By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘This is pure imagination,’ she said briskly. ‘It wouldn’t stand up for one moment.’

  Evelyn tugged at my sleeve. ‘She’s right, you know. In law, you haven’t produced anything that would convince a magistrate, let alone a jury.’

  Encouraged by this apparent support from such a quarter, Margaret went on, her voice professionally crisp. ‘One: Grace probably killed your grandmother, and committed suicide from remorse. Two: your accidents were the work of Coombe’s men, though the police would never be able to prove that. Nor that I had a hand in them. And three,’ she produced in triumph, ‘I didn’t know the loft set was all Frederick Ashe, until you proved it, just now.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come here.’

  ‘It was because you knew, that you couldn’t afford not to. But you did know, and this is one thing I can prove. And with it, your motive.’

  ‘You can prove nothing,’ she said in disgust.

  ‘The biography of Maurice Bellarmé,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s most unlikely that the reproductions were printed backwards. Not in a work like that. I think that book will show them printed as they were painted, and from seeing them you would have your proof, if you still needed any, that Frederick Ashe painted the loft set. You were vague about that biography. You didn’t want me to come here, because you knew those two paintings were in the Renfrew Coombe collection. Probably it told you so in the biography.’ I turned to Coombe. ‘Ones you actually bought legally?’ I asked him.

  ‘Of course,’ he said gravely.

  I returned my attention to Margaret. ‘And I’ll make a bet that the biography you said you hunted out in London is in fact in your own library, at what you modestly call your cottage.’ I held out my hand. ‘May I have the key, please.’

  ‘You may not.’

  ‘It’ll save me breaking in to collect the six for Mr Coombe.’

  ‘They’re not there. I told you—’

  ‘Of course they’re there. You told me you’d moved them, and I was able to tell Mr Coombe, quite convincingly, that they were safe in London.’ I turned to him again. ‘Were you convinced?’

  He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Completely.’

  ‘So ... your cottage is the one place they’d be, Margaret.’ I waggled my fingers. ‘The key, please.’

  ‘You’re not having it.’

  I sighed. ‘I can ask Mace to pull on all the lights. I can ask Coombe to get two of his men to carry you, if necessary, round the gallery, so that you can’t help seeing every painting he’s got. And then, Margaret, he wouldn’t dare to let you stay alive.’

  Furiously, she reached her hand into her bag, fumbled, and produced a set of keys.

  ‘Thank you.’ I looked at them. ‘I’ll use the Volvo.’ It was a statement. ‘And all I’ll ask Mr Coombe to do is hold you here in the house, until the police arrive. It’s them you’ll have to convince.’

  Panic caught her. ‘But you can’t—’

  ‘I know, Margaret. You’ve heard so much about the little trick he’s going to play on the police that he might decide it’s safer to remove you, anyway. I’m sorry. A little worry won’t hurt you.’ I grinned at Coombe. ‘Perhaps you’ll be careful to keep her healthy, if only to offer some little morsel of comfort to them by handing her over.’

  He clapped his palms together. A hundred or more paintings shuddered. But he was only expressing pleasure. ‘I can’t wait for them.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So we’re all agreed? Then you can open the door, Mace.’

  We trooped out in much the same order as when we’d arrived. I had a little difficulty walking straight, but Evelyn took my arm. Margaret did not take the other, though she walked beside me, her head up, a small defiant smile on her lips. She was still fighting.

  I said to Coombe: ‘Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back with the six paintings. You’d better make room for them in the gallery and start hanging the others somewhere near the front door.’

  He nodded. Mace was frowning. He was not happy with the arrangement, though he didn’t know why. Evelyn came with me to the car. ‘Is that Aleric’s?’ she asked, noticing the bike.

  ‘I’ve been using it.’

  ‘You’re too old for that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ll bet I’ve got more experience than him.’

  We stared at each other. She smiled. ‘You should have been a solicitor, Tony.’ It was her ultimate in compliments. She capped it by leaning forward and kissing me briefly on the corner of the mouth.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I drove away in the Volvo. The trip was uneventful, apart from the fact that I had to stop at three service stations to use their toilets. It’s free, now, you know.

  When I got home I managed to contact Detective Sergeant Dolan. When I told him I had his affidavit ready he said he’d be over in the morning.

  And so he was. He was waiting for me when I got back from the bank.

