Cocking his hat on the side of his head, he strolled away, rolling slightly. I sat there. It was a long while before I found I could start the car and drive away with any confidence.
Heading towards the M5 and Somerset, I had to try to convince myself I had an adequate reason for going there.
CHAPTER TEN
It was nearly three in the afternoon when I came within hitting distance of my objective. For several miles I’d been fighting those tight curves and the steep rises and falls, and it was quite abruptly that I came out on to the moors above Renfrew Coombe, with the turn-off to the village a mile ahead.
The hedges had disappeared as though trimmed by giant shears. Each side, now, was a low bank of gorse, and there was no difficulty in turning off on to the green-brown carpet and stopping to consult my map. I wanted to be absolutely certain of my location, and my possible escape roads. There was a likelihood that I’d need them, as I hadn’t Margaret’s driving ability to rely on if I found myself in trouble. I got out of the car to pin-point the village.
It was somewhere below me in a cleft between the round-topped hills, which marched away in all directions. This high above sea level, they were all capped brown with gorse, not yet green, and since it was early June they were possibly not going to be able to achieve it. In the valleys, as though they’d tumbled from the peaks, were folds of green trees, too far below for me to identify them, but a solid, bright green, so probably deciduous. They fell down the lower slopes like a tossed green duvet in a ditch, and it seemed that no habitation could exist beneath their tight mass. Yet my map confirmed it. Renfrew Coombe was below me, or rather, below a point half a mile farther on.
I drove that half-mile, and there found a bare, red-earth, pull-in space, into which I nosed the car, gently, because the fall in front of me was steep. I got out and had another look. The brown slope fell below me at an angle of thirty degrees, directly into the cleft of the valley. Now I could see slate roofs and sun-caught thatches beyond the belt of trees. The map indicated a distance of less than a mile. As the crow flies, the saying goes, but from there he’d be falling.
I backed out and drove on, downhill now, steep and winding, and again abruptly between high hedges, and then between trees, massed each side and meeting above me, the sun pattern on the tarmac dazzling. Then there was the bridge and the village. I hadn’t before noticed how constricted the cottages were, with the hill slopes so tight behind them and the rock-strewn brook facing them across their meagre street.
My approach was noted and relayed. When I rounded the final bend and turned into Renfrew Coombe’s courtyard, the front door was already open, and the goon stood waiting.
‘Mr Mace is expecting you,’ he said, almost bowing. It was an honour, he implied, for me to be invited beyond the door.
Paul Mace was standing at the rear of the echoing hall, but this time the other side of the stairway. There was no friendliness in his eyes as he gestured towards me in a peremptory manner. Then he reached back to open the door.
It was a sun room, in that the roof above it had been removed, and glass substituted. Everywhere was glass, and the room looked even larger than it was because some of the glass was mirrored. Green tangles of growth had been encouraged to climb the walls and to hang from the glass ceiling. Potted exotic plants crowded from all sides. The humidity was high, and the temperature controlled at about 100°F. From the branches of a tree that might eventually bear bananas, two marmoset monkeys gibbered at me, peering suspiciously at a stranger.
‘They’re outside,’ said Mace, his voice tense with distaste. ‘Outside’ was a place of which he did not approve.
There was a tall door consisting of a single sheet of plate glass, and beyond it a wide spread of terrace. It was slabbed with imported granite, was wide, and sported a balustrade and half a dozen Greek statues, which could well have been stolen there and shipped clandestinely. Beyond it, down a wide sweep of ten shallow steps, was a lawn.
To achieve a flat, smooth lawn it must have been necessary to chop into the hillside. On this lawn they were playing croquet, my wife and Renfrew Coombe.
Surely I hadn’t been mistaken when I’d thought his chair to be orthopaedic. Certainly, from his bulk, I’d assumed he was incapable of standing on his own two feet. Yet here he was, massive even against a backfall of huge oaks, planting those great feet firmly and smacking a ball vigorously, though inaccurately. Evelyn was laughing. She must have been winning, because losing was never, for her, a source of joy. But Coombe was enjoying it. He could, after all, afford to lose a game here and there, when nothing rested on victory. My impression was that he was being gallant, and deferring to her lack of experience. Evelyn was as close to simpering at his jovial attentiveness as I’ve ever seen her.
