Silence Observed

by Michael Innes

  And there was the body.

  There was the body, with disorder all around it. But whether there was any connection between the fact of this disorder and the circumstance that Trechmann had a bullet through his head, Appleby saw no immediate means of telling. The little shop looked as if it was always untidy, so that even a reckless pillaging operation would make little difference to its appearance. There was a little counter almost invisible behind buttresses of books and beneath sheaves of prints and papers. There were a few chairs similarly encumbered. There were valuable-looking books behind steel grilles and equally valuable-looking books on open, rather dusty shelves. In the middle of the floor there was what looked at first like an elaborate infernal machine, but which turned out to be a clockwork model of the solar system. And there was a bust of Homer hazardously perched on a pedestal formed out of bound volumes of the Proceedings of the British Academy.

  The body was seated in an old swivel chair, and slumped forward over rather a narrow desk. Trechmann had been an elderly man, shabbily dressed, and with a bald patch on the back of his head. It was very exactly through the centre of this that the bullet had gone. Some blood had flowed from the punctured scalp. But, on the whole, there wasn’t much mess.

  Appleby stepped forward. The sight of this nondescript person, so efficiently and ruthlessly despatched, oddly moved him – so that he found himself ignoring a constable who had stepped indignantly forward, not knowing him from Adam. The dead man’s left arm hung limply down to the floor. The right arm was flexed on the desk, and the fingers had contracted on an open book, crumpling its title page. Automatically Appleby deciphered the print beneath the nerveless hand:

  Premiers Monuments

  de l’Imprimerie en France

  au XVe Siècle.

  It was difficult not to feel that the late Mr Trechmann’s pursuits had been of a singularly harmless kind.

  “Excuse me, sir – but might that be something Top Secret-like?”

  The constable, who was very young, had somehow been apprised of the newcomer’s importance. And he was putting his best foot forward.

  Appleby looked again at the large clockwork toy.

  “Top Secret?” he said.

  “I think I’ve seen something of the sort in pictures, sir. Like it might be about a bomb, sir. A working model of an atom, you might say, with the neutrons and molecules and all moving like they should.”

  “Ah – I see.” This appeared to Appleby a very intelligent conjecture. “As a matter of fact, it’s something of the sort on a larger scale. That’s the sun, and that’s the earth, and these are the other planets. You’ll see that they’ve all got their moons – except that this one, sixth from the centre, has rings.”

  “Saturn, sir?”

  “I believe so. And the thing’s called an orrery. Who’s in charge here?”

  “Inspector Parker, sir.” The young constable nodded towards an inner door. “Through there, he is. And I’m waiting the word to get the body away. We’ve had the whole outfit now, sir – photographers and all. But now the Inspector is marking time, as you might say.”

  Appleby smiled.

  “You mustn’t criticize Inspector Parker, except to Inspector Parker. And do something about securing that outer door. We might have anybody walking in.”

  The constable did as he was told. Appleby went on into the inner room. It was much like the outer one, except that it was not furnished with a corpse. Inspector Parker, looking far from amiable, was standing at one end of it. At a hastily cleared square of table a uniformed sergeant was sitting over a blank notebook, visibly sweating at the effort of doing nothing at all. And in an ancient basket chair in a corner, apparently engaged simply in giving Parker sour look for sour look, was a young man of wholesome appearance and athletic build.

  “Mr Heffer?” Appleby asked, as his two subordinates got to their feet.

  The young man didn’t rise.

  “Yes,” he said. “Are you another policeman?”

  “I am. And my name is Appleby.”

  “How do you do?” the young man said – civilly but entirely without interest.

  “My wife, Mr Heffer, is much distressed that you were unable to dine with us.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” Now the young man did tumble to his feet. “I say – what a frightful thing. But I did clean forget. Please explain to Lady Appleby. And of course I’ll call and apologize just as soon as ever I can.”

  At this Inspector Parker, who had been obtrusively impassive before so startling an event as Appleby’s appearance, spoke for the first time. It was briefly.

  “Um,” Inspector Parker said.

  “And ‘Um’ to you,” the young man said rather childishly. “Why can’t you do something?” He turned to Appleby. “Why don’t they arrest me, if they want to? This chap will do nothing but ask me to be reasonable – by which he seems to mean that I should pour my life history into the sergeant’s waiting notebook. Why doesn’t he caution me, and say I ought to send for a solicitor, and that sort of thing?”

  “I imagine, Mr Heffer, that he feels there are circumstances of which you could give him a perfectly simple explanation if you were disposed to. As for your solicitor, I should certainly advise you to have him along. Summoning him will not establish the slightest adverse inference as to your position in this affair.”

  “I’ll be damned if I summon anybody. And we’ve been staring at each other like this for hours, with the consequence that I’ve been extremely discourteous to your wife. And all because I happened to find old Trechmann shot dead. It’s outrageous!”

  “That a harmless man should be murdered?”

  “Well, yes – that too, of course.” Jimmy Heffer seemed a little checked by this.

