by Thomas Swan
A number of checks were payable to Gillian MacCaffrey, and each one prompted Oxby’s curiosity. The first was for fifty pounds, the second for twenty. Oxby had not taken special note of the checks until, in the third folder, he found four checks made payable to the same Gillian MacCaffrey in larger amounts: two hundred, and one hundred fifty pounds. Oxby studied the most recent statement, which had not yet been closed out and which held the canceled checks that would have accompanied the statement. Sixteen in all. One check for three hundred pounds, made payable to Gillian MacCaffrey, had been endorsed with a signature stamp that included an address. He copied the address onto his pad and put all the records back on the table just as Eustace returned.
“Find what you’re looking for?”
“Yes,” Oxby said brightly. “I’ve had a peek into Mr. Boggs’s life and see a twist or two.”
“That’s jolly fine,” Eustace said as he gathered the papers. “Anything more we can do?”
“Allow me to use the phone.”
“My pleasure. I’ll say goodbye.” He shook hands and was off.
Gillian MacCaffrey lived in Red Hill, one of the points of a triangle formed with Bletchingly and Dorking. The information operator intoned a number, and Oxby dialed it. A child answered, a little girl. Oxby asked for her mother, and after a moment a quiet voice came on the line.
“I’m dreadfully sorry about your father,” Oxby said with sincerity. He introduced himself and asked if he might meet with her for several minutes. Oxby waited for an answer, then said, “We want to be certain that if someone caused your father’s death we will be able to find that person.”
“He was killed, you know,” she responded.
“That may be so,” Oxby replied respectfully, and quickly added, “In an hour then? I’m just in Dorking and can find you in good order.”
Another brief silence, then she gave him directions.
Gillian MacCraffrey lived in the old part of town, where the homes were snuggled close together, each with a patch of ground in front and one in back. End-of-the-season flowers dotted some patches; in others the vegetable plants had been turned into the soil.
Gillian answered the door. She was dressed in a dark-blue pantsuit and looked too warm in it. Oxby judged her to be in her mid-thirties and losing her youth and prettiness to unkind vicissitudes. The door was pushed open wide by a towheaded little girl whose eyes gleamed with grit and curiosity. Oxby asked if she had been the one who answered the phone when he called.
She nodded vigorously and said her name was Meghan.
“Are you going to help my mother?” she asked in the no-nonsense way of children.
“I’m going to try, Meghan.”
“Come in, please,” Gillian said and led the way to a small, simply furnished living room. “Be a dear, Meghan, and put some water on to boil.”
Meghan smiled at Oxby and went off with a touch of importance in her stride.
“You said on the telephone that you thought your father had been murdered.”
“He wasn’t the kind to commit suicide. Never in a million years.”
“I’m not suggesting that he did, but the times and circumstances change, and often people change, too. The ones least likely to hurt themselves are suddenly vulnerable. What kind of changes did you see in your father in the past year?”
Gillian patted her neck and the sides of her face with a handkerchief. “None that would make him take his own life,” she said resolutely.
“Your father was having financial problems, and I believe that you’ve had your share of those problems, too.” He shifted around in the chair to face her directly. “Please don’t be embarrased by my questions, but I must know if what I have just said is true.”
Gillian turned he eyes away from Oxby, then down to her hands that pulled and twisted the handkerchief. “We’ve had terrible money problems. My father began gambling a few years ago.”
“Was he wagering heavily?”
“My father had never made a bet in his entire life, but once he began he couldn’t stop. He had saved a fair amount, I believe. But what he had, he lost. Every penny of it.”
Oxby remained silent.
“We were doing all right, me and my husband Bob, that is. Bob and his partner bought a plastics company three years ago. The partner handled the books and the finances, and Bob ran the factory. The partner was an old friend, at least we thought he was. He had been stealing money all along, and when Bob found out it was too late. The partner skipped out, leaving Bob owing everybody and with no credit.”
“Your father helped?”
