Appleby Talks Again (14 page)

Appleby worked through this. It was a melancholy task. There was a series of sketch-books, some much thumbed and battered, and some from which pages had been ripped out here and there – perhaps in impatience or despair. Appleby found himself with the impression that Pacello had worked a slender talent very hard, and that nobody had cared a damn. One of the sketch-books Appleby studied with particular attention. It was newer than the others. And pencilled on the cover was the description:
Boulogne, Spring
’
54
.

The contents were entirely miscellaneous. There were studies of the sea, of clouds, of ingeniously ugly buildings. There were one or two figure studies and several portraits. It was at one of these last that Appleby paused. He was looking at what was far and away the best thing he had yet seen: the head and shoulders of a woman, with some suggestion of a balustrade upon which she was leaning to gaze out at sea. It was no more than an extremely rapid sketch, and there was no suggestion that the subject had posed, or even been aware of what was happening. Nevertheless what Pacello had achieved was at once something vividly individual and universally moving. At the foot of the page he had scrawled the words
lonely woman
. Then he had struck these out and written
the exile
instead. Appleby looked at this for a long time. Then he put the sketch-book in his pocket and turned to leave. Suddenly he stiffened. The building in which he had located Pacello’s studio was at present unoccupied, and he had experienced some difficulty in getting the key. But now somebody was coming cautiously up the attic stairs.

“Good afternoon.” Executing an old professional manoeuvre, Appleby stepped from behind the door and smartly closed it. “Did you suppose you were in luck, and the house unlocked? On the contrary, you’re out of it. I come from Scotland Yard. The game’s up.”

This headlong onslaught had its effect. The elderly man who had crept into the attic gave a weak cry. “I don’t understand you,” he managed to say. “I have simply come to look–”

“I think for this.” Appleby drew out the sketch-book. “You got away with the painting, and with two others to obscure what you were about. And then, knowing something of the subject, you realised there would probably be a sketch among Pacello’s abandoned effects. So here you are. And here” – and Appleby thrust forward the drawing of the woman – “is…would it be your wife?”

The man nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s no good. You’ve got us.”

“Your wife, banished for some reason to Boulogne, was sketched by Pacello without her knowing it. When Pacello died, the painting he made from this sketch was publicly exhibited, bearing the date 1954. And this was the disaster. Why?” Appleby paused. “Have you been conspiring with your wife to suggest that she is dead?” He paused again and received a feeble nod. “An insurance fraud?”

“We’ve done nothing about that yet!” The elderly man’s voice was desperate. “We made it look like drowning – two years ago. But it was held doubtful, and we were scared. It might be another two years before death was legally presumed. She went to Boulogne. It seems to be an eternity ago. And she’s still there. But if anybody had recognised that portrait, and noticed the date–”

“You would both have been prosecuted?”

“I suppose so. But – I tell you – I haven’t received a penny! I haven’t even made a claim on the company! Or only what you might call a provisional notice that–” The elderly man’s voice tailed away. He was mumbling incoherently. “Great temptation…sudden idea…wonderful plan…led into it…better self…and didn’t work.”

“No.” Appleby shook his head. “Those wonderful plans seldom do.”

“Hamlet thought it great fun,” Appleby said, “‘to have the engineer hoist with his own petar’. My yarn is about a fellow who was rather, you might say, dropped by it. And it wasn’t at all fun. In fact, it was horrible. I’m not sure you’d care to hear it.”

Appleby paused on this, while the company – needless to say – expressed itself as willing to take any degree of horror. “Very well,” he said, “here goes.”

“Can you recall the Great Enigma? He was a stage illusionist of some note, and his real name was Jones. So prosaic a name had very well fitted his father, a highly reputable solicitor who had left his eccentric son a large and equally prosaic house in Kensington. Young Jones – Enigma Jones, you might call him – had this converted into flats, keeping the ground floor and basement for his own use, and letting out the rest. His tenants tended to be theatrical folk like himself; and from time to time, one gathered, their domestic relations would get slightly mixed up. A faithful anthropological study of this little community, that is to say, might not precisely have conduced to edification.”

