He held another, much older painting, although its surface was so dark and dirty that from a distance it was difficult to make out its subject matter.
“Yes, I’d say Italian Renaissance,” said Davison, bringing the little painting closer to him so that he could study its detail. “Probably Venetian.”
“How extraordinary,” said Phillips. “I don’t know how that can have got inside.”
“It’s a Crucifixion scene,” continued Davison. “It needs a good clean, but it’s a beautiful composition. The figures seem to loom out of the darkness, and there’s a mysterious quality about it, too.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your lesson in art history,” said the inspector, “but what has this to do with the murders?”
Davison turned to me. “Perhaps you’d like to continue, Mrs. Christie?”
“Very well,” I said. “It’s time to tell you all the names of the murderers of Robin Kinmuir, Mrs. Veronica Kinmuir, and Simkins the butler… They are Mr. Rufus Phillips and Mr. James Kinmuir.”
FORTY-FOUR
“Didn’t I tell you that it was him,” said Mrs. Buchanan, pointing at James Kinmuir. “Right from the beginning. But nobody listened.”
“You must be out of your mind!” exclaimed James Kinmuir.
“Utter nonsense,” said Rufus Phillips. “And you haven’t got a shred of evidence to support such a ridiculous accusation.”
“But there, you see, you’re wrong,” I said. “First of all, though, I must finish the story of the rhyme, because I believe that’s where the idea for the murder plot started.”
“Murder based on an old nursery rhyme—it’s preposterous!” said James Kinmuir. “Really, Mrs. Christie, I think you’re going the way of old Auntie.”
“You can’t dismiss me that easily, young man,” I said, feeling anger rising within me. “And don’t take the name of your great-aunt in vain. You should be utterly ashamed of what you did to her.” I took a deep breath, turned away from the two men, and continued. “Now, back to the rhyme. I suppose it must have started as a game between the two young friends, calling Robin Kinmuir ‘Cock Robin’ behind his back and that sort of thing. After all, Robin Kinmuir had dyed his hair a rather garish shade of red. Perhaps the two friends also talked about how he resembled a red grouse. It was all very innocent if not very polite banter, the kind indulged in by young men such as these.
“But then one day, when Rufus Phillips was visiting Dallach Lodge, he noticed one of the grime-covered paintings on the upstairs landing. Something about this little oil panel caught his eye. He turned it over and, yes, the inscription gave him an idea. No doubt we’ll come back to that. Of course, I should have picked up on the clues much earlier—especially after I saw this portrait that Mr. Phillips painted of Robin Kinmuir with his eyes missing. Robin Kinmuir was blind to what was before him; he had no knowledge of the provenance of the old Crucifixion scene. I remember him saying that he did not have an eye for art. The painting was hiding in plain sight, you see. However, James knew that his uncle had a photographic memory, and the two young men had to be careful. If he or Rufus had simply removed the painting, then it might have alerted Robin Kinmuir to the nature—and value—of the work of art. And so they began to hatch a plan.”
“Honestly, you should hear yourself, Mrs. Christie,” said James Kinmuir. “I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve used the words ‘perhaps’ and ‘guess.’ This really is beyond belief.”
“You didn’t have time to wait for your uncle to die: the doctor here pronounced him in good health. He could live for years,” I said, making an effort to keep my voice strong. “But you wanted the money now. There was a problem, however: if Robin Kinmuir was murdered, and the painting was identified as being the work of one of the great artists of the Renaissance, the finger of suspicion would point at you, Mr. Kinmuir, because you were his heir.
“In addition, you were the only person close enough to your uncle who knew something of his dalliances and shady business deals. No doubt over the years he had entertained you with tales of his conquests, both in the bedroom and in the world of business. And when you related those stories to Rufus Phillips, you came up with a scheme to entice his enemies to the lodge with the promise of watching him suffer. Oh, yes, it was a long time in the planning, but the rewards were high. And so you wrote letters to Simon Peterson, Vivienne Passerini, and the Frith-Stratton sisters inviting them to stay. You needed a number of suspects. To invite simply one stranger with a past grudge would have been too conspicuous. How you must have laughed when you realized that the Latin root of Miss Passerini’s surname was passer—sparrow. She was the sparrow of the rhyme and, in your plan, she would be the one who would be framed for killing poor Cock Robin, your uncle, on the first day of the grouse season, the twelfth of August. Oh, the Glorious Twelfth—what an irony! It was almost too perfect for words.”
