‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘We shall have to conduct further inquiries. I have another problem, Mr Hourani. Can you tell me where August Riverside is going?’
‘I can, indeed I can. I received permission to tell you that only this morning. Rupert said you were bound to ask. The painting is going to the United States, Lord Powerscourt. I am going to take it there myself the day after tomorrow. We were acting at the auction for an American firm called Knoedler, Alfred Knoedler, who have a high reputation for Old Masters at Old Masters prices. They, in turn, are acting for one of America’s great collections, the Huntington Library in California, built, endowed and stuffed to the rafters with railway money. Henry Huntington, the founder, is so wealthy that he feels sure that if it is known that his library is interested in a work, the price will rise automatically and I dare say he is right. This is not the first time we have acted for him through Knoedler. He must keep them in profit, he buys such a lot through them.’
Inspector Kingsley looked like a man who has just solved a mathematical problem in his bath. It was the mention of a possible departure the following day that spurred him into action.
‘You may be going to the United States the day after tomorrow, Mr Hourani,’ he announced, ‘I’m afraid the painting will be staying here. I’m arresting the picture called August Riverside or Mortlake Terrace. It will remain in police custody pending further considerations.’
‘You can’t, you can’t do that,’ Hourani spluttered. ‘The tickets are booked and everything. I have one dinner appointment at the captain’s table, for heaven’s sake!’
‘The painting stays here. And so do you, Mr Hourani. For the moment you are going nowhere. Count yourself lucky you’re not being arrested as well.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘Receipt of stolen goods. We believe the painting was taken over eighteen months ago. The theft was reported to the police. Until we have further information I must ask you to remain in London until further notice.’
It was the mention of the report to the police that sent Powerscourt’s brain working in a totally different direction. ‘Inspector, I’ve just thought of something,’ he said, the words tumbling out very fast, ‘this could be the reason why the name has changed. The theft was reported to the police at the time. Customs departments, the people who grant export licences, police authorities, art dealers and experts all over the Western world will have been told of the theft of Mortlake Terrace, Summer’s Evening. They will have been told to watch out for her. They will have been asked to notify the authorities in their own country if they see the painting or hear any trace of her. They will not have been asked to look out for August Riverside. That could sail through without anybody taking any notice at all. So the whole purpose of the auction may have been just that, to change the painting’s name. Maybe our American friend was worried about being in receipt of stolen goods. So he organized this charade instead. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s very plausible, my lord,’ said Inspector Kingsley. ‘But why wait for so long? Why didn’t he do it before?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he thought the warning ran out after a year. Maybe it had to be renewed. Maybe there were circumstances in his own affairs that caused the delay. I’m sure we can find out.’
‘For now,’ said Kingsley, ‘I’m going to take the painting away. My sergeant is going to organize a parade of experts to inspect it. I shall look into the question of the renewal of the theft notification.’
‘And I,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘shall get in touch immediately with the New York Times European art correspondent and ask him to launch some enquiries in that city.’
Sylvester Hourani watched sadly as August Riverside or Mortlake Terrace, Summer’s Evening was removed from his window and his bank account and taken into police custody. Powerscourt wondered where Inspector Kingsley was going to keep her. If only, he said to himself, if only she could share a cell with the Caryatid.
‘We’ve found him! We’ve found Lucas Ringer!’ Inspector Davies’s voice was breaking up on the telephone line from Wales. Inspector Kingsley, fiddling with his pen in the little office he shared with two other inspectors, was delighted that the lost undertaker had been located.
‘Where did you find him?’ he asked.
‘I’m in Aberystwyth. The local police found him sleeping rough near the seafront. You’ll never guess what’s happened.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Friend Ringer has turned the rules of police procedure upside down. Most people can’t wait to get out of a police cell once they’ve been inside it. Lucas doesn’t want to leave. He says the prison cell is the only place in the whole of Wales where he feels safe.’
‘And are you going to let him stay there, Inspector Davies?’
‘I’ve offered him a bargain. If he agrees to talk, to tell us everything that was going on before, he can stay in the cell for the time being.’
‘Well done.’
‘I’ve been thinking about this, mind you. In my opinion Ringer will say more to somebody he doesn’t know than he will to somebody he does. I don’t live in the same town but I’m not that far away. I think he suspects that anything he says to me will, sooner or later, get passed round the community. His granny or his auntie will be spreading the news within the week. Word gets round fast in Wales. People talk. So I think it would be best, certainly best for your investigation, if you came to talk to the man yourself.’
‘The fact that I’m a policeman won’t matter? He won’t think that I would tell you and word would get out that way?’
‘I don’t think so. Once you’re in plain clothes he won’t necessarily think of you as a policeman at all. Aberystwyth is quite bracing at this time of year, my friend. A blast of sea air will do you good, “blast” being the operative word.’
‘Very well, Inspector Davies. I’ll pack my best bucket and spade and be with you tomorrow.’
Lucas Ringer looked like a man who had spent too many days and nights sleeping rough. He had shaved badly with a borrowed razor and spots of blood were all over his left cheek. The police had taken away his clothes and lent him some others which had been made for a much larger man so they hung off his frame. And, as Inspector Kingsley soon discovered, it was more than his body that had been affected. His brain was not what it had been either.
