The Missing Old Masters

by John Creasey

  ‘You have those paintings, haven’t you?’

  ‘What paintings?’ Mannering asked.

  ‘Must you pretend? The ones from the cottage, of course.’

  ‘Or from the north gallery,’ Mannering suggested.

  ‘From—the cottage. You went there and took them from—Anstiss. I know you did.’

  ‘I took them away from the cottage,’ Mannering agreed.

  ‘You must let me have them.’

  ‘You—or Anstiss?’

  ‘You must let me have them,’ she repeated. ‘They’re not yours, you’ve no right to them.’

  ‘I’ve more right than Anstiss or Lobb,’ Mannering said, drily.

  ‘You haven’t, they …’

  Mannering interrupted her. ‘If they’re the paintings from the north gallery I’ve every right to keep them. Your father has asked me to try to get them back for him.’

  She closed her eyes and seemed to sway, first backwards, then towards him. She leaned against the bed, very close to him, and peered into his eyes.

  ‘They’re mine,’ she said huskily. ‘They were my mother’s, and when father dies they’ll be mine. I’ve more right to them than anybody. Please let me have them.’

  ‘Joanna,’ Mannering said firmly, ‘I have been commissioned by your father to find them for him, and if I give them to anyone it will be to him. Supposing you go back to bed—and in the morning tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘They’re mine,’ she repeated.

  ‘Joanna …’

  ‘They’re mine and I want them,’ she said hoarsely. ‘And I’m going to get them. Where are they?’

  ‘In a safe place.’

  ‘They’re not in this room because I—’ She broke off.

  ‘So you were the searcher,’ said Mannering drily. ‘No, I don’t leave valuables in the expected places, Joanna.’

  ‘If you don’t let me have them I’ll tear my clothes off and jump on you and scream!’ she cried. ‘I’ll scream until the whole household is awake, and I’ll say you tried to rape me. I mean it! Give me those paintings!’

  Chapter Eight

  The Amateur Wanton

  Joanna did mean it.

  Mannering, taken aback by the unexpectedness of her threat, was amused for an instant, and smiled – realising at once what a mistake this was. Joanna drew a deep, shuddering breath. Clenching her fists, she shook them in his face.

  ‘Don’t dare laugh at me! I’ll scream the place down; I’ll get everyone in here; my father will horsewhip you!’

  Her father might, with advantage, Mannering thought, have spanked her more often than he had.

  ‘Give me those pictures. Tell me where they are!’ Her whole body was aquiver; in her fear-inspired rage she must have been oblivious of her look of wantonness. ‘I mean what I say, I’ll scream the place down.’

  ‘If you must, you must,’ Mannering said, ‘but be quick, I’m tired out already running after your pictures.’

  ‘If I scream—’

  ‘Go ahead, Joanna. Scream! Or perhaps I ought to do the screaming,’ Mannering suggested. ‘After all, I’m the victim.’

  She was so taken aback that she could only stand and stare.

  ‘Or else go back to bed,’ Mannering said.

  Joanna caught her breath.

  ‘You—you know what will happen if I do scream?’

  ‘Do you know that if an attractive young girl is found in a man’s room wearing her nightclothes, she’ll be branded as a hussy?’ Mannering asked. ‘Now if I’d broken into your room—’ He stopped short. ‘Wait a minute. How did you get in?’

  ‘The door was open.’

  ‘It wasn’t—’ Mannering began, then broke off, struck first by a sense almost of shock that he should have been sleeping so unguardedly in a room into which it was so easy to force entry; secondly, by realisation that Joanna was in a state of extreme tension and that she was in deep need of help. What he must do, thought Mannering, was try to ease that tension, and so make her more likely to tell him what the trouble was. He leaned back, relaxed, and changed the whole tone of his voice. ‘What’s the problem, Joanna?’ he asked. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘You—you can help by giving me those paintings!’

  ‘I think that would only make more trouble for you,’ Mannering said. ‘What is worrying you, Joanna?’

