by Iain Pears
But the fact remained that the clock was ticking. Flavia still had no proof of anything, but she was fairly certain, on such knowledge as she possessed, that she knew what had been going on. The only problem was that being right was as bad as not knowing anything at all.
“Ah, you’re back,” Mary said cheerfully as they trooped into the kitchen. She gave the mixture in her pot a quick stir then replaced the lid. “I hope you’ve had a profitable day.”
She looked up at them, and scrutinized their faces carefully. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Graveyard looks. It’s serious talk time, is it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
She took off her apron, tossed it over the back of the chair, and got out a tray, some glasses and a bottle.
“These may be needed,” she observed. “Come on, then. Back to the sitting room. Let’s see what you want.”
Very much in control, she swept out of the kitchen, and up the stairs to the sitting room, with Flavia close behind and Argyll bringing up the rear with the tray. He was in full agreement that it was of central importance, and busied himself pouring and distributing while the other two settled themselves into position in the overstuffed armchairs and prepared for combat.
“All right then,” Flavia began. “I’ll give you an account of the day Forster died. Round about lunch-time, Jonathan and Edward Byrnes are eating together. At two-thirty, or thereabouts, he rings Forster and says he wants to talk to him about a picture. A stolen one. Immediately afterwards, it seems, Forster leaves the house and heads for Norwich, where he visits and empties his safe deposit box. Later that evening, he is visited by George Barton, and has an acrimonious fight about George’s forthcoming eviction. George leaves, and is seen by his son-in-law, Gordon. Around nine o’clock, Forster falls down the stairs, breaks his neck and dies.
“His body is discovered the next morning by Jonathan. Gordon, at the time of the death, is in bed with Sally, the barmaid; George was visiting his daughter and Mrs. Forster was with her lover.”
“With her what?” Mary said with astonishment.
“True, apparently.”
“Good God! My opinion of her rises all the time.”
“Yes. Anyway, the point is that nobody saw, heard, smelt, suspected, divined or guessed that anything was wrong. So much so that the police here, I gather, now agree. As far as they are concerned, the case of Forster’s death is closed until such time as there is some evidence to justify reopening it.”
“That’s a relief,” Mary said. “Everybody will be very pleased.”
“So what do we conclude? That Forster’s trip into Norwich had nothing to do with Jonathan. That his death was an accident. That his willingness to talk to him about a stolen Uccello was also unconnected to his death.”
Mary Verney looked placidly interested, but said nothing.
“Even so, there is evidence that Forster was connected in some way with the theft of pictures. Three statements from three people, none of whom know each other, all point to that. And, of course, there was the burning of Forster’s papers, for which deed we must pencil in Mrs. Forster. She returns to find her husband dead and also under investigation as a thief on a grand scale. Perhaps she knows it’s true. So to protect what little money she has, she decides to bring the police investigation into this angle of her husband’s life to an abrupt halt. End of story.”
Mary Verney continued to look calm, but companionably distressed at such an unsatisfactory conclusion.
“The trouble is, of course,” Flavia went on, “that however agreeable this is as an explanation, it is not true.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Fairly certain, yes.” .
“Why?”
“Firstly, because the police say they went out of their way to make sure that Jessica Forster did not learn from them that her husband was suspected of any thefts. They say they asked her about matters surrounding his death. Nothing about anything else. She may have known he was a thief, but there was nothing to let her know that anyone else suspected and that she had to act. So, how did she know?”
There was a long silence as Mrs. Verney drained her glass, then spoke: “Simple. I told her.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? I don’t like her much, but living with Geoffrey was punishment enough for one lifetime. There was no need for her to suffer from him beyond the grave. I wanted to spare the poor thing the turmoil of having everything she owned—or he owned—taken away from her by vengeful victims. So when she came to visit that afternoon I told her that if she was going to do anything to defend herself, she’d have to move fast. Personally, I think it was good advice.”
“And she rushed out with the matches?”
“No. I rushed out with the matches. She was dithering too much to do anything herself. She asked my advice, and I gave it. She asked my help, and I gave that too.”
“That is a serious offence.”
Mrs. Verney seemed blithely unconcerned. “I can’t see how it changes anything, myself.”
Flavia gave her a look of profound disapproval. “Very humanitarian of you. It’s a pity it’s not true either.”
“I’m afraid it is. I nearly put my back out lifting all that paper.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean your motives. You did not put the idea into her head to get rid of evidence indicating Forster was a thief. Nor did you do it when she came to visit.”
“No?”
“No. You did it to disguise the fact that there wasn’t the slightest bit of evidence that he was a crook. And you went round to see to it after we got back from London and Jonathan said he’d be looking into his papers to see what he sold from here.”
“But it was raining.”
“It was stopping when we arrived.”
“And why would I do that? What was it to me?”
“Because the papers would have probably revealed that he was bleeding you and your family dry by threatening to reveal that for years your kleptomaniacal cousin had been touring the country houses of Europe lifting masterpieces.”
“Goodness! What a lovely idea. What leads you to that?”
“Enough, I think.”
“For example?”
