Silence Observed

by Michael Innes

  People were buying catalogues, postcards, colour prints. People were giving up umbrellas and macintoshes. A mob of school children were being issued with little camp stools which they would presently trail in the wake of a peripatetic lecturer. Meanwhile, they were staring in awe at the vast expanses of marble around them – all except one small and clearly obnoxious boy with spots. He had discovered that the marble was merely painted on, and he was drawing the attention of a companion to this satisfactory discovery. In recesses of the building beyond these, and upon benches very comfortably upholstered at the cost of the nation, sundry citizens dozed, cuddled, toiled at crossword puzzles or lunched off slabs of chocolate and bananas. Parker, ignoring all this artistic fervour, led the way down into a kind of splendiferous and gigantic basement.

  “Dead?” Appleby asked, when he judged that a sufficient degree of seclusion had been attained.

  “Oh, yes – oh, dear me, yes.” Parker spoke with gloomy satisfaction. “Instantaneous. Absolutely instantaneous. And precisely as last night, you know. Bang through the back of the head as he sat at his desk.”

  “But I don’t think Gulliver had the same bald patch. So not precisely the same sort of target.”

  “Well, no.” Parker seemed doubtful whether to consider this reservation on Appleby’s part frivolous. “But two identical crimes like this aren’t comfortable, sir. Not within something like twelve hours of each other. And one of the victims a person of eminence. It scares people, a thing like this. Maniac at large, and so on. One more big-wig, and we’ll have half the bigwigs of London ringing up to say that they won’t positively object to being given police protection. Thank goodness that little chap Trechmann wasn’t a bigwig too.”

  “Quite so.” Appleby, although not much worried by the bigness or littleness of wigs, sympathized with Parker. At the same time, this didn’t dissuade him from a mild pulling of his colleague’s leg. “And our friend Heffer?” he asked. “I suppose he was found standing behind the body?”

  “Certainly, Sir John. Just that.”

  For a moment Appleby supposed that Parker too had given way to frivolity. But this was clearly impossible.

  “My dear man,” he murmured, “let’s get this absurd affair cleared up rather quickly.”

  “Yes, sir. You express my own feeling exactly. This way, sir.”

  There was at least a considerable contrast in the settings of the Trechmann and Gulliver fatalities. Sir Gabriel had died in an enormous and cavernous room like a mausoleum. One end was taken up by tall windows which proved to be only of the slightly subterraneous order. The other was occupied by a vast historical painting by John Martin. It was called The Destruction of Carthage and depicted a huge harbour crowded with grappling vessels, surrounded by colossal moles crammed with improbable pylons, cenotaphs and fortifications, garnished with three or four hundred drowned, stabbed, crushed or dismembered human bodies, and illumined throughout by a lavish display of fireworks diversified by skyward-roaring flames. All this now made a kind of backcloth to one additional corpse, that of the late Director of this imposing institution.

  And he had been a queer chap – Appleby thought, looking down at him dispassionately. What quirk of character, for instance, had drawn a man whose business was with Botticelli and Rembrandt to live with a monstrosity like that? Appleby turned back to the painting. Not, he thought, that John Martin didn’t have his points. There had at least been a kind of honest ruthlessness to give dignity to that second-rate imagination.

  “Plenty of doors here, too,” Appleby said. “These little incidents do seem to transact themselves in efficient theatrical settings. That was a secretary’s room we came through?”

  Parker nodded.

  “Yes – and she was there all the time. A Miss Quinn. It was a great shock to her. We haven’t revived her yet.”

  “Haven’t revived her! What on earth do you mean?”

  “Only that she did rather an obstinate faint – or perhaps hysterical turn. She’s in a room along the corridor, with a doctor who says she must be taken slowly.”

  “Well, well. And those two doors on the other side of this great barn of a room?”

  “That one” – Parker pointed – “leads to Heffer’s room, just across a passage.”

  “Ah, yes – where the Rembrandt was inspected.”

  “The Rembrandt, sir?” Parker was puzzled.

  “Just something that came into my head. Probably with no relevance at all. And that other door?”

  “It takes you into a small room where Gulliver kept some clothes. Then there’s his washplace, and then a corridor again. Not muchused. Anybody could have come and gone that way, quite unobserved.”

  “But not without knowing the building? I mean, there are no notices and arrows and things, saying ‘This way to the Director’?”

  “No, sir. Of course there’s nothing like that. A person would have to have information. But it wouldn’t be terribly hard to come by.”

  “Quite so. Parker – have you ever thought how easy it is to kill people?”

  “Well – yes, sir. It’s our business, I suppose, to reflect along those lines from time to time. And yet there isn’t a great deal of killing done. Broadly speaking, the disposition must be absent in the vast majority of the population. It’s an encouraging thought.”

  “No doubt.” Appleby took a turn about the room. “Where’s Heffer?”

  “In his own room. There are a couple of constables keeping an eye on him.”

  “But no doctor? Heffer didn’t put on a fainting fit like this sensitive Miss Quinn?”

