by John Creasey
Lance began, “You mean—”
“I mean we’re on our way to a fortune. Falconer would be tempted like hell to buy the Velazquez anyhow. When he knows that buying it is the only way to save his daughter from drugs and shall we say degradation, he’ll fall over himself to buy it. And, oh boy,” - an expression of unbelievable cunning spread over Robin Kell’s face, making him look quite demonic - “oh, boy,” he repeated in a low-pitched voice, “won’t we have him where we want him then? He’ll buy everything we want him to, or the police will be tipped off to pay him a visit.”
Lance was watching him, appalled, but as if mesmerized. Robin’s tone changed.
“So we’re home and dry. All we have to do is keep our heads. There were only three men who could have caused us any real trouble, but now they can’t. We’ve got to work out how to get rid of the body. The best way will be to get de Courvier back in the Jaguar. It doesn’t matter where it’s found; the trusting neighbour will report it stolen and the police will think it all happened in the car.”
He nodded to himself with obvious satisfaction.
“So long as you don’t hurt Christine,” Lance said weakly.
“I won’t hurt Christine if she behaves herself,” Robin said absently “It’s past time we put this piece of lolly away, now. My God! You could have got us into real trouble!” But he did not dwell on that, only raised the Velazquez shoulder high and stepped toward a wall adjoining the next-door building, on which several big paintings, none of any quality, hung from a picture rail. “Come and lend a hand,” he added more brusquely.
Lance moved after him, and together they took the pictures down. Then Robin pressed a section of the rail, and the now bare wall slid open, revealing a dark recess beyond, about three or four feet deep. Inside were a dozen cylindrical metal containers, each marked “Fire Resistant.” Robin picked one up from the left-hand side, twisted a key in a small lock, opened the hinged top, and turned toward Lance, who was rolling the Velazquez. Taking the picture, he eased it gently into the container and then closed the cap. He tested it to make sure the self-locking device worked, then put it with those on the right-hand side.
“Eleven in the bag,” he remarked. “We won’t worry about making it a round dozen.” He pressed the picture rail again and the doors slid to; then they put the pictures back.
“Foolproof and fireproof,” Robin observed “We’re nearer that fortune than we’ve ever been. And no one can give us away now - all of them are dead.”
Lancelot Judd nodded, but almost at once gave an involuntary shiver. Robin appeared not to notice. Neither of them spoke of Christine.
“Did you know that Christine wouldn’t be in for lunch?” asked Sir Richard Falconer. He was lunching, frugally for him, in the morning room overlooking the walled garden of Falconer House, a garden with a centuries-old lawn, smooth as velvet, bordered on one side by espalier apple and pear trees, still heavy with fruit, and on the other by the rich variety of colours and blooms of late dahlias and early chrysanthemums.
“Yes, I knew,” Lady Falconer answered.
“Do you know where she intended to go?”
“With Lancelot Judd, of course.”
“It’s very risky, Charlotte,” Falconer said severely.
“It’s even more risky for us to try to live her life for her,” retorted his wife, with rare spirit. “If you restrict her too much, she will rebel completely and leave home.”
“I don’t think you know her as well as I do.” Falconer cut a piece off a peach and placed it in his mouth. “She will accept - she does accept - the situation, and she will certainly not be foolish enough to leave home. Life in a garret or what passes for penury these days certainly would not suit her, nor will this young man. Do you really know anything about him?”
“I know you have no doubt set your spies on him,” Lady Falconer said bitterly.
“Charlotte, I really don’t understand you. I must take the obvious precautions. Of course I needed to check the background of Lancelot Judd, who might possibly have proved suitable as an escort for Christine. He is the son of Jacob Judd, a Brighton solicitor; got a scholarship to Oxford, and worked in an antique shop during vacations, so he has some knowledge of antiques and paintings. But until he set up shop he lived on a small inheritance, and seems to be a somewhat odd young man. He was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a campaign which you know that I abominated. And he has friends who are no less odd. Christine must be persuaded to break the association.”
