The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘This whole thing’s been a bit of a nightmare to be honest,’ Deegan said suddenly. ‘Frank dying like that, I mean, but in the end we’ve managed to salvage enough to pay the men what they were owed. When he died, he owned nothing but his house and his car. Not a penny in the bank. He had no family, poor old Frank. I believe his wife died early in their marriage and there were no children. His house was sold to pay off the creditors, the car was a write-off.’ He swallowed and fell silent, looking away, as if struggling not to let his emotion be seen. His boss had evidently meant more to him than he was saying. Reardon waited to let him get over it and it didn’t take long. Deegan was clearly one who didn’t like silences and soon went on to fill this one, answering most of the questions Reardon had prepared before he could ask them.

  ‘I was very fond of Frank. He’d been very good to me, you know, and he was talking of taking me into partnership. Since he died, I’ve been struggling hard to get money together to buy what stock there was – including all that stuff out there, which I left because I’m hoping Miss Hillyard will let me finish the job – finishing the inside of this wing for the art and science rooms, and then on to whatever she decides to do with the rest of it. It will give a good boost to starting up my own business if she does. There’s a lot of goodwill out there – Frank had worked up a good reputation.’ He bit his lip. ‘If only.’

  Two of the saddest words in the world.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Deegan, but you seem like an educated man—’

  ‘So what am I doing working on a building site?’ He shrugged. ‘I trained as an architect – partly trained, that is, until the war machine got me.’ He didn’t explain more and Reardon didn’t ask. There were scars from the war, unlike his own, which didn’t show. But sometimes they did, even in smiling Irish eyes.

  ‘So money was a problem?’

  ‘Not on this job. With other customers, yes. But Miss Hillyard was never late with coming up with the necessary. When money was due at certain stages, it was always there.’

  The Maxstead Court that Reardon had known before, when it was still owned by the family who’d occupied it since the Dark Ages, hadn’t exactly been falling down, but it had been in severe difficulties regarding repairs to its structure, and its upkeep. Death duties after the decease of Sir Lancelot Scroope, rising taxes and the general state of the British economy had in the end been the nail in the coffin which had forced the family out of their ancestral home. They had been lucky to find a buyer for it. Reardon thought he would be very interested to find out where the money had come from to fund such extensive refurbishment and repair. Edith Hillyard was said to own the school personally. Either she was a very rich woman in her own right, or she had a backer.

  ‘You’ve been working here for some time. You must have got to know the staff.’

  ‘We’re on nodding acquaintance, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you know Mlle Blanchard?’

  ‘Isabelle Blanchard? I spoke to her once or twice, that’s all.

  A flicker of some emotion that Reardon couldn’t read crossed his face. Policemen have nasty suspicious minds, and for a moment his antennae quivered. The man could be lying, for any amount of reasons. Perhaps there was more to Michael Deegan than showed on the surface. A man like him, doubtless attractive to women, and he’d known the dead woman well enough to know her first name.

  ‘What it was, she was concerned about the girls using what they’re calling the Quad as a short cut to the tennis courts. Not that they were in any real danger, but it wasn’t the place for them, and we had enough to do anyway without silly little girls who wouldn’t do as they were told. It wasn’t our job to keep an eye on them.’ He sounded slightly defensive all the same. He took a quick look at his watch.

  He was clearly anxious not be late for his appointment with Miss Hillyard, and Reardon had no wish to keep him from it, so he wound things up with a few more questions. Nothing significant emerged and Deegan left. Reardon felt he rather liked what he’d seen of the man. In fact, it had come as a bit of a relief to speak man to man after so much feminine input. He wasn’t by any means a misogynist, far from it, he liked women, and respected them, but he’d long ago admitted that questioning them when they might well be under suspicion wasn’t precisely his forte. Even Gilmour was far better at it than he was. For one thing, Reardon was convinced, even against evidence to the contrary, that women were less criminally inclined than men – though definitely more devious – and it was hard to persuade him otherwise; for another, they could run rings around him if they chose. Especially when presenting a united front. United we stand, Ellen had said of the teachers here. Was that really so? Did they all know something about Isabelle Blanchard that they were keeping from him? He had a notion that at least one of them might.