“It was a loan. I kept track of every check. He wanted to send more, and it’s why he kept betting, he said. He was going to win a basketful. Always a basketful.” She shook her head and burst into tears. Then she wiped the tears as Meghan came back into the room and stood by her mother.
“Shall I fix the tea?” she asked very properly.
“Perhaps Mr. Oxby would prefer coffee,” Gillian said.
“No, tea,” Oxby said emphatically. “And I hope Meghan will make it for me. I like it strong—with sugar.”
Meghan beamed and ran back to the kitchen.
Oxby smiled and watched the little girl go off. “Can you describe your relationship with your father?”
“We were very close and for a long time,” Gillian said wistfully. “Even more after mother died.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Tuesday evening. That was his night to have dinner with us.”
“Was he in good spirts when he arrived?”
“In fact, he wasn’t. One of those tours had been in the gallery that morning and was very slow. He argued with the tour director who stopped in front of every painting and gave a lecture, which my father said was just to make her sound like she knew something. He’d had run-ins with her before.”
“That was the Danish group,” Oxby suggested.
“He didn’t say what group it was, just that the director was difficult. There was a photographer taking pictures, and then my father became upset because a man and a woman fell back from the rest of the group. That sort of thing could make him angry.”
“There are always laggards,” Oxby said. “They take notes and put them with all the other notes they never look at again. What else did he say about them?”
“He said that the woman carried one of those large tote bags over her shoulder and that he was afraid they might put something in it.”
“And did she?” Oxby asked.
“Not this time. But father knew that people stole from each other. Fold-up umbrellas or a camera when someone was careless. He thought it strange that this woman strayed away from the group.”
“What else did he say about her?” He waited a moment, then added, “Describe her, perhaps?”
“He said she was tall and pretty, and at one time she asked him about one of the paintings.”
“Did he say where they were in the gallery when this happened?”
“It was near the end of the tour, but I’m guessing. He was trying to speed them along and wanted the stragglers to catch up with the others. He was always worried that someone might steal the Rodin statue. It isn’t very large, but it’s extremely valuable.”
“So this happened where the Rodin is displayed?”
“I can’t say where, but that might be what he meant.”
Oxby studied his notes. “Do you mind going over everything one more time? The smallest detail can be very important, and perhaps you’ll remember one or two.”
Meghan came from the kitchen, proudly holding a tray on which was a cup of tea and a dish piled high with sugar cubes.
“Well now, that’s handsome,” Oxby said, taking the cup and stirring in four cubes of sugar. “I do like it sweet,” he said pleasantly, and for that moment Meghan forgot her sadness.
Gillian closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and retold the events of the previous Tuesday when her father had come by for his weekly dinner. O
xby let her talk without interruption, sipping his tea, making an occasional note. When she concluded, Oxby asked her to sort through her memory a final time and see if she could remember any other comment her father had made. A silence of two minutes was interrupted when Gillian said softly, “He said that he wasn’t gambling. That it was over.”
Oxby asked one last question. “How did he seem when he left ... depressed...good spirits?”
Gillian’s response was immediate. “As he was leaving I felt that he was quite himself. My father was the kind who would brood and be angry, then after he got it all out, he would be fine. He wasn’t one to hold things in; it’s why he liked being here with his family.” Then she looked up at Oxby and fresh tears appeared.
“Why did someone kill my father?”
“I can’t tell you. But I promise to have an answer soon.” He stood, started to leave, then stopped and looked back at Gillian. Her arm was around Meghan, holding her tightly.
“Please look over your father’s papers and any mail that has been sent to him in the past few days. Call me if you find anything you feel I should know about.” He handed her his card.
Before letting himself out Oxby bent down to the little girl who was still nestled against her mother. “Thank you for the tea, Meghan. It’s the best I’ve ever had.”
