by Lorna Gray
My eyes strayed to the portrait of that young man. I understood now that Jim had allowed us to presume these features belonged to the other brother as a test. Now I saw this face with new eyes. He looked too cheerful to have been the author of the unforgiving reference to his brother’s curtailed romance. Jim’s voice was hard as he asked me very specifically, “Do you know him?”
I was actually disappointed to be unable to help, though Lord knows what it would have meant for me if I had known who the man was. I said regretfully, “I’m sorry, no. I’ve never even heard the family name.”
“Why don’t you ask him then?” This was gruff, from Adam. He knew we were being tested with this man’s identity and he didn’t like it.
Jim was singularly unrelenting when he replied bluntly, “He’s dead.”
He caught my look. “Oh, this art thief didn’t kill him. But he might as well have done. It’s the way this thing seems to go.”
“Oh.” It was hard to know what to say to that. Jim had after all dubbed this a crime governed by a toweringly murderous greed. Then something struck me. My gaze sharpened to meet Jim’s. I said accusingly, “So when precisely did you decide I was the orchestrator of all this?”
Somewhere in the background Mrs Francis was clattering discreetly with pans. She was doing it in that peculiarly hushed way people have when they are doing something noisy so they do it very slowly as if that will make it quieter. It barely registered with me but I think Jim had to wait some time for the volume to decrease again before conceding, “I never did think you were our thief.”
He said it almost apologetically as if I should be affronted by the oversight. He explained, “If your uncle is exonerated by virtue of the fact he wasn’t in Cirencester at the time this letter was directing John Langton towards the crucial meeting at your gallery, the same rule applies to you. You weren’t here. You left the marital home in late 1945, long before this letter was written. You didn’t see Rhys Williams again until your divorce a year later. You weren’t here at the crucial time.”
“But Rhys was?”
Jim’s posture was suddenly impatient. The memory irritated him. “You should be aware that when this note came to light we immediately got our warrant and undertook a thorough investigation into the business of that gallery. We’ve been inside that place. We’ve turned everything over; every record, every sale logged in the accounts, every detail of every delivery company you’ve ever used, every transaction in cash and through the bank, and found nothing.”
I was surprised. “Not even a record of this particularly ‘valuable muddy painting’? Because if it was entered into the general selling exhibition for that year, it’d be listed in the exhibition catalogue at the very least, even if it never sold.”
Jim shook his head. “Apparently this man’s prospects improved so abruptly around that time that he felt able to promise the vendor a loan and the painting was saved.”
I persisted, “So you’ve got nothing that proves this Langton fellow ever went there?”
“Put in those terms, no,” Jim conceded. “And there’s nothing we needed to learn about Rhys Williams except that he is utterly convinced he is the great maestro in that place. Sorry.” This last was an apology to me. I didn’t mind. “We had to discount him, we discounted Benjamin Dillon; and we discounted the downtrodden ex-wife in less time than it took to cross your name off a list. For months that’s all we had. Everything was absolutely still and calm, just as it had been before this note came to light. As you’ve quite rightly observed, I had to finally consider that the lead was absolutely irrelevant. Then two weeks ago something changed. Two weeks ago, it all started up again. The chain of brutality surrounding those looted artworks lifted its head above the parapet and finally stretched out its hand to decisively include your gallery. A man disappeared. And still I don’t know why.”
“Rhys Williams.” My voice was hoarse.
“No!” Jim’s slap of his hand upon the tabletop was so emphatic that he made me jump. “Not Rhys. He came next. A missing policeman is the man that matters to me. And a record of him turned up entirely unexpectedly in your hands.”
For the third time he reached into a pocket, this time on the other flap of his jacket, and drew out a folded card. He flattened it out. It wasn’t card; it was a photograph. In fact, it was the photograph he had stolen from me that night in my hotel room. Jim was watching me carefully, for all that he had already declared I wasn’t under suspicion any more. He was examining every nuance of my facial expressions, every manner, every action for even the slightest trace of guilt.
He asked me, “Is this man familiar?”
He meant the only man in the photograph that I couldn’t identify. The man standing in the gallery on an opening night within the little cluster of hopeful journalists beyond the glowing artist with his close-knit group of friends and patrons. The man that had been the fundamental part of all my plans on that last day in Aberystwyth, only it had all gone wrong. I shook my head. My heart was beating.
“Do you know the name Steven Leicester? What about Philip Black?”
He fired the names at me. Again I shook my head. Beside me, Adam’s hands moved restlessly upon the chair back. Protectively. I think Jim noticed it too.
Jim said, “Well, he’s perfectly familiar to me. I told you just now that after our failed search we went back to the station to formulate other plans and this was it. This dishevelled gentleman who looks like he must have stumbled in from the nearest bar to unexpectedly land at a launch party is none other than Detective Constable Philip Black, a colleague of mine. Three months ago we put him in the gallery as a newspaper hack by the name of Steven Leicester who cunningly persuaded your egotist of a husband that it would be delightfully prestigious to collaborate on a spot of reportage. That gallery was concealing something, something so subtle it required a subtle man to winkle it out. My friend and colleague was the man tasked with doing just that.”
