By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Whoops!’ I said. ‘My mistake.’ I grinned at him, and produced another set. Held them up. ‘All right? You can tell these are the ones ...’ I gestured towards the wall. ‘The frames. They show.’

  He frowned at my prints, then nodded, stepping back. I reached inside my side pocket and found Evelyn’s rubber stamp.

  ‘Breathe on it and it’ll work’ I told her. ‘Is that all you need?’

  She flicked me a look under her eyebrows. She has never plucked them. They caught the light redly. ‘I’d prefer the atmosphere of my office, otherwise ... yes, I can manage. What is it you want me to say?’ She looked round. ‘If I’d got something to write with.’

  ‘Forgot.’ I produced her Sheaffer.

  She laughed. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I want to swear something to the effect that the six photographs herewith referred to—I suppose we’ll have to mark them in some way ...’

  ‘I’ll put something on the back of each one. I hope the stamp’ll hold out.’

  ‘Yes. Herewith referred to ... are of canvases to be seen on the premises of Renfrew Coombe, at Renfrew Coombe, Somerset ...’

  ‘So that’s where we are!’

  ‘Where they are hanging—’

  Coombe’s hand slapped down on the law stationery, confirming his contempt for anything relating to the law. ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘An affidavit.’

  ‘Paul!’ he shouted.

  Mace, at his shoulder, stepped forward.

  ‘What’s he playing at?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  Evelyn looked up at Coombe. ‘I’m notarizing an affidavit.’

  ‘And what,’ he rasped at me, ‘do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘Take it to the police. I promised Detective Sergeant Dolan—’

  ‘He’s insane!’ bellowed Coombe.

  ‘If you’ll just listen ...’

  ‘Perhaps, sir—’ Mace began.

  I cut in. ‘I’m just about to tell you why my six paintings are worth fifty thousand pounds each. If you’ll only listen.’

  I stared into Coombe’s face. Slowly, his hand lifted. ‘Say it.’

  ‘I will take this affidavit, and the photographs of the six paintings, to the

  police. They will go to a magistrate—’

  ‘A Justice of the Peace,’ corrected Evelyn.

  ‘Thank you. A JP then. And they will get a search warrant.’

  Coombe was rumbling, close to an eruption. I held up my hand.

  ‘I happen to know they’ve been trying for years to get something, anything, that they can use to get into here. They’ll pounce on this. And I can guess you’ve been expecting something or other from the police. But you’ll notice that the affidavit will read premises. Not gallery. By the time the police arrive, you’ll be expecting them. These six paintings here will then be displayed in your hall or your study, or whatever you call it, and if you’ve got any sense the two Bellarmés will be there too. Because you’ll be able to show that the six paintings covered by the affidavit are not by Frederick Ashe, but are copies, so that none of them could have been stolen from the galleries who’ve unfortunately lost them. And because that covers the information in my affidavit, they can’t look any further. You can even let them take them away, because by that time you’ll have the six genuine versions of the same paintings, which I shall bring to you, displayed here in the gallery. And you can laugh them out of the house, knowing that they’ll never be able to try a search warrant again.’ I took a deep breath. ‘There. Isn’t that worth fifty thousand each to you?’

  Coombe was wheezing, his huge chest shaking, and the cross on it vibrating. I realized what was happening. He was laughing. Then he raised his mauler, and I thought for one appalling moment he was going to slap me on the back. But it descended on Mace’s shoulder.

  ‘What d’you think, Paul?’

  ‘I like it, sir. I like it.’

  ‘Then do it,’ he boomed at me.

  So we did it. All through my exposition, Evelyn had been drafting the affidavit and annotating the backs of the six photographs. All I had to do was sign, watch her bang on her rubber stamp (with seven breaths it just managed to work seven times) and add her signature. I picked it all up, folded the affidavit round the certified photos, and slipped the package inside my jacket. I got to my feet.

  ‘No!’ said Margaret.

  Nobody had been taking any notice of her. She had been silent in the background. Thinking, no doubt.

  ‘No?’ I asked.

