“These,” said Stewart, “are the component parts of a triptych painted by Niccolò Frumenti and two of his pupils, and stolen more than three years ago from the church of St. Brieuc des Caves near Sassencourt by two Iranian thugs. Their presence in the private cabinet of Mr. Meyer raises a number of interesting questions—”
“Put them back, for God’s sake. And let’s shut this thing up and talk about them next door.”
When they were back in the office Stewart said, “It seems to me, correct me if I am wrong, that you are scared of your boss.”
“I wasn’t until today. Until then I’d thought of him as clever, rather self-satisfied and a bit eccentric—”
“Eccentric?”
“Well – he hadn’t made the slightest suggestion of a pass at me—”
“Eccentric indeed. But go on.”
“Well, this morning, when he was talking on the telephone and coping with whatever it was had happened to Mrs. Chaytor, suddenly he seemed to be quite a different sort of person.”
“I see. And what exactly had happened to Mrs. Chaytor?”
“I’ve no idea. Except that she was on a two-day trip to Paris. I didn’t even know that she was involved in Meyer’s business.”
“Do you mean to say that you’ve been here, with him, for three hours and haven’t got him to tell you all about it?”
“I didn’t feel I could ask him. Could you?”
“I could. And I will. Let me read in the crystal ball. Some time this afternoon, or early this evening, his wife will telephone him and will tell him that everything is all right. She will be speaking in her normal wife-to-husband voice and will order him to stop fussing and go home. He will be deeply relieved. That is where we take him in hand. We tell him that he must not on any account get home before his wife does. Sitting in an empty house will upset him all over again. Solution, to come out and have a celebratory drink. We’ll go to one of the pubs in Shepherd Market that our boys use and have a real rave-up. I shouldn’t imagine that Chaytor is a hardened drinker.”
“I’d guess not.”
“Then very soon alcohol will combine with relief to loosen his tongue and we shall have the whole story.”
“Stewart,” said Lisa.
“Adsum.”
“Tell me, just why are you so interested in Mr. Chaytor? In fact, why are you so interested in what goes on here? As I understood it, it was Peter’s case. He wrote the letter that hooked Meyer—”
“True. What I felt was that a situation was developing which might merit the attention of both of us.”
“What you mean,” said Lisa severely, “is that you couldn’t resist the temptation to poke your nose in. Isn’t that correct?”
The return of Mr. Chaytor saved Stewart from having to answer this. Half an hour later the expected telephone call came. The voice of Mrs. Chaytor boomed reassuringly down the line. A very short time after this saw them ensconced in the saloon bar of The Running Footman, one of Shepherd Market’s most cheerful taverns.
Stewart was sorry to find that Mr. Chaytor preferred to drink beer. The trouble was that an inexperienced drinker, imbibing more pints than he was accustomed to, would probably be sick before he was intoxicated. A glass or two of whisky would have produced the required effect more quickly and more neatly.
Ron and Len were there, with their cousin Les Britton the bookmaker’s muscle-man. It had, thought Stewart, as he made his way through the crowd round the bar, the makings of a good party.
The most prominent man in the crowd, with the loudest voice and the reddest face, was haranguing two or three people who might have been his friends, or might simply have found themselves next to him at the bar. As Stewart squeezed past him, he half turned and caught sight of Mr. Chaytor. The sight seemed to upset him.
“Bugger me,” he said, “I thought this was a saloon bar, not a Pixie’s Paradise.”
One of the men by the bar said, “What are you talking about?” and three or four heads swung round.
“Look what they’ve let in. Do my eyes deceive me, or is it a fairy?”
He had spoken loudly enough to embrace everyone in the bar, but if he had intended to raise a general laugh he was disappointed. Stewart put down the drinks he had collected, swung round and said, “Who are you talking about?”
The crowd seemed to have drawn back, in the way crowds do when trouble is brewing and there was a clear space between Stewart and the red-faced man. From behind Mr. Chaytor, Ron, Len and cousin Leslie, a powerful phalanx, advanced towards the point where Stewart was standing.
Stewart said, “It’s a simple question. You called someone a fairy. Who were you talking about?”
“I made a private comment.”
“You made it loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear. So let’s all have the answer.”
“I – I refuse to be cross-examined.”
“Are you going to refuse a punch on the hooter?” said Les, who was now within swinging distance of the red-faced man.
“Speak up,” said Ron. “Don’t keep the audience waiting.”
The red-faced man seemed to have shrunk. He looked round for support, found none and said, “I’m not looking for trouble.”
“Then apologise,” said Stewart. “And be quick about it.”
“If anything I said was taken in the wrong way, I’m sorry.”
“Not a very good apology. But it will have to do. And now, if you really want to avoid trouble, I advise you to slip off home. No, don’t bother about your drink. We’ll finish it for you.”
“Good advice, chummy,” said Les. “New teeth cost a mint of money these days.”
The red-faced man was already sidling towards the door. As he went out the conversation in the bar resumed. Stewart picked up the drinks. The Starfax party returned to their table. The incident was over. Les said, “Pity he scarpered. I’d got my eye on just the spot in his lovely grey waistcoat that I was going to plant a swinger.”
