by John Creasey
“Why not?” asked Gideon, settling in at the wheel.
“Doing something to the road,” the other answered. “Cars are jammed like sardines.”
Gideon grunted, not very graciously, and drove onto the Embankment, turning left, not right toward Parliament Square and the Houses of Parliament. Big Ben, behind and out of sight, struck the quarter. Traffic on the far side was already slowing down, and above the shiny tops of cars and between the big red buses he could see the higher level of the London County Hall and, further along, some of the slender arches of Waterloo Bridge and the top of the new Shell buildings across the river. Trees hid the Festival Hall, and he could not see a single patch of water. In a strange way his mood had changed, entirely because of Parker, the detective officer he had just spoken to, who would never become a sergeant unless on sentimental or compassionate grounds. Any man at the Yard who knew a major road was up but could only describe it as “something” was an indifferent policeman. Gideon, unaware that his own thirst for knowledge was as natural as breathing, wanted to know what was being done.
He turned in to Northumberland Avenue and reached the traffic lights at Trafalgar Square. There traffic was much thinner; the homeward rush was over and the reverse-direction theatre rush had not yet started. There was something both soothing and satisfying about the scene, and he was glad of the wait at the red signal. Nelson’s Column, recently cleaned, looked a little unreal as it rose from its guard of bronze lions. The square itself, its fountains playing, the pigeons strutting like an ill-disciplined army, was bathed in the evening light, tinged now with a warm pinky gold. The fountains were like waterfalls. Beyond, looking almost naked from its recent cleaning, was the National Gallery.
Soon, driving along King’s Road and New King’s Road, he passed the rows of second hand and antique shops, without noticing the one with the name “Jacob Fisk” on the fascia. He had no idea that Lucy Jenkins lived and worked there, but he realized one thing which he must have noticed before but which had not registered as it did now: practically every shop in this stretch of New King’s Road sold antiques or garden furniture, masonry or pictures. This side of London was fast becoming an art and artists’ colony on a much greater scale than the Chelsea of his youth; the trade that went on in this square mile must be enormous.
And because he was a policeman, he wondered whether the Yard had its finger as firmly on this area’s pulse as it should. Where there was trade, there was crime; where there were small art dealers, there was a great risk of buying and selling of stolen goods. Although he lived nearby, he had not given much thought to the mushrooming of a business with such an obvious crime potential.
This area was covered by CD Division, and Jack White, the Superintendent in charge, was a good, solid, sound detective, but hardly a man with a flair. He would have to find a reason to talk to White. One could hardly expect the divisions to specialize, however, and the specialist in art at the Yard was Frobisher, Wally Frobisher, a much younger man, who had won swift promotion because of his knowledge of the art world. Frobisher was at the moment up in Manchester, helping the local police with the investigation of a theft of three small Watteaus from the Manchester City Museum.
There was another man, Thwaites, who had a less expert but much wider general knowledge, at the Yard. He might know much more about the present situation than Frobisher.
By the time Gideon reached his own street, Harrington Street, Fulham, close to the Hurlingham sports grounds, he had put Jack White and Frobisher to the back of his mind. He had a garage round the corner at the far end of the street. Neighbours were working in their gardens and many doors and windows were open; out here it seemed even more muggy than it had been in town. The front-room window of his own house was wide open, and he heard two or three bars of Beethoven’s Sonata in C Minor. He broke into a smile, which broadened as he caught sight of Penelope sitting slantwise by the sitting-room window. Then he noticed that two or three neighbours were at their front gates, others at their windows, and none of them was talking.
They were, he thought, listening to Penelope.
Now that he was no longer in the car, he could hear much more clearly. Into the quiet there came a sudden clatter of a lawnmower, and one of two women at a gate said, “Oh, drat that man!”
The clattering went on, and now only those neighbours close to Gideon’s house could hear Penelope playing. She was near the end, he knew, and he wondered how many more times she would go over the piece again this evening. A man at the window of the house next door, called, “Beautiful, Mr. Gideon, absolutely beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Gideon said. “You don’t find it a nuisance, then?”
