Over his apéritif that evening – this time reassuringly consumed among persons of the polite or quasi-polite class – a useful, if fragmentary, perception came to him. What had been the immediate occasion of Edwin’s suddenly breaking off their Italian holiday and insisting on returning to England? Considering this question earlier, he had taken the reason to have been simply the general upsettingness of Melissa’s turning up on them in that restaurant in Rome. But now he recalled that Edwin had said something very explicit as the taxi took them back to their hotel. He was going back to Hanwell Court, he had declared, in order ‘to clear things up there’. And he certainly hadn’t employed this phrase in the sense of ‘to tidy up’ – perhaps before quitting the place. He had been envisaging something much more significant than that. He had been intending to elucidate something. Just what, Honeybath now had to elucidate himself. So what had occurred at that meeting with Melissa that could have set Edwin’s mind in this direction? Suddenly Honeybath knew the answer. It had been Melissa’s announcement that Prout was now claiming to possess no less than three of those hypothetical lost early Lightfoots. That, somehow, had been too much for Edwin. It was this situation that he had said he was going to clear up. And ithad been at Hanwell Court that he proposed to do it. He had returned there. And within a very short space of days he was dead.
All in all – Honeybath told himself with a strange mingling of satisfaction, horror and dismay – things were looking bad for Ambrose Prout.
19
He paid a call on Prout. It was perhaps an odd way of distinguishing one whom he was beginning seriously to suspect of homicide, and at first he had favoured the alternative plan of going to see the exalted Adamson at the London Metropolitan Police Office instead. Honeybath knew enough about the organization of the constabulary in the British Isles to be aware that a certain improbability had attended the prompt turning up of such a person in the wilds of Berkshire so hard upon Edwin’s death. Adamson was almost part ofthe mystery – which was something dead against the canons of the roman policier affair now thickening around Charles Honeybath RA. And as Adamson certainly couldn’t be said to have taken Honeybath into his confidence, Honeybath hesitated, perhaps somewhat irrationally, before making any corresponding movement himself.
Quite aside from this, moreover, it was only fair that Edwin’s brother-in-law should be taxed (or at least tested) in a private manner before being denounced to the police. Honeybath felt this to be the civilized thing, even if the situation were to turn into an unusual one. After breakfast – he resolved as he prepared that simple meal for himself – he would go straight to Prout’s flat. If he arrived early enough, he would almost certainly find its owner in.
There can be no doubt that he was also hoping to find something else as well. The problem of Edwin’s lost paintings was still predominating in his mind even over the problem of Edwin’s death. Nothing could really be done about Edwin’s death, apart from giving Nemesis a nudge and setting her to work. He knew that ultimately there was going to be no more than a flawed satisfaction obtainable from that. He suspected that it would be more flawed under the present law of the land. It must have been very shocking to have been responsible for having a man hanged. But being aware of having sent to prison a man who was still there after twenty years would conceivably be worse.
About the pictures something could be done. If they existed (as he now believed them to do) they could be recovered from fraudulent hands, specious representations, perhaps clandestine or semi-clandestine sale. That would be a real service to Edwin’s memory.
More simply, Honeybath just longed to see more of Edwin’s work from the grand time. And it seemed probable that, if he was forceful enough, he could compel Prout to produce it. He didn’t now think out a plan of campaign in any detail. He would act as the spirit prompted when the moment came. Only he wouldn’t come away baffled. There had been quite enough of bafflement already in this affair.
Prout was a bachelor, and answered his own bell. He said, ‘Ah, Charles – good morning!’ in a commonplace way before immediately standing back to let Honeybath enter. He was wary but couldn’t have been called nervous. If he and Dr Michaelis were partners in crime, then it was he who would prove the tough one. He owned, for one thing, a dogged acquisitiveness, an immense cupidity. If he had possessed himself of certain objects worth a great deal of money, he would hold on to them with a grip as strong as a badger’s jaw.
‘I’ve seen Mrs Gutermann-Seuss,’ Honeybath said.
‘Capital! Do sit down, my dear Charles.’ Prout had perhaps drawn a long breath. ‘Can I make you some coffee?’
‘Thank you, no. She seems a very simple woman.’
