There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Mr. Clavering—better known, according to himself, as ‘Bill’—turned his innocent, surprised eyes on the speaker.

  “Up-to-date blokes, the police,” he murmured. “Do you have lectures on art in the force?”

  “Strange as it may seem to members of the aristocracy,” Bobby remarked coldly, “we are not entire ignoramuses.”

  “Member of the aristocracy yourself,” retorted Mr. Clavering with spirit. “Sorry, all the same. I apologize, and hope same will be accepted in the spirit in which offered.”

  It was not a remark well received. Payne scowled. Bobby frowned. Mr. Clavering continued to beam. Bobby said:

  “Perhaps you will be good enough to explain what the death of Dr. Jones has to do with an alleged painting by Vermeer, and why anyone should expect to find it in an uninhabited and empty house like Nonpareil? And I think it might be as well to remind you that this is an official investigation into an alleged murder, and that anything you have to say may be used in evidence.”

  If Bobby had hoped that this observation, made in his most official tones, would have any effect upon his visitor, he was doomed to disappointment. It was with a solemnity that Bobby did not at all approve that Mr. Clavering answered:

  “We have some reason to believe that Dr. Jones, alleged dead, was on the trail of an alleged Vermeer. I think I had better start at the beginning—or the alleged beginning to be as prudent as one should be when making an official statement.”

  Bobby, suppressing a strong desire to place his visitor under arrest, in handcuffs, throw him out of the window, and a few other such strictly unofficial yearnings, snapped:

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Solomon and self,” answered Mr. Clavering. “I’m acting for Solomon. Expenses, a commission if the Vermeer stunt comes off, and immortal glory thrown in—entry in all future histories of art: ‘This wonderful picture was restored to the world through the energy, skill, and unparalleled knowledge of the Honourable Marmaduke Clavering,’ and thus the ‘Honourable’ restored to honourable status and e’en the ‘Marmaduke’ forgiven.”

  “I should be much obliged,” said Bobby icily, “if you could tell us anything you know—if anything—without comment. We are only interested in facts.”

  “Sorry,” Mr. Clavering apologized again. “I gather I am not making a good impression, though such is my sole aim. To start at the beginning. It is known that after Vermeer finished his ‘Delft’ he did another he described in a letter to a pal as a view of Rotterdam in sun and rain. The letter is lost, but is known because of another letter written by an Alderman Six of Rotterdam, in the eighteenth century, in which Vermeer’s own letter is quoted. According to it, Vermeer told his correspondent it was his best work, and that in it he had been much more successful than in his ‘Delft’. He goes on to describe it as so much his favourite work that he was sorry to part with it. But a travelling English ‘Milord’ had offered him so generous a price—forty guineas paid down in English gold—that he had felt unable to refuse. After all, Vermeer is quoted as saying, forty guineas was good provender for a twelvemonth or more, and the ‘Rotterdam’ took but a brief time, being painted, as it were, in a fever, in great haste, to put down a vision before it faded quite away. Sounds interesting, but you can never trust an artist. Fatheaded blokes. Throw their best work into the dustbin and call some awful daub their masterpiece. No judgment, no critical discernment,” said Mr. Clavering, shaking his head sadly. “The trouble is they value a thing by what they’ve tried to do, instead of by what they’ve actually done. Possibly Vermeer may have been like that, and even if the ‘Rotterdam’ turns up, it may be a bad example of his work. But if it does turn up, and if it justifies Vermeer’s quoted opinion—only that may have been exaggerated or even untrue or perhaps just the contemporary form of sales talk—well, it would be,” and here Mr. Clavering’s voice grew solemn—“the greatest art find of all time.”

  “Motive for a murder or two?” Payne asked; and Clavering looked at him and nodded gravely, twice over.

  “I still don’t see the connection between Nonpareil, Dr. Jones’s death, and this more or less hypothetical Vermeer,” Bobby remarked.