“A nuisance - that girl’s playing? Good Lord, no!”
Gideon, highly pleased, turned into his gate and, glancing up, saw Kate, his wife, at the window of their bedroom. She raised a hand, then turned away; and when he stepped into the house, she was halfway down the stairs. She was a handsome woman with a fine figure; her hair was greyer than Gideon’s, but with the blue rinse she had now, she looked much younger than he did.
Her face was smooth and unlined, and it was hard to believe that only a few months ago she had had serious heart trouble. For an agonizing moment, he relived the panic he had felt then - Kate, his wife, ill. She was fully recovered now, thank God.
She stood on the bottom stair, so that she seemed an inch or two taller than Gideon; and in fact, at five feet eight, she was tall for a woman.
Silence fell inside the sitting room as they met, and Kate, who had started to speak, uttered two or three words which sounded very loud, because the earlier words had been muffled by the piano music.
“It’s a good thing that someone feels he—-”
When she stopped, her mouth was open, and Gideon grinned, leaned forward to touch her cheek with his lips, then drew back and asked: “What’s a good thing?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said, in rare confusion. She looked at the sitting-room door, obviously expecting Penelope to come out, but when the door remained closed she took Gideon’s arm and led him along the wide passage that ran by the side of the staircase, and into the living room. In these deep, narrow houses there was the front sitting room, then a smaller, connecting room used by many families as a dining room, and, beyond the passage, a big living room with kitchen and scullery opening off. Everything in this particular house was solid and of good quality, as well as being spick-and-span. “Oh, dear,” Kate went on, half laughing, “I nearly put my foot in it, George.”
“How?” inquired Gideon, deeply interested.
“Mr. Curtis has been complaining bitterly about Penny’s practice, and Millicent’s tried to calm him down, while I’ve been reassuring Penny. If she heard me say it’s a good job someone feels he can enjoy piano music, Penny would have realized there’s been trouble.”
Gideon smiled. “It’s a bit obscure, but I think I get you. One neighbour thinks she’s wonderful and the other says she’s driving him out of his mind.”
“That’s about it,” said Kate.
“Very interesting,” Gideon remarked, taking off his jacket. “Gosh, it’s sticky tonight.” He rolled up his shirt sleeves and went into the scullery, where he washed his hands under the tap. As Kate paused in the doorway, Gideon went on: “Have Curtis and Henshaw ever settled their argument over the service alley?”
Kate stared.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed. “I never thought of that!”
“Curtis complains, Henshaw hears about his complaints and is all sweetness and light, which is a way of getting at Curtis.” Gideon reasoned. “And Penny gets squeezed in the middle, poor kid. Is she upset?”
“I don’t think she knows anything has been said,” Kate answered. “George—”
Gideon was back in the living room, taking whisky and glasses from a cupboard by the side of the fireplace. He was not a heavy drinker, but he had come increasingly to relax in the evening with a whisky-and-water. Kate came in wit
h a small jug of water.
“For you?” asked Gideon
“No, I won’t,” said Kate. “George, I don’t see how we can avoid complaints, and if Curtis makes an official one, or even comes banging on the door, it will upset Penny so much”
“Just a week to go,” Gideon remarked. He sipped and dropped back into a large easy chair which looked as if it had been made for him. “We—”
“George,” said Kate again, “you can’t be glib about this.”
Gideon, startled, echoed: “Glib?”
“You can’t just push thought of it aside with a few casual words.”
Gideon drank again, more deeply, hitched himself further up in his chair, and said with greater deliberation: “You were obscure before, dear. Now you’re really confusing me! What am I supposed to be glib about?”
“Oh, I didn’t really mean glib. I meant—”
“I was pushing something aside,” said Gideon mildly.
“What, precisely?”
