A Long Silence (22 page)

‘White cotton with Swiss embroidery.'

‘Detestable. Anisette with lots of ice-cubes?'

‘Oh yes. Lovely, Charles, delicious. Tell me, did you see Piet in the six weeks or so before?'

‘I wasn't able to say anything or do anything. Yes, I know I'm a selfish superficial egoistical little nasty, but I was utterly paralysed. I think though you won't hold it agin me. You would have been cross, you know, if I had appeared with a long face and a bunch of gladioli – oh how I hate them, so fleshy. So smelling of anaesthetics and starched white coats and clinics in Neuilly.
Bitte-bitte
, darling, you're not cross?'

‘No, but I asked you a question.'

‘Why I did. Yes, so I did. No no, not see. Phone. Brain-picking as usual, the old bastard – sorry darling, but to me, honest, he's not dead at all, I keep thinking he'll roll in any moment with one of those Picassos they paint down there in Ibiza and try and flog it me. Oh well, now you mention it, I'd quite forgotten but he had something to ask me.'

‘Can you remember what it was about?'

‘Of course. Ordinarily not in all likelihood but murders do fix things in one's mind, hm, Doctor Johnson wasn't it – however, it wasn't anything at all thrilling, he only wanted to know whether I knew Louis Prins.'

‘Name means something, but I don't know what.'

‘Ach it's that jewellery shop on the Spui. Lot of antique bric-à-brac which looks good but isn't if you take me – you'd never bother looking at it seriously.' The name, the address – Arlette scarcely noticed. The word ‘jeweller' was ringing loud
bells, though she hardly knew why. Some theory of Danny de Vries, but what … her mind was in too much confusion to recall.

‘But what was it about?'

‘I shouldn't be saying it ordinarily, but you I can trust. Libellous you see. He was asking me whether old Louis was fiddling on pictures, and I said oh yes, be sure of that, but no proof of course, so I better warn you, don't repeat that and if you did I'd have to repudiate, swear I'd never said anything of the sort; no such thing, m'lud, the police is putting the words in me mouth what I never said.'

‘Pictures – phony pictures?'

‘Not at all, ducks, Louis is high class, he wouldn't touch a phony, no, just mucking about with invoices to avoid income tax and not get fucked about either by earnest people who think the national patrimony of art's getting dilapidated, and that's what I told Piet and he just grunted that way of his, so I couldn't for the life of me say was he excited or was he bored stiff. I remember thinking it off-beat because he was one of these rarefied-atmosphere types and what the hell interest could he possibly have had in somebody's piddling income-tax, good grief, he'd have been taking an interest in mine at that rate. I'm glad I saw you my love, I can tell you without blushing that I was most overthrown and hamstrung by that beastly happening – poor old Piet, always did have a taste for low life and people who shoot at one. You've gone back to France of course, what are you doing here? Sentimental pilgrimage, or are you applying a little ginger to the leisurely bureaucracies?'

‘That's about it,' said Arlette vaguely. She wasn't going to tell him – not that he would have been interested anyhow. Dear Charles, standing on his chair in his cocoa-coloured linen trousers and an oatmeal cardigan, and a raspberry shirt – pretty, but not serious.

*

Danny de Vries she found plunged in contemplation in front of a picture, but looking too cross to be Gandhi, and slumped
anyway on his shoulders in a broken cane chair. He cheered up when she came in and stood gawking at the picture.

‘It's just about good enough to throw darts at,' he said. ‘Hilary's out shopping. Like some brandy? – you rescue me from deep despair. Don't stand about there looking irresolute, it's what I've been doing for an hour or more Bring home any bacon?'

‘I've been too flustered to sort anything out but I do believe so.' Arlette had felt ashamed at not thinking of anything during the ‘meeting', and had passed the day with the embarrassed sensation of being the captain of the team but playing badly, and getting on this account into a tangle of impotence. She launched upon a confused and boring tale, in the middle of which Hilary came back and made tea. ‘I don't know if it really is of any use,' she finished lamely.