Chapter 10
Rain and heavy winds slowed air traffic into the Nice airport. After an hour delay the plane landed, and Peder Aukrust made his way through a terminal clogged with weekend travelers and bought a local newspaper. After a crowded ride on a shuttle bus to an extended-time parking lot, he faced a hundred-yard run through a cold rain to reach his car, an eleven-year-old Peugeot station wagon, which refused to start immediately. When it finally did, he allowed the car to run until the engine was dry and the car was warm. As he waited he leafed through the newspaper, amused by an article in which the director of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux had issued a warning to all museums in the country to tighten security; that a dangerous, possibly deranged fiend was loose; that three of Cézanne’s portraits had been viciously destroyed.
Aukrust paid for four days of parking and drove out to the A8 and west on the wide autostrade to Cannes. In spite of the storm he reached the turnoff into the city in less than twenty minutes. At the sign to the beaches and main shopping district, he turned onto Rue Faure. Three blocks further on, he stopped in front of a shop identified by a new sign over a single, large window that read: ARTISTS SUPPLIES—FRAMING.
There were two locks in the door, and he put a key in one and inserted a plastic card in the other. The door opened into the darkened shop. Three feet along the wall was a panel with three rows of buttons. A red light glowed, signifying the alarm system was still armed. After, he pushed the buttons in proper sequence the red light went off and a green flashed. He pushed more buttons and ceiling lights came on. Paintings, drawings, and artist’s supplies filled display cases and shelves. Along one wall were scenes of Provence, some of reasonable quality, most the work of amateurs. A display of sample frames occupied space against the wall to the left of the entrance; contained in it were perhaps a hundred different styles, materials, sizes, and colors.
Behind the counter was a door of unusual complexity. It was eight feet high and four feet wide and made of two-inch-thick wood covered by a steel plate on the inside. The frame was made of heavy-gauge steel. There was a lock above and one below a door handle set nearly six feet from the floor. A third lock was at the top of the door. Aukrust unlocked all of the locks then pushed the door open. Beyond the door was another room, nearly square and somewhat smaller than the outer space in the shop. In the middle of the room was a table the size of a billiard, covered with a tightly woven carpeting material. The table was used for cutting, then beveling the glass used in picture frames. The flat surface was also used for the repair and assembly of picture frames. To the side of the table was a rack filled with sheets of glass, and beside it a wooden box that contained scraps and odd pieces of glass.
Cabinets from floor to ceiling lined one entire wall. Aukrust opened the doors to one section and put away his medicine case. One of the deep and wide shelves held a variety of bottles and jars in every size and shape; on two adjacent shelves were racks of test tubes, reagent bottles, beakers, an etna, a distiller, a chemist’s scale, assorted jars and stainless steel tools, a centrifuge and a quantity of laboratory instruments. Other shelves contained the fixtures and accoutrements of a pharmacist’s shop. One of the cabinets held several dozen homeopathic remedies.
Against the rear wall was an old vault that a previous tenant had installed. It was huge piece of steel and lead, and one marveled that it had been possible to move it at all. In spite of its size and weight, it was more useful as a fireproof storage vault than a safe for valuables. Aukrust turned the huge dial forward and back, then opened the door and took out a small, flat package. He removed the paper to reveal a painting that measured a mere seven by ten inches.
He turned it over and inspected the precise stapling of the canvas to the new wood stretchers he had made. Then he set it on the table and surrounded it with four lengths of framing stock that had been mitred and cut to size. Tomorrow he would finish remounting the painting. For now he was content to lightly touch the paint and inspect the minor details of the canvas. He had cleaned the little painting; perhaps it had been the only time in the painting’s one-hundred-year history that it had been cleaned. It was the portrait of a young girl, one with fat, full cheeks and cupid’s bow lips. Behind her flowing blonde hair were white and pink carnations.
The painting was by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Chapter 11
Margueritte DeVilleurs had grown tired of wearing the mourning band, and as she dressed for the day she took the piece of black cloth from her dressing table and ceremoniously dropped it into the wastebasket. Not a soul was counting the days since her husband Gaston DeVilleurs failed to wake up on his seventy-fourth birthday. On this day of liberation Margueritte selected a brightly colored dress, one she had purchased in Monaco the week before. In her younger years she had been pretty, and, though her well-groomed hair was now gray and her waistline a touch heavier, she was still described as dignified and very handsome. She was seventy and moved on a tennis court or a dance floor with surprising grace.