  “Hypothetical,” agreed Mr. Clavering, “is the mot juste. Efforts have been made to trace any mention of the picture in any catalogue or list of heirlooms. Special attention to the family of any wealthy Englishman known to have been in Holland in Vermeer’s time. No result. The picture was given up. Damaged, and then destroyed as spoilt for good. Simply mislaid and finally thrown away. Burnt in some fire. That’s happened often enough. There’s a story of one old master found in use to stop a leak in a cowshed roof. That was on canvas, of course. Vermeer’s picture is believed to have been on panel. Anyhow, hope had been abandoned, if hope there had ever been. So you can imagine the excitement when the story got about that a young man had been asking questions about it at the Wilkinson, Morgan, and Tails place. He wouldn’t give his name and address, just looked mysterious and dropped hints, and went off saying that they might hear from him again if ‘it came off’—which was taken as meaning if he produced the Vermeer ‘Rotterdam’. But it happened that he had been recognized as a young chap named Hardman, nephew of a Major Hardman, who at one time ran an antique business off Bond Street somewhere and didn’t make much of a success of it. The nephew had something to do with the business, which is how he came to be recognized. After some trouble Major Hardman was traced. He had retired, and come to live up here. But he isn’t on good terms with the young man—calls him a bad egg, and says he let him down badly in some deal or another. In fact, he rather hinted the nephew wasn’t always quite honest—‘an unscrupulous young bounder’, he called him.”

  “Have to try to get hold of that young man; might be as well to ask him a few questions,” Payne remarked, taking out his note-book, and glancing at Bobby, who nodded agreement, though without much show of enthusiasm. “And if he is above ground we’ll find him,” added Payne with resolution and confidence, but Clavering looked startled.

  “You don’t think he may have been done in, too, do you?” he asked.

  “We aren’t thinking anything at present,” Bobby said. “Merely trying to get together facts to think about.”

  “Well, one fact is that young Hardman was certainly in this neighbourhood recently, trying to get in touch with his sister, who keeps house for Major Hardman. A scallywag can always depend on a sister if he is lucky enough to have one—Claudio the exception, but that was Shakespeare’s crass ignorance of human nature in sisters. Now he seems to have vanished again, unless you can trace him. Major Hardman doesn’t seem to think he is likely to hear from him again for a time—gave him a fiver, he says, and told him to get out and stay out. But as soon as it was known where Hardman was living it was remembered that it was near Nonpareil, believed at one time to house a swell collection of sculpture—-junk really, as you spotted yourself. But though the statues were junk, the bloke who got them together, who must have been an awful ass and badly let down, might still have hit on a good thing by accident. It could happen to anyone. The whole contents of Nonpareil was cleared out at auction, so there was a chance, the Vermeer had been included in one of the job lots, and was lying about in some dealer’s shop unrecognized. Another snag, though. The auctioneers who carried out the sale had their place done in in one of your local blitzes, and all records destroyed. So no way to find out who bought what or if there seemed to be any likely lot. That would have made most blokes throw up the sponge, but not the Solomon Intelligence Department—that’s me,” explained Mr. Clavering modestly. “Retaining fee. Grossly inadequate, by the way, though Solomon grumbles every time he draws a cheque. The next thing the S.I.D. discovered brought in Dr. Jones, brother-in-law to Tails, of the Wilkinson, Morgan and Tails concern, Tails being the junior partner, but really the boss of the show, and tough even for the picture-dealing racket, where we are all tough or in Carey Street, and generally both. Jones was trying to get permission to do a
ghost hunt at Nonpareil. Well, of course, the S.I.D. at once reflected that while you are tracking down ghosts you can also, and quite conveniently, keep an open eye for a lost Vermeer. So the S.I.D. instructed me to toddle along and see what was going on. I must say this for old Solomon. He would give a fair price and be content with a fair profit. I’ve known him give a few odd hundreds for a Bonnington offered him for a fiver, and then he didn’t do so badly on the re-sale. But Tails would pouch the whole lot—and it might be a big lot. Six figures would be a possibility.”

  “£100,000,” said Payne, impressed. “There’s your motive,” he said again.

