Death by Sheer Torture

by Robert Barnard

  And yet I didn’t get the idea she was lying. In fact, it had come out seemingly involuntarily, regretted immediately. And though it might seem a pretty repulsive thing to do, calling on a girl like Chris to devote her life to looking after a nasty old crackpot like our father, nevertheless, the idea was perfectly typical of my mother: she was still emotionally in the world of 1750 or thereabouts, and the pious hope that Chris would devote herself to her father’s well-being would have seemed entirely natural, indeed only right, to her. I asked myself how the wish had been communicated. And I came up with the answer: by letter.

  I walked round and round the garden, thinking about this and other things: the pictures, the mise-en-scène of the murder, the scissors in the plant-pot. I spoke to the gardeners, who had finished their deeds of retrieval around the house, and were busy rehearsing the story of Aunt Sybilla’s pink fits for later retelling in the Marquis. I recognized one of them as being the most junior of the outdoor staff in my young days. We talked about the grounds, and what needed to be done, and how you couldn’t get the labour, in spite of all this unemployment, and how you couldn’t expect two men to do the work of eight, and so on. I began to feel like a member of the gentry, being matey with the peasantry. I was glad Jan wasn’t there to overhear. Finally I landed up round the front of the house and was hailed from the Gothic wing by Tim Hamnet.

  ‘’Morning, Perry. Back on duty, I hope? By the way, no luck with Philadelphia. The Museum’s closed until Monday, and no power on earth’s going to get them to open up and let the police photograph the thing. That’s the message; I suspect the cops themselves aren’t putting their backs into it.’

  ‘Damn their hides. I suppose with their murder rate the odd country-house killing seems an epicurean luxury. By the by, I had an idea about those pictures—bit of a long shot, but —’

  ‘Give.’

  ‘Well, if you’d got pictures like those to dispose of, who do you think would be interested?’

  Hamnet was a bit at sea. ‘National Gallery?’

  ‘Wrong. They’ve got nothing British later than Turner.’

  ‘That other one—the Tate.’

  ‘Right. But if there was anything shady about the deal, you’d be a bit wary at approaching anywhere so well known. Their purchases tend to be well publicized. Then there’re several provincial galleries with a strong line in Victorian stuff—Birmingham, for example—and of course we ought to approach them. But on the whole the same applies. What would be better would be to approach somewhere a bit less . . . how shall I say? . . . exposed. See what I mean? Somewhere not quite so well known.’

  ‘I get you. Could a small place afford them?’

  ‘They could afford the Allan. He has no particular market value. And it occurs to me that the place that would be most likely to be interested in Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Turkish Fisherman After Having Swum the Hellespont would be —’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Newstead Abbey. Byron’s home.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Not far from Nottingham. Do you think it would be worth while giving them a tinkle?’

  ‘Surely. We don’t lose anything by it. I’d do it myself, but I’m waiting to interview little Mordred. Anyway, you know your stuff on that sort of thing. You’d do it better.’

  So I trolled off quite happily and entered the house. Then I was presented with a poser. Where did I phone from? I had intended using the phone in the Main Hall, but if there was an extension in the kitchens, as I suspected, that was about the last thing I ought to do. I ruled out Sybilla as too agog, and Peter as all too conceivably implicated, and I landed up with Aunt Kate. So I made for the Georgian wing, and of course found her thoroughly delighted to be of help.

  ‘Ring from here? ’Course you can, Perry! tickled pink, really. Don’t trust the others, I suppose. Is it top secret? Anyway, come on in.’

  I went in, averting my eyes from the signed photograph of the late German Führer, given a place of honour in the cluttered little hallway.

  ‘It’s not exactly top secret, but I would like it to be private. It’s not just an extension you’ve got here, is it?’

  ‘Not on your life. We each have our own phone, pay our own bills. Old stingyboots Lawrence sees to that. You can have the study phone if you like. Come on, we’ll take the lift. Upsadaisy!’