‘She’s certainly not a very effective one. It was the first Gutermann-Seuss who was the swell, you know. Quite at the top of his tree. Do you know Verver’s The Spoils of Darius? A wonderfully revealing account of collector’s mania in the great age. And there’s an amusing account of Verver’s making a trip to Brighton to relieve Gutermann-Seuss the First of some Oriental tiles. Gutermann-Seuss the Second carried on successfully for a time – as his having done a little business with poor Edwin shows. But he took to drink and the business began to go to pot. Gutermann-Seuss the Third was wholly incompetent even when dead sober. His widow may be described as quite bright in comparison with him. Disreputable dealers – pure jackals – moved in, and cleared out for a song anything worth taking. Or so they thought. But they missed those Lightfoots.’
‘And you did not. You bought them? Or did you just offer to take them away?’
‘Of course I bought them – and for quite respectable sums. Would you care to see the receipts?’
‘No. But I’d like to see the pictures themselves, please.’
‘Ah.’
Honeybath waited. The monosyllable, he thought, had betrayed indecision. He rather expected Prout to say something like, ‘They’ve all gone to be cleaned’. But this didn’t happen.
‘You can see the zinnias,’ he said briefly. ‘It’s the only one here. Come this way.’
Honeybath followed Prout into another room. And there the picture was. It was quite small, a bunch of flowers in a Chinese pot. It stood perched against a pile of books on a table, and in rather a poor light. But there could be no doubt about it – none whatever. Honeybath was very much moved. He didn’t fail, however, to go close up to it at once and peer at the bottom left-hand corner. As always with Edwin, it was signed and meticulously dated. The date was right too.
Honeybath stood back a little, and took his time. It was an important moment. It would be fair to say, after all, that he probably had a surer instinct for Edwin’s work than anybody else in the world. He wasn’t looking at a forgery.
‘Very pretty,’ he said. ‘Are the others all as small as this? You could carry it away in a brief-case.’
‘Lord, no! You can call this the mere hors d’oeuvre, my dear Charles. The others are major compositions. You’ll see them one day.’
‘No doubt.’ Honeybath judged that there had been a faint impudence in this last throwaway remark. ‘There were major pictures by Edwin Lightfoot tucked out of sight among all the junk in that Brighton house? And you nosed them out?’
‘Just that. I was tremendously excited, as you can guess. Never such a moment there since the good Adam Verver of American City found his doubtless priceless tiles. It’s almost time for a drink.’
‘It’s nothing of the sort.’ Honeybath looked at the picture again, vaguely troubled. Had he ever seen it before? The mere history of his close relationship with Edwin suggested that this was possible. But could he have forgotten it? This was not possible – or so he told himself. Yet his memory had faintly stirred. ‘We’ll go back to your other room,’ he said abruptly, and turned away.
It was Honeybath who had a moment of indecision now. As well as having no doubt about the zinnias, he had no doubt about Mrs Gutermann-Seuss either. Neither this picture nor the others had ever reposed amid the forlor
n detritus of the arts over which she unregardingly presided in that dismal Brighton house. She could be forgotten about, or forgotten about unless and until some legal row blew up about the just proprietorship of the rediscovered pictures. When that happened it might all be mixed up with a sensational murder trial. And the grim business of Edwin’s death was now the next item on the carpet with Edwin’s scoundrelly brother-in-law.
But ought it to be? Honeybath was certain that he owned no impulse to funk a confrontation, even if it ended with Prout taking a swipe at his skull with a poker. But Prout, he had decided, was tough. A nut, in fact, harder to crack than most craniums would be. It was Michaelis who might be said to represent the soft underbelly of the mystery. Before Prout was alerted to any imminent danger, it would be good tactics to have a go at the Medical Superintendent at Hanwell Court.
That there was danger not far off, both men must surely know. It was likely that there existed constant communication between them. They could not possibly be in any doubt that, once the hanky-panky over the lost pictures was suspected and came under investigation, they would themselves be in the front line of suspects in the mind of anybody who believed Edwin’s death to have been a matter of foul play. So had they a strong sense, Honeybath wondered, that the tide was turning against them? Were they in constant fear that, in one way or another, they might slip up?