Across the table, Jim sat back in his seat with a sigh. He didn’t need to tell us that it hadn’t worked. The detective conceded grimly, “It was a fine waste of everybody’s time. He was there for weeks and months and had nothing to report except that Rhys Williams had taken some truly extraordinary photographs. It was a damned expensive way for the force to fund an artistic project and not quite the glittering demonstration of talent that Philip Black had been looking for. Phil was a uniformed constable in the spring just as I was. Phil caught the attention of our Chief Inspector in March, as I did, and was moved into CID in the summer with me. We both shed our uniform for plain clothes at the same time and Phil’s been with me every step of the way since. This was supposed to be his big case. We put him in that gallery to have a little look about and he found absolutely nothing. Until Rhys Williams unexpectedly killed himself by launching from the top of that waterfall … and we learned that Philip Black had disappeared a few days before.”
There was deeply strange little silence that was broken by Mrs Francis abandoning her stove to reach across the table for the photograph. Its stiffened corner scraped noisily across the wooden tabletop.
Jim was watching her as she examined his friend’s face. His voice was suddenly sober. “I wasn’t following you at all, Kate, at first. Phil’s disappearance meant that he must have found something. I don’t believe he vanished voluntarily and the probable suicide of Rhys Williams only a few days later indicated we were wrong to discount that man after all. It even went so far as to suggest that Rhys might have been our thief and the shame of discovery had finally tipped him over the edge. I went to Aberystwyth to see if anything had turned up in his effects that might make a hunch become fact. Only that drew a blank too, mainly thanks to the inspector in charge demonstrating a complete lack of interest in, well, anything. I was about to head home with my tail between my legs when you arrived.”
“You saw her get off the train.” The break of Adam’s voice above me was expressionless.
A short nod from Jim. He s
aid, “I’d just bought my ticket. Then a certain woman walked boldly past.” He told me, “I recognised you from a photograph we’d picked up from the gallery during that fruitless search. It was an old one so Rhys Williams didn’t mind it being mauled over by the police. Your hair was long in the photograph so it required a second glance to be sure, but your kind of features don’t alter much and then it was easy enough to tail you and take a room at the same hotel. You didn’t suspect me then, did you?”
I shook my head mutely.
Jim said musingly, “There I was, thinking that Phil had uncovered something, something so awful that the thief’s only escape was to kill himself, and you turned up and proved me wrong all over again.”
“How did I do that?”
“Because, Kate, you proved that your husband’s death was just another number to add to the tally. If he’d been the man we’re after, the tally would have ended with him. Your arrival proved it hadn’t. I realised you could claim to have a perfectly innocent explanation for your visit but it was pretty clear from the start that you weren’t simply planning to lay flowers at the head of the falls, console his parents and so on. You were definitely skulking about in the shadows and you made it very clear that you were alert to being followed. It looked more like a fact-finding mission than any kind of homage to the dearly departed and even at the spot where he … at Devil’s Bridge I mean, you were nothing but perfectly self-contained. Unconcerned, even. I watched as you messed about in the car park during our trip to that ruined castle. You looked like you might be leaving a note or sign for the owners of that car and then the very next day you attempted to ditch me by the pier. I saw you make what I thought was a prearranged meeting with those men, who by the way I’d never seen before, and I thought I’d struck the jackpot. Only then you happened to look back as they led you past.”
I tried not to fidget uneasily. I could feel the tension emanating from Adam in waves. His hands were gripping the chairback to the point that his veins were proud about his wrists. I was counting out the deaths – Langton, Black and Rhys – and realising that I, by the barest bewildering mercy of the man beside me, really had escaped being the next.
I remarked incredulously to Jim, “But you must have known about my accident?” Mrs Francis set a plate of cold and badly buttered toast down before me. “Thank you. You must have known what I’d told the police there? It was in their report.”
Jim shook his head ruefully. “Actually, I didn’t. You keep forgetting that we’d eliminated you. Until you arrived at the hotel, I had absolutely no reason to wish to know more about you. The local force had your accident pegged as just that – an accident. They certainly weren’t going to think to pass the information on. It only came to light when I leaned heavily on our mutual friend Inspector Griffiths and he got the Lancaster Constabulary to send everything they had on you by first-class post. It wasn’t easy given the fact he holds the senior rank. But the file arrived on Saturday. I read it that evening – after I’d given myself a nice fine shock by standing idly to one side while Clarke tried to snatch you right beneath my nose.”
He leaned in. “Do you know, I spent a lot of time running around after you that day. First I had to deal with the realisation that you weren’t Clarke’s accomplice and then play my part to ensure you got away. I was frantically wracking my brains for some sort of distraction that would leave my cover intact when young Samuel and his bucket of crabs appeared on the scene. His father conveniently delayed one fellow and my shady salesman character neatly stumbled into the path of the other, and then once every man there had lost all trace of you and we’d all wasted several hours staring at the railway station in case you attempted to take a train, I took myself down to the police station once more and threw my weight around. Eventually even our moustachioed inspector got interested enough to show me the file that had come in the post, which included a report of the accident.”
