The Unfinished Portrait

by John Creasey

  Copyright & Information

  The Unfinished Portrait

  First published in 1969

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1969-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  075513169X 9780755131693 Print

  0755134109 9780755134106 Kindle

  0755134524 9780755134526 Epub

  0755155432 9780755155439 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Chapter One

  A Storm In A Teacup

  John Mannering sat in a winged armchair in his flat in an old house in Green Street, Chelsea. If he turned his head towards the right he saw the pageant of London’s river on a lovely summer evening, small craft abounding, lighters and barges moving sluggishly through the still water, pleasure boats crowded with people passing to and fro. Between him and the river were plane trees in full leaf, but not yet dark green, for it was June. If he turned his head towards the left, he had another, very different picture.

  Of his wife.

  She was intent on some photographic prints, spread out on a low table. She looked puzzled and preoccupied, and now and again she frowned. His perspective of her heightened the breadth of her forehead, rendering the whole face heart-shaped. Her dark hair, with a few strands of grey, was drawn straight back, but fell, like wings, over her temples. Her dark lashes seemed to be swept upward from her clear grey eyes.

  She glanced at him, realising that he had been looking at her. For a moment her gaze was straight, almost sombre; in such moments she could look sullen. Suddenly, her lips parted and she threw her head back. The movement, feminine, provocative, gave her an added attraction.

  Mannering stared at her for a long time before saying, ‘Like a drink?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘Like any help?’

  ‘No,’ she said positively. ‘This is something I need to work out for myself.’

  ‘So you want to be alone,’ he said.

  ‘I want to put these away and forget them until the morning,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s what I hoped to hear,’ he said. Quite suddenly he was on his feet and standing beside her, and she was holding out her hand …

  Later, when it was dark, she lay asleep and he awake.

  He was remembering the time, not very long ago, when they had been drifting apart, and it had seemed as if nothing could hold them together. To this day he was not quite sure what had in fact held them, but such nights as this held a greater tenderness, a greater sense of fulfilment, than they had known in the days when their love had been more passionate.

  He could hear her soft, even breathing, and could make out the shape of her cheek and forehead against the pillow. The sweep of her eyelashes reminded him of the way she had looked from his chair in the window. She had been so preoccupied about the photographs, but had left them spread out on the table without further thought. He smiled with near laughter.

  A gust of wind shook the window and the curtain billowed into the room. Far off, there was a rumble of thunder. So there was a break in the weather, and the possibility of heavy rain. The sensible thing was to close the window, or at least push it to. That would mean getting up and he did not want to. He was snug and lazy, and if he got up he would go back to his own room and the spell would be broken. He dozed – and was startled by a vivid flash, then by a crack of thunder directly overhead. He realised that he must have been asleep, no storm would move so fast. Then he heard the sharp impact of rain against the window and had no choice but to get up.

  Had he secured the window in the sitting-room?

  Pushing the bedclothes back stealthily, anxious not to disturb Lorna, he half-grimaced, half-grinned. He hadn’t secured windows or doors or anything at all!

  As he closed the bedroom window, a fork of lightning split the sky and lit up the squat towers of the Battersea Power Station and the mass of foliage across the river. For a stupefying moment the Thames was a mirror reflecting the savage streaks of light. Darkness fell with opaque completeness: then another crack of thunder came directly above the house.

  ‘John!’ gasped Lorna. ‘John!’

  He swung round and saw her starting up in bed, frightened yet now knowing what had wakened her. Another streak of lightning showed her face vividly, hands stretched out for reassurance, shoulders smooth and glowing as marble. He went across to her quickly, and put his arms round her.

  ‘We’ve incurred the wrath of the gods,’ he said lightly.

  ‘How long has it been going on?’

  ‘On and off for quite a time,’ he told her. ‘But the rain has only just started. I was going to shut the window in the sitting-room.’

  ‘Is this one open at all?’

  ‘Just a crack at the top.’

  ‘I don’t like the windows closed when there’s lightning about,’ Lorna remarked.

  ‘I won’t close it completely,’ he promised.

  Another savage flash, another terrifying crack, came before he reached the door. Lorna was pulling the bedclothes up to her neck and looking towards the window. Mannering crossed the small landing and felt a gust of wind; a door slammed. He went into the sitting-room to find the curtain billowing, the photographs scattered over the floor, a newspaper blowing about and rustling in one corner. As he neared the window, rain spattered coldly on his face. He closed the window with a bang, and stood back. This view showed an even longer
stretch of the river, and a lightning fork seemed to turn the surface to molten gold.

