By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Be quiet, Grace! You’ll do yourself an injury. Take it easy, for God’s sake!’

  Then her face, made for it, crumpled into tears, and I almost had to catch her as I helped her back to her chair. She found a handkerchief from inside her garments and pressed it to her face, sobbing and sobbing to a point where I realised it had become false. She didn’t want to look up at me.

  ‘But it’s true,’ I said softly. ‘You’ve got to admit it, Grace. He would have told you.’

  I waited, and eventually she shuddered and raised her face, dabbing at it futilely. ‘He never did.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘You can just please your damned self,’ she said distinctly, separating each word with emphasis. ‘Now will you please go.’

  I did so, after a last, doubtful glance at her, but I waited in the hall knowing she would have to watch me out of the door. She came after me, briskly now, her head up again.

  ‘Oh ... one thing, Grace,’ I said.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘She was paralysed down her right side. I noticed that. So at the end she’d learned to use her left hand. What was she before her fall, right—or left-handed?’

  ‘What’re you up to?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘She was right-handed, if that does you any good.’

  I smiled at her. I didn’t expect to see her again, unless she took me to court over the ownership of the paintings.

  When I turned from her, a large, dark car was parking behind mine in the drive. The first person out of the rear door was Detective Sergeant Dolan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  For a moment I was uncertain what to do. Did I nod, walk over to my car, and drive away? But that would signify an abandonment of Grace. I advanced on to the drive, and waited.

  A tall, thin and sour man got out of the other side of the car. He stared at me across the roof, said something quietly to Dolan, and on his reply gave instructions. Then he and the driver, who was a woman in a plain costume, not a uniform, advanced on Grace. I heard the thin man ask whether she was Grace Fielding. At her murmured response, they disappeared into the house.

  ‘So here you are,’ said Dolan, as though they’d been scouring the countryside for me.

  ‘As it happens, yes.’

  ‘Just off?’

  ‘That was my intention.’

  ‘Spare a minute? Come and sit in the car.’

  We sat side by side in the back of the police Granada. He was treating me as an old and valued friend.

  ‘A social visit, was it?’

  He was offering me an escape route. ‘Not really.’ I tried to get my pipe going, my system shouting out for nicotine. ‘I came to discuss the paintings.’

  He gave a soft chuckle. We weren’t staring at each other, so a smile would have gone to waste. ‘Not a friendly discussion, I’d guess. The Super’s going to be mad, you smoking in his car.’

  ‘Let him. I don’t mind getting out and driving away.’

  He touched my elbow. ‘He’d like to hear that I’m keeping you fully in touch.’

  ‘There’re developments, then?’ I wound down the window and blew smoke at the open air.

  ‘The post-mortem report’s in. A verbal one, anyway.’

  I glanced at him. ‘And?’

  ‘She was suffocated. A hand over her mouth and nose. There was no struggle.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there would be,’ I said, feeling sick at his casual tone.

  He seemed to be marshalling his thoughts, as there was a pause. Then he slapped my knee. ‘Have you tried the beer in The Dun Cow?’

  ‘No,’ I said cautiously. ‘Haven’t had the time.’

  ‘The draught bitter’s good, and they’ve got a pin-ball machine.’

  ‘Exciting. That’d tax your mind.’

  ‘She goes there every night. Two halves, and she plays the machine. Thumps the side, as they do. It’s supposed to achieve something.’

  ‘Yes. This is Grace Fielding you’re talking about?’ Watching his nod, I struggled for a mental picture of her, half a pint in one hand, and thumping the other palm against the machine. ‘Are you telling me something?’

  ‘The machine’s painted brown. The paint’s flaking. All that thumping, I suppose. And it’s not often dusted.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There were traces of dust and tiny flecks of brown paint in your grandmother’s lungs. We’ve taken samples from the machine for checking.’

  He must have been a wow in court, with his precise and exact explanations. There was only one question I needed to ask.

  ‘You’re taking her in?’

  He shook his head. I’d turned to face him. He said: ‘I shouldn’t think so. If that’d been the intention, the Super would’ve sent me. No—he’s playing it softly. He’s a sneaky devil. If he gets a straight admission, that would change things. But I doubt he will. She struck me as a hard woman.’

  ‘She doesn’t admit much. But she was upset—’

  ‘You upset her?’

  ‘Not purposely. One thing led to the other. I doubt she can stand much more, but I don’t think you’ll get an admission.’

  ‘So he’ll go gently. Just questions. He knows we’ve got no case, as it stands. Nothing the court wouldn’t throw out. At this stage, anyway.’

  ‘Why’re you telling me this?’

  ‘You’re an interested party.’

  ‘Don’t kid me, Sergeant. The police don’t show their hands unless they want something. What d’you want from me?’

  He grinned, and to his credit came out with it. ‘The paintings. Information on them. Why is she making such an issue about them?’

  So we were back to the paintings. There was no getting away from the subject. ‘My grandmother had been giving away bits of furniture and ornaments and things, all of which cut down Grace’s possible inheritance. The paintings—me taking them away—was perhaps a camel’s back situation. She spotted us driving away. She couldn’t stand the thought. The way Grace put it, it was the principle of the thing.’

