Appleby Talks Again (17 page)

Reluctantly, Carabine admitted that he had.

It was half an hour later that Appleby rejoined his wife. Rather to his surprise, she was alone. “Hullo,” he said, “what’s happened to Braunkopf? Has he sold you the whole lot?”

Judith shook her head. “He’s gone after higher game. Lady Heritage.”

“She doesn’t know the top of a painting from the bottom. And she’ll certainly be tired of the whole subject at the moment. I don’t know why she should agree to see him.”

“Braunkopf is very enterprising. He’s made an appointment with her. He had a sort of lever.”

“A lever?”

“This job he’s just done for you: digging out Carabine’s association with her husband.”

Appleby jumped to his feet. “Braunkopf’s told her I’ve got on to that?” He strode across the room to the telephone.

“My dear John, what’s the matter?”

“Action stations, Judith. Get out the car.”

Inspector Chugg was waiting on Westminster Bridge. He jumped in before Appleby had drawn to a halt. “A Mercedes,” he said. “And it has an hour’s start for the coast. We’ve got everything out, sir. But it’s always tricky at night. A driver who knows the country really well might just get through.”

“Get through to where, Inspector?” Judith, who was sitting beside her husband in front, turned round. “Can’t you have something uncomfortable waiting at the other end?”

“The other end is a motor-cruiser, your ladyship. But we don’t know just where she’s lying. The difficulty’s there.” Chugg paused, fiddling with a mechanism beside him. “Your short-wave’s all correct, sir.”

Judith said no more. Even the fact that this was John’s private car hardly made her presence very regular. They swept through south London in the early darkness and out along one of the arterial roads. Voices murmured in the back as messages came in from all over the southern counties. Judith got the impression that two or three times the Mercedes had been spotted, but on no occasion by police who were in a position to give immediate chase. Once they halted for a rapid consultation over a map. When they went on, it was as if John had taken some confident guess. She remembered that he had got to know the south coast pretty well during the war. She knew that he and Chugg were directing and co-ordinating a vast search. Suddenly it came to her that perhaps they were going to do something more. Perhaps they were themselves going to be in at the death – if it came to a death. A long time seemed to pass. Judith dozed, and woke up. She saw they had reached the sea – or rather they had reached a cliff road, high above it. There was an alarming moment when their head-lights appeared to reveal nothing but an abyss before them. Then they swung abruptly to the right, and Judith realised that they were rounding a deep cove. At the next bend the windscreen took a sudden dangerous lunge at her face. John had brought the car to a dead stop. There was another car – stationary and without lights – straight in front of them. Chugg gave a shout – it might have been of excitement or of recognition – and in a moment the two men were out and running. Judith followed.

And then it all happened in seconds – or so it seemed to her afterwards. There was dark water far below, and from somewhere out on its invisible surface the brief flash of a signal. There was a crazy path down the face of the cliff, and there was a figure running yet more crazily down it, caught every now and then in the beam of Chugg’s powerful torch. The figure was staggering under some obscure but crippling burden, and the two pursuers gained rapidly as Judith watched. Chugg was shouting – a summons, a warning – when his voice was drowned by a single ghastly scream. The fugitive had slipped, recovered, slipped again, dropped the burden in a final effort to regain balance, and then plunged headlong down the face of the cliff.

They drove back to London in the very early morning. Judith felt numb. “A better death than being hanged,” she said – and then tapped the stout wooden box beside her. “John – what is it, anyway?”

“It’s the Grandoni Apollo.”

“Impossible!”

“One of the finest Greek bronze heads ever discovered. And, as you know, it disappeared again about a couple of centuries ago. There have been plenty of copies and engravings to tell one what it was like. But the head itself had vanished – until Carabine found it and bought it on the quiet for Heritage. Then Heritage hit on the notion of the portrait. Cigar, tankers, refinery, an Old Master or two –
and
the Grandoni Apollo. Think of the sensation when the thing was recognised at the Royal Academy exhibition. But Heritage died. And Lady Heritage, having no notion of what was afoot, simply shoved the portrait into her bedroom. And there it was presently seen by her brother Charles Ozanne, who had some artistic cultivation. He tumbled to the truth, rummaged round, and found the actual Apollo.”

