Henry Dane got up from his desk and went to the window and rubbed his forefinger along his furrowed cheek.
‘‘Well, go on. I’m all attention now.”
I said: ‘‘ It seems to me to be an insurance fraud, but I’ve no real proof of it yet; and so far it’s a very modest one. In any case there are reasons at present why I don’t want to come out into the open. I thought if anyone could advise me … Nobody’s had more experience than you, as the solicitor with the sort of record——’’
‘‘All right. Skip the compliments.”
I told him then what I knew and what I suspected. I changed one or two of the facts about and gave no names, so that he couldn’t have any idea whom I was really talking of.
He sat on the window-sill and filled his pipe, ramming down the tobacco with the cap end of a .303 bullet that he always carried.
‘‘Man in any sort of financial trouble?’’
‘‘It’s hard to find out. Griggs Agency have nothing to report on him. He’s always lived as a private gentleman. He was badly hit by death duties a few years ago.”
‘‘Wife in the fraud, d’you think?’’
‘‘… Yes.”
‘‘Mother?’’
‘‘No, I’m almost certain not.”
‘‘Can you lay your hands on this first picture?’’
‘‘Yes, But I’ve asked about the artist, and I don’t think it would be possible to prove that he didn’t paint two pictures of the same scene. I’m told it was done sometimes.”
‘‘Then you may be mistaken about the fraud.”
‘‘… There are other things.”
‘‘You assessed the damage after the first fire?’’
‘‘Yes.”
‘‘And you think they’re planning to do the same sort of thing again’’
‘‘Sooner or later.”
‘‘And that they’ve made a friend of you …?’’
‘‘Yes, to make things easier for them when the time comes. I remember the man, only the second or third time we met, asking who chose the adjuster to be employed on a case. In fact often we’ve talked about insurance, and I’ve told him what I knew. The wife as well.…”
‘‘These other pictures …”
‘‘That’s what I was wondering about. This next week I could lay my hands on them, more or less at leisure. D’you know any way of telling an old master from a cheap copy—any, so to speak, general rules?’’
He blew out a smoky breath. ‘‘Some fakes are so good they cheat the experts.”
‘‘But I don’t think these would be all that good. They’re hung in a hall well out of reach.”
‘‘Yet you could get to them?’’
‘‘I could get to them.”
After a bit he said: ‘‘The man you should see is Lewison. He’s got a little shop in the West End, not far from you. What he doesn’t know about fake pictures nobody knows—unless it’s that Dutchman. Lewison served two terms in prison before the war, but it’s all forgiven and forgotten now. He was a great help to me in the Killarney case. But you’d better mention my name or you won’t get a word out of him. And you’ll have to pay. He doesn’t talk for nothing.”
‘‘This man,’’ I said. ‘‘ Might he know something about fake furniture too?’’
Dane smiled a slow sardonic smile. ‘‘He should do. He makes it.”
There was no tactful arrangement of a solitary oil painting in the window of Mr. Lewison’s place. A Reynolds-type small boy in a heavy frame leaned against a lacquer secretaire cabinet. Some odd pieces of Doulton were grouped anyhow on a cane-bottomed stool. Chippendale—or pseudo Chippendale—chairs were being used to prop up a panel of a sort of evening party painted in the Spanish style. When you got inside you realized that all the best stuff was in the window. It was the shop of a man who never said no to a reasonable proposition, whether it was a pianola or a jemmy. I wondered who insured him.
A tall chap with a big nose and a stoop came out from behind a Jacobean bookcase and sniffed suspiciously as if he thought I’d brought in a bad smell.
‘‘Mr. Lewison?’’
He didn’t answer for a minute but turned back for his glasses. When he’d got them fixed he stared at me through the wrong part of the bi-focals and said:
‘‘This shop, as you can see over the door, belongs to Martha Goodman.”
‘‘Are you Mr. Lewison?’’
‘‘What is that to you?’’