His wife looked at him out of her beautiful shell, and her voice carried more feeling than her features - even her eyes - showed.
“Christine is extremely resentful at being watched and followed wherever she goes. You must stop doing that, and give her her head for a while.”
Falconer toyed delicately with another sliver of peach.
“I must at least appear to,” he conceded, “and I made a start only this morning. I told Oily not to have anyone follow her today. But if she isn’t back for dinner I shall regret it very much indeed.”
“She’ll be back,” his wife said with assurance. “She promised to be here for dinner.” She relaxed a little as the footman brought in coffee: on Sundays they always had coffee in this room. As she poured, she smiled at her husband, and when she passed the tiny cup of priceless porcelain, their hands touched for a moment in a kind of aloof intimacy.
Gideon, on that pleasant Sunday afternoon, hoed vigorously among the late-summer flowers in the back garden and, when the rich earth had been stirred, took a pair of edging shears from the small garden shed and began to trim the lawn edges. Insects kept perching on his face and he brushed them off with the back of his hand. Now and again, when he stopped, he could hear the piano; Penelope was practising as if her very life were at stake. Kate was upstairs, getting ready to go out; they were going to supper with Prudence, the eldest daughter, her husband, and their five-year-old child. It would be pleasant but not exciting; like the gardening.
Gardening soothed Gideon, and while he gardened he was able to think clearly without fogging his mind by too much concentration. Often, while pottering with lengths of bass, or with secateurs, tidying the shed or adjusting the blades on the lawnmower, he had flashes of illumination on matters which might have been worrying him for days. Today was mostly ruminative. He couldn’t do any more about the National Gallery inquiry and hadn’t yet made up his mind whether to attend the conference on Tuesday morning, or whether to delegate Hobbs. He wondered where Riddell was, thought of the dead Pakistani girl. Was hers an isolated case or did such things happen often? If a conference was needed, it was over the immigrant smuggling, but that was a major social problem, not simply one for the police, and he had a sense of the need for caution.
He couldn’t consult Chamberlain; the man would be impossible. Nor did he want to handle this on his own. The only person to discuss the problem with was Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, the Commissioner. Perhaps this evening he would call him; it would be easier to discuss it out of office hours, and Scott-Marie could be trusted absolutely.
He wondered how Entwhistle was, and whether Honiwell was right, and the case could and should be reopened. Was it really possible that Greenwood had let Entwhistle spend three years in prison, to face the rest of his life in prison, for a crime he hadn’t committed? What went on in the minds of such men? How could anybody live with a burden like that on his conscience?
The simple truth was, of course, that such men had no conscience, it was a hard thing to accept, and although Gideon had been dealing with the most ruthless and hardened criminals all his life, it was still difficult for him, especially on a Sunday afternoon in the garden, to believe that men could be so cold-blooded. But suddenly he had a revulsion of feeling against his own thinking. He knew damned well that some men were so utterly coldblooded that they did not have a spark of remorse or contrition whatever they did.
The killer of Jenkins, the killer of Slater might well be cases
in point.
There was a furious burst of music, a moment of praise and triumph; bless the child! He wondered how the strange affaire between her and Hobbs was progressing. She appeared most of the time to regard Hobbs as an uncle or an elder brother, and though she sometimes seemed almost to be in love with him, such periods did not last long. Soon she would meet another, younger man with whom, for a few weeks, sometimes only for a few days, she would be completely infatuated.
Odd not to know how one’s children thought and felt. The parent-child relationship was a strange one, and often totally unpredictable. Take for example Jenkins and his daughter Lucy.
Funny about Lucy, working in a shop that he, Gideon, passed every day. He had read the report from the Division at Fulham; it had been written with a rare sensitivity which had somehow made him understand Lucy’s reaction to her father’s death. The tragedy wasn’t in the death but in the revelation of the estrangement between father and daughter. Funny, too, about that yearly Christmas card with a five-pound note tucked inside.