  ‘Hmm!’ he said. I hadn’t supplied him with the fact that these gifts had been Angelina’s only way to hit back at Grace’s malice. But perhaps he guessed. ‘Are they valuable?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s a question of who painted them.’

  ‘Perhaps she knows they’re valuable. Grace Fielding, I mean.’

  ‘That’s what upset her, me trying to find out. But she wouldn’t admit to knowing a thing about them.’

  ‘We might be able to persuade her.’

  ‘Beat it out of her?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘If necessary,’ he said solemnly. ‘You on her side or something?’

  I laughed. ‘You’re tricky, Sergeant. I said it as a joke.’

  ‘I’ll try it in the canteen, and let you know how many laughs I get.’

  I sighed. ‘She’d looked after Angelina for most of her natural life. She’d hardly kill her now ...’

  ‘Unless she knows they’re valuable. From fury. A last straw, as you said.’

  I was silent. I could hardly tell him that Grace wouldn’t destroy the person on whom she could vent her hatred. He would think I was mad. At last I ventured: ‘I don’t think she knows what they are, valuable or not.’

  ‘You are on her side.’ He spoke accusingly, wonderingly.

  The house had witnessed too much distress already. I shook my head.

  ‘She was your grandmother, for Pete’s sake!’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘You’re a bit slow on the uptake, that’s your trouble. Haven’t you realized ... if we take her in, charge her, and get an admission that she killed Mrs Hine—or if we eventually get a conviction—then it’ll show that your grandmother died after you’d left the house, and then there’d be no denying your legal right to the paintings.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

  ‘Then think about it.’

  I stared at him, not
sure any more that he was the friendly and understanding man I’d thought him. Understanding, yes, but in a sly, furtive way. He was trying to use my emotional responses to force me into revealing every fact that Grace had told me. One of them might clinch the case. I had no reason to feel any sympathy for Grace, but I couldn’t find it in me to hate her.

  ‘All right. I’ll think about it,’ I promised, and opened the car door. From outside, I leaned into the open window. ‘And if they turn out to be valuable, I’ll let you know.’

  I left him a waft of smoke, walked to the Fiesta and got inside, and only then realized that I was blocked in by the Granada. So I had to sit and wait, with nothing to do but think.

  I realized, thus thinking, that the provenance of the paintings had now become imperative. It was no longer a question of value, nor a matter of assisting Margaret in her ego problems, but a matter of laying a ghost. Those canvases had sparked too much tragedy. I had to know to what extent it was justified.

  At last the superintendent and his driver emerged. They did not have Grace with them, but she stood there at the door, still open six inches, and peered out at them. When the Granada backed out, she shut the door firmly. It indicated that she considered me a very minor menace, in comparison.

  I reversed out, and set off back to Margaret’s place, stopping only to post off the proofs for the factory at Maidstone.

  It occurred to me that opening the front door was the first time that day she’d taken a breath of fresh air. Her stance was dejected and weary, her face blotched, her make-up nil, her eyes red with strain.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something cooking. I only hope it isn’t spoilt.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad, I’m starving.’

  She stood back from me. I could tell she was poised to demand how it had gone, but she restrained her impatience until we were halfway through the meal. At last: ‘Well? Did you discover anything useful?’

  ‘By useful, would you consider an accusation by Grace that my grandmother killed her husband?’

  Her fork was poised, waved, then she said: ‘Is the old fool completely insane?’

  ‘I think not. There was a hint, too, that it was Grace who caused Angelina’s accident.’

  ‘A hint?’

  ‘She almost boasted about it.’

  ‘Dear Lord, what a house!’

  ‘I don’t think I want to see it again, ever.’

  I then went on to tell her what had happened during my visit there, to the best of my recollection. Her dinner grew cold on her plate. Not mine; I ate between bursts of speech.

  ‘And did she know what crates Arthur Hine took the paintings from?’ she demanded, before I could get into that bit.

  I considered how to put it. ‘She said she didn’t ...’

  ‘Of course she knew!’ Margaret burst out.

  I looked down at my plate. ‘She wouldn’t need to know. Her purpose was to say to Angelina that the Frederick Ashe paintings had been destroyed. She wouldn’t need to know the truth.’

  ‘Then why is she so possessive about them?’ she demanded. ‘She must know they’re valuable, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘How could she, Margaret? You people, living in your tight little art world, you seem to believe the great British public can’t wait for the latest news about art. It’s not so. The odds are that Grace doesn’t know how well-known Frederick Ashe has become.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a fool! Don’t you want to know the truth?’

  ‘Very much so.’ What I didn’t want to do was watch her face, so I went to get the coffee. ‘But not by conjecture. Proof positive.’

  ‘Which we’re never going to get. That woman knows the truth, and you let her get away with evasions.’

