By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Does it matter?’

  She flung her hands towards the ceiling. ‘They’re probably still in the loft—the other set. We’ve got to know the truth, which they are. I’m going to wake her.’

  I grabbed her arm. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I snapped, ‘who painted what! You’re obsessed.’

  She allowed me to draw her towards the door, but she was furious. From behind us there was a bubbling sound from Grannie. We turned. Her eyes were open, and she was smiling.

  ‘Such a clever girl,’ she murmured. ‘That’s exactly what he did.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Now we were drawn back by Angelina’s alertness. So far as she was concerned there had been no gap in the conversation. She even raised her arm in a gesture of companionship. We were her friends.

  ‘Did you know this, Gran? On that night, when you burned the paintings, did you know you’d destroyed Freddie’s?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not then. Not until years later.’

  ‘You didn’t go into the loft to check?’

  ‘At that time, it was a comfort I didn’t wish to disturb. And I was afraid. Of him.’

  ‘Then when did you get to know?’

  ‘Later. Much later. After Charlie left home, after Mr Hine died.’ He had become Mr Hine, I noted. ‘I went up then. Tried to, but I fell. It’s very steep. That’s why I’m in this chair.’

  Then how had she found out? But before I could ask, I realized that Grace must have gone up for her. ‘Was it Grace?’

  ‘Yes. She told me the marked crates had been broken open. So he’d won after all.’

  Margaret moaned feebly. But Grace might have made an error. ‘The others are still there?’ Margaret asked quickly, desperately clinging to any remote possibility.

  Smiling now, sleep far away, Angelina nodded. ‘Which is why I’m so glad Tony has come. I told myself, if Tony comes he shall have the paintings. Who else should they belong to but the grandson of the person who painted them?’

  ‘I can’t let you—’ I began, but Margaret was still in there fighting.

  ‘You’re giving them to Tony, Mrs Hine?’

  ‘That was what I said.’

  Margaret turned away, and I heard her rustling in her shoulder bag. I said: ‘It’s very good of you, Gran, and if it’s in your will ...’

  ‘I’m not going to trouble changing it now. Don’t be a silly boy. Take them with you.’

  ‘I ... can’t!’ Not past Grace, not after what she’d said about vultures.

  Margaret tugged at my shoulder and thrust something into my hand. It was a sheet torn from a notepad.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a formal deed of gift. I’ve scribbled it out, and it might not be legal wording—’ ‘To hell with your formalities.’

  ‘It’s a matter of provenance, proof of ownership.’

  ‘You heard what she said. They’re not works by Frederick Ashe. Not from his magic brush. So you don’t have to worry.’

  She was agitated, her eyes wild. ‘I don’t know. I need time. Get her to sign it, Tony, damn you.’

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Gran. ‘Let me see. Get me my glasses, they’re over there somewhere ...’ Her fingers reached for the paper.

  Before she could take it I crumpled it and thrust it in my pocket. The idea of getting my grandmother to formalize a gift was repulsive. I was family, her own grandson. I took her reaching hand in mine.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Gran. I’ll treasure your paintings.’

  She smiled, and her hand fell limply from mine. She had smiled herself to sleep.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘You must be insane!’

  ‘There’s no money in it, no glory in the find. They’re only paintings by Angelina Foote.’ I picked my own from the top of the chest of drawers. ‘So you were right about this being a Frederick Ashe. Too bad, as it turns out.’

  Talking steadily, I got her out of the room, and closed the door quietly.

  ‘You’ll regret this.’

  ‘What I regret is that I ever went to that Antiques Road Show in the first place.’ I shuffled her down the stairs.

  ‘Your paintings ...’ she tried.

  ‘When she dies, I’ll collect them. Nobody will want them, not eighty Angelina Footes. Ah, Grace, we’re off now. She’s sleeping. We can see ourselves out.’

  Grace watched us out of the door. In spite of what I’d said, she refused to deny herself the pleasure of closing it with firm finality.