Kate, a little flushed, was spreading a white cloth over the big deal-topped table. She moved with natural grace, and Gideon never tired of watching her. She was a little thinner than she had been, her loss of weight especially noticeable at her waist, particularly when she wore a blouse and skirt, as she did now.
“There’ll be more and more,” she said, at last.
“More and more—oh—practice.”
“Yes,” Kate said with obvious relief. “When she’s finished this sonata, she’ll play another, and another, and another. That’s inevitable, isn’t it?”
“And the more successful she is, the more she’ll have to practicse.”
“Yes, obviously.”
“And the more our neighbour Curtis won’t like it.”
“It isn’t only Curtis” replied Kate ruefully. “Several of the neighbours have asked rather pointedly when the concert is going to be held.”
Gideon sipped, frowned, and half smiled.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “‘Doesn’t Penelope play beautifully, Mrs. Gideon; when is she going to finish?’”
“I can’t really blame them.” Kate was putting knives and forks round the table, setting four places in all. “George—”
“We can’t soundproof the sitting room,” Gideon objected.
“We could soundproof the attic, or we could very nearly,” answered Kate, and then she went on much too quickly, swallowing some of her words. “We only keep rubbish and our suitcases up there; half of it’s boarded over, and I don’t think the sound would travel far from the one small window. I shouldn’t think it would cost—”
“Say, two hundred pounds,” interjected Gideon.
“Oh, it couldn’t be as much as that!”
“Yes, it could,” answered Gideon. “Probably quite a bit more, too. Even if it were practicable.”
“Oh, it is! I’ve had a good look round. And you know Alan Pryce-Davies, don’t you - the cartoonist, I mean - he’s soundproofed his room; he says it’s the only way he could get any peace. I can’t believe it would cost as much as two hundred pounds.”
“Oh, well” said Gideon. “I suppose we can find out.”
Kate’s face lit up, making her look quite beautiful.
“May I, George?”
“Will you, love?”
“I’ll make it my first job tomorrow,” Kate promised. “George, she is our last daughter, and—”
“You don’t have to sell me the idea,” Gideon said gruffly. “Are we going to eat tonight?”
Kate, her eyes very bright, went past him to the kitchen, pressing his shoulder firmly. Gideon finished his drink, then leaned back in his chair and dozed for the next few minutes, until Kate called out, “Well, if you’re hungry.” He opened his eyes to see the table laden with a steak pie with beautifully browned crust, three dishes piled up with boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage.
He smothered a yawn and got up as Kate, at the open door, called: “Penny!” As he reached the table, Penelope came in, tall but not so tall as her mother, dark hair drawn off her face, making her look a little too thin. Her eyes, also grey, lacked the brightness of Kate’s.
“Hallo, Daddy.... Has it been a beastly day?.... Oooh, what a lovely pie!....” He really would have to find her a practice room where she could play without being worried about the neighbours, he told himself, and reflected comfortingly that there wasn’t much he needed to spend his income on these days.
Malcolm, the youngest of the family, came rushing in halfway through the meal, full of apologies about being late and having to go out again in twenty minutes.
“If you’re going swimming—” began Kate.
“No, it’s not swimming; it’s work in the gym. Get the old muscles pepped up!” Malcolm stretched out his arms and flexed his biceps, brought his plate from the hotplate to the table to allow his mother to serve the main course, then helped himself to vegetables. Sitting opposite Penelope, he gave her a salute. “And how’s the gorgeous pianoforte virtuoso today?”
Everyone laughed.
For the Gideons it was a pleasant, happy evening.
4: The Falconers
For the Falconers, who lived in Mayfair, it was a very different kind of evening. Christine Falconer, the only child, wondered whether she alone among the four present realized what kind of life they led, how unbelievably artificial it was. At certain times, she had a feeling that her mother was living under a great strain and somehow putting on an act; at others, she felt almost despairingly that her mother had become a kind of automaton, switched on as it were to defer exclusively to her husband’s wishes.
Christine thought, looking down the long, highly polished Sheraton table at her mother, How can anyone so beautiful be so empty of emotions?
