Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘Did he try to sell them?’

  ‘Try?’ She laughed lightly. ‘He did sell them. Locally, and in the art shops, all over the place, and a gallery off New Bond Street had started selling them. Graham was good. You know — a genius.’

  As, I suppose, he had been. His difficulty had been in focusing it, and this Anna had done for him. No wonder she was speaking with a quiet and possessive pride. It had, after all, been her achievement too. I wondered whether it had perhaps been a dealer who’d collected Graham, that day he’d disappeared. But Graham seemed not to have mentioned it to Anna, and there would’ve been no point in making a secret of it.

  ‘Are there any more?’ I asked.

  ‘More!’ She snorted a bright laugh, walked in front of me, and began to jerk out drawers. One wall was solidly lined with a working top, including a sink, with beneath it a set of four drawers, shallow but wide. Each one contained about twenty paintings.

  ‘And mine in the end one,’ she told me, and it was a modest dozen or so.

  ‘There’s a fair amount of money here, anyway,’ I commented, somewhat in relief. ‘And there’s the cottage…’

  ‘Oh yes. But I shan’t stay. No, I don’t think I’d like to live here alone.’

  ‘No.’ I said it absently. I’d tried another hint, and again she’d indicated an assurance that she would be inheriting at least the cottage from Graham. And…now that I came to consider it…she’d also indicated a certainty that there was money involved. But she could have been thinking of the paintings.

  ‘And there’s this,’ she said, her voice rising and her face suddenly flushed.

  She whipped off the covering that masked the framed picture on its easel. It was a set-piece. She’d certainly set it up, even perhaps had rehearsed that sweeping, revealing gesture with the cloth, like a matador swinging his hips to flare his cape.

  It was a portrait of me. I couldn’t breathe, felt choked, hot tears behind my eyes. I saw myself as I’d have wished myself to be. Had he been so very perceptive, that he’d managed to paint my high cheekbones, and yet smooth the line just a fraction? And my hair! There it was, the copper wire, but he’d captured a thousand golden lights in it, so that it looked softer, light and airy. My eyes! Oh heavens how he’d caught them, not in any of my treacherous and stormy moods, but with a hint of warmth and of humour, which he’d reflected in the mouth, now presented without any determination and none of the stress lines. With love, perhaps. Had he seen the love I’d once felt for him, and captured it again — for himself?

  ‘…must have had a dozen goes at it,’ she was saying. ‘Anything else, he always got it first time. But that drove him mad. Until he got it right. That was the final one. He framed it. I…I noticed his eyes were always roving to it.’

  I turned to her. She was standing there stiffly, hands linked in front of her, and with an expression she was hoping to present as amusement, but it failed, and came out as bitterness.

  ‘I don’t…understand,’ I whispered, which was all the sound I could manage.

  ‘Not understand?’ She lifted her chin. ‘Not understand! My God, you must be stupid. I loved him. I’ve said it and I say it again. Loved him, and thought he loved me. So how could he be so cruel…so vicious, as to slave over that…’ She jerked a finger towards it. ‘…in front of my very eyes. Couldn’t he see how much it hurt me! Hour after hour — and I brought him tea and buns to keep him going. Ha! I was hoping it’d tell him something, but he never raised his head. I don’t think he bloody well noticed I was there.’

  ‘It can’t…’ I fought for control of my brain. The whole thing was running away from me, and too fast. ‘He probably thought of it as a challenge. No more than another painting —’

  ‘You must be blasted stupid. You are. I know. From what he said. Oh, don’t worry, he never hesitated to talk about you to me. Didn’t see I hated it. You and your men and your affairs…oh, I had the lot. You’d got Graham. Wasn’t that enough for you?’

  I wasn’t going to stay there and talk about this, wasn’t going to be insulted. ‘There were no other men,’ I said quietly.

  ‘He knew there were.’

  Her voice had been rising, a hard edge cutting into it. She flung an arm around for emphasis. I had to get in quickly.

  ‘He was mistaken.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Ms Philipa Lowe.’