  ‘It isn’t valid,’ she plunged in, almost breathless with it, her hair flying about with the emphasis. ‘It won’t work.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because it is not valid. Not enough to support legal action, or anything else based on authenticity. Tony, I’m sorry. But I can’t let you walk out of here, and have the whole thing crumble away ...’

  She stopped, biting her lip. I’ll swear she was close to tears. Because of this, I spoke quite gently.

  ‘Tell us why it isn’t valid.’

  ‘Because you can’t—positively—argue that two people, right- and left-handed, would sit the way you’ve described. It isn’t proof. They might not have done that. They might have both leaned across to use the palette. It’s possible, Tony, and you know it. Just possible.’

  I sighed. ‘Oh, Margaret! I did hope you wouldn’t say that. You see, there’s another proof. I was keeping it in reserve.’ I smiled at her. ‘Just in case you did say it.’

  She gave me a long, considered look, then pressed thumb and fingers to her forehead, and said dismissively: ‘Let’s hope it’s better than your last load of proof.’ Her tone sharpened. She was unable to control her tension. ‘It wasn’t proof, and you know it. Ask her—ask your wife. She’s the solicitor. Everything’s black and white with that lot.’

  I turned to Evelyn. She gave me a crumpled smile. ‘Evelyn?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t proof, Tony. Not what you could take to court.’ She said it sadly.

  ‘Then we’ll have to give this other thing a try.’

  ‘A try! Do you mean to tell me it’s something you haven’t tested? Tony ...’ She could think of nothing to add.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, and tried to grin. ‘It was only half an hour ago that I got the idea.’

  ‘Can we get on!’ shouted Coombe.

  ‘Right.’ I stood face on to him, my eyes level with the cross. ‘The idea came to me when I did that cross. One of the strokes has to come after the other, and crosses it. You can see. Even though it’s dry, you can see which came second.’

  He tried to peer down at his chest, but one of his chins got in the way, so he went and stood in front of the nearest mirror.

  ‘He’s right, Paul. Come and have a look at this.’

  Paul Mace did. He prodded the chest. ‘Yes. But I don’t see ...’

  ‘It’s like this.’ I looked round for something to draw on, but there was only the affidavit. I took it out of my pocket and used the back, borrowing Evelyn’s pen.

  ‘These two people,’ I said, ‘Frederick Ashe and Angelina Foote, were so intrigued by the fact that they had the same initials, only reversed, that they both used the same combined form of initials. They used the F and the A overlapping, to sign their paintings. So they look the same. But they wouldn’t be the same, would they? Ashe would naturally do the F first, then add a down stroke to complete the A. And Angelina would do the A first, and add a cross stroke at the top to make the F. Like this.’

  I did it quickly, and found it quite difficult, but managed a reasonable representation.

  ‘Frederick Ashe,’ I said. ‘F.A.’

  ‘But this would be Angelina Foote. A.F.’

  ‘You can see the difference is mainly in the top left-hand corner. It all depends on which stroke does the overlapping.’

  I looked round. Margaret, distancing herself from my antics, had withdrawn into the shadows.

  ‘
Margaret, may I borrow your magnifier?’

  She came forward, plunging into her shoulder bag. ‘If you must. But I’ve got no faith in this.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Mace and Coombe were almost in my back pocket as I bent to the paintings on the wall. The magnifier was a superb instrument, bringing the image up very clearly. There was absolute silence behind me. I moved slowly along the line of six, stopping from time to time to wipe the lens, as sweet was dripping from my forehead. It was not easy. The texture of the paint beneath the initials obscured the result, and the clarity of the overlap depended on the fluidity of the paint that’d been used to inscribe it.

  I straightened. Margaret was now pacing. Evelyn watching me with strain in her eyes.

  ‘Give me side-lighting and a camera with a macro lens and I could blow the initials up to ten by eight, and there’d be no doubt. I’m certain of two, not so certain of the other four. Mace, you want to take a look? It’s the top left-hand corner, remember.’

