By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Or I take my eighty-one to Christie’s, and they sell them as Frederick Ashes, whether they are or not, and your six’ll be worth nothing. Damn it all, Coombe, are you stupid or something? I’m offering you a business proposition, not robbing you of something.’

  ‘Three hundred thousand,’ he barked. ‘That’s robbery.’

  ‘I’ll prove to you it’s not. If you’ll just agree. The left-handed painter would most likely sit to the right. Yes?’

  ‘Much more of this ... I agree. Yes. Paul explained that. So what?’

  ‘So look at the photographs,’ I shouted. A man appeared at the end of the terrace, another in the open doorway. I grabbed up one print from each batch, and waggled them in front of Coombe’s face. ‘That’s one of yours. This is one out of the eighty-one set. Which one is painted from a right-hand point of view? Look, damn it. They’re not going to bite.’

  He stared at me through the space between them. I registered the fact that I was destined to place my cross on the flagstones.

  ‘Look, or I’m leaving.’

  A corner of his lips twitched into a sneer. His eyes re-focused. He actually looked at the photographs.

  ‘Mine,’ he growled, ‘is painted from the right-hand side, yours from the left.’

  ‘Fine. Good. That’s something.’ I put them down on the table surface, then collected them all up, patted them into neatness, and slid them back inside my jacket. ‘For your information, my original painting, the one that came to me from my father, is the same as yours. It’s painted by the left-handed artist.’

  He lost his temper. It had to come some time. His huge fist slammed down on the metal surface of the table and a dent appeared. The tray danced.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this!’ He put back his head and raised his voice, and in the woodland the rooks rose in droves. ‘Mace! Where are you? Carter! Phillips! Green!’

  The two men I’d noted came running, and a third appeared from behind me. Mace walked from inside the sun room, so appositely that he must have been lurking there.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  Coombe was on his feet. ‘What the hell’s the idea of letting this madman come here? It was your idea. Yours, Mace ...’

  ‘With respect, sir—’

  ‘I want no blood on the terrace,’ Coombe cried. ‘It soaks in. But I want him silent.’

  It was not the remark of someone out of control. His fury had been measured. Evelyn didn’t realize this and flew at him, hammering as far up his chest as she could reach. Coombe picked her off and handed her to one of his men, who steered her back to her chair. Margaret seized on the diversion to whisper to me: ‘What are you doing, Tony?’

  ‘Getting somewhere,’ I murmured. Aloud, I said: ‘Let’s get along to the gallery and confirm it, shall we!’

  ‘I think it would be best, sir,’ Mace suggested.

  ‘It’s ready?’ said Coombe.

  ‘As you said.’

  ‘Then we’ll go there, and let this idiot dig his own grave.’

  I realized then that this had been his intention all along. Mace had expressed an uncertainty Coombe couldn’t live with. I was the only one who could return his continuing existence to its former complacency.

  ‘Come along, Evelyn,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t miss this.’

  ‘I’d prefer to.’

  I took her arm. ‘I need you desperately.’

  ‘You won’t need me, Tony,’ said Margaret in a distant voice.

  ‘Oh but I do.’

  ‘You know it all.’

  ‘This is your reputation we’re talking about. Your expertise. Your integrity. You’re surely not going to allow me to say what I like?’

  She managed a smile, but still hesitated. ‘Besides,’ I went on, ‘you said you’d give anything to get inside that gallery.’

  ‘Not my life. As it’d be, if I saw too much.’

  ‘Then don’t look.’

  Coombe raised his voice. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Be with you.’

  With one woman on each arm I followed Coombe and Mace through the sun room.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We used a different route from the one by which Aleric had initiated me to the gallery, up the main staircase, with one of the gunmen leading, then Coombe, tailed closely by Mace, myself following with a lady each side, and two more gunmen behind us. The pace was steady and measured, like mounting a tumbril.

  Margaret hissed in my ear: ‘I don’t need you to hold my arm.’

  ‘I got the impression you were about to turn and run.’

