The Missing Old Masters

by John Creasey

  The room was, roughly, the same size as the north gallery, and Mannering guessed that it ran beneath it. Over in the far corner was a spiral staircase, the steps of wood, the balusters of beautifully worked wrought-iron. That must lead up to the gallery. Mannering took another swift look round, then switched off the light and went back to the door leading to the ladder. If Cunliffe or anyone else had come to his room during his absence, they would realise he had found the secret entrance to the studio.

  He climbed back without difficulty, lowered the hatch and placed a heavy chair over it; now no one else could take him by surprise. Then he went across to the bed and lay down at full length; the relaxing of his body was exquisite relief.

  Who was the artist?

  Or rather – who were the artists? For judging by the difference in style and methods of work, there had been more than one painter in that studio. Was Lobb one of them? How could such a man obtain facilities to paint at Nether Manor? Did Cunliffe know about it? It was useless to speculate, and yet Mannering found himself doing so. Restlessly he got off the bed and went out on to the landing. There was no one about, but the main lights were still on, and from somewhere he heard voices. Joanna’s room? He approached the closed door, and through it recognised the voice of Lady Markly.

  ‘Just absolute quiet, then.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Markly—and if she doesn’t show any improvement when she comes round, I think she should be put under observation at the Infirmary.’ The doctor had a high-pitched voice, giving Mannering the impression of a fussy man. ‘I’ll telephone after surgery in the morning—and in the meantime, should you feel there’s the slightest need, please send for me.’

  Mannering moved away as the voice drew nearer. The door opened and Cunliffe came out, followed by a middle-aged man with a very high forehead and pebble-lens glasses. There were signs in his apparel that he had been summoned hastily, and from bed.

  ‘Goodnight, goodnight.’

  ‘I’ll come down …’ Cunliffe began.

  ‘No need. No need at all.’ The doctor quickened his pace towards the head of the stairs. Cunliffe looked too tired to exert himself and Mannering went forward.

  ‘Shall I look up?’

  ‘Oh, if you will—if you will,’ Cunliffe said gratefully. ‘Dr. Ignatzi—Mr. Mannering.’

  Mannering nodded, and Dr. Ignatzi peered at him shortsightedly. There was room for them to walk down the stairs side by side, and as they reached the foot the doctor asked abruptly: ‘Are you a friend of the family?’

  ‘An acquaintance.’

  ‘I see. Will you be here long?’

  ‘Probably for a few days.’

  ‘It would help—I am sure it would be advisable—if Colonel Cunliffe could be persuaded to rest, to take some form of tranquilliser in fact. He is living on his nerves. No doubt you’ve noticed that.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that he’s very edgy, yes.’

  ‘“Edgy” is not perhaps a professional description, but it fits the case.’ They were at the door and Mannering opened it. ‘Mr. Mannering—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If, in your position of—er—acquaintance and ob server, you should deem it advisable that Joanna should be moved at any time, please tell me. My own feeling—’ Dr. Ignatzi hesitated, then looked Mannering straight in the eyes, his own enormously magnified by the thick lenses. ‘My own feeling,’ he repeated, ‘is that she would be far better off away from the Manor for a while.’ They stepped on to the porch. ‘Forgive my talking in this way, Mr. Mannering, but I am troubled by both father and daughter.’

  ‘How long has Joanna’s condition worried you?’ asked Mannering.

  ‘For nearly a year,’ answered Dr. Ignatzi. ‘Now the sister is of a very different temperament; perhaps that is what enabled her to cut the home ties and go and live in London. Mr. Mannering, I beg you to call on me if you think there is the slightest need.’

  ‘Certainly I will.’

  ‘Very good of you,’ said Dr. Ignatzi. ‘Thank you. Goodnight.’ He nodded jerkily and stepped to his car, drawn up outside the porch.