  ‘It was he…him…oh, I’m not going to discuss it.’ But I couldn’t move from there. From somewhere I managed to rescue a morsel of dignity. ‘Do you know — can you imagine — what hell it is to be accused over and over of infidelity?’ I bit my lip. Infidelity! Not the word he’d used. ‘My every move timed…why’re you late? It only takes you twenty-five minutes. Why’re you having to go to Leicester? Who’s there? Who with? Every day, on and on, his blasted flaming jealousy. How would you like that?’

  She twisted her lips, a sarcastic remnant of a smile. ‘I’d have liked at least a hint. I got nothing. He didn’t care a tuppenny cuss where I was and how long for.’

  But it’s easy to dismiss. Jealousy, they always say, can’t arise unless there is love. I’d had to try to assure myself, over and over, that there’d been love behind it — and yet there was also the degradation. Did anybody inflict that on a loved one? To be blamed, castigated and reviled for something you haven’t done, that surely is the ultimate indignity.

  ‘And to make it worse,’ I said, as though I’d been expressing my thoughts aloud, ‘he had to have women here when I was away at the office.’

  ‘Other women!’ she sneered.

  ‘Why the hell d’you think I left him?’ I shouted. ‘Did he think I’d got no sense of smell? The different scents! God, I’d walk headlong into them when I went into the bedroom. And lipstick! Tissues in the wastebin with lipstick on them. He must’ve thought I was stupid…’

  I stopped. She had her head back and was laughing, hysterically, emptily.

  ‘Stupid! My God, weren’t you stupid! Look at you, the grand and confident businesswoman — and there isn’t one scrap of real commonsense in your empty, silly head. I told you — he talked about you. Christ…endlessly. I told you this before — you went out, to work, all day. It got on his mind. He couldn’t help it — you were away from him too long. He was bloody well obsessed with you. And that’s the truth. I’ve had to live with it. I ought to know. He didn’t want to believe there were other men, but it ate into him. Like acid. Ate him away.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of this.’ Didn’t want to.

  ‘Believe it or not, what do I care? But I’ll tell you what — just think. What would you do, if it was you? Reverse it, and what’d you be then? The little wife, looking after the house for her darlin’ man. How’d you feel? Try it. Think about it. Wouldn’t you try to fight back, if you thought of him with all those bits of stuff at his office, and couldn’t get it off your mind?’

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I went along with it. ‘I’d fight back.’

  ‘Which was just what the poor, ridiculous wimp did. Don’t you understand?’

  I shook my head, partly to clear it.

  ‘He fought back!’ she shouted, reaching forward and jerking open one of the drawers. ‘With these.’

  I advanced. I looked down into the drawer. They were all there, the perfumes I’d detected, Coty, St Laurent, Helena Rubenstein, Chanel. And about a dozen lipsticks.

  She was speaking loudly into my right ear, hatred and disgust in each vitriolic word.

  ‘That was what I found after he died. In a box behind the stuff in his wardrobe. He bought them. That’s the sum total of all his women. The smell and the signs. For you, you ignorant, stupid, useless creature.’

  I turned to face her. She was very close. Fight back, I told myself, as he’d done. But it was all too new for me, too unacceptable. I could say nothing.

  ‘And you have the nerve, the utter gall, to come back here, to this country, to his funeral, and flaunt yourself around as though you’ve got an
y right at all, here or anywhere around here. Bugger off back to America, Ms Lowe. We don’t want you here. He divorced you. At least, I got him to do that. There’s nothing here. You had it, and you chucked it away.’

  Fight back, I told myself. ‘The divorce was not valid.’ My voice seemed to come from a distance.

  ‘Don’t come that.’

  ‘He made an illegal statement. I think on purpose.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’

  ‘No. No, it’s a fact. I am still his wife. Widow.’

  ‘He left everything…’

  ‘He left nothing to you, Anna. He even amended his will to allow for that. After the so-called divorce. Amended it to make sure I inherited.’ Blast it, I thought, don’t go on. It’s enough. Leave now, before you say too much. I turned away.