Hilary was looking at her with an affectionate but much-tried patience, like an elementary-school teacher with a charming, slightly retarded small child.

‘But darling – don't you see that it hangs together?'

‘What?' glumly and obstinately incapable.

‘Oh sweetie! – the pictures, Louis, the boy, B. It's that antique shop in the Spui – Louis Prins. This Mr Bosboom must be B.'

‘Do you really think so?'

‘Oh, lovey,' exasperated, ‘don't be so thick.'

Dan, who had been listening with half an ear while scrabbling in the notebooks Arlette had brought, gave a great bellow.

‘Take away that filthy tea – I said I wanted brandy, didn't I – here it is – it's all here – by god that great cow Treas was quite right.' He was brandishing
English Criminal Precedents
and had turned back into Mr Kipling, all fierce eyes and moustache.

‘Don't sputter,' said Hilary, chill. ‘You're spitting all over us.'

‘Down here black on white – “sole fact, the boy came to see me”. All there – the jeweller, the Spui, the old man – can that be Bosboom, or perhaps Louis? – reference to a retired manager. Pictures – they sell pictures there, and furniture, as
well as jewellery and all that junk – you know, antique paperweights and silver sugar sprinklers. Listen – he says, “Observation Spui unlikely to tell anyone much” – that's as may be – and then – “Larry Saint, some personal observation”. Now who is Larry Saint? Does that mean anything to you, Arlette?'

‘Nothing whatever I'm afraid.'

‘It does to me though.'

‘Oh, crap,' said Hilary. ‘Stop drinking that brandy, you're getting over-excited. You've never been near the place – I see you there, with half-a-crown in your pocket, whipping in because you saw a Japanese sword that pleased you.'

‘Woman,' said Dan with horrid quiet, ‘I wish I had one, I'd disembowel you on the spot. I'm perhaps a bloody lousy artist, and I've spent all day painting that thing which if a dog saw it he'd piss up against it first moment. But I'm a painter and that means I see things.'

‘Seeing things is it now? – oh all right tell us. What is it that it sees?' – still with the retarded children, this time one having a temper tantrum.

‘Neil's son of woeful Assynt.'

It was launched with a voice of Churchillian resonance, pregnant with doom, but it fell flat. The women looked at one another.

‘Huh?'

‘The stupidity of you females, good for nothing but making this unspeakable tea and showing a bit of bum from time to time – aren't I telling you I'm a painter? This boy Piet van der Valk was in the wrong job, I've said it. It's like a crossword – if you understand his mentality you can read the clues. Assynt – assonance – Saint.'

‘Oh, my gawd,' said Hilary rudely.

‘Surely the boy …' began Arlette.

Dan got into a rage, looked about for something to break, found nothing, saw the cup of cold tea and threw it violently at the bad picture, ‘Ah,' he said, in a voice of great auto-satisfaction, ‘that's what I needed.'

The bright, sunny, warm afternoon in late April had been turning slowly black without any of them noticing. In the
silence that had fallen came a huge slow rumble of thunder, and the same moment, like a good actor, a drenching downpour of rain came slap against the window. They all looked at each other.

‘There,' said Dan magnificently, ‘is God telling me I'm right.'

*

Trixie's coffee was absolutely horrible – she had the bad Dutch habit of making a piddle extremely strong and then filling up the cup with clawky hot milk. They were all drinking it politely.

‘Something factual.'

‘Something to go on at last.'

‘But we don't know yet. No certainty.'

‘We don't Know, but there's a strong probability.'

‘How so? I mean, why more probable than something else?'

‘Because all the other probabilities have been exhausted.'

‘By the police, he means: they've been over everything.'

‘But they'd missed this. It's the only thing left really. I mean there's nothing else even terribly remote.'

‘Even hinted at.'

‘Anyway there's all sorts of other indirect pointers. He was conducting a private experiment. He didn't make any solid notes, and he didn't ask the police for anything. It was something quite small and unimportant. He never took it very seriously.'

‘But I don't understand – in that case, how did he get killed?'

‘Well, that's what we'd like to know, isn't it?'

‘That's what we're intending to find out.'

