Swing Low, Swing Death

by R. T. Campbell

  “Why not?” the old man was obviously bewildered, “If I was broke I’d probably start a business as a nursery man. Bellamy and Varley both know about pictures an’ they are neither of them rich men, an’ they are both in a position to purchase pictures from private owners who would not think of goin’ direct to a dealer like Ambleside.”

  I could see that the Professor was right, but I could still not manage to visualise Dr. Bellamy getting down to the point of speaking about pounds, shillings and pence. I ordered another round of beers.

  “Anything else?” I asked, more automatically than with the hope of there being an answer.

  “Yes,” he said deeply, “there’s one new point an’ I’m thinkin’ it’s probably o’ some importance once we get things straight in our minds. There was a plain-clothes man on duty in Iron Street all that afternoon when the picture was destroyed,—there’s some business about a club three doors away,—and he was curious enough about the Museum—he’d read a lot about it in the paper—to be watchin’ that too. He says that he’d ha’ noticed if anyone out o’ the ordinary had gone in durin’ the afternoon, an’, as he’s a good man, I think we can take his word for it.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?” I asked blankly. All it seemed to mean to me was that the Chirico had been destroyed by one of those who was working in the Museum and not by a stranger from outside.

  “Plenty,” said Professor Stubbs and went towards the door.

  Chapter 6

  Revolt of the Sage

  I HAD thought that I was to be taken to Hendon to help get the photograph, but not a bit of it. I was condemned to return to the gallery to control morons and mischievous apes. For a good way of spending an afternoon I cannot recommend this. By half-past-three I would gladly have filled the whole gallery with carbon monoxide, not, judging from their faces, that it would have done anything to alter the colours of the complexions of the dowagers who sailed round the place like celluloid swans in a bath-tub.

  Certainly I saw one or two people I knew, but I had about as much chance of anything in the way of conversation with them as I would have had if I had been sitting on top of a steam-organ in a merry-go-round.

  The Professor did not arrive back until nearly four-thirty. By this time I felt as though I had been pushed into a Turkish bath with all my clothes on. He blundered through the crowd towards me with the determination of a tank going through a forest of saplings. Owing to my abnormal height I was able to see him coming, but I was in such a vile temper that I made no effort to go towards him, and I refused to listen to the sound of my name which he shouted once or twice, with the violence and unexpectedness of a hunter calling on a moose. He had to come right up to me before I deigned to notice his existence.

  “It’s all right now, Max,” he said, “You can come along. Had a good afternoon?”

  Rather pointedly I looked round the crowd without saying anything. I let my eyes rest momentarily on the more moronic members of it. The old man followed my eyes and nodded his head.

  “I’m sorry about that, Max,” he said. The trouble with Professor Stubbs is that he is always only too willing to apologise. It doesn’t mean a thing, but it sometimes results in his way of life being easier than it would otherwise have been.

  As we went towards the door we encountered my bugbear, the appallingly horrible child. It seemed as though she had not had enough in the morning but had come back for more. I made the most horrible face I could think of and the child burst into tears.

  I was so intent on my revenge, for my thumb throbbed beneath the bit of Elastoplast, that I bumped into Francis Varley. “Sorry,” I said automatically. Then I thought I should give him a warning. I pointed to the awful child.

  “You see that child, Varley?” I asked, “Well, keep an eye on her. She tried to steal the fur teapot this morning and I think she has come back to have another shot at it.”

  Francis Varley followed my finger. He looked a little surprised.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” he asked and I shook my head, “That is Miss Zulieka Bellamy, the learned Doctor’s daughter. She is being brought up as a genius. I may tell you, my dear fellow,” his voice dropped so that no one else could hear it, “that to spend an evening with the Bellamys is a sore trial. They put that child at the piano and sing praises of the discords she manages to create. To be perfectly honest, when my Siamese kitten gets on the keys she makes a better noise. But steer clear of her, old man, she’s poison.”

  “I know,” I said grimly as I went on my way, wondering whether the poison extended to her fangs. I hoped not but I would not have been the least surprised if I had developed tetanus. I worked myself into a state when I was almost certain that I was bound to develop some vile disease from the child’s bite.

