Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection

by Nina Jon

  As soon as she was through her front door, she logged onto the website of the Marlowe-on-the-Water Green Party and read up about the young man she’d just spoken to. Like the liberal candidate, he too was local. He’d grown up in the area and had gone to school there. He’d met his partner, Yolanda, at university, and ran the vegetarian restaurant with her. She looked at the photographs of the rest of his campaign team. Just like their candidate, they were all very young. Indeed most of them would not have been born when Roz was living and working in Greater Flyborough.

  Jane didn’t really see either of the candidates she’d met as being the letter writer, nor their campaign teams. She was going to have to think a bit laterally on this one. She decided to push Roz’s case to the back of her mind for the time being, in the hope that her subconscious would come up with something which her conscious self had failed to spot. Her visit to the Beech Hill Art Gallery the following evening should be a nice break from things.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Spinsters Fight Back!

  I

  Bill Bennett stopped briefly outside the wool shop that time forgot, ran his hands through his hair, and stepped inside, where he found two of the three Bailey sisters behind the shop’s long counter. He walked over to them.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Bill Bennett. The council have asked me to serve you with, I mean give, you this,” he said of the letter in his hand.

  “You’re from the council?” Nellie shrieked. “Come to evict us?”

  “I’m actually what is called a process server. I’ve come because the council need to know you have received this letter…”

  He was cut short by Nellie Bailey, running as fast as her age would allow, across the wool shop towards the door which divided it from the residential quarters, shouting: “Lettice! Lettice! We are being evicted! Man the barricades! Man the barricades!”

  Bill Bennett’s attempts to explain that he had not come to evict any one fell on deaf ears. Nellie disappeared through the connecting door, which she loudly locked and bolted behind her. “I haven’t come to evict you,” he said patiently to Dotty. “I’m only here to make sure you receive this…” He abruptly stopped speaking when Dotty emerged from behind the counter, with a pair of knitting needles in her hand. These she pointed in his direction.

  “I want you out of my shop and my home. I’m not afraid to use these, you know,” she said, jabbing the needles towards him.

  At six foot three, Bill Bennett towered over the four foot nothing Dotty. He stared down on the woman in front of him. She was so small he could probably have picked her up and put her in his pocket. This didn’t cow her. She advanced on him, knitting needles pointing dangerously in his direction, her tiny frame visibly shaking.

  “This is still our property which you are on uninvited and unwanted. We’re allowed to defend ourselves and our property. We have the law on our side.”

  Rather than argue with her, Bill raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion, and backed away, taking one step backwards, while Dotty took one step forward. They continued in this way until Bill reached the front door. He didn’t turn his back on Dotty until he’d safely stepped outside in as calm and as dignified a way as he could manage, hoping Dotty wasn’t about to chase him through the streets of Failsham, knitting needles at the ready. He was quite relieved when he heard the door locked and bolted behind him, as for only the second time in its history, the wool shop closed early.

  Bill hadn’t finished the task he’d been appointed to do. He bent down and opened the shop’s brass letter box, pushing the letter through it, only for it to be almost immediately pushed back out again, followed by the sharp end of the knitting needles and Dotty shouting, “We will fight this all the way, the council can be sure of that. My sisters and I will be writing to the Prince of Wales himself about this!”

  II

  “What’s wrong with those old ladies?” Councillor Duigan yelled down the phone to Felix Dawson-Jones, after Felix had called him to tell him about the incident with Bill Bennett. “Why do they keep attacking people who are only trying to help them?” he continued from the passenger seat of a car driven by his wife. “It’s lucky for them Sarah and Bill are being so good about it. Those women should consider themselves lucky the police haven’t been called.”

  “I don’t think they view it as attacking us,” Felix reasoned from his hallway. “They think they’re defending their home, which in a sense they are.”

  “Why on earth do they want to stay in that musty old building of theirs? It’s wholly illogical.”

  “I’m not sure logic comes into it.”

