Appleby Talking (25 page)

“Could he be described as middle-aged and intellectual looking; and does he smoke Russian cigarettes?”

“I don’t know about his smoking, although there are people who will. But the description certainly fits.”

“It certainly fits.” Appleby nodded thoughtfully. “But then – it would fit Mark Borlase as well.”

“
Mark
Borlase?” Meritt was puzzled.

“Stephen’s cousin. They don’t seem to have briefed you in the family, Meritt, quite as they should. Mark Borlase appears to have travelled up from Sheercliff today, although he has kept quiet about it. Fisher here saw him at Waterloo – and believes that he may even have followed the taxi of the girl who spotted the shoes. When I hear of anybody claiming actually to have seen your friend Krauss there, I shall begin to take rather more interest in him. Meanwhile, I keep my eye on Cousin Mark. You don’t happen to be a member of the Junior Wessex? A pity. He told us he’s putting up there for the night. You could have gone and taken a peep at him for yourself.”

“I’m going to do my best to take a peep at Krauss.” Captain Meritt rose. “I haven’t much hope for that notebook – but one never knows. These fellows have queer ways. He may hold on to it till he gets his price.”

“There’s some comfort in that. Or Mark Borlase may.”

Meritt moved to the door. “I think your Mark Borlase is a rank outsider.”

“Fisher and I have our money on him, all the same.”

When Meritt had departed, Appleby looked at his watch. “I wonder,” he asked, “if you would care for a cup of tea? We make astonishing tea at the Yard. And capital anchovy toast.”

“Thank you very much.” Derry Fisher was disconcerted. “But oughtn’t we – ?”

Appleby smiled. “To be organising the siege of the Junior Wessex – or otherwise pushing effectively about? Well, I think we have the inside of an hour to relax in.”

Derry stared. “Before – before something
happens
?”

“Before – my dear young man – we take a long shot at finally clearing up this odd business of a dead man’s shoes.”

“A black shoe and a brown – how very curious!”

“What did you say?” Jane Grove set down her tea-cup with a surprising clatter.

“And – dear me! – at Sheercliff.” Jane’s aunt, enjoyably interested, reached for a slice of cake. “You might have run into it. Which just shows, does it not? I mean, that in the midst of life we are in death. I’ve got a whole cherry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jane’s voice trembled slightly.

“Something in the paper, dear,” Jane’s aunt propped the folded page against the milk-jug. “A poor man found dead beneath the cliffs quite early this morning.”

“Early this morning!”

“And something about
another
man. Will you have a third cup?”

“No. Go on.”

“I intend to, dear. I
always
take three cups.”

“I mean about the other man.”

“The other man? Oh, yes. He seems to have travelled on a train, and to have worn mixed-up shoes too. There are people at Scotland Yard who want any information about him.”

“May I see?” Jane took the evening paper and read without speaking.

“It couldn’t be a new fashion?”

“A new fashion, aunt?”

“Wearing different-coloured shoes.
Two
men, you see. But one – of course – now dead.”

Jane laughed a little wildly. “No – not a new fashion.” She got abruptly to her feet. “I think I must–”

“Yes, dear?”

Jane hesitated. “I must water the pot. You might like a
fourth
cup.” She performed this commonplace action with a steady hand, and when she spoke again her tone was entirely casual. “I’m afraid I have to go out.”

“To go out again, Jane – after your long day?”

“I – I’ve got to do something I forgot. It’s rather important.” Jane fetched her handbag and gloves. “I don’t suppose I shall be very long.”

“Very well, dear. But don’t forget – you can’t be too careful.”

Jane Grove jumped. “Careful?”

“Of the traffic, dear. So dangerous nowadays.”

Jane, standing by the window, smiled wryly. The quiet Kensington road was deserted. She lingered for some minutes. Then, as if reproaching herself for some lack of resolution, she grabbed her bag and hurried out.

Sir John Appleby’s tea and anchovy toast, although it had all the appearance of being a leisurely and carefree affair, had a steady accompaniment of messages despatched and received. Finally, Appleby’s secretary came in and spoke with a trace of excitement.