  He took the magnifier. I stood and watched, playing with my pipe to stop myself from screaming. He straightened, and nodded to Coombe.

  ‘Numbers one and four?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Those for certain.’

  ‘And what did they indicate?’

  ‘The cross bar at the top of the F came last.’

  ‘Which is a definite and unarguable proof that they were painted by Angelina Foote?’

  Mace stuck out his lower lip. It cost him a lot to say it, but he managed to get the words out. ‘They’re Angelina Footes.’

  My legs went weak. I leaned a cheek on the table. ‘Right then. Fine.’ I picked up the affidavit and waved it. ‘So what I’ve got here’s not just evidence that’ll bring the police rushing round, but on the back there’s absolute proof that what they’ve come to see are only copies, not genuine Frederick Ashe paintings.’

  I could tell that Coombe was delighted at the outcome. He was shortly to acquire the genuine Ashes, and the evidence to make complete fools of the police. He would perhaps invite the TV newsmen to bring their cameras along. His delight was expressed in the fact that he unzipped the top six inches of his tracksuit and a quarter of an inch of a smile.

  ‘My cheques then, please,’ I said.

  ‘When you bring your six.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Coombe. If I brought six paintings, I’d leave with no cheques and no paintings. If I take the cheques and don’t bring the paintings, d’you think I’d expect to live long enough to spend any?’

  He contemplated this. Then he said: ‘Paul.’ Mace produced two cheques. The total was three hundred thousand pounds. I folded them, my fingers uncertain, and tucked them in with the affidavit.

  ‘Your wife stays,’ said Mace flatly.

  ‘Oh ... Tony!’ she wailed.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ I assured her. ‘It’s only another day. Back tomorrow with Coombe’s paintings—’

  ‘And how d’you intend to do that, Tony?’ Margaret demanded from the shadows. ‘You don’t know where they are.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Coombe. ‘The clown doesn’t know where to put his hands on them.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She advanced into the light. The starkness of the tubes drained her face of colour, its shadows hid her eyes. There was a tense authority about her. She had made a decision.

  ‘But Margaret,’ I said quietly, ‘you know where they are.’

  ‘And why should I tell you? I’ve listened to all this, to you calmly proving that you own eighty-one genuine Frederick Ashe works—his complete collection—then you happily promise to let this ape here have six of them!’

  ‘For good money, Margaret. Your commission—’

  ‘To hell with my commission. What do I care for that! It was a find! The complete set, and a way to authenticate them. And you’d rob me of that!’ Her voice was brittle. It crackled round the gallery. Nobody said a word. ‘You’d break up the collection, just so that this thieving swine, who hasn’t got one atom of feeling for any of his collection ... so that he can get one over on the police, and go on with his rotten, underhanded pirating of art treasures ...’

  ‘Be quiet, woman,’ put in Mace.

  ‘Quiet! Oh, you can easily silence me. And don’t think I would care. Tony, I just don’t understand you. You prove you own all that beauty and perfection, and before I can begin to take it in you start to split it up!’ Her voice was breaking with the emotion of it.

  I took a pace towards her. ‘But, Margaret, you’ve known all along that the loft set are the genuine Frederick Ashes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You used your magnifier just now. D’you think I didn’t notice? I did, because I’d only just thought of the idea. And the first thing you examined was the initials. Now be sensible, Margaret. You’re an expert. You know all about signatures. It’s one thing you’d think about, that overlapping business of the initials.’

  ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘But you do. Your first sight of my painting ... and you said: Frederick Ashe. But at that time you knew nothing about the story of the two sets. When you did know, you couldn’t wait to get your hands on the loft set. And in that loft you had no magnifier, and not enough light. You had to know! Had to. So you said you would wake my grandmother and ask her. Then you came back and told me she’d shouted for Grace. As I suppose she would, because she’d found herself looking at a genuine Frederick Ashe, when Grace had told her they’d been destroyed. Of course she would shout for Grace, and of course you would want to know why. And my grandmother would have told you why. There was no reason for her to keep it from you.’

