Blood Ties

by Oliver Davies

  He looked down at the card in his fingers and tucked it safely into his breast pocket. “Certainly shall, Inspector, you have my word.”

  “Excuse me, Mr Harrer,” Mills put in, “what about frames?”

  “Frames?”

  “Is a painting worth more in or out of its frame?”

  “Depends on the frame, my boy. Selling it together is always recommended. And, I am assuming here, Lord Hocking would have some very fine frames.”

  “Very fine,” I told him. “Heavy. Gilded.”

  He gave a steady nod. “I doubt they would have been taken apart. Besides, in those older pieces, it’s not as easy as slipping a photograph in and out of a frame. It’s quite the process.”

  “Not something that can be done quickly?” Mills checked.

  “No. Nor without the right tool. If someone had done it, at the scene of the crime,” Harrer dropped his voice to a whisper, “you’d know.”

  “Thank you,” I told him truly. He’d been more helpful than I expected.

  “Anything for Jeannie.” He sighed and stood up, pulling on a long woollen coat. “That girl is trouble, Inspector. But I suspect,” he said, walking around the table and pausing by my shoulder, “that’s why she likes you so much.”

  “And he her,” Mills added dryly.

  Harrer laughed, gave a jaunty wave and strolled off from the café. I turned to glare at Mills, who ducked his smirking face.

  “Shall we get a coffee, sir?” he asked. “Before heading off?”

  “You’re buying,” I told him darkly.

  He stood up, still sniggering. “I’ll get a teacake,” he announced, “and we can call it even.”

  Eleven

  Thatcher

  I walked with Mills back to the station to update Sharp in person. She had little to say on what Harrer had told us, nothing more than we already thought, but it was more a question of keeping her in the loop. Doing everything by the book.

  “Someone who knew that crowd would know about private art sales,” I had said to her. “Would likely have some connections to it.”

  “On behalf of their boss, you mean?” she asked, leaning against her window with her arms folded.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m following your trail of thought, Thatcher,” she assured me, “but the butler always seems a likely suspect and so always makes an excellent scapegoat.”

  “For a good reason.”

  “I’m not disputing that,” she said, walking towards me, “but I’d wager that there are other people with better reasons to steal from Lord Hocking. Is the butler the sort of man to throw away two generations of a good working relationship, of being almost family, over such a small thing?”

  “Might not be small to him,” I reminded her, “and if they’re the ones throwing it away first, why wouldn’t he do something?”

  “Why now?” she demanded. “When there are still a good few years before he would retire? Why not, when they’re actively searching for his replacement? I don’t doubt your instincts, Thatcher, I never have. But consider the timing of it all. Why would he do this now?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her, but I didn’t think she actually wanted one. Sharp got where she was by making people think, making them backtrack and question and poke. I’d known her long enough to know that she wasn’t making conversation, she was making me think.

  She gave an easy sigh and smiled at me. “Go and see the brother. What you learn there might change the whole course of this case, Thatcher. If we’re talking about a motivation driven by familial spite, he might make the better suspect.”

  But why now? I wondered, not bothering to receive the scold I would get from saying it aloud. I nodded to Sharp, and she sent me from her office.

  I walked over to the desk where Mills and Smith sat, the sergeant flipping through a list of names and numbers, looking as though he’d have more fun swimming along the river in mid-December.

  “Have fun, you two,” I smirked as I walked past, knocking on the table.

  Smith smiled back at me, but Mills glared, already barely begun and already looking dishevelled. I left him there, somewhat gloating, and headed out from the station to my car, hopping in and spent longer than I’d care to admit figuring out my bloody sat nav, inputting the address I had found.

  Sandow’s address was in a town a few miles west of the city. I knew the place vaguely, and mostly from cases rather than sightseeing. A middle-class suburb that hid the darker parts of its society beneath cookie-cutter houses and neat lawns. It wasn’t an entirely bad place to live, but a far cry from the noble estate that Sandow had grown up in. From what I’d found, he’d moved out there about fifteen years ago and had stayed put ever since. It was the years in between, after changing his name and leaving Hocking Estate, that his whereabouts were challenging to pin down. In fact, finding this address had taken a bit more leg work than it usually does. Richard Sandow, it seemed, did not particularly want to be found. A pity for him then, that I had a case to solve.

  Driving out of the city into the few miles of countryside that surrounded the outlying towns, I thought about what Harrer had told us. I was basing much of this case on the fact that the thief knew exactly what they were doing. The timing, the style, the painting itself, all done carefully. If they were going to sell it, I’d wager they would have the sense to go to a man like Harrer, rather than trying their luck on the open market.

  The frame was something else that caught my interest, and I was glad that Mills had brought it up when he did. It would be taken, all in one, which means it would have been harder for the thief to smuggle out from the house; it’s not like they simply rolled up the canvas and tucked it inside their jacket. A full, heavy frame wouldn’t have been easy to manoeuvre.