  Margaret stalked to the car, lips tight, small patches of white at their corners. She slammed the door furiously.

  As I slid in beside her, she rounded on me fiercely. ‘You damned fool, Tony. You complete and utter idiot. You should have got her to sign it.’

  ‘She gave me the paintings. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It is not! That Grace, she’ll probably get the lot in her will. Everything that’s left in the house, and those are, that’s for sure.’

  ‘She’ll hardly want a load of old paintings. And Gran gave them to me.’

  ‘You can’t prove that in a court of law. And how d’you know Grace wouldn’t want them? You know nothing. It’s all contradictory. Can’t you see ... we’ve proved nothing. Oh, to hell with it. Let’s go and get something to eat.’

  Being Margaret, she naturally headed for the most expensive restaurant in town, which stretched my pocket somewhat as of course I had to pay my share. But we got a corner table, and being expensive they were also discreet. We were allowed to eat without undue interruption.

  ‘We know nothing,’ she said again. ‘Your grandmother’s memory could have been faulty, and I think she was confused, anyway.’

  ‘She sounded lucid enough to me. For her age.’ The soup was cold. Margaret said it was supposed to be.

  ‘For her age,’ she agreed. ‘But as soon as she saw the painting she said: “It’s his.”’

  ‘So? Apparently it is. Frederick Ashe’s.’

  ‘She later said she needed her glasses to read the bit of paper you so cleverly stopped her from signing. So she may not have seen the painting clearly. She saw the magpie, so she’s probably long-sighted.’

  I wasn’t sure I liked the soup, and left half of it. ‘She also later said she was convinced she’d burned Frederick Ashe’s paintings, but mine was the one she saved from the fire. So she would know it’s one of his without seeing it very clearly.’

  ‘She saw it was the cottage. No question of that. She mentioned the briars. When she said it’s his, she could have meant the cottage and not the painting. As it was. He was renting it.’

  We sat back and waited for the roast lamb. I said: ‘Now you’re trying to persuade me that my painting isn’t a Frederick Ashe, and that she burned her own stuff after all. You’re contradicting yourself. Surely an expert such as you can’t be mistaken!’

  ‘Oh, you can laugh. But you heard what she said. She copied every brush stroke. She used the same paints. We don’t know how much alike the two sets of paintings are.’

  ‘But she’d be able to tell, surely.’

  ‘Of course she would,’ she agreed, tossing an absent smile at the waitress bringing our lamb.

  ‘Well then,’ I said, after she’d left. ‘My Gran said she wrapped up my painting the morning after the bonfire, and hid it in the shed. At that time she believed she’d destroyed her own. If in fact she had destroyed Frederick Ashe’s, she’d have realized when she was wrapping it. Her sight was probably good at that time.’

  She smiled as she chewed, waited until she had swallowed, then pointed her knife at me. ‘Yes, but she told us she was in tears. So she might not have been able to see.’

  ‘Why was she in tears?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If she thought, at that time, she’d fooled her husband, why the tears?’

  ‘You’re very unimaginative, Tony. She had been degraded. She’d been forced into destroying something precious to her, whether it was a set
of her own paintings or a set of Ashe’s. And don’t forget, she did say he’d treated her violently the previous night. Really, Tony!’

  She was, at least, in a less abrasive mood now. I allowed myself a smile very close to a grin. ‘You’re trying desperately to convince yourself you’ve not made a mistake, and yet you’re now saying my painting might not be a Frederick Ashe.’

  ‘I have not made a mistake. I have personally studied the four available genuine Ashes, in the art galleries. However well she copied his brush strokes, they could not be so exactly alike in style. There are dozens of considerations, confidence in line, the strength of the approach, the impasto ... I could not be mistaken. Yours is by the same hand as those other four.’

  I thought about that, and decided I didn’t want a pudding but was dying for a smoke. I couldn’t see what she was getting at. She couldn’t have it both ways.