‘They kicked him to death, you know,’ were his first words to Inspector Kingsley in the little interview room in Aberystwyth police station the following afternoon.
‘I know,’ said Inspector Kingsley, desperately trying to work out how to handle this crucial witness who might be able to open the whole case up.
‘Cigarette burns too. On his arms.’
‘Indeed,’ Inspector Kingsley replied. One route to follow was the obvious one. Play the policeman – Look here, you’ll be in real trouble if you don’t answer my questions, do you want me to throw the book at you, I could have you locked up for a long time. Inspector Kingsley didn’t think that would work. Something softer, something gentler was required. He had plenty of experience of the first route and a little of the second. He would just have to work it out as he went along.
‘Do you remember leaving home?’ Inspector Kingsley asked in his mildest voice. ‘Could you tell me why?’
‘I was frightened.’ Lucas Ringer stared hard at the policeman from London. ‘Didn’t want to get kicked to death, I suppose.’
‘Well, nobody’s going to kick you to death in here, you know that. Nobody knows you’re here for a start. Inspector Davies and the local men haven’t said a word to anybody.’
‘One day he was alive all day. That evening he was gone. No one knows how long it took to send him from one state to the other.’
‘What do you think Carwyn would say to you now, what advice do you think he would give you?’
There was a long pause. ‘Don’t know, I’m sure.’
‘Well, I’m quite sure of one thing, Mr Ringer. H
e would want you to help us catch the people who killed your friend. Once they’re out of the way you won’t have to worry about being kicked to death any more. But we don’t need to think about that just at the moment. Is there anything we can do to help you just now?’
‘I’m frightened, see. Very frightened.’
‘I can quite understand that. I’d be frightened too if I were in your shoes.’ Inspector Kingsley wondered if that had been a mistake as soon as he finished saying it.
‘I’ve asked this before, but I don’t think they knew I was serious. Can I stay in my cell for a while? I feel safe here, you see.’
‘Of course you can. Don’t worry about that. It’ll be fine, just fine.’
Inspector Kingsley wondered suddenly if the undertaker was hungry. Certainly he looked as though he hadn’t had a square meal for some days.
‘Tell me, Mr Ringer, would you like something to eat? You must be hungry, surely, after all you’ve been through. Could I order some sandwiches for you from the canteen? Some tea perhaps?’
Lucas Ringer nodded emphatically. ‘Ham?’ he said. ‘Do you think they have ham sandwiches? They’ve always been my favourite. Sometimes I have ham sandwiches for my lunch every day of the week.’
Inspector Kingsley departed to the front desk to be told the canteen would send them up directly.
‘We’re temporarily out of caviar and champagne, mind you,’ the sergeant on duty told him, ‘we hope to get fresh supplies next week.’
Ringer devoured one pair of sandwiches, then another. He finished a cup of tea and asked for a refill. The Inspector thought he began to look a little better. It was proving to be a most unusual interview.
‘What I’m going to do, Mr Ringer, is to tell you the little I know about what was going on. Then I would like you to fill in the gaps in my knowledge if you will.’
The undertaker gave a reluctant nod, but it was a nod, none the less.
‘Some strangers came, I don’t know how many. They were based either in one of the caves or at a great barn out on the Crickhowell Road. Neighbours heard a lot of banging in the night. You were asked by somebody, I don’t know who, to make an enormous coffin, much bigger than normal. The schoolteacher came up with the cover story about how it was going to send a statue to America. Something, we don’t know what, it might have been anything, was placed inside the coffin and it was sent off to Bristol.’
‘That’s good,’ said Lucas Ringer, tucking into the last pair of ham sandwiches, ‘there’s some things I know about and some I don’t. I don’t know anything definite about the strangers, it was all rumour and gossip. Some people said the people were foreign, but I’m not sure. I do know about the coffin. A man came from London to order that. At least he said he’d come from London. He gave me the dimensions of the thing. When it was finished, I was to drive it out to that big barn on the Crickhowell Road and wait while they put something inside it. Then I had to drive it back to my place and wait for the transport to Bristol.’
‘What sort of man was he? Well spoken? Did he sound like a Londoner? What sort of age, would you say?’
‘He looked about forty years old. He sounded like a professional man, rather like yourself, Inspector. His clothes were ordinary, as far as I remember. Dark blue suit, plain tie. He left me an address in London to write to if there were any complications. That was the address I gave to Carwyn Jones. I don’t know what part of London it was. But don’t you see?’
Lucas Ringer’s eyes took on that hunted look again. ‘If they came to kill Carwyn for what he knew, then why shouldn’t they come to kill me too? I know even more than he did.’
‘And the two men who came down to see Carwyn after he sent that letter? What can you remember about them?’
‘They were thugs, basically,’ Lucas Ringer said. ‘They made me feel uneasy, just looking at them.’
‘And you have no idea what was in Carwyn Jones’s letter?’
‘Not a clue.’
