Silence Observed

by Michael Innes

  “We’ll hope that Heffer is telephoning ahead, to make sure of the girl he’s going after.”

  “Girl, sir?”

  “Yes, Parker. I’ll be upset if it isn’t a girl – an astoundingly beautiful girl.”

  “Indeed, sir.” Parker clearly wasn’t sure that this wasn’t frivolity. “Now he’s out again. Quick work. Nothing in the nature of a long lovers’ chat – girl or no girl. And he’s going along A11, all right. Switching to the Yard now, sir. Call you back in ten minutes. You’ll be lucky if you’ve made this point by then. Turn you grey, this traffic would.”

  Appleby sat back and waited. The car nosed its way down Fleet Street. Occasionally an alert constable spotted it and managed a great air of speeding it on its journey. But it was slow work. They certainly weren’t going to kill anybody. Judith, it was to be hoped, was making better speed to Winterbourne Crucis. She was a fast driver but a skilful one. She wouldn’t run into any trouble. She never did.

  The chauffeur, brought to a standstill in a traffic block, spoke over his shoulder.

  “Like old times, this must be for you, sir.”

  “Well, yes – it is.” Appleby was pleased. He liked to think that, in however small a way, he had his legend.

  “Parker here.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re booked for beyond Woodford, sir. Right in the Forest, in fact. If it can be called that.”

  “Dear me. What a bosky afternoon. My wife’s on her way to a forest too. The New Forest. Which, incidentally, is older than Epping.”

  “Yes, sir.” Parker was patient. “I’ve turned up Whipps Cross Road. No point in trailing him now. He might become aware that this van has been on his horizon for some time.”

  “Quite right. What more?”

  “Well, sir, the name is Kipper.”

  “Parker, I don’t believe it. Astarte simply can’t be Miss Kipper. It would be intolerable.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir.” Parker’s voice was now openly reproachful.

  “I’m sorry, Parker. All this has been happening rather too rapidly for much talk. But I’ve got quite a tale for you. You did say Kipper?”

  “Yes, sir. A Mrs Kipper, Veere House, Sewardstonebury.”

  “What!” Now Appleby gave what was virtually a shout. “Spell that.”

  “Spell it, sir? S-E-W–”

  “No, no, man. The name of the house.”

  “V-E-E-R-E. I made them spell it out myself. But it isn’t my idea of spelling Vere.”

  “Ah – you’re thinking of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Parker. I’m thinking of Miss Kipper. Blessed name! I see it now. And we’re right in the target area. Avanti!”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Appleby, although suddenly in high spirits, was abashed. When Parker used that aggressively subordinate expression it meant that he was definitely offended.

  “Listen,” Appleby said. “Veere is a place on the Dutch island of Walchern. It has very ancient trading associations with both England and Scotland. And Kipper can only be a name of Dutch origin. A couple of hundred years ago it was probably Kuyper.”

  “Well, sir?”

  “And this chase, you see, is all a matter of a Dutch picture.”

  “I’d never have suspected it, sir.” The disembodied voice of Parker was once more merely resigned.

  “A Rembrandt, as a matter of fact. And, within the next hour, I’m going to set eyes on it, or–” Appleby paused. “Well – or I’m a Dutchman!”

  But perhaps I am – Appleby thought, as his car ran down the Mile End Road. If I took the next turn to the right I’d be in Stepney – where that wretched lad used his boots. I’ve kept an eye on that from my desk, but it hasn’t occurred to me to go barging in. Yet I am barging in on the Trechmann and Gulliver affair. Of course, I can plead that it has rather barged in on me. Yes – that’s the point I must stress to this excellent Parker.

  The car braked smoothly as an ambulance passed ahead of it with a clanging bell. The London Hospital… It’s nearly all tolerably clear – he told himself, sitting back. There are two stories, and I can now pinpoint the place at which they intersect. What chiefly remains baffling is a purely psychological matter. It comes to this – that the Gribble affair is disconcertingly out of scale.