  In the hall of the Museum we came face to face with the Doctor himself. He stopped us with a gesture. “I must thank you, Mr. Boyle,” he said, “for your very kind assistance this afternoon. Oh, I see you have hurt your hand. I hope it isn’t serious?”

  “No,” I said bitterly, “I was merely bitten by a dangerous and poisonous wild animal. My thumb will probably mortify and fall off.”

  He looked at me in surprise. Then he laughed. “Oh you scientists,” he said, “You must have your little joke, mustn’t you?” He laughed again and went on his way, leaving me looking after him. The only consolation I could think of was that, with that child about the place, he must have been bitten himself—her bite shewed considerable dexterity of the sort which is not acquired without much practise—and certainly he appeared to have lost no limbs nor to suffer from many scars.

  The Bentley was purring outside. We shot away from the white façade of the Museum of Modern Art, narrowly missing a postman who was crossing the street, and snaked through into Piccadilly.

  Our destination, I realised, was undoubtedly Scotland Yard. I wondered what we were going to do there. Sometimes the old man uses the place as somewhere to cash a cheque after the banks are closed. One of the high ups was at school with him and I think he is frightened of the Professor; at any rate he’ll always cash cheques for him.

  When we entered the place I realised that we were not looking for money but were about to pay an unsocial visit to the Chief Inspector.

  I must say that he did not look overjoyed to see us. He looked up from the papers which were spread before him on his desk and groaned very theatrically.

  “My God, John,” he said, “isn’t it enough that I see you during my few hours of leisure without your needing to come and haunt me when I’m at work?”

  “Ho,” snorted the old man, “Just listen to him. Ho, I do all his blasted work for him and that’s all the thanks I get. Anyhow, Reggie, I’m not going to worry you for long. I’m just goin’ to leave Max here in yer charge while I kinda wander along to yer ballistics department.”

  “My dear man,” the Chief Inspector was amused, “what do you want with the ballistics department? I don’t surely have to remind you that Julian Ambleside was strangled and hanged and not shot. You haven’t discovered some new way of committing a murder by firing a noose or a pair of imitation hands at your victim, have you?”

  Professor Stubbs looked mysterious. He closed his left eye in one of his face-contorting winks.

  “Just ye wait an’ see, me boy, just ye wait an’ see,” he said very amiably, “Now can ye put me in touch wi’ a chap in yer ballistics department who’ll let me fiddle around wi’ his instruments for a few minutes?”

  The Chief Inspector looked thoughtful, but he picked up the telephone beside him and spoke briefly into it.

  “I suppose it will be all right,” he said, “so long as you don’t break anything, John. Remember some of these instruments are very expensive and are not easily replaced even if you have the money to buy them.”

  “I know,” said the old man, “I won’t break anything. I just want to use an instrument which I haven’t got lyin’ around my own house an’ so I’ll have to borrow yours. No
t,” he was slightly nettled, “that I’m in the habit o’ breakin’ things. I can’t remember breakin’ anythin’ recently.”

  I thought it all depended upon what he meant by the word “recently.” If it was a matter of hours he was being truthful, otherwise he was certainly not telling the truth, for I had seen the remains of a flower-pot in his waste-paper basket only that morning. I felt slightly annoyed at the way in which he was dumping me in the Chief Inspector’s office like so much luggage to be left till called for, but I could not think of any reasonable excuse for coming with him, beyond my natural curiosity, so with a look to see if the Bishop minded I made myself at home in a chair, and started to read a book which I had in my pocket, William Derham’s Astro-Theology, which set out to prove the existence of God from the positions of the stars.

  This habit of carrying books about with me is one I have picked up from the old man, whose pockets are large enough to hold a small 17th century folio. No doubt it is a bad habit, but it has its compensations, as on occasions like this, when I am left alone with nothing to do.