  SIX

  Of those rooms Reardon had seen on his previous visits to Maxstead Court, what was now the art room was the only one virtually unchanged. Gone, for instance, was the gracious drawing room, and the small den once used as the business room by the Scroope family. But this place remained virtually unaltered. Then known as the garden room, it was now cleared of the horticultural disorder it had once housed, though it was no less cluttered now, being full of desks and easels and all the paraphernalia presumably needed to give lessons in art to the young. He glanced around, but didn’t find much of their work was displayed or pinned up, though admittedly there wasn’t a lot of wall space for that, most of it being taken up by the windows that let in the floods of light, making it an obvious place to use as a temporary art room.

  Jocasta Keith was still engaged on the painting Ellen had described to him, or one similar, if the furious explosions of colour that looked as though they’d been hurled at the canvas were anything to go by. With exaggerated patience she put down the palette knife she was holding when he told her he’d like to ask her a few questions and perched on one of the desks, swinging an elegantly silk-clad leg. The overall she wore was paint stained, as were her hands, which he saw were not long-fingered and delicate, as the hands of artistic people were popularly imagined to be. Hers were square, rather blunt and capable looking. The nails, he noticed, were bitten to the quick.

  ‘Ask away,’ she said, waving him to another desk and offering her cigarette case.

  ‘I don’t smoke, thanks, but I don’t mind if you do.’ Reardon’s last cigarette had been smoked an hour before the motorcycle accident in France which had given him his scar and earned him a medal and permanently scotched his taste for tobacco. She watched him over the flame of her lighter as she drew on the cigarette, a look which took him in top to toe.

  ‘You’re another new addition to the staff, I’m told, Miss Keith, like Mlle Blanchard.’

  ‘Later than most of them. She and I started about the same time.’

  ‘Where did you teach before?’

  ‘I’m not a teacher, but Miss Hillyard is enlightened enough to realize you don’t need diplomas to teach elementary art. If you’re an artist yourself, you can show anyone the basics, the mechanics and techniques. They can be learnt, but after that it’s up to yourself, what’s in you.’

  That sounded rather arbitrary to him, and he wasn’t sure it could be right. What about all those art schools, and the professors who worked in them? But then what, if anything, did he know about art, apart from the fact that it wasn’t renowned for bringing in much money? Miss Keith looked as though she might need quite a lot of that to keep her in the style to which she’d like to become accustomed. She hardly seemed the type to tolerate living in the proverbial garret.

  His scepticism must have shown. ‘It’s all about self-expression, anyway. Getting rid of inhibitions,’ she added.

  She had a rather scornful way of looking at you if you didn’t immediately cotton on. He was well aware what she meant, but he didn’t argue. If what was on the easel was the expression of Miss Keith’s rejected inhibitions, she must have amassed a whole lot she needed to dispense with.

  ‘I
didn’t have any training myself,’ she volunteered suddenly. ‘I worked in a factory, prostituting my art if you like, designing – if you could call it that – china. I was good, and I could have gone to art school to learn more, but only how to paint more pretty tea sets.’ Her expression said what she thought of that. ‘This is only a stopgap. As soon as I have enough money I shall be off and get myself a studio. You won’t see me for dust.’ As if pulled by invisible strings, her glance was drawn back to the painting on the easel.

  How much of her attitude was tongue-in-cheek, or bravado, he wouldn’t know, but he hoped she had the sense to keep her intentions to herself. Miss Hillyard was not likely to welcome any hint that another member of her staff was poised to leave her in the lurch as soon as she could. If it should come to her ears, Miss Keith might find herself quickly dispensed with, whether she was ready to leave or not.

  ‘Although, come to that,’ she went on, almost to herself, as though a new and rather welcome thought had just struck her, her face suddenly becoming animated. ‘I could, why not? There’s nothing to stop me leaving now. I could easily get by – the salary here’s not bad.’ But just as suddenly, the excitement seemed to drain away and she shook her head. ‘Not a brilliant idea, on second thoughts. Let me show you something.’