He need not have deferred. Evelyn could take on anything and succeed. All she would need was a sight of the rules, and as long as there was a sufficient number of ‘provided thats’ and ‘notwithstandings’ she’d have them tamed at once. Her cold and analytical mind would then compute the angles and impacts required, and before you’d know it she’d have you retrieving your ball from the shrubbery.
In this instance there was no shrubbery, just a steep drop into a million or so trees, so that when Coombe watched his ball disappearing over the edge he raised his meaty shoulders, jutted his flabby lower lip, and growled heartily: ‘You win. You’re too good for me.’
‘Who could be good enough for you, Renfrew?’ she asked, taking his arm, hanging on it like a poor, weak feminine person, and allowing him to pilot her up the steps.
Ye gods! I thought. They fancy each other! I’m on a winner, here. Though of course, she was probably only undermining him with her charm. But why didn’t I ever encounter that charm? She was flushed with it, short of breath from it. It was years since she’d been short of breath with me.
‘Mr Hine is here, sir,’ said Mace, his voice cold.
‘D’you think I hadn’t noticed! Clear off, Paul, there’s talking to be done.’
‘I think I should be here to advise—’
Talking down to his employer from the terrace was one thing, but now Coombe had reached the top step. He loomed over his slim and effete curator. ‘You’ll do as I say,’ Coombe told him, and after one glare at me Mace turned and walked away round the corner of the house.
As my eyes followed him, I noticed that one of the statues was attended by my son, Aleric, leaning against it. This all seemed strange to me, that he and his mother should, supposedly, be under restraint, when Aleric could simply have disappeared into the trees. Though perhaps there were invisible guards, or Aleric had been told there were and didn’t care to risk it. He flipped a hand in my direction.
‘Hi, Pa! How’s it going?’
‘Fair, son, fair.’
‘We will sit,’ Coombe announced, ‘and talk in a civilized manner.’ He led the way to one of the round, white-painted metal tables and drew back a chair for Evelyn. She smiled up at him as he slid it behind her. Then he sat himself, and the chair sighed. I sat opposite to them. It was a triangle of three people, yet my impression was that I was opposite them. Strange.
Coombe pressed a bell-push. ‘We’ll have tea. I import my own Darjeeling. You’ll like it.’
Evelyn smiled. She liked it all, it seemed. ‘My short stay is coming to an end.’ There was sadness in her voice.
Aleric realized that he was not invited to join us, but he strolled across and found a closer statue to embrace.
Coombe said: ‘You’ll stay to tea, then your husband can drive you home, with a standing invitation—’
‘I’ve got a feeling she won’t be going home,’ I cut in.
‘What!’ Evelyn slapped her palm on the table surface.
‘Though it seems to me you won’t be displeased,’ I assured her.
‘What the hell d’you mean?’
I looked away from her furious eyes. ‘I haven’t brought the canvases.’
I expected Coombe to be chole
ric in his anger, but all he did was rumble a little in his chest, then smile in a most unpleasant manner.
‘That was very stupid of you,’ he said gravely.
‘They’re no longer available.’
‘You’re lying, of course.’
I shrugged. Something that Detective Sergeant Dolan had said came to my assistance. ‘They’re kind of involved in a bequest. The Chancery Court, or something like that, is holding them until there’s an inquest—’
‘For God’s sake, Tony!’ Evelyn cried. ‘Don’t talk legal gibberish to me. You’re just trying to be clever. I can’t afford to get stuck here ...’
‘Now, now, Evelyn,’ said Coombe heavily. ‘Afford is an irrelevant word. You stay as my guest. Until I say otherwise,’ he added smoothly to me. But his eyes were twin buttons of black ice.
‘I can’t stay here!’ Aleric suddenly put in agitatedly. ‘My bike! What about my bike?’
We ignored him.
‘There’s something you ought to understand,’ I said quietly.