  “As a matter of fact, I rather gather that he did. Or the next thing to it. And I’ve seen myself that he’s very much upset.”

  “Not the sort of cool customer turn that he put over last night?”

  “Very far from it. Really shaken.” Parker hesitated. “You’ll agree, sir, that when one catches the killer after an affair like this, he’s often disconcertingly remote from his deed. Impassive or calmly negative. But it isn’t always so. I’ve seem them trembling as this man Heffer has been trembling.”

  “He might well tremble – forming the habits he seems to have been doing. Whose body will he be found posed behind tomorrow? It may be yours or mine, my dear Parker.”

  “Of course there are professional risks.” Parker offered this generalization in a finely wooden way. “But they’re not things that you’d expect him to hit up with.” And he jerked a thumb in the direction of the body. “Or that little fellow in Bloomsbury, either.”

  “I hope soon to be in a position to disagree with you there. And now you’d better tell me what’s known, so far, about Round Two.”

  “I suppose it is Round Two?” Parker was cautious. “Of course, the manner of killing is a link. And so is Heffer.”

  “And so is the general context of both affairs.” Appleby was looking at John Martin’s gigantic massacre again. “Art and literature and acquisitiveness. But mostly, of course, acquisitiveness. Now, go ahead.”

  “Eleven a.m., sir. Sir Gabriel Gulliver sitting alone in this room, presumably as we see him now. Across the corridor, Mr Heffer alone in his room.”

  “Ah.” Appleby nodded. He had sat down and lighted a cigarette – somewhat doubtfully, perhaps, on account both of the body and of its impressive surroundings. “So our young friend had regarded last night’s excitements as the climax of his holiday, and had clocked in to work again?”

  “Seemingly so, sir. And Miss Quinn was in her room – the outer one we came through – doing some typing. Any visitor for the Director in a regular way would, of course, have been filtered past her after signing a book in the head porter’s office.”

  “A formal business, apparently. I had an idea that Gulliver ran the place rather easily.”

  “I gather, sir, that all these museums and su
ch-like more or less follow government office rules. But, of course, nobody did sign. There were no visitors, whether by appointment or otherwise, for the Director this morning.”

  “Pallida Mors.”

  “Yes, sir – I grant you that.” Parker was plainly pleased by this reliance upon his Latinity. “In the midst of life we are in death, as another ancient authority has it. But Sir Gabriel, no doubt, was thinking of other matters. About buying another picture for the place – or whether he would have a glass of claret with his lunch.” Parker paused only briefly on this flight of fancy. “Then somebody walked in on him, shot him dead, and walked out again. Either Heffer, operating from his own room, or an unknown, operating through the little anteroom and from the corridor beyond the washplace.”

  “But if it was Heffer – and we seem to have had something like this discussion before – then he didn’t walk out again. Because he was actually found here with the body.”

  “Yes, sir. But the body has a bullet in it. And Heffer had no weapon. This room concealed no weapon. Indeed, we’re already almost certain that no weapon is concealed anywhere that Heffer could possibly have reached in the time available to him.”

  “How much time?”

  “Well, sir, it seems to have been like this. The corridor between this room and Heffer’s takes a right-angled turn, so that it runs just behind that.” Here Parker pointed at John Martin’s canvas. “Round that corner, so that they couldn’t see whether anything was happening or not happening between this room and Heffer’s, three employees of the place were working just on eleven o’clock. I gather they were preparing to get a large picture up through a trapdoor into a main gallery. And they heard a shot.”

  “They knew it to be a shot?”

  “Yes and no. Unfortunately they paused to argue about it. One of them thought it might be a picture falling. That, no doubt, is felt to be the utmost possible disaster in a concern like this. Then they decided it had been a shot. So they ran down the corridor and made that right-angled turn. That meant that a blank wall was in front of them, this room on their right, and Heffer’s room on their left. They went for Heffer’s room. Perhaps that was less alarming than charging in on the Director. They knocked, got no reply, went in, and found the room empty. They repeated the process with this room – and found Gulliver’s body precisely as you see it now, and with Heffer standing beside it.”

  “Heffer might have shot Gulliver, nipped through that other door into the anteroom, handed over the weapon to a confederate who made off with it, and then himself immediately have returned to the seat of his crime. It sounds as if there might have been time enough for that.”

  “Yes, sir. I agree. But it’s hard to see that there would have been any sense in such a plan.”

  “I rather concur. But what about this Miss Quinn?”

  “As I think I’ve said, there can be no doubt that she was in her own room – the room commanding the regular entrance to this one – during the whole material time. She was found there – either screaming, or fainting, or both – when it eventually occurred to someone to go in and look for her. There had been the usual sort of confusion, of course, that you get on top of an affair like this. Perhaps you’d like to tackle the young woman yourself?”

  Appleby considered for a moment.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll go along and talk to her – that doctor you spoke of permitting.”