From that point it was a very good party and might have gone on until closing time if Mr. Chaytor hadn’t caught sight of the clock over the bar. He said, in a sudden panic, “It can’t be as late as that.”
“Pub clocks are always fast,” said Len.
“But I must be off. I can’t let my wife get home and find no one there. Really I can’t.”
Stewart looked at him judgmentally. He said, “That’s right, Colin. You must be there when your wife gets back. I’ll run you home.”
“Please don’t bother. I can manage.”
“At this time of night?”
“There are plenty of trains to Staines. Then I get a bus out to Stanwell. They run quite late.”
“Why take a chance on it? I’ve got my car here.”
“Well, if you insist. It’s very kind of you.”
“I do insist,” said Stewart.
4
“Bloody lucky I did take him home,” said Stewart to Peter next morning. “I don’t believe he’d have got a bus from Staines at that time of night and if he’d tried to walk to Stanwell, as like as not, he’d have ended up in the George VI Reservoir. I don’t think he’d any idea how much he’d drunk.”
“Where and what is Stanwell?”
“It’s tucked away in the south-west corner of Heathrow.” Stewart demonstrated on a plan of the airport and its surroundings. “Before the airport was built it must have been rather a charming little place, with a manor and a park. Now the Chaytor homestead is the only remaining inhabited house in it. Some nice stuff in it too. Old china and good reproduction antique furniture. More his taste than his wife’s I should guess.”
“From which we conclude that Meyer pays him well.”
“Handsomely, I’d think. And he does some painting on his own, too. There’s a studio at the back of the house. Nice northern light across the airport. He had it built on a year or two ago. I thought he was a little bashful about the studio, but I was allowed to poke my nose into it. Oils, water colours, acrylic paints, the lot.”
“A versatile performer.”
“Certainly. And, as I discovered from our talk, versatile in more fields than painting.”
“Explain.”
“Well, when we’d settled down in the living-room, he opened his heart to me. It wasn’t just the drink. I think it was the first time anyone had stood up for him in public and he was overflowing with gratitude. I don’t mean that he told me anything personal. But interesting, all the same. You remember those three triptych paintings?”
“Vividly.”
“They were stolen over three years ago. Right? Then do you realise that Meyer’s only got to hang onto them for another two years and they could be sold openly in France? And a year or two later in England or America.”
“How so?”
“It’s a useful gadget known as the Statute of Limitations. After a certain period the person in possession of stolen material can no longer be charged with stealing it. A different period for different countries. France is the shortest. Five years. Seven years here and in America, and ten in Italy.”
“You mean when that time’s up he can offer it openly for sale with no fear of prosecution?”
“Right. But that’s not all. There’s something else he explained to me. If you buy a picture at a public auction, which Meyer often does, through an outfit called Pikorx, then that gives you another let-out. If the police get interested they might pursue the auctioneers. But clearly they’re only agents, selling for the real owner. And anyway, how were they to know that the stuff had been stolen? Particularly if it’s a fairly obscure painting or tapestry lifted from some continental church or museum. The theft may never have been officially notified here at all.”
“But if it is notified, then the police, who are not entirely stupid, are surely going to ask the auctioneers who their principal was?”
“Easy. He was a Monsieur Le Blanc, with an address in Paris. If our police pursue their enquiries in France – which they probably won’t as it’s expensive and they seem uninterested in recovering stuff stolen abroad – they will find that Monsieur Le Blanc and his address are both fictitious. And that, you may be quite sure, is the end of the matter.”
“Then how does Mrs. Chaytor come into it?”
“Easy. She’s the carrier. Can you imagine anyone less likely to be suspected than a woman who’s shepherding a gaggle of kids? A woman who’s been backward and forward so many times that the officials on both sides of the Channel probably know her by her Christian name.”
“Rather elaborate, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“I should have thought that anyone could have brought in the small stuff. The sort you were talking about, that hasn’t been notified here. Suppose he was stopped, he’d say, ‘Oh, I picked that up for a few francs from one of the stalls on the South Bank. Pretty isn’t it?’ End of Customs Officer’s interest.”
“Right. If you’re talking about the small stuff. But what about the important pictures? The ones on the Interpol File and the International Art Registry List.”
“Yes, I suppose they might use Mrs. Chaytor for those. It’s feasible.”
“And to take back the considerable sums in cash needed to pay those two thugs and any of Meyer’s other connections in France. The men who do the actual stealing.”
Peter could see Stewart’s eyes lighting up with excitement as the scroll was unrolled before him, bright with the primary colours of danger and device, ruse and counter-ruse; a boy’s enchanted landscape, with mountains to climb, forests to explore, lakes to swim across.
Time to bring him down to earth.
He said, “Let’s stop theorising and stick to the facts we know. And here’s a question to start with. Just why should Chaytor have picked on that impossible place to set up house? And if he’s spent a lot of money on building an annexe for his studio he must be intending to stay there. Less than a mile from the main Heathrow runway! For God’s sake! No one would go there unless he had some very good reason for it. Everyone else seems to have been driven out.”
