A Private View Read online

  Judith concentrated all her forces, as if some last and desperate thrust against a formidable barrier. But she knew that it was her fingers that she must use. With an immense effort of will, she once more felt about her. There was something like a breath of cold air in her hair. It flowed over her scalp and down her spine. It drenched her whole body. And to this sensation – for a moment merely physical – she was presently giving a name. It was knowledge – knowledge so grotesque that she ought to be laughing aloud at it. But she had no impulse to do that. For her pulse was dropping to normal and her mind was perfectly clear. Her position must be called hazardous and absurd. It could not be said, therefore, that she was in command of the situation. But she was at least once more in command of herself.

  ‘You know things that I don’t? How am I to know there’s any truth in that?’

  It was Cherry’s voice, returning sullenly to some former point in the argument. The two men, it seemed to Judith, had arrived at a deadlock. But if they chose to beat over the whole matter again, that was all to the good. It gave her a second chance, and one which she was now much better able to take.

  ‘Listen, Cherry – I’m not going to give anything away. All you know is this: you stopped Crabbe getting the thing to me – stopped him by killing him. But you suspect I must have got it, after all – for where else could it have got to? Well, you’re right. And you’re also wrong.’ Zhitkov gave his harsh laugh as he propounded this conundrum. ‘Crabbe kind of got it to me – and then others stepped in.’

  ‘What others could step in? You’re trying to fox me, Zhitkov. There aren’t any others that knew. First your lot got the thing. Then my lot got to know, and I played my hand. I admit I came down on it. But there were only our two lots. No other lot could know.’ Cherry was again soft, repetitive, obstinate.

  ‘You’re quite right. Nobody else did know. But somebody else stepped in, all the same.’

  ‘Who else stepped in?’

  ‘Steptoe stepped in – or that’s my guess.’

  ‘What’s that you say? You’re talking gibberish. You’re wasting my time.’

  ‘That’s right, Cherry – I’m wasting your time.’ Zhitkov gave his ugly laugh, and Judith wondered if her head was going to start swimming again in the effort to find sense in what she was listening to.

  ‘How could Crabbe, as you say, kind of get it to you?’ Once more Cherry had gone doggedly back.

  ‘There was the telephone, wasn’t there? Cherry, you’re a fool. I always thought so: Cherry is a fool.’

  ‘There was the telephone? What about the telephone? Crabbe couldn’t get you that on the telephone.’

  ‘He could tell me a lot – all I had to know. But Crabbe couldn’t tell me what he didn’t know himself. About the stepping in of Steptoe – the unknown factor in the whole affair.’

  ‘There’s the telephone.’

  A bell was ringing sharply somewhere in the studio. It was out of place, Judith thought – a telephone in a studio like this. But then Zhitkov, decidedly, was not what he seemed. She had learnt that much, at least… For some seconds the bell continued its insistent summons. Zhitkov, she guessed, had no great fancy for taking the call in Cherry’s presence.

  ‘Go on, Zhitkov – perhaps it’s Crabbe.’ Cherry was softly mocking. ‘Perhaps it’s Crabbe, and he’ll be telling you things. News from hell.’

  ‘You go to hell.’

  The bell went silent. Zhitkov must have picked up the receiver. And in a second he said sharply: ‘Speak low.’ There was an interval of silence. Then his voice rose a pitch, excited and furious. ‘Didn’t get it…you say you didn’t get it? You say they got it…what do you mean? Did you say a fight – a fight in the shop? It proves I was right, but you ought to have got it… Tell me about that… It must have been Cherry’s men – and Cherry’s here now.… You’re sure of that? What about speed?… I said, what about speed? They wouldn’t have speed in a thing like that? What about the dark? You can often be given the slip in the dark. Remember Crabbe… I said, remember Crabbe… If they just hold on. They must hold on.’

  The receiver went down with a click. There was silence again. Judith knew that it was the silence of quite a new tension in the room.