  ‘I don’t see why you need me.’

  ‘You will.’

  We marched on.

  Evelyn hissed in my other ear: ‘Let go myarm. I think you’re out of your mind.’

  ‘I can’t do it without you.’

  ‘Well, that’s an admission.’

  The gunman turned to the right at the top. It was like a conducted tour, though Coombe blocked most of the view. We turned a corner, and we were in a corridor I recognized, if only because it needed artificial light in the day time. At the end sat the guard alert and prepared, watching our approach nervously.

  Mace already had the key. He held it up for all to see, like an illusionist. The guard stood to one side. The door swung open, and Mace reached through a hand and put on the lights. We entered. Mace closed the door behind him, locked it, and dropped the key in his side pocket. It clinked against something else metallic. He set his shoulders against the door, plunged his hand into the same pocket, and smiled thinly.

  I could barely detect the smile, because when I said lights, the plural was hardly applicable. There was a small one above the door, trapped in a wire cage, and farther into the darkness of the gallery, six strip-lights above paintings.

  Mace had performed well. He had switched off all but the appropriate lights, and as they were hooded the illumination extended for no more than a yard in any direction. Quite efficiently, the other secrets of the gallery were kept.

  The one guard ahead, and the two guards behind, were still in their relative positions, but the one in front had disappeared into the darkness, and the ones behind had slipped into deep shadows. Nevertheless, I was aware of them.

  We stood facing the paintings. Coombe turned massively.

  ‘There they are. Tell me what you can see that isn’t in your damned photographs.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘But Dr Dennis hasn’t seen the actual paintings before. Perhaps she can tell us something.’

  Smiling, I turned to her. The light, angled deliberately on the canvases, offered a very poor reflected glow at face level. Margaret seemed to be confused. Her shrug and her gesture of resignation told me more than her expression. Her voice was empty of emotion. ‘What d’you expect me to say?’

  ‘Well,’ I said encouragingly, ‘we know these are by the same hand as my original one, because all seven are duplicated in the eighty-one set. Mine, you were sure, is a Frederick Ashe.’

  ‘Mmm, mmm,’ she said, when I paused.

  ‘And you seem to be sure that the eighty-one are all by my grandmother. So look at these. Go on, Margaret, touch ’em and smell ’em, whatever the technique involves. Would you say they are genuine Frederick Ashe works?’

  Still she hesitated—I was introducing nothing new—then she went to them, and we waited. I took out my pipe. ‘No smoking in here,’ Coombe grated. I shrugged. Something to play with, that’s all it was, something to occupy my shaking fingers.

  She did all I’d suggested, plus a few other things, making it look good. She produced from her shoulder bag a contrivance I hadn’t seen before, a magnifier with an open-work wire frame, for placing over the surface. She used it mainly to study the signatures. Whatever the canvases told her, they took a long time to yield their secrets.

  At last she turned. Back-lit, her face was cut into hollows. I could see her lips move, but she was whispering.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear th
at.’

  She spoke too loudly. ‘My opinion hasn’t changed. These are by Frederick Ashe. I’m sorry, Tony.’

  ‘Just what I said,’ Mace called out from the door. He sounded jubilant and relieved.

  ‘So that’s the end of that,’ Coombe decided. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Wait.’ I still held Evelyn’s arm and I could feel it shaking. ‘Margaret, do you agree that these were painted from a right viewpoint, so probably by a left-handed painter? Would you like to see the photos again?’

  She frowned. I was becoming pedantic, flogging the same point over and over. She said: ‘I don’t need to, thank you. These are right-hand viewpoints, compared with the six that match them.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Good?’ Evelyn jerked my arm. ‘What’s good about it?’

  ‘It was what I expected. They’re by the same hand as my own original one, from the house.’

  She groaned. ‘So all right. So you own a genuine Frederick Ashe. That was what this lady expert told you in the first place. Nothing’s changed. Why can’t you let it lie, Tony? Why can’t you?’