“So that was your fault, was it?” I remarked accusingly as light dawned. “You told him I was in hiding at the hotel. You got me into a lot of trouble. He was very angry that I’d used my maiden name at the hotel but given him my married one.”
Jim wasn’t remotely apologetic. “And so he should be. I’d have given you a pretty stiff telling-off too if I’d known you were attempting to dodge the likes of Clarke and Reed with only a switch from your married name to your maiden name. Didn’t it occur to you to assume a completely different identity?”
“It’s all right for you,” I retorted. “I presume you can get a plethora of ration books and licences and everything in any name you like. When you’re a normal person like me and there are rules about taking rooms in hotels, you’re stuck with the name on your real documents. My ration book just happens to be in my maiden name so I used it there, that’s all.”
Another cup of tea appeared by my side. It arrived without Mrs Francis ever leaving her station by the window so I presumed she could just conjure them at will.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this during our chat that last morning at the hotel, Jim?” Adam’s voice was even cooler than ever and it drew my eye. He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Surely once you’d established she was vulnerable, getting her safely out of harm’s way must have been your first obligation? Or were you too busy nudging me towards deciding to bring her back here?”
For the first time in what was possibly his life, I saw Jim look briefly guilty. “I did want to get her back here, you’re right. They seemed dead set on achieving it, Rhys Williams lived here and Philip Black disappeared from here. There had to be more than just chance symmetry behind that. But I thought I could control this if I just kept my cover for a little longer. I thought I’d got a route that kept Kate nicely protected, and with you back here,” Jim levelled his gaze at me, “it was a dead cert they’d come back here. At long last I might have a chance of seeing the real players at work in this game. And I had to use Adam. I couldn’t very well ask you to come back here myself, could I? You wouldn’t listen to me but you did listen to him. I knew I’d never get you to come back otherwise. You hate it here. Since your divorce, you haven’t even paid a visit to the town to see your sister.” He acknowledged my startled glance. “Yes, we sent men round to interview her too when you pitched up at the hotel. Everyone’s a suspect now.”
He gave Adam a conciliatory smile. “And I did get someone to probe into your background too before forming this plan.” He said it as if that made everything all right.
Adam’s voice was as cold as the breakfast congealing on my plate. Without lifting his gaze from the chair beneath his hands, he said, “This plan of yours nearly scared her off completely. It left her covered in scuffs and bruises and bearing a particularly interesting cut behind her left ear – which, judging by Kate’s reaction just now, she didn’t think we knew was there. It very nearly ended with your entire case being lost to the sea.” Then he looked up and his eyes were as hard as slate. “Did you give that careful consideration beforehand too?”
I stopped trying to reassure myself that my hair covered the mark that had been made by my fall from the ladder and dropped my hand to my lap. I couldn’t help watching his face, and the stubbornness that tugged at his mouth which told me – even if not the others – that he’d noticed it when I had been curled up asleep on the edge of his bed.
That unforgiving voice continued. “And I wouldn’t, by the way, use the term ‘unconcerned’ to describe the way she looked that day at Devil’s Bridge.”---
The silence was so complete I could hear a clock ticking in the hall.
About a minute later, Mrs Francis drifted towards the stove. With the art of one experienced at smoothing over any dispute, she asked the kettle, “More tea?”
“Yes, please, Mrs Francis,” replied Jim. Then he added smoothly, “Then I can tell you what I want Kate to do now.”
Chapter 26
In the brief lull while the housekeeper fussed with the pot, I forced down some toast and Adam quietly collecte
d our cups. Jim took the opportunity to say, ”Do you know, Kate, you really injured my pride that night when you confronted me over your lost sketchbook and gave me a thorough dressing down for following you. I thought I’d been so sly. Though as it happens, with regards to your sketchbook, I really wasn’t ever particularly interested in it. As I recall, I was just making polite conversation. Whereas Mary was so interested she stole it. And slipped it back into your bag while you were building up a good head of steam by berating me …”
“Mary took it?” Adam was leaning against the sideboard behind me, midway through eating a piece of toast. His expression was odd; confused now rather than tense. I suppose it was hard for him being confronted with all the ways he’d been misled these past few days. “Why?”
I expect I looked a little doubtful myself until it finally made sense. I said on a little note of realisation, “She wanted to show her sister the portrait of my ex-husband.”
There was a nod from Jim across the table. “Mary told me what she’d done while I was packing my bags for my return here.”
I stared at him. He must have confided to her who and what he was. I was suddenly thinking, poor Mary. She always did seem to think men were set to be a disappointment. I wondered how she’d felt when she’d learnt that her playful fantasy of becoming wife to the muscle-bound Mr Bristol was in fact a dream of being Mary Fleece. And what if the fantasy ran to having children? The temptation amongst the witty public to call them her little lambs would be tortuous.