by Ellis Peters
“Yes, I see it would be easier for us to do it. Though probably no more effective. And then another question arises. I notice you haven’t mentioned the sign itself. If he was removing the evidence of the gift, why not remove the gift at the same time?”
“He couldn’t, it wasn’t here. I got sort of interested in the thing. It’s been overpainted so many times you can’t tell what may not be underneath, and there’s something about the shapes and proportions of the painting itself that isn’t nineteenth century by a long chalk. It isn’t that I think it’s worth anything, not in money, but I should like to know something about its history, and see if there’s something more interesting underneath the top layers. So I talked to Barney Wilson about it. He said how about that dealer who has the gallery in Abbey Place, the other side of town, he thought he’d be willing to have a look at the thing for us. So I got him to take the sign over to him for an opinion, and it’s still with him now.”
“When did you send it to him? Before the letter was abstracted, obviously. Was it also before Mr. Shelley came to see you?”
Leslie visibly counted days; colour had come back into his cheeks and something like excitement into his eyes. “Yes, by God, it was! Shelley was here on Thursday evening. Barney took the sign away with him in the van on Monday morning, three days before.”
“Suggestive, you think?”
“Don’t you? I’d had the thing six weeks, and Dad had shown no further interest in it. Then it’s deposited with this dealer, and three days later Dad opens a campaign to recover it. Wouldn’t you say there’s a connection?”
“You think he got a direct tip from the dealer that it might be of value after all?”
“Well, I don’t know that it need mean that, actually. It might be enough if it got to my father’s ears that I’d asked for an opinion on it. If he thought he’d accidentally given me something valuable and turned the joke on himself it would just about kill him.” He shied at his own choice of words, the sharp realisation of his position coming back upon him with a painful jolt.
“All right, leave it at that,” said George equably. “The letter vanished. What then?”
“Well, then, last night, as I said, I suddenly set off to tackle him about it, without saying a word to Jean. I didn’t want to go home to see him, and last night I knew exactly where he’d be, and I suppose I was in the mood to pick a fight, too, smouldering mad. Not that mad, though,” he amended with a wry grin, meeting George’s measuring eye. “I never touched him. I suppose I got there a bit before ten, and asked this waiter of yours to ask him if he could spare a minute. I didn’t give a name because I thought if I did he wouldn’t come, but most likely he would have, anyhow, the way it turned out. He came out bouncing and laughing when he saw me, and banged me on the back as though I was the one thing wanted to make his evening complete. He said he’d just leave his friends a message and then he’d be with me, and then he shoved me out of the side door and said go on over and take a look at the barn now, see if you recognise the old dump. Walk in, he said, the door’s unlocked, I was going over there in any case a bit later on.
“And I went on over, just as he said. I could guess what he wanted with me over there, but I wanted privacy for what I’d got to say to him, so it suited me, too. You’ve seen the place, I take it, you know what he’s done to it. In a few minutes he came bounding in, bursting with high spirits, with a magnum of champagne under his arm. ‘Well, what’d you think of your ideal home now, boy,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t it shake you?’ But I hadn’t come to amuse him, and it was all rather water off a duck’s back. I let fly with what I had to say, told him what I thought of his dirty tricks, and accused him of stealing the letter. He just laughed in my face and denied everything. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said, ‘why should I want to steal my own letter?’ I suppose I hadn’t expected any sort of satisfaction except just in getting the load off my own chest, so I unloaded. I told him what sort of lying, cheating devil he was, and swore I’d fight him to the last ditch, over the sign, over my career, over everything.”
“And half an hour or so later he was dead,” said George deliberately.
“I know, but I didn’t touch him.”
Jean moved her hand silently upon the table until it touched Leslie’s hand; that was all, but the spark that passed between them quivered through every mass within the room.
“I didn’t touch him,” said Leslie again, with a softer and easier intonation. “He was running about the gallery there, getting out champagne glasses from the bar, and I said was he celebrating the final break, because this was it. And he said, ‘This isn’t for you, boy, I’m expecting better company.’ So I left. I walked out and left him there fit and well. It couldn’t have been half past ten, because only one or two cars had moved out, and there was no sign of turning-out time. I walked home, and I walked fast because I was still burning. By about ten to eleven I was home.”