“If he hadn’t, he’d be alive today.” Judith shivered.

“Quite so. Well, there was a vast temptation to steal the bronze. Because of Heritage’s close ways, there was a chance that his estate could be wound up without this big purchase ever coming to light – and particularly, of course, if Ozanne himself moved in and negotiated the tricky corners. He decided to take the risk. And all went well – until his sister decided to give the portrait to the Comfiters. Immediately it was unveiled, and glimpsed by a competent art historian, Ozanne was done for. And Littlefair was another risk. He mayn’t have been more than vaguely aware of the importance of the Apollo. But if the portrait simply vanished unaccountably, he might begin groping for a reason – and find it. Actually, as we know, he very nearly got there in the last fifteen minutes of his life.”

“So the Mammon-business
wasn’t
any sort of demonstration.”

“It was designed by Ozanne to look like one – and so to obscure the practical motive involved. It was also neatly calculated to throw Littlefair into a state of mind – later cleverly exacerbated by Ozanne – in which suicide would seem plausible. Ozanne was a little quick to plug the suicide theory, I noticed.”

“And he tried to plant the thing, very much as a demonstration, on Littlefair’s wife?”

“Exactly. And by slashing the canvas to ribbons before planting it in her shed, he was able to remove the vital area with the Apollo. The only remaining danger was Carabine. But it was entirely in Carabine’s interest to remain quiet, and Ozanne had no reason to suppose that we should ever hear of him. But when Braunkopf went off and prattled to Lady Heritage, she naturally passed on his talk to her brother. The game was up, and Ozanne made his last move – the move that ended on that nasty bit of cliff.”

Appleby looked at the railway carriage for a moment in silence. “You couldn’t call it rolling-stock,” he said.

This was true. The carriage stood not on wheels but on trestles. And it had other peculiarities. On the far side of the corridor all was in order; sliding doors, plenty of plate glass, and compartments with what appeared to be comfortably upholstered seats. But the corridor itself was simply a broad platform ending in air. Mechanically propelled contrivances could manoeuvre on it easily. That, of course, was the idea.

Appleby swung himself up and peered through one of the compartments at what lay beyond. He saw nothing but a large white concave surface. “Monotonous view,” he murmured. “Not for lovers of the picturesque.”

The Producer laughed shortly. “You should see it when we’re shooting the damned thing. The diorama, you know. Project whole landscapes on that, we do. They hurtle past. And rock gently. It’s terrific.” Realising that his enthusiasm was unseemly, he checked himself and frowned. “Well, you’d better view the body. Several of your people on the job already, I may say.”

Appleby nodded, and moved along the hypertrophied corridor. “What are you filming?” he asked.

“It’s a thriller. I’ve no use for trains, if they’re not in a thriller – or for thrillers, if there isn’t a train.” The Producer didn’t pause on this generalisation. “Just cast your mind back a bit, Sir John. Cast it back to September, 1955.”

Appleby considered. “The tail end of a hot, dry summer.”

“Quite so. But there was something else. Do you remember one of the evening papers running a series of short mystery stories, each called ‘Murder on the 7.16’?”

“Yes. Oddly enough, I think I do.”

“We’re filming one of them.”

“In fact, this
is
the 7.16?” Appleby, although accustomed to bizarre occasions, was looking at the Producer in some astonishment. “And perhaps you’re going to tell me that the murdered man is the fellow who wrote the story?”

“Good lord, no!” The Producer was rather shocked. “You don’t imagine, Sir John, we’d insist on having you along to investigate the death of anyone like that. This corpse is important. Or was important, I suppose I should say. Our ace director. Lemuel Whale.”

“Fellow who does those utterly mad and freakish affairs?”

“That’s him. Marvellous hand at putting across his own crazy vision of things. Brilliant – quite brilliant.”

It seemed that Whale was in the habit of letting himself into the studios at all hours, and wandering round the sets. He got his inspiration that way. Or he got part of it that way and part of it from a flask of brandy. If he was feeling sociable, and the brandy was holding out, he would pay a visit to Ferrett, the night-watchman, before he left. They would have a drink together, and then Whale would clear out in his car.

