Appleby Talks Again (20 page)

“No. He drove himself, and Briggs was shoved into the back, with a glass partition up and a blind down, so that he could have a light on and work at some papers. It was a regular set-up, it seems, when those two drove through the night. Only this time it hadn’t quite worked, for Briggs had felt uncontrollably drowsy and dropped into a sleep. Or so he said.”

“And what else did he say?”

“He said that what woke him up was the car coming to a stop with a jerk and then tilting over. Knowing that something must be badly wrong, he let up the blind in front of him. He was just in time to see his employer, still at the wheel, in the act of blowing his brains out. He didn’t remember clearly anything after that until I found him standing in the road holding the gun.”

I shook my head. “It must have struck you as a pretty queer yarn, my dear Appleby. Here is this financial magnate driving composedly through the night in what was virtually entire solitude. And then quite suddenly he pulls up, produces a revolver, and shoots himself. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Quite so. And Briggs was evidently aware that things wore an ugly look. I thought it proper to tell him at once that I happened to be from Scotland Yard. He was scared stiff, and mumbled something about saying nothing more except in the presence of his solicitor. We might well have got no further, but for the arrival, with a hoot and a scream of brakes, of Charles Counterpoynt. That livened things up.”

“Steel’s partner?”

“Yes – and what you might call a dominating personality. It took him no time to size up the situation and he seemed all for pushing us about. Briggs was prepared to take it. But it’s something that a policeman, whether he be a constable or Assistant Commissioner, doesn’t in these circumstances at all fancy. And when Counterpoynt told me to drive off and find a doctor, I was prompted to a little hard professional thinking. I wonder if you’d care to hear the result?”

“
Hear
the result?” I watched Appleby in some surprise as he walked down the long room to what it sometimes pleases him to call his museum. When he returned it was with a cardboard box from which he produced a small spool of metal tape. “Do you mean, my dear Appleby, that you are going to play me something?”

“Just that,” Appleby was now bending over some sort of machine. “It struck me, you see, that there was something odd about Charles Counterpoynt’s following along like that. I wondered if conceivably he had some design – whether on young Briggs or on Steel’s body, or even on something in Steel’s car.

“I remembered the fact of Briggs’ feeling unaccountably sleepy and dropping off. And I reflected on what you yourself have mentioned: the seeming solitude and silence in which Steel was suddenly prompted to kill himself. So I had a go at the car – keeping, I may say, a wary eye on both Counterpoynt and Briggs meanwhile. And presently I – well, I elicited something. Just what, you are now going to hear. And just
when
, by the way, is of some significance. So bear in mind that the time was now about 9.15.”

Appleby ceased speaking, and as he did so strains of music began to issue from the machine beside him. After perhaps a couple of minutes, this faded behind a chime of bells – and presently I realised that I was listening to Big Ben striking nine. There was a moment’s pause, and then a familiar voice followed: “
This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news
…”

I turned to stare at my friend. “But, Appleby, didn’t you say that it was already a quarter past–?”

Appleby held up a silencing finger, and I listened to the headlines being read in the announcer’s level tones. And with the last of them something like light broke on me. “
Armed with a search-warrant, police officers from New Scotland Yard today visited the head office of Messrs. Steel and Counterpoynt…”

“The firm had been exposed at something criminal? Steel switched on the nine o’clock news and realised that it was all up with him?”

Appleby shook his head. “Steel
thought
he switched on the nine o’clock news – which was his regular habit when he was in his car at that hour. But I couldn’t, you know, with some rummaging about, have switched it on all over again at nine-fifteen. What in fact he switched on was an entirely bogus news bulletin recorded on this tape – and very ingeniously wired up to the car radio by our friend Counterpoynt.

“Counterpoynt had had enough of his fellow-crook Steel. He couldn’t trust him. Or rather he could only trust him in one particular – to keep his word to shoot himself the moment he believed that exposure had come.”

“Briggs had been drugged?”

“Yes – at dinner, so that he wouldn’t by any chance listen, too. And Counterpoynt was tagging along behind to remove his contraption from the radio. He was uncommonly upset when I did the job for him.”

“Cellini’s salt-cellar?” As he sat down opposite Lord Funtington, Appleby showed surprise. “Isn’t that in Vienna?”

“You’re thinking of the big one.” Funtington was impatient. “Ours is much smaller, but the workmanship is quite as good. Cellini made it for Pope Clement VII, as he did many of his finest things. It’s been in my family for quite a long time. The second earl bought it along with some other Medici treasures. You’ll have heard of the Funtington Signorellis and the Funtington Piero.”

Appleby nodded. “Certainly. I’ve seen them in New York.”

Lord Funtington flushed faintly. “No doubt. We’ve been obliged to part, you know, with a number of our things. But we still have the salt-cellar. Or we had it – until last night.”

“It’s been stolen?”

Funtington hesitated. “It’s gone. The matter may be delicate. Discretion is needed, my dear Sir John. That’s why I’m uncommonly glad you have been able to come along yourself.”

“Discretion is something one has to be rather discreet about.” Appleby offered this stonily. “May I have the facts?”

“My wife gave a party last night, and we played – well, some rather childish games. You will understand that only quite intimate friends were present. Not more than eighty guests.”

“I see. A very cosy affair. And the games?”

“The games involved scampering all over the house. And for the last one we turned off the lights. I needn’t bother you with explaining it.”

Appleby nodded. “As to that, I’m quite willing to remain in the dark for the moment. And the salt-cellar?”

“There was rum punch and hot chestnuts going, and we thought it would be rather fun really to use Cellini’s piece. So we stood it beside the chestnuts on a table in the grey drawing-room.”

“I see.” Appleby, who had been making a note, took off his glasses and stared at Lord Funtington very hard. “You asked some eighty people into this house, showed them a pocketable object of enormous value, and then turned out all the lights. Am I to understand that when they came on again it was with immense surprise that you discovered the salt-cellar to have vanished?”

Lord Funtington frowned. “I’m dashed if I quite like your tone. But the thing had certainly gone.”

“What did you do?”

“Just at the moment, I didn’t do anything. Or rather I consulted my wife, and we agreed that nothing could be done. There was an exalted personage present, you see, and also several distinguished foreigners. There was nothing to do but pretend not to notice, and get in touch with the police – with yourself, in fact – afterwards.”

“I suppose you’ve also got in touch with your insurance people?”

“Oh – of course. That goes without saying.”

Appleby nodded grimly. “I’ve no doubt it does.”

“But now I’m uncommonly uneasy.” Lord Funtington hesitated once more, and rather distractedly reached for a silver cigarette-box. “Smoke? I keep on forgetting, since I don’t myself. Now, what was I saying? Ah, yes. The party was only friends, as I’ve said. Or rather friends and relations.”

“Quite so.” Appleby had known investigations drift this way before. “In fact, you believe that one of your own–”

The sentence remained unfinished. For a door had flung open. Lady Funtington, pale and agitated, strode into the room.

She took one glance at the two men, and appeared to divine the situation in a flash. “Charles,” she cried, “you must drop it. The disgrace would be unthinkable. I implore you to send that gentleman away.”

Appleby, who had stood up, smiled faintly at this note of melodrama. “I’m afraid I can’t be sent away, Lady Funtington. Your husband has called in the police, and I think he has communicated to his insurance company what is equivalent to a formal claim. Isn’t that so, sir?”

Funtington, who had also risen, moved uneasily. “My wife is right. I regret this.”

“Perhaps you do.” Appleby spoke softly. “But I am afraid it is your duty to speak what is in your mind.”

Funtington had walked moodily to a window. When he turned round, it was to speak with a sudden unexpected savagery. “Very well. Rupert Stride is in my mind. The name will tell you that he is my first cousin, damn him. And he’s much less my friend than my wife’s. He got back from some crazy wanderings in Italy a week ago, broke to the world. And his record won’t bear–”

“Stop!” Lady Funtington was now looking at her husband in momentary naked fury. Appleby kept still. This sort of fracas also was sadly familiar to him. “It’s mean and horrible. Rupert–”

“No doubt, my dear, you don’t relish inquiry about Rupert.” Lord Funtington gave a smile that Appleby judged extraordinarily ugly. “But one cat is out of the bag, anyway. If your precious friend stole his own mother’s diamonds, it’s surely likely enough that he wouldn’t stop at pocketing a bit of a mere cousin’s plate.”

“But he took the diamonds when he was a mere boy!” Lady Funtington was desperate. “And even if–”

“May I interrupt?” There was something in Appleby’s voice that made the excited husband and wife fall silent at once. “Lord Funtington, you had something to say about discretion. Well, I doubt whether it will be discreet to go on discussing the matter in this way. I have a practical measure to recommend.”

Lord Funtington produced a silk handkerchief and nervously dabbed his forehead. “Then recommend it.”

“I can have half a dozen skilled men here in ten minutes. And I propose that they search this house.”

“Search my house!” Lord Funtington was pale with anger.

“Certainly. It is an indispensable first step on any premises from which an article of value is reported to have vanished.”

“Then search and be damned.”

“Thank you. And may I ask you both to meet me here in three hours time?”

The salt-cellar, Appleby thought, was undoubtedly a magnificent thing. It had been fitted with a glass lining to which some grains of salt still adhered. He turned it in his hands so that the jewels and enamel gleamed again. And then he looked mildly at the Funtingtons across the table. “I’m glad it was so easy,” he said. “To tell you the truth, sir, your dressing-room was the first place I told my men to have a go at.”

Lord Funtington sprang up with a cry. He had every appearance of a man who has received a staggering shock. “How dare you, sir! This is a monstrous impertinence…a disgraceful trick.”

“It may certainly be the latter.” Appleby tapped the glittering salt-cellar before him. “It’s easier to play tricks with – isn’t it? – than a Piero or a Signorelli.” Appleby turned to Lady Funtington. “I am afraid that this must be very painful to you. And I am also afraid that we are not yet quite at the bottom of it. Do you know what I have here?” He picked up a small object from the table and held it out before him. “I found it wedged between the glass and the gold.”

Lady Funtington leaned forward, bewildered. “It appears to be a match – a sort of wax match. But an unusually small one.”

“Precisely. And it brings Mr Rupert Stride into the picture, after all. This sort of smoker’s match is far smaller than anything you get in England. It comes, in fact, from Italy, where it is called
cerino
. And from Italy Mr Stride returned only last week. I don’t think he gave these matches to your husband, for Lord Funtington doesn’t smoke… Ah, here is what I have been waiting for.” Appleby paused as a constable entered and placed a black garment on the table before him. “The gentleman didn’t object, Joyce?”

“No, sir – said you were welcome. Amused, he seemed to be.”

“Thank you.” Appleby waited until the man had gone. “Mr Stride’s dinner-jacket.” He turned the right-hand pocket inside out. “I thought so. Salt.”

Lady Funtington stared at the tiny white pile. “You mean that Rupert really–?”

“Yes, Lady Funtington. He pocketed the salt-cellar. But he did so guessing that it had been a temptation which Lord Funtington deliberately set in the way of his old weakness. Into the motive of that, we needn’t enter. Mr Stride then made his way through the house under cover of darkness, and left the salt-cellar where Lord Funtington would have some difficulty in accounting for its turning up. It would look, in fact, as if your husband were doing his own thieving with an eye to defrauding his insurance company.”

Appleby rose. “Neither gentleman can be said to have behaved well. But I must say that I prefer the reprisal to the original blackguardly plot.”

“You say that this is a serious loss?” Appleby took a swift glance round the laboratory, lavishly equipped with apparatus that was wholly mysterious to him. The door of the strongroom at the far end was still open. Holiday, the Director, was standing beside a table on which stood a telephone, much as if he had not moved since sending Appleby his urgent summons. Holiday’s assistant, a young man called Sambrook, was half perched on a bench, staring at his chief in sombre consternation.

“A very serious loss indeed.” Holiday was silent for a moment. “It’s Nicolson’s improved epsilon valve. Clean vanished.”

“I see.” Appleby was not, in fact, very confident that great light had come to him. “Is it a bulky affair?”

Sharply and unexpectedly, the intent young man called Sambrook laughed. “Before Tim Nicolson went off on his trip to Washington,” he said, “he lodged the valve in the strongroom there. It was like a pigeon’s egg snugly tucked up in cotton-wool by a small boy. And its container was simply a tin out of which Tim had tipped a hundred cigarettes. Tim sealed it up, of course, and that was that. We don’t go in for much window-dressing here. We just get on with the job. We were going to do that tonight, the Director and myself. And now this damnable discovery has interrupted us.”