A Private View Read online

  ‘Slugged on the head!’ Cadover turned to the surgeon. ‘Is there any–?’

  ‘There’s some indication of a fall or a blow.’ The young man was cautious. ‘And if Miss Arrow suffered both a nervous trauma and a physical injury, that would go a long way to explain–’

  ‘No doubt.’ Cadover was regarding Mary Arrow with frank anxiety – and it was the first time, Judith reflected, that she had seen that expression plainly on his face.

  Mary had managed to get to her feet. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘To-morrow – if you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to press you in any way. But there are circumstances making it very important that I should get all the information I can, here and now.’

  ‘Gavin is dead. That’s the only terribly important circumstance I know, I’m afraid. But come tomorrow. Or I’ll come back here.’ She turned to Judith. ‘Will your husband be in then? I’ve an idea he’s the person I’d like to explain things to.’

  Judith shook her head – and tried to keep all anxiety out of her voice. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell whether–’

  But Cadover was less scrupulous. ‘Miss Arrow, please listen to me carefully. It would be Lady Appleby’s husband who would be questioning you now, were he here in his Department. But he isn’t. And we none of us know where he is. But we do know that it is his concern with Gavin Limbert’s death that has taken him away. It begins to look – and I don’t try to disguise this from Lady Appleby – as if it had taken him into danger. That’s sometimes our trade here, and his trade’s a thing that Sir John is uncommonly fond of. If we are to back him up, we must have the fullest picture we can get.’

  Mary had sat down again. She was looking at Cadover with rounded eyes. ‘And what I can remember might help?’

  ‘Certainly. There is some piece of confused and desperate mischief going on somewhere at this moment, and it is bound up in some way we don’t understand with Limbert’s death. Sir John may be in the thick of it.’

  Mary frowned. It was as if she still had some difficulty in sorting out the reports of the world actually about her. Then she put out a hand and touched Judith’s. ‘I didn’t understand,’ she said. ‘You’ll think me heartless – downright low. But I thought all this was only academic. The Law, and Punishment, and Protecting Society. I had no idea…about your husband.’ She turned back to Cadover. ‘For goodness’ sake get it all out of me quick.’

  The young surgeon had gone. In his place there had appeared a sergeant who was preparing to take shorthand notes. He was an elderly man, compounded of fatherliness and discretion. And Cadover, who himself carried round with him permanently something of the same character, had positively disposed his features, Judith believed, in enhanced lines of wise benevolence. It was a place in which they all worked very hard, she thought. And, certainly, nobody worked harder than John. But his interest in this affair had been of her own making. If she hadn’t led him that dance to the Da Vinci –

  Judith realized that for some moments she had lost herself in reverie. The events of the night of Monday the twenty-second. She was not sure whether it was Cadover or the sergeant who had given this out as a sort of text for the inquiry that was opening. A private view. Mary would have to tell them about that. The events of the night of Monday the twenty-second began with a private view. A private view of what, madam? Of Lady Clancarron emptying out the baby with the bathwater. And you have a photograph of this destructive proceeding? No, sir – but I have a pleasing snap of The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation…

  Judith jerked herself awake. A drift of chill night air from the uncurtained window by which she was sitting made her shiver. An oblong of darkness now, it looked by day across the river to the County Hall, backed by the smoke of Waterloo. She had a sudden sense of the immensity of London, stretching round her in unending reticulations slashed through by the black and winding river. Deep below her feet was the empty Underground; above her head, in further bleak and functional rooms, other CID men sat up late over other murders, disappearances, robberies, treasons, thefts. And all around the pausing city was the further darkness of nocturnal England, stained with the dull glow of sleeping towns, shot with the glare of foundries, probed by the innumerable headlights of heavy night-travelling lorries with their burden of bricks, of car-bodies, of cement, of the family possessions of clerks, artisans, schoolteachers following the drift of labour. And among them was a van carrying – fantastically – Vermeer’s Aquarium. A dark van, hurtling through the English darkness, and containing that other and unearthly darkness of a submarine world in which a dozen grotesquely imagined monsters, large and small, miraculously generated their own conflicting systems of jewelled and coloured light. How had the painter of the tranquil town, the little street, the daughter in fancy dress, the lacemaker over her bobbins, come to imagine this remote universe, which only the modern bathysphere had vindicated as true? Nobody could tell. And nobody might ever see that picture again. Or John Appleby again…