“Did you see anyone around when you left? Or on the way? Just to confirm your times?”
“Not that I noticed,” said Leslie, paling. “I wasn’t thinking about needing confirmation, or I’d have done something about it. I was inclined to fume off by myself, rather, the mood I was in.”
“I can confirm the time when he got in,” said Jean firmly, and the hand that had moved to touch her husband’s now closed over it and gripped it tightly. “There’s a chiming clock at the church just along the road. I heard it strike the three-quarter hour just two or three minutes before Leslie came in.”
“Yes, well, there may be others who noticed him somewhere along the way, you know. We’ll try to find them.” Evens so, Armiger could just as well have been left behind in his ballroom dead as living. According to the surgeon he might have died as early as ten-fifteen. “Mrs. Harkness didn’t have to let you in, I suppose? You have your own key?”
“Yes. And she probably wouldn’t hear me come in. She goes to bed early, and she sleeps at the back of the house.” He was going to the opposite extreme now, producing all the possible unfavourable circumstances himself before they could be unearthed by others.
“Don’t labour it,” said George with a slight smile, getting up from his chair. “Others are having to account for themselves, too, you know. If you’ve done nothing wrong then you’ve nothing to hide and nothing to worry about. And if you’ll let me advise you, hide nothing. And then stop worrying.” He buttoned his coat, stifling a yawn. The coffee had helped, but what he needed now was sleep. “Meantime, you’ll be here at our disposal, won’t you?”
“I’ll be here,” said Leslie, slightly huskily because his throat was dry with returning fright.
The last George saw of them, as he looked back from the top of the stairs, was the two pale, unwavering faces, side by side and almost on a level, with wide, wary eyes staring after him; and the two hands gripped together between their bodies, clinging to each other as though they defied the world to tear them apart.
CHAPTER VII.
“I’M INCLINED TO believe him,” said George, frowning over the litter of scribbled notes tucked under his coffee cup. “When his father told him to go across to the barn, he says the old man said: ‘Walk in, the door’s unlocked, I was going over there in any case a bit later on.’ And then about the champagne, which put me off in the first place: ‘This isn’t for you, boy, I’m expecting better company.’ That strikes me as sounding true, and fitting in with the facts. If the champagne had been all part of heaving his triumph in Leslie’s face he’d had time to open it. But it wasn’t opened. And the alternative seems much more probable. He was expecting someone, he was preparing a celebration, but it wasn’t for Leslie. Leslie was just a pleasant interlude of devilment thrown in by sheer luck, to pass the time until the other person arrived. The real business of Armiger’s evening was still to come. And if I’m right, then it was because of this other person, not because of Leslie, that he didn’t want to be disturbed. Why should he care who heard him tormenting his son? He’d have enjoyed it all
the better with an audience.”
“Didn’t you say Miss Norris told you he said he’d be only a quarter of an hour or so?” asked Bunty. “That makes his time schedule rather tight, doesn’t it?”
“It does seem so. And as a matter of fact only she used that phrase. According to Miss Hamilton and Shelley he merely said he’d be back, and he hoped they’d be able to wait. Maybe her recollection isn’t quite accurate, maybe he was speaking rather loosely. And important meetings can take place in a quarter of an hour, of course.”
“Supposing Leslie did get back by ten to eleven, would he have had time to be the murderer? He has no car, there’s no bus just then, it must be true that he walked, and even walking fast it would take him fully twenty minutes. So he must have left by half past ten at latest.”
When she was admitted into conference in this way she used a level, quiet voice, careful to break no thread of George’s reasoning. Sometimes she put things into his head, sometimes she showed him things that were already there.
“Yes,” said George, “there was time, though certainly none to spare. The surgeon’s report confirms that death may have taken place any time between ten and eleven-thirty.”
“And it doesn’t take long, of course,” admitted Bunty, “to bash somebody over the head with a bottle and run for it.”