Appleby stopped to puff at his pipe, and I had time to reflect that these rather prim turns of phrase were growing on him.

“Still, the Great Enigma was quite a celebrity, and amusing people were to be met with at his parties. That is probably why a very old barrister friend of mine, Colin Grant, went along to one of them. Grant loves anything odd. On this occasion he got involved with what was decidedly that.

“It was a warm summer night, but late and quite dark, and Grant found an uncomfortably crowded party milling round in a moderate-sized room at the back of the house. He knew a number of stage people, and had expected to see at least some familiar faces. But the guests all proved strangers, and he had to rely entirely upon his host for introductions.

“Jones was quite competent at this, and when he judged Grant to have had enough of one group he disentangled him and led him up to another. The process eventually landed both of them together near a curtained window, and Jones seemed about to shuffle Grant round as before, when he suddenly paused, produced a silk handkerchief, and mopped his forehead. ‘A bit warm, don’t you think?’ he asked Grant.

“It was stifling, so Grant felt he could with perfect civility agree. ‘A close night, Jones,’ he said. ‘Not much air.’

“Jones nodded. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘What about drawing back the curtain and opening the window?’

“He had addressed this question not only to Grant but to several people round about, and these broke off their talk to turn to him and in one way or another indicate their agreement. And at that, Jones stepped forward and whisked back the curtain.

“The people standing in the brightly lighted room couldn’t distinguish a great deal in the darkness outside. But somewhere close by there was another lit and uncurtained window, and it was the shaft of light from this that enabled Grant, some five seconds later, to see what he did see. It was a human form, hurtling through space.”

Appleby was silent for a moment, and I ventured to put in a question. “I think you said this party was on the ground floor?”

“Precisely – and so, naturally, it was only a fraction of a second later that there followed the dull nasty thud.”

“Everybody heard that?”

“I hardly suppose so. At that noisy party, only those close to the window would hear anything. Jones seemed staggered for a moment. Then he flung up the window, and he and Grant both peered out. As soon as their heads were in the half-darkness, of course, they could see more. There, sprawling on the flags of a small enclosed yard, was the body of a man. His head was tucked beneath his trunk as no living man’s head could be.

“Colin Grant, although elderly, was first through that window. He knelt by the body, and within seconds he knew there was no doubt about the fact of death. He looked upwards. Directly overhead, and right at the top of the house, light was streaming out into the darkness through a window of which the lower sash had been flung up as high as it would go.”

“As you can imagine, this distressing business caused a great deal of confusion, and some real distress. There was one lady – it appeared she lived in the house – who went into a faint after a good deal of screaming. Jones dashed off to fetch a doctor, and somebody had the good sense to ring for the police at once.”

“So that, my dear Appleby,” I asked, “was how you came in?”

Appleby smiled. “Well, answering calls of that sort is no longer precisely my job. But Colin Grant, for a reason of his own, rang me up at home, and I did decide to go straight round.

“When I got there, our people were already on the spot. The dead man, whose name was Fagg, had been a musician, living by himself in a single large room on the top floor. I had a look at his body, where it still lay in the little yard. The place was thoroughly dismal – being little more than a stone-paved oblong space, with a few weeds struggling up between the slabs, some litter slung in a corner, and a couple of basement windows set in gloomy pits, with their tops just peeping dejectedly over the level of rusty iron gratings. It was close to one of these that Fagg’s body was lying. He might have been crawling along – it grotesquely struck me – with some notion of peering through the bars looking for a trapped cat.

“I asked Jones about the character and habits of his tenant: was Fagg known to be in any sort of trouble, and had he a temperament which would lead one to suppose him capable of turning suicidal. But Jones hadn’t much to tell. From the first, he said, he hadn’t cared for the musician, and lately there had even been some coolness between them.

“After a certain amount of poking about here and there, I went up to the dead man’s room, taking Jones with me. There were two windows side by side, and one of our men from the Yard was making a close study of the one that stood wide open. He had just found some scratches on the paintwork that might well have been made by the shoes of a man climbing out. But, of course, the window I was interested in was the other one.”

