A Long Silence (26 page)

‘Yes,' said Arlette unwillingly.

‘Come, my pet, I know what's going on in your head. But think – it might not be only guilty knowledge, you know. Has it struck you that…?'

‘Yes. It has.'

‘Well then … I mean, one hasn't the right to shuffle it off.'

‘I know.'

‘Oh come,' it was Hilary, all bracing commonsense as usual. ‘We can't talk like this. This isn't only theorizing ahead of the data, but really it's dangerous. We can't make suppositions of that kind. This boy, it seems pretty well established, is the boy – I mean “the boy” mentioned in the notes: I'm not denying that, I can't. But hell, where is the motive? He came to Piet, asking for we don't know quite what. Advice maybe, or help even. He wasn't an informer about anything criminal – or Piet would certainly have taken steps. And as we know, he didn't. So the boy was in some kind of trouble. He'd maybe not
pinched this famous watch at all, but just been accused of it. He's just afraid that now we mention the name that there's some little thing we know of, some little secret, probably utterly trivial, we know something about – and he feels that as something disgraceful. You know how boys are, they exaggerate out of all proportion. It's probably – much more probably – something ludicrously petty.'

‘I don't agree,' said Dan bluntly. ‘And remember I saw him – you didn't.'

‘Well, where's the motive?'

‘If there'd ever been any motive, don't you think the police would have found it? They're not perfect fools after all. You can bet your behind that if there was one they'd have solved all this and we wouldn't be here now. They'll have gone through everybody's advantage or impulse or motivation like – like that dose of castor oil Trixie was talking about.'

There isn't any motive,' said Bates bluntly. ‘If you'd seen as many pathological people as I've had the misfortune to come across – people do things without any motive. Or that's to say of course there is one, but the casual observer can't see it. They don't even know it themselves.'

‘I'm going to go and see this boy,' said Arlette, who had not been listening, or given no sign of doing so.

‘Oh, Let, you can't.'

‘I can and I will. You talk as though you were able to stop me or something – now shut up, Danny, my mind's made up. I'm going to find out what it was my husband was interested in.'

‘This mysterious Saint, no doubt, whom nobody seems able to lay eyes upon.'

‘She's right,' said Hilary with finality. ‘If it were anybody else then I'd agree, we can't go bullying this wretched boy over something he may not even know the slightest thing about. But she has a right to go if she wants.'

‘In all honesty,' said Dan, ‘the boy may feel worried because Piet got killed, and be wondering quite without rhyme or reason whether it might not have been in some way his fault, because somehow he was at the start of all this.'

‘That's just what I meant,' shouted Hilary triumphantly. ‘Quite illogical.'

‘It doesn't matter,' said Arlette quietly. ‘I'm going to find out. All this speculation gets nobody anywhere. I'll ask. And if necessary I'll find this Saint. And ask him too. I want to get to the bottom of this. What's the use of talking?'

‘But ducky – the shops will be shutting in a few minutes.'

‘I know where the boy lives,' she said unanswerably.

‘Well I'm going to come with you – or anyway after you,' said Dan.

‘What for?'

‘Just as a witness. I won't interfere. I won't even be there. But just to say afterwards if need be, that you were at such a place at such a time.'

‘I wish you wouldn't. It makes me feel most uncomfortable.'

‘That's maybe so. But all the same I've made up my mind.'

‘That's reasonable,' said Hilary, ‘- just as long as you don't indulge in any heroics.'

‘If anybody accosts me,' said Danny happily, ‘I'll scream, that's what I'll do.'

‘And I'll come and rescue you,' said Arlette, grinning. ‘One has to deflate the drama, my husband used to say.'

‘Are you going at once?'

‘I'm going to change. A white blouse will show the blood better.'

‘Don't make jokes like that, pet,' said Bates seriously. ‘I just hope you know what you're doing.' She did not say, ‘I'm the only person here able to realize how serious this is', but her attitude did. To the others, she thought, it's just a drama. Almost a game. Arlette guessed this, watching her disapproving eyes on Dan, but said nothing. She could not tell anyway what might be at the back of an elderly woman's mind.

*

‘May I come in?' asked Arlette abruptly when the door opened.