He had only a few feet of the lawn edge to finish when he heard Kate from the window.
“George!”
The piano was still playing, a neighbour’s lawnmower was clattering.
“George! Telephone!” Kate was mouthing the words and beckoning.
A little reluctantly, Gideon put down the shears and strolled into the kitchen. There was an extension in the passage just outside the door. The music ended, by chance or with intent, and he picked up the receiver.
“Gideon here.”
“I’m sorry to worry you on Sunday afternoon, George,” said Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, “but I would like a word with you about Tuesday’s conference. Can you fit it in sometime this evening without disturbing your family too much?”
He could!
“About half past nine tonight, sir, if that would suit you,” Gideon replied promptly.
“Make it ten o’clock, will you? We needn’t be too long. Thank you. Goodbye.”
Gideon rang off, smiling with deep satisfaction. Scott-Marie must have sensed what Chamberlain had been doing, and deliberately relieved Gideon of the need to broach the subject. Yet Scott-Marie had a reputation for being the most coldly aloof man at the Yard. Ten o’clock was easier, really; he could bring Kate and Penelope home and then go to Scott-Marie’s place in Mayfair.
It couldn’t be better.
On the other side of London, above Lancelot Judd’s little shop, Christine Falconer lay in a drugged sleep.
Barely half a mile away from Gideon, at the back of Old Fisky’s shop, Lucy Jenkins watched the old man as he worked on her possible find. She could hardly control her impatience, her longing for a dream to come true.
15: The Find
Old Fisky did what Lucy had done at first, placed the picture flat on the bench, the odds and ends of rags, bottles, pieces of frame, glasses, brushes, cigarette packets, and empty matchboxes pushed to one side. Then he soaked a rag in turpentine, using far more than she would have dared to, and smeared it over the canvas, peering at it with sharp, unblinking eyes while the little miracle occurred. As the turpentine made the dirt and the varnish beneath it translucent, the picture itself began to show up. He grunted but made no comment, allowed the turpentine to dry, and then repeated the process. This time, he picked the wet picture up and held it so that the light shone on it. Clear, sunless light from the north, pure as light could be, made the three partly draped figures look very real.
“It’s certainly odd,” he said. “Varnish is very cracked. Put that diacetate nearer and get me some more cotton wool.” Under his breath he muttered something which sounded like “You should know what I want by now.”
But Lucy was too excited to feel rebuked.
Old Fisky picked up a paintbrush with the hairs almost completely worn away, took the cotton wool Lucy handed him, and wound it round the thick end of the brush until it was a cylindrical shape about the size of a cigarette. Lucy pushed a bottle marked “diacetate” toward him, and unscrewed the plastic cap. He dipped the stick inside, held it for a moment to soak the cotton wool, then allowed the excess liquid to drip back into the bottle before moving it to another corner of the picture. Slowly, he drew it across the canvas, and it took the dirt away as if by magic. He dabbed the cloth soaked in turpentine on the clean patch, then repeated the process until a strip about a quarter inch wide ran for three inches across the painting. Vivid blue and dull white showed up.
“It’s dry enough now,” he said. “Give me my glass, girl - for heaven’s sake, don’t just stand there.”
Without a word, Lucy handed him a magnifying glass about the size of a small saucer. She was unable to stop herself from trembling, because his manner told her that he was as excited as she was. He peered through the glass, now close to the cleaned strip, now a few inches away, and when he drew back he handed her the glass.
“Have a look for yourself... See what I mean when I talk of craquelure - those tiny, tiny cracks... Oh, it’s old.” She was hardly able to hold the glass still, excitement so possessed her. “Depends on the kind of varnish, of course, but at least three hundred years old, I would say, and Dutch. You only get that kind of blue in Dutch paintings – a secret they kept to themselves, never been able to reproduce it. Can you see?”
She could see the vivid blue of the paint and the myriad criss-cross lines where the varnish had cracked with dryness and age. It seemed to her that she had never seen so pure a blue, and she knew that Old Fisky was enraptured by it. The tiny criss-cross of cracks in the varnish was unmistakable, too. He had told her of this but she had never seen it so clearly before.