  He followed her across the room, to where a sheet of paper was pinned to the wall. ‘Stand back, so you can see it better,’ she advised.

  It was a pastel drawing of a horse and a boy in a field, nothing more. And yet so much more. A leaping chestnut horse with its forelegs raised, its mane streaming, a rope around its neck, a laughing boy, backing away and clad only in a shirt and trousers, holding a halter. It was simple, so much so that at first glance it might be dismissed, until you looked, and looked again, and saw the powerful, swiftly and confidently executed lines, which gave such a vivid impression of movement you could almost feel the horse leaping from the picture and sense the boy’s joy. ‘It looks good,’ he said inadequately, ill-equipped to find the words to convey more. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Me? No, I couldn’t do anything like that! It’s by one of the girls. And that’s why I’d better stay on – for a while, at least,’ she added as an afterthought, making him wonder if that was the only reason. ‘If I go, no one else will give her the encouragement she needs, and she’s just beginning to find her feet. Before I came, they never realized what they had here, and her work went by the board. I’m not altogether sure they know now, apart from Miss Hillyard. She came in last week and saw this and I think it might have persuaded her I’m not talking completely through my hat.’

  ‘Who is this treasure?’

  ‘A girl called Antonia Freeman. She doesn’t apply herself to anything else, so she tends to get overlooked. Or blamed for anything that goes wrong, poor child.’ There was a softening in her voice, pity and perhaps understanding, as she spoke the girl’s name. Might there be parallels here with Jocasta Keith’s own life, a feeling they were both outsiders? Thinking about what she’d just said, Ellen’s remarks about those practical jokes which had been played came back to him – she had mentioned a girl called Freeman, but he didn’t recall her being thought of as the perpetrator. She’d been the one at the receiving end, hadn’t she?

  He could admire Miss Keith’s passionate defence of her talented pupil, and he would like to know more about this Antonia, but they were rather getting away from the point of why he was here. ‘Tell me, how did you find Mlle Blanchard?’

  ‘I didn’t have all that much to do with her.’ She shrugged. ‘They said she was a good French teacher, but so she should have been, being French.’

  ‘Was she French?’ he asked, not knowing why he had asked that. ‘The name could be either.’

  ‘Definitely, I’d say, typically so.’

  ‘Typical in what way?’

  ‘Like all the French, convinced of their own superiority and uncompromising about it – bloody-minded, if you like, as they say where I come from.’ She paused and reached for another cigarette. Jocasta Keith might project violent colour into her paintings, but she obviously saw life in terms of stark black and white. Then she surprised him by adding, ‘No, that’s not quite fair, I suppose. I have to admit, she did know quite a bit about French art.’

  He surmised all the same that Isabelle Blanchard’s opinions had not been entirely in accordance with Miss Keith’s own, and that she’d been rubbed up the wrong way by it. But she shrugged and went on, ‘She thought a lot of herself, Isabelle, and she wasn’t an easy person to talk to, but we both said what we thought and we’d found ourselves thrown together here in this situation, so I guess we did get along, in a funny sort of way. Actually, I suppose I did quite like her. She certainly didn’t deserve what happened to her,’ she finished abruptly.

  What exactly had she meant by finding themselves together? It was interesting to think that the one person who had at first seemed totally uninterested in the Frenchwoman or what had happened to her now appeared might have known more about her than any of her other colleagues. He might have struck gold. But in the end, nothing came of that. She had suddenly resolved not to give anything more away and he saw he was wasting his time trying to push her. Jocasta Keith wasn’t by any means telling him everything she knew, but she had decided she’d said enough and wasn’t going to go any further.

  There was, however, more he had to ask before he left her. ‘Do you have any idea why she left?’

  ‘Oh, I think she got cold feet,’ she answered, without giving it much thought.

  ‘Cold feet?’