  Mannering waited until he was halfway down the drive, then turned back. He shivered, partly with cold, partly with reaction from the night’s events. The act of locking and bolting the door reminded him vividly of Joanna’s desperate pleading for those pictures.

  Had she really been in such distress for a whole year?

  He turned towards the stairs and was halfway up them when Lady Markly appeared from Joanna’s room. Her face looked pale and strained.

  ‘How is she?’ asked Mannering.

  Lady Markly frowned. ‘I don’t know. She’s under sedation, of course—all the same, I think I’ll sleep in the next-door room just in case she wakes.’ She paused, her hand on the door handle. Suddenly she swung round.

  ‘Mr. Mannering, I—’ She broke off.

  ‘Yes, Lady Markly?’ What was she going to tell him, Mannering wondered; from her tone of voice it sounded as if it might be something important.

  ‘It—it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ Mannering began encouragingly, ‘then please—’

  She interrupted him. ‘No, there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Goodnight, Mr. Mannering.’

  Without another word, she disappeared into the room next to Joanna’s, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Mannering stirred to bright daylight and a shaft of sunlight striking the wall opposite his bed. For a few moments he lay between sleeping and waking, but gradually the incidents of the previous day formed clear images in his mind. He began, drowsily, to catalogue them.

  The man Jenkins, with his story of the old masters at Eliza Doze’s cottage and Larraby’s statement that Jenkins was an ex-convict. What was the wife’s name, the woman left in charge of The Kettle? Doris? No. Nora? No. Ah, Dora.

  Beverley Willis, with his knowledge of the Cunliffes and his obvious affection for Joanna’s sister; Mannering made a mental note that it might be worth talking to Willis, even worth bringing him down to Nether Manor.

  The amiable taxi driver with a conscience.

  The cottage; frightened Betsy Doze; vicious Harry Anstiss. Mannering could almost see the half-rolled paintings falling from the attic; see Anstiss bound hand and foot; see Joanna, pleading for his release.

  Joanna …

  Joanna, whose motives for wanting the paintings, he had doubted and still had cause to doubt. Joanna, raving like a shrew, trying to frighten him, pleading with him and with her father. Joanna, crouching on the floor with her lovely hair shorn.

  Mannering felt the stirring of anger, and reminded himself that it would be easy to take it for granted that Lobb had used those shears.

  Joanna, motionless and pale, looking as if she were in a coma.

  Cunliffe, putting on a brave act at first, pretending all was well though he was obviously deeply troubled.

  Lobb.

  Anstiss.

  Violet Markly. What had she been going to tell him the previous night, and what had made her change her mind so suddenly?

  He remembered her as she had disappeared into the room next to Joanna’s; remembered the firm, almost defiant, click of the door.

  What was the time now? He lifted his wrist-watch from the bedside table and saw that it was nearly half-past nine. He rang, and within a few minutes a maid arrived with tea.

  ‘Breakfast will be at ten o’clock, sir, but if you would rather have it in your room—?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Mannering, ‘I’ll come down.’

  The tea was hot and strong; he did not linger over it, and was shaved, bathed and dressed in twenty minutes, and downstairs at five to ten. Middleton, the butler, was hovering discreetly in the breakfast-room.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’


  ‘Have the others been down?’ asked Mannering.

  ‘The Colonel has, sir. He is now out riding.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mannering sat in the chair Middleton pulled out for him, and was soon tucking into bacon and eggs and coffee as good as anything he had tasted. No one joined him, and twenty minutes later he left the breakfast-room and was walking across the hallway and towards the front door as a red Post Office van sped along the drive; a small man with a remarkably pointed nose delivered both the post and the newspapers – Times, Telegraph and Express. Mannering glanced through the headlines before walking briskly in the direction of the hut to which he had been taken by Lobb and Anstiss the previous night. Today the scene was pleasant and reassuring. The hut door was wide open; close by, a man with a scythe was cutting the long grass, using the instrument with slow, sweeping movements which told of expert knowledge and experience. A long way off, Mannering could see a man on horseback, galloping across parkland.