  ‘She told me one thing,’ I claimed equably, putting a mug under her nose. ‘Angelina was right-handed.’ She looked down. ‘It’s not much, but it’s something. Unless she was lying, of course.’

  I sat down opposite to her again, uneasy at her hair-trigger temper. When she still hadn’t spoken after two minutes, I asked: ‘And your day—how did it go?’

  She looked up smiling, but with an obvious effort. ‘Something, possibly, achieved. Very little, but I got something. I drove up to London. There were catalogues to be consulted, and the records of art gallery collections. I wanted to find reproductions of the four Ashe paintings that were stolen.’

  ‘And you did?’

  She pouted. ‘Black and white in three cases, and only a description in the fourth. But it did seem, working from memory of course, that they could have near duplicates in the loft set.’ At my eagerness, she shook her head. ‘It means nothing. Most artists paint more than one canvas of their favourite scenes. It doesn’t have to mean ...’ She stared past me, her eyes vacant, and licked her spoon absently. ‘It occurred to me to search for biographies. They’re sometimes very useful. The authors use reproductions of little-known works, because the pictures are important to the reading matter, not because they’re fine works.’ It was clearly a practice of which she didn’t approve.

  ‘I can see you found something. Let’s have it. Whose biography was it?’

  She smiled like a temptress, her eyes narrow, her tongue flicking her lips. ‘Maurice Bellarmé. Your grandmother mentioned him. He was apparently a close friend. There was a reproduction of one of Bellarmé’s paintings that he simply called Angel, 1914. She was very beautiful, Tony. And there was another. Frederick Ashe, 1914. It was this one that caught my attention. It was a picture of Ashe working on a canvas. They often did this, the artists in those days, using each other as models. And Tony, Ashe was painting left-handed.’

  She produced this nugget of interest as though it didn’t glitter with the perfection of a pure and definite clue. I opened my mouth, and she put a finger to my lips.

  ‘I don’t want to make too much of this, Tony. After all, if they’d both been right-handed, he’d probably have sat to her right when they painted together. Then he would be the one to reach across for the palette, out of politeness.’

  ‘Politeness to their womenfolk wasn’t rejected in those days.’

  She didn’t rise to it. ‘But with him being left-handed, it’s almost certain he would sit to her right. Almost.’

  ‘If he sat to her left, they’d both have had to reach across,’ I agreed.

  ‘Exactly. So we could surely take it as proof.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  She raised her eyebrows. We were both being very cautious, because we were aware that we were taking Grace’s word for it that Angelina had been right-handed.

  But I had a ghost to lay. Ghosts demand truth, because they can see through deceptions and evasions, see through each other.

  ‘Let’s take a look at the matched pair we’ve got,’ I suggested, and she was up off her chair so fast it nearly went flying.

  It was me she’d wanted to persuade. Or rather, she had wanted me to persuade myself. Already she had made her decision, but her attitude had changed since we’d first met. Then it had been a matter of plain and incontestable statement: this is, and this is not. Her confidence had carried her forward, and she would not have expected to be forced into persuading. Now she was confident, but it was qualified. I was the one who now had to be persuaded. It was, perhaps, flattering. But it was out of character.

  We put the two paintings of Frederick Ashe’s cottage side by side, in the way they had been painted, which was apparent from the slightly different points of view. We separated them by a distance of three feet from each other, the approximate amount apart they would have been on their easels when they were painted. In these positions, the difference in perspective gave them a fresh reality.

  My own canvas—I checked the scorch mark on the back—was the one on the right.

  Margaret sighed, and seemed to sag. Frederick Ashe, left-handed, and sitting to the right of Angelina, must have been the one to paint my canvas.

  ‘So that’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s th
e answer. Ashe painted yours, and it was rescued from the fire. So the rest of his, apart from the six we know about, were destroyed. You’ve got eight-one Angelina Footes.’

  ‘Haven’t I!’ I said with pride.

  ‘Don’t you care, damn it?’ she shouted.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘The whole damned batch wouldn’t fetch as much as your one Frederick Ashe.’

  ‘Probably not. School of Frederick Ashe. You said that.’

  ‘Oh ... you’re impossible.’

  ‘What d’you expect me to say?’

  ‘At least ... at least show some sort of disappointment. What’s the matter with you? You nearly had a fortune in your hands, and now you’ve got ... what?’ She made a wide, sweeping gesture, almost swinging herself off her feet. ‘A load of tat, not worth getting rid of.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to. However it turns out, I have a houseful of paintings by both my grandparents.’ But no house to display them in, I recalled. Fleetingly, I wondered what Evelyn would say if I took home eighty-two paintings. How many canvases per wall would that be, counting the bathroom? I must have smiled.

  ‘And it’s nothing to smirk about,’ she snapped.

  ‘You’re taking it too seriously.’

  ‘Of course it’s serious.’

  ‘Ah! Perhaps you’re thinking of the time you’ve wasted. Time lost and no fee. Tell you what, take any half dozen. Go on—’

  She slapped my face.

  Startled, I could do no more than stand there rubbing my cheek. She had her lower lip in her teeth.