Silence Observed by Michael Innes Page B

spectacle – he was to reflect afterwards – must have been an odd one: a dampish person, formally dressed and carrying a certain professional authority, competing with a dog and a number of cats in the hopeful inspection of these humble but necessary utensils. And now he tilted the thing over to get a better light in its interior. He saw that it wasn’t absolutely empty, after all. An irregular scrap of white paper – no more than an inch square – adhered to the bottom of the bin. He reached in, fished this out, and turned it over. He was looking at a representation of a human eye. More than this – he was looking at a familiar representation of a human eye.
    It didn’t make sense. Or, at least, at first it didn’t do so. The eye wasn’t even a whole eye, but only part of one. What there was of it was in colour – very much in colour. For a moment Appleby supposed that it might be from the cover of a magazine. But no pin-up girl ever had that eye. Nor was it likely that an eye from such a source would strike him with this mysterious sense of familiarity.
    On second thoughts, there was only one explanation of it. What he had found was a scrap torn from a coloured reproduction of some painting with which he was acquainted. One more square inch, and he would probably be able to identify it. Once more he looked carefully in the bin – and carefully over the whole area round it. But a second square inch wasn’t there. Of course – he reflected, as he made his way back to Trechmann’s shop – an expert would probably know. Gulliver would know. He’d ask Gulliver.
     
    “Sir Gabriel Gulliver, sir.”
    Henry James, pale with excitement, had got this out on top of something incoherent that Appleby hadn’t caught.
    “Gulliver?” Appleby was shaking the rain from his overcoat. “What about him, man?”
    “A telephone message from the Yard, sir. In his private office at the gallery. And would you go at once.”
    Appleby stared in dawning comprehension.
    “You mean–?”
    “Dead, sir. Shot through the back of the head.”

 
     
9
    At the top of the broad shallow steps, sheltered from the rain by the great portico, Inspector Parker stood with an elaborate air of negligence. When Appleby approached, he turned and walked ahead. Parker was much given to such harmless manoeuvres. At the moment, he was busy not attracting the attention of the Press – supposing the Press to be about. Gulliver’s death – if it really was his death – had presumably not yet been made public.
    People were buying catalogues, postcards, colour prints. People were giving up umbrellas and macintoshes. A mob of school children were being issued with little camp stools which they would presently trail in the wake of a peripatetic lecturer. Meanwhile, they were staring in awe at the vast expanses of marble around them – all except one small and clearly obnoxious boy with spots. He had discovered that the marble was merely painted on, and he was drawing the attention of a companion to this satisfactory discovery. In recesses of the building beyond these, and upon benches very comfortably upholstered at the cost of the nation, sundry citizens dozed, cuddled, toiled at crossword puzzles or lunched off slabs of chocolate and bananas. Parker, ignoring all this artistic fervour, led the way down into a kind of splendiferous and gigantic basement.
    “Dead?” Appleby asked, when he judged that a sufficient degree of seclusion had been attained.
    “Oh, yes – oh, dear me, yes.” Parker spoke with gloomy satisfaction. “Instantaneous. Absolutely instantaneous. And precisely as last night, you know. Bang through the back of the head as he sat at his desk.”
    “But I don’t think Gulliver had the same bald patch. So not precisely the same sort of target.”
    “Well, no.” Parker seemed doubtful whether to consider this reservation on Appleby’s part frivolous. “But two identical crimes like this aren’t comfortable, sir. Not within