‘Understand!’ Evelyn reached across and snapped her fingers beneath my nose. I’d never seen that done before. ‘All I understand is that you’re being deliberately awkward.’
‘I was talking to Mr Coombe. He’s the one who needs to understand.’
‘Let him speak, my dear.’ Coombe clasped her other hand in his, where it disappeared. ‘But first, here’s something for you to understand, Mr Tony Hine. Your wife has told me she’s shortly to be free of you, and will have more spare time. I’m in need of legal advice, and she’s agreed to represent me in all legal matters. Various departments and institutions are trying to tie me down with their complications, and she will help me. So when you speak to me, you’re also speaking to her. Have I put that correctly, Evelyn?’
This was a different man from the one I’d met before, who’d seemed to rely on Paul Mace too readily, and whose only weapon had been a hectoring voice. He was smooth and he was patient. He was deadly. I couldn’t decide who was fooling whom, as clearly a man such as Coombe would already be surrounded by a barrier of legal finagling, and a woman as astute as Evelyn must have realized that.
‘The point is, Tony,’ she said, ‘that when I divorce you, I shall claim the paintings as part of my settlement. I’ve explained this to Renfrew, and you ... from the way you’re speaking ... must realize your legal hold on them isn’t very strong.’
Did I tell you how clever she is? This wasn’t a warning to me, it was a stall she was presenting to Coombe. He had only to be patient, and all would fall into his ample lap. Heavens, I thought, she had realized I was in danger from him, and she’d thought this up as a protection ... for me! I looked down at the table, not wishing her to read the expression in my eyes.
‘The snag is,’ I explained, looking up, ‘that the paintings I’ve got could be worthless, in which case we’re sitting here arguing about nothing.’
At this point a manservant appeared along the terrace with a large tray, which he placed in front of Coombe, who glanced at him. ‘You took your time,’ he snapped.
‘I’m sorry, sir. The cream had gone off.’
‘Well, watch it, sport.’ He turned, smiling at Evelyn. ‘Will you be mother?’
It was revolting.
‘Could well be worthless,’ I persisted. ‘There were two sets painted at the same time, by two different people, one of them Frederick Ashe. It’s almost impossible to tell one from the other. All I’ve had to go on is the one painting I’ve always owned, which is duplicated in the new set of eighty-one. Is anybody listening to me?’
Evelyn was concentrating on the teapot, Coombe on the strawberries and cream and on her.
‘Listening,’ Coombe growled.
‘It’s impossible to say,’ I went on, raising my voice a little, ‘at this stage, with any certainty, if my own painting is a Frederick Ashe, and its mate in the other batch what you might call a copy. And this’d apply to the rest of the eighty-one, of course. The odds are that this new lot are copies, and worthless.’
Coombe flicked his eyes at me from beneath the thick bushes of hair that he called his eyebrows. ‘You would naturally say that. I’d prefer my own opinion.’
‘Which is just why I came. To help you form it.’
‘But you haven’t brought the paintings, so how would you do that? Milk second for me, my dear.’
I took out my envelope of prints and slapped it down on the table. ‘With those. There’s one photo of each of the eighty-one, as you know. One of them is duplicated by my own, and I’ve got reason to believe your six are, too.’
‘My what?’
At last I had his attention, full frontal, all that unlovely face in one concentrated scowl. It had not been intentional. I knew I’d made a mistake, before the words were out, and possibly a fatal one.
‘What did you say?’ he asked heavily.
‘He said: your six,’ Evelyn offered, smiling at me sweetly.
He glanced at her warningly, then said to me: ‘Why do you say that?’
Honesty, I decided, would deflect his fury from me. ‘On my previous visit here, when I got this batch of prints back, six of them were out of order, all together at the bottom.’
His face was now red. He mouthed something, and jabbed at his button. ‘Paul!’ he snarled.
‘And as,’ I went on, trying to keep the momentum going, ‘the only four you hadn’t got have been stolen from their rightful owners, and as you’re the sort of man who can arrange such things, I naturally assumed you were simply putting together a full set of Frederick Ashe.’
