‘Oh, dear!’
So we explained. ‘And he was really a bit of a mess, mud and blood everywhere. We took him into the pub to clean him up, and then gave him lunch, although he didn’t eat much of it,’ I concluded. ‘He did give Alan a little money for it. A few pounds. We thought it was all he had.’
‘We all run short of cash from time to time,’ said Ms Carter. ‘And then what?’
‘Then he left, and we went back to our B-and-B, and then climbed up to the Broadway Tower, and on the way back . . .’
‘Ah, yes. And when did you next see Paul?’
‘We didn’t,’ said Alan before I could speak. ‘As you may have gathered, he’s staying at the same B-and-B as we are, the Holly Tree. But he left without a word to Mrs Littlewood, and so far as we know, he hasn’t been back.’
I kept my mouth shut.
‘I see.’ She gave us a thoughtful look, but said only, ‘If you should see him, I’d be grateful it you’d tell him I’m a bit concerned about him. He knows where to find me here in Cheltenham, but I may go back to Broadway tomorrow to see if he’s returned.’
With that she sketched a wave and was gone. I turned to Alan. ‘You didn’t want to mention we’d seen him here in Cheltenham.’
‘She told us very little about herself, and almost nothing about Paul . . . did you notice?’
‘Actually, I did. I’m inclined to trust her, Alan.’
‘I suppose I am too, but I often make it a policy to tell a little less than I know. Once a thing is said, it can’t be retracted.’
‘Hmmm. The cautious policeman. I guess you’re right, though I can’t see what it would have hurt. Wherever Paul is now, it isn’t at that corner where we nearly ran over him.’
‘What do you think he was doing there in the first place?’
‘Is it too far-fetched to think he was looking for Ms Carter? She mentioned something about social services. Could she be . . . his parole officer, or something?’
‘That wouldn’t come under the heading of social services, unless she was using the term very loosely. Some sort of counsellor, would be my guess. She has that trick of eliciting confidences while saying very little herself.’
‘I noticed,’ I said, in a tone almost as dry as hers. ‘I really spilled my guts, didn’t I?’
‘What a revolting expression, my dear! You demonstrated that you trusted her, and also that you’re firmly in Paul’s corner if it comes to a battle. I doubt you told her very much that she didn’t already know.’
‘Except about the motorcycle, and almost knocking me down. I don’t think she knew that.’
‘You may be right. She didn’t seem terribly disturbed about it, though, did you think?’
I pondered. ‘No, not really. Interested, but not alarmed. Now why, do you suppose?’
‘Who knows? Maybe it’s exactly as she said, or implied. She’s an old family friend, slightly worried about the boy because he’s gone missing.’
I yawned. ‘Maybe. Anyway, what are we going to do with the rest of the day? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I need a nap.’
‘I could do with one myself. Why don’t we find a good B-and-B and stay the night? If we feel like it, we could take in a play tonight. I think I saw The Importance of Being Earnest on a poster somewhere.’
We took an early bus back to Broadway the next morning. It wasn’t as much fun as the steam train, but it was faster, even with the several stops it made. We found the village in a ferment of activity. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Pam. We had arrived just in time for a late breakfast, to which she had graciously invited us, even though we’d spent the night away.
‘Oh, it’s the arts festival,’ she said. ‘Hadn’t you seen the posters? They’re all over town.’
‘Goodness, is this festival heaven? There was a performing arts festival going on in Cheltenham yesterday. We saw a great performance last night at the Everyman Theatre.’
‘Oh, The Importance of Being Earnest! I saw it last week. It never palls, does it? I didn’t know the Lady Bracknell, but wasn’t she superb?’
We discussed the play for a little while. Then I asked, ‘But about this arts festival?’
‘Oh, it’s really rather exciting. This is the first time we’ve tried it, but we hope to make it a biennial event. A great many artists have lived here at one time or another, you know.’
‘I didn’t know, actually.’
‘Oh, yes. It was a coaching stop originally – you know about that?’
‘Alan told me.’
