‘Yes,’ Mark Tytherton said. ‘It’s pretty rotten, I expect. But it must come out.’
‘I’m afraid it must.’ For the first time in his narrative, Appleby hesitated. ‘It isn’t an aspect of the matter one would want to ventilate, so hard upon your father’s death. But here it is – and its background, I believe, is a state of considerable financial stringency at Elvedon. Your father probably inherited rather more in the way of business interests than business ability; there was a good deal in his way of life that cost money; and things just hadn’t been going too well. I think it likely that Mr Ramsden could tell us a certain amount about all that.’
‘I could,’ Ramsden said. ‘But the present popular assembly isn’t the occasion for it.’
‘No doubt you are right. Well, a couple of years ago, Maurice Tytherton, thus embarrassed, was led into a thoroughly fraudulent act.’
‘Led?’ Mark said sharply.
‘I should judge so. However, we can’t blink the fact of what he did. He caused certain pictures to appear to be stolen; collected money on them from an insurance company; and then quietly sold them through the agency of this disreputable person Raffaello. But this in itself would appear only to have been part of a much larger and more ambitious scheme. It simply released capital for something else. And at this point I think I may introduce to you my colleague Miss Kentwell.’
‘Sir John expresses the matter most obligingly.’ Miss Kentwell was the only member of the company not to be discomposed by Appleby’s mild joke. ‘I must disclaim any connection, past or present, with the Metropolitan Police.’
‘Miss Kentwell works for a private inquiry agency which I have no doubt is of the highest repute. She came to Elvedon – the late Mr Tytherton supposed – entirely in the interest of certain wishes and intentions of his own, which I need not at present particularize. But, in fact, she had a more important client: Novoexport.’
‘And what the devil,’ Carter asked, ‘is that?’
‘It is the Russian state agency which has the sole control over the export of all works of art from the Soviet Union. As you will know, of recent years the ikonographic art of mediaeval Russia has become extremely popular among collectors, and there has been a great deal of illicit traffic in ikons, whether good, bad, or indifferent. What Maurice Tytherton managed to acquire was a dozen that were very good indeed. With skill, they might be marketed for several times what he gave for them. Only, Novoexport – a highly efficient organization – were on his trail.’
‘All this,’ Carter interrupted, ‘has the elements of a capital thriller, no doubt. But I can’t see what it has to do with Goya.’
‘Just have a little patience, Mr Carter. It is remarkable how things connect up. And now I must mention somebody who requires no introduction to any of you: my friend Mr Catmull.’
‘It had nothing to do with me, it hadn’t,’ Catmull said. His tone mingled truculence and alarm. ‘This conspiracy wasn’t nothing to me. I didn’t accept – and don’t none of you think I did – no more than a position of trust, I did.’ Under stress of feeling, Catmull seemed to decline into something like the lowly educational status of his wife. ‘And very worrying it has been, particularly with that Raffaello – not to speak of Miss Kentwellski – nosing around.’
‘Mr Catmull is himself the possessor of a small but choice collection of works of art. They may be viewed – in usefully massive frames – on the walls of his pantry. You will find one of the illicitly acquired ikons behind each. It was an admirably chosen hiding-place – at least of the temporary character required.’
This information, as may be imagined, was variously received by those gathered in the late Maurice Tytherton’s workroom. Raffaello produced something between a curse and a groan, and Mrs Graves an uncomprehending stare. Mark Tytherton, who had been reduced to immobility by the record of his father’s illegal enterprises, did no more than slightly shake a dazed head.
‘But now,’ Appleby said, ‘let us take a sufficiently broad view of the state of affairs in this house. There has been a pretence of pictures being stolen from it when they haven’t been. There has been a hiding away in it of other works of art either stolen or most irregularly come by. There has been the trafficking with Mr Raffaello and, for all I know, others of his kind. It might all be called enough to put funny business with pictures in anybody’s head. A little private enterprise, for instance, in the same general territory.’ Appleby again turned and glanced at the Goya. ‘For example,’ he said, ‘why not make off with Don Jusepe, or whoever he is, and in some fashion that will result in nobody being much the wiser for quite some time? It’s at least an idea, isn’t it? And I ought to say it came to Inspector Henderson quite early.’