  Moultrie had been sold a Toulouse-Lautrec and Lord Mountmerton had been sold a Van Gogh. The technique had been almost identical in each case. And it was an uncommonly good technique. Given that the faker could do his stuff and the supposed female relict of the painter in question could do her stuff, the thing was almost foolproof. At least it was almost foolproof if the dupes were chosen with a little circumspection. And there were plenty of dupes. Two continents were prolific in them. Probably there had been successful dealings, too, in spurious Cézannes, Renoirs, Pissarros. Sisleys and what-have-you.

  Queen Mary College – a sombre haunt of the Muses – went past on his left. Parker and his greengrocer’s van would probably have reached Veere House by now. Parker wouldn’t do more than keep it under observation. It was Appleby’s role, clearly, to drive up and effect a comfortable elucidation of the whole affair.

  Gribble, then. Victims like Moultrie and Mountmerton would yield a fortune in no time – and there could be rational calculation in the view that one might get away with half a dozen or a dozen such coups without disaster. But the defrauding of Gribble had represented no less a risk than any of the other operations. And it had been undertaken for mere chickenfeed. In fact, for £800. And the forgery, moreover, was in a totally different medium – that of literary manuscript. Whatever the ingenuity brought to bear in this field, the proceeds could never come to a tithe of those gained from the faking of paintings. Again, consider what had been forged. Gribble had believed himself to be buying a forgery, and so he had been – in a ludicrous double measure. In fact there was a freakish sense of humour behind the Manallace fraud, and it had been indulging itself at only a negligible prompting in point of financial gain. Conceit and whimsy, you might say, had enjoyed a field day at the expense of poor old Charles Gribble. Yet the joke had ended in murder.

  The obvious conclusion appeared to be that Jacob Trechmann had acted as agent for two independent crooks, or gangs of crooks. Yet even this didn’t quite make sense. If he was in on the picture racket – no doubt as one who could make valuable contacts with potential clients – why should he willingly traffic as well in very small beer, with all the increased risks attending it?

  But there was another material point. Armandine de la Gallette. Moultrie was a stay-at-home chap. He would never have heard of the Moulin de la Gallette – and much less of the slang sense of this term which might suggest that poor Lautrec’s supposed good angel had been a gold-digger. Nevertheless the pitching in of this wanton absurdity had been not without some hazard. Here, in fact, in a context of large stakes and large skill, was the same sort of conceited freakishness that had forged – or caused the forging of – a Manallace forgery. And it would require a strong will, surely, to foist this element of gratuitous risk upon associates in a big-time criminal organization. So here – one might say at a guess – was the master-mind.

  But indeed – Appleby asked himself, as his car swung into Woodford New Road – was “freakish” quite the word that was required?

  Might it not rather be “mad”?

  14

  “A madwoman, it seems,” Parker said.

  “No, no, Parker. Not a flagrant red herring like that, please.” Appleby checked himself. “Very good show,” he said, with an approving nod.

  “Thank you, sir. Sergeant Murray here did a thoroughly sound job at the wheel. And it’s he who has found out a little about the place. He walked back to a pub on the edge of the common. It seems they know the owner of Veere House as the mad Mrs Kipper. Or, rather, they don’t know her. Bec
ause nobody ever sets eyes on her. Or hears about her.”

  “No servants to gossip?”

  “The last are said to have cleared out a couple of years ago. And I’m not surprised. Never saw a more dismal-looking place. Just take a glance up the drive, sir.”

  Appleby did as he was told – making his observation cautiously from behind a decayed stone pillar on which there must once have hung a gate.

  “Superior old house once,” he said. “Older than most of what’s around here.”

  “It was there when its only neighbours were highwaymen, I shouldn’t be surprised. What they call Queen Anne, isn’t it?”

  Appleby nodded.

  “I suppose so. Interesting that you should get an old-established Dutch mercantile family here. Matter of the route to Harwich, I suppose.”

  “You seem very sure about this, sir.”

  “Ah – I’m doing no more than bolstering my confidence, perhaps.” Appleby made another reconnaisance round the pillar. “Dismal enough, I must say.”