  “I made up my mind I might as well have a look round first,” Clavering continued. “I knew Tails was being clever—he always is, so clever it hurts him to run straight. If he has to go anywhere, he always goes round by the back streets. He wanted to stop any gossip about Dr. Jones’s visit, or what he was really after, so he sent Jones on a sham ghost hunt—at least, it may have been genuine enough in itself, but it wasn’t priority No. 1. That was the Vermeer, the ghost hunt was secondary. Jones is quite a well-known member of the Super-normal Research Society, so his visit was plausible enough, though I gather he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that his society always insists on two investigators. One might get too scared, I suppose, and funk the ghost altogether. I don’t know if he had any luck, but I drew blank though I got in first. Because I went direct to the agents and simply asked for an order to view, and got it at once, while Jones was still negotiating for his ghost hunt. Of course, when he got it he got permission, too, to spend nights there, and so had much longer time for his search, while I had only an hour or two, and even then the caretaker came to see what I was so long about. As I told you, when Nonpareil proved a washout, I tackled Major Hardman, but that was N.B.G., too.”

  “Thank you very much,” Bobby said. “A painting worth all that money certainly provides a motive, very much of a motive. If we hear of its recovery, and it would be front page news, we shall have a few questions to ask.”

  “Answers will be provided,” Clavering assured him. “Wholly satisfactory answers. Tails knows his onions. It’ll turn up in the Argentine, perhaps, or in San Francisco, with a well-authenticated history of its discovery somewhere as far from Nonpareil as Hitler is from truth. If you want to get ahead of Tails you have to be up very early in the morning. Personally I find it better not to go to bed.”

  “I take it,” interposed Payne, “this Mr. Tails, even if not too particular in his business methods, wouldn’t be likely to mix himself up in a murder?”

  “Not unless it were foolproof, and I gather murders never are,” Clavering answered. “No. Tails is a perfectly respectable business man, a churchwarden and all that, with a fat bank balance, a well-established connection—and no guts. No stuff for murder there. Besides, it’s his agent who’s been done in. If the Vermeer comes into it at all, it looks as if some rival is concerned. That’s why I thought I had better trot along here at once and come clean—that’s the correct expression, I believe?”

  “Quite so, but have you come clean?” asked Bobby dryly. “You’ve said nothing about why you were in Major Hardman’s garden late at night, or what you were doing there.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  QUESTIONS

  The question went home. For once the glib, self-confident Mr. Clavering looked taken aback. He even became a little pale, and his voice seemed a little less perky than usual as he said:

  “How do you know that? Did they tell you, did they see me?”

  “Never mind how we know,” retorted Bobby, confident now he had been right in guessing that his visitor was responsible for the footprints reported by Major Hardman as having been found in his garden, and reflecting to himself that in a good cause a good guess is of much virtue. “Enough that we do know. Well?”

  “I suppose mine was a naif question,” admitted Mr. Clavering, “and if you don’t know my methods, Watson, so much the better. Mystery impresses.”

  “Who is Watson?” interposed, suspiciously, Payne, less well acquainted than he should have been with the great classic figures of fiction.

  “Modern myth, one of the greatest,” explained Clavering, now once more himself, now the first shock was over. “You’re quite right, of course. It’s like this. In the course of my Sherlock Holmsing, I visited that perennial source of information—the local pub. By judicious pumping I learned that the lady, who, if she is like most of her tribe, obliges Miss Hardman by occasionally accepting half a crown as a reward for looking on while Miss Hardman does the work, had a story of a wonderful picture worth untold gold in the Hardman drawing-room. In the circumstances, I was interested. You might even say, excited. I didn’t commit burglary. I didn’t do anything you can run me in for. Hardman had already told me he knew nothing. So no good asking him again. What I did was, in the dead of night, to creep into the Hardman garden. I forced the drawing-room window. That was breaking, perhaps, but you have to add entering to breaking to make it a crime, and I didn’t enter. But having got the window open and dealt with the black-out, and having provided myself with a full size torch, I made sure there was nothing like a Vermeer there. Though there was what looked like a Birket Foster—posthumous probably, in my opinion.”

  “Posthumous?” repeated Bobby. “He didn’t paint pictures after his death, did he?”

