Silence Observed (19 page)

“Don’t think I don’t understand that. I’ll live with it, all right. But, you see, there’s another thing.”

“Yes?” Appleby waited. He knew what was coming.

“Gulliver. I must know about that, please. Am I responsible?”

“Yes and no. If you hadn’t started what you did, your chief would be alive now. But what has happened isn’t anything you could possibly have conceived of as likely to flow from what you did. That’s all I can say. And now–”

A telephone bell rang sharply in the room. Appleby turned and picked up the receiver. He listened, and his expression changed instantly. He turned, still listening, and pointed through the open door of the room. There was a second instrument on a table in the hall. And Heffer understood at once. He was out of the room in a flash, and listening to what followed.

“Yes,” Appleby said. “Sir John Appleby speaking.”

“Splendid,” a man’s voice said. “I wonder if you know who I am?”

“Certainly I do. Carl Bendixson.”

“Excellent. You’re good at guessing. In fact, I think you’ve been guessing a good deal?”

“You’re right. I have.”

“For instance, that I was under that newspaper when Gribble was gassing away at the club?”

“Of course.” Appleby had turned pale, but his voice was steady. “And that you knew Trechmann would give the show away if put in a really tight spot. And that you were good enough to dine with my wife and myself immediately after killing the man. And that you left early for the purpose of cleaning up the studio in which your wife perpetrated her fakes.”

“Splendid again. I say, isn’t this a queer conversation?”

“I see no need to characterize its quality. Say what you have to say.”

“All in good time. Have you anybody listening in on this, by the way? If so, I hope he’s thoroughly reliable.”

“I have, and he is. I’d describe him as somebody I’m inclined to trust. Continue.”

There was a moment’s pause. It was as if Carl Bendixson’s confidence was momentarily shaken.

“It was odd, Appleby, that you should pick on me to ask about Van Gogh’s eye. That told me you were on the trail, all right. And I suppose you’re clear about that ass Gulliver?”

“I am. You realized that the picture faking racket was packing up on you. You had heard about the Rembrandt from Trechmann. You believed that, once they had committed themselves to a criminal act, it could be extorted from Heffer and Miss Kipper by threats. And that Gulliver was the only other person who knew about it. You decided to make a bid for such an enormous prize. Your wife called on Gulliver, confident that she could make him an accomplice. Gulliver had passed on to Lord Mountmerton some nonsense you’d fed him about a niece of Van Gogh’s, and your wife mistook casualness for lack of scruple. As it happened, Gulliver was a thoroughly honourable man. Quite a lot of men are. So she had to cover her tracks by shooting him. It is a family habit you appear to have formed.”

“Very true, Appleby. It is a thing that comes more easily with practice. Reflect on that.”

There was again a moment’s pause. This time, it was on Appleby’s part. When he did speak, it was as calmly as before.

“Have you anything more to say, Bendixson? It’s rather risky, you know, prolonging a telephone call of this sort. The police have their resources in these matters.”

“No doubt. And they are really quite fast workers, I admit. Sending your wife jaunting off to Winterbourne Crucis was quite a bit of hustling, was it not? She happened to mention where she was going to a friend of mine.”

“Miss Wildsmith?” Appleby had gone quite tense.

“Yes – our delightful Mary. Mary rang me up at once. In a sense, I had to admit that the game was up. We were very careful about that studio in Bloomsbury. You wouldn’t have connected us with it at all easily. But we were careless about the fascinating Mme de la Gallette’s cottage, I admit. It’s rented in my name. I am a shade rash at times. And injudiciously frolicsome. All that Manallace nonsense, for example. Fun – but injudicious. Mary, by the way, has departed. She will be in France by now, and your chances of tracing her are negligible. Gretta and I, on the other hand, require a little time. If we are to do things comfortably, that is to say – and depart with such material goods as we are minded to depart with. Hence this call.”

“Go on.”

“All this is under your hat. That’s your habit, as your wife was good enough to inform us. None of your people are at present effectively in the picture. And you will freeze the whole affair, please, for forty-eight hours from this moment. If, that is to say, you want your wife returned to you. Goodbye.”

It was over. Heffer was back in the room.

“It can’t be true!” he said. “Such things just–”

“One thing does lead to another, Heffer. And, meantime, one’s job remains one’s job.” Appleby was quite still for a moment. He was looking at Heffer unseeingly when his eyes suddenly lit up. He whirled round to a bookcase and seized a book. It was an atlas.

“But they simply couldn’t–”

“Don’t waste time. Take my car to the corner of the street and fill up with petrol. Then come back.” Appleby picked up the telephone again. “The fellow’s mad. What does he think of me? I’ve got to call the Yard. And the Admiralty. Can you use a revolver?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going on rather a risky trip. Will you come with me?”

There was a second’s pause. It was because Heffer wasn’t quite sure of his voice.

“Anywhere,” he said, a little huskily.

Silence observed…forty-eight hours…we’re not on the telly yet.

But we well might be, Appleby thought, as the Aston Martin roared through the late evening. The very air it was displacing was filled, he knew, with short-wave signals reaching to every corner of the country and beyond. But he was his own best hope.

For forty racing miles Heffer hadn’t dared to speak. But now he did.

“Is this a DB4?” he asked – and was instantly aware of the horrible fatuity of such a question.

But Appleby answered quietly.

“Yes – and just run in. But one wants an Autobahn if it’s really to show its paces.”

Heffer found the self-control of this steadying.

“You have a clue, sir?”