‘‘Mr. Henry Dane, the solicitor, sent me. He thought you could help me, give me some advice. I’m an insurance investigator.”
He tried the smell of that, and didn’t altogether like it. ‘‘I am not an informer.”
‘‘I’m not asking you to be. It’s some advice on two pictures that I want—how I might be able to detect whether they were genuine.”
He stared at me and fiddled with his glasses.
‘‘What are the pictures?’’
‘‘Two oil paintings. A Constable and a Lippi.”
‘‘Lippi never painted in oils. Where are the paintings?’’
‘‘I can’t produce them. It’s some general advice I want.”
‘‘General advice is useless. There is only one way of coming to detect whether a painting is a fake or genuine; and that is by studying a thousand pictures—in great detail. Then in a few years perhaps, it is a feeling that one gets. Rule of thumb methods can only help sometimes—if the copy is a poor one.”
‘‘I should be prepared to pay for your opinion,’’ I said.
He frowned and then slopped off behind the bookcase again. I thought I heard a door shut. A stuffed ferret kept a pretty sharp watch on me.
When I was beginning to think I’d have to make a noise to attract his attention the old man came back. With him was a woman about half his size, hurriedly wiping her arms on her apron.
‘‘This is Martha Goodman,’’ said Lewison, as if he’d produced something I was searching for. And then, evidently seeing I was a bit slow, he added: ‘‘There has to be someone to look after the shop. Now we can go inside.”
By the time I got back to my flat it was well after six, and it was even chances that I might have left any further move until the Sunday. I might have let things slide and gone to a cinema—and in that case everything would have been different. But I knew well enough that in my present state of mind no film would be a strong enough dope.
So I had a snack meal and started about eight. There was no point in getting there before dusk; and although Tracey and Sarah would probably have left in the morning the old servants might potter about for hours afterwards. I didn’t know what the exact arrangements were, and it might be that a caretaker would be left in the house, in which case my journey would be wasted.
It was a windy evening, even in the West End, with a good lot of cloud and a few patches of coldish blue sky. I got my car off the fourth floor of the garage, and drove slowly down Park Lane and Grosvenor Place to Victoria, along Victoria Street and across Westminster Bridge to St. George’s Road and the roundabout at the Elephant and Castle. I didn’t hurry.
My mind was full of stuff about age-cracks and varnishes and the mesh of canvases and manufacturer’s marks and whether the stretcher was glued or tacked and if the priming varied. My mind was full of that but I didn’t think about that. I thought about Sarah. I thought about our last meeting ‘‘ There are reasons,’’ she had said, when I asked her why she came out with me.
I took the main road for Rochester, and at Dartford turned sharp south along the valley of the Darenth, through Farningham and Sevenoaks. I hadn’t been that way before. As the light began to fade I saw that there was a three-quarter moon rising among the clouds. You could feel the wind more out here; it was a half gale and all the warmth and summer had been blown away by it. I passed a good many orchards, and the trees were shaking their blossoms like nautch dancers.
About a couple of miles away from the house I stopped for a smoke. In spite of the clouds it wasn�
��t dark. I wasn’t too happy about the gatehouse. Sarah had told me it was empty; normally they let it, but the man had died and the new people hadn’t come in yet. But that was some time ago. I didn’t want to spend the night in jail.
I threw the cigarette end out of the car and started up. I was still able to drive on sidelights, and I went past the gatehouse. It was in darkness. I parked a couple of hundred yards beyond, on a grass verge under some trees, and switched off the lights and slid out.
I didn’t go back that way, but shinned over the wall into Tracey’s property.
The back of the gatehouse also showed dark, so I walked up the drive, keeping well in to the holly trees. There was still a good deal of light over in the west, and every now and then the moon would flood out like an arc lamp, making sudden black shadows under the trees. When you looked up the great clouds were racing so quickly that you got a sense of the world turning over.