  ‘I—I just want those paintings. They are mine.’

  ‘I don’t think your father would agree,’ Mannering said. ‘Shall we call him and talk it over with him?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What have you done that you don’t want him to know about?’

  ‘Nothing! I just want the paintings.’

  ‘Joanna,’ Mannering said, ‘Eliza Doze was seriously injured because someone wanted the paintings. I was attacked in the grounds tonight and very nearly tortured because someone wanted the paintings.’

  ‘Tortured? I—I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You should, because it’s true. What’s Anstiss doing here as a footman?’

  ‘He—he works here.’

  ‘How long is it since he came?’

  ‘Only a week. He—he’s a good footman.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. He’s not a very good thief.’

  ‘He wouldn’t torture …’

  ‘Not Anstiss. Lobb.’

  ‘Lobb!’ exclaimed Joanna in an anguished tone. For a moment Mannering thought she was going to collapse and he moved quickly to support her, but she recovered. ‘If you’ve met Lobb,’ she went on through clenched teeth, ‘then you know how serious it is.’

  ‘Joanna—what are you being blackmailed about?’ Mannering asked quietly. ‘You can tell me; I’ll promise to keep that a secret, at least.’

  ‘Blackmailed,’ she echoed in a whisper. ‘I’m not being blackmailed. You—you’re mad. You’re mad!’ She backed towards the door and then stood with both arms stretched out in supplication. ‘Can’t you see how important it is to me? While to you it can’t matter at all. Where are they?’

  ‘Joanna,’ Mannering said quietly, ‘if you tell me the whole story and I really believe that you should have the paintings, I’ll see that you get them.’

  ‘I—I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Then you can’t have them. What were they doing at Eliza Doze’s cottage, anyhow?’

  Joanna didn’t answer, but stood there, tears misting her eyes. Slowly she dropped her arms to her side and turned away. Each movement was so slow, so deliberate, that Mannering suspected she hoped at the last moment he would relent. She opened the door – which he had locked and bolted – and went out slowly.

  Mannering did not move.

  The door closed with a faint click. He watched the handle, still gripped from the further side. The temptation to go and open the door, to start reasoning with her again, was almost overwhelming, but he stayed where he was.

  Would she, herself, open the door and make a fresh appeal?

  The handle turned, then went still. There was no sound of movement at all, but he could imagine her going very slowly along the passage towards her room, head bowed, shoulders drooping. Was she as distressed and troubled as she seemed? Or was there some degree of duplicity, of pretence? He couldn’t be sure. He wanted to believe in her, but could not entirely do so.

  Should he go after her?

  ‘Nonsense!’ he exclaimed aloud, and then glanced up at the bolt of the door and at the key. How had she come in? Had it been a comparatively simple matter of forcing a lock he could have understood—but who had the skill and dexterity to force a bolt from the outside?

  His lips twisted wryly.

  He had.

  There were far-off days when he had been the Baron, jewel-thief and cracksman extraord
inary, a Robin Hood and Raffles of a man. Then, with special tools and after great practice, he could have eased a bolt open, but not without leaving some sign that he had done so. He got out of bed and stepped across to the door, examining it closely. There were no scratches, no fresh marks of any kind.

  With infinite care he eased the key out of the lock. It was an old-fashioned one, and the end could be gripped by a special shaped pair of pliers – but these would leave scratch marks at the top. There were none.

  There were only two possibilities: one, that Joanna had been hiding in the room, and had unlocked and unbolted the door before waking him; two, and this was much more likely, that there was another, secret, way of entrance. He began to look around. The panelled walls were hung with tapestries, and one of these might well conceal …

  A high-pitched scream pierced the silence of the house. Mannering sprang instinctively to the door, hand outstretched, but suddenly drew back. Was this a trick? Was this Joanna’s way of carrying out her threat?

  Be damned to that!

  He pulled open the door as another scream, loud and frightening, echoed through the hall and along the landing. A dim light glowed at the head of the stairs and in the hall itself. Mannering reached the landing as Colonel Cunliffe appeared.