“Forster, to start off with. What evidence is there that he stole paintings? Suggestions by three people, his comments to Jonathan, and his death. But he hardly lived like a vastly successful criminal; there were obvious signs of a shortage of money, and no indications at all that any is hidden away.
“He is meant to have spent ages touring round Europe stealing things, but his wife said he hated travelling and had hardly left Norfolk except for day trips to London since he moved here. He was, admittedly, in Florence when the Uccello disappeared. But so was your cousin Veronica, at della Quercia’s. Virtually next door and with access to the Palazzo Straga. And your cousin was on the guest list for the Dunkeld wedding in 1976 and he was not. Your cousin had a reputation for taking things; whereas until last week, Forster did not.
“None of that is enough to acquit Forster or condemn your cousin. But think of his relations with her. She didn’t like him in Florence, it seems, but brings him in to help look after the collection. Why? It hardly needed looking after. She pays him a salary, virtually gives him a house, and begins to transfer other property in a way which made it entirely his when she died. A lot of money for not very much. If he was a thief it doesn’t make sense. If he was blackmailing a thief, then it does.”
Mary Verney took a sip of her glass, and regarded Flavia with some affection. Flavia noted that she seemed neither indignant at listening to such a travesty, nor nervous about it either.
“I see. Interesting. But I wouldn’t try going to court on it. Even Dr. Johnson—indiscreet old buffer though he is—would have a hard time persuading a jury that someone as obviously scatty as my poor old cousin could manage the sort of planning your Giotto would have required for success. I mean, stealing things is only part of it, isn’t it?”
“Oh,
yes. And I’m sure that her success was largely because she stole things at random, knew only faded and impecunious aristocrats like herself whose collections are precisely the sort which aren’t catalogued or insured too well. It took Bottando to turn lunacy into method, and see craziness as breathtaking skill. As for getting rid of them, she wouldn’t have to. Winterton would do that.”
Mary looked surprised at the name. “Winterton? Why him?”
“Come now,” Flavia said severely. “You can do better than that. You know perfectly well why him. He’s the man who went and talked to Sandano three months ago to find out what he knew about the Fra Angelico theft. Fifties or older with thick dark hair, so Sandano says. That matches Winterton, but Forster was grey and a bit thin on top. Nice touch to give Sandano one of Forster’s cards, though.”
“Old family friend helping out?”
Flavia frowned with disapproval at her lack of invention. “Who gives a second-rater like Forster a place in his very exclusive gallery? And who risks his career by going to Italy to pay money to thieves and implicates Forster in the theft of the Pollaiuolo? He wouldn’t touch something like that unless he had to. He’s not the sort to do people favours like that. Not good enough. Perhaps you should tell me why? Save time and effort on the guessing games.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Mary replied, sipping the drink, then putting it down again and composing herself for the trial of being perfectly frank. At least, Flavia thought, they weren’t going to have to batter their way through any more lies and evasions. One thing about Mary Verney, she was eminently sensible. She knew when she was beaten.
“He based his entire career on poor Veronica’s little weaknesses,” she said with a sigh. “He took a vast percentage, I gather. So much that the silly woman never really benefited much from her habit. Enough to keep things ticking over, not much more. Which was typical of her, really. I mean, if you’re going to be a crook, you might as well make money out of it, don’t you think?”
“Was it always part of the plan to kill Forster?”
“Certainly not,” she said robustly. “If I’d wanted that, then I could have killed him and had done with it. No. I simply wanted him off my back. His dying made life appallingly complicated.”
“How did he get on your back in the first place?”
“Forster knew Veronica in Italy, and when she lifted that Uccello, he offered to help her out by getting rid of it. It was just a way of worming himself into her affections, although I suspect he also made quite a lot of money out of it. Then communications ceased for years, until he was called in to organize the collection of someone in Belgium. He did it quite well, and noticed that a picture by Pollaiuolo wasn’t all that it seemed. He worked quite hard, and found out what it really was, and absconded with all the sale documents concerning it.”
“Which were?”
“Which were, firstly a deed of sale countersigned by Veronica and by Winterton as the dealer who organized the deal, and secondly an export permission saying it came from the collection at Weller House.”
“Isn’t that a risky way of selling hot pictures?”
“Evidently, as we are sitting here talking about it,” she said drily. “But who am I to judge? If you think about it, I suppose you could say that the painting’s original ownership was undocumented; it had been hidden away for some time, there was nothing to prove that it hadn’t come from Weller House and the inventories here were vague. Forster got suspicious only because he knew Veronica and at some stage after Uncle Godfrey’s death had gone through the Weller collection inventory, so knew what was in it—and what certainly wasn’t. Very bad luck on their part.
“Anyway, Forster figured out what might have happened, and decided to follow up. He wrote Veronica a letter, came to see her and put his cards on the table: ‘Hi. Remember me? I knew you in Florence. When you were stealing a Uccello. Nice to see you’re still at it. Pollaiuolo now, eh? And I have documents to prove it. What’s it worth?’