  ‘You clever devil.’ It was Zhitkov. His voice had changed. ‘You knew. You knew about this man Steptoe and his lot.’

  ‘Ah – Steptoe. You were speaking about Steptoe.’ Cherry was softer than ever – and non-committal, enigmatic. ‘And you thought that our lot didn’t know about Steptoe.’

  ‘You’ve been working fast.’ There was reluctant admiration in Zhitkov’s tone. ‘It was only today that I saw the truth. It was only today I tracked Steptoe down. We waited for the dark. That would be the time to collect the picture–’

  ‘Ah!’ Cherry’s interruption seemed involuntary. ‘So it would.’

  ‘There had been a fight – Steptoe knocked silly. And Steptoe’s shop knocked silly too. A van moving off. We’ve just got on to it. We’re following it now. That would be you.’

  ‘It wasn’t me. And the fight wasn’t me.’ Cherry spoke more rapidly than he had done so far, as if he was aware that some critical moment had come.

  ‘Not you? Then Steptoe’s own lot–’

  ‘I suppose so. But whoever it is, your people are following?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that green Humber?’

  ‘What do you know about that green Humber?’ Once again Zhitkov’s voice had risen sharply.

  ‘It’s been one of our lines on you, Zhitkov, you fool. And whatever you’re trailing, we’re trailing too.’

  ‘You’re trailing the Humber?’

  ‘We never let up on trailing the Humber. What about talking?’

  ‘I think we’ll talk.’ There was a sound of movement, and Judith guessed that both men were now standing up. ‘But the talking had better be – you know where. Let’s get along.’

  ‘Let’s get along.’

  In some queer way the relationship between Zhitkov and Cherry had been transformed. And for some further reason – equally obscure – the change seemed to necessitate a changed venue for their further parley. Almost before Judith was aware of what had happened, they had left the studio and she was alone.

  It was only when she got outside the cupboard that she realized how bad that smell had been. No wonder that it had set her imagining things. Zhitkov must have lowered the gas as he went out; she turned it up again and went back to stare at her late prison. It was very like what, in the stifling darkness, she had fancied it to be: a charnel house of decomposing flesh. There, sure enough, was the litter of dismembered limbs over which her horrified fingers had passed; and it was from these that the smell came. Fascinated, she went up and touched them once more. They had a rubbery consistency – it wasn’t like living flesh, but it was decidedly like – At one and the same time Judith laughed and shuddered. The experience was now ridiculous, but it had been sufficiently real. Zhitkov did actually have this profession. He modelled in queer new stuffs with a filthy smell – commercial modelling, it looked like – and this cupboard was a dump or store.

  But Zhitkov was something else. And primarily something else. Both his racket and Cherry’s were organized affairs established on a big scale – Cherry’s, it seemed, on a bigger scale than Zhitkov’s – and in a more or less permanent way… Judith recalled the International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects – that ramifying organization built up to trade in Europe’s post-war vanished works of art. She recalled what John had told her of a no less astonishing or nefarious group – that of the Friends of the Venerable Bede. She recalled too the abominable scoundrel Wine, who had amassed the power to carry off from their rightful owners not mere pictures and statues but objects as miscellaneous as a Bloomsbury house, a Harrogate cab-horse, and a classical case of multiple personality in a seventeen-year-old girl. It was with criminality on a similar scale – if directed to some quite different end – that she appeared to be in contact
now. And John was in contact with it too… She frowned, obscurely disturbed.

  John would be home by now. He had gone off to deal with old Moe Steptoe, who had almost certainly become again possessed of the stolen Vermeer. How John had intended to proceed, she had not inquired. He had simply taken hat and coat and walked out of the house, leaving her to entertain the Duke of Horton until that nobleman thought proper to betake himself to his hotel. But, whatever had happened, John should certainly be home by this time.