‘Well, then. But then the railways came along, and Broadway became a backwater. But the wealth was still here, and the big houses, and all the lovely shops and so on that had sprung up for the coaching trade. So the village was beautiful, and very peaceful. And the artists came, and the writers and composers. Barrie lived here—’
‘The Peter Pan man?’
‘The very same. And Henry James, and Edward Elgar. And you may be surprised to know that John Singer Sargent painted one of his most famous paintings right here in Broadway.’
‘Sargent! But he was American, surely. I know he painted a portrait of Mrs Astor, and Isabella Gardner . . .’
‘He was certainly born of American parents, but in Florence, and he lived all over the place. I doubt if there are many beautiful women of his time that he didn’t paint . . . beautiful, wealthy women at least! The point is, he painted Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose here in Broadway, and he and it are the focus of our festival this year. It’s at the Tate Britain, of course, but one of the galleries will have a full-scale copy.’
‘That’s the one with the little girls, isn’t it? And the Japanese lanterns?’
‘Of course. That’s why there are Japanese lanterns all over town. You must go to the festival, if you’re at all interested in art. It promises to be quite splendid!’
‘Where does it take place?’
‘Almost everywhere. Most of the galleries in town are participating. It doesn’t open until tomorrow, but you can get brochures anywhere and plan what you want to see and do.’
She went away to tend to her duties in the kitchen and we sat finishing our coffee. ‘Shall we?’ I asked Alan.
‘Might as well. I rather like Sargent, and we haven’t visited the galleries yet.’
‘And there’s nothing more we can do about Paul unless . . . no, until he comes back.’
Alan grinned. ‘The eternal optimist! That’s the reason I love you.’
‘That and my great beauty,’ I said, pushing back my chair with some difficulty. ‘And it’s going to be even greater unless I stop eating these incredible breakfasts.’
My tastes in art are rather specialized. I like almost all the Impressionists, French, English, and American. I don’t, as I’ve said before, care for the Pre-Raphaelites. I’m picky about the Old Masters, and I refuse to look at just about anything created after, say, 1910. So Alan and I have never done a lot of gallery-hopping, where much of the work is likely to be either contemporary or amateur, or both. I am, in short, both an old fogy and an art snob, neither trait being attractive.
But I truly do admire Sargent’s work, and there was a piquancy to discovering him in an English village. I was happy enough to wander the village on Alan’s arm, looking in windows and deciding where we wanted to go when the festival opened the next day.
Most of the galleries were closed in preparation for the festival, but one of the big ones on the High Street had its door standing wide. We sauntered across the street and walked in.
Two women stood in the far corner, in such intense conversation that neither noticed us. Paintings and drawings hung on the walls. There were a good many bare spots, and under them other works stood leaning against the wall, apparently just taken down or ready to be hung. Alan, drawn to a lovely piece of sculpture in one corner, brushed one of the frames on the floor with his foot and stopped immediately with an exclamation.
The two women looked up. One of them hurried towards us, looking wo
rried.
‘Sir! Madam! The gallery is not open. I’m sorry, but I must ask you to leave. Our insurance . . .’
The other woman fixed us with steady scrutiny. ‘Mr Nesbitt, Mrs Martin, good morning.’
It was Jo Carter.
SEVEN
She promptly made introductions. ‘Sarah, this is Alan Nesbitt and his wife Dorothy Martin. Mr Nesbitt is a retired policeman. We met yesterday in Cheltenham.’ She turned to us. ‘My friend, Sarah Robinson. I hope I got your names right.’
Everyone made the appropriate noises. ‘I’m so sorry for intruding,’ I said, ‘but the door was open. We didn’t know . . .’
‘Of course not.’ Ms Robinson had recovered her manners. She was a woman in her forties, not beautiful, but extremely tidy and well-groomed. She pushed her glasses back on her nose. ‘Not your fault in the least. There’s another big painting coming in, so we left the door open. But I do have to ask you to leave. The security system isn’t . . . that is, the insurance . . .’
Alan came to her rescue. ‘We understand. And I’m terribly sorry I stumbled over the painting, but I don’t believe I’ve done any damage. You might want to take a look to be certain . . .’ He stopped speaking. Neither Ms Robinson nor Ms Carter was paying him any attention.