‘Just what came to the Inspector?’ Carter asked.
‘A notion that made me remember something. And the memory set me to a little investigation this evening.’ Appleby put a hand in a jacket pocket. ‘In the Elvedon rubbish bins, as a matter of fact. I cestini dei rifiuti.’ He walked over to a small table, and produced from his pocket and laid upon it half a dozen scraps of multicoloured paper. ‘These will do for the moment, although more are available. There happens to be a remarkably good full-size colour reproduction of this Goya – originally the Horton Goya. I know, because I had a copy when little more than a boy. And this small jigsaw will build up into another one. I made a further find in the cartàccia, incidentally. But that can keep.’
‘How very curious!’ Carter had advanced and was studying the scraps of paper thus so strangely brought in evidence. ‘Do you mean to say that there was an attempt – apparently an abortive attempt – to substitute this’ – and he tapped what might have been Don Jusepe’s nose – ‘for that?’ His hand had shot out and pointed to the portrait over the fireplace.
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t.’ Appleby spoke very quietly. ‘The reproduction was to have no function in this room. It was to have a function, and it did have a function, in the identical room directly overhead. Call it the dummy workroom. For this mystery has been very much a matter, you see, of another story.’
Much as if by way of applauding (or, conceivably, censuring) this bizarre joke, a door banged sharply. It was the door of the workroom; Ramsden had vanished through it; and now Henderson was in vain trying to wrench it open again. He had left the key on the other side. And Ramsden had not lacked the presence of mind to turn it in the lock as he departed.
There was a general hubbub. Mrs Graves (who had been behaving very well) had hysterics. Seizing her opportunity, Mrs Tytherton slapped her. Archie Tytherton, exhausted by his perfectly awful day, had fallen to abject blubbering. Raffaello was shouting angrily, as if under the persuasion that some special insult or indignity had been directed upon him. Catmull had picked up a poker, perhaps to beat down the door, or perhaps to defend himself in some imminent lethal affray. Mark Tytherton had leapt to his feet, dashed to the window, and appeared to be measuring the drop to the terrace below. Carter, intending to display detachment and coolness by lighting a cigarette, had actually been sufficiently agitated to burn a finger in the process, and was cursing softly. And the Elvedon peacock chose this propitious moment to scramble to its favourite perch on Hermes and produce a succession of splendid screams.
‘Don’t jump, Mark,’ Appleby said quietly. ‘They’re keeping a look out below, and he won’t get away… Ah! That’s better.’
Inspector Henderson had produced a whistle and blown it loudly.
Nevertheless it was a good many minutes before the house guests of the late Maurice Tytherton (together with the attendant Catmull) were released from their confinement. Ramsden had not merely locked them in; he had successfully pocketed the key as he ran. So the door had to be forced open after all – amid a formidable rending of timber – by two burly constables in the corridor. Appleby’s patience was untried by all this. He had been in such fracas and confusions before. Bu
t he was hardly less upset than Henderson when he was told that the fugitive had vanished.
‘But at least he can’t have got clean away,’ Henderson said. ‘Or can he?’ He turned to the grim and slightly apprehensive sergeant who was his second-in-command. ‘Did anybody hear a car?’
‘No, sir. And I don’t think he’s come downstairs at all. We had the staircases watched.’
‘He may have dropped from a window, man. Mr Tytherton here was about to try that ten minutes ago. It could be done.’
‘Yes, sir – but where would he be then? The moon’s up, and this is a very regular sort of building. These terraces can be commanded by two men – and that’s what I’ve had there.’
‘If he hasn’t gone down,’ Appleby said, ‘he has either remained on this floor, or gone up.’
‘Quite so, Sir John. It’s a matter of one or another of your stories, one may say.’ Henderson offered this a shade tartly, but not with positive ill temper. ‘The second floor, with your dummy room. Or the third, with all those attics. And he’s armed, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It’s certainly very possible that he had on him, or has now picked up, the weapon with which he killed his employer.’