  I had been their first customer. I had cherished an expectation that the size of the cheques would at least raise an eyebrow. I had imagined that the deputy manager would have me in, to discuss investment. Even, perhaps, the manager. But ... nothing. Not even the bat of an eyelid from the cashier.

  That sort of money safely in his account gives a man confidence. I felt solidly comfortable when I dealt with the sergeant. We were in the kitchen, disposing of a pot of tea. He made no comment on the fact that we’d had to go round the back to get in.

  I explained the situation to him in detail, showed him the proof sketches on the back of the affidavit, and gave him the relative photos with the affirmations on their backs. Inside, I was laughing.

  ‘Make it tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘The day after. We’ll need to rake in an art expert and so on.’

  ‘Right. Now we’ll go and pick up the paintings.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I want you as a witness.’

  What Dolan was a witness to was the fact that the complete set of eighty-one loft canvases, plus my original one, were there. But more important, to the fact that the Maurice Bellarmé biography was in Margaret’s library. As it was. The paintings were printed, side by side, exactly as they had been in the gallery.

  ‘So you’ll need another warrant,’ I told him. ‘So it seems. But we already had our suspicions.’

  ‘Of me,’ I reminded him.

  ‘That too.’

  I collected together the relative six paintings and packed them carefully. Margaret had all the correct materials for packing paintings. Dolan took along the biography of Maurice Bellarmé. It was in French, but it was the pictures that mattered.

  ‘You’ll need a magnifier,’ I said. ‘For the initials.’

  ‘Have to buy one.’

  ‘I thought all detectives carried a large magnifying glass.’

  ‘Ha!’ he commented.

  After lunch, I drove to pick up my wife.

  This time I was not even allowed to enter the house. Coombe stood in the open doorway, watching, whilst Paul Mace came out and opened up the package in the back of the Volvo. Each canvas received a searching examination. He used Margaret’s magnifier. In the end, he raised his head and nodded. They were genuine Frederick Ashe paintings.

  Coombe gave a bleak smile.

  ‘Is it all right if I take my wife now?’ I called.

  ‘She’s here.’

  Evelyn came from the front door. She stood there a moment as though this was a special brand of fresh air, then she smiled and walked towards me.

  I had another package, especially for her, inside the Volvo.

  What’s this?’

  ‘I popped round to see Aleric’s latest girlfriend. She’s about your size. I’ve borrowed her riding kit for you.’

  ‘I’m expected to—’

  ‘Yes. You’ll love it. I can’t take the Volvo, now can I! It’d be theft.’ I handed Mace the bunch of keys. ‘Tell Dr Dennis that I’m keeping the ke
y to her cottage, until I’ve taken away the rest of my paintings. It’ll be under the flower pot by the front door.’

  He said he would do that. Everything was calm and civilized.

  ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘The police? Oh, I couldn’t say. They don’t confide in me. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. You’ll be prepared?’

  ‘We’re ready now.’

  While we’d been talking, Evelyn had been climbing into the overtrousers, and trying to master the snaps on the jacket.

  ‘I feel an absolute fool,’ she said.

  I caught a glimpse of Margaret at one of the windows upstairs. If she found it amusing, there was nothing in her expression to confirm it. I was reminded of Evelyn at her window. There was the same complete lack of emotion.

  ‘All you’ve got to remember,’ I told Evelyn, ‘is that you lean with me. Don’t try to lean against the bike.’

  I supported the bike as she climbed on. Then we were away.

  One advantage a bike has over a car is that it limits conversation. From time to time she shouted something, but inside the helmet I could make nothing of it. I made one unbroken run of it. My technique was now as good as it had ever been. No incorrect decisions, no hesitations ... straight through.

  She climbed stiffly to the ground, removed the helmet, and said calmly: ‘I really enjoyed that.’

  I laughed.

  Two days later, Dolan visited us and told us what had happened. The police had arrived at Renfrew Coombe in a large contingent, headed by a superintendent. The police were not armed, though there was a wagon full of men in camouflaged battle jackets and berets, but with no weapons visible. They were not called into action.

  The Superintendent told Mace he had a warrant to search the premises for six paintings, four of which were believed to be stolen. The leading group was politely invited inside. The main group of police dispersed themselves in a surrounding movement.

  Coombe’s six paintings had been displayed in the hall. The Superintendent stood and stared at them. The art expert examined them. In his hand he had six photographs with my signature on the back of each.

  ‘These,’ he said at last, ‘are not the relevant paintings. They do not correspond with the photographs attested to by a Mr ... er ...’ He turned them over. ‘A Mr Anthony Hine.’