They were staring out the front door of the shop, apparently at a group of people walking down the street. Ms Robinson’s face was ashen, and she was gripping Ms Carter’s arm so hard I was sure she’d leave bruises.
The group moved past. Ms Carter gently loosed her friend’s fingers and moved forward to shut the front door with a solid little click. ‘I think, Sarah, it might be better if the painting came in the back door, don’t you? And if our guests wouldn’t mind leaving that way . . .’
We were politely but very efficiently shepherded out and the door pulled shut behind us. We found ourselves in a narrow passageway with a couple of rubbish bins and a distinct reek of tomcat.
‘Not the best way to bring in a big painting,’ I observed after a moment.
Alan looked at the small door through which we had just passed, and the foot or so of clearance between the wall of the building and the rubbish bins. ‘No,’ he said in a voice devoid of expression. His nose wrinkled. ‘Nor the most salubrious. Shall we?’ He gave me his arm and we edged our way out to a larger alleyway, and thence to the street.
It was too early for lunch, but we’d lost our taste for art. It was a perfect day, sunny but not too warm, so we strolled to the green and sat on one of the benches to rest and watch the world go by.
At least that was the excuse I made to myself.
‘And what,’ I finally demanded, ‘was that all about?’
Alan shook his head. ‘It was not about our wandering into a closed gallery by mistake.’
‘No. It wasn’t about us, or not entirely. But they were definitely disturbed that we were there.’
‘Disturbed that anyone was there?’ Alan suggested.
I frowned. ‘Well, that, too, but I got the feeling that there was something about us, specifically, that made the situation worse. I can’t imagine what.’
‘Nor can I. We barely know Ms Carter, and the other one . . . Robinson, is it? . . . we don’t know at all. Do you suppose she owns the gallery?’
‘Robinson, do you mean? I don’t think so. Along with everything else, she was nervous about letting someone come in when the alarms were off. Nervous the way an employee is nervous, afraid she’ll get chewed out.’
‘I do sometimes wonder, my dear, if you’ll ever learn to speak the Queen’s English.’ He shook his head in mock dismay.
‘Garn!’ I said in my best Eliza Doolittle imitation. ‘But seriously, something’s badly wrong in there. Alan!’ I was struck with such a dreadful thought I stood up in my agitation. ‘You don’t suppose we interrupted a robbery in progress? Some of those Sargents must be worth an awful lot of money. Should we go back and—’
‘No.’ Alan was quite definite. ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you. That is a circumstance I would recognize. You keep forgetting, my dear, how long I was a policeman. I have been involved in bank robberies, hostage situations, abductions, the whole gamut, and I would lay any odds you care to propose that no one but the four of us was in that gallery.’
‘Then where was the owner? Because I’m sure that Robinson woman is an employee.’
‘Who knows? Perhaps off fetching that large painting, or escorting it. Escorting it, most likely. And I sincerely hope that their insurers never find out about that open door or the disabled alarm, because the painting would be whisked back to its home before you could say Sarah Robinson.’
‘You don’t think . . .’
‘Why not? There was a prominent blank wall, right in the middle of the room. Just about the proper size, if I’m any judge, and certainly the proper position for the star of the show. Even a copy can be quite valuable, you know.’
I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Nonsense. Nobody would be that careless with a painting of value. Anyway, whatever was going on in that gallery, it didn’t have very much to do with the art; I’m reasonably sure of that. It was . . . I don’t know what it was, but I can’t get that woman’s face out of my mind. Ms Robinson, I mean. I thought she was going to faint.’
‘When we came in?’ Alan sounded dubious.
‘No, in that odd little moment when everything froze. You were a few steps behind me, so maybe you couldn’t see her face, but it was white. Not pale, not what everyone means when they say that about a face, but white, like . . . like paper, or a blank canvas. Alan, that’s the second time in twenty-four hours that I’ve seen naked fear on someone’s face.’
‘And Ms Carter was there with her.’ Alan’s voice was very thoughtful.
