Appleby's Other Story (23 page)

‘Yes… I don't know. I didn't look at
my
watch. But I think so. Just when these things happened can't be important, surely?'

This time, the silence was a baffled one – Henderson's only reply to the lady's question being expressively to compress his lips. And then Carter spoke.

‘Those jewels,' he said, ‘have made their inglorious exit from the story – and Archie Tytherton with them, I rather suspect. Isn't it time to return to the pictures?' Carter turned arrogantly to Appleby. ‘They seem rather to have dropped out of your rambling remarks.'

‘I can promise not to do much more rambling.' Appleby was coldly polite. ‘It is a matter, is it not, of certain eliminations having to be made? Wouldn't you say, Mr Carter, that it is to the comfort of a number of people that they
should
be made?'

‘No doubt.'

‘And I am ready to come back to the pictures – including this one.' Appleby had turned round. ‘A very fine portrait by Goya, indeed.' He paused. ‘But once more, I am afraid, I must move back a little in time. A couple of years, in fact.'

‘You be careful, Appleby.' Raffaello, suddenly alerted, had come out with this. ‘Anything you say to these people I may take to my solicitor, remember. You'll see.'

‘Very well.' Appleby was unimpressed. ‘What I am telling these people is that, two years ago, you were knowingly involved in a criminal fraud – and that you are at Elvedon now because you have been in hopes of involvement in another one. If you care to have Inspector Henderson take down these words, I'll sign them on the spot. And you can take them, for all I care, to the entire Law Society. Now, let me get on.'

‘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. But 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.'

 

 

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?'