  Joanna, down below, cried: ‘No, no!’

  A door slammed.

  ‘What is it?’ gasped Cunliffe.

  Mannering rushed past him and down the stairs. There was a sobbing from somewhere out of sight, and as he reached the hall he saw Joanna. She was crouched on the floor, her body rocking to and fro, and if there were doubts of the genuineness of her mood before, there could be none now.

  Scattered round about her were the fallen locks and strands of her dark hair.

  Someone had hacked at it, as if with shears, so that pale gaps showed close to the scalp. There were patches which stood wildly on end, while others, still long, drooped over her hands.

  Mannering raced towards the front door as Cunliffe ran to his daughter. The bolts and chains which the old servant had secured were now out of position. Mannering pulled the door open, and stared into the night. There was no moon; only the stars had brightness, but they gave little light down here.

  Somewhere, a long way off, he thought he heard footsteps, but they stopped suddenly and then, sharp and clear, came the staccato noise of a motor-cycle engine, uneven at first, then purring into coherence as the machine gathered speed. There would be no chance at all of catching up with the rider.

  Mannering turned to Joanna and her father.

  Cunliffe was on one knee by the girl’s side, in attempted comfort, but Joanna was still sobbing in that degree of grief and shock untouched by sympathy. To and fro her body rocked, to and fro.

  ‘Mannering,’ Cunliffe asked helplessly, ‘what shall I do? What the devil shall I do?’

  ‘Give her a sedative and get her back to bed,’ Mannering told him. ‘If you haven’t anything stronger than aspirin, then a stiff brandy.’

  ‘Er—Violet has some tablets.’

  ‘Can we send for them?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cunliffe muttered. ‘Yes.’ He looked up as two men appeared – one of them Anstiss, the other the old butler. ‘Anstiss, hurry over to Lady Markly and ask her if she will give you some of her sedative tablets. Hurry man! Don’t just stand there.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Anstiss hoarsely.

  ‘What happened?’ asked the old man, huskily. ‘Is—is Miss Joanna all right, sir?’

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ muttered Cunliffe. He straightened up, grunting. ‘She—she doesn’t seem to hear me.’

  ‘Let me carry her,’ Mannering offered.

  He bent over the girl, put one arm behind her knees, another round her shoulders and lifted her; she was heavier than he had expected, a dead weight, without buoyancy.

  ‘This way, sir,’ the old man said.

  Mannering carried Joanna up the stairs and along a secondary passage, into a room on the right, Cunliffe following him. A bedside light was on, showing a pleasant room with wide, chintz-curtained windows. The bed had been turned down but not slept in that night. Mannering, breathing heavily, placed the girl down carefully. She was pale, and cold, and very still. A heavy lock of hair had been cut off above the forehead, and a scratch was bleeding slightly. That was the only sign of injury.

  Mannering turned to Cunliffe. ‘I think you ought to call a doctor,’ he said abruptly. He did not like the girl’s pallor or rigidity, and this shock on top of her emotional exhaustion might have grave consequences.

  If he had only run at the sound of the first scream.

  Nonsense, he told himself, I couldn’t have prevented it; I didn’t lose five seconds.

  He had a sense of uneasiness all the same, almost of guilt. If he had gone to see what the girl had done, instead of worrying about how she had got into his room, he might have saved her from this terrifying experience.

  Cunliffe was speaking into a telephone on the other side of the bed.

  ‘Yes … Ask him to come at once, please … Thank you.’ He rang off.

  She left my room and took her time going down the stairs, Mannering was thinking. Her attacker must have been waiting out of sight, but she kept free long enough to scream. It was the kind of viciousness he would have expected from Lobb, but why should he – why should anyone – do such a thing as this?

  Cunliffe stood on the far side of the bed, looking down on his daughter. He raised his hands, then let them fall heavily by his side. The old butler, heavily buttressed in a plaid dressing-gown several sizes too big for him, brought in a silver tray, with brandy and three glasses. He glanced at Joanna.