‘And she was very careful to let Ms Robinson know you were a policeman,’ I added. ‘Why?’
Alan ran his hand down the back of his neck. ‘Lots of questions. I could do with a few answers.’
‘Ms Carter has most of the answers. I’m sure of that.’
He shifted on his bench. ‘What did they see, the two women, when they reacted so strongly?’
I made a frustrated gesture with my hands. ‘That’s just it! I have no idea. When I looked where they were looking, all I saw was a group of people passing by, laughing and talking. They looked like perfectly normal tourists, some of them Japanese, maybe. Anyway there were a bunch of cameras in evidence. Nobody was doing anything in the least threatening, nobody was lurking, nobody was doing anything at all out of the ordinary. And they were gone in seconds.’
We sat in silence for a while. Two children were playing ball with a black and white dog of uncertain ancestry, probably mostly terrier. A fat man sat solemnly chewing on a sandwich. A coach stopped in front of the Lygon Arms and discharged its load of tourists, Americans by their accents and rather vivid shirts.
I sighed and stood up. ‘I have no useful ideas at all, and I’m hungry. The Swan?’
We went off in search of sustenance.
After lunch, of course, we took a nap. One of the lovely things about ageing is that one need not apologize for afternoon naps. I lay down sure that I wouldn’t sleep a wink for worrying about our problem, and woke two hours later chuckling.
‘What’s funny?’ asked Alan, sitting up with a yawn.
‘Oh, just a silly dream. I dreamt I was a little girl, and staying with Aunt Maude. She was really a great-great aunt or something of the sort. I was too young to get the relationships quite straight. I thought she was ancient, and I didn’t like her very much. She lived in a big, dark, gloomy house in Chicago that smelled of dust and old lady, and once for some reason I had to spend a day or two with her, without my parents. She served me some sort of tasteless lunch, and made me eat every bite of it, too, and then sent me to bed for a nap. I thought I was too old for naps, and I hated that big, dark bedroom. I don’t know why it was so dark in the middle of the afternoon, but I tried desperately not to go to sleep, afraid of
what might be lurking in the shadows.
‘So anyway, I dreamt about that, and relived how much I hated having to take that nap, and the nightmares I had afterwards about being abandoned at her house for ever.’
‘And that made you laugh.’ Alan spoke in the careful voice of a man who hopes he will at some point understand what his wife is talking about.
‘Only when I woke up. I told you it was silly. I just started thinking about how much I hated that nap all those years ago, and how much I love them now, that’s all.’ I stretched luxuriously. ‘Alan, let’s get out of town this afternoon. Go for a walk. I’d like to forget about everything for a little while and just enjoy ourselves.’
‘Fine with me. Where shall we go?’
‘You choose. So long as it’s not too far away, and the way there is reasonably horizontal, I don’t care.’
He got out the OS map, which by now was beginning to show definite signs of wear, and pondered. ‘Well, we could go north-east to a village called Willersley. It’s not far, and there don’t seem to be any hills to speak of, but there’s no footpath. We’d have to go by the road. Or we could go about the same distance south-west to a hamlet, scarcely a village, called Buckland. There’s a footpath, one of the national ones, so it should be well-marked. Some hills are involved, but there’s a nursery and something called the Buckland Manor Hotel. We could probably get tea.’
‘You said the magic word. And I think I’ve seen a brochure about that hotel. It’s supposed to be the last word in luxury. Buckland it is.’
It was a beautiful walk on a perfect afternoon. Amazingly, we didn’t get lost once, and the views were spectacular. We had a wonderful tea at the storied hotel, though I nearly choked on my scone when I happened to see the bill.
‘We only live once, love,’ said Alan in an undertone.
‘And at those prices it’s a good thing!’ But I lingered over my tea, to enjoy every gold-plated bite.
After tea we poked around the church. I found it much more to my taste than the nineteenth-century concoctions in Cheltenham. Then, pleasantly tired, we wandered back to Broadway, watching the cows going home to be milked. Somewhere a church bell sounded.
The Evil that Men Do Page 5