  “Godforsaken part of the world anyway, if you ask me. Neither one thing nor another. A land of litter and unenterprising picnics, I’d call it.”

  “A thoroughly apt description.” Appleby was impressed by this flight on Parker’s part. “But my guess is that this house is on the site of an old hunting lodge. You’re sure our young man is inside?”

  “Well, sir, you can just see the tail end of his car. But I’ve been wondering whether I should call out some of the local men and get the place surrounded. After all, it’s homicide we’re dealing with.”

  “Very true. But I don’t think we’ll do that yet, all the same. Only you might send your driver – Murray, did you say? – round to keep an eye on the back. And you yourself stay here by the van.”

  “As you please, sir.” It was evident that Parker didn’t approve.

  “I don’t want to create alarm, so you’ll forgive me if I just walk up to the house by myself. Nobody come or gone since you arrived?”

  “Well, yes. A fellow drove up about ten minutes ago. I think he’s parked his car just in front of Heffer’s. Seemed to be in rather a hurry. Looked as if he might have been a doctor.”

  “Did he, indeed? Well, wait for me, Parker – there’s a good chap.” And Appleby walked round the mouldering pillar and up the drive. He stopped, however, at a word from Parker behind him.

  “One thing I forgot, sir. About what they told Murray at the pub. The only other inhabitant’s a girl. A niece, she’s thought to be.”

  “Miss Kipper, in fact?”

  “That may well be, sir.”

  “Splendid. This affair is going to offer one sheerly aesthetic moment, at least. I look forward to it.”

  And Appleby walked on.

  The drive was completely untended. It passed between ragged shrubberies and skirted a garden which was a wilderness. But even this hardly prepared one for the spectacle that the house itself presented on a closer view. It stood, as it were, knee-deep in weeds – like some forlorn prehistoric creature in an inedible pasture. Its grey surfaces were flaked and cracked; its woodwork was denuded of paint; many of the lower windows showed tattered curtains pulled awry, and some of the upper ones lacked entire panes of glass. The effect was the more shocking because the house carried its breeding on its ruined face. If challenged to date it, Appleby would have said 1718; if challenged to name the builder, he would have said James Gibbs. But now it spoke either of madness – which, indeed, was what was attributed to its owner – or of penury. Perhaps it spoke of both. Appleby found himself wondering how the false Astarte had risen to a decent coat and skirt when she had presented herself to Gulliver and Heffer on that fateful occasion. For this was Astarte’s home. Mysteriously, but finally, Appleby hadn’t the slightest doubt of it.

  He glanced at Heffer’s car. It told him that Heffer was either a man of unassuming tastes or possessed of only a very modest private income indeed. He glanced at the other car, which Parker had supposed to be a doctor’s. There was a briefcase on the back seat – and, neatly stacked beside it, a sheaf of documents tied with narrow pink tape. Not a doctor, then. A solicitor. This discovery was a relief.

  Appleby mounted half a dozen steps to the front door. As he did so, he recalled Sir Gabriel Gulliver’s guess at Astarte Oakes’ background: the ponies and the spaniels in decay, and a garden boy beginning to feel entitled to a rise in wages. Genteel poverty among the descendants of a Colonial Governor. Well, that looked as if it had been a near miss. The poverty was here, all right. But it didn’t seem as if there were a garden boy. Appleby rang the bell.

  Or, rather, he went through the motion of doing this. But the bell-pull went limp in his hand. It might have been the limb of an infant corpse – he suddenly and ghoulishly thought – before rigor mortis set in. Then he remembered a story of a man who had pulled at a broken bell like this so vigorously that yards of wire had shot out and strangled him. Veere House, he decided, didn’t conduce to a healthy state of mind. He clenched his fist and knocked vigorously on the door. After a pause, he knocked again. There was every reason to suppose that the effect in the interior must be considerable. But nothing happened. Perhaps he ought to begin shouting an injunction to open in the name of the law. But that was more in Parker’s line. He tried the door and found that it wasn’t locked. So he opened it and walked in. Trespass, perhaps. But not house-breaking or burglary.