  “Old women!” Duigan said, derogatorily. “Well we’ve served the formal notices on them, if they want to leave them lying in the street that’s their business. There’s just the public meeting to get through, then the lawyers can take over. I should have left it all to them in the first place. No good deed ever goes unpunished,” he muttered ruefully, as his car pulled into a tunnel and the line cut out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Graham Burslem

  Beech Hill was a steep, narrow, quaintly cobbled lane, lined by tiny and misshapen buildings preserved from mediaeval times. At its pinnacle stood a mediaeval church and a beech tree, said to be as old as both church and lane. Whilst the higgledy-piggledy nature of the bumpy, uneven cobbled lane, lent itself well to the cafés, antique shops, craft shops, and art galleries which lined it, it also made visiting rather strenuous. Thank heavens, Jane said to herself, when she realised the Beech Hill Art Gallery, stood at the bottom of the hill and not the top.

  Jane peered through the gallery’s window and was a little surprised to discover it empty apart from a solitary man sitting behind a desk near the door, whom she took to be Graham Burslem. She double-checked her invitation to ensure she’d arrived at the right place at the right date. She had and so she stepped inside.

  Although housed in a centuries-old timber-framed building, the gallery’s interior was much more modern than its exterior, having at some stage over the years, been gutted to create one large room, with living quarters above. Lit by windows which reached from ceiling to floor, with lime-washed walls, and under-floor heating, the open-plan room was light and warm.

  “Now, this is lovely,” Jane said to Graham Burslem.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  “Am I early? Or late?” she asked, glancing round the empty gallery.

  Graham laughed out loud and got to his feet to pour her a glass of white wine from a bottle on the desk. He was a tall, overly thin man probably in his sixties. Jane glanced over to the lowest part of the gallery, whose ancient ceiling sloped downwards, at the same place as its floor sloped upwards, and wondered whether Graham could actually stand upright there.

  The door to the gallery opened and a glamorous and rather bohemian looking young couple walked through it. Both wore ankle length velvet coats, with scarves wrapped around their necks, and dark velvet caps, with gold tassels. Unless it was Jane’s imagination, Graham seemed surprised by the couple’s appearance in his gallery. He stared first at them and then back to the door, as though he’d meant to lock it, but had forgotten to do so. Common sense told her that no one else but she was supposed to be there. She listened on.

  “Are you the artist?” the female half of the couple asked Jane, after having scanned the gallery.

  “I wish I could say yes,” Jane replied.

  “Unfortunately Mandy herself can’t be here,” Graham said of the ‘young and upcoming photographer’ – Mandy Tomas.

  “For her own exhibition?” the young woman asked.

  “Her mother was rushed to hospital this morning,” Graham explained. “You can imagine how disappointed she was.”

  The young couple looked at each other and said they could.

  “Are you her sponsor?” the young man asked.

  Graham motioned to photographs of the human eye, which lined the walls of the gallery, and said, “I am. I absolutely
love Mandy’s work and will promote it to my dying day.”

  The couple asked whether they could look around.

  “Of course, please do,” Graham said.

  His reply came across as unenthusiastic. The presence of the couple appeared to grate with him somewhat, although the couple didn’t appear to notice this and began to bombard Graham with questions about the artist and her photographs, which he answered rather half-heartedly and briefly, something Jane thought surprising for a man who’d just stated how much he loved the artist’s work.

  With the couple monopolizing Graham, Jane was left to her own devices. She walked around the gallery, stopping to look at each photograph in turn, before moving on to the next. The eyes captured on film came in many shapes, sizes and colours, some more unconventional than others. Some of the eyes came in pairs, some were singles, and one was of a Cyclops. Some of the eyes were open, others closed. They winked, or were open wide in surprise, or had a beauty mark beneath them. In one photograph, a man’s hand shielded his eyes; in another, an Indian caste daub separated the eyes of the young Asian woman. One eye had a deep scar running across it, making its owner unable to open it; others were so damaged by white cataracts, they rendered their owner blind. Some of the eyes belonged to children, whilst others images were of fading, elderly eyes, with drooping eyelids and heavy bags and thick deep wrinkles, etched underneath them. In some of the more unconventional pictures, the irises were painted vivid orange, or purple, or striped, or pairs of eyes had different colours. Those sold had small red stickers on their right hand corners.