  “Then might it not be reasonable that we should approach the matter in a co-operative spirit?” Appleby turned to Inspector Parker. “Just what is the situation, Parker, and what do we want to know?”

  “Well, sir, Mr Heffer has some story about an old woman.”

  Appleby frowned. He plainly thought poorly of this as the beginning of an expository speech.

  “Some story, Parker? I don’t think we can have that. It carries an implication of prevarication which isn’t at all proper at this stage. I can see that Mr Heffer is an irritating person – or at least that he is behaving in an irritating manner now. But irritated is just what we mustn’t get. So let’s start again.”

  “Yes, Sir John. Well, the circumstances are these. At just after six o’clock this evening a constable on his beat turned into this street from the direction of the British Museum. He believes himself to have been aware of two persons, both male, walking down it in the same direction as himself, and a little ahead of him. Unfortunately, as it turns out, his attention was then distracted. He had occasion, that is to say, to examine the window of the stationer’s and newsagent’s shop near that end of the street.”

  Appleby considered this gravely.

  “Wasn’t that rather an idle occupation on this constable’s part, Parker?”

  “A matter of vigilance, sir. He had reason to suppose that the window might be displaying publications of a pornographical character.”

  “Well, well! And what was it that he failed to observe as a consequence of this distracting pornography?”

  “He failed to observe what had happened to the two persons walking down the street in front of him. Not, of course, that there was any particular reason why he should observe them. But he is fairly sure that the street was empty when he heard a shot.”

  “Heard a shot? It was a deuced clever thing to hear, wasn’t it, when walking in the direction of one of the most noisy thoroughfares in London? Do you mean he heard a bang which might have been any sort of bang?”

  “No, sir.” Inspector Parker was respectfully reproachful. “This man ha
ppens to have received a good deal of instruction in small arms, and he knew at once that he had heard a revolver shot. He walked forward rapidly, and became aware of the open door of this shop. He paused, and there was a perceptible fume.”

  “A what?”

  “A smell of gunpowder, sir, if one may speak very roughly. One can’t fire a pistol without a bit of stink.”

  “True enough. And then?”

  “He entered, and found Mr Heffer here.”

  “I see. And what was Mr Heffer doing?”

  “According to the constable, sir, he was standing directly behind the dead man, with a revolver held in his right hand.”

  “And what was Mr Heffer doing according to Mr Heffer?”

  “Just that, Sir John. There is no conflict of testimony at that particular point.”

  “That’s something, I suppose.” Appleby turned to the young man. “You confirm that, Mr Heffer?”

  “Certainly I do. I’d picked up this revolver, or whatever it was. But I hadn’t yet really looked at it. I was looking, you see, at the old woman. Or rather, at where the old woman had been.”

  “Or rather at that, all right,” Parker said grimly. “For there was certainly no old woman when the constable entered the shop.”

  6

  Appleby had lit a pipe. He had tapped an open packet of cigarettes which the sweating sergeant had inefficiently failed to conceal – with the result that the sergeant, in a great awe, obediently took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Excellent,” Appleby said. “Now we’re really making progress. As only Mr Heffer saw the old woman, only Mr Heffer can tell us about her. Mr Heffer, go ahead.”

  “What’s that?” Heffer had started – so that Appleby received the momentary impression that the young man hadn’t been listening. Indeed, it was almost as if he had been listening for something else. “Oh, the old woman. Well, it was pretty queer.”

  “A number of things seem to me to be that, Mr Heffer. For instance, it isn’t clear to me why we are all holding a sort of vigil in this not very comfortable shop.”

  “Entirely Mr Heffer’s affair, sir,” Parker interrupted. “I invited him to come to a police station and give his account of the matter there. But he refused to budge, unless put under arrest. And I have regarded that as – um – premature. So Mr Heffer has insisted, you may say, on staying put – and on being most uncommunicative as well.”

  “A sort of sit-down strike?”

  “Well, at least a trial of patience, sir. But perhaps we are going to hear something now.”

  “Quite so – about this old woman. But first, Mr Heffer, could you put yourself to the trouble of telling us why you came into this shop at all?”

  “Why I came in? Oh, just to look round.”

  “At just after six o’clock? You knew it would be open?”

  “I just hadn’t thought about it. I wasn’t making a special journey, you know. Just passing.”

  “Where from, and where to?”

  “Where from?” Again Heffer’s attention appeared to have strayed. “I was coming from the BM, where I’d been doing a bit of reading. And I was going back to my flat, to change and go out to dinner with your wife and yourself. Odd, isn’t it? Here we are in quite a different relationship.”

  “Do you commonly spend your holidays in the BM?”

  “Holidays?” Heffer was startled.

  “I think it’s a fact that, quite recently, you made rather an abrupt decision to begin a holiday due to you? But we might have a little conversation about that later. You came into this shop to look round. Had you ever done that before?”

  “Dear me, yes. Often enough.”

  “I see. Well, was there anybody else in the street – anybody who might have entered the shop a minute before you?”

  “I really can’t say. I can’t say, at all. I wasn’t looking or thinking, you know.”