  She grabbed at my arm to turn me back, got a bit of sleeve and a bit of flesh. ‘Don’t you walk away from me!’

  I shrugged myself free, and stood back from her. Her neck was flaming, her eyes wild, even mad. ‘It’s a bleedin’ lie!’ she screamed.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Anna.’

  ‘Sorry! You’re sorry? Keep your damned pity. I’ll see a lawyer.’

  ‘Do that. But Anna — one thing — you can have the cottage. You can keep this…’ I moved my bruised arm, gesturing.

  ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Out! And take your bleeding paintin’ with you.’

  She whirled it from the easel and hurled it at me. It smashed to the floor, the glass shattering. I bent and picked it up by the frame, now broken, glass tinkling from it. Then I walked with dignity on shaking legs from that room, from the cottage, and somehow got into the car and backed it round with the wheels spinning and drove — I can’t remember an inch of it — back to The Carlton, got up to my room somehow, and fell on the bed in tears with the painting beside me on the coverlet.

  5

  My mind was in chaos, like a disintegrating, wildly-whirling wheel, thoughts fleeting across it and being cast away before I could capture them, thoughts being sucked into the vortex, jostling for a prominent position from where they could stand and jeer at me. These were the thoughts I didn’t dare to face, for sanity’s sake. What I couldn’t capture, though I clutched for them frantically, were the ones I needed to hold and cherish.

  But they were there and gone in a flash.

  In frustration, I beat my fists on the coverlet; in fury I kicked at the air, my shoes flying off somewhere.

  It had all been in the mind. No women for him: a drawer full of cosmetics. No men for me; I had Graham. Then suddenly I’d had nothing, falling headlong for his paltry trick that had been intended to draw me closer to him — to where we’d been before. That was the distress. And…the joy and wonder? That was there somewhere, too, if I could only capture it and hold it. Yes, yes, now I had it. He had loved me. As simple as that. I clutched at it, and it was an empty triumph when I caught the thought and held it motionless while I examined it. He had loved me, but now he was dead.

  I walked the floor in stockinged feet, backwards and forwards, trying to assemble the background details I’d got from Anna. She had known there was money, if not its extent, of that I was now certain. She had thought everything would come to her, once she’d persuaded him to apply for a divorce. A common-law wife would have a valid claim, even if he’d died intestate. Perhaps she’d been aware of this, and if he’d been reluctant, or too indolent, to wish to marry her, she could well have been too impatient to wait for his death.

  Ridiculous, I thought. For the cottage, when she was already living there comfortably? Certainly not. For the value of the remaining paintings? That was even more ridiculous, when he was producing more all the time. Only if she’d known of the secret quarter of a million pounds would she have been driven to murder, and then only if she’d seen the money about to drift away from her.

  I shook the thoughts from my mind, began to hunt for my shoes, and there was a knock on the door.

  ‘What is it?’ I was so tense that it came out too loud.

  ‘Room service, madam.’

  ‘What the hell…’ I jerked open the door. Detective Inspector Oliver Simpson stood there, a tin tray in his hand loaded with bottles and glasses, and a stupid grin on his face.

  ‘Oh God!’ I turned away and headed for the bathroom, leaving him to shut the door.

  What could I do in two minutes? I could spare no more, as I wanted to get rid of him. I dabbed here and there, polished and fluffed and padded, and emerged at last with my head as high as it would go and a brisk determination to see the back of him.

  He’d put the central light on, as I’d been unable to face anything brighter than the bedside one. He now stood beneath it with my painting in his hands. He had detached it from the broken frame and picked off any stray splinters of glass. The portrait was on thick paper, which supported itself.

  He glanced at me casually, and away again. I’d wasted my time. ‘This is good, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Really first class. Signed: G. M. Tonkin, so I assume that was your Graham.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded to the small table, on which he’d put the tray. ‘You marched past me in the lobby as though I was a hat stand. And I’d waited hours. Hours. I thought you looked distressed, so I brought up a few things. Gin and stuff. Brandy, too, though I see you’re better now.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Look it, anyway. Downstairs, you’d have broken my arm if I’d tried to stop you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was having difficulty thinking of something to say.