  ‘Conjecture.’ But Margaret barely parted her teeth.

  ‘Perhaps. But it sounds right, and when you consider what followed ... You knew, in that second, that this was a wonderful discovery, and it was your find, your glory, your rung right to the top. As long as it was your find, and they didn’t belong to that fool, Tony Hine. So ... I must not be allowed to know what I had. Who knew what I’d do with them? Give them away, or some damn fool thing like that. But my grandmother would have told me, if you gave her the chance. So you covered her mouth and nose with your hand, Margaret ... no, don’t talk about what you intended. Don’t say you only wanted to stop her from shouting out for Grace. Because I wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘Who cares what you believe? Anybody can say anything. It’s all lies. You’re making it up!’ She spoke in frantic appeal, as though I might be persuaded to stop doing it.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got into the habit of trying to prove things. What I’ve just said can be proved. The dust on your hand also had bits of brown paint in it. They—the forensic people—can analyse the paint specks that were found in my grandmother’s lungs, and analyse the brown that Ashe used—’

  ‘You could have done it.’

  I shook my head. ‘Dusty I was, but it was from the crates. It was you who wiped a hand over the surface of one of the canvases.’

  ‘I’m getting out of here. Tell your stupid ideas to the police.’

  ‘The door’s locked.’

  Her chin lifted. I caught a glint in her eyes. ‘Then tell it to somebody else.’ Then she turned her back on me and tucked her hands beneath her arms against a chill that wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t difficult to understand her. In the formative years there had been her frustration that she could not become an artist. Then the cold, ruthless determination to master something which she herself had called a science and not an art. She would have had no emotional feeling for it, so that she’d succeeded in something to which she had had to drive herself. And somewhere in the intervening years all emotion had died, until she was no more than an unfeeling machine, one that wouldn’t balk when the ultimate opportunity presented itself.

  ‘I could forgive you almost anything, Margaret,’ I said quietly, ‘except the cold-blooded murder of an old lady in her bed. I could even forgive you the three attempts on my life ...’

/>   ‘Tony?’ Evelyn whispered.

  I reached back and touched her hand, and went on: ‘I know I was supposed to accept that they were the work of Coombe’s men ...’

  ‘Now hold it right there!’ Coombe snapped.

  I didn’t glance round. ‘But how could they have been? The first one, on the hill above here—Coombe couldn’t have known I’d come from up there. His men didn’t even chase me up the hill. So I must have been followed, and you knew, Margaret, that I was coming here. The second: you were the one who knew I’d be working in my darkroom. The third: you knew my hired Metro was in the drive at my home. So you see, by that time I knew it was you who was trying to kill me.’

  She whirled round, and stared at me with challenge. ‘Knew! Knew!’ she snapped in contempt.

  I continued as though she hadn’t spoken. I had to get it all out, before it choked me.

  ‘I didn’t understand why you wanted me dead. I thought your idea was to pass off a lot of Angelina Foote paintings as Ashes, and that I might object. But it was better than that, because you knew by that time exactly what you had. And only I knew you had them, and Grace Fielding, she knew. But she died. Suicide, they thought, though there are doubts. I haven’t got any doubt at all. Grace not only knew about the paintings, she was also threatening legal action, because she knew that my grandmother was dead before we left that house.’

  ‘Ye gods,’ said Coombe. ‘What have we got here!’ He spoke in a voice of awe.

  ‘You’ve got to admit she’s got plenty of nerve,’ Mace commented.

  ‘More than you can know,’ I told him. ‘She had to get Grace Fielding into a loft—probably on the pretence of looking for crosses on the old crates—and strangle her there, then put a noose round her neck, and push her through the trapdoor opening.’

  Evelyn made a high, shrill sound of disgusted protest.

  ‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘And she would have had to climb down the ladder past her dangling body.’

  Coombe whistled absently.

  Margaret, apparently annoyed that the catalogue of her activities should have drawn admiration from such an uncouth oaf as Coombe, turned to face us again. She advanced on me with a determination that was quite admirable under the circumstances.