  Professor Stubbs was gone about three quarters of an hour. When he returned he was looking very pleased with himself. I tried to draw him on the question of what he had been doing, but I might as well have tried to draw the teeth of a hippopotamus with a pair of stamp-tweezers. It was, as they say, no go.

  I must admit also that I could make little sense of the questions which the old man put to the Chief Inspector. Mostly they seemed to deal with the question of Julian Ambleside’s stock—the pictures and so on in his possession at the time of his death. I remembered that Douglas had told me, talking about the question of the genuineness of the Chiricos, that Ambleside had four more besides the one he had sold to Emily Wallenstein and which had been destroyed.

  “Are there any paintings by Chirico?” I asked and the Chief Inspector shrugged his shoulders. I tried to explain the sort of thing which Chirico had painted, but the Bishop said that he had only spent a short time at Ambleside’s house in the Chelsea square and that he had not had time to take a proper look.

  “D’ye mind if we go down an’ take a look?” the Professor asked suddenly, “I’ll gi’ ye me word that I won’t break or destroy anythin’ at all. Is there anyone there who’ll let us in?”

  “I doubt it,” said the Chief Inspector, “the house is really large enough to need a full-time maid, but they are in such short supply these days that Ambleside made do with a woman who used to come in every day. She arrived in time to make his breakfast and went away about fivish, leaving some cold food ready for his supper. From what we know of him it would seem that he was not given to eating in in the evenings, but usually went out to a restaurant or dined at his club. The woman will be gone by this time, but if you’ll bring the keys back here as soon as you’ve done with them, I don’t see that there’s any reason why you should not go there. You will find that he kept his stock-in-trade in two large rooms in the basement and in two bedrooms on the second floor. Of course it seems, from the look of the house, that a lot of the things which he used to have around him were also saleable. Here, Max,” he handed me a Yale key, “you take charge of that and see that he doesn’t start breaking things up. If he can’t get into anything and he wants to get into it, he’ll just need to wait until to-morrow.”

  We left with the Professor’s voice raised in a wail of protest about the ungrateful treatment which he received at the hands of public servants. From the way he spoke one might have supposed him to be a veritable paragon who was being unjustly accused. Having been with him for some time I knew just how justified and necessary the Chief Inspector’s warning was. I have seen the Professor break open desks with a poker, and get through doors by the simple expedient of throwing his bulk against them.

  I did not enjoy the ride to Chelsea any more than I enjoy any ride with the old man driving. All that could be said for it was that it was no worse than the average.

  The house where Julian Ambleside had lived was one of these tall, narrow eighteenth century houses which manage to persist in parts of Chelsea and Bloomsbury in spite of the encroachment of the block of flats, which provides dwellings for fifty where five had lived before.

  I opened the door and we went in. The house was well and very expensively furnished. The pictures on the walls were superb. They were not all paintings of the twentieth century. I noticed a good early Corot and a Courbet. In addition there were a great many pictures in the hall and on the staircases which were obviously the work of untrained English artists of the 18th and 19th centuries.

  Stiff cricketers bowled an everlasting slow underhand to batsmen who were forever poised to hit the stationary ball into the willow trees by the common, or crinolined ladies were frozen in conversation with top-hatted gentlemen in the market-squares of country towns.

  We solemnly set to work to look for any paintings by Chirico. I found three drawings by him, and was pleased to notice that none of them was as good as the one I had. But of the four large paintings which Douglas had mentioned there was no sign.

  I would have given up the search when we had looked through the rooms of the house, but the old man was exceedingly pertinacious this evening. He insisted in going up into the attics and on making me crawl, to the sad detriment of my clothes, among between the rafters. We looked in the lavatories and under the bath, we looked in the kitchen, behind the Aga cooker and under the sink. I began to get fed up. The old man went over to the large Ideal boiler. We had already examined this, but he seemed to be determined to take another look.

  Of course there was nothing there. I’m afraid that I shewed a slight inclination to crow over him.

  “Come on, Sherlock,” I said mockingly, “where’s your magnifying glass? Why don’t you get that out?”

  He looked at me gravely, his steel rimmed glasses perched precariously on the tip of his blunt nose and the black sombrero, which he had neglected to remove, shoved back on his head.

