‘Can I help you?’ asked Gulliver, when he had prowled around for some time and finally come to rest in front of Shylock, knife raised, towering over a bare-chested, fainting Antonio with madly rolling eyes.
Patrick, the only customer in the gallery, put on his most urbane expression.
‘Do you do these yourself?’ he asked.
‘Most of them, yes,’ said Gulliver. ‘I can turn out Anne Hathaway’s cottage in less than an hour.’
Patrick inspected the work on his easel. It showed the young Shakespeare poaching at Charlecote.
‘They go quite fast when the season proper begins,’ said Gulliver. ‘It’s only just starting, you know.’
As if on cue, there came the sound of footsteps on the cobbles outside and the chirrup of feminine voices. In came a posse of some twenty or more American matrons; they flowed around the aisles and Patrick was swamped. Sure enough, they were eager purchasers, and soon Gulliver was busy exchanging his wares for travellers’ cheques. He wrapped the pictures in brown paper, fastening the corners with sticky tape. Patrick watched in fascination. Every tourist bought something – if not a painting, then a pottery medallion or a plaster bust of Shakespeare. Reinforcements arrived, in the shape of a female whom Patrick silently christened, however implausibly, Stella, to help with the parcelling. She was fifty-ish and plump, and wore a homespun dress, thereby adding to the cottage-industry atmosphere. Further copies of the church, and Clopton Bridge by moonlight, were obtained from the rear of the shop; there seemed to be an unending supply. Doubtless Gulliver spent the winter in his atelier, turning them out.
A blue-rinsed woman with the petite wrists and ankles common to so many Americans was enquiring for a picture of Othello suffocating Desdemona. Her schedule had not allowed her time to see the play, she said, so she wanted to take back a picture instead.
To fetch Othello, Stella had to visit her store behind the scenes; however, she reappeared quickly with the desired picture, ready wrapped. Patrick, ostensibly studying Lear depicted with leaves in his hair and wearing a goatskin, watched from the comer of his eye as the American woman shelled out dollars. The party, in twos and threes, began to drift off, declaring that their coach would be waiting. They were due at Shottery next.
Patrick, his eye taken by Miranda playing chess with Ferdinand, thought it would be an appropriate purchase because of the family link, so he bought it; when it had been wrapped he ambled out of the studio in the wake of the Americans.
They were piling out of their coach in the car-park when he arrived at Shottery soon afterwards. He watched them go up the road towards Anne Hathaway’s cottage; they carried their purses, but not their recent purchases, which were left in the coach. Patrick saw the driver lock the door.
The group would not be gone long, Patrick knew, for they must be due elsewhere – at Warwick Castle, perhaps, and to Blenheim for tea. He waited. Less than half an hour later they filtered back; heads were counted; they took their seats, and were off.
He followed them all the afternoon, until the coach finally stopped at a hotel near the West London Air Terminal where they were booked in for the night. Baggage was hauled from the luggage compartment and piled with handbags and carriers in the busy foyer as keys and rooms were allocated, and registrations made.
Patrick watched while the Othello painting was laid down on a leather seat beside a navy jersey coat and a clutch of tourist literature. There was room for him on the seat too, and he sat there reading the Evening Standard which he had bought from the kerbside vendor outside the hotel while he watched the coach disgorge. When he got up and sauntered out a few minutes later, Miranda and Ferdinand, indistinguishable in their brown paper wrappings from the picture of Othello, had taken his place, and Patrick bore off with him towards Oxford the image of the Moor.
Part XIV
1
The picture had been clamped into a mock-old plastic- moulded, gilt-painted frame. It lay on the table between Patrick and Humphrey Wilberforce. Othello, bow-legged, his toga rent, glowered at the shrinking Desdemona whose opulent bosom threatened to escape from her chiffon-like nightdress.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ said Patrick cheerfully.
‘And this fellow charges twenty-five pounds a time, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well—’ Words failed Humphrey. ‘What has this to do with me?’ he asked.
‘I want you to prise it apart. I daren’t touch it – I might wreck it.’
Humphrey’s expression indicated that this would be a service to art.