  ‘You’re wasting my time,’ Coombe said harshly. ‘I’ve had about enough of you—’

  ‘But you agreed.’

  ‘I agreed what, damn it?’

  ‘That the person who painted your six, and my own, which are painted from a right viewpoint, must have been left-handed.’

  ‘No!’ he roared. That sound in the labyrinth of his gallery bounced around and back, returning in a mirror image, but still as no. ‘Most likely! Most likely!’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘So let’s get out of here.’

  ‘In a minute. There’s more.’

  ‘More what?’

  ‘Evidence. Dr Dennis found a reproduction of a painting in a biography. It showed Frederick Ashe to be painting left-handed.’

  ‘Well that proves it!’ Coombe bellowed. ‘You stupid or something?’

  ‘Sometimes pictures get printed backwards in books.’

  ‘And sometimes people get carried out backwards, and feet first.’

  Mace permitted himself a soft snigger, and Coombe beamed at him in approval.

  ‘There’s another photograph I want to show you.’

  Coombe clamped his hand on my shoulder, nearly bearing me to the floor. ‘No more pictures. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Then I’ll describe it.’ The grip on my shoulder increased, but I managed to speak through the pain. ‘When I was here—as you know I was in here—there was one shot I spoiled. I jerked. When I printed it, it showed two blurred pictures of paintings, one of them actually of Frederick Ashe. The same painting as was reproduced in the biography. You’ve got the painting here, Coombe. The biography was of another painter, Maurice Bellarmé.’

  The fist was removed. I straightened. He made a hissing noise through his teeth.

  ‘The camera swung to the right,’ I said. ‘There must be an alcove or something just there.’

  Coombe made no move. Evelyn whispered: ‘He’s hurt you!’ I touched her fingers. Margaret turned away in disgust at my foolishness.

  Coombe said carefully: ‘There is no alcove there.’

  ‘My photograph showed Ashe, as far as I can tell, painting left-handed,’ I said softly, offering it, praying he would react. ‘What is there, Coombe, if not an alcove?’

  ‘A mirror.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s as I guessed. I got mirror images. So the Bellarmé paintings ...’

  I turned, my eyes searching the shadows behind me.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ Coombe rasped.

  There was movement along the aisle. Two pairs of feet appeared inside the edge of the illumination. I was very still.

  ‘What’re you afraid of?’ I asked quietly.

  Coombe grumbled deep in his chest, then he moved past me, his hand swooped down, and a switch snapped on. I stared into the alcove that had been behind my right shoulder, as the two tubes flickered, then steadied.

  Coombe could not have owned what he thought to be a complete collection of Frederick Ashe, and not also have owned a portrait of the artist. The two portraits went together, Ashe and his angel. My grandmother. Still they were not separated. There they were, side by side.

  Bellarmé had been their friend. He had painted Frederick Ashe as though he was working on a portrait of his angel who, as Margaret had said, was performing a domestic chore in her painting. She was darning one of his socks. Ashe would not, of course, have been actually painting. Hadn’t they always painted side by side? But Angelina Foote seemed actually to be darning. The concentration was there, and her beauty, the transparency of her complexion, and in her expression her devotion to such a minor item relating to her Freddie—his sock. Bellarmé must have had a sense of humour, because his picture of Ashe, seated on a hard-backed chair at his easel, showed him to have one foot bare.

  ‘It’s her!’ cried out Evelyn involuntarily. ‘Your grandmother, Tony!’

  She had last seen Angelina twenty years before, when she was younger than my most recent memory. I felt choked, unable to speak. I wanted to meet these people, as they were then, and meet Bellarmé. And shake his hand in congratulation. The two works were superb.

  Frederick Ashe was holding the brush in his right hand, Angelina Foote had the sock on her right hand, and the needle was poised in her left.

  I cleared my throat. ‘You didn’t tell me this, Margaret.’

  She was behind my left shoulder. I turned. She was shaking her head, in bewilderment or in rejection. I couldn’t be certain.

  ‘Or perhaps they were both printed in the biography backwards,’ I offered.

