Free Silence Observed by Michael Innes

rapidly, and became aware of the open door of this shop. He paused, and there was a perceptible fume.”
    “A what?”
    “A smell of gunpowder, sir, if one may speak very roughly. One can’t fire a pistol without a bit of stink.”
    “True enough. And then?”
    “He entered, and found Mr Heffer here.”
    “I see. And what was Mr Heffer doing?”
    “According to the constable, sir, he was standing directly behind the dead man, with a revolver held in his right hand.”
    “And what was Mr Heffer doing according to Mr Heffer?”
    “Just that, Sir John. There is no conflict of testimony at that particular point.”
    “That’s something, I suppose.” Appleby turned to the young man. “You confirm that, Mr Heffer?”
    “Certainly I do. I’d picked up this revolver, or whatever it was. But I hadn’t yet really looked at it. I was looking, you see, at the old woman. Or rather, at where the old woman had been.”
    “Or rather at that , all right,” Parker said grimly. “For there was certainly no old woman when the constable entered the shop.”

 
     
6
    Appleby had lit a pipe. He had tapped an open packet of cigarettes which the sweating sergeant had inefficiently failed to conceal – with the result that the sergeant, in a great awe, obediently took out a cigarette and lit it.
    “Excellent,” Appleby said. “Now we’re really making progress. As only Mr Heffer saw the old woman, only Mr Heffer can tell us about her. Mr Heffer, go ahead.”
    “What’s that?” Heffer had started – so that Appleby received the momentary impression that the young man hadn’t been listening. Indeed, it was almost as if he had been listening for something else. “Oh, the old woman. Well, it was pretty queer.”
    “A number of things seem to me to be that, Mr Heffer. For instance, it isn’t clear to me why we are all holding a sort of vigil in this not very comfortable shop.”
    “Entirely Mr Heffer’s affair, sir,” Parker interrupted. “I invited him to come to a police station and give his account of the matter there. But he refused to budge, unless put under arrest. And I have regarded that as – um – premature. So Mr Heffer has insisted, you may say, on staying put – and on being most uncommunicative as well.”
    “A sort of sit-down strike?”
    “Well, at least a trial of patience, sir. But perhaps we are going to hear something now.”
    “Quite so – about this old woman. But first, Mr Heffer, could you put yourself to the trouble of telling us why you came into this shop at all?”
    “Why I came in? Oh, just to look round.”
    “At just after six o’clock? You knew it would be open?”
    “I just hadn’t thought about it. I wasn’t making a special journey, you know. Just passing.”
    “Where from, and where to?”
    “Where from?” Again Heffer’s attention appeared to have strayed. “I was coming from the BM, where I’d been doing a bit of reading. And I was going back to my flat, to change and go out to dinner with your wife and yourself. Odd, isn’t it? Here we are in quite a different relationship.”
    “Do you commonly spend your holidays in the BM?”
    “Holidays?” Heffer was startled.
    “I think it’s a fact that, quite recently, you made rather an abrupt decision to begin a holiday due to you? But we might have a little conversation about that later. You came into this shop to look round. Had you ever done that before?”
    “Dear me, yes. Often enough.”
    “I see. Well, was there anybody else in the street – anybody who might have entered the shop a minute before you?”
    “I really can’t say. I can’t say, at all. I wasn’t looking or thinking, you know.”
    “Did you hear a shot?”
    “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I didn’t. I can’t have been listening either.”
    “Very well, Mr Heffer. You entered the shop. What then?”
    “There was this old woman. She was standing looking at Trechmann, who had been shot through the back of the head.”
    “Did