  I’d forgotten the lift. Lifts had been installed in the Georgian wing after the car accident in 1939 which killed my grandmother and left my grandfather an invalid for the rest of his life. Kate was the only child at home, and she had taken care of him, at least until her internment, in this wing that had later become her own (or rather her own, subject to the whim of Lawrence, or—rather more dangerously—Peter, in the not too distant future). We got out at the third floor, and she popped me in through the study door.

  ‘There it is,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You can have a look at my collection while you’re talking. Be worth a lot When The Time Comes. I’ll be downstairs. Toodle-oo.’

  No wonder she made a quick escape. Her ‘study’ in fact housed her proud collection of Nazi mementoes. As I got on to Directory Enquiries my eye rested on medals from the desert campaign, Iron Crosses, and pictures of the heroic action against the Polish ghetto. I closed my eyes. Really, I had to try to think of Aunt Kate not as she was now, an overgrown product of St Trinian’s, but as she had been for much of her adult life, a besotted admirer of a regime that even the most morally undeveloped could perceive as evil. Could that old Kate have been totally obliterated by the ‘breakdown’ of last year?

  I got the number of Newstead quite easily, but after that things did not go quite so well. I was answered by a helpful but rather hesitant male voice, which was obviously not at all pleased when I said I wanted to ask a question about the house.

  ‘Look, could you ring back Monday? There’ll be someone around then. I’m just a student, sitting in, you know, and none of the regulars will be back till next week.’

  ‘It’s quite a simple question, about a picture. It’s a big one, I’d guess, so you ought to be able to locate it.’

  ‘Yes, well, you see I’m a student of psychology. My mum knows one of the gardeners. The fact is, most of the visitors here know more than I do.’

  I sighed. I knew that sort of literary shrine. ‘Look, my name is Trethowan. I’m a policeman and it’s an urgent matter.’

  ‘I say, are you the Trethowan? Whose dad got done in when he was getting himself a bit of sado-masochistic fun? That case is just killing me. I’ve just been reading all about you in the Excess.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I said.

  ‘They call you Big Perry. Your aunt told the Excess you gave her the most wonderful feeling of safety.’

  ‘My aunt gives me the most wonderful feeling of a pain in the arse,’ I said.

  ‘Would you like a snap diagnosis of your father’s mental condition?’ asked Little Brightness at the other end.

  ‘I understood my father’s mental condition without benefit of psychiatry before I was into my teens,’ I said. ‘Look, about this picture —’

  ‘OK. But I don’t see what pictures have to do with it.’

  ‘Yours not to reason why. Read next Monday’s Excess and you might find out. It’s a picture called Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Turkish Fisherman After Having Swum the Hellespont. It must be fairly easy to identify.’

  ‘Hell, it’s not even easy to say! How am I supposed to identify it?’

  ‘Well, he can’t have much on, I would imagine. And there must be a sort of Turkish element in the picture.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Hey, wait: there is a picture like that. Sort of sexy, in an ethereal Victorian kind of a way. Where is it, now?’

  ‘Could you trot round and have a look for it?’

  ‘Sure thing. Hold on.’

  I hung on, and cast my eyes around my aunt’s loathsome souvenirs. The Turks and the Nazis—both rapists of Greece. There was a picture of tanks en
tering Athens. Before long my budding Freud came back on the line.

  ‘Yes. I’ve found it. It’s like what you said. Lots of white flesh. Hey, you’d have thought he’d have had a tan, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Gentlemen didn’t tan in those days. White was sexy.’

  ‘Is that for real? I thought sexy was always sexy.’

  ‘You can’t have seen any silent films. Keep to the subject. Is there anything about the picture in the catalogue?’

  ‘Catalogue? . . . Oh yeah, wait a tick . . . Yes, here it is: Lord Byron etc by William Allan. Painted, 1831. Acquired for Newstead in 1979.’

  ‘It doesn’t say who from?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Any idea who would know?’

  ‘Not a clue. Why don’t you ring Monday, eh?’

  ‘Look, is there a list in the catalogue of the Trustees, and the committee, and such like, for Newstead Abbey?’

  ‘Haven’t a notion. Where would it be?’