‘But we can't be Sure, can we? I mean, if only we could be Sure…'

‘If we were sure we'd only have to go to the police. Wouldn't be anything for us to do at all.'

‘But if he got killed for something so small …'

‘Must be a loony. There doesn't have to be any motive at all.'

‘Surely that's where the police went wrong – looking for a motive.'

‘One looks for Cui Bono – whom could it possibly have advantaged. Who could possibly have gained by such an act.'

‘Whereas if it were a loony …'

‘Don't you see – just because in some obscure loony way he felt menaced, or interfered with or something.'

‘But in that case he might feel threatened by us too, no? We might get murdered too.'

‘That's ridiculous – we can't sit here getting frightened about what might happen if something else utterly hypothetical were conceivably to happen.'

‘There's always an element of risk. Why else have police?'

‘Yes, they're paid to stick their neck out.'

‘Not paid much poor dears.'

‘So they stick their neck out halfheartedly and who can blame them? They don't have our motives.'

‘We mustn't have any motives. Or even any fixed ideas at all.'

‘Except not getting shot at.'

‘Oh well, if you're just going to be frivolous …'

They weren't getting anywhere, and were becoming cross with each other. It was Bates who put an end to this, in a tone so downright that the nonsense stopped abruptly.

‘We feel sure that we're on the right track, so we have to pursue that. And even if there were some risk, what would that amount to? Whoever or whatever it is can't shoot all of us, even if it is a bad person, or somebody insane or even both together. If we all have a go at him he's bound to get rattled and that would make him give himself away sooner or later.'

‘That sounds reasonable enough, but how is one as you describe it to have a go at anyone, and why should he get rattled?'

‘Suppose we were wrong?' said Bates soberly. ‘We can't exclude that, can we? Suppose a lot of people, all apparently unconnected, came to you and showed suspicion of your having committed a crime, I don't know what, being a burglar or something, why, if you were innocent you wouldn't take any notice, except that you'd get cross at being persecuted,
but I mean, they're not accusing you, they're just showing suspicion. Whereas if you were guilty you'd be very frightened.'

‘I'd start feeling guilty even if I were innocent,' said Dan.

‘Now, Danny, stop being tiresome. The point is that if several people seem to have knowledge of your having done something disreputable you couldn't attack them or anything. You wouldn't dare, because you couldn't be sure how many people were involved or had knowledge of your guilt. You would break down.'

‘A loony doesn't necessarily work like that. They react quite unpredictably.'

‘It's much too easy to call all criminals loony,' said Bates firmly, ‘all criminals pretend they're loony once they're caught. It's the easiest way of evading responsibility. They say they can't remember or they must have had a blackout.'

‘But that's often true.'

‘It's true because they want it to be true. They don't remember because they don't want to remember. It's easy to obliterate something disgraceful or unpleasant from one's memory, or otherwise we would all be tormented by remorse. They first blunt and then destroy their own moral sense.'

‘So what do we do?'

‘We all go to this man on some pretext, which we will invent. We're inventive enough, I should think.'

‘Danny is.'

‘Is he now?'

‘Too much so sometimes.'

‘Now, now. Don't you see, on rather ridiculous pretexts. Ridiculous enough that the man would understand – if he's guilty that is.'

‘We all go.'

‘Except Arlette.'

‘That's true. She might be recognized.'

‘Isn't that the idea?'

‘No no. That might be putting too much pressure on. If the horrible man saw her coming …'

‘That's true. We can't risk her life.'

‘Why not?' said Arlette in a sharp, grating voice. ‘My husband
risked his.' There was a silence, as though she had said something shocking.

‘She's right you know,' said Dan. ‘He may have done just that – coming with a silly story to show suspicion because he had no proof. And provoked whoever into an act of violence.'

‘An act of fear,' corrected Bates. ‘But it won't happen to us – safety in numbers.'

‘But we won't let Arlette run that risk.'

‘It seems to me,' said Willy, ‘that we need some extra proof first and what about this Bosboom? Since anyway it was he who sold the watch. He might well be the murderer.'