This time Ferrett hadn’t seen Whale – or not alive. That, at least, was his story. He had been aware that Whale was about, because quite early on this winter night he had seen lights going on here and there. But he hadn’t received a visit. And when there was still a light on in this studio at 4 a.m. he went to turn it off. He supposed Whale had just forgotten about it. Everything seemed quite in order – but nevertheless something had prompted him to climb up and take a look at the 7.16. He liked trains, anyway. Had done ever since he was a kid. Whale was in the end compartment, quite dead. He had been bludgeoned.

Ferrett’s was an unsupported story – and at the best it must be said that he took his duties lightly. He might have to be questioned very closely. But at present Appleby wanted to ask him only one thing. “Just what was it that made you climb up and look through this so-called 7.16?”

For a moment the man was silent. He looked stupid but not uneasy. “I tell you, I always liked them. The sound of them. The smell of them. Excited me ever since I was a nipper.”

“But you’ve seen this affair in the studio often enough, haven’t you? And, after all, it’s
not
a train. There wasn’t any sound or smell here?”

“There weren’t no sound. But there was the smell, all right.”

“Rubbish, Ferrett. If there was any smell, it was of Whale’s cursed brandy.” It was the Producer who broke in. “This place makes talkies – not feelies or tasties or smellies.
This
train just doesn’t smell of train. And it never did.”

Appleby shook his head. “As a matter of fact, you’re wrong. I’ve got a very keen nose, as it happens. And that compartment – the one in which Whale died – does, very faintly, smell of trains. I’m going to have another look.” And Appleby returned to the compartment from which Whale’s body had just been removed. When he reappeared he was frowning. “At first one notices only the oceans of blood. Anything nasty happening to a scalp does that. But there’s something else. That split-new upholstery on one side is slightly soiled. What it suggests to me is somebody in an oily boiler-suit.”

The Producer was impatient. “Nobody like that comes here. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Unsolved mysteries seldom do.” Appleby turned back to Ferrett. “What lights were on when you came in here?”

“Only the line of lights in the 7.16 itself, sir. Not bright, they weren’t. But enough for me to–”

Ferrett was interrupted by a shout from the centre of the studio. A man in shirtsleeves was hurrying forward, gesticulating wrathfully. The Producer turned on him. “What the devil is wrong with you?”

“It’s not merely Whale’s flaming head that’s suffering in this affair. It’s my projector too. Somebody’s taken a bleeding hammer to it. I call that beyond a joke.”

Appleby nodded gravely. “This whole affair went beyond a joke, I agree. But I’ve a notion it certainly began in one.”

There was a moment’s perplexed silence, and then another newcomer presented himself in the form of a uniformed sergeant of police. He walked straight up to Appleby. “A fellow called Slack,” he murmured. “Railway linesman. Turned up at the local station in a great state. Says he reckons he did something pretty bad somewhere round about here last night.”

Appleby nodded sombrely. “I’m afraid, poor devil, he’s right.”

“You didn’t know,” Appleby asked next day, “that there’s a real 7.16 p.m. from your nearest railway station?”

The Producer shook his head. “Never travel on trains.”

“Well, there is. And Slack was straying along the road, muttering that he’d missed it, when Whale stopped his car and picked him up. Whale was already a bit tight, and he supposed that Slack was very tight indeed. Actually Slack has queer fits – loses his memory, wanders off, and so on – and this was one of them. That was why he was still in his oil-soaked work-clothes, and still carrying the long-handled hammer-affair he goes about tapping things with. There just wasn’t any liquor in Slack at all. But Whale, in his own fuddled state, had no notion of what he was dealing with. And so he thought up his funny joke.”

“He always was a damned freakish fool over such things.” The Producer spoke energetically. “A funny joke with
our
7.16?”

“Precisely. It was the coincidence that put it in his head. He promised Slack to get him to his train at the next station. And then he drove him here. It was already dark, of course, and he found it enormous fun kidding this drunk – as he still thought him – that they were making it by the skin of their teeth. That sort of thing. No doubt there was a certain professional vanity involved. When he’d got Slack into that compartment, and turned on your gadget for setting scenery hurtling by, it was too amusing for words. Then he overreached himself.”