‘And he wouldn’t stick at killing you or me – or, say, a couple of my men?’
‘That I rather doubt. Or not if he has really no chance of getting away. That’s my reading of his character, Inspector, for what it is worth. But we’re not going to risk the lives of your constables on a hunch like that.’ Appleby paused. ‘And if it comes to a straight man-hunt, it might go on in those damned attics for days. Do you know what, Henderson? I think I’ll take a stroll through them.’
‘Well, Sir John, that’s more my function than yours, if I may say so.’
‘But you may not say so. Or that’s how I see the thing.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m a retired man, with no standing in this affair at all – except simply as one appealed to, as I think we may call it, by your Chief Constable. But I’ve held rather a senior job. So will you take an order from me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Appleby fleetingly touched Inspector Henderson’s arm. ‘I’ll give your lads a hail,’ he said, ‘if there’s any occasion to call them in.’ He hesitated for a moment, and then laughed softly. ‘After all, it was my own bloody fault, wasn’t it? Showing off like that.’
‘Sir?’ It would have been fair to describe Henderson as very much shocked.
‘I thought, you know, I had another thirty seconds at least. But he saw that he was booked. His mental processes – and his reaction times – are pretty quick.’
‘Yes, Sir John. What the old Westerns called quick on the draw. Good luck.’
24
Ramsden was on the roof, and the roof was bathed in moonlight. Near its centre the great lantern which stood poised high above Elvedon’s imposing hall cast a shadow like a blunt arrowhead over the gently sloping leaden expanse around it. It seemed an enormous roof: a complication of rising and falling surfaces, of broad plateaus and shallow valleys, of sudden gullies and sharp ridges, all livid and faintly lustrous in the cold illumination now steeping it. Ramsden was perched negligently on a balustrade from which the drop to the south terrace must be sheer. And he had one hand deep in a pocket.
‘I’d advise,’ he said, ‘against coming too near.’
‘Thank you, but there’s no need. It isn’t exactly a death grapple that’s in my mind.’
‘You’ve come to tell me that the game’s up, and that I may as well give in?’ There was an easy mockery in Ramsden’s voice.
‘Not really that, either. Almost the reverse, in a way. Haven’t you thrown up the sponge rather easily?’
‘But have I thrown it up? I don’t know that I’d noticed.’
‘Haven’t you bolted in a panic? But perhaps it’s been no more than a withdrawal to think things over. Even although you did lock us all in in that childish way. Would you say, Ramsden, that there’s really a case against you?’
‘Yes, I would. You were just going to embark on it.’
‘But a convincing case? I’m thinking of a judge and jury.’
‘Perhaps that’s a different matter.’ Ramsden had suddenly turned away. ‘May I ask you something, my dear Appleby?’
‘By all means. In fact, I undertake to try to answer quite faithfully absolutely any question you care to put to me.’
‘What first lodged your sense of the matter quite firmly in your head?’
‘Something I was told by your unwitting collaborator, Miss Kentwell. Do you recall trying to prevent her looking out of a window?’
‘Ah.’
‘I had to ask myself why. You had your wits about you, and knew that there was nothing more alarming or significant in the prospect than a screeching peacock, perched on the head of Hermes. But what about the viewpoint? What if it might reveal to her, then or later, that she wasn’t where she thought she was? As soon as I’d asked myself that, I saw the truth. The statue of Hermes is directly below Tytherton’s workroom, but it is obvious that it is also directly below the room immediately above as well. You and Miss Kentwell were – in the first instance – in that upper room. You didn’t want her to see that, on some later occasion in the real workroom, she might become conscious that she was viewing from a perplexingly different elevation. On that, what may be called the whole theory of the dummy room came to me. It was the ingeniously created instrument of an alibi in what was to be a premeditated murder. But juries, you know, don’t much care for ingenuity – not, I mean, when it has to be urged by a prosecution. So – seriously – don’t you think you still have a chance?’