  ‘I don’t ... remember.’

  ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. The point is, we’ve got our proof at last. My painting, and the six in here, being painted from a right viewpoint, were done by my left-handed grandmother, Angelina Foote. Now what d’you say, Margaret?’

  She gestured. She turned and stared at the six on the other wall. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, damn it!’

  ‘Anybody can make a mistake,’ I said comfortingly.

  ‘But not me!’ she cried out.

  ‘You’re insisting you didn’t?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Leave me alone. Please.’

  She looked round frantically, as though seeking a chair for her shaking legs.

  ‘We need chairs, Coombe,’ I said briskly. ‘Three chairs and a table.’

  ‘Will somebody please tell me what the hell’s going on!’ he appealed, and the two guards moved closer.

  ‘What is going on,’ I told him, ‘is exactly what I promised. I said I’d prove that you own six paintings which are not by Ashe. I’ve just done that. With Ashe shown to be right-handed, and Angelina Foote left-handed, it’s inconceivable that they would paint in any other arrangement than he on the left and she on the right.’

  ‘Then what d’you want with a table, goddamn it!’

  ‘Because we now have to complete our financial arrangement.’

  ‘I’m not sitting in here to discuss—’

  ‘I’m not asking you to either sit or discuss. The sitting part is for my wife and myself, and there’s nothing to discuss. I’m going to legalize the situation. My wife’s a solicitor. Doesn’t that make sense?’

  ‘In here?’

  ‘I thought you’d prefer that,’ I said innocently. ‘Then, if you don’t agree with what I’m going to do, there’ll be no chance of me getting away before you can tear things up. Get it?’

  He stared at me broodingly, then he wobbled the upper stack of his chins and barked: ‘Mace!’

  Paul Mace came running. He was revitalized. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You been listening to this?’

  ‘Every word.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘My assessment of the paintings was perhaps a little—’

  ‘Never mind that. What’s he up to? That’s the point.’

  ‘What I’m up to,’ I put in,
‘is the tying up of the loose ends. What you’ll see and hear is going to be enough to justify fifty thousand pounds for each of my six genuine Frederick Ashes, to replace yours. So we need a table. And chairs.’

  ‘Mace!’ snapped Coombe. ‘A table and chairs. This, I’ve got to hear.’ He put back his head and laughed. ‘Fifty thousand!’

  Mace turned to the two guards. ‘Get ’em.’

  They went into the back of the gallery to search, each carrying a torch. There would be places to sit, and tables on which to place ashtrays that dared not to be used. We waited. Coombe stood in massive menace, Mace moved restlessly, and Margaret went to stand looking at the six paintings, perhaps not even seeing them. Evelyn leaned against my shoulder, her lips close to my ear.

  ‘What’ve you got in mind, Tony?’

  ‘An affidavit. A water-tight incontestable affidavit. I’ll pay your fee later.’

  ‘You can have my advice free.’

  ‘I know what it would be. Give him what he wants—six paintings. Give him, Evelyn? Never. I’m going to hand him a rattlesnake with fangs at both ends.’

  ‘You’re an idiot!’

  Then why did she squeeze my arm supportingly?

  They came back with the chairs and the table. Margaret seemed to have recovered, and waved hers away impatiently. The table was placed in the centre of the aisle, where it received only a spill of the light from each side. I put the chairs facing each other across it, and held one for Evelyn. Normally, she would have frowned at my impertinence. This time she threw me a quick smile, and sat. I walked round and took the seat opposite.

  ‘Can we get on with it?’ Coombe demanded.

  I smiled up at him. ‘Can you see all right?’ I asked Evelyn.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Right.’ I plunged my hand into my left-hand inside jacket pocket and produced the folded sheet of law stationery, opened it up, folded it back the other way, and put it in front of her reasonably flat. I plunged again, and brought out six photographs.

  Mace, who’d been watching me very closely and with suspicion, pounced in, and whipped them from my fingers. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

  They were the wrong set, the prints of the six from the loft set.