  I shoved the thoughts aside, my attention needed now to focus on the man I was about to meet. Other than those few years of having dropped off the face of the earth and having little to no connection to his well-known family at all, I had only a few scraps of information on the man. A medical man, ending up in the hospital, he had kept his marriage announcement out of the public eye, as well as the birth of his son and granddaughter. As far as the world was aware, he was just another average man who had severed himself from his family. A family of centuries-old nobility who receive threats from animal activists and are probably in some strange, convoluted way related to the royal family. I hadn’t gone that far back in the family tree, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Families like these were all connected in some way or another, down the line, tangling lines of history. How they kept their money, my grandfather used to tell me as a child, struggling with my homework, it’s how they kept the power in one place. And when a member of the family goes rogue, like Richard Sandow had, they vanished. The estate has a lord, and it has an heir. Who cares about the rest of the family? I was sure such ideas would be enough to fill a man with spite, but then, that rather depended on the man.

  I pulled up in front of a modest two-story house, just off from the town centre. A neat garden, clean cars, fresh paint on the doors. It was altogether tidier than the estate, but it looked like the estate would eat it for breakfast. I stayed sat in my car for a moment, looking up at the house and then with a sigh, got out and walked up the short path to ring the doorbell.

  It opened quickly, a grey-haired lady standing there holding a mixing bowl under her arm.

  “Hello,” she said, looking a trifle confused.

  “Hello. Forgive my intrusion.” I pulled out my warrant card. “I’m Detective Inspector Thatcher, North York police. I’m looking for Mr Richard Sandow. Is he in?”

  Her eyes widened as she looked from my ID to me and nodded, stepping back a bit and letting me into the house. She led me down the small corridor and into a living room, infinitely more modern than Lord Hocking’s was.

  “Is he in trouble?” she asked.

  “No. I just have a few questions for him.”

  She nodded. “I’ll call him in for y
ou. Can I get you a cup of tea, Inspector?”

  “Thank you, but no, I’m alright, Mrs Sandow?” I checked quickly. She gave another nod and hurried from the room.

  As I waited, I paced around, looking at the photographs that hung on the walls and were propped up on the mantelpiece. Mr and Mrs Sandow were in most of them. A young lad grew up through them, and a little girl after that, the granddaughter no doubt.

  Nothing to do with the estate, I noticed. Nothing of Lord Hocking. There was one small picture, old and faded, of a young girl, several decades ago. She had the same round face as Lord Hocking, the same upturned nose. Rosemary, I believed. And there was one more picture, so close to the bookshelf that you wouldn’t really see it if you didn’t look. Three children, two quite young, but I recognised the oldest as Henry Hocking. The little ones beside him, Rupert and the yet unmet Rose.

  So, he had some connection then, or at least, enough of one to show an interest in his nieces and nephews. I wonder how he got the picture.

  “Inspector?” The door opened and Richard Sandow strolled in, shutting the door behind him. In-person, the resemblance to his brother was uncanny. Minus the red face and slightly rounded stomach, he looked just like his older brother. There was even something of him in Henry, I now realised. Strong genes in this family. He wore a pair of simple trousers and a jumper, his feet stuffed into slippers that shuffled over the carpet as he walked towards me, hands outstretched. I took it, finding it old and weak in grip.

  “Mr Sandow?”

  “In the flesh. Please.” He indicated an armchair, and I sat down as he lowered himself into the one opposite. “I would make an educated guess,” he began, “and presume that this is about the painting stolen from Hocking Estate?”

  “It is. How did you become aware of it?”

  “I saw it in the paper,” he said, busying himself by fishing out a handkerchief.

  “Have you spoken to Lord Hocking since it happened?”

  He looked back at me, almost pityingly, and shook his head. “Not much I can really do to help, is there?”

  “I disagree.”

  He looked at me for a moment, with the same unreadable sort of authority that his brother had and nodded. “Please go ahead.”

  “We believe that the theft is a personal attack on your brother, Mr Sandow. And that until the matter is resolved, he and his family might be in some small amount of danger.”

  His face didn’t change. “And that includes me?”

  “If the thief is aware of your existence, yes. I would like to know whatever they might know. I need to tick off every box, as it were.”

  He nodded for me to continue.

  “I understand,” I tried to keep my voice as diplomatic as I could, “that you and brother had some sort of altercation. And that you left the family home and took your father’s name.”

  “All true,” he confirmed.

  “According to a source we found,” I added, “it was due to a woman.”

  He laughed at that. “How simple that makes it all sound, eh?”

  “Would you be willing to tell me a little about what happened?”

  “Need to cross me off your list of suspects, do you?”

  “I do,” I confirmed easily, “but I’d like to know more about the painting itself, and why your brother is so fond of it.”

  Mr Sandow gave another nod, his gaze roaming to the window behind me, to the photograph by the bookshelf, and landed once more on my face, his expression solemn, but peaceful.

  “My brother and I were always close,” he told me, “our sister too.”

  “Rosemary,” I supplied.

  “He told you about her?” he asked, seeming surprised.

  “He did.”

  “Rosemary. The family wasn’t the same after she died. Of course, it wasn’t. But we were still brothers. And we had her,” he said wistfully. “I've never been sure which one of us met her first, but we both loved her. A great, great deal. Rosemary did too.”