‘Well – er – were you looking for Mr Saint? I'm afraid he's not here and I don't quite know when to expect him.'

‘I don't know yet whether I'm looking for Mr Saint; I'd like
to speak to you first. And since I'm not selling anything, and my business is personal, I'd be grateful if I could come in.'

‘Sorry – er, of course. Please sit down. A cigarette?'

‘Thank you. Why did you ask whether I was looking for Mr Saint?'

‘Well – he lives here – when he's around, that is Er – I'm just keeping things, warm for him.'

‘I see. You take his place, in a way?'

‘I don't see quite what you're getting at.'

‘You live in his flat. You work in his shop. Isn't that so?'

‘Oh that – yes, yes.'

‘Sounds as though you're quite a handyman,' said Arlette taking one of her own cigarettes,

‘Well – we're friendly. You haven't told me what this is all about?'

‘I didn't think I would need to.'

The boy might have been confused, by her manner, her accent, her appearance. She did not look like a policeman's widow; nor was she playing the part in a conventional manner. She was not of course accustomed to playing parts, and too forthright a person to be good at dissimulation. Faced with this boy, in this flat where lived another man connected as she felt certain with the assassination of her husband, she felt oddly free of emotional pressure. She felt no rancour, no cruel desire for vengeance, no anger and no fear. It might have been her detached and chilly manner as much as her clothes that confused the boy: they were a little too smart. She had dressed for her own execution rather than for a simple interrogation. It is possible too that her voice, dropping monosyllables with a flat delivery and a metallic timbre, had a resemblance to Saint's?

‘You must be a friend of Larry's,' said the boy. ‘I should be offering you a drink. Would you like a glass of champagne?' She heard this with a surprise which brought her sense of detachment, as though she were standing at a distance, a step further towards unreality.

‘I think that unlikely.'

He was already twisting the wire off a half bottle.

‘If it's business …' with an air of cunning, going back for two glasses, ‘I dare say you could tell me, you know, and I'll see it's passed on.'

‘So that you're in his confidence, you'd say.'

‘Oh yes,' with a self-satisfied chuckle, twisting the cork out carefully and holding it back to make the inrush of air less abrupt.

‘Then perhaps,' said Arlette, sitting very straight, ‘you can tell me what happened to my husband, Commissaire van der Valk.'

The cork jumped, and champagne dribbled all over his hand and up his sleeve. He stood, and stared. With a housewifely instinct of dislike at the waste of good champagne Arlette got up, took the bottle, and put it down on the table.

‘I see,' with her face close to his, ‘that you know.' He looked at her, face like an idiot's.

‘You see also that I know.'

He could find nothing better to say than ‘How?'

Arlette did not become angry but she lost her detachment. How! As though that mattered.

‘What are you then – his handyman, his fancy boy? – you were in it together, I can see that.'

‘That's not true,' yelped the boy, who had heard the word ‘fancy' and missed the rest altogether.

‘What's not true?' – furious at the stupidity of the denial, catching hold of his tie and wrenching him so that he staggered. ‘What's not true, little
ordure
that you are?' speaking French without realizing.

‘Larry …' he sputtered out. ‘Stop – you're choking me,' like a child, when a game has become too violent. It had all been a game – and now the game had suddenly stopped, and like an over-excited child he began to cry.

‘The police …' stupidly, as though wondering why they weren't there to help him.

The police … what had they to do with it? She lifted her hand to hit him, the disintegrated face of a great blubbering boy, but stopped herself.

‘Which of you was it? Or both?'

‘Larry … I… Larry drove the car…'

‘And you? What was it you did?'

‘I …'

‘You shot.'

The boy fell to the floor, hid his face in his hands, and sobbed. Arlette wanted to be sick. She turned her back abruptly. Her gloves and bag stood on the table. The bottle stood alongside, in a little pool of champagne: she snatched her gloves up before they got stained. One could do nothing with that invertebrate there. Where was Saint? She looked around the room, dizzy with nausea. This was his flat. Here he would come, sooner or later. She set her teeth hard; she had to get out of here before she became sick. She got control of herself with an effort, took her bag, put her gloves on slowly, the familiar painstaking movement calming her, and forced herself to open the door quietly, and closed it quietly after her.