  “D’ye know, Max,” he said solemnly, “I think you got somethin’ there. If I had a glass I’d use it.” He took out his pipe and started to fill it, glaring vindictively at the Ideal boiler. Suddenly he put the pipe back in his pocket and slapped his hands on his thighs. “By cripes,” he bellowed, “I am a thunderin’ ass. To think that I was expectin’ to find anythin’ here in the boiler. O’ course there wouldn’t be anythin’ here, would there now, Max?”

  He appealed to me, and I shook my head wisely. I had to confess to myself that I could see no especial reason why there would not be anything in the boiler, except that I had not expected to find anything there.

  “An’ why,” he rumbled, “would there be nothin’ in the ash-pan o’ the boiler? Well, it’s kinda simple once ye think o’ the answer. What time o’ day was it when Julian Ambleside was found hangin’? Why, by God, it was in the afternoon, an’ ye don’t think that his woman would come in here an’ clear up an’ still neglect to make up the blinkin’ boiler. She’d want it made up to give her hot water for the washin’ up, wouldn’t she?”

  “Yes,” I said, “Your grasp of domestic detail astonishes me, but I still don’t see what you’re driving at?”

  “Ha’ ye ever filled one of these boilers?” he demanded, and I nodded my head, “Well, one o’ the first things ye do is to rattle the cinders that are in the bottom an’ take the ash-pan out an’ empty it, ain’t I right?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think you are right, more or less, but I still don’t see where you hope it’s going to get you.”

  “Max, son,” he said in a voice which I call his more in pity than in anger voice, “Max, son, will ye for the love of thunderin’ Mike try thinkin’. Ye were given good brains an’ it’s a pity not to use ’em, but just to let ’em lie rottin’ in yer head.”

  I got his meaning that time. I had, I admit, been pretty slow in the uptake. I made for the door into the area and got there ahead of the old man.

  By pure good luck the ash-bucket had not been emptied. Lying o
n top of it was a little pile of grey and brown ash. The old man pushed past me and started to riddle this with his fingers. He soon found several tacks, large-headed strong tacks. By the time he had finished riddling the ash we had quite a sizeable pile of these tacks lying beside us.

  We took the pile back into the house and laid them out on the monel metal sink. The old man looked at them thoughtfully. I thought he was trying to conjure them up so that they could tell him a story.

  “Umhum,” he mumbled to himself, “Umhum. Ye know what these are, Max?” He didn’t give me time to answer him, “These, son, are the sort o’ tack which is used by a man stretching a canvas on a wooden stretcher. Look at the size o’ their heads and the strength o’ the shanks. They would not pull out easy, would they?”

  I shook my head. I was fingering one of the tacks. It was certainly a very strong one.

  “Do you think it would be possible to trace these to their maker?” I asked hopefully. “Scotland Yard are pretty good at that sort of thing these days. Perhaps they might be able to say which shop they were bought at.”

  The old man shook his head heavily. “I doubt whether there’d be much point in tryin’ to track ’em down,” he said, “even if they are o’ English manufacture, which I doubt. I’m thinkin’ that these tacks were the ones which were used to hold the canvas o’ the stretcher o’ the four missin’ pictures by Chirico.”

  He stopped and held up one of the tacks between a blunt finger and thumb.

  “I think we can take it that the murderer was someone who wanted to destroy the Chiricos an’ his only way o’ gettin’ at ’em was to kill Ambleside. I don’t think that the blessed Doctor’s theory that the picture was destroyed at the Museum ’ull hold water for a moment, even if it could be proved that the plain clothes man watchin’ that club had missed seein’ someone goin’ in. Someone had to get rid o’ the pictures, an’ the reason that he had to get rid o’ them was that they were not genuine, that, in fact they were spurious. I think that we’ll need to get hold o’ Mr. Francis Varley an’ start askin’ him a few questions. I got a kinda feelin’ that he knows altogether too much. I’ll get on to him in the mornin’ an’ see what he can do by way o’ explanation.”