I looked at Appleby in astonishment. “The other one?” I said – and several of our small company echoed me.

“Precisely. I threw up the sash as far as it would go, and had a good look around. Presently I beckoned Jones and pointed to two small patches of raw putty in the woodwork. He turned as white as a sheet – and then he jumped.”

“Jumped?” I was horrified.

“Clean through the window. I made a vain grab at him that took my own head and shoulders out into the open air. I saw his body hit one of these area gratings down below – and vanish.”

“Jones had prepared the whole thing?”

“Just that. His quarrel with Fagg – it was over the hysterical lady – had taken him to all lengths. He had knocked his rival on the head and pitched him through the one window shortly before the guests were due to arrive. Then he arranged a prepared dummy – it was no more than a jacket, trousers, and a bag of builder’s sand – on a standard magician’s device just outside the other window.”

“A device?” I was incredulous.

“A retractable bolt, set to operate five seconds after the closing of an electrical circuit. When it slid back, the dummy fell. It was the area grating down below that had been the real labour. Jones had converted it into a trap swallowing anything that struck it sharply from above. All in all, it was a very pretty illusion.”

I shook my head. “I think I could find another word for it. But you said that your friend Grant–?”

“Yes, indeed. He had two reasons for summoning me. He thought Jones had been a suspiciously long time calling in that doctor – and now we know, of course, that he was doing the lightning tidy-up. But there was something before that. It was the drawing back of the curtain that closed that circuit and released the dummy. Grant had seen the Great Enigma make just that gesture on the stage – when demonstrating to his audience that the lady had vanished. The thing had a professional touch that set my friend wondering.”

Lady Appleby came into her husband’s study, slipped off her coat, and sat down. “I’ll have a drink,” she said.

Appleby poured sherry without comment. Judith didn’t often take it into her head to drink before dinner. For some seconds they sipped in silence. “Frightfully boring?” he asked.

“No – not boring. Unexpectedly exhausting, though.” She paused, frowning at her glass. “I think you ought to have been there.”

“Nonsense.” Appleby’s tone was unnecessarily decisive. Having enjoyed a cosy afternoon with a novel, he was feeling slightly guilty. “For one thing, I just haven’t your zest for artistic occasions. For another, I scarcely knew his late lordship, and I’ve never set eyes on Littlefair, and I’m not a member of the Confectioners’ Company, or whatever it is.”

“Comfits, not confectionery. The Comfiters. Lord Heritage was their Master. That’s why Lady Heritage was presenting them with Littlefair’s portrait of her late husband. Or thought she was.”

“What’s that?” Appleby looked up sharply. Judith wasn’t given to idle talk.

“I repeat, John, you ought to have been there. There was – well, I suppose it was a kind of joke. It could be made to sound screamingly funny. Probably it will be. But it wasn’t. It was rather horrible. That’s why I’m drinking your sherry.”

“Drink some more.”

Judith Appleby shook her head. “No. But I’ll tell you what happened.”

Appleby tossed his novel aside. “Is it a police affair?”

“Lord, yes. That faithful Inspector of yours – the puff-puff man–”

“Chugg?”

“Yes – Chugg. He was on the spot before I came away. So you’ll be hearing about it. This is just a preliminary note by an unskilled eye-witness.”

Appleby finished his sherry, and with a gesture of mild resolution put the stopper back in the decanter. “Go ahead,” he said.

“The Comfiters aren’t one of the large livery companies. But they have a splendid hall, and the presentation was to take place in that. The Comfiters themselves, and their wives–” Judith broke off. “How funny! Isn’t there a comfit-maker’s wife somewhere in Shakespeare?”

“Undoubtedly there is.” Appleby replied briskly but not impatiently. “You were saying, I think, that these grand people were up on the dais?”

“Yes – along with Lady Heritage, and Jethro Littlefair, and some particularly important-looking outsiders. The Comfiters have the most gorgeous robes. A sort of cerise–”