  Jane returned to the first photograph she’d looked at, having walked around the entire exhibition. Whilst she’d enjoyed it, in the end, the entire exhibition came across as being something hurriedly put together on a computer by an art student, keen to complete an end-of-year project before the party season kicked off and Graham’s enthusiasm for the absent photographer seemed disproportionate to the talent displayed on the walls. Jane couldn’t help wondering if Graham was the young photographer’s father, or even her sugar daddy. Shame on you, she thought.

  She heard the gallery’s front door open, and turned round to see Graham showing the couple out of the gallery. This time he locked the door and put the closed sign up.

  “You worried I’m going to leave without buying anything?” she joked.

  Graham invited her to sit down, which she did. He topped up her glass of wine and said, “Allow me to explain.”

  “By explain you mean why you have really invited me here. It wasn’t to try and sell me some artwork, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was to ask you to sell some artwork on my behalf, actually.”

  “Sell?” Jane said, rather surprised at the request.

  “I don’t know how much you know about the art world,” he began.

  Jane admitted she knew little.

  “I’m relatively well-known in the art world, which is a small, cliquey world. What is less well-known among my associates is that I’m effectively bankrupt. I got involved in overseas property just as the market imploded. Even Jenny, my wife, doesn’t know how bad things are. The only way I can repay my debts is to sell my most precious possession, a collection of sketches of a young woman by an artist called Jasper August.”

  Jane admitted she’d never heard of the artist. Graham explained that Jasper August was a contemporary artist of some repute who’d died of a brain tumour within the last few years, adding, “Unfortunately for Jasper, but fortunately for all those who own a piece of his artwork.”

  “Go on,” Jane said.

  “Many years ago, I shared a flat with Jasper and another man, whose name I can’t remember. Bernie? Benny? Don’t know. In those days, we were the ones with the money, and Jasper the impoverished one. After Jasper hadn’t sold any work in ages, Bernie as we’ll call him, agreed to pay his share of the rent. He couldn’t see him out on the street, could he? To thank him, Jasper gave Bernie a sketch pad containing sketches of Jasper’s then girlfriend, Angela. It may not seem much, but those sketches formed the basis of what would become his most famous picture – a portrait of Angela. Like every other artist I’ve ever known, he assured us that one day he’d be rich and famous, and Bernie would thank him for it when that day came. But unlike all the others, he actually did become rich and famous. By that stage, the three of us had gone our separate ways. What Jasper didn’t know is that Bernie swapped me the sketches for my guitar. He never liked the sketches and I’d never been able to master the guitar. It seemed a fair swap at the time. I hung on to the sketches, and now Jasper’s dead, they’re extremely valuable. I hate to part with them, but this is about as rainy a day as it gets, and so I’m going to have to.”

  “And where exactly do I fit in?”

  “If it becomes known that I’m selling the sketches, people will inevitably find out why. Once the real reason comes out, its price will go down. People bid low in fire sales.”

  “I see,” Jane said. “Forgive me for seeming rather slow, but surely if it’s known that the sketches are yours, how is my selling it on your behalf going to help?”

  “Because nobody knows I have it. In fact, outside these walls, no one knows where the sketches are. That Jasper drew them is public knowledge, but their whereabouts remain a mystery except to you and me. Jasper, Bernie and I lost touch years ago. After he became successful, Jasper contacted me to enquire if I knew where Bernie was, and whether he still had the sketches? He wanted to buy them back. I didn’t need the money, nor did I particularly want to sell them, knowing they would only increase in value. If Jasper had found out I had the sketch-pad, he’d have badgered me until I sold it back to him, so I told him I hadn’t a clue where Bernie was, but I knew for a fact he’d given the sketch-pad away years earlier, well before Jasper became well-known. I said I didn’t know where it was, or even if it still existed. He told me that Bernie always was a damned fool and I agreed with him.”