“Well, it’s not quite so simple as that. It wasn’t just one blow that killed him. Seems there were at least nine blows struck, all at the back and left side of the head. There are several fractures, and some splintering of the bone. Then there’s also a large abrasion on his right temple and cheek, apparently from his fall; when he was first struck. That wouldn’t have killed him, in any case, he’d have been stunned but nothing worse. But at least four of the other blows could have been fatal. It may not take long to batter a man’s head to pieces that way, but it takes longer than just hitting out once and running. It must have been quick work if Leslie did it.”
“Very messy work, too,” said Bunty.
“Yes, we’re not forgetting that. And Johnson’s report isn’t much help, except in establishing that somebody must have had some badly soiled gloves to dispose of after the event. No prints on bottle or glasses except Armiger’s own, nothing to be got from that broken statuette, and all the prints lying at random about the room turn out to be Armiger’s or else belonging to some of the decorators and electricians who were working on the place. Only one or two haven’t yet been matched up. Clayton’s prints are on the door handle, but nowhere else, and there are also some on the door we have to check up now with Leslie’s.” He shuffled the sheets of notes together, and reached for the toast. “Well, if the chief agrees I’m going to follow up this odd business of the inn sign. May as well see if there’s anything to it.”
Dominic was standing in the doorway of the room with his school-bag under his arm. He had been there for some time, waiting to be noticed, and unwilling to break into his father’s concentration until he could catch his eye. The morning was bright, and the normality of everything wonderfully reassuring, and they had said not a word that could tend to cast a shadow on Kitty. Not that other people were expendable, of course, but he couldn’t help being glad when Kitty slipped clean out of the discussion.
“Have I to bike to-day, Dad, or are you going in this morning?” he asked, seizing his opportunity.
“Yes, I’m going, I’ll take you. Give me five minutes and I’m ready.”
Dominic had hoped that he would be communicative on the ride, but he wasn’t, he remained preoccupied, and nothing was said between them until they parted at the corner by the police station. It was still an effort not to ask questions, but since the inquiries seemed to be veering well away from Kitty it did not hurt him quite so much to contain his curiosity.
“Can I ride back with you this afternoon? I shall be a bit late myself, because it’s rugger practice. Say quarter to five?”
“I hope to be free by then,” agreed George. “You can call in and see, anyhow. I shall be here.”
He watched his son shoulder his bag and stride away along the street. He was running to length these days, not so far off a man’s height now, but still very slender. He was getting control of his inches, too, and learning to manage his hands and feet and all the other uncoordinated parts of him. Give him a year, and he’d be downright elegant in movement. Odd how they do their growing-up by sudden leaps, so that however constantly and affectionately you watch them they still manage to transmute themselves while your back’s turned, and confront you every third month or so with another daunting stranger. Freckled and chestnut-haired and no beauty, apart, perhaps, from those eyes of his; but like his mother, whom he so engagingly resembled, he didn’t need beauty. George found them both formidable enough as they were.
He went in to his conference with Superintendent Duckett assembling in his mind the details of his evening interview with Jean and Leslie Armiger. Duckett found them no less interesting than George had done, and endorsed his proposition to follow up the curious affair of the inn sign. The dreary, dogged search for bloodstained clothing, the exhaustive interrogation of anyone and everyone who had been present at the opening night of The Jolly Barmaid, would go on all day and probably for a good many more days into the bargain; but if a promising side-track could shorten the journey, so much the better for them all.
George telephoned County Buildings before he set out, to check with Wilson.
“That’s right,” said Wilson amiably, “I offered to pick up the thing for Leslie and take it over to Cranmer’s for him. Oh, yes, I think the chap’s all right, knows his stuff, and all that. He’s had one or two good things in since I’ve known the place. I don’t know a thing about this panel of Leslie’s, no. I’ve seen it, of course, but there’s nothing exceptional about it on sight, except, perhaps, the quality and solidity of the panel it’s painted on. I’d like to see the worm who could get his teeth in that. No, I can’t say I know Cramner, except just from looking round his place occasionally, and buying one or two small things. He’s been there a few years now. Usual sort of antiquary, old and desiccated and hard as nails.”