‘Go on, Appleby.’
‘The entire architecture of the place favoured the deception. Symmetry, balance, repetition are the keynotes. Grove nods to grove.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Never mind. At least the second floor simply echoes the first. At the same time the scale of the place makes any wandering course through it a bit confusing. Choose somebody – like Miss Kentwell – unfamiliar with the house; conduct her on a rambling tour at night; and she mayn’t notice – even though she is a private detective, she mayn’t notice! – that the room to which she appears to have been brought back at eleven-twenty is not the room – the absolutely identical room – to which she was introduced at eleven o’clock. And in the interim, during which you haven’t been out of her sight, a man appears to have been killed in it. It was as simple as that. But Maurice Tytherton was, in fact, dead in his real workroom before you appeared downstairs and proposed the little tour which took Miss Kentwell into the dummy one.’ Appleby paused. ‘But consider that jury again. It would want to know how this odd facsimile could be created – and then uncreated.’
‘No doubt.’ Ramsden had shifted a little on the balustrade, and his hand had gone deeper into his pocket. ‘Do tell me all about that.’
‘You often had the house virtually to yourself, and on that almost deserted second floor you could go to work at leisure. The workroom isn’t copiously furnished, and it was all sufficiently easy, I imagine, to have been quite fun to fudge up. The Goya, as we’ve seen, was no trouble at all – not for a superficial glance. Nor was a dim old Italian cassone. Nor was borrowing, and rephotographing, that photograph of Mark. No, it was all perfectly simple – curtains and rugs and the rest of it – given plenty of time. Of course, dismantling your precious assemblage was another matter. At that, you clearly had to work pretty fast this morning, so that there should be nothing but an innocently empty room again. But among all that endless junk on the floor above, clearly, one could bury a whole houseful of stuff: picture-frame, writing-table, chairs, what you will. It would be quite a job, I imagine, to reassemble that dummy room again now. But I do deprecate your being so casual about the torn-up colour print – to say
nothing of the torn-up photograph. That, by the way, was the other scrap of evidence I came upon, with the help of a nice Italian girl, newly arrived in what may be called the family wastepaper basket. You ought to have had your own little bonfire, Ramsden. You really ought.’
‘When are you going to tell your friend Henderson all this?’
‘Now, now – don’t start that lethal rush. Henderson knows it all already. At a pinch, I’d be expendable.’
‘And he knows what it was all in aid of?’
‘Certainly – and I don’t think even that worried jury would lose sleep over that one. You were the mastermind in Elvedon, Ramsden. You ran the place – and perhaps rather more to your own occasional profit than it would have been comfortable for your employer to get to know. But that’s speculative, and a minor issue. The bogus robbery two years ago, and the subsequent big coup with the profits: you were certainly the controlling intelligence behind both. And when it began to appear that the ikons could produce, even on a black market, a very large sum of money indeed – well, you didn’t see why it shouldn’t all come to you. There would be only Catmull to square. He had his own plans, perhaps, for double-crossing you. But they would have been ineffectual ones. He’s a petty rascal, if ever there was one: of low intelligence, likely to be extremely scared, and ready to make himself scarce at very inconsiderable cost.’
‘I wouldn’t dispute that character sketch, for what it is worth.’ Ramsden laughed softly. ‘Of course, a lot of other things were happening at Elvedon. Your jury might find them a shade confusing.’
‘Perfectly true. Capable counsel could cast very effective suspicion over at least half a dozen people under this roof now. The unexpected must have come near to unnerving you more than once, Ramsden. Mark’s turning up, and proving to have been with his father almost immediately before your own operation was due to begin. The sudden rumpus following Archie’s being discovered in bed – if they bothered about a bed – with Mrs Graves. Tytherton’s sending for his solicitor. Above all, the shattering realization that Archie had actually been staring at the dead man at an hour which, if it were to be reliably pinpointed, would blow your whole alibi business sky-high. Yet in all these things there was the positive advantage which might come to you from utter confusion. Your original plan had gone wrong – but you had a chance of getting away with your crime, all the same.’
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