  ‘Try the first page.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Here they are. Local bigwigs and some professors.’

  ‘Could you dictate their names to me?’

  And so, finally, I got them, and the other end rang off, very cheery, saying if I wanted more help, just to ring back. I decided that the checking of the list of trustees to see if they could help over the buying of the Allan could be done by Tim or one of his team. The main thing was, I’d established that one of the pictures missing from Harpenden had indeed recently been sold (I was damn sure it hadn’t been given to Newstead!). Now we had to decide where to go from there.

  I went down the stairs. I’m never entirely happy in rickety old lifts: they sometimes give the impression that my weight is something in the nature of a last straw. When I got down to the hall, Kate was waiting, like a well-set-up vulture.

  ‘Get what you wanted?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Kate, I think so.’

  ‘I say, Perry?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You haven’t inquisited me yet.’

  ‘I haven’t inquisited anyone, Aunt Kate.’

  ‘Oh, you fibber. You’ve talked to people. You’ve talked to Mordred and Peter, I know. The other one inquisited me, but I didn’t tell him much. There are things one doesn’t talk about outside the family.’

  ‘Well, we could have a little chat, Aunt Kate,’ I said, thinking she wasn’t so entirely round the bend that she couldn’t be useful.

  ‘Oh, spiffing! When?’

  ‘Well, I’ve just got to deliver this list to the Superintendent. I could be back in twenty minutes or so.’

  ‘Oh, goody,’ said Kate. ‘Then you can stay to lunch!’

  CHAPTER 12

  LOW CUISINE

  Of course, I had to admit to myself that I’d asked for it. Walked straight into it with my chin out. One look at the clock, then showing after twelve, should have warned me of the danger. Even then I could have said I’d come back at half past four, and she could have given me afternoon tea and we would have both been happy. You can’t do much with afternoon tea. But I was caught off balance, and all I could do was to produce a ghastly grin of acquiescence.

  I went and shared my bit of news about Lord Byron with Tim Hamnet, and he set one of his men on to ringing round the various Trustees of Newstead to see if any of them had been involved in the buying of the picture. I also procured one of those little plastic bags that policemen use for sending specimens along to the forensic labs. I felt an awful coward. It was obvious that eating with Aunt Kate was an essential part of the Trethowan experience. One ought to face up to it, as to one’s first beating at public school, one’s first taste of fire in battle. It wasn’t as if I had a particularly delicate stomach: after all, I’d been eating in army and police canteens for most of my adult life. One develops a certain toughness of the gut.

  Still, I have to admit that as I strode resolutely back towards the Georgian wing, I was in a moderately filthy mood. And it wasn’t improved by my coming upon Mordred in the main hall: quite apart from the business with Chris, I was irritated by the mere look of him: he had no business to go around with that air of oh-so-appetizing agelessness, like an academic Cliff Richard.

  He said: ‘Hello, Perry. Bloodhounds still hot on the scent, are they?’

  I just snapped: ‘I want to talk to you later.’

  He looked hurt and injured, like a favourite courtier spurned by the Sun King.

  I steamed ahead, the battleship Resolute preparing for an engagement, and rang the doorbell to the Georgian wing. Kate was all over me, of course, and beside herself with the unaccustomed pleasure of being hostess. She was wearing one of her inevitable suits (I remember her confiding to me that as fashions changed she took the hems up two inches, or let them down two inches), and over it a magnificent flowered apron. She looked the very embodiment of Kirche, Küche, Kinder. She marched me into the sitting-room—normally decorated, thank God, without tributes to the heroes of the Third Reich, though I noticed gaps on the walls caused, no doubt, by Lawrence’s depredations—and she sat me down in a capacious, comfortable armchair. All the time she fussed over me in her gruff way, like an Old English Sheepdog penning up a prize ram.

  ‘Won’t be a sec,’ she bellowed, darting off to the kitchen. ‘It’s nearly ready. I love risotto, don’t you? You can put absolutely everything in!’