  ‘Haven’t you missed one very important point?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s this. Gran said she never managed to get up into the loft, to confirm for herself which were destroyed. So what we’re discussing depends entirely on Grace. She might have made a mistake about the tea chests. She might even have lied to Gran, though heaven knows why. But there’s only her word, from a quick look in the loft, which is probably very dark anyway, to say that it was the Frederick Ashe paintings that were burned. Suppose she was wrong. Then Gran did destroy her own, and mine—having been saved from the fire—is therefore one of hers.’

  ‘I’ve told you. I’m certain yours is a Frederick Ashe.’

  ‘But only because you’re comparing it with known Frederick Ashe paintings in the galleries.’

  ‘Only? Her eyes were very big. Her voice held a hint of danger. ‘And what d’you mean by that?’

  I admit I hadn’t much faith in what I was about to say, but I couldn’t resist the impulse to take a dig at her precious art expert establishment. I kept the smile out of my voice.

  ‘What if the art gallery paintings are Gran’s, and not Ashe’s? Then where would you be? After all, Gran said she sold six. Isn’t it likely she would sell six of her own, if her Freddie’s were so precious to her?’

  ‘Not unlikely at all,’ she agreed complacently, surprising me.

  ‘I’ll have to stop calling him Ashe. He was my grandfather.’

  ‘That much seems true.’

  ‘So where’s my artistic heritage now—both grandparents artists!’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘No need to sulk.’

  ‘I was pleased for you. For both of us. Pleased that you’ve at last come round to the point I wanted to make.’

  I eyed her with suspicion. ‘What point?’

  ‘That it’s absolutely imperative for us to get a good look at what’s in that loft.’

  ‘Oh now ... hold on.’

  ‘She gave them to you. They’re yours.’

  ‘All the same ...’

  ‘We don’t know how close your grandmother’s work was to Frederick Ashe’s. Hers could be terrible imitations. One look, and I’d know. But they’re yours, in any event, so we ought to go and collect them.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘If you think I’m going to stand in front of Grace and say I’ve come to empty the loft ...’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘She has to leave the house some time.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘I’ll tell you this, Tony. I feel I’m on the verge of a great art discovery. One way or the other. If necessary I’ll break in at midnight and sneak up there on my own, but for you to do it you could at least claim you were collecting your own property.’

  ‘At midnight?’

  ‘It need not be so late.’

  ‘Why can’t we just go and see Grace and say we simply want to do no more than look in the loft? Not take anything away. You did say—you’d only need one look.’

  ‘I was talking figuratively.’

  ‘Figuratively in what way?’

  ‘I’d want to get them back to my place, clean them up, examine them in detail. Check them against yours.’

  ‘You’re hopeless.’

  ‘With you or without you, I’ll get into that loft.’

  ‘Without me, you could only look, and leave them there,’ I pointed out.

  ‘There you are then.’

  There I was. Stuck. I have to admit that I too wanted to be certain. I owned a loftful of canvases which could be wildly valuable, or worthless apart from their sentimental value. Whatever happened, I was the grandchild of a famous painter, but it would be less unsettling to know which grandparent had become famous. Only the fear of Grace prevented me from marching up to the house and demanding my rights, and the fear of the law. How could I prove Gran had given them to me?

  ‘So how do we do it?’ I asked, when we were sitting in the car.

  ‘We watch the house, and wait till Grace goes out.’

  ‘It could take days.’

  It occurred to me that if I’d been Grace I would have listened at that bedroom door, suspicious that Angelina might be giving away more of the precious inheritance. It also occurred to me that Grace might be well aware that she had a loftful of Frederick Ashe paintings, that she was equally aware of their value, and that eighty times twenty thousand could cushion her declining years, and that she could well spend all of them cruising the world on it. First class.

  But I didn’t say anything on this aspect of it, only decided, as we had planned, that indeed our actions had to be kept secret from Grace.