Saint, by one of those coincidences dear to fiction writers, was at the bottom of the stairs but – as should not happen in well-organized fiction – was too late to be cued into the scene. He looked at her with interest, wondering what had made her so explosive, with amusement, thinking, ‘Dicky-boy, you've been clumsy', with some enjoyment, thinking, ‘Good-looking woman', with curiosity, wondering, ‘Where did he find that?' He did not know who Arlette was. Her picture had not appeared in the paper, thanks to the commissaire of police who had been friendly enough to protect her from the press. And a day later, she had been in France. It had deflated somewhat the human interest side of things.

Arlette, coming down the steep narrow stairway, while he flattened himself courteously to allow her to pass, knew at once that this was Saint. Into her mind, instantly, came ‘the arsenal'. It had been Van der Valk's joking name for the bottom drawer of a big countrified Louis XIV commode. Here he kept his hunting rifle, a Mauser 7–64 with a telescopic sight with which he had sometimes gone after wild boar; a – 22 for sniping at rats, pigeons, and hooded crows; and a variety of ‘police souvenirs' – he had never been one for guns himself, and very rarely carried one, but there were two pistols and
the Israeli submachine-gun which had killed Esther Marx, Ruth's mother.

Bred in the French countryside where everybody carries a gun, even though the consequences of this are that there is nothing left to shoot at, Arlette was not afraid of guns. Once, in the summer, passing by a French garrison barracks on ‘Open-doors-day' she had been tempted into trying her luck, and had scored forty-six out of fifty with an army rifle on the barrack range. It had been third best, and next day an amused officer had come to call, bringing her her ‘prize' of a pocket alarm clock and a pair of sandals. They fitted her too.

‘You had a good look at my feet, anyway,' she said, entertained. And once on New Year's Eve, rather drunk, she had complained of having no fireworks. She had fired a magazine-ful from the little machine-gun at an uncomplaining pine-tree; being tracer, the result had been deeply satisfying.

It was not, though, this pleasant memory that was uppermost in her mind right now. It was sheer animal desire for blood.

If she had had a gun, she would have shot Saint to pieces there on the stairway. The odd thing was that she could pass him, almost touching him, aware of his appreciative sketch of a half-smile, in perfect command of herself.

Danny de Vries was on the pavement opposite, rivers of sweat running down his ribs. He had seen Saint go in, had felt sure he knew who this was, had been very frightened indeed. Arlette was very white but not in the least shaky: his breath came out between his teeth when he saw her, and he rubbed his elbows along his sides to try and stop the secretion of fear. She was self-possessed, too; instead of walking towards him she crossed the road in a diagonal and walked away towards the corner. He had a moment of alarm before realizing that she did not want to compromise him, just in case anyone were looking out of the window. He breathed deeply and forced himself to stroll along casually.

She was waiting round the corner, leaning against a baker's window, eyes clenched shut. He gripped her arm and was relieved when she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

‘That was Saint. I'm sure of it.'

‘I know. Take me to a café, Danny, I've got to have a brandy or something, and I think I've got to be sick.'

‘You shouldn't drink; you're in shock. Some hot tea …'

‘Do as I say.'

She drank the coarse pub cognac, shuddered violently, clenched her teeth on the glass – thick enough, luckily, not to break – bolted for the lavatory and was away so long that Dan began to have lurid visions of having to break the door down. He was just wondering how one should go about this – did one call the fire-brigade? – when Arlette came back with her face drawn, certainly, but natural-looking, and said sorry.

‘If you had a black coffee, or something?'

*

Saint, with less gentleness, had heaved the still sobbing, shapeless boy to his feet, thrown him roughly into the bathroom, looked with distaste at the puddles of spilt champagne, and gone to his room to change. When he came out again everything was as he had left it. He made a face, went into the kitchen, got materials to mop up, made a meticulous job of doing so, threw out the dregs of stale champagne, looked around carefully, went and looked in Dick's bedroom, poked over a few papers lying about, frowned, and went into the bathroom. The boy was sitting on the lavatory seat, looking dilapidated past belief.