  He collected the photographs, one of which felt damp. He put on a light and looked down at the face of a woman.

  She was quite remarkably beautiful.

  He knew her slightly, having met her at various social functions both before and after her marriage. She was a Mrs Cornelius Vandemeyer, young wife of a man of great wealth and culture, a renowned collector of objets d’art and one of the better customers at Mannering’s Mayfair shop.

  Why had Lorna been so intent on these photographs?

  He took them into the bedroom with him, flicking on the switch of a subdued light.

  The storm now seemed farther away, much less of a threat. He took a paper handkerchief from a box on the dressing-table, and dabbed the photograph before putting it on the dressing-table with the others.

  ‘No damage done,’ he reported cheerfully.

  ‘It’s a good thing you thought of the window, the carpet would have been ruined,’ Lorna remarked. ‘It’s getting quieter, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mannering. ‘Feel bold enough to stay on your own?’

  ‘If the storm comes back again, I shall come rushing in to you!’

  Mannering brushed her forehead with his lips and turned away; he was at the door before she asked, ‘Do you know Deirdre Vandemeyer well?’

  ‘Nothing like so well as I know her husband. Why?’

  ‘I—oh, it doesn’t matter,’ Lorna said, with sudden impatience. ‘Just a silly idea. I started a portrait of her a few months ago, and went to see her again yesterday, to discuss finishing it.’

  ‘And wasn’t she keen?’

  ‘What on earth made you ask that?’ demanded Lorna.

  ‘You weren’t very happy when you were studying the photographs,’ Mannering pointed out.

  ‘So there must be a problem!’ Lorna frowned. ‘It’s impossible to repress the great detective in you, isn’t it? Let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  ‘Of course. Sleep well,’ Mannering said, and closed the door.

  The sheets in his own bed were chilly, and made him even more wide awake. He lay looking at the distant lightning, his thoughts still with his wife. Tonight had brought them closer than they had been for a long time, yet the phrase she had used – ‘It’s impossible to repress the great detective in you, isn’t it?’ – had been uttered with real feeling – the kind of feeling which had once been like a thickening wedge between them.

  The ‘great detective!’

  He tried to put the thought out of his mind but it would not go, and he got up suddenly and went into the sitting-room. Inside an Elizabethan settle, carved with knights in armour, were several press-cutting books. He took them out and put them on the table where the photographs had been, and began to turn the pages.

  There were headlines and articles about big jewel robberies carried out with great daring and skill, and intermixed with these stories were others about ‘The Baron.’ ‘Jewel thief extraordinary,’ the newspapers called him, ‘Raffles in Real Life.’ ‘The Robin Hood of Crime.’ Feature articles followed fast upon one another, of the Baron who stole from the unjust rich and gave to the deserving poor.

  It was a past age. There would be no scope in Britain for such a man today. How a few decades could change society! And how they had changed him …

  Had they changed him enough? he wondered.

  Lorna, at heart, did not think so. That was the crux of all their differences.

  Yet in the very early days, embittered and vengeful towards society, he had robbed for personal gain. It had been Lorna who had swung him from that, and largely because of her he had become a kind of Robin Hood. How absurdly melodramatic the soubriquet seemed to him now!

  He had bought Quinns, and with Lorna’s eager approval turned it into one of the most famous shops in the world for jewellery and antiques. Since then he had never stolen – but he had, as a private investigator, often forced entry and broken safes, for the benefit of clients who had good reason not to work through the law. And as the years had passed, not only had the conflict between the Baron and Scotland Yard, then represented by Chief Superintendent William Bristow, ceased, but he was even, on occasions, consulted by them.

  Yet Lorna, he knew, wanted him to stop all his activities except buying and selling and acting as a consultant.

  Could he blame her?

  Whether or no he could blame her – could he ever stop?

  At heart he knew that it would be almost impossible, and that even if he tried he would soon fall from grace.

  The issue had been forced between them several times but had not been raised for nearly a year. Perhaps he was wrong in thinking that it had been raised tonight.

  Tired, woken in fright, all her emotions had been near the surface and she had spoken without thinking, reflecting a strongly held, though usually unvoiced opinion. Was it always the same with a married couple? Was there always some conflict between them, buried or outweighed at times by the strength of love but always latent, always liable to flare up when it was least expected?