  It was only because of this that I spent the afternoon and most of the evening skulking in the shrubbery just inside the drive of Mandalay. Margaret was parked, bored to the eyebrows I hoped, in the drive of an empty house just down Forster Grove. My thoughts reflected my condition: damp, cold, and depressed. I was considering that if I’d been Arthur Hine, intent on banishing all evidence of Frederick Ashe from my house, I would have burned the lot—both sets. It was unlikely that my Gran, distressed at the time, would have counted them, especially as she was being helped by Grace. A pile of a hundred and sixty might well look like what one would expect of a pile of eighty.

  Strangely, as I examined this idea more deeply, I found it a little comforting. If this were to prove correct, all decisions would be lifted from me, and I’d be back with my single canvas. Frankly, I didn’t care who’d painted it.

  The front door opened. The time was something after nine, and it was now dark. Heavy clouds had been massing, intensifying the gloom, but before she turned off the hall light I saw that Grace was dressed for outdoors, in a bonnet and a long, ancient topcoat. She slammed the door, and her shadow moved towards the dilapidated garage at one side of the house.

  I edged my way back towards the entrance, then turned and ran.

  ‘She’s going out,’ I panted, yanking open the car door.

  ‘Don’t panic.’ She was smoking a cigarette, the first time I’d seen her doing that. ‘Come in and sit down, and don’t slam the door too hard. She’ll probably be driving past here, it’s a dead end farther up.’

  We sat with the engine purring softly. Grace drove past in a very old Morris Minor, the model with the split windscreen. Margaret pulled out into the road, and we followed. It wasn’t difficult. Grace’s maximum speed was 25 mph.

  We were reaching the outskirts of the town, with a few shops making their appearance when Grace swung right and parked in the space beside The Dun Cow.

  ‘Right,’ said Margaret, looking for somewhere to back and turn. ‘That’s Grace out of the way for a while. I bet she does this every evening, after she’s tucked Angelina into bed. Down here for her two halves of Guinness and a natter.’

  And who could blame her?

  To my surprise, Margaret drove into the drive at Mandalay. If Grace returned early, we would be trapped. But clearly, Margaret anticipated that we should load the Volvo directly from the front door. She a
lso anticipated finding an open window round the back, which she did, almost as though she was an expert at this kind of thing. Doctor of Crookery.

  ‘You climb in, and come through to open the front door for me,’ she instructed.

  I nodded. As of now, she was in charge. My nerve was failing; I’d have made a rotten burglar. In practice, it was easier than I’d anticipated. Some latent memory guided me though the hall. The front door had a cylinder lock, so we would be able to close it behind us with no sign that we’d ever been there.

  At the head of the stairs there was a small light left on. It guided us up the creaking treads, and along the short, facing passage. The cross-corridor was dark. I groped for a light switch, and suddenly Margaret snapped on a torch she’d brought from the car, searching out switches.

  ‘I’ll go and look in on Gran,’ I said softly.

  ‘Why on earth ... ?’

  Because, if she was awake, I wanted to say something like: I’ve come for the paintings, Gran, so if you hear any noises ... So as not to frighten her. ‘You look for the loft,’ I said, not prepared to argue about it.

  She made a clicking sound with her tongue, and went in the other direction. I opened Gran’s door very quietly. The room was not completely dark, as there was a light on the small table beside her bed. She lay on her back, only her face showing. I went forward, making no sound, and stood over her.

  The bedclothes were neatly tucked in, and she made hardly any disturbance in their smooth symmetry. Her tiny head seemed buried in the soft pillow. I bent down and carefully lifted away a lock of thin hair that had fallen over her eyes.

  There was hardly any indication that she was breathing. Abruptly concerned, I bent my ear close to her lips, and was just able to detect a shallow inhale and exhale. Very old people barely disturb their environment with their presence.

  I turned away and left the room. The door-latch made a faint click.

  Margaret was waiting for me, impatient and now nervous.

  ‘It’s at the end of the corridor,’ she said.

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘There’s a ladder.’

  It was not so much a ladder as open stairs, as there were treads instead of rungs. The climb was almost vertical, and once again it was my turn to lead.