  Judith took herself in hand and listened. The events of the night of Monday the twenty-second. Mary was talking – coherently, and only occasionally prompted by a question from Cadover.

  ‘He had gone over to the Thomas Carlyle. Not that he was a member; he thought the place absurd and squalid, and he had no business there at all. Only he said it sometimes gave him ideas. It seems that an abstract painter is as dependent as any other on keeping an eye on things and people around him. Gavin claimed that he had a right to drop in on the club just in a neighbourly way. And nobody ever stopped him. He usually managed to please himself, you see. He was forceful – and at the same time he had a great deal of what, I suppose, is called charm… I used to think it would bring him trouble one day. It would be so desolating a thing to find himself possessed of, if ever he found that he possessed nothing else – nothing, I mean, of what he hoped and dreamed of. I never deluded myself into thinking that, if his talent betrayed him, he would think anything of possessing me.

  ‘He had been to the club – just a look-in, quite early – and when he got back – it must have been before midnight – he came up to talk to me. He talked–’

  ‘Up by the fire escape, Miss Arrow?’

  ‘No – the ordinary inside staircase. He talked for quite a long while. Sometimes he seemed to wind himself up for work in that way – by…by just talking, and then going straight down to work. He had met an old schoolfellow who had shared his interest in painting – somebody called Crabbe, who had looked, Gavin said, pretty down and out. He said I might meet this Crabbe sometime, because he had given him an invitation to drop in. He talked about other things too. Would you want to hear them?’

  ‘Anything about a man called Steptoe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary looked surprised. ‘I’d never heard of this Steptoe before, but Gavin made him sound extremely amusing. He had bought an old canvas from Steptoe, and also a junk-shop painting about which he was very excited, because he was convinced it was by George Stubbs. Well, this man had turned up on him that day and tried to buy the things back. Gavin said it made him feel suspicious; that possibly the Stubbs was a real Stubbs, and stolen property, so that perhaps he ought to tell the police. I don’t think he said more about Steptoe than that.’

  ‘Did he, either at this or any other time, mention to you somebody called Cherry?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

  ‘You know Zhitkov, Miss Arrow – the sculptor on your ground floor? Was Mr Limbert on terms of any special intimacy with him? Did he ever do business with him in any way?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I doubt whether they ever did much more than pass the time of day.’

  ‘And he didn’t mention Zhitkov to you in any connexion on this occasion?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But – wait – yes, he did. He said something about Crabbe’s having said something about Zhitkov. I think Crabbe had asked him if he’d seen Zhitkov that evening, or if Zhitkov was about – something like that. It was a bare mention. Gavin put no emphasis
on it.’

  ‘Thank you. And then–’ Cadover checked himself at a knock upon the door. A constable came in and handed him a message. He glanced at it, dismissed the man, read the message more carefully, seemed about to say something prompted by it, and then changed his mind. ‘And this takes us past midnight, Miss Arrow?’

  ‘Long past it. I used to forget about time when Gavin and I were talking. It must seem absurd, but I’ve really no idea of how long Gavin stayed. When eventually he went away, he started off by the inside staircase. But he was hardly out of the door before he was back again. “People prowling,” he said – or something like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t that rather strange, at such an hour?’