  “Not that I know of,” Clavering answered, “but he got a bit queer at the end of his life. Always starting something fresh, and never finishing anything. After his death the house was full of half-finished pictures, so the dealers bought the lot, and got a rather good man who worked in Foster’s own style, to finish ’em off. He made quite a good job of it, and of course put his initials on ’em all to show they were part his work, and of course the dealers took the initials out again and sold the things as pure Birket Foster. You can generally tell ’em, though. I told you what a racket it all is, didn’t I?” and once more Mr. Clavering adjusted his monocle and beamed approval on his audience and on a universe where such things happened for the entertainment of the instructed.

  “Isn’t Birket Foster a well-known man, too?” inquired Payne.

  “He is,” agreed Clavering, “and in the general category both he and Vermeer rank as artists. Yet how different.” Mr. Clavering paused and sighed. “How very different. But perhaps I’m prejudiced,” he admitted. “The other day I had a Birket Foster to value—another posthumous, in my view. I said worth a hundred, and in twenty years not half as much. The blessed thing brought six hundred at auction the next month, and there’s the name of Bill Clavering mud for ever after—at least in that quarter. The chances and the changes of this mortal life, I suppose.”

  “Anyhow,” said Bobby impatiently, “there was nothing like a Vermeer!”

  “Nothing. The Birket Foster, which is probably the picture worth untold gold, a hundred or two soon changing into untold gold in the warm, rich atmosphere of the local; some prints; and a rather awful full length in oils slap bang over the mantelpiece so you couldn’t possibly miss it—grandpa Hardman, I should judge, in full regimental rig out, Crimea period or even Waterloo. Only family affection could explain that thing, hanging there where no one could possibly escape it. Even if you shut your eyes, you saw it still in all its blaring horror. After all, even if Hardman had the Vermeer he wouldn’t be likely to keep it hanging on his drawing-room wall. But after hearing that charwoman’s tale I simply had to make sure.”

  “A most improper proceeding on your part,” pronounced Bobby severely. “You owe Major Hardman an apology, at the very least.”

  “I owe my tailor, too,” said Mr. Clavering sadly. “He still lives in hope. So will Major Hardman, probably, if you tell him.”

  “We shall do nothing of the sort,” declared Bobby, as sternly as before, and with a glance at Payne to make sure he heard. “No offence in law except trespass. You can be sued for any damage done. Not a police matter. It all depends on your own standard of decent behaviour.
”

  “An art expert’s,” Mr. Clavering told him, and added: “Need I say more?”

  Bobby grunted. He asked a few more questions and Payne added a few on his own account. Mr. Clavering had, however, no more to tell. He had noticed nothing of any interest during his rapid survey of the bare, deserted Nonpareil rooms and corridors. A world’s tour in miniature, he said. Mr. Parkinson he had never met, but he knew about him. He was the chief proprietor of a large and prosperous drapery business in a provincial town. He had come into contact with the world of art in painful circumstances. One of the wholesalers with whom Parkinson dealt had got into low water financially, and had borrowed from him a large sum, some thousands of pounds, on the security of his collection of old Italian masters. Then he had gone bankrupt, and the collection had proved to be of small value—most of the paintings were copies, and the few genuine were mostly second-rate examples of second-rate men. It had brought in on sale a thousand or two, and had left Mr. Parkinson much more than that out of pocket. An unfortunate experience, and one that seemed to have induced Mr. Parkinson to interest himself in art matters. But whether Parkinson knew or had heard anything of the Vermeer tale, Mr. Clavering had no idea. He did not think it likely, but it was possible. For his own part, Mr. Clavering explained, he in-tended to remain for a few days in Midwych, to watch developments, if any.

  “That Vermeer, that possible, improbable Vermeer,” he murmured, and seemed to lapse into a kind of mystic trance.

  Then he departed, and Payne, who had been beginning to look worried, said to Bobby:

  “Do you think he can be our man, sir? It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer has tried to escape suspicion by coming forward with useful information.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, would it?” agreed Bobby absently. “I wish I could make up my mind about that young man—more in him than appears, but very doubtful what.”