  And Judith turned to hurry out. She could get a taxi at the top of Gas Street; and she had news which, however confused and fragmentary, might be useful. Moreover she had no wish to linger in Zhitkov’s studio a moment longer than she need help. The place had given her some moments so nasty that she would always shudder at the memory of it. And – quite apart from that – Zhitkov might come back at any time – either alone, or with Cherry again, or with some group of his own circle of ruffians.

  But suddenly Judith was so impatient, so irrationally apprehensive, that she could not feel even a taxi to be half quick enough. Her glance went to Zhitkov’s telephone. Why not risk using that? Once she had reported herself to John she would be safe.

  She went rapidly to the intrument, picked up the receiver, and dialled her own number. Long before there was an answer she had to acknowledge a mounting sense that something was wrong. If John was at home – and even if he had gone to bed and fallen asleep – he would have answered by now… When a voice did come it was a woman’s – the sleepy voice of her only resident domestic. Sir John had not come in.

  Judith rang off – and for some seconds stared blankly at the bloated volumes of the London telephone directory. Why was this information so unaccountably disturbing? There was no reason why John, once personally involved with the job, should not spend the whole night happily clearing up on the Vermeer affair… Only it was not ten minutes since she had heard Zhitkov receiving something that sounded like the latest report from a battle-front. Steptoe’s shop, late that night, had become the focus of interest for obscurely conflicting criminal forces. There had been a fight in it. There had been no indication that police were now in possession, or that they had been involved or invoked at any stage… Judith, upon a sudden impulse, seized a volume of the directory and rapidly turned its pages.

  And there was no reply from Old Moe’s shop. The telephone didn’t even ring there; she could get nothing but the low burr announcing that a number is unobtainable. But there was always the possibility that she had unconsciously dialled the wrong number. She tried again, and with the same result. She was about to put back the receiver for the second time when the instrument crackled oddly. It was a sound she did not remember hearing before; it faded slightly and then remained continuous. She guessed at some technical fault – and guessed too that despite this she had after a fashion got through. She waited for a voice that didn’t come.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Hullo, is that Mr Steptoe?’ And now there was a reply – but of a sort to make her persuade herself that her ear had betrayed her. ‘Is that Mr Steptoe?’ she said again. Once more she heard the same sound. There could be no mistaking it. It was a low groan. And a moment later there was a clatter, as if the distant receiver had tumbled from nerveless fingers to the floor. The instrument went dead.

  Judith had supped enough with horrors for that night. She flicked down the receiver rest and dialled another number. This time it was Whitehall 1212.

  Rain was pattering down outside. Through it Judith fancied she could hear, very faintly, the Eminent Victorians making night hideous with their swing and jive. Or perhaps it was just a radio further up Gas Street. She couldn’t be certain of the direction. And she couldn’t be certain of a lot of more important things. What she had to say would be a muddle. And it wouldn’t even be to John that she would be saying it…

  She sat down. She felt very flat. Appeal to the police and they make you feel like that – quite safe but very flat. She had been told to wait. There had been no suggestion that she should seek the protection of Boxer, or hide in a cellar, or arm herself with a poker. That wasn’t carelessness; it was simply an index of the complete efficiency and confidence of the powerful machine she had invoked. Yes, madam, we’ll come at once. Lady Appleby? Thank you, madam… The voice had been quite unimpressed.

  And here was an ordinary, shabby studio, with a bad piece of carving in the middle of the floor and a lot of commercial stuff hidden away in a cupboard.

  Over the way was Boxer – either asleep, or sobering up, or getting a little drunker than he had been. Up above, there was an empty flat. And up above that, another empty flat. Puzzle flats. Problem flats. Think about those flats and you cease to feel flat. You know that you haven’t been imagining things, like poor old Lady Clancarron. There really is a Limbert mystery, and you are in on it. And there is a Mary Arrow mystery, too. A shy girl, that. She won’t come out of the wings. Perhaps she is going to be the goddess in the machine – descending, not without some audible creaking ropes and pulleys, to tidy things up in the last act.