  He’d taken her up too quickly, and for the first time she looked a little disconcerted. ‘Just a figure of speech. I meant she’d realized she didn’t fit in here. Like me, I suppose. All the other staff members were known to Miss Hillyard before they came here. They’re very cliquey.’ She shrugged and picked up her palette knife.

  ‘Where did she go, or intend going, after she left here?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. And though I don’t want to be rude, Inspector, I do have to get on with some work before my next class.’

  She turned back to her easel and gazed critically at it. After a moment she put the palette knife down. ‘Oh God, now I’ve lost it.’ He assumed she meant inspiration, or something like that, for the painting. It looked quite mad to him, anyway, but he thought it would be tactless to comment. He had sensed something in her tone. Not annoyance. He rather thought it might be despair.

  Several questions occurred to him as he walked away from the room. What had she meant about being able to leave Maxstead now? Because she had amassed enough money, or what? Clearly, she had regretted having spoken her thoughts aloud. She’d been momentarily fired with the possibility of quitting a job she obviously loathed, until it had occurred to her that for some reason it wasn’t possible. Something was preventing her, and the excuse of staying on to provide support for a talented pupil didn’t really hold all that much water, however much she might believe in the girl’s need for it.

  ‘So,’ said Gilmore, catching up later with Reardon, who was still at Maxstead, ‘it looks as though we have a missing woman now, as well as a murdered one. At least, let’s hope Phoebe Catherall is just missing.’

  ‘Whoa! We’re not ready to go in that direction just yet.’ Reardon had so far listened to Gilmour’s account of his visit to Mrs Cooper with interest, though the information he’d gained complicated matters even further. ‘All right, I take your point, but don’t let it run away with you. Although I have to agree, it’s damned funny – and I don’t mean ha-ha – that Phoebe Catherall, untrained if we’re to believe your Mrs Cooper, should be given the job of teaching French at a posh school.’ Though in actual fact, didn’t Miss Hillyard seem to be in the habit of taking on unqualified persons – at least one other, in the form of Miss Keith? ‘Not to mention that the story about the hospital and the operation sounds like a load of codswallop to me. Cooked up so that Mlle Blanchard could take her place? Why, for Pete’s sake? We
need a lot more than that before we start making assumptions.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘And what about Miss Catherall’s mysterious visitor?’

  Gilmour shrugged. ‘Mysterious only because it was unheard of for her to have visitors.’

  ‘Which makes it a bit odd that it happened just at this time.’

  ‘We have a photograph.’

  ‘What?’

  Gilmour grinned, ‘Not of him, the caller. And not a proper photo, as such.’ He dug out his wallet and produced a newspaper clipping, folded and beginning to turn yellow. ‘Mrs Cooper cut it out of the Birmingham Mail and kept it. It’s Miss Catherall.’

  ‘What was her photo doing in the paper?’

  ‘It was taken when they opened the rooms above the Springfield picture house for ballroom dancing lessons. Publicity, I suppose. That’s her on the back row.’

  It was a group photograph, posed in front of a white building with a modernistic domed frontage, the people pictured being those who were presumably concerned in the new enterprise, with the principal movers sitting on chairs in the front row, one woman clasping a large bunch of flowers. Most of them were grinning, eager to have their moment in the limelight, though the photograph was as dark, grainy and blurred as newspaper photographs usually were. Miss Catherall was the exception to the rest. She wasn’t smiling.

  ‘No oil painting, is she?’ Gilmour remarked.

  ‘She didn’t have to be; she was only the piano player.’ Reardon thought Gilmour was being uncharitable. You couldn’t judge from a photo like this, though in no way could it be called flattering. On the back row because she was half a head taller than anyone in front, Phoebe Catherall seemed to be trying to efface herself. Her head was half-ducked, almost as if the large, horn-rimmed glasses she wore and the two heavy plaits curled low on her cheeks in ‘earphone’ style were weighing her down. Maybe she was shy. Or didn’t want to have her photo taken. Either way, it wouldn’t be much use as identification.