so far.’

  ‘About–?’

  ‘About the Vermeer, Lady Appleby – about the Vermeer. It won’t leave these islands by air tonight.’ He was suddenly impatient. ‘Steptoe’s friends must be fools to think of such a thing.’

  ‘And the other gangs – do you think they are fools too?’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘They’re uncommonly foolishly employed. I wonder if that’s the only reason why there’s a lot in the affair that just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You find it like that?’ Judith felt some diffidence in advancing an opinion to this sombre professional. ‘It seemed to me to be coming together, more or less.’

  ‘It has to come together in toto, Lady Appleby, before we can take much satisfaction in sitting back and looking at it. Didn’t one of the men you overheard – Zhitkov – say that Steptoe had been the unknown factor in his scheme…something like that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m quite confident he said it in almost exactly those words.’

  ‘Quite so. And don’t both Zhitkov and Cherry appear to have been unknown factors in Steptoe’s scheme? Wouldn’t you agree that he really did know something about them?’

  ‘It certainly looked like that.’

  ‘Well, if we can be said to have a scheme, I suspect there’s an unknown factor in that too.’

  ‘Perhaps by this time it’s not unknown to John.’

  Cadover stared at her. Then – to the general surprise of the room – he laughed aloud. ‘Capital,’ he said. ‘That’s the most sensible idea I’ve heard tonight. And now we’ll go and see Miss Arrow. She’s just along the corridor. A good deal better, too, according to the doctor.’

  Judith was dismayed. ‘You’re not going to try to make the poor woman talk?’

  ‘I think she may want to talk. I’m sure I hope so.’

  ‘You think it might be important?’

  ‘I have an idea – less rational than I commonly go in for, Lady Appleby – that she holds the key to the whole thing.’

  The police surgeon was quite young – little older than the man who had talked into the microphone at the desk. Judith rather doubted the possibility of his possessing that store of experience with which Cadover had credited him. But he appeared to take the case of Mary Arrow in his stride. ‘Undoubtedly a genuine instance of total amnesia, Inspector.’ He turned to Judith. ‘Loss of memory, that is to say.’

  Judith received this doubtless well-meant effort at education stonily. It was rather cool, she was thinking, carrying off a sick woman to a glorified police station. She ought to have been put in an ambulance and taken to one of the big hospitals. But then somebody had to have the habit of being cool, and keeping cool – on a night like this… ‘Where is she?’ she asked.

  ‘In the next room. We’ll go in as soon as I’ve told the Inspector what I can. Are you a relative?’

  ‘This is Lady Appleby.’ Cadover was scandalized. ‘How is Miss Arrow’s memory now?’

  ‘The amnesic state began to break up only a few hours ago. When somebody found her–’

  Judith interrupted. ‘I found her, Doctor.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’ve no doubt you concluded she was in a very confused condition. In many cases that lasts for quite a time. But this woman is getting things sorted out rather remarkably. She’s very clear about the place and time at which things began coming back to her. Victoria Station at midnight. She felt dazed, but her only real surprise was at the lateness of the hour. So she went home, and made some tea, and talked to somebody. That would be you, Lady Appleby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I first saw her, less than an hour ago, she was worrying over never having known anybody called Judith. She was hiding behind that fictitious worry, you might say, from what is her real trouble. It was her last attempt at dodging. But she’s out in the open now. Shall we go in, Inspector?’

  ‘Just one moment.’ Cadover paused by the next door. ‘Miss Arrow has been dodging in more senses than one. We’ve been looking for her for over a week, without coming upon as much as a trace. Total amnesia may be common enough, but that sort of successful disappearance with it is not. Have you gathered anything that might explain it?’

  ‘She says that at Victoria she was puzzled by another thing. She had hardly any money in her purse. And she was puzzled about why she was puzzled, because in point of fact she never does carry about very much. What she does do is to keep ten pounds or so in cash in her flat, against emergencies. So she’d probably set out in the first instance with that.’

  Cadover nodded. ‘Quite right. It fits in with what I know. By the way, did she have a toothbrush on her?’

  The young police surgeon stared. ‘As a matter of fact, there’s a toothbrush in her bag. I noticed it when she took out a powder compact. Talking of that sort of thing, by the way, she’s quite clean. Baths, I’d say.’

  Judith compressed her lips. At any moment one might be knocked down by a bus, and instantly one would be treated not as a person but a thing… Involuntarily she asked, ‘Why not baths?’

  ‘The point, Lady Appleby, is that Miss Arrow didn’t go careless about that sort of ordinary routine. And that means that she probably didn’t, in any very immediately obvious way, go helpless either. And that in turn means that she could probably so plan, and so conduct herself, as to avoid discovery by her relations or by the police. She’s been in hiding, in every sense. That’s the whole idea, I need hardly say, of any form of hysterical fugue.’ The police surgeon opened the door. ‘Most of them fail at it, almost at once – as far as successful physical flight goes. Behave in a lost or outré fashion, and are picked up and lodged in hospital before they can say Jack Robinson… Well, Miss Arrow’ – and the young man’s voice took on a briskly professional cheerfulness and confidence – ‘here are some friends of yours… Drunk up your coffee? That’s splendid.’

/>   ‘They make wonderful coffee here. Nobody could resist it, Doctor.’

  If a capacity for polite mockery was an index of mental balance, Judith thought, then Mary Arrow was indeed securely on her pins again. Physically, however, she still seemed worn out; her grey jersey was not more devoid of colour than her complexion, and the shadows under her eyes were still as black as her slacks. Lying back in a deep armchair, she glanced from one of her visitors to another. Then she gave a faint smile. ‘The unknown Judith.’

  Judith went over to her. ‘Are you reasonably comfortable, Mary?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be very polite to say otherwise. Didn’t you tell me your husband ran part of this place? I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.’

  ‘John is – not here at the moment.’

  ‘Pity.’ Mary seemed to have lost interest. She put both her feet flat on the floor, as if to test what weight they might be able to carry. ‘I think I’ll go home now.’

  Judith felt Cadover stiffen beside her. He took a step forward. ‘There is a car waiting, Miss Arrow, to take you where you wish to go at any time. Only–’

  ‘It’s something to learn that. I was beginning to think that perhaps I was detained – isn’t that the word?’

  ‘Nobody can be detained, except in the imagination of journalists.’ The purist in Cadover had risen up. ‘You are perfectly free to leave at any time. Only, sooner or later, you must tell us anything you can that may shed light on the death of Mr Limbert. I fully realize the very distressing–’

  ‘No more professional touch, Inspector – please. I’ve had a stiff dose of it on the medical side.’ Mary Arrow frowned. ‘I’m still behaving pretty oddly, I suppose? There seems no call for me to be rude. And of course I’ll tell you what I can. But I’d rather it wasn’t tonight. There are things about it that make it rather a strain to face up to. After all, that’s why I and my wits together cleared out as they did. That – and being slugged on the head.’