  But the police wouldn’t be interested in a neat literary allusion. They were on their way now, and Judith had better try to do a little tidying up herself. What had she heard in this room that really added to knowledge of the affair? What did she now know that she wished John knew?

  Steptoe had stepped in. Zhitkov had let that out in the first instance simply because the jingle amused him, and because he believed he could afford a little mockery of Cherry. Well, begin with it. If Steptoe had stepped in, that meant that he, and the associates with whom clearly he was provided, had not been the prime movers in the affair. And there were considerations that lent support to the probability of that. Old Moe, surely, with his junk shop and his petty receiving of stolen goods and constant brushes with the police, was not a criminal on a large scale, or with the sort of resources and knowledge that could organize the elaborate business of the Spanish chest that had been sent to the Duchess of Horton. All that had been contrived by others – and then old Moe had stepped in. Whereupon Gavin Limbert had stepped in upon old Moe.

  And after that – Judith frowned, fearful that her mind was going to waver helplessly before the complexity of the thing – to admit that here was a mystery for the solving of which a professional was needed. And after that yet another set of rascals had stepped in. Or at least here was the general formula for the affair. Crooks all over the place – and biting each other. Three rival shows. Quite prepared to talk things over among themselves. That was what she had just been listening to. But equally prepared for a little slugging – Zhitkov had been slugged – or even for a little murdering – Crabbe had been murdered, and Limbert had been murdered too.

  Crabbe had been Zhitkov’s man and Crabbe had been clever. He had been clever because he had got something to Zhitkov over the telephone. There didn’t sound as if there was anything very clever in that; Judith herself had just used the telephone to get something over to Scotland Yard. Perhaps there had been a code, and Crabbe had got a message away within the hearing of his unsuspecting enemies. Yes, perhaps it had been something like that…

  It didn’t take one very far. Cherry had believed that Crabbe kept nothing. And Crabbe had kind of got something to Zhitkov – and then others stepped in. That meant Steptoe and his friends. They, so far as both Cherry and Zhitkov were concerned, were the unknown factor in the whole affair. Or were they? Judith realized that she was guessing.

  And she could only guess. No satisfactory theoretical construction was possible to her, because her information was too fragmentary, too confused. But she did possess a fairly clear picture of one concrete situation – a situation existing now. A van had got away from Steptoe’s. And it had got away with something: presumably the Vermeer. On the whole, she had gathered that it was Steptoe’s van; that Steptoe’s associates still controlled the booty. Zhitkov’s friends had arrived on the scene just too late for effective action, but they were trailing the van in a green Hum
ber. And Cherry in his turn was having the Humber trailed.

  This last circumstance appeared to have impressed Zhitkov; to have given him a new view of his opponents’ reach and tenacity. As a result of it he had shown signs of coming to terms with Cherry, and it was on something like that understanding that the two had gone off together… And that was about all Judith knew. Somewhere in the night that queer multiple chase was going forward.

  She had left a piece out. She had left it out because – obscurely – she had wanted to ignore it. There had been a fight at Steptoe’s. And that had been John. The knowledge came to her, intuitively and absolutely, as she stared blankly at the wretched piece of carving upon which, to the affected indignation of the bogus sculptor Zhitkov, Gavin Limbert’s lifeblood had dripped.

  The bare floor was moving under her oddly, was flowing beneath her like a river. Without knowing it, she had sprung to her feet and was running for the door. They ought to be here by now. By now the big, dark, discreet car should have swept round the corner of Gas Street, past the prosperous and tasteful dwellings of all those gentlemen of England, and be here at the door of this shabby, tragic, and enigmatical place.

  She was out in the darkness of the little hall. It was unrelieved by any glint of light from Boxer’s door, so presumably he had gone to bed. The house and the street were both quite silent except for a continued light drum and patter of rain. She could no longer even fancy that she heard dance music from the Thomas Carlyle. But suddenly, standing tensely there and straining her ears for the hum of an engine, she did hear something. It was the sound of a key – turning in a lock upstairs.