  Miss Quinn proved to be an abundant young person, whose charms were doubtless at their most striking when set off by a heaving bosom and a distraught air. The doctor who had been called in, and who had gone on to attend to the lady after pronouncing Gulliver to be indubitably dead, was just leaving her when Appleby and Parker arrived. He expressed himself dryly to the effect that her condition was scarcely serious. But if her reaction to the mere hearing of a pistol shot, he added, appeared to be altogether excessive, it would be unwise to conclude that she actually knew more than she was disposed to tell. On such occasions it was to be observed that genuine shock and the most tiresome play-acting regularly got themselves mixed up, and it was a waste of time trying to distinguish the one from the other.

  Appleby felt that, medically speaking, this was no doubt true. Legally, however, it might be another matter. And he introduced himself to Miss Quinn without much ceremony. She was being attended by a motherly person who had been summoned from the ladies’ cloakroom for the purpose, but who remained silent during the interview except for occasionally contributing a heavy sigh.

  “I understand, Miss Quinn, that at the time of–”

  Miss Quinn’s bosom heaved. It was rather as if she had been squeezed elsewhere, and as if this necessary pneumatic consequence had followed.

  “I am much to blame,” Miss Quinn said. Her voice contrived to be at once strong and tremulous. “I am very much to blame.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I condoned it,” Miss Quinn said. She sighed – and at once the female attendant sighed too. “For long I condoned it. The natural weakness of a woman. How bitterly I regret it now.”

  Inspector Parker breathed so heavily that Appleby was afraid he might begin to sigh as well. He contented himself, however, with producing a notebook in ominous silence.

  “May I ask,” Appleby said, “just what you condoned, Miss Quinn?”

  “The women.”

  “Ah – the women.” Appleby paused to consider this. “I suppose you must mean women who might be described as women in Sir Gabriel’s life?”

  “Exactly,” Miss Quinn said.

  “I am not sure that you mayn’t be imagining things. But, even supposing that these women existed, how can you be said to have condoned the matter? It had nothing to do with you, and you bore no responsibility.”

  “They came here.”

  “You are referring merely to the fact that ladies visited the Director in his office? As it happens, my wife occasionally did so.”

  “Ah – Lady Appleby.” And Miss Quinn nodded in a fashion that, although theatrical, did suggest that she wasn’t entirely lost in a world of prurient fantasy. “But she comes in the proper way – which is through my room.”

  “You mean that Sir Gabriel was in the habit of receiving ladies who came in by the back way?”

  “Yes. As he did this morning. I heard–”

  “One moment, Miss Quinn. Did male visitors sometimes come in by that way too?”

  “Well, yes. Some did.”

  “Visitors who ask for the Director, even for the purpose of making a social call, sign a book, and wait while a message goes through to you, and so forth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t it be reasonable, then, for Sir Gabriel to mention to intimate friends that they were always welcome to drop in on him by this less formal route?”

  “Not all those women.”

  The motherly person gave her heaviest sigh yet. She appeared to take the darkest view of the whole situation.

  “Come, Miss Quinn. We must be thoroughly sensible in a matter of this kind. Sir Gabriel liked the company of women, no doubt. But do you seriously suggest that there was something clandestine and improper in the visits you have in mind – visits taking place in a room into which, I imagine, you were entitled to enter at any time with business that required his attention?”

  “You should have heard what was going on this morning,” Miss Quinn said.

  The motherly woman, in addition to a sigh, contrived a shocked noise with her tongue. Parker opened the notebook and brought out his fountain pen. Unless Miss Quinn were to be judged as living in a world of mere daydream, something was going to emerge at last.

  “It is, of course, fortunate that you heard it,” Appleby said. “Please tell us about it now.”

  “Passion,” Miss Quinn said. She looked round, and appeared dissatisfied with the effe
ct she had produced. “Guilty passion,” she said.

  “Come, Miss Quinn. I think your imagination may be running away with you. Let us say that a lady came to see Sir Gabriel this morning. At what time?”

  “Ten to eleven. I looked at my watch.”

  “Thank you. And within a few minutes of eleven o’clock Sir Gabriel was dead. So what is this talk of guilty passion, please?”

  “Well – they were excited. I could hear that. It wasn’t just social talk.”

  “As Sir Gabriel was presently shot, that seems very likely. But it is something rather less specific than you have been suggesting, you know. You didn’t recognize the woman’s voice?”

  “No.”

  “Had you heard it before, would you have been aware of the fact? Was it distinct enough for that?”

  Miss Quinn shook her head. She appeared discouraged.

  “I wouldn’t have known,” she said. “And I couldn’t make out a word. But there was a quarrel.”

  “A quarrel? Are you sure?”

  “Well, a dispute.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “An argument. But at the end Sir Gabriel was certainly angry. He raised his voice.”

  “So that you could hear what he said?”

  “Yes.” Miss Quinn hesitated. “Because by that time I had–” She hesitated again. “Well, by that time, I had gone to listen – just a little.”

  “I see. And what was it that you heard Sir Gabriel say in this raised voice?”

  “That he would have nothing to do with it.”

  Appleby stared in astonishment.

  “My dear young lady – do you realize that you may have to give evidence in a criminal trial? And be required to talk sense? Does this remark which you overheard seem to have anything to do with what you call guilty passion?”