  ‘Did you see anything, Middleton?’ asked Cunliffe.’

  ‘Nothing at all, sir, nothing.’ The butler put the tray down. ‘Who would do such a thing to Miss Joanna?’ There were tears in his eyes and his voice was unsteady. ‘Is there anything more I can do, sir?’

  ‘No—you go back to bed,’ Cunliffe said, and glanced at a clock by the telephone. ‘Half-past three.’ He spoke resignedly, as he poured out a drink. ‘Brandy, Mannering?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Think we ought to give Joanna …?’

  ‘I’d leave it to the doctor,’ advised Mannering.

  He waited until he heard Violet Markly’s voice in the hall, and then went out. Anstiss was telling her, in shocked tones, what had happened. He gave Mannering a single half-scared, half-pleading look.

  ‘I’ll be in my room if I’m wanted,’ Mannering said.

  He went back to his room, sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the door. He felt very tired; reaction from his own ordeal and from this second shock was setting in. Perhaps he should have had that brandy. He leaned back against the head of the bed, picturing Joanna in her anger and her fear. She had looked so beautiful, not least because of her lovely hair. He began to doze, and slowly the image faded. His head slid heavily down the bed panel, but he was too uncomfortable to go soundly to sleep.

  He mustn’t go to sleep; he must find out how Joanna had entered the room. He made himself get up, then went to the bathroom and splashed his face and hands with ice-cold water. Feeling better, he began to examine the walls. It seemed evident that there was a concealed door here – uncommon in Georgian houses but not unknown. Methodically he tapped the wall, moving the tapestries and the lighter pieces of furniture, but found nothing.

  The ceiling had three big beams; it seemed solid enough.

  He began to examine the floor. This would prove the longest task; he had to go down on his knees and check each board, especially those which had cracks or a join in them. If Joanna had come in through the floor, then a section presumably opened upwards; he took his penknife from the dressing-table, opened it at a skeleton-key blade and hooked board after board. It wa
s a waste of time, of course; the girl must have been hiding under the bed, after all.

  A board moved slightly; and creaked.

  He pulled again, his interest quickening, and it came up far enough for him to get his fingers underneath. It-was fastened to an adjoining board, a section of which was hinged so that it was like a hatch cover. Very slowly and cautiously he opened it as far as it would go.

  Chapter Nine

  The Studio

  The opening was two feet or so across one way and about eighteen inches the other. Below, it was pitch dark. Mannering moved across to the wardrobe, took a pencil torch out of his jacket pocket and came back. The light showed the outline of a narrow ladder, leading down out of sight. Mannering began to climb down the ladder, finding the glow of light from his bedroom less necessary as he became accustomed to the gloom. The ladder was firm, fastened to the wall of a cavity similar, though smaller, to a lift shaft. At each step he tested the rung cautiously, and when he had come down fifteen rungs, he touched ground.

  Standing in near darkness, he shone the torch about him. Three walls were blank; the fourth had the outline of a narrow door. There was no handle, merely a recessed hole large enough for two fingers. He put his fingers into this and pulled.

  The door yielded. Very slowly, he opened it. Darkness lay beyond, and stillness and silence – and the smell of oil paint. He shone the torch again, and the light fell upon an easel, a half-finished painting propped against a wall, a palette and a table Uttered with a mess of tubes of paint, mostly squeezed until they were half empty. Mannering shone the torch on to the other walls, and saw a light switch against a door on the right of the one through which he had entered.

  He went across and pressed it down.

  A fluorescent light flickered and then came on, almost as bright as day. It shone on a long, narrow room stacked with frames and parts of frames. A woodworker’s bench carried a fair variety of tools, another bench was laden with tubes of paint, canvas and hardboard. Round the walls were modern paintings, attractive in their way but showing no great skill – and in one corner was an excellent copy of an early portrait by Franz Hals.