“I think so. I think Judith isn’t the only one to have given something away. The Bendixson woman…at that accursed dinner party…talking her nauseous nonsense about antiques…not that we don’t do it ourselves–” Appleby was speaking spasmodically as he swung the wheel. “Something about picking up a small treasure in a junk shop on the south coast. A place where they keep their yacht…glorified motorboat of some sort, I don’t doubt. And ocean-going, wouldn’t you say? Place called Bryne Bay, not far from Lymington… Been through it once…still a confoundedly long way off.” Appleby thrust down the accelerator another fraction. “But not so far from their precious Rose Cottage in the New Forest.”

“But why that telephone call, at all? Why that forty-eight hours? Why didn’t they just go?”

“Because I’d have been on top of them in twelve hours…on top of them in six. Do you think I’d have gone to sleep if Judith hadn’t turned up? Do you think my brain would have stopped working?” For the first and only time that night, Appleby’s voice rose a pitch. “I’d have had all France alerted by dawn. And the sea swept beyond Ushant.” Appleby was silent for a moment. He took a corner with care. “In half an hour we’ll have a moon,” he said quietly.

“How did that Mary Wildsmith come in? She isn’t a painter. And do you think she has really got clean away?”

“She could put on an act, either in French or English, as the mistress, daughter, grandchild or whatever of one eminent painter or another – and as one happily still in possession of some priceless masterpiece. You can control great companies, it seems, and yet be completely gullible when you think you have a chance of getting ahead of other collectors. I formed the impression that she is a highly intelligent woman – which, no doubt, helps. And I think it unlikely that she will ever be traced. She probably possesses the necessary papers, and can fade into a French identity somewhere without the slightest difficulty. A pity – but I don’t feel vindictive about her… The acceleration is good.” Appleby had turned into a straight stretch, and Heffer felt the car hit him in the back. “There’s a revolver in the glove box. You’d better investigate it.”

After a rainy day the moon had come up in a clear sky. It was silvering the Channel when they caught a first glimpse of it. As they roared through the single silent street of Bryne Harbour it glinted on a hanging sign that said “Antiques”.

“Where they got their damned ‘spones with knopis’,” Appleby said. “But it doesn’t follow–”

“Look!”

Heffer was leaning forward, breathless. Straight ahead of them, its landward end concealed by a group of sheds, a low pier ran on a gentle curve far out to sea. A few small craft were moored in its lee; two or three others were at anchor in the bay. But it was something else which had drawn an excited shout from Heffer. A large car had been driven to the point of the pier, and a motorboat lay just beneath it. There were moving lights. And it was just possible to see moving figures.

“Yes,” Appleby said. “Yes – it can be nothing else. Not at this time. It’s them. And we can run straight up behind them. Have that gun ready.” He swung round the sheds, and a second later was braking hard. There was a crash, and they were both thrown forward in their seats. A van had been drawn up dead across the entrance to the pier. They had gone straight into it.

Appleby was out and running. But Heffer was before him. They scrambled over the van and tore down the pier. The crash had echoed through the night. There was a warning shout from ahead. The motorboat rocked violently. Its engine spluttered, roared into life, spluttered and died again. Heffer was still ahead – and so far ahead that Appleby wondered whether he himself had been hurt without knowing it and was merely stumbling forward. And then he remembered. The four hundred metres. Jimmy Heffer was a man who, when on form, would cover that distance rather notably. Say in forty-eight seconds flat.

But now the engine was roaring again. Appleby saw the nose of the motorboat move and turn. Then clear water between its stern and the pier. Heffer was still running. Now he had taken a flying leap – a leap you could hardly believe in. The motorboat veered wildly; there were shouts, a shot, and then it was moving with gathering momentum on a straight course. But now there was another sound – the answering roar of a second engine from somewhere beyond the bay. A plume of spray appeared, a low grey craft, a trail of foam. It was a Coastguard cutter.

What followed, happened with horrifying swiftness. The two hurtling craft were close together. There was another shot from the motorboat, another shout – and suddenly it had turned sharply and turned again, completely out of control. The cutter, taking evasive action too late, caught it bow-on. As the concussion echoed across the bay, and as the cutter swung in a wide arc to return to the scene of the collision, the motorboat parted in two, like a toy, and sank.

A second later, Appleby was swimming.

The bodies of Carl and Gretta Bendixson had both been recovered. They lay on the pier. Somebody had found a tarpaulin to cover them with. They might have been merchandise – a small quantity of ship’s stores, waiting to be loaded.

Judith Appleby sat on a bollard. She was chafing her ankles.

“You see, they tied me up,” she said. “Fair enough, after all the kicking I did. But to be treated not as a person at all – to be treated as a physical object – by people who ate their last dinner off you: it’s a shock.” She smiled rather wanly at her husband. “Wasn’t I an ass – giving myself away to Mary Wildsmith like that? Giving you the hell of a drive – and a wetting.”

Appleby felt for cigarettes – and then remembered that, in a man who has had the hell of a wetting, this is a useless gesture. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

“That young man – he’ll be all right?”

“Heffer? Yes, he’ll be all right. He’s in the ambulance now. A bullet got him in the shoulder.”

“Bendixson knocked him out, and he came up again. Gretta shot him and he came up again. It was during the second scrap that the tiller went. Lucky about the cutter. You must have got organized pretty fast, John. As I’d expect.”

Appleby put out a hand.

“Get up,” he said. “We go home now.”

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President's Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at 'St Anthony's College', Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby's taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980's.

In
Appleby's End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels