For the Falconers, who lived in Mayfair, it was a very different kind of evening. Christine Falconer, the only child, wondered whether she alone among the four present realized what kind of life they led, how unbelievably artificial it was. At certain times, she had a feeling that her mother was living under a great strain and somehow putting on an act; at others, she felt almost despairingly that her mother had become a kind of automaton, switched on as it were to defer exclusively to her husband’s wishes.
Christine thought, looking down the long, highly polished Sheraton table at her mother, How can anyone so beautiful be so empty of emotions?
And she thought, looking toward the other end of the table at her father - in his high-backed chair, the arms of which always seemed a little too high so that he was continually knocking his elbows - How can anyone be so rich and so stupid?
Opposite her, his face softened by the candlelight from two big silver candelabra, sat Frederick Charles Stuart Oliphant, whom everyone knew as Oily. He had been virtually one of the family since she was quite tiny; she could not remember the great house without him. She had accepted him without thinking for so long that when at last her mind had opened to doubts and uncertainties about him and she had started to revalue her attitudes, it had been difficult to see him differently. He was now in his middle fifties, a little older than her father, and, of course, to her he had always seemed old. He was balding, with a round, pale face and a small rosebud of a mouth. She could never remember him being out of temper or ruffled or excited. He was the secretary, confidant, and friend of her father, and she knew that he was regarded as one of the great art experts of the world.
Davies, the butler, came in silently and offered more of the delicious apricot-and-peach flan, more of the rich Jersey cream: but no one wanted a second helping.
“We will have coffee in the drawing room,” her father said.
“Very good, sir.”
It was like a record player.
“Come along, dear,” her mother called, as she had from the days when Christine had first been allowed to join them at the dinner table.
Oily moved and pulled her mother’s chair back. Davies placed the port in front of his master. The candlelight made a cage of the dining table and the silver and the dishes, holding the gaze at eye level; now, above the glow, the pictures showed, each discreetly lit, each a portrait, each an Old Master, and each priceless. Christine stood up, feeling an almost overwhelming temptation to pick up a knife and hurl it at the nearest solemn face; instead, she turned away from the table and followed her mother out the door, at which Davies was standing, tall and stately and, like all of them, not quite real. She thought the whole nightly performance was like a charade in which the first prize went to whichever performer could show least expression.
They went out of the dining room into the hall.
Here were the landscapes: Gainsborough, Constable, Turner - paintings of rich beauty and great value. And here were the sculptures and the busts; it seemed to her as her mother walked past them that the marble and the granite, the bronze and the alabaster, were so much more real than the people who lived in her home.
“Mother,” she said as they reached the open door of the drawing room.
“Yes, dear?”
“Mother, I’ve a headache. Do you mind if I go up to my room?”
“Your father will be very disappointed, Christine.”
“Tell him I’m sorry, won’t you?”
They stood facing each other for a few moments, and this was one of the rare occasions when Christine felt that the woman, not the automaton, was in front of her. Even then she was aware of the Dresden china perfection of her mother’s skin, the brilliance of her eyes, all the subtlety of makeup, the elegant simplicity of the Balenciaga dress, the small diamond pin on her shoulder. The woman receded, the automaton, the work of art, taking her place, and a new thought crossed Christine’s mind: that her mother had been made for her father, or else he had searched for her as he searched for every other rare piece in his collection.
“Christine, dear,” her mother said. “You’re not going out, are you?”
“I might—I might go out for a breath of fresh air.”
“You haven’t made any plans to see anybody?”
“No,” Christine said. “But is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“Well, you know, my dear, your father doesn’t like some of the young people with whom you have been associating recently,” her mother said. “I am sure you would be very wise not to see them or anyone else surreptitiously. You know how your father likes to have everything out in the open, don’t you, dear?”
“Do you mean he’s been—” Christine began, in sudden white heat of temper, but somehow she bit back the words “spying on me” and turned and hurried away. She felt in a turmoil, at the point of revolt against a life which was becoming increasingly intolerable.
She ran up the curving staircase, past recesses and alcoves in which stood vases and goblets, some of them chased gold and silver, some of the others jewel encrusted: The Italian (mostly Cellini), the French, and the Spanish; a little farther up, where the stairs rounded, the Chinese of old dynasties were represented with vases and jade figures dug from ancient tombs. And on the landing were rare objets d’art from South America, from Russia, from Mexico. Every single piece was unique, every single piece of rare value.
She went hurrying by, oblivious of everything.
She turned in to her own suite, with a dressing room on one side and a bathroom on the other, all Regency, all beautiful, and hers. When she shut the door, she could at least shut the rest of the house off, the artificiality, the lifelessness.
My God! she thought. He’s been having me watched. He’s actually been spying on me!
She stood in the middle of the bedroom, feeling almost numbed. After what seemed a long time, she muttered, “I’ve got to get away! I simply must!”
Downstairs, her father and Oliphant went into the drawing room, where her mother sat looking at a television set. Coffee was on a low table in front of a long couch. Newspapers and magazines in great variety were in racks by each seat and chair.
“Oh, hallo, my dear” said Falconer. “Where’s Christine?”
“She has a headache, Richard, and has gone to her room.”
“Indeed? She didn’t complain of a headache at dinner.”
“I thought she looked a little unwell,” remarked Oliphant.
“She is probably planning to go and see her friends. That should make her feel unwell,” Falconer said coldly. “Have you the report for me on her friends, Oily?”
“On seven of them,” Oliphant answered.
“Are they satisfactory?”
“Those seven? Wholly.”
“What of the others?”
“Well, there is a young man named Judd. She sees a good deal of him,” Oliphant said. “But I know very little about him - only that he has a small antique shop in Hampstead and appears to be doing well.”
“Indeed,” said Falconer heavily.
Oliphant gave a small, almost plummy smile.
“I shouldn’t assume that he is using Christine in the hope of doing business with you,” he said.
“That is exactly what I fear he may be doing. Have you tried to find out his background?”
“Yes,” said Oliphant.
“It’s not like you to admit failure.”
“I haven’t admitted failure yet,” Oliphant retorted. “I have asked Alec Hobbs if he can make some inquiries, and he will be in touch with me tomorrow.”
Falconer nodded, seeming reasonably well satisfied.
“How is Alec?” asked Charlotte Falconer, as if hoping to change the subject. “He was so distressed by poor Helen’s death. I really wondered whether he would ever get over it.” After a pause, and while she poured coffee, she went on: “I could never understand why Alec elected to become a policeman.”
“Some people would call him a detective,” Oliphant replied.
“Is there any difference?” asked Charlotte indifferently, looking at her husband. “Richard, will you have brandy or a liqueur?”
“Brandy,” answered her husband. “Brandy.”
Deputy Commander Alex Hobbs, Gideon’s deputy and chief assistant at Scotland Yard, sat back in an easy chair reading an American police manual, storing much of what he read in his card-index file of a mind, and half listening to Swan Lake on a stereo record player. He could hear cars passing along the Embankment in front of Ayling Crescent, and now and again a heavy lorry changed gear as it turned to go over Chelsea Bridge. Very occasionally a tug or a lighter hooted on the river.
There had been a time, even as recently as six or seven months before, when he would have been troubled and restless, still fighting the loneliness which had followed the death of his wife. During her long illness, they had lived in a flat not a quarter of a mile away, overlooking the same stretch of river, and her last awareness, as she lay propped up on pillows in a bed close to the window, had been of the river. When she died, Hobbs’s immediate inclination had been to get completely away from this all too familiar part of London but eventually he had settled on a small suite of rooms in a modern block of flats in Chelsea. Pleasantly though somewhat severely furnished, it provided excellent service; he had nothing to worry about but getting his evening meal; and he could, whenever so minded, leave the washing up to the maid in the morning.
He would have given up, almost certainly, but for the slow growing of his interest in Gideon’s daughter
Penelope. He was falling in love with her; and the Gideons knew it. But Penelope was so young, and so full of enthusiasm for younger men...
He finished a chapter and put the book down, yawned and stretched, then looked at the brandy and the empty glass on a wine table by his side. Suddenly he placed his hands on the arms of his chair and sprang up, a very fit, very lean man of forty-five, dark-haired, handsome in an almost artificial way.
He turned to the window.
Here again he had forced himself to overcome an impulse to draw the curtains every night. Helen had liked them open, and when she held been well - and even during her illness when she had been able to stand - they had often put the lights out and gone to look at the view, the Embankment and the bridges, the luminosity of the smoke pouring out of the squat chimney stacks of the Battersea Power Station, the coloured lights of the Fun Fair at Battersea Park, the slow, smooth-moving lights on the river craft. The view hadn’t changed. The awareness of being alone strengthened noticeably, and he made himself stand rigidly there.
Slowly, remembered grief and present tension eased, and he relaxed.
As he did so, his telephone bell rang.
Moving toward the table where the telephone stood, within hand’s reach of his chair, he glanced at a clock standing on a bookcase which lined one wall to waist height. It was quarter to ten, late for a call from the Yard unless it was an emergency. He picked up the receiver.
“Alex Hobbs speaking.”
“Good evening, sir,” a man said, with a slight North Country accent which Hobbs immediately recognized. “Thwaites here, sir - sorry to bother you so late.”
Whatever else, this was no emergency.
“That’s all right,” Hobbs said. “What is it?”
“You asked me to make inquiries about a Lancelot Judd, an antique dealer of Hampstead.”
“Yes,” said Hobbs.
“I would like to discuss the situation with you, sir.”
“Tonight?”
“I have a full day planned tomorrow, and to do it then I’d have to put off several cases, but of course if you—”
“All right, Thwaites,” Hobbs interrupted. “Come to me here, will you? Have you eaten?”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
“Good,” Hobbs said. “Where are you now?”
“In Hampstead Village, sir. I’ll be about half an hour.”
“Right,” Hobbs said. “Have you been here before?”
“No, but I know where your flat is, sir.”
“Press my downstairs bell and take the lift to the fifth floor,” Hobbs told him. “I’ll be at the flat door to meet you.”
He put down the receiver and stepped back to the window. In some ways a more incisive man than Gideon, he had acquired a surprising number of Gideon’s methods and Gideon’s attitudes. In fact, although they came from vastly different backgrounds, they thought in much the same way. That was why Gideon had recommended Hobbs as his deputy. Hobbs, one of the public-school policemen, came of a family which had been both rich and esteemed three hundred years ago. He had been to Repton and King’s College, Cambridge, and while some thought him aloof, even snobbish, all agreed that he was a first class policeman. Now he thought over everything he had told Thwaites to do and what he knew of the Chief Inspector. Thwaites had had a North Country upbringing, followed by twenty years at the Yard; at forty-four or five, he was a rather untidy, comfortable looking man, who had acquired a love and deep knowledge of antiques.
“Always liked to poke around second hand shops when I was a boy, sir.”
And he still enjoyed poking around, Hobbs believed; even when he was inquiring into an art theft, looking for stolen goods, getting information about others to be shipped out of the country, Thwaites enjoyed touching, looking at, and assessing the value of every kind of antique, painting, and objet d’art.
Also he was a dedicated policeman.
It was disturbing that he wanted to talk about Judd, for it suggested that all was not straightforward. Was it possible that Lord Falconer’s daughter was involved with a suspicious character?