And there was another question about the pair. Had they planned Edwin’s death from the start? Looked at one way, their whole project could be thought to have required it. They were proposing to steal, and Prout was proposing to assert his legal ownership of, a number of paintings which Edwin had, for reasons hidden in the depth of his own strange personality, concealed and presumably cherished. How could they hope simply to make off with them without his becoming so much as aware of the fact?
There was an answer to this. Michaelis had the cocksureness about the inside of other people’s heads that was a kind of professional risk with persons of his kidney. Prout had for long harboured the notion that Edwin’s mind, and particularly his memory, were quite extravagantly in decay. Together they might have decided that they could so work things that their depredations might never transpire. Indeed, the simple psychological likelihood lay here. There was something excessive and unverisimilar in the notion of amateur sneak thieves planning deliberate murder from the start. They had killed Edwin as an emergency measure when he turned out to be much more alert than they had supposed. It was fatally that he had returned to Hanwell Court instantly upon the report that Prout hadcome into the possession of three early Lightfoots. Rapidly altering and augmenting their design, the thieves had promptly made away with him.
It was a situation more hazardous than they had bargained for. But although both were equally involved, it had been only Michaelis who had been thrown into patent panic. Yes, Michaelis was the weak spot. Michaelis was the man to go for now. Having come rapidly to this conclusion, Honeybath resolved to pick up a taxi the moment he quitted Prout’s flat, drive straight to Paddington, and make for Hanwell by the first available train. Prout would probably take a little time to ponder the significance of Honeybath’s visit before taking any action. It might even be possible to corner Michaelis before any contact between the conspirators had been made.
‘I’m delighted to have seen the zinnias,’ he said pacifically, ‘and I look forward to seeing the others. But they are no substitute – are they? – for Edwin himself, poor fellow.’ Honeybath felt bad as he thus endeavoured to administer a kind of Machiavellian bromide to the doubtless suspicious Prout. ‘Incidentally, Ambrose, what is your own idea about the manner of Edwin’s death? From time to time, you know, I really have a suspicion that foul play was involved. But it scarcely seems a rational notion – for what enemies could a man like Edwin have? I’d like your opinion. Was it plain misadventure, would you say – just a matter of a false step in the dark?’
‘It seems far the likeliest explanation.’ Prout paused – decidedly wary now. ‘Yet I sometimes doubt it too. Edwin, after all, had that thing about women. He had fits when he couldn’t resist them. You remember how he even had in tarts when he was living alone in Holland Park.’
‘Yes, I do remember that,’ Honeybath said – and wondered whether he had lured Prout into some rather stupid double bluff. ‘But I think that may just have been a matter of his feeling lonely, and having in a girl from the street to chat to. Scarcely a matter of a sexual urge at all. It does often happen, I believe.’
‘No doubt. But don’t forget, Charles, that it was a very rum place you landed him in.’
‘Hanwell?’
‘Yes, Hanwell. Half of the people clear nutters, including plenty of idle women. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Edwin had got tangled up with two or three of them, and that some crazy fit of jealousy did the rest.’
‘I see.’ Honeybath offered this thoughtfully and judiciously, although he thought it even more absurd than Melissa’s daft notion about Lady Munden. ‘We must leave it all to the police,’ he added vaguely, and got up to take his leave.
There was a taxi at the corner of the road. He hailed it, said ‘Paddington!’ to the driver, and jumped in. He doubted whether Prout had been deceived. But at least he was himself now vigorously on the move.
20
In the train a disconcerting reflection came to our investigator. When that letter had arrived in Rome from Prout announcing the discovery of Edwin’s zinnias Edwin had declared roundly that he had no memory of the thing, and had doubted whether he would recognize a zinnia if he saw it. But was this possible if the flower piece had been among those few undeclared canvasses that he had secretly cherished – or at least hidden away? Surely he must have taken a glance at them from time to time? It was hard not to suppose that his disavowal had been disingenuous; that he had quite pointlessly prevaricated. And this was unlike Edwin. He could be perverse and elusive, and he could happily spin you what were patent fantasies. But he didn’t tell lies. Brooding on this small explicability, Honeybath felt rather hurt in his mind.
It was a sultry day, and had followed a sequence of sultry days. As soon as he had got out of London (where there is never anything to speak of that can be called weather in the common sense) Honeybath was aware of approaching storm, of thunder in the air. He was even a little nervous about it, since he was setting out on this unpremeditated expedition without a raincoat or even an umbrella. The train was heading west, so only the engine driver had much of a view in that direction. It was probably distinctly louring.