  With a sigh, he closed the books and put them away. There was no light under Lorna’s door, so she was presumably asleep. All was quiet now, even the hissing and spatting of the rain had stopped, and the sky was star-lit, the river dark but calm.

  He got into bed and was asleep within five minutes.

  When he woke, Lorna was looking down on him, smiling, holding a tea-tray. She looked rested and attractive and Mannering’s half-formed fears of the night were blown away. She put the tray on the bedside table, kissed him lightly on the cheek, took newspapers from under her arm and spread them over him.

  ‘There’s news for you,’ she announced lightly.

  There was something on her mind. It showed in her eyes. Mannering sat up and scanned the front page of The Times – and saw a small paragraph with the headline:

  ‘Scotland Yard Chief Retires.’

  Lorna poured out and Mannering read on:

  ‘Chief Superintendent William Bristow, Scotland Yard’s expert on jewels, is to retire at the end of August – just thirty-five years after he first joined the Metropolitan Police Force.’

  ‘Tea, my love,’ remarked Lorna, sweetly.

  ‘I need something,’ said Mannering, and then took the bull by the horns. ‘I wonder if his wife put him up to this.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think she would need to,’ replied Lorna. ‘Most men come to their senses sooner or later!’ She laughed easily, her expression innocent of reproach. ‘We could ask them to dinner, and find out.’

  ‘Yes, fix it,’ approved Mannering, sipping his tea. ‘Thirty-five years. My, my! I’ve known him for over twenty. He was only a boy when I first met him!’

  ‘He isn’t a boy now,’ Lorna said drily.

  ‘No, dear.’ Mannering finished his tea as he scanned the main headline. ‘No major disasters or political uproars, I see. That makes a nice change!’ He glanced at the bedside clock. ‘After eight, I shouldn’t be too long. I’m seeing Rennie at the shop at half-past nine. Will you be out, or up in the studio?’

  ‘In, most of the day,’ Lorna answered. He had the impression that she wanted to add something, but she stopped herself. ‘I’ll get breakfast while you have your bath.’

  She went out – graceful and nearly as slim-waisted as she had been in those early days.

  Mannering shaved while his bathwater ran, pondering over Rennie, a highly reputable dealer who did a lot of business with Quinns in Boston. There were three shops, now, the third in Paris, and Rennie was not in London as much as he had been at one time. Rennie, he suspected, was interested in a partnership, and Mannering wasn’t sure that would be a good thing. If the Bostonian made a formal proposal, he would talk it over with Lorna before making a decision.

  He went into the kitchen-cum-breakfast-room. The only help they had in the house, these days, was a daily who arrived at half-past nine; they had grown used to h
aving the flat to themselves in the morning, and now very much preferred it. Eggs and bacon with fried bread and grilled tomatoes were on the hot-plate above the gas stove, and coffee was bubbling in a percolator. Lorna was reading a letter. Several letters were by Mannering’s place. He opened them; all were pleasant, none was important. When he looked up, Lorna was staring at him intently, her letter still in her hand. ‘John,’ she said, ‘promise not to crow.’

  ‘Do I usually make such unpleasant noises?’ he inquired lightly.

  ‘Occasionally, if the opportunity arises,’ she said wryly.

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘That’s for you to decide,’ replied Lorna. ‘I want you to solve a problem for me. I’ve an instinctive feeling that something’s wrong.’

  He looked at her intently, and saw that she was serious. It dawned on him how much it must have cost her to confess to such an idea.

  He gave a delighted smile, covered her free hand with his, and said with complete assurance, ‘Lady Vandemeyer won’t have her portrait finished, and you want to know the reason why. Is that it?’

  ‘That’s half of it,’ said Lorna. ‘She won’t have it finished. But I think I know the reason why. I don’t think she is Lady Vandemeyer.’

  Chapter Two

  A Delicate Matter

  After a long pause, Mannering said, ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘You can’t be awake,’ Lorna retorted, ‘or you’d know I am.’

  ‘You mean …’ Mannering paused, and then went on, ‘You don’t think Lady Vandemeyer is Lady Vandemeyer.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Lorna reiterated simply. Mannering frowned.

  ‘We need to think and talk about this,’ he said heavily.

  ‘But if you’re late already—’

  ‘Rennie can wait for a while if he has to,’ said Mannering. He helped himself to bacon and eggs while Lorna poured out coffee, and went on. ‘When did this possibility occur to you?’ When Lorna didn’t reply immediately he continued very thoughtfully, ‘There can’t be many richer people in the world than Cornelius Vandemeyer.’