Lowis Manor was unlit, as I’d expected; but there was one obvious thing to do as a precaution. I walked straight up to the front door and pulled the bell. If Elliott were still here, or some caretaker, it would be easy to fake a story.
It looked a big place in the half dark, silent and squat. I rang again. It was one of the old-type bells, not electric, and you could picture the bell wagging and tinkling in the very depths of the house, in the kitchen where nobody stirred now.
I stepped on a flower-bed and tried to peer in at the window of the hall, but it was too dark inside. A circuit of the house first just as a further precaution. There was all night if necessary.
I started off anti-clockwise, meaning to take in the stables last, but I never even got as far as the kitchen. On the southeast side of the house, just past the big Irish yew, were the bow windows of the dining-room. The gravel path ran close to the house here and almost level with the windows. Sarah had told me that this was because the ground had risen through the centuries. I was just going to peer in when I saw that the last window was ajar.
If anything would have amused me in the mood I was in, that would have. Probably old Elliott had slipped up. Or perhaps Tracey himself had left it open in the hope that there would be a burglary.
The latch was on the first hole. There was just room for me to put my knife in and knock it up. Then I put a leg through on to the window seat and stepped into the room.
I brushed the window seat to take off any dirt, and then flicked my torch about for a second or two. The room was unfamiliar in dust-sheets. The fine Chippendale table—which might also be only an imitation—had something lumpy on it. In the corner behind the screen was the door leading to the kitchen. Perhaps old Elliott hadn’t gone but had fallen to sleep in his chair. More likely he was getting quietly sozzled in his favourite pub.
I went into the hall.
I didn’t want to use my torch much at the front of the house; and, in any case, just when I opened the door the moon was full out. It all looked most odd. The decorators were still very much in charge here, and had left two pairs of stepladders standing in the middle of the floor with a plank between. The furniture was draped in white and in unfamiliar places, and there was a great pile of dust-sheets near the foot of the stairs.
The moon went behind a cloud, and the room suddenly frowned at me. The wind was buffeting against the house, and I thought for a minute I heard a footstep on the stairs. I peered up through the darkness but there was noihing there. A noise though: tap-tap … tap-tap-tap somewhere upstairs. You couldn’t expect a house of this age to be silent in a half gale.
‘‘Tracey and I have a perfect understanding and trust,’’ she had said.… Forget. First the pictures. That was what I’d come for. Proof. Take them down, into some room with heavy curtains and a north window.
I’m a fairly quiet walker, and the old stairs only creaked once as I went up them. And then I saw that the pictures were not there.
I stared at the blank spaces, feeling thoroughly annoyed and frustrated as if the things, had been hidden away specially to thwart me. Then I realized that no one in their right senses left pictures up when the decorators were in.
As I came down the stairs again, I thought I could see a promising shape covered with a dust-sheet beside the door leading to the old hall; and when I went across I found it was in fact the two pictures I wanted.
I’d never seen them at close quarters before and they were bigger, heavier than I thought. The faces of the Magi in the Lippi were life-size. In the shaded light of the torch they seemed to be half alive; you could fancy the contorted features ready to move, ready to break into a whisper. What had Lewison said? Wooden panel, coated with glue size. All sorts of details that I couldn’t follow: gesso … yolk of egg and water … green earth …
I leaned the picture over on its face and fished out my penknife. I struck the blade into the back of the panel. It went in. I put the knife away and picked up the pictures, one in each hand.
The moon was still behind the clouds, but my eyes were getting more used to the dark, and it was reasonably possible to move about without bumping into things. I made for the living-room, avoiding the ladder on the way, and was almost at the door when I stepped on something. It was like a thick piece of rubber and I kicked it but it didn’t move far.
I put one picture down and took out my torch and switched it on. The thing I’d stepped on was a man’s hand. I jerked the torch back and it caught the edge of the picture frame and slipped out of my hand. As it hit the floor it went out.