  “Who, Mr Sandow?”

  “Selene,” he said the name almost reverently. “Selene Whitlock.”

  “Who was she?”

  “A maid. Classic old story, that one, isn’t it?” he chuckled.

  “You were both in love with her?”

  “We were. Only mother wanted my brother to marry someone more, of our own circle, if you like.”

  I nodded in understanding. “What about you?”

  “I could hardly marry the girl my brother also loved, could I? And live in the same house? My plan was to leave. Marry Selene and move out somewhere else, at least until he was settled himself with someone new. He didn’t think that was fair. That he didn’t get to be with her, but I could.”

  “What did Selene say?”

  “She refused to come between two brothers,” he sighed. “Said she wanted no part in it. She handed in her notice and was gone. It was only after she was gone, that one of the other maids told us she had been with child. Pregnant.”

  I inhaled slowly. “Who was the father?”

  He smiled sadly. “Never knew. She never said. I tried to persuade my brother to bring her back. Said that we needed to look after her, figure out who fathered the child, that she was family.”

  “But?”

  “He had just gotten married and Henry was on his way,” he scratched his jaw, eyes almost tearing up, “so he refused. Had all the support of the rest of the family. We had a row, a nasty one. And I couldn’t be there anymore. So, I took my father's name, and left.”

  “Did you look for Selene?”

  “She died,” his voice cracked, “a few years later. The child,” he shrugged, “I tried to get the welfare state to tell me about the child, but they wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t the father, nor was my brother, not according to her.”

  He slumped back in his chair, his gaze moving to the photograph of his wedding on the wall, “I went to Wales for a while, met my lovely wife. Haven’t looked back since. Haven’t said her name aloud since. It was her,” he added suddenly. “She loved the painting, so my brother did too.”

  “It was his only memory of her,” I said quietly.

  Richard scoffed. “His own bloody fault,” he snapped. “It was him who sent her away.”

  I looked away, my eyes wandering around the room again. They landed on the bookshelf, scanning the various titles, and to the coffee table, where a few books laid on the surface. One caught my eye, and I leant forward. The Works of Brynmor Ragsdale.

  He knew his art.

  “I understand Ragsdale came from the estate village,” I said conversationally.

  He looked up, surprised, and shook his head. “A common misconception, Inspector.” He flipped open the book and pointed to the name of a village. “Close to the land, but not quite.”

  I nodded, acting interested, and closed the book. “Mr Sandow,” I asked him carefully, “where were you two nights ago? Whilst the party was on?”

  “I was home. Family dinner, we had the son and granddaughter over. They’ll vouch for me,” he waved a hand, “I’m sure.”

  His face had fallen, the brightness in his eyes dimmed. He was angry at his brother, he knew about Ragsdale, he knew about the party, and he had good cause to make such a move. But as I looked at the man, grey-haired and small in his armchair, I couldn’t imagine it to be him. Selene was gone, and there was nothing he could do now.

  But Selene’s child was something else entirely. Selene Whitlock, I hastily scribbled it down on an old receipt in my pocket and tucked it safely away. Sharp had mentioned welfare, something about Sandow. He’d gone looking for the child. The child would be grown up now, the same age as Henry, grown-up enough to care about who fathered them, grown-up enough to be mad about it.

  “Thank you, Mr Sandow. You’ve been a big help.” I stood up as he did, shaking his hand once more.

  “I haven’t been to that house since the day I left,” he told me, almost regrettably. “Not even when my niece and nephews were born. I
’m told Henry has children himself now.”

  “He does.”

  “Time flies, doesn’t it?” He walked me back to the front door, opening it up. I handed him my card, just in case.

  “Never too late to make up for lost time,” I told him.

  He smiled faintly, and I headed back to my car, watching as he shut the door. I recalled what Sharp had said earlier about the butler.

  “Why now?”

  As I drove back to the city, I wondered that myself.

  Twelve

  Thatcher

  I drove slowly back to the station, my encounter with Richard Sandow playing over and over in my head. I couldn’t shake the image of his face from my mind. The sadness there, the almost shameful way he had spoken about Selene and his nephews and niece. It was one thing, I supposed, to turn your back on your brother, but the children were innocent, something like must weigh heavily as the years drift past. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to get them all in one room, let the past untangle itself.

  Either way, with all my deliberations and wondering, there was little in me that suspected Mr Sandow to be behind this. None of it fit, not the timing, nothing. The butler remained at the top of my list, and tomorrow, I’d head back out to the estate and have another long chat with the family and their loyal servant.

  I’d go now if I could, but Sharp had made her orders clear, and I was in no mood to have to do battle with her today. Not after that. It was rare that an interview with a suspect left me feeling drained, but bugger me if Richard Sandow hadn’t managed it. Some small, cynical voice in the back of my head made me question if he had done it on purpose, if he was still in some way involved. Perhaps what was going on with the butler gave him the motivation he needed, after hearing about another servant being poorly treated by the family.