“If nothing else, I do admire your imagination, Mrs. Christie,” said Rufus Phillips. “But that’s all this is… pure invention.”
I ignored him and carried on. “Of course, I did have to ask myself: If Vivienne Passerini was the sparrow of the rhyme—the real killer of Robin—would she really give herself away by virtue of her surname? I suppose you thought that the rhyme would serve as some sort of admission of guilt, the confession of someone who was clearly insane. And you would have enjoyed seeing Miss Passerini suffer as she protested her innocence. But that was your cruel streak at work—or, rather, I should say the combination of both of your twisted personalities. I wonder, if you had never met, whether either of you would have gone on to commit murder. But what is certain is that together you were lethal.”
“Have you quite finished?” asked James Kinmuir, looking at me with disdain.
“No… no, I haven’t,” I said. “We need to look at each of the deaths in turn. In fairness to you both, as I said, I believe you intended to commit only one murder: that of Robin Kinmuir. Your plan was a thorough and a detailed one in which you would confess to the murder before being cleared of it. You warned Mr. Kinmuir of his imminent demise in a series of anonymous letters, another symptom of your sadistic natures.
“The arrival of Mr. Davison and myself at Dallach Lodge must have unsettled you, especially when Mr. Davison took it upon himself to sleep in a camp bed in Robin Kinmuir’s dressing room. But of course you realized that it would be impossible for Mr. Davison to watch your uncle every minute of the day, especially when he was bathing and so on. At some point you managed to slip into your uncle’s room and smear the curare on his razor, knowing that he had already been bothered by a midge bite on his throat.
“You also knew that each morning he took a walk with his beloved dogs. They were a key to the murder, one you didn’t think anyone would pick up on. That morning—the morning of Mr. Kinmuir’s death—I paid a visit to see the cook, Mrs. Baillie, who told me that James Kinmuir had recently got into the habit of taking sausages away with him from breakfast. I remember too how you fed the dogs straight from the table. I think that morning you left a trail of sausage meat across the moor, knowing that would lead the dogs and, in turn, Mr. Kinmuir towards you. As your uncle ran after the Labradors, you shot him, but you were careful not to kill him. What did you do then? After all, you didn’t know exactly how long it would be before the curare began to take effect. Did you go over and stand there by your uncle and wait for him to die? Did you look into his eyes as he took his last breath?”
“I hope you’re writing all this down, Inspector, as I intend to bring a case of slander against this woman,” said James Kinmuir. “The next time I see you, Mrs. Christie, will be in court. Come on, Rufus. We’re leaving.”
“I’ve taken it all down, Mr. Kinmuir, and neither you nor Mr. Phillips are going anywhere,” said Hawkins. “Now, carry on, Mrs. Christie.”
“Thank you, Inspector,” I said. “The next murder was that of old Mrs. Kinmuir on the eighteenth of August, and as I said, that was unforgivable. You had to kill her be
cause of something she told me during my chat with her. The following day, on the nineteenth of August, one of you—I’m not sure whether it was you, Mr. Phillips, or you, Mr. Kinmuir—made an attempt on my life up by the old derelict castle. You were worried that I was getting too close to finding out the truth and so you tried to silence me by hurling a rock down on my head. Luckily, I managed to jump out of the way and I was found by Mr. Peterson.
“And now to your final murder: that of Simkins, who was blackmailing you, I believe because he had seen you enter Robin Kinmuir’s room and tamper with his razor. You were running out of time—you knew Mr. Glenelg and his men were coming to take the inventory of the house—and so you did something desperate. In order to fake Simkins’s suicide note, you stole what you believed to be a sample of his handwriting from his room. Your first mistake was not to double-check that it was his writing. The second was to forge the handwriting you found so accurately that even its creator—myself—could scarcely tell the difference between the original sample and the forged copy. You see, those pages were from my notebook, pages which Simkins had ripped from it. Only an artist of the first order—someone like you, Mr. Phillips—could execute such a forgery. No doubt you employed the same artistic skills when it came to forging Miss Passerini’s passport, which seemed to show that she had recently visited South America. Talking of South America, I believe one of you must have visited that continent recently in order to purchase the curare. My guess is that it was you, Mr. Phillips. On your return I think you cut out the pages in your passport and then, very cleverly, you spliced them into Miss Passerini’s documents.”