“Of course there was a reason for it. When those pictures reach England – the important ones, I mean – they’ve got to go out again. The only real markets would be the States or South America. So what could be more convenient than a private back door to Heathrow Airport?”
“I hope you realise,” said Peter coldly, “that you’re talking nonsense. If you looked carefully at that plan you’d see that once Chaytor had climbed the fence at the end of his garden he’d find himself among the airport sewage-works and filter beds. All right? Having picked his way cautiously through those he next has to cross an extensive area which is used by various firms to park their lorries. If he crossed this unchallenged he would find himself in the main airport. Which, mark you, he could have got into without the slightest difficulty, on foot or in a car, by one of the public entrances. The checks and controls at Heathrow only start when you get into the Terminal Building and head for the aircraft.”
“Perhaps he was planning to pass the picture to one of those lorry drivers.”
“Most unlikely. If the idea was to get it sent over to the States as part of Messrs. XYZ’s consignment of Scotch whisky, the handover would have been done in private. Not in front of the interested gaze of a dozen other lorry drivers.”
“All right,” said Stewart crossly. “All right. Point taken. You’re supposed to be the brains of this combination. Suppose you devote some of your famous intellectual power to solving your own conundrum.”
“I’ve got a feeling that there is an answer and if we could find it we should be nearer to understanding just what is going on. Always supposing that it’s any of our business.”
“Everything about our clients is our business. Time devoted to investigating it must not be grudged.”
Peter sighed. He realised that what Stewart really meant was that he had got onto the track of a promising mystery and was unwilling to let it go. “All right,” he said, “but business first. Here’s a letter from the man who conducts the astrology column in the Brighton and South Coast Times. He’s complaining that I’ve been copying his predictions.”
“Have you?”
“I might have picked up one or two of his favourite expressions.”
“No problem. Write to him and point out that what he is passing on to his readers is the Voice of the Stars. The copyright in these statements belongs to the Stars, not to him. If he’s planning to sue anyone for breach of copyright he’d better watch out to see that Virgo and Taurus don’t sue him.”
Some days later Lisa said to Peter, “You’ve got a chance of getting into mummy’s good books.”
“A sound move, if it can be done.”
“She’s accepted an invitation to spend two or three days at Lambrécie. Important local characters will be there. I gather that late September is the traditional time for this sort of jamboree. It’s the week before the grape-picking starts. The last row of vines has been weeded, the gear overhauled, the casks scrubbed. A moment for feasting and merriment.”
“It sounds perfect. But where do I come into it?”
“You’re to go with her.”
“Why on earth?”
“Maybe she feels she’s getting a bit old for unaccompanied foreign travel. Or perhaps she wants to get to know her future son-in-law better.”
“She’ll pay the fare for me?”
“Of course. First-class travel and all found.”
Peter said, “Fair enough. When do we start?”
“My dear Constantia,” said Joseph Wellborn, “how kind it was of you to leave your comfortable Highgate mansion and risk the discomforts of my rustic dwelling.”
“Don’t try that stuff on me,” said Mrs. Shilling. She had long ago taken her younger brother’s measure. He, let the truth be known, had been slightly scared of her since their nursery days. “You know perfectly well that you’ve got a gorgeous place here. Far too good for you, actually.”
“Y
ou see,” said Joseph to the portly gentleman alongside of him, “being a sister she feels able to proffer an insult when she is hardly inside the front door. Allow me to introduce you. His Excellency, Alfred Bruneau, Deputy Mayor of Bordeaux. Next year he will occupy the mayoral chair and will be too proud to visit us.”
Monsieur Bruneau smiled politely and introduced his wife, who had been hovering in the background.
“We are honoured also to have with us for the weekend Professor Philibert-Lucot, whose work on the chemistry of the saccharomyces is the bible of all wine-growers. And – I forget my manners – I should of course have introduced her first, Madame Philibert-Lucot.”
The Professor was tall and thin. His wife was twelve inches shorter than him and comfortably rotund.
“She is the Broad and I’m the High,” Peter quoted to himself. “We are the University.” He managed to keep a straight face as the introduction proceeded. Fortunately the Professor’s idea of conversation was a monologue, so he was not forced to reveal his ignorance of the history of the grape, delivered some inches above his head. When the Professor paused for a moment Joseph interrupted to indicate a brown-haired, brown-eyed man who had been standing unobtrusively in the background. He reminded Peter of the Kent cricketer Underwood and turned out to be Commissaire Paul Meurice of the Brigade Criminelle of the Bordeaux Police Judiciaire.
The Professor, deprived of his audience, turned to Mrs. Shilling and said, “You have survived your lengthy journey well, Madame. In the heat of September it must have proved fatiguing.”
“I was much helped by my young friend.”
“We had the pleasure of his company here a few years ago,” said Mr. Wellborn. “He arrived – on a bicycle!”
“Ah, the young,” said Madame Bruneau.
“This time, as you hear, he has been escorting my sister. He has one great advantage as a courier. He speaks excellent French.”
“Not surprisingly,” said Mrs. Shilling drily, “since he is a de Clissac and was brought up in France.”
“Indeed,” said the Professor, now bending forward so that his head came down to Peter’s level. “What branch of the de Clissacs is that?”
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