  “Did you hear a shot?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I didn’t. I can’t have been listening either.”

  “Very well, Mr Heffer. You entered the shop. What then?”

  “There was this old woman. She was standing looking at Trechmann, who had been shot through the back of the head.”

  “Did she look as if she might have done the shooting?”

  “Not in the least. She had a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other.”

  “Was she agitated?”

  “She certainly didn’t seem to be. She turned to me as I came in and said: ‘Shot ’im ’e ’as’.” Heffer paused. “Do I make that intelligible? ‘Shot him he has’ was what was intended.”

  “Quite so. And then?”

  “She said: ‘Perlice work that is and no cleaning ’ere neither not till they’re through’. And she turned and walked out of the shop and into this inner room. She wasn’t seen again.”

  Inspector Parker could be heard breathing heavily. Appleby gave him a restraining glance and then turned again to the young man.

  “You realize, Mr Heffer, that you are ascribing a somewhat improbable course of conduct to this old woman?”

  “Well, it was certainly surprisingly phlegmatic. Perhaps she was feeble-minded. I hadn’t time to think about it, you know, because the policeman came in from the street a moment later. You’ll be able to settle the point when you find her.”

  “If we ever do find her,” Parker said. “And if you ask–”

  He broke off at a gesture from Appleby. From somewhere in the rear of the premises two sounds were making themselves heard. One was a clanking. The other could be described as a slip-slopping. Their association could conjure up one image only. And this was almost instantly vindicated. A door opened, and there stood in it an old woman. She was wearing carpet slippers, and she carried a pail, a mop, a broom, a contrivance for kneeling on, and a number of dusters. The appearance of the four men revealed to her was something which she seemed to find wholly unsurprising.

  “That there Mr Trechmann’s corpus,” the old woman said, “would it ’av been taken to the morguary?”

  Parker’s difficulty in the matter of respiration increased. Nor did he seem better pleased when Heffer, without obtrusiveness, rose, tipped a pile of books and papers from a chair, and invited the new arrival to sit down.

  “No,” Appleby said. “Not yet. But it won’t be long now.”

  “I got to thorough through that there shop, I ’ave.” The old woman, who was plainly gratified by Heffer’s attention, had sat down composedly. “And ’uffkins my name is. ’arriet ’uffkins. And Missus, although in a widowed state.”

  “Mrs Huffkins,” Appleby asked gravely, “will you explain to us how you came to leave these premises immediately after having come upon Mr Trechmann’s body?”

  “Give it time to settle, was what I said to myself. And I went to the pichers. Mark you, ’e was ’ere.” Mrs Huffkins pointed a grubby finger at Heffer. “Gentleman, if ever I saw one, and well able to ’andle the perlice.”

  “So you felt,” Appleby asked, “that you could leave it all to him, and you downed bucket and brooms and went off to the cinema? And now, at this late hour, you have simply returned to get on with your job?”

  “That’s it, mister. That’s it in a coconut.”

  At this the sweating sergeant spoke for the first time.

  “Nutshell,” he said. “That’s what she means, sir. Nutshell. Not literate, she isn’t.”

  “No doubt you are right, Sergeant.” Appleby paused to get his pipe going again. “Mrs Huffkins, there is one point I must get quite clear. Could this gentleman – whose name is Mr Heffer – have shot Mr Trechmann, withdrawn from the shop, and then given the appearance of just having entered when you first saw him?”

  “In course ’e couldn’t.” Mrs Huffkins answered as one who, what
ever her intellectual limitations, would make a rock-like and impregnable witness. “It couldn’t ’av ’appened – not in the time between when I ’eard the shot and saw what I saw. Besides, I saw ’im that done it, didn’t I?”

  “You saw ’im that done it?” Once more the sergeant was unable to refrain from interrupting. “You mean you saw ’im that done it a-doing of it, and then you walked out and went to the pictures? Inside, you ought to be.”

  “You mustn’t make suggestions, Sergeant, as to where Mrs Huffkins ought, or ought not, to be.” Appleby shook his head seriously. “Although her behaviour, it has to be admitted, was not wholly that of a responsible citizen. Mrs Huffkins, are we to understand that you actually saw Mr Trechmann being shot?”

  “I didn’t say that, I didn’t – and you can’t put it on me that I did. As I come in through this ’ere back shop, there was Mr Trechmann with an ’ole in ’is ’ead. And there was someone what ’ad dropped ’is gun on ’earing me, and was out through the other door – the one to the little back stair – just as I came in and caught a glimpse of ’is back. And then in come this gentleman as anyone can see, Mr ’effer, from the street. So it’s none of my business now, I thinks, and I leaves ’im to it.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Inspector Parker looked glum. He was seeing, clearly enough, that as the killer of Jacob Trechmann young Mr Heffer would never be worth a night’s board and lodging in a police cell. Heffer himself, who ought to have been looking correspondingly relieved, was in fact paying very little attention again. There was a strained look on his face. And he was reaching into a pocket – Appleby supposed it was to pull out a watch – when the thing happened.