Paul appeared in the doorway of the sun room.
‘Though of course,’ I qualified, ‘it now seems they might not be Frederick Ashe paintings at all. If,’ I explained placidly, ‘the new set of eighty-one are.’
Coombe crooked a finger, then pointed it at the terrace surface in front of himself. Paul advanced and stood there. His face was pale and pinched, so he must have sensed the atmosphere.
‘You,’ said Coombe, ‘are a bloody fool.’
‘Sir?’
‘You gave him back his photographs with six of them—yes, I said six—in one set at the bottom.’
‘Oh.’ Paul stared into the distant trees, where a corpse might lie hidden for years.
‘So now,’ growled Coombe, ‘while you’re still around, you’d better arrange for another room for another guest, because we daren’t let him go. And get a team out to collect those canvases.’
‘No point,’ I said quickly.
‘What?’ His head swivelled at me with the ponderous weight of a swing bridge.
‘They’re no longer at that address. Gone to Christie’s, I think. Or was it Sotheby’s?’
Coombe bounced to his feet, the metal chair clattering away, and vented his fury on Paul. ‘By god, I’ll break you for this! Every soddin’ bone. They’ll put ‘em up for auction, and I’ll have to bid for every bleeding one, you ape, you stupid, worthless moron.’
Paul’s immaculate suit seemed to become a size too big for him. Perspiration dripped down his nose. ‘I’ll ... I’ll ...’
‘You’ll what? Raid Sotheby’s?’
‘Or Christie’s,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘Or both.’
Paul made a whimpering sound.
‘There’s an easy solution to it,’ I offered. The head again swung towards me, shoulders following. ‘You pay me their estimated value, a million and a half, and I give you a deed of assignment. Evelyn can draft it—’
‘Damn you, I’ll see you dead first.’
Evelyn put in: ‘Aren’t we becoming too agitated over this? Simply because Tony believes you have all six of the Frederick Ashe paintings, it isn’t necessarily a danger to you.’
Coombe stared at her blankly. ‘He can go to the police. D’you think I can risk them coming here—with a search warrant! Talk sense, Evelyn, or keep your mouth shut.’
She flushed. I could’ve told him he’d made a mistake. But she persisted. ‘What can
he take to the police? A story of photos in a certain order? A theory he’s worked out from that? They’d laugh him right out into the street.’
Slowly, as though hypnotized by her calmly confident court voice, Coombe relaxed. Recognizing this, Paul Mace scuttled for the fallen chair and brought it back for his boss’s superior backside, and after a moment Coombe sat. But his face was still dark with anger.
‘After all,’ she added, patting his hand, ‘he hasn’t actually seen them.’
Once again, I realized, she had come to my assistance. All sorts of unpleasantness had been lining up for me, and one thing I could not afford at that time was to be restrained forcibly. But in assisting me, she had, though she couldn’t have understood the importance to me, successfully put a stopper on my plans to get a sight of the actual paintings in Coombe’s gallery.
In fact, this was really why I’d gone there. It would have been possible to make my position clear on the phone, but I’d had the hope that I’d be able to con my way into his gallery and check his paintings against my prints, in this way confirming—or otherwise—that his were painted from the same relative viewpoint as my own original one. This, Evelyn had effectively blocked. All the same, there’s no harm in trying.
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ I complained. ‘What if I did see your Frederick Ashe collection? There’d be nothing to gain, me dashing off to tell the police. All I’m interested in is finding out whether my eighty-one are Frederick Ashes or not.’
All that did for me was to provoke one of Coombe’s better glares. ‘You must be soft in your head. How’d you come to marry such a gormless idiot, Evelyn?’
‘I can’t remember. Certainly I can’t imagine, now, any good reason.’
‘Well ...’ I said. ‘I’ll be off then, seeing that nobody loves me around here. All I’ll say is that I’m not parting with any of my canvases until I know the truth about them.’
If Coombe was a gambler, that might get him, I thought. The risk of allowing me to see his six, against the possibility of making a profitable deal. It didn’t work. He backed only certs.
By Death Possessed Page 13