“At this stage, you see, he didn’t even know the start of it, but once he was in the house, it didn’t take him long to figure it out. He began dropping little hints; asking for favours, then money, then a house.”
“So what was the problem with your cousin? Couldn’t she be stopped?”
“Again, you’re asking the wrong person. I would have stopped her, but no one asked me. When she came back from Italy, she told my uncle everything and he panicked. He asked Winterton’s advice. Personally, I think the obvious thing would have been to go to the police and help them recover the picture. ‘Sorry, Veronica had one of her little turns; you know how it is.’ Then followed it by locking her up or getting her good psychiatric treatment.
“But, of course, my family didn’t think like that. The first thing that worried them was the shame of it all. All their instincts were to cover it up, and Winterton encouraged them to think that it would be easy to do this. I honestly don’t think that it ever occurred to them that a real crime had been committed. That’s what oiks like Gordon Brown do; Beaumonts are merely indiscreet. And, of course, they kept Veronica’s cut from the sale.
“Besides, initially no one thought it would become a habit. And then it was too late: by the time Veronica had hung half a dozen little acquisitions on the wall and Winterton had got rid of them, they’d compromised themselves rather badly. Manufacturing fake provenances? Handling stolen goods? Benefiting from the sales? How could they explain that away? The only problem was Forster, but Winterton did a fine job of persuading him that he was just as guilty and more likely to go to jail if anyone said anything. Fine for as long as Forster thought it was an isolated incident.
“As I say, Winterton built a lucrative clandestine career on it, and recycled the money into legitimate picture dealing. Did very nicely too, once he’d worked out who were the richest clients with the smallest scruples. He’s a prig and a snob, but he’s no fool either.
“Unlike Forster who, once he’d started, didn’t know when to stop. He pushed too far, asking for this house and everything. He knew she was ill, and he had a vision of himself as Lord of Weller or something. Always a climber. Now, Veronica was crazy, but not that mad: and he attacked her in the one area where she would fight back—her family pride. She was determined to preserve Weller in the Beaumont family, even if that was me.
“So she dug in her heels, and told him to do his worst. Forster says he will do just that. Veronica realizes he means it and she reaches for the pills as the only way of stopping him. That’s one interpretation.”
“What’s another?”
“That Veronica decides to give herself up, confess all and denounce Forster as a blackmailer. And that Forster murders her.”
“Is that likely?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit too much like a Victorian melodrama, really.”
“Why, then, did you revive it all? I assume it was you who prompted Fancelli to call in the Italian police?”
“Absolutely not. That wasn’t the idea at all.”
“So what did happen?”
She sighed wearily, then nodded sadly. “I was always on the outside of the family; I knew Veronica was a bit loopy, but never exactly how much. She died, I inherited this place, and realized the finances were catastrophic. So I decided to cut back, and the biggest—and pleasantest—saving was to get rid of Geoffrey Forster. And I got a little visit. It was the first I’d heard of any of it. At first I just laughed and said I didn’t believe him. He suggested I go and ask Winterton. I did, and Winterton told me the whole story.
“It was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. I inherit a stately home, and find that what I’ve really inherited is a rundown money sink kept afloat by thieving lunatics, up to its eyes in debt, pursued by the taxman and being blackmailed into the ground as well. I mean, Jesus. What a bloody mess.
“The trouble was knowing whether Forster really had enough proof. Winterton figured out who might have known something which would back him
up, and the riskiest two characters—apart from himself—were Fancelli and Sandano. It wasn’t certain if they knew anything, but it was important to find out. So, he visited them and made sure that, if asked, they would deny anything about Veronica and say that they thought Forster was the thief; and I went through all the papers here and destroyed any embarrassing ones. And there were quite a lot, believe me.”
“But Forster still had the vital evidence in the safe deposit box,” Flavia said, fascinated by the story now.
“Yes. And we still didn’t know what it was. Which was why Winterton also got statements signed by Fancelli and Sandano saying more or less what they told you—that they knew Forster was a thief and had stolen these two pictures.
“He had statements indicating Veronica was a thief; we had statements saying he was. So I offered Forster a draw: his documents for my documents and a lump sum to show there were no hard feelings.”
“This was the deal he told his wife about?”
“I assume so. I’d scraped away and raised the money and got the documents ready and was just waiting for a final few thousand to be credited to my account. All we were waiting for was Forster’s agreement.”
“So what happened?”
“Then all hell broke loose, because of that stupid woman Fancelli. She was rather taken with the idea of saying Forster had stolen the Uccello, you see, once the subject was raised. And after thirty years, she saw a means of getting her revenge.”
“Hold it. Forster was the father of her child?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. That was all true. And behaved abominably, I gather. His child takes after him, as well.”
“He wasn’t paying for the nursing home?”
She shook her head. “I am. Or rather Winterton is. A fair exchange for her statement. Where was I?”
“Fancelli’s revenge.”
“Oh, yes. Anyway, the trouble was that she wanted to do it before she died—Winterton said she was in a bad way, and I imagine that is what triggered it. So she gave the police a prod to start things off, and in due course Jonathan telephones Forster.