  Well, I suppose that is the theory. I had an awful feeling that even the most exuberant of Italian housewives would still exercise a modicum of discretion that was beyond my Aunt Kate. I sat there, helpless, a lamb to the gastronomic slaughter.

  Kate poked her head round the door.

  ‘Dandelion or parsnip?’

  ‘I beg your —’

  ‘Wine, you chump! I’ve got the parsnip chilled.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, being fiendishly cunning. ‘The parsnip, then.’

  She bore in the wine, in superb nineteenth-century goblets. She bore in a great tureen and served out the risotto with a liberal hand, ignoring my gestures to stop.

  I received my plate, and tried not to look too closely. The rice was soggy with overcooking, but it was in any case a minor component. The major part consisted, if my eyes did not deceive me, of scraps of beef, bits of turnip and beetroot, hacked up sardines and diced tinned peaches. And some squares of what could very easily be dog food. I shut my eyes and thought of England.

  ‘Lawrence sent the gardeners today,’ announced Aunt Kate. She had seized a fork in her large paw and now began shovelling in with gusto, as once she must have gobbled camp food in the Bavarian mountains, while Czechoslovakia bled. ‘After my pictures.’

  ‘Did they take any?’

  ‘Took two. When they came back for more, I’d got my Mauser out of the Collection. Scared ’em silly, and they took to their heels. Wasn’t loaded, but they weren’t game to risk it. World’s gone soft!’

  ‘Uncle Lawrence certainly seems to be concerned about his property.’

  ‘Got a fit of the meanies,’ said Aunt Kate complacently. ‘Happens when you get old.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I never remember him being miserly when I was young.’

  Aunt Kate shook her head vigorously. ‘Wasn’t. Didn’t care about money. Above it. Paid out oodles to that second wife of his. Pete’s mother. What do they call it? Alimony.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Keep her quiet. He was having an affair with a Marchioness or somebody. Paid out so she wouldn’t be named as co-respondent, so he said.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a Trethowan. I’d have expected him to revel in the publicity.’

  ‘Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? We are a bit blatant, aren’t we, Perry?’

  ‘The tiniest bit, now and then.’

  ‘Anyway, he didn’t have to shell out for long, because she died.’

  ‘Had he paid alimony to his first wife too?’

  ‘Oh, no. They were never divorced. She was a Catholic. She died before the war some time.’

  ‘Didn’t
have much luck with his wives, Uncle Lawrence.’

  ‘They didn’t have much luck with him,’ said Aunt Kate emphatically. ‘Always sniffing round someone or other. Wouldn’t think it, to look at him now!’

  ‘How bad is Uncle Lawrence? In health, I mean.’

  ‘Has his off days, as you saw. He’d had three days like that when you saw him. Sleeps here with me, these days. Think he puts it on a bit, sometimes. Like a child. Wants attention. Likes to be fussed. Knows more about what’s going on than he lets on to. Still, I play along with him. Not like Syb and Leo —’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They’re crazy, the way they provoke him. Provoked, in one case. Ought to think of the future. He’ll pop off if he has another of those strokes. Then where will we be? Awful swine, that Peter. Wouldn’t think twice about throwing us all out into the snow. You enjoying this? It’s scrumptious, isn’t it?’

  I was masticating thoughtfully a forkful that seemed to include a bony bit of kipper and a lump of marshmallow. I washed it down with a great gulp of parsnip wine and said: ‘This wine’s awfully good.’

  ‘I’ll fill you up,’ said Aunt Kate, and trotted off to the kitchen, while I transferred a judicious amount of the nauseating goo to my little forensic bag, and stuffed it into my trouser pocket.

  ‘What did you mean,’ I asked, as she settled herself down again and resumed her enthusiastic fork-lift job on her plateful, ‘about Father provoking Uncle Lawrence? Did they have any big rows?’

  ‘Not out in the open. Too cunning for that. Of course, your father sniped. He couldn’t help that, you know, Perry. He was a sniper by nature. But they kept the row under cover.’

  ‘What makes you think they had one?’

  ‘Because,’ said Aunt Kate triumphantly, ‘he took him walking!’