“Fifteen Babcock Gardens, sir. And at five-forty-five.”

“Good.” Appleby rose briskly. “He did as he was told, and said he’d walk?”

“Yes. He’s making for the Green Park now.”

“That gives us all very good time. You’ve got three cars out?”

“They should be pretty well posted by now. We’ve studied the maps and had a report from the section.”

Appleby nodded and signed to Derry Fisher to follow him. “And what sort of a problem does this house in Babcock Gardens look like presenting?”

“Tricky, sir – but it might be worse. At a corner, but very quiet. All the houses there have basements with areas. There’s a deserted cabmen’s shelter over the way.” The secretary hesitated. “Are you taking a bit of a risk, sir?”

“That’s as it will appear.” Appleby’s tone suggested that he found this question not wholly in order. “And now we’ll be off.”

“Your car’s outside, sir – with the short-wave tested and correct.”

Below, a discreetly powerful limousine was waiting, and into this Derry Fisher found himself bundled. It had a table with street-plans, and it was filled with low-pitched precise speech. Appleby had no sooner sat down than he joined in. The effect, as of an invisible conference, was very queer and very exciting. Derry had been involved in this sort of thing before – but only in the cinema. He rather expected the car to go hurtling through London with screaming sirens. The pace, however, proved to be nothing out of the ordinary. Turning into the Mall, they moved as sedately as if in a procession. Canton House Terrace seemed to go on for ever, and the Royal Standard fluttering above Buckingham Palace drew only very slowly nearer. When they rounded Queen Victoria on her elaborate pedestal and swung round for Constitution Hill, it was at a speed that seemed more appropriate to sightseers than to emissaries of the law.

But if the car dawdled, Derry’s mind moved fast – much faster than it was accustomed to do in the interest of his uncle’s business. He had never heard of Babcock Gardens, but he guessed that it was an address in Kensington – and the address, too, which he had failed to hear the girl giving at Waterloo that morning. And somebody was walking to it – walking to it through the Green Park. And Appleby had acknowledged that the girl was in danger, and Appleby’s secretary had let slip misgivings over the riskiness of what was now going on. What
was
now going on? Quite clearly, the setting of a trap.
Appleby was setting a trap, with the girl as bait
.

“I ought to tell you that there may be a little shooting before we’re through with this.”

Derry jumped. Appleby, apparently unconscious of any strain, had murmured the words in his ear. “Shooting, sir – you mean at the girl?”

“But all this is itself a very long shot.” Appleby had ominously ignored the question. “It mayn’t come off at all. But it’s going to be uncommonly labour-saving if it does… I think we turn out of Knightsbridge at the next corner.”

Derry was silent. He felt helpless and afraid. The crawl continued. Appleby was again absorbed in listening to reports and giving orders. But he had time for one brief aside. “Complicated, you know. Lurking for lurkers. Requires the policeman’s most cat-like tread. Not like marching up and arresting a fellow in the name of the law.”

Again Derry said nothing; he didn’t feel at all like mild fun. Suddenly the pace increased. Appleby’s dispositions – whatever they were – appeared to be completed. The car ran through broad, quiet streets between rows of solidly prosperous-looking houses. Presently it turned left into a narrower road, and then left again into what seemed a deserted mews. And there it drew to a halt.

Appleby jumped out. “The unobtrusive approach to our grandstand seat.”

Derry followed. “A grandstand seat?”

“We are at the back of Babcock Gardens. A surprised but obliging citizen is giving us the run of his dining-room. Number fifteen is just opposite.”

It seemed to Derry Fisher afterwards that what followed was all over in a flash. The dining-room of the obliging citizen was sombre and Victorian, and this gave the sunlit street outside, viewed through a large bay-window, something of the appearance of a theatrical scene – an empty stage awaiting the entrance of actors and the beginning of an action.

Suddenly it was peopled – and the action had taken place. The house opposite stood at a corner. Round this came the figure of a man, glancing upwards, as if in search of a street number. Derry had time only to realise that he was familiar when the door of number fifteen opened and a girl came down the steps. It was the girl of Derry’s encounter on the train that morning. She had almost reached the footpath when she staggered and fell – and in the same instant there came the crack of a revolver shot. The man was standing still, apparently staring at her intently. Denny could see only his back. But he now knew that it was the back of Mark Borlase.