Of course the hand was not unattached—the rest of the man was there, somewhere about two feet away from me, a thicker shadow than the others. I’d dropped my torch—that was the first thing: light. I leaned the pictures shakily against a table and trod across the hall towards the switch by the door, not caring now who knew I was here.
Get to the switch and fumble with it and flick it down. Nothing. The light had been turned off at the main board.
I stood there against the door. One of two things to do: go out through the door behind me, leaving it to somebody else to ask the questions, or stay and face it put.
The first shock was passing. I’d seen plenty of dead and injured men; it wasn’t that.
Then the moon came out brilliantly, and with the light behind me I could see it all, the white peaks of the furniture, the piled dust-sheets, the ladders, the two pictures leaning, and the lumpy shadow of the man just in front of the door of the living-room. It was all motionless, waiting for me. I felt gutless and weak. I went back.
He was lying on his side with one arm flung out. His face was in the shadow but I thought I knew the clothes. There were two or three bits of wood on the floor around him. I picked up the torch but the bulb had smashed. After a minute I pulled the man over. It was Tracey Moreton.
His eyes stared past me, over my shoulder, as if he was looking at someone there. Only he wasn’t looking. He seemed thinner and smaller than usual. I couldn’t tell how long he’d been dead.
I pawed over him for a minute and then stood up. I still felt shaky, and seeing who it was hadn’t helped. I needed a drink. I needed a drink and I needed company.
Something made me look up; and then I saw that the moulded balustrade of the gallery just above was broken. That was where the wood had come from. And my foot was crunching on bits of wood that crumbled like old biscuits.
The wind gusted against the house again, and the thing upstairs went tap—tap—tap. There was a funny smell somewhere. My brain was still working in fits and starts, but it seemed to be a good idea to get a better view of the broken balustrade. As I passed the pile of linen at the bottom of the stairs my foot caught in a tangle of it and I lifted it away. The thing wasn’t a dust-sheet—it was what appeared to be a good lace curtain.
The top of the stairs was darker, and just before I got to the broken balustrade the moon went in again. The break was almost opposite the door of Tracey’s bedroom and two doors from the one I’d had. The door of Tracey’s bedroom was open, and through it I could just make
out the grey oblong of the windows. I tried to see what had caused the break. It wasn’t merely the handrail; one of the big twisted supporting balusters had given way. Of course this was where there had been woodworm.
Another curtain on the floor. Perhaps he’d tripped, fallen. But why the curtains—unless my first suspicion, before I went to the brokers and was reassured, was actually true. An embittered man intent to seize the opportunity he’d rarely have: his mother away, the servants gone, alone except for his wife.… Not this time the small claim but the big one—setting him free from the incubus of a rambling expensive house, setting him on his feet again, enough capital to live comfortably. Perhaps Sarah was not in this major fraud, perhaps he’d sent her away too.
Somehow, by mischance, he had leaned against the balustrade and it had given way. In the middle of his preparations, before he’d been able to destroy it, the house had destroyed him.…
I turned to go down again. And then a terrible thing happened. There’d been a lull in the wind for two or three minutes, and as I straightened up I heard Tracey breathing close beside me.
Chapter Twelve
The moon brightened and quickened, and then died again. In the room behind me a French clock began to strike the hour. Nothing touched me. Nothing stirred. The wind was roaring away among the distant trees.
I couldn’t move. Then I gripped the broken balustrade and slowly forced my head round, stared into the darkness.
‘‘Tracey!’’
No one answered. The house was empty except for myself and a dead man on the floor below.
I swallowed a dry lump and walked into the bedroom. There were blankets on the floor and the curtains were crooked at the window. The smell of Tracey’s herbal cigarettes was strong. Perhaps that had suggested the other. I cursed my nerves, found I was still clutching a piece of wood off the balustrade, didn’t throw it away. The feel of it gave me a silly sort of comfort.
And then I heard it again—or thought I heard it again—out in the passage behind me.
Fortune Is a Woman Page 9