And she thought, looking toward the other end of the table at her father - in his high-backed chair, the arms of which always seemed a little too high so that he was continually knocking his elbows - How can anyone be so rich and so stupid?
Opposite her, his face softened by the candlelight from two big silver candelabra, sat Frederick Charles Stuart Oliphant, whom everyone knew as Oily. He had been virtually one of the family since she was quite tiny; she could not remember the great house without him. She had accepted him without thinking for so long that when at last her mind had opened to doubts and uncertainties about him and she had started to revalue her attitudes, it had been difficult to see him differently. He was now in his middle fifties, a little older than her father, and, of course, to her he had always seemed old. He was balding, with a round, pale face and a small rosebud of a mouth. She could never remember him being out of temper or ruffled or excited. He was the secretary, confidant, and friend of her father, and she knew that he was regarded as one of the great art experts of the world.
Davies, the butler, came in silently and offered more of the delicious apricot-and-peach flan, more of the rich Jersey cream: but no one wanted a second helping.
“We will have coffee in the drawing room,” her father said.
“Very good, sir.”
It was like a record player.
“Come along, dear,” her mother called, as she had from the days when Christine had first been allowed to join them at the dinner table.
Oily moved and pulled her mother’s chair back. Davies placed the port in front of his master. The candlelight made a cage of the dining table and the silver and the dishes, holding the gaze at eye level; now, above the glow, the pictures showed, each discreetly lit, each a portrait, each an Old Master, and each priceless. Christine stood up, feeling an almost overwhelming temptation to pick up a knife and hurl it at the nearest solemn face; instead, she turned away from the table and followed her mother out the door, at which Davies was standing, tall and stately and, like all of them, not quite real. She thought the whole nightly performance was like a charade in which the first prize went to whichever performer could show least expression.
They went out of the dining room into the hall.
&n
bsp; Here were the landscapes: Gainsborough, Constable, Turner - paintings of rich beauty and great value. And here were the sculptures and the busts; it seemed to her as her mother walked past them that the marble and the granite, the bronze and the alabaster, were so much more real than the people who lived in her home.
“Mother,” she said as they reached the open door of the drawing room.
“Yes, dear?”
“Mother, I’ve a headache. Do you mind if I go up to my room?”
“Your father will be very disappointed, Christine.”
“Tell him I’m sorry, won’t you?”
They stood facing each other for a few moments, and this was one of the rare occasions when Christine felt that the woman, not the automaton, was in front of her. Even then she was aware of the Dresden china perfection of her mother’s skin, the brilliance of her eyes, all the subtlety of makeup, the elegant simplicity of the Balenciaga dress, the small diamond pin on her shoulder. The woman receded, the automaton, the work of art, taking her place, and a new thought crossed Christine’s mind: that her mother had been made for her father, or else he had searched for her as he searched for every other rare piece in his collection.
“Christine, dear,” her mother said. “You’re not going out, are you?”
“I might—I might go out for a breath of fresh air.”
“You haven’t made any plans to see anybody?”
“No,” Christine said. “But is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“Well, you know, my dear, your father doesn’t like some of the young people with whom you have been associating recently,” her mother said. “I am sure you would be very wise not to see them or anyone else surreptitiously. You know how your father likes to have everything out in the open, don’t you, dear?”
“Do you mean he’s been—” Christine began, in sudden white heat of temper, but somehow she bit back the words “spying on me” and turned and hurried away. She felt in a turmoil, at the point of revolt against a life which was becoming increasingly intolerable.
She ran up the curving staircase, past recesses and alcoves in which stood vases and goblets, some of them chased gold and silver, some of the others jewel encrusted: The Italian (mostly Cellini), the French, and the Spanish; a little farther up, where the stairs rounded, the Chinese of old dynasties were represented with vases and jade figures dug from ancient tombs. And on the landing were rare objets d’art from South America, from Russia, from Mexico. Every single piece was unique, every single piece of rare value.