I looked at Rufus Phillips, whose eyes now blazed with hatred. “But none of this is proof, it’s just… just conjecture,” he said.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But what Mr. Davison saw last night certainly isn’t. In fact, what he witnessed proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are both guilty.”
“You see, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Kinmuir, unbeknownst to you, I saw you take this small picture down from the wall and replace it with another,” said Davison. “I followed you up to the studio room in the attic, where I overheard you talking about your plan. There you untacked the back of the portrait of Robin Kinmuir, slipped the panel inside, and tacked up the cover again. I even overheard you name the artist—Giorgione—and boast about the value of—”
But before Davison could finish his sentence, Rufus Phillips grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me towards him, forcing me to drop my handbag. In a flash, he whipped out a razor from his pocket, opened it, and positioned the blade an inch away from my throat. Davison and Inspector Hawkins rushed towards him, the inspector brandishing his gun, but Phillips threatened to press the sharp metal edge hard against my skin. The taste of fear soured my mouth.
“Step away,” said Phillips. “All of you, get away from me.”
“Rufus, stop!” shouted James Kinmuir. “Don’t you see they haven’t got anything on us? They’re bluffing!”
Panic overcame Rufus Phillips, and he looked like an animal that had been hunted and cornered. He realized that his actions had betrayed him—that he had reached the point of no return. “The blade is covered in curare,” he said, spitting the words out. “One cut, even if it’s not a deep one, will be fatal.”
“Phillips, put that razor down now!” ordered Hawkins, aiming his gun directly at him.
At this moment, two uniformed officers stormed into the room.
“Tell them to get out now!” shouted Phillips. “If they don’t, she’s a dead woman.”
Hawkins gestured for the men to leave.
“And I’ll only put it down when I’m outside the house, in a car, with that painting by my side,” said Phillips. “If you shoot, I will make sure I cut deep into Mrs. Christie’s skin, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Don’t be so damned stupid, Rufus,” said James Kinmuir. “Can’t you see? It’s over now.”
“No it’s not!” Phillips protested as droplets of spittle exploded from his mouth. “It can’t be—not after everything we’ve put into it. After all I’ve done. I can’t go back to that life, painting portraits of the rich and grand for next to nothing. Constantly having an empty stomach, living in a cold, damp attic. The artistic life is all very well, but when you’re not born with money, it’s no fun. But what’s the point of it all if we don’t take the painting, James?”
“It’s too late now. Can’t you see that?” insisted his friend.
Phillips bent my arm backwards, sending an icicle of pain stabbing through my shoulder blades.
“I wish I’d killed her up there by the castle,” Phillips said. So it had been him… “Davison, give me that painting,” he demanded. “Now!”
Davison looked at the Renaissance panel in his hand for a moment, almost as if he were trying to see beneath the dark surface to its hidden beauty before he gently reached out and allowed Phillips to snatch it from him.
“You go first, James,” Phillips told his friend. “Just walk out of the door. If your car is not ready to drive, then we can take one of the others, or a van.”
James Kinmuir looked at Rufus as though his friend were speaking a foreign tongue and remained fixed to the spot, unsure about what to do.
“If any of you try to stop me or James from leaving the house, then I will not hesitate to use this on you,” said Phillips as he held up the razor in the air.
The sight of the blade, its deadly silver sheen reflecting the flames of the fire, brought me to my senses. I realized that since Phillips had grabbed me I had fallen into a state of shock, unable to respond in any way. I felt weak and nauseous, but if I didn’t do something, I had no doubt that Phillips would kill me.
I readied myself for action.
“You do know that the painting’s a fake, don’t you?” I said. “Your friend James here substituted the real work for this forgery soon after we arrived at the house.”