  Hearing someone approaching from behind, he turned, and saw that it was Violet Markly.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Mannering.’

  ‘Good morning. How is Joanna?’

  ‘She hasn’t stirred,’ answered Lady Markly. ‘Poor child, it was such a shock. Mr. Mannering—what did Dr. Ignatzi say to you last night?’

  So she wasn’t unobservant, Mannering noted.

  ‘He asked me to give you and your brother any help I could.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What else would you expect?’ Mannering asked.

  ‘I know he takes a serious view of the anxieties here,’ said Lady Markly, ‘and Joanna—’

  Mannering interrupted her. ‘What anxieties?’ he asked sharply.

  Lady Markly hesitated before replying.

  ‘Joanna—Joanna misses her mother very much,’ she said at last, ‘and my brother has never really recovered from the shock of her death. I’m going back to the cottage, Mr. Mannering,’ she added, with obvious relief at this change of subject. ‘I’ve arranged for Betsy Doze to stay with Joanna and to tell me the moment she comes round.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Mannering said.

  Suddenly, he was anxious to get away from this woman. While she was at the cottage and Cunliffe was out riding there would be ample opportunity to look into the studio again. Returning to the house, he went quickly up the stairs, but the door leading to the north gallery was locked, and it would be showing his hand too obviously to force it. Going to his own room, he found the bed made and everything dusted – and the heavy chair back near the wall, where it belonged. He locked and bolted the door, then reopened the hole in the floor. He listened intently but heard nothing.

  But he smelt something – burning.

  Burning?

  Suddenly tense with alarm, he climbed down the ladder; and now the smell became stronger. There was no sound, no feeling of a hostile presence to warn him, only the thickening air. Nearing the door to the studio he opened it slowly, cautiously, aware of the danger of a sudden draught, horribly alive to the terrible memory of the burning cottage.

  Over in the far corner, near the paint store, the canvases and the hardboard, a pile of rags was smouldering, a little patch of flame dancing about them. Near the rags was a plastic bag which looked as if it were filled with water.

  Water? Mannering realised in a flash that it could be petrol. If it were, and if it exploded, then the whole place would be alight.

  Chapter Ten

  The Danger

  The innocent-looking plastic bag was twenty feet away from Mannering, but within inches of the smouldering rags. If the flames leapt suddenly they might well touch it.

  He remembered the explosive sounds in the cottage – just such sounds as would be made if this bag did burst and it did contain petrol.

  As these thoughts were sweeping through his mind he was moving swiftly but steadily towards the bench. A flame leapt two inches into the air. It was very hot. He could see only the liquid in the plastic bag, liquid which he now noted was slightly yellowed, lacking the clarity of clear water. Lifting a piece of hardboard with agonising slowness – any quick displacement of air might well fan the flames in the wrong direction – he placed it firmly between the rags and the plastic bag, and wedged it in position.

  His mouth was very dry.

  With another piece of hardboard he pushed the rags further away, close to the edge of the bench. Then he placed the board on top of them; that should smother the flames. The smell of burning was nauseatingly unpleasant.

  Keeping a hand in front of his face, he watched the plastic bag. Overheated by the flames, it might well explode at a touch; and though, with every moment, the risk of an explosion was lessening, he would be wise not to handle it for some time. He began to look about him and saw another, similar, bag in the corner where, on his last visit to the studio, he had seen the copy of the Franz Hals portrait.

  The portrait wasn’t there.

  The second bag was quite cool and he picked it up. This, too, was made of plastic, with a rubber band round the neck, rather like a toy balloon. He loosened this band carefully, smelling, as he did so, the faint but unmistakable fumes of petrol.

  He looked across at the other bag, beginning to take in the situation in more detail. Once the fire had taken a hold, this studio would have been wrecked, and so would the gallery above it. Even if the rest of the house had been saved, the whole of the north side of the Manor would have been burned out.