Although Honeybath had left Paddington shortly after noon, he had been able to buy what was absurdly called an evening paper, and he took this unexacting reading matter along with him to the dining car when he decided that lunch on the train was preferable to a late refection once more at the bar of the Hanwell Arms. He consumed some soup, while simultaneously absorbing what the paper had to announce about the state of the nation. It wasn’t much. He turned a page, and found himself looking at Lady Munden.
Yes, here the ill-used lady was again – and again as represented by Edwin Lightfoot. This time she was presented straight, although in effective caricature; and at the bottom of the very indifferent reproduction it was just possible to read the words Soggy Sabrina. They rang a bell, and Honeybath was so startled by this singular bobbing up of the late Edwin Lightfoot’s censurable hobby that it was moments before he realized that Lady Munden was only one in a little picture gallery of Hanwell notabilities. Next to Lady Munden was Colonel Dacre, who was labelled Barmy Bang-bang; next to Colonel Dacre was Michaelis, who was Signor Cipolla; and last came Mr Brown, who was apparently Nasty Ned.
Feeling (as elderly people do) that no outrage was beyond the reach of the press, Honeybath looked for justification or enlightenment in the article below the reproductions. It was a fairly reasonable recapitulation of the circumstances of Edwin Lightfoot’s still recent demise, and it was more informative on the general conditions of life at Hanwell Court than concerned to s
peculate other than very circumspectly on exactly what had happened. That luxury accommodation for elderly gentlefolk was provided by the establishment in an impressively stylish way, and that a great deal that was mildly but expensively eccentric went on among them, were clearly the circumstances that had prompted somebody to the notion that Hanwell was good for a brisk and bright write-up. On how the drawings had come into the possession of the newspaper no information was supplied.
Through a mist of indignation, Honeybath penetrated to the fact that he knew. There had been reporters around remarkably soon after the discovery of Edwin’s body. And there had been that break-in, and that mysterious laugh. The laugh had come when the intruder’s eye had fallen, say, on Soggy Sabrina, and the scoundrel had got away with the drawings in his pocket. He must obviously have had an effective lie to tell about them when he sold his effort to an editor, since newspapers even of a rubbishing sort are chary of purchasing stolen goods. Apart from this, the thing was innocuous by the common standards of the day. Honeybath didn’t at all care for it, all the same. If, as he suspected, a letter from a solicitor should presently turn up with the news that Edwin had appointed him as his executor on the professional side of his estate, that paper – he told himself – would be booked for trouble. Indeed, it could probably become a police matter at once. There had been extraordinary hardihood, surely, in such an act of pilfering within hours of Edwin’s mysterious death.
Rather as if he were a demoniac figure taking the stage in grand opera, Honeybath descended from his railway carriage to the sound of great peals of distant thunder. He inquired hastily about return trains (since he wasn’t going to risk another night at the Hanwell Arms) and then got himself into a cab. Just how to tackle Michaelis was something on which he hadn’t made up his mind, and he realized that he had about ten minutes in which to do so now. This time, he didn’t think that improvisation would quite do. Michaelis, although a less resolute man than Prout, was also a much cleverer one. If he were to be led into any betrayal of wrongdoing, a plan of campaign was required. And in the first place he had to be seen clearly. He had fallen into some sort of panic at the time of Edwin’s death, but this didn’t mean that he might not be quite a dominating personality on his own ground. Had he dominated Edwin – a pliable man in some ways, although an obstinate man in others? Honeybath felt that he knew very little about their relationship, except that Michaelis had applied what might be called the theory of occupational therapy to Edwin. In fact he had badgered him into painting – perhaps when he didn’t feel in the least like it – simply to prevent his wandering round and being a nuisance. Or course, Edwin could be a nuisance. There had never been any doubt about that. The treatment had been extremely demeaning, all the same, and it was probable that Edwin hadn’t liked it a bit. Edwin had nicknamed Michaelis Signor Cipolla. Honeybath couldn’t place the reference, although he had an obscure sense that he ought to be able to do so. But it was unlikely that the original Cipolla was an amiable character.
Honeybath's Haven Page 15