He took the glass from her, his hands spotted and with the veins standing out, hers very small and delicate and white.
“Now we will take it off the new canvas,” he said. “Anyone who saw the new canvas and the paint on it would think the dirt was new, wouldn’t give It a second thought. Except you!” He cackled to himself as he filled a big sink with water and put in a little detergent which would not affect the paint or the varnish but would soak the new canvas until it became loose and could be pulled away. After allowing the picture to float for ten minutes, he examined it with infinite care; then he pushed his few locks of hair back, and looked at Lucy with his head on one side.
“It’s an old one, Lucy, you can be sure of that. We’ll leave it for half an hour; the two canvases will pull apart easily then. How about me making you a cup of tea, for a change; it’s Sunday, and Martha’s out at church.” He turned toward the stairs, and thumped heavily up them, Lucy following him. “Warm today,” he remarked, loosening his collar.
“I’ll make it,” she said
She went into the kitchen and made the tea, as they both knew she would, then cut a few slices of his favourite wholemeal bread, spreading it with butter so soft that it melted into the coarse grain.
He was sitting in a big old saddleback chair, feet up on a pouffe, huge boots jutting out like boats. As she came in with the tray, he tapped the stool by his side.
“Put it here, I’ll pour out.”
She laid the tray on the stool and drew up a small sewing chair, one she especially liked because it gave her arms and elbows freedom. Old Fisky handed her a cup.
“You’re a very good girl, Lucy, and I know I’m an old grouch sometimes, but you’re a very good girl. You don’t try to do what you’re not qualified for, and that’s unusual in a young woman. You’ll be rewarded one of these days, don’t worry about that.”
“Do you think this is a find?” she asked eagerly.
“It’s an old picture,” he repeated noncommittally. He poured a cup for himself. “I’m sorry about your father, Lucy,” he went on unexpectedly.
She closed her eyes but didn’t speak.
“Don’t you ever feel lonely?” Old Fisky asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. “Yes, sometimes.”
“Never thought of getting married?”
She opened her eyes wide
in astonishment.
“Don’t be daft,” she said flatly.
“But that’s not daft,” he protested. “Don’t you like men, Lucy?”
“I never think of them,” she stated simply.
“If you did your hair properly, and if you—” He broke off, drank his tea in great gulps, and immediately poured himself another cup. “Oh, never mind, never mind. It’s your own life, as Martha keeps reminding me.” He was mumbling now, talking to himself, and Lucy could barely distinguish the words. “Make yourself attractive and some fellow will come and take you off, and I’ll lose the best assistant I ever had.” Suddenly, much louder, he asked, “Will you have more tea?”
“Yes, please,” she said meekly.
At last the half hour passed, and on the tick of the last minute Old Fisky stood up and led the way downstairs. Side by side, they looked at the picture and saw that it was still floating; then Fisky pulled it out of the water and held it up gingerly by that magic corner. There were bubbles in the new canvas; the new and the old were coming apart. Now he laid it, painted side down, on an old towel, and began to pull the two pieces apart. He kept picking pieces off his fingers, the old paste used in the relining, hardened by the years but soft after half an hour of soaking.
“It’s just relined,” he said “That cleaning label was a fake. Now, let’s dry it out and see if we can see what it is.” She waited, only too aware of her own shortcomings, while he examined the picture.
Soon appeared larger patches of the blue and white and then other, richer colours, reds, greens and yellows and pinks of the flesh and browns of hair and eyes. The old man breathed very hoarsely; there was no doubt at all of his excitement.
“I think it’s a John Bettes - that’s sixteenth-century Dutch,” he said. “Let me have the Benezit, Volume Three. Hurry, girl, hurry!” Lucy turned to the wall shelf where the row of green bound books stood, took down the volume he wanted, and held it out to him. He flipped over page after page, then suddenly stopped.