  ‘Well, people do come rather oddly in from time to time. A drunk sleeps on a landing, or a couple make love on the stairs. Studio folk are known to be tolerant about such things. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. You see, Gavin loved his little conspiratorial route by the fire escape, and I thought he was just saying the first thing that came into his head, in order to have the fun of playing that game. Anyway, he went off down the escape, and I closed my window after him. It was high time to go to bed. I was just beginning to get undressed when I heard a bang. Gavin always closed his shutters at night, and I thought the sound must have been his doing that, for some reason extra hard. But somewhere in my mind I must have known it was nothing of the sort. I found myself restless and anxious. But I told myself I was being a fool; that it was only because we hadn’t made love.’

  The sergeant’s pencil travelled smoothly over his pad. Cadover appeared to be studying his own toes. For Judith an almost unbearable suspense was building up, and she was unable to take her eyes for a moment from Mary’s face.

  ‘I remembered what Gavin had said about prowlers. But some time had passed before that. I’d tried to read a book. When I did remember, I opened the door of my flat and took a cautious look downstairs. I could just make out two or three figures on Gavin’s landing. They were whispering – purposeful whispering, not any sort of whispering one might expect. I caught some sentences. One of them said, “It’s a raid on that club – nothing more than that. And they’ll be clearing off any time now.” And another said, “It would be quieter with a key, all the same; perhaps there’s one in the room of the other fellow downstairs.” I couldn’t make it out, but I was very frightened. I went back into the flat and shut the door.’

  Mary paused. Cadover too was now absorbed. His heavy breathing could be heard in the silence. What must have been a lorry piled with empty milk cans rattled over Westminster Bridge.

  ‘And then I went down the fire escape. Gavin’s shutters were closed – and bolted too. There was nothing out of the way in that. I used to knock if I wanted to get in. The lights were on inside. You can see through, because there are two of those little diamond-shaped holes. I’ve told Lady Appleby how we made a game of them; about – about my private view.’

  There was another silence. For the first time, Mary seemed to have difficulty in continuing. Cadover looked up. ‘And what did you see, Miss Arrow, on the occasion in question?’ The official phrase fell with well-calculated gravity and impersonality upon the room.

  ‘Gavin seemed to be working. That was what I’d have expected, and for a moment I was relieved. He often worked at drawing right through the night. And he had spoken of making a start at blocking out something on his new canvas.’

  Cadover looked up sharply. ‘You mean the canvas he’d had from Steptoe? And he’d spoken of making a start on it? He hadn’t done anything on it so far?’

  ‘It had certainly been a blank that morning. I couldn’t properly see what was happening, because the easel seemed to have been moved from its usual place. But presently I did catch a glimpse of something that surprised me. The man at the easel wasn’t drawing. He was painting in oils. And in that instant I knew… It was like a physical blow, and I must have cried out. The man at the easel thrust away his palette and whirled round towards the window. Of course it wasn’t Gavin. It was somebody I’d never seen before – a man with a twisted lip.’

  This time the silence seemed very long. Cadover sat fixed in thought. Mary Arrow’s eyes were unnaturally dilated; she must, Judith guessed, be reliving her experience in terms of sheer hallucination. When at length she spoke again it was very quietly.

  ‘And my cry was fatal to him. He was caught completely off his guard. There was a click at the door, and men in the room. The man dived for something – I don’t know what – and in the same instant there was just such another bang as I had heard before. This time, I knew what it was. The man who had been pretending to be a painter absorbed in his work dropped out of my field of vision. But I was certain he was dead.

  ‘I think there were three men. I couldn’t see much, and it was difficult to count. They seemed to be behaving like madmen who were bent on destroying everything they could lay their hands on.’

  ‘They were searching the studio, were they not?’

  ‘It must have been that. I started to batter at the shutters. And at that moment the thing happened – the thing that pretty well finished me for the time. Two of them had pitched aside a sofa that was in their way. It just went past my field of view. And then they pitched aside something else. But that fell full on the patch of floor that I could clearly see. It was Gavin with the top of his head blown off.’