  At this point there was a certain amount of aggressive movement, some of it violent. Coombe’s men had been out at the front to consider the implications of the camouflaged jackets, and surrendered their weapons without argument.

  Coombe, restrained by four large policemen, shouted: ‘These are the paintings. I watched him sign the damned photographs.’

  But the photographs I had attested to, and quite correctly because the paintings were, now, on Coombe’s premises, were the six Terry Bascombe had copied for me, from the loft set. He’d done a grand job. What it entails, this masking, is exposing your six prints under the enlarger with part of the printing paper masked off, so that it only exposes the bit you want. Then you reverse the masking, covering the portion you’ve just exposed, and print the other part you want. For the first run he had printed six picture frames from the set of pictures in Coombe’s gallery, and for the second part of the job he had printed my six matching canvases, from the loft set. So he’d framed them, and they looked, at a superficial glance, as though they were prints of Coombe’s own paintings. Which they weren’t.

  Remember the name. Terry Bascombe. Any time you need a special job doing.

  The Superintendent was able to point out that, as the paintings reproduced in the six photographs were not on show anywhere he could see, it would be necessary to search deeper. This of course now included the gallery, and quite legally. It was part of the premises mentioned in the affidavit.

  It was in the gallery that the art expert really came into his own. With a free run of the display, he trotted in ecstasy from one canvas to the other, discovering, quite apart from the ones they had come for, twenty-seven major works that had been given up as lost, having been stolen over a period of twenty years.

  Charges were made, arrests were made. Coombe quivered in dissolution in his special chair.

  There was an unexpected bonus. I had told Dolan about the episode of the white cross, and he’d passed it on to his superiors. On an inspiration, prompted by a complete lack of any sense of humour, the Superintendent had tried an experiment. He ordered the slabs on the terrace to be lifted.

  For two days his men worked at it, and uncovered three skeletons and one decomposing corpse. The corpse still contained the bullet that had brought about its death, and the forensic experts later matched it to Mace’s gun.

  The trials are expected to last several months. The Superintendent has made much of his triumph on television, but I have seen no mention of Detective Sergeant Dolan.

  That was six months ago. Aleric is now at home. He is working at this time in acrylics. I tell him I can now afford to send him to any art school of his choice, but at the moment he seems to want to remain at home. I never could understand him.

  Evelyn intends to continue with her practice. This, I expected. I intend to continue as a professional photographer. This, she didn’t. I am having a proper photo-lab built, with a reception area, and already I’ve engaged a secretary/receptionist and a lab assistant, this as Evelyn had suggested. Both are young women. Evelyn disapproves, of the lab assistant particularly. She believes this is not a proper profession for a young lady. I don’t think I’ll ever understand Evelyn either.

  The four paintings from the collection found in the gallery have now been returned to the art galleries from which the thefts were made. But now they have genuine Frederick Ashes, in place of the Angelina Footes they originally owned. I wonder whether any of their acclaimed art experts have noticed the difference. I wonder whether Ashe should now be described as school of Angelina Foote, and whether it matters.

  Unfortunately, this now leaves Renfrew Coombe as the legitimate owner of two genuine Frederick Ashes. But it’ll be a long while before he’ll be able to gloat on the fact.

  I have kept only two, my original painting of the cottage with the morning sun, which after all was painted by my grandmother, and its mate from the loft batch, painted by my grandfather. I have them displayed side by side on the sitting-room wall, in their relative positions, Grannie’s on the right. After all, she was the one who was left-handed.

  The remaining seventy-four I have donated to the National Gallery. After much thought. For after all, my grandmother was dead before we got the canvases out of the house, so that they were legally part of the legacy to Grace Fielding. So I have no right to them. So I’ve given them away.

  No right or not, I nevertheless listened carefully to the gentleman who came from the Home Office, and I made no protest. In view of my gift, it is hinted, I shall see my name in the next honours list. A CBE, or perhaps an OBE. Who am I to argue?

  And that about wraps it up.

  Oh, I nearly forgot. The second warrant was not used, because Dr Margaret Dennis was not at Coombe’s house. He claimed she had given his men the slip, and got away. Maybe that is so. But perhaps his nerve went, and he didn’t dare to allow her to speak to the police.

  Wherever she is, she will never be able to utilize the expertise and world-wide acclaim she fought so hard to acquire.