The words hit Phillips like a bullet. His face drained of color and he looked like he was going to collapse.
“I d-don’t believe you,” he said.
“Don’t listen to her, Rufus; she’s lying,” said James Kinmuir.
“I’m afraid Mrs. Christie is right,” said Davison. “The real Giorgione is stashed upstairs, hidden away in James Kinmuir’s bedroom. So you see, everything you’ve done—the murders of Robin Kinmuir, of old Mrs. Kinmuir, of Simkins—has been for nothing.”
“It’s not true,” said Kinmuir. “You just said that—”
“It’s a very good copy, though, isn’t it,” said Davison. “And clever of you to spot the original, Mr. Phillips. I congratulate you: you must have quite an eye. No doubt you thought that your plan would net you hundreds of thousands of pounds. You told everyone here that after leaving Dallach Lodge you planned to travel to Italy, and I suppose you thought of taking this small panel with you and selling it to a wealthy collector. Neither of you would ever need to work again. Both of you would be rich beyond your wildest dreams, even after the substantial debts on Dallach Lodge had been paid off. After all, there are so few genuine Giorgiones in existence. But you didn’t count on your friend here betraying you.”
“They’re making all this up, Rufus,” said Kinmuir. “Surely you can see that. They’ve already contradicted themselves when they said that—”
“So your dreams of a better life are over now,” said Davison. “It’s time to put the razor down and release Mrs. Christie.”
“That’s right, Phillips,” said the inspector, jabbing his gun in the direction of the artist once more. “There’s nothing left for you now: you need to give yourself up.”
“I would never do that to you, Rufus; you must know that,” James Kinmuir assured him. “They’re trying to set us against one another.”
I felt the artist’s quickened breath on my neck and could discern the acrid smell of fear emanating from his skin. People behaved unpredictably in such a state. There was no telling how he might react. And perhaps he didn’
t know himself.
What he did now would make the difference between life and death, his and my own. A quick slash with the razor and my existence would be snuffed out. I thought of how much I had risked to bring the killers to justice. I thought of the possibility of not seeing my daughter, Rosalind, again. My chance of happiness with Max—the man who was due to be my husband—would disappear. And I would be no more. My memories, my experiences, all gone. And what would I leave behind? A few novels and a clutch of entertaining short stories. People might talk fondly of me for a while, but then I would slip away from their minds, melting into the mists of the past.
No, I was not ready for that.
In my handbag at my feet there was something that I could use to drug Phillips. But would I be able to reach the bag, open it, and inject him with the drug before he took a quick swipe at me with the blade? I knew the chances of my survival were low, but I had to fight back. What other option did I have? I took a deep breath and was about to launch myself forwards when I felt Phillips’s grip on me loosen. I turned my head to see his eyes full of fury, pure and black.
“It was my idea!” shouted Phillips at his friend. “Without me you wouldn’t have known about the Giorgione. There was only one person in this house who knew, and that was the old lady.”
“Calm down, Rufus,” said Kinmuir. “I told you, it’s not true. You can go and search my bedroom if you like. That’s the original oil there, the one you’re holding. And how would I have got hold of such a perfect copy?”
But Phillips could not see the logic behind such a statement. “You said that we would never have to worry again—that we could live out the rest of our lives in style,” said Phillips. “And there you were, planning to double-cross me from the beginning.” He laughed then, a harsh, sardonic laugh that brought tears to his eyes. “To think… I actually thought you were the nicer one of us. The mild-mannered schoolmaster whose family had fallen on hard times. A handsome chap, if a little on the dim side. You were amazed when I told you the name of the artist who painted this.” He held up the panel. “To you it was simply one of those little pictures that clutter the upstairs landing. Nothing special. You didn’t realize it had been painted by the Venetian master Giorgione and could be worth—well, it was priceless. And then, when I came up with the plan to kill your uncle, you said that I was a genius. But in truth I was being manipulated from day one.” The anger that had clouded his face cleared, and in just a few brief moments he looked at his friend with a range of emotions that veered from longing to regret through pain and disappointment. “Well, who’s the fool now?”
I Saw Him Die Page 30