  ‘Miss Arrow, you needn’t tell us more.’ Cadover had got to his feet and was making an odd, compassionate gesture. He was clearly deeply distressed. ‘I can only say–’

  ‘Let me go on. There’s hardly anything more that I can tell. Perhaps more of my memory will come back later. Now, there’s no more of it that is – is consecutive. There may have been an interval while I did a faint – something like that. Certainly I got back to my room and out on the staircase. The men had come out of Gavin’s studio and let the door lock itself behind them. I saw Zhitkov’s door open and some sort of flurry there. I thought I heard a groan. Then I realized that they were bundling a body down the stairs – bundling it down as if it were a sack. I thought it was Gavin’s and I flew at them. I remember somebody turning and looking surprised. Perhaps he hit me. After that there is just nothing at all. Except that I can see a sort of picture of myself, staggering upstairs to fetch something – something that I must have in order to follow I didn’t know what.’

  ‘Money.’ Cadover spoke very gently. ‘Money, Miss Arrow – and a toothbrush.’

  13

  ‘Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford.’ The great car was moving like a projectile, but Cadover from the darkness spoke as if his eyes were still fixed on the map in his room now far behind them. ‘They can’t have made any great speed. Any minute we may hear from Reading that it’s all over. Some excellent people in Reading.’

  Judith leant forward to peer at the speedometer. The dashboard showed a multiplicity of illuminated disks, large and small; it was like a model of the planets and their satellites in an up-to-date museum. Or you might fancy you were in an airliner in the stratosphere. The car travelled as smoothly as that. It was a good road.

  Her eye found the right instrument just as the green light behind it changed to red. That might be to suggest, perhaps, that mild hazard attached to such a speed through the night. The needle stood without a tremor at eighty. In an uncanny way the straight ribbon of macadam fed itself into the devouring car. It was like being one of those gadgets holding a tape-measure that whips itself out of sight on the pressing of a button… How idiotically, Judith thought, the mind behaves in a state of tension – hunting similes like a jaded novelist. It would be better if she could talk. But the car was full of voices, an orderly succession of voices issuing from the darkness just below the extended constellation of glowing instruments. For the most part Cadover just listened to the voices, but sometimes he conversed with them. It was like some queer séance in which a host of well-drilled spirits had been taught to wait their turn… There – she was at it again.


  ‘It sounds like a funeral.’ Judith realized that the voices had been faded out; that Cadover was speaking to her; and that he too had produced a simile.

  ‘Like a funeral, Inspector?’

  ‘Only in a manner of speaking.’ Cadover seemed to feel that his association of ideas had been a little unfortunate. ‘An oddly-assorted group of vehicles, going along at rather a slow pace. It was that, you see, that caught the eye of a constable outside Slough, and brought us in our first report.’

  ‘Of the van? I’m afraid I’ve got a bit confused about all this.’

  ‘What he first noticed was the old Baby Austin. Runs one himself, maybe. In front of that was the motorcycle, and in front of that again the green Humber saloon.’

  ‘And the van?’

  ‘It was there, all right, and at first he supposed it was holding up everything behind it. But there was a clear road, and he suddenly had the idea that here was a sort of procession. And so, of course, it was – as we very well know. Smart man, it seems. What he saw was very trivial – but slightly odd, all the same. So he took the number of the Austin, which was the only one left in view. When he got back to his station, and was questioned as a result of my message having been received there, of course he remembered all this at once.’

  ‘But the Austin–’ Judith checked herself. The voices had begun again. It was some minutes before she was able to say, ‘But the Austin would make one too many?’

  ‘Its presence at the tail of the procession may have been accidental, of course. But it was still there at Maidenhead, and naturally we’re taking no chances. It’s being traced now.’

  ‘Traced?’ Judith frowned into the darkness. ‘Surely we’re tracing the whole lot.’

  ‘Not the Austin itself, but its registration.’ Cadover was completely patient. ‘Name of the owner. You never can tell.’

  ‘I see.’ Judith felt stupid and exhausted. ‘You’d better not bother to go on explaining, Inspector. I don’t want to be a blight.’