  He was confirmed at once in his impression that here had been a dwelling of some elegance. In front of him was a circular hall of moderate dimensions, rising to a cupola and lantern, and clothed in a plain honey-coloured marble which was relieved by engaged pilasters in the same stone. Ahead was an archway beyond which a branching staircase rose beneath a second cupola. On either side were open doorways, giving on large rooms.

  The hall was quite empty. It could have done with a vigorous wash down, but apart from this it retained the dignity of the day on which it was built. Contrastingly, both the rooms leading off it gave an immediate impression of being disgraced. And the reason was obvious. Not only were the carpets and curtains in the last stages of decay. The rooms were crowded – and crowded with junk. It wouldn’t all be junk, indeed, if transported to a junk shop. But it was junk here.

  Appleby concentrated on the room on his right. There was a further open door at the other side of it, through which it was possible to see part of another room beyond. This seemed to be crowded in the same way. And neither room was furnished with the slightest attempt at individual character or even specific function. There were beds and there were sideboards. There were desks which looked as if they had come from massive Victorian offices, and there were dressing-tables which looked as if they had come from penurious Victorian servants’ dormitories. The walls were covered with pictures – oils, watercolours and steel engravings side by side. There were bags of golf clubs and bundles of tennis rackets. There was a vaulting horse and a croquet box and a stuffed bear and a harmonium. And in the disposition of all these crowded objects there was only one principle to be observed. It was a principle, however, that struck Appleby as a notable one. Nothing was entirely concealed behind anything else.

  In the minute which it took Appleby to absorb all this, Veere House was as soundless as the tomb. If the false Astarte were really here, it must surely be in the character of a Sleeping Beauty. In which case, Jimmy Heffer had certainly taken on the role of Prince Charming. But whether his plan for arousing the lady was at all moral – whether, indeed, they mightn’t both wake up to find themselves in jail – was a different matter. Anyway, they must now be hunted out. Appleby was about to address himself to this task when he became aware that the deathly stillness of the place had been broken. It had been broken by a light, firm tapping from – he judged – some distant part of the ground floor on which he stood.

  The tapping came nearer. You didn’t have to re
member Treasure Island and the blind pirate to be a little unnerved by it. Appleby, who had fought for his life in thieves’ kitchens almost as often as Sexton Blake, felt a momentary tingling of the scalp. And then – at the far end of the farther room at which he had been glancing – the occasion of the tapping appeared.

  It was an old woman. She came from the shadow of some remoter corridor into a shaft of afternoon sunshine falling through the farthest of a series of windows which extended between Appleby and herself. As she did so, the sound of her stick – for the tapping did proceed from a stick – was muted but still irrationally alarming. She had passed from a tiled floor to a carpeted one.

  It was a quick tapping – so that it suggested itself as indeed produced by a blind person rather than a lame one. But this was delusive. The old woman had eyes that could see. That she was using them was almost the first impression you had of her. She was advancing towards Appleby with her head turned steadily to her left. Her stick was in her right hand. With her left hand – its index finger extended – she was making spasmodic but purposeful movements as she advanced.

  She was very old. She was in black. The black was relieved by a white collar and a white cap. And this, of course, was what made her uncanny – uncanny as she advanced through this decorous house, a house of the kind in which the successors of Sir Christopher Wren had tactfully refined upon the Dutch taste of William and Mary. The old woman was like an old woman by Rembrandt. That was it.

  Of course it didn’t make sense. Mrs Kipper was not, presumably, a Kipper. Very probably she had been a Miss Smith or a Miss Jones. But perhaps she had grown into the place… Now she had passed into the shadow between two windows – and now she was in clear faint sunlight again. She was nearer. And she wasn’t – Appleby saw – a Rembrandt, after all. She was just a Frans Hals. She hadn’t – that was to say – grown out of the flesh with age. She was an ordinary acquisitive old woman.