  Who would take such a risk, and – why?

  Why had Anstiss set fire to the attic at the cottage?

  Obviously, thought Mannering, to destroy something that he and Lobb were anxious that no one should discover; so, presumably, the same kind of ‘something’ was here in the studio. His heart began to beat faster. Search, and he would find.

  Just as he had taken it for granted that Lobb had cut off Joanna’s hair, so, now, he was taking it for granted that Anstiss had started this fire. It wasn’t absolutely certain, but it was highly probable.

  Why?

  What was there here which had to be destroyed?

  What had there been in the attic at the cottage?

  He began to search, looking behind every picture, on every shelf, moving everything so that he could be sure he overlooked nothing. Gradually he became absorbed in the task, so much so that he lost all count of time – all thought of danger, too.

  Suddenly he heard a sound from the top of the spiral staircase, and realised that someone was approaching the stairs from the gallery.

  He moved back cautiously, stepping behind an easel supporting a large canvas.

  The door leading from the gallery to the stairs opened, and a pair of highly polished riding-boots appeared, then a man’s legs, then the skirt of his jacket.

  It was Colonel Cunliffe.

  Cunliffe left the door open and clumped down the stairs quite briskly. He sniffed, looking about the studio without appearing to notice Mannering. The plastic bag, however, caught his eye, and he went straight over to it. His hand hovered; Mannering was tempted to shout: ‘Don’t touch it,’ but it was probably cool enough to be handled by now. Cunliffe was cautious, after all, and merely lifted the hardboard off the rags. Smoke billowed up, sending him back, gasping.

  ‘What the devil!’ he exclaimed.

  He stood staring at the rags, wrinkling his nose. Then he turned and stared at the paintings, running his hand over the back of his head. ‘Can’t understand it,’ he muttered. ‘Who would want to burn the place down?’

  Now he leaned over the plastic bag, sniffed, then backed away. Slowly he buried his face in his hands; at that moment he was remarkably like his daughter, giving the same impression of helplessness and hoplessness that she had given when crouched in grief at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Will it never end?’ h
e asked, despairingly. ‘Will it never end?’

  Presently he straightened up, and brushing the rags on to the hardboard, he carried them to the sink and ran water over the now all but dead embers. He stared at the tap as the water sprayed out, then washed and dried his hands with unthinking thoroughness. Mannering could see him very clearly, could not mistake the look of despair on his features.

  ‘Joanna,’ he said sadly. ‘Oh, Joanna.’

  He looked about the shelves and seemed to be making sure that there were no other smouldering rags. Then he turned and stared at the painted trifles.

  ‘Joanna,’ he repeated.

  At last he went up the stairs, his step that of an old and weary man. The gallery door closed. Cautiously Mannering moved from his hiding-place, the picture of Cunliffe’s despair vivid in his mind’s eye as he continued his search.

  He found nothing that could have the least significance.

  He went round once again and then stood where Cunliffe had stood, in front of the gay little modern paintings. For the first time he saw the initials J.C. in the bottom left-hand corner of each. These were the only finished paintings, the only things of any conceivable value here, and no one could possibly believe they were worth more than a few pounds, unless …

  He took one off the wall and carried it to the clear north light beneath the window. Any art student with the slightest flair could do as well or better. Fetching a small bottle of methylated spirits and a piece of clean rag, he dampened a spot on the rag and carefully rubbed a corner of the painting. The pale blue of the sky came off on to the rag almost immediately. He dampened another spot, and worked on the same corner again with even greater care.

  He did not get down to the canvas, for there was darker paint beneath the blue. He cleaned a slightly larger area and found traces of varnish, reddish-brown colour and a small speck of bright yellow, strangely reminiscent of the Franz Hals portrait he had seen on his earlier visit. He stopped, putting canvas and rag down, and studied the picture.