Death of an Old Girl
Page 25
‘Reverting to Torrance, was the Blue Bonnet the coup of a lifetime, or has he done this sort of thing before, do you think?’
‘I very much doubt it. He’d never have been able to resist bragging about it in that incredible letter he wrote me before he shot himself. The first part of it was sheer unadulterated gloat at having pulled off the theft and fooled the Yard.’
‘It was at Christmas, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, three and a half years ago, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Several of the staff had been let off early: there was a stink about it afterwards, if you remember. Torrance went in not long before the Wrexham closed, disguised of course, and with the replica he’d painted under a duffle coat, and when the room was empty switched them over. Then he oozed out into the Christmas crowds. They closed soon afterwards, and the substitution wasn’t discovered until they re-opened after Boxing Day. As neat as the colour-box scheme for getting it out of the country.’
‘And of course there was absolutely nothing to connect it with Torrance?’
‘Nothing in the world. And it was a big job, and he could afford to wait. Extraordinary that a small painting like that can have a market value of about £10,000.’
‘What I think is so amazing,’ said Jane, ‘is having the patience and coolness to sit on all that for over three years.’
‘I think he was determined to make it the perfect, untraceable crime. His colossal vanity came in here. Wait till the racket died down and until a perfectly normal situation developed which he could use for getting it across. After all, I can’t think of a much better way than expert concealment in an art student’s modest luggage, can you?’
‘No,’ replied Jane, ‘especially if the art student looks like Ann Cartmell. But where do the Vanderplanks come in? How did he get on to them, do you suppose?’
‘He went to New York on Domani business early in the year of the theft. It seems reasonable to suppose that he met Mrs Vanderplank through his contacts with the artist community, and so got in with her husband, who seems to be up to the neck in shady dealings. Who the Blue Bonnet was really destined for we shall never know, of course. I wonder what Torrance was to get?’
‘What on earth did he want money for so badly?’
‘His public image involved a fairly high standard of living, you know. He probably thought he’d better cushion himself against inflation.’
Jane rolled over on to her front, and absently picked at the grass.
‘I see that the essence of the scheme was to have the first colour-box sent direct from B. & S. He’d never had possession of it, so if the worst happened, of course it was nothing to do with him. But surely the substitution idea was awfully risky. In the first place, how could he be sure that he’d find the B. & S. one when he arrived at Meldon?’
‘Ann cleared that up. When Torrance rang her that Saturday afternoon he said he’d like to have another look at it, and she said she’d leave it out in case he got there first. He’d have had plenty of time if it hadn’t been for that road smash and diversion, of course.’
‘But surely he couldn’t know what she hadn’t used the B. & S. box and would see the difference if the second one was intact?’
‘He’d thought that out too. First of all, the B. & S. box wasn’t sent off until the Tuesday. The Meldon term didn’t end until the Friday. He knew quite enough about schools to realise that the chance of Ann having time for an oil painting session could virtually be ruled out. After all oils aren’t watercolours, as you’d be the first to admit. Saturday morning was out because of Festival. But to make double sure he’d asked her to take the box over unused if possible, as he had shares in Wynne’s and Mrs Vanderplank though some art shop she patronised might be interested.’
‘Revolting brute,’ said Jane with sudden vehemence. ‘It makes me absolutely see red the way he played on that unfortunate girl. And to clinch it all, you know, he’d suggested that she should live with him when she came back. She broke down completely when she told me that. I told her she’d had an escape in ten million.’
‘A particularly repellent type,’ agreed Pollard. ‘And without the excuse of a criminal background.’
A jet screamed across the sky, ripping up the silence like the tearing of cloth.
‘What doesn’t seem in character to me,’ Jane resumed when the piercing noise had faded out, ‘is the way he lost his head at the very end, after all that ice-cold calculation.’
‘Lost his head? I don’t believe he did for a moment. I think B.B.’s murder was the result of a quick but absolutely deliberate decision. In his letter he said she’d seen him change over the boxes and challenged him when he came back to fetch the Artifex. He realised he couldn’t hope to keep her quiet in any other way. He knew it meant a trial and long term of imprisonment, and the absolute ruin of his career. I’m quite sure he decided in a split second that killing her was a justifiable risk considering what was at stake. He knew there were a lot of people about to confuse the issue. He couldn’t possibly foresee that there would be virtually no opportunity for anyone else to commit the murder, largely thanks to Sister Felicity roosting on the fire-escape with her pal. And of course if we did catch up on him there was always the final escape route… He damn nearly did get away with it, too.’
‘You’d have got him in the end,’ asserted Jane confidently. ‘I wonder. Once the incriminating colour-box and its contents had vanished without trace in America, I doubt if we could ever had brought a case against him on purely circumstantial evidence, without being able to put forward a shadow of a motive. I was slow off the mark over several things. Torrance’s anxiety about getting Ann off was beyond normal concern for a protégée: I ought to have paid more attention to it and thought out possible implications much earlier on. Then there was that workshop of his: obviously he was a highly skilled carpenter. That didn’t make me tick either.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, after a pause, ‘you’d have pulled him in on an attempted smuggling charge in the first place, if you’d got there in time?’
‘Yes. It was a near thing. We’d decided to risk it, being sure something pretty big was involved, and had actually left with the warrant just before the Domani dialled 999. The staff had heard the shot and dashed up to Torrance’s flat. If he hadn’t chanced to drop in at B. & S. that morning we’d have got him. It was Diane, of course. She hailed him to tell him she’d had drinks with us, and how I’d been so interested in the two colour-boxes he’d bought. And for good measure she added the news that something funny was going on that morning about a third box…’
‘Diane…’ said Jane dreamily. ‘She simply isn’t true, is she? But what an extraordinary coincidence that he went along there that morning. Things like that seem to have popped up all through the case. The Artifex being forgotten, and then Ann remembering it, for instance.’
‘They so often do in life, it seems to me,’ replied Pollard. ‘In some ways the most fantastic touch was old Beakers handing me the solution on a plate in Round One. He chipped me about the Blue Bonnet theft, you know. There’s a reproduction of it in the library at Meldon.’ He turned his head and looked into his wife’s face, amusement in his eyes. ‘The only coincidence I haven’t been able to swallow is your sudden need for a new sketching block last Saturday morning, involving that visit to Brocatti & Simpson’s.’
Jane met his gaze and cocked an eyebrow.
‘Honestly,’ she remarked, ‘you might almost be a detective.’
*****
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ALSO IN THE POLLARD & TOYE INVESTIGATIONS SERIES
THE AFFACOMBE AFFAIR
ALIBI FOR A CORPSE
DEATH ON DOOMSDAY
CYANIDE WITH COMPLIMENTS
> NO VACATION FROM MURDER
BURIED IN THE PAST
STEP IN THE DARK
UNHAPPY RETURNS
SUDDENLY WHILE GARDENING
CHANGE FOR THE WORSE
NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CASE
TROUBLED WATERS
THE WHEEL TURNS
LIGHT THROUGH GLASS
WHO GOES HOME?
THE GLADE MANOR MURDERS
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Copyright © Elizabeth Lemarchand, 1967
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