The description fitted Mr. Cranmer very fairly, George thought, when he entered the small gallery in Abbey Place, and took stock of the person who hovered delicately in the background, refraining from intercepting him until he showed whether he wanted to gaze or do business. The neighbourhood was a part of the old town, mainly early Tudor, and the low black-beamed frontage of the shop was beautiful. English black-and-white, in contrast to some of its European kin, is so wonderfully disciplined, makes such a patterned harmony of a whole street, instead of a Gothic cadenza. The interior was also plain white beneath the enormous beams of the ceiling, and not cluttered. The man himself was of medium height, slightly stooped, grey of hair and complexion and clothing, and lean with an astringent leanness like that of roots and sinews and all that is most durable in nature. He wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look enormous and incredibly blue. To approach him from the inoffensive side-view and be suddenly transfixed by that vast blue glare was electrifying.
The voice that went with the grey shape was old, prosaic and discreet; so discreet that until George identified himself as a police officer it produced no information whatever, and without even appearing to be wilfully stalling; as without any apparent volte-face it then became loquacious. Yes, he had the painting in question in his workshop, he understood that it had been the sign of an inn called The Joyful Woman. Yes, it might possibly turn out to be of some value, though questionably of very much.
“Several times clumsily overpainted, you know, and exposed to a great deal of weathering when in use as a sign, and therefore frequently touched up and varnished over, like most of its kind. But I have an idea, mind you, it is just an idea, that it may be based on an eighteenth-century portrait by a local artist named Cotsworth. You won’t have heard of him, I dare say. Not important, but interesting, if it turns out to be his. Worth a few hundreds, perhaps,
to a local collector.” He trotted away into his back room to bring forth a foot-square framed canvas, the head of some long-dead worthy. “This is a Cotsworth,” he said triumphantly. It seemed to George depressingly smug, clumsy and ugly, but he forebore from saying so.
“You’ve had the painting for about a fortnight, I understand. Are you making tests on it? Did young Mr. Armiger empower you to do that, or was he merely asking for an opinion first?”
“He asked for an opinion, but I should like, if he agrees, to try to uncover at least a corner of the older paint, and see if it confirms my guess. If it does, Mr. Felse, I may be prepared to offer Mr. Armiger as much as two hundred and fifty pounds for it myself.”
“Very handsome, Mr. Cranmer. Did you inform Mr. Armiger senior, or anyone in his employ, that you had the painting here, and that it might conceivably be valuable?”
The two hundred and fifty pounds had struck the first really phoney note; if he was ready to mention such a sum he was thinking in terms of a thousand and upwards. And once that false quantity had jarred on George’s senses this whole room began to seem as much a faŕšade as the magnified blueness of the eyes.
“Certainly not,” said the old man stiffly. “It came to me as the property of Mr. Armiger junior, through Mr. Wilson, and I wouldn’t dream of communicating with anyone else about it. Except, of course, the police when they require me to co-operate.” He made it a plaintive and dignified reproof, and George let him have it that way; but the fact remained that he had not been required to co-operate to the extent of naming a price, and there had been no need whatever for him to do so. Unless, of course, he wanted his offer to come back to the owner in this superlatively respectable fashion, relayed by the innocent police. It might not come off, but there was nothing lost in trying.
All very correct, thought George, halting for a moment outside to weigh up the three mediocre moderns in the low Henry VII windows; but then, he would be correct, and cautious too, now that Armiger’s dead. The last thing he’d want would be to be involved. All the same, George suspected that Mr. Cranmer had indeed flashed the urgent warning to Armiger: look out, you’re giving away something valuable. He probably didn’t know that Armiger had gone as high as five hundred pounds in his attempt to recover it, or he wouldn’t have stuck at two hundred and fifty himself, the discrepancy was too glaring to pass without comment. He hadn’t, of course, actually made an offer, only hinted that he might be prepared to do so, but the implications were there. He would have collected a plump commission, no question of it, if he’d helped Armiger to get the better of Leslie, and acquired the great man’s formidable patronage into the bargain. Now that that was knocked on the head, quite literally, he was going into the deal for himself. All that, thought George, strolling without haste back to his car, depends rather on whether Mr. Cramner was acquainted with the painting’s provenance; but since the thing came from young Armiger, and he evidently knows it to be the sign of The Joyful Woman, we may safely assume that he could guess Armiger had thrown it out as valueless, even if Wilson didn’t tell him. And he probably did, he’s a talkative soul, he confides easily.