  “Good heavens!” Jane said. “But I’m still not entirely sure where I come in?”

  “You will be playing the part of the owner of the sketches, who wants to sell them,” Graham said. “I’ve prepared an ingenious story, explaining how the sketch-pad came to be into your possession and where it’s been all these years. I’ve selected a gallery, which I know will be able to verify its authenticity. They’ll almost certainly insist on getting a second opinion from independent art auctioneers such as Fonebies. They may even run tests to see if there are any of Jasper’s fingerprints on it. There should be – I’ve always kept the pad in a zipped binder and worn gloves to handle the sketches. Feel free to leave the sketch-pad with them, but please do get a receipt for it. You’d better bring some ID with you, by the way. The independent verification shouldn’t take too long. Once complete, the gallery will contact you, and undoubtedly offer to buy the sketches from you straight away. I’ll tell you what their worth, and you mustn’t take any less. They can pay you, and then you can pay me once the money has cleared. I’m assuming your agency has its own bank account?”

  Jane nodded.

  “I’m going to Germany shortly. With any luck, by the time I get back, you’ll have good news for me.”

  Jane leant back in her chair and took a sip of wine. “I take it this exhibition isn’t for real?” she asked, wondering why he’d gone to so much trouble to mount a fake exhibition, rather than simply pick up the telephone to her.

  “It is,” Graham said. “It’s a genuine exhibition, but today is the last day. I sent Mandy home early so I could talk to you. I don’t bother opening my gallery in Sailles over the winter – there’s absolutely no point. No tourists, the second homeowners are all back in the Home Counties, so I spend the winter months launching new artists up and down the UK. Mandy is one of them. It’s her work I’m taking to Germany. I’m immensely proud of my success in promoting the careers of new artistic talent such as Mandy Tomas, particularly those trying to make it outside London.”

  “I’ll need to d
o some investigations. I can’t just take your word for all of this, you understand.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Graham said. “I can assure you, my story will check out. I’ve even got my passport and a utility bill with my address on it to show you.” He produced the documents. Jane opened the passport and studied the name and photograph on it. The passport was in the name of Graham Burslem, and the photograph in it, the man opposite her.

  The passport was just under seven years old. Just as she began to make a note of the passport details, Graham said,

  “Why don’t you hang on to it for a few days? I don’t need it immediately and you can carry out any checks you want to on it.”

  “Are you quite sure?” Jane asked.

  “As long as I have it back before I go to Germany, I’m quite happy for you to take it, as proof of my good faith. We can meet up again at my gallery in Sailles in a week or so.”

  She slipped both the passport and utility bill into her handbag.

  “If you don’t mind I’d like to visit the library and make further investigations before I’m prepared to go any further.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She walked from the gallery to the library in less than ten minutes. She searched on-line against the artist Jasper August and read everything which came up, before typing Angela - a portrait by Jasper August. Everything she read confirmed Graham’s story, up to a point. There was mention of the portrait’s preliminary sketches having been lost, and the portrait itself as having been recently sold at auction.

  Whilst she was there, Jane also checked out Graham Burslem’s website, which described him as an art dealer with an art gallery in ‘the picturesque coastal town of Sailles on the north Hoven Coast’, open for business April-October (although trading through its webpage all year round). Jane stared at the photograph posted on the website for some time. It certainly looked like the man she’d left behind at the Beech Hill Gallery. The web page also referred to him as – One time flatmate of the late Jasper August. She clicked the link giving details of the Mandy Tomas exhibition and read about the exhibition she’d just visited. Graham’s statement about the pride he took in promoting unknown regional artists was repeated there.