  He returned his attention to the painting. ‘Difficult, you know,’ he observed. ‘Portraits, I mean, in water-colour. So I’ve heard. But he got you — spot on. Your eyes! And the glints in your hair…’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Oliver, you’ve covered the gap. I’ve found my tongue again.’

  ‘Good girl.’ How dared he condescend! ‘I brought some lime for the gin. The beer’s for me.’

  ‘You intend to stay a while, then?’

  ‘Why d’you think I was waiting in the lobby? I had to see you.’

  I sat on the end of the bed and opened one of the miniatures of gin. It saved me from looking at him.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have kept?’

  ‘Possibly, yes. Is it this that’s upset you?’ He waved the painting, then put it down and came to sit opposite me on a ridiculous padded stool, his knees jutting up as high as his head. He peered at me from between them, peeling the can open. ‘I can see that it would.’

  The gin ran down warm and soft. ‘Yes. Partly that. It was…it took him several attempts.’

  ‘Anna Treadgold told you that.’ He nodded. It was a statement.

  ‘How can you know that?’

  He shrugged. ‘The frame was broken. I reckon she threw the thing at you.’

  ‘Yes.’ I felt reluctant to go on. He was taking me back into the chaos of my thoughts. ‘Other things too.’ Because I couldn’t resist facing them, perhaps sharing them.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘No reason. Please yourself.’

  I stared down at my glass. ‘There’s money in it, you see. A lot of money. So my solicitor says. And Anna might have thought some of it would be hers. The cottage at least. But it’s all going to be mine.’

  ‘I reckoned on something like that.’

  ‘How is it that you know all these things?’ I demanded. ‘Who’s been telling you —?’

  He held up his can, restraining me with a spare finger. ‘I’m a detective. Supposed to be. And I’m not going to hang around in the lobby all evening waiting for a woman, like a lovelorn teenager…’

  ‘Of course not.’ I had to look down, so that he wouldn’t see the amusement in my eyes.

  ‘So I drifted around, listening and watching. They’re here, you know, coming down like a wolf on the folding stuff. His family and her family. Not just Dennis, the whole tribe. Checking in. Your name was bandied abou
t, and they’re not the sort to waste money on a hotel for nothing.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And Maguire is here. Rupert Maguire. Remember him? Or perhaps you never met him when you were at Fellowes and Simple. The company solicitor. You’ll like him — perhaps. And Fellowes himself. I heard him ask at reception for you. As I said, I’m a detective. Of course there’s a strong smell of money in the air.’

  Then he grinned, a facial contortion that grabbed hold of his face and scrambled it into weird and wonderful shapes.

  ‘Company men!’ I stared at him blankly. ‘What’s the money got to do with… It’s mine,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Oh… I’m sure.’

  ‘A legacy. They can’t take that —’

  ‘They can try. Come on now, Philipa, you’re not naïve. You know there was an embezzlement, even a suicide. The money was never traced, though. It was one of those complicated computer wangles. They simply toss figures around. The whole world’s controlled by figures now. But if there’re clever boys who can conjure it into their hands, there are equally clever people who can trace it through. Given time. And there’s been plenty of that. Damn it, Philipa, you must have connected it up in your mind. Graham resigned, and hid himself away at his cottage. Which he could well have bought with that in mind. And now you find he had a lot of money in the bank!’

  He stopped, giving me time to think how to reply. The thought had been hovering away in the background. Admit it, Phil, I told myself. But I hadn’t liked it, so I’d filed it away in pending. I made myself another drink. Made. In the USA I’d have built it. I shook my head. There, you see, one glance at the origin of that money, and my mind had shied away again.

  ‘Well, they’re not having it,’ I told him.

  ‘Spoken like the true daughter of a senior police officer.’

  ‘I don’t need your sarcasm. Where’s your proof? You’re the detective.’

  ‘Not my line, finance. And it’s lawyers who prove it — if they can — using their accountants’ evidence.’ He popped open another can. ‘How much?’

  ‘What?’