A strong brew of coffee sent an aroma from the kitchen. Emily, companion and housekeeper, had put the day in motion. Though Emily was younger than Margueritte, time had treated her unkindly, and it showed on the working woman who had barely tolerated Gaston but was passionately devoted to Margueritte. In a home without children, Emily had become family.
The DeVilleurs home was perched on a bluff on Cap d’Antibes overlooking the Mediterranean, with a view of Nice and the Maritime Alps behind it. Gaston had loved Nice, Margueritte despised it; an irritation that had helped divide their marriage. Margueritte was born in Salon-de-Provence, midway between Aix-en-Provence and Arles. Her father traced his roots to Lucca, Italy, where his ancestors had built an olive-oil factory in 1757. Then, a hundred years later, a member of the family traveled to Lourdes with a crippled son, subsequently returned with the rest of his family, settled in the Provence, and developed new olive-tree groves and, not long after, a factory to produce great quantities of olive oil.
The company prospered over the years and by the end of World War II was a prominent worldwide marketer of fine quality olive oil. Margueritte inherited the business, and Gaston had been installed as managing director. Over the next forty years he successfully masterminded the inexorable decline of the prestigious company while simultaneously siphoning off assets to build his own net worth. Bad advice from a lawyer named Frédéric Weisbord coupled with disastrous losses in the stock market had pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy. In spite of the down-spiraling of the company’s fortunes, however, Weisbord had managed to cling to the role of family adviser and legal counselor.
Margueritte continued to wear sable, not told that t
he DeVilleurs’s wealth was disappearing until Weisbord announced the bad news at the end of July; and in mid-August the decision to sell the company was made. To everyone’s surprise, a buyer stepped forward and the transaction completed early in September. Only after the papers were signed did it dawn on Margueritte that the lawyer had been planning to sell the company all along, that the buyer who had miraculously stepped forward had in fact been patiently waiting for Weisbord’s call.
After the sale of the company, Margueritte discovered the true despair of her financial position. The proceeds yielded only enough money to liquidate Gaston’s debts and buy a thousand shares of stock in the newly organized company that had bought her family’s business. She owned the Antibes home, furs and jewelry, and several acres of land in the country outside of Salon. It had been a wedding present from her father, and in spite of Gaston’s incessant importuning, she never transferred title. The Antibes home would bring a handsome price, but it was heavily mortgaged, another unwanted surprise from Gaston.
Then there were the paintings. If Gaston had been inept at all else, he had shown a deep affection for fine art. He and Margueritte had put their incompatibility aside and over the years bought and sold until they had assembled a small, valuable collection. Margueritte became a shrewd trader, and in the end the DeVilleurs collection consisted of eleven paintings, the least valuable of which was a small yet perfectly lovely Renoir. There were two by Pissarro, one by Mary Cassatt, a Caillebotte, an early Picasso, a Corot, two by Sisley, and prized above all, two Cézannes. One was a country scene, the other, and the centerpiece of the collection, a self-portrait. Margueritte was attached to the country scene depicting a farmhouse near Salon. It reminded her of a sweet childhood.
With the period of public grieving behind her, Margueritte looked forward to a visit from the new owner of a small framing shop situated in Cannes. Margueritte grudgingly shopped in Cannes, and a month earlier had met a tall Norwegian in one of the food shops. Both were inspecting a supply of oranges shipped in from Africa, and he had helped her put her groceries in the car. She had been charmed by his accent and his bearlike bigness and pleased when he introduced himself and invited her to see his shop. She found him kind and knowledgeable and, at the same time, felt that he was sexually intimidating. And that excited her. After several more visits to his shop, she decided to entrust him with an important assignment. She removed her precious Renoir from its frame and gave the canvas to the owner of the shop. She asked him to carefully clean the painting and prepare a new frame.