Borlase took a step forward. Simultaneously, another figure leapt across the road – it must have been from the corresponding corner – and made a dash for Borlase. It was Meritt. What he intended seemed to be a flying Rugger tackle. But before he could bring this off, yet another figure dramatically appeared. A uniformed policeman, hurling himself up the area-steps of number fifteen, took the charging Meritt in the flank and brought him crashing to the ground. In an instant there were policemen all over the place.

“Come along.” Appleby touched the horrified Derry Fisher on the arm. They hurried out. Mark Borlase had not moved. Shocked and bewildered, he was looking from one side to the other. On his left, Meritt had been hauled to his feet, and stood collared by two powerful constables. On his right, still sprawled on the steps of number fifteen, lay the girl – a pool of blood forming beneath one arm.

Derry ran towards her, his heart pounding. As he did so, she raised herself, and with a groping movement found her handbag. For a moment, and with a queerly expressionless face, she gazed at Meritt and at the men who held him. Then with her uninjured arm she opened her bag, drew out a small glittering object, and thrust it in her mouth.

“Stop her!”

Appleby’s cry was too late. Another revolver shot broke the quiet of Babcock Gardens. Incredibly – incredibly and horribly – Denny Fisher’s beautiful girl had blown her brains out.

Later that evening Appleby explained.

“There was never much doubt, Mr Borlase, that your cousin had been murdered. And clearly the crime was not one of passion or impulse. The background of the case was international espionage. Sir Stephen was killed in order to obtain an important scientific secret and to eliminate the only brain capable of reproducing it. There may have been an attempt – conceivably by the man Krauss – to get at Sir Stephen by the ideological route. But that had certainly come to nothing. You agree?”

Mark Borlase nodded. “Stephen – as I insisted to you – was really perfectly sound. He worried me at times, it is true – and it was only yesterday that I felt I ought to go down and have a word with him. Actually, we didn’t meet. I got him on the telephone, and knew at once that there was no question of any trouble at the moment. So I concealed the fact that I was actually in Sheercliff, put up at the Grand for the night, and came back this morning. I ought to have been franker when you challenged me, no doubt.”

“It has all come straight in the wash, Mr Borlase. And now let me go on. Here was a professional crime. This made me at once suspicious of the genuineness of any
muddle
over those shoes.
But they might be a trick designed to mislead
. And, if that was so, I was up against a mind given to doing things
ingeniously
. I made a note that it might be possible to exploit that later.

“Now the train. I came away from my inspection of it convinced that the girl’s story was a fabrication from start to finish. The fact stared me in the face.”

Denny Fisher sat up straight. “But how
could
it? I’ve chewed over it again and again–”

“My dear young man, these things are not your profession. This girl, representing herself as badly frightened, ignored three compartments – in two of which she would have found feminine support and comfort – and chose to burst in upon a solitary and suitably impressionable young man of her own age. Again, while the mysterious man with the different-coloured shoes would certainly have retreated
up
the train, the rifled suitcase was
down
the train – the direction in which the girl herself went off unaccompanied, for her cup of coffee. Again, the Russian cigarettes had discernibly been smoked in a holder. On one of them, nevertheless, there was a tiny smear of lipstick.” Appleby turned to Derry. “I think I mentioned it to you at the time.”

“Mentioned it?” Derry was bewildered – and then light came to him. “When you made that silly – that joke about seeing red?”

“I’m afraid so. Well now, the case was beginning to come clear. Sir Stephen’s body had been dropped on that rock, and not into the sea, deliberately; we were meant to find it in the strange clothes and the unaccountable shoes – otherwise the whole elaborate false trail laid by the girl on her railway journey would be meaningless. But
why
this elaboration? There seemed only one answer. To serve as an alibi, conclusive from the start, for somebody anxious to avoid any intensive investigation. My thoughts turned to Meritt as soon as he produced that streamlined picture of the man Krauss as the criminal.”