Inspector Kingsley thought that he had information now to banish most of the terrors that haunted the undertaker. If Ringer knew that Carwyn had been trying to blackmail the man from London, then he would surely feel safer. Always assuming he, Ringer, hadn’t been trying a bit of blackmail too. But there was one thought and one thought only uppermost in Inspector Kingsley’s mind. If he could get Ringer to swear in the witness box at the Old Bailey that the twins in the dock were the same people as those who had come to see Carwyn Jones on his last night alive, the twins would surely hang. Inspector Ferguson’s problem with the silent witnesses of Deptford would be solved. He couldn’t work out, for the moment, whether a very frightened Ringer would be more likely to identify them than a Ringer who was just a little bit scared. He resolved to think about the matter overnight.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Ringer. I think you have had enough for one day. I’d like to come back in the morning and we could have another talk. Is there anything else you can tell me before I go? Anything more about the man from London perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so, my mind has got confused. There is one thing, though. I think he was bald, the bloke from London, but I’m not sure. I could be wrong.’
Lady Lucy Powerscourt was opening the mail from the afternoon post in the drawing room in Markham Square. Her husband was reading a long account of the search for the Caryatid in the Morning Post.
‘Look, Francis,’ she said, ‘they’ve sent us a whole lot more information, the Hellenic College people. We’ve got details of the staff and where they come from, and a page of school news. This will interest you, my love. The new Erechtheion building will be officially opened on Saturday evening – that’s two days from now – by Dr Tristram Stanhope, Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and Classical Consultant to the Hellenic College. “Unfortunately,” the news goes on, “there will not be enough room for us to welcome parents and visitors on this important day, but we are sure you will wish us well on the happy occasion.” What do you think of that?’
‘Did you see the new building at all when you were there, Lucy? Is it very enclosed, perhaps?’
‘That’s the curious thing. The new Erechtheion is at the end of a long glade, a broad stretch of grass that runs between the trees up towards the Parthenon. You could put loads of people in there, I’m sure.’
‘Maybe they haven’t got enough chairs, Lucy.’
‘You can’t be serious. The people in that big house up the road must have heaps and heaps of chairs. They often have concerts and things like that by the side of the lake.’
‘Do they say what time the opening is going to be?’
Lady Lucy checked the news sheet on her lap. ‘Eight o’clock in the evening. It’s going to be quite dark. How odd, to open a new place when most people won’t be able to see it.’
Powerscourt strode downstairs to send an urgent message to Warwickshire.
Inspector Kingsley thought he was seeing quite enough of the country’s penal establishments. Aberystwyth police station the day before yesterday, one of London’s most notorious prisons today. His second interview with Lucas Ringer had been uneventful and yielded nothing apart from another round of ham sandwiches. He had left a set of recommendations with Inspector Davies.
‘The only thing that matters is that Ringer should be able to identify the Twins in court. Whatever we have to do to make him fit for that, we must do it. If he’s happy staying in the police station, so be it. If he wants to go home with a police guard, that’s fine. If he wants to go to a bloody hotel, the Met will pay. Let’s just hope we can keep him on track.’
The land surrounding Wormwood Scrubs Prison had once been the favourite place in London for duelling. The building itself, he had been told by the Governor on a previous visit, was constructed entirely by prison labour. There were two reasons for his visit today. He was going to see the convict he had sent there eighteen months ago, in a bid to raise the man’s spirits and, possibly, to save him from suicide. The other r
eason concerned the three men who had been sent to prison in recent years for fraud and other related crimes in London’s art world. Inspector Kingsley felt sure that at least one of them must have been incarcerated here in the Scrubs. He had sent a list of names to the Governor’s office on his return from Wales.
‘Easton, Kennedy, Blakeway,’ the Governor began, ‘they sound like a firm of solicitors, don’t they? Now then, I’ve had my people look them up and ask around about what we remember of these characters. We only had two of them, the records say that Easton was sent to Pentonville. I’ve written to my opposite number there to ask for any news.’
‘So what of Blakeway, Governor? Nicholas George Blakeway, former auctioneer and fraudster?’
‘Blakeway was an interesting character, Inspector. He seemed to fit into the prison routine from the day he arrived. Some people do. Perhaps he’d been to boarding school. He was rather an expert at cards. Most of the inmates refused to play poker with him after a while so he taught them whist instead. I remember him telling me that the criminal mind, for some unknown reason, had a natural ability to remember all the cards that have been played so far.’
‘Did he make friends with anybody in particular during his time here?’
‘I think you could have said he was friends with everybody and nobody at the same time. He got on well with most people but he didn’t get close to anybody.’
‘I see,’ said Inspector Kingsley. ‘What about the other man, Michael Moloney Kennedy?’
‘Ah, Kennedy. The man with his hand in the till. The inmates knew he had been called Trustworthy Kennedy the day he arrived. He was one of the strangest prisoners I’ve ever seen. From the day he came through the doors, he was miserable as sin. He used to rent out his services as a financial consultant with some success. Odd how the prisoners rate a man as better qualified if he’s actually been convicted for theft. But he was very unhappy at the beginning. Then, after three or four months in here, he cheered up. He got a letter in the post, Michael Moloney Kennedy, and after that he was as cheerful as the lark until the day he left.’
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