‘Whatever for? Are you collecting plastic frames?’ he enquired.
‘I think there may be something underneath Othello.’
Humphrey made a crude remark.
‘I mean,’ said Patrick patiently, ‘I think it may cover some other painting. A stolen one.’
‘Pretty small,’ said Humphrey.
‘A little Corot,’ Patrick suggested.
Humphrey cast him a sharp look.
‘That robbery – no, Patrick. How could it?’
‘I may be entirely wrong – I rather hope I am – but I don’t want to go wasting people’s time at Scotland Yard or the National Gallery if that’s the case.’
‘And my time’s expendable,’ said Humphrey.
‘If I’m right, we pass it on at once. If not, there’s no harm done.’
‘Hm.’ Humphrey picked the picture up, balancing it between his hands. ‘It is a bit heavy for what it seems to be,’ he said. ‘I suppose we’d better proceed with infinite caution. Come along.’
Patrick followed him into his studio, where very gingerly Humphrey, who was primarily a historian but also a painter in his spare time, carefully damped the edges of the paper backing on the mount. They waited in silence until it began to curl, and then Humphrey began to ease it off. Behind it was a layer of thicker paper.
‘This is rather odd,’ said Humphrey, now intrigued. He took a tiny knife out of a drawer and inserted it under the edge of the frame; the plaster cracked at once. ‘Not at all strong,’ he said. ‘I suppose they were trying to keep the weight down.’
‘So there is something there?’
Humphrey worked very slowly and carefully now, easing the frame off the canvas it surrounded. The paper that covered the back of the painting extended over the front edges, and the canvas bearing the representation of Othello was attached to it by some sort of strong glue. Humphrey separated the paper at the side and tore away a tiny part of it. Under it could be seen a fragment of canvas much older, and covered in darker paint.
‘I’d better stop,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’m not an expert on stolen property, and I may obscure clues if I go on. There’s another picture here. The monstrosity is stretched over the back of it, I think.’ He looked longingly at the thick paper. ‘It’s probably got some other layer beneath, as protection, but they’ll have wanted it to be ventilated in some way. I don’t suppose it was intended to be left like this for long.’
Patrick thought of the American lady, no doubt due to board a plane the next day. She would not discover the substitution until she reached home. It would not be difficult to trace her, but Gulliver himself was the person the police would want to question. He wondered how best to tackle the next step; a special department at Scotland Yard dealt with art thefts, though doubtless the local police did on-the-spot investigations. Colin would know whom to approach. Meanwhile there was the question of the picture’s safety.
‘You get on to some of your police chums,’ said Humphrey, whose thoughts had meanwhile run parallel. ‘I’ll keep the painting safe for the moment. I’m sure it’ll be taken off my hands very swiftly. How on earth did you stumble on this racket, Patrick?’
‘Quite by chance – because of a poodle,’ said Patrick.
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘Nor do I, yet, but there must be one.’
If, in fact, other missing masterpieces were hidden under the dark paintings he had seen
at Pear Tree Cottage, was Tina keeping them for Gulliver to collect?
‘What made you suspect there was something wrong about this picture?’ Humphrey asked.
‘I thought it strange that a woman should want a painting of this particular moment in the play and carry it away without looking at it. The parcel was brought to her ready wrapped, from the rear of the gallery.’
‘I see. It was a bit of luck you happened to be there at the time.’
‘Yes, it was. But it wasn’t the only picture being smuggled out like that. If I’m right, there’s a constant stream of them. There have been several art thefts in the Midlands lately and I think Gulliver has a good racket going – painting them over and passing them on. And maybe passing on the proceeds of other people’s thieving too.’ For if the pictures he had taken from Tessa were also disguised masterpieces, someone else had already blotted them out: unless Gulliver had been using the empty cottage as a hiding-place, in which case Tina wasn’t involved.
But the pictures had come up with all her furniture. Or had they?
2
He put this theory to Detective Inspector Colin Smithers on the telephone.
‘If the cottage was a hiding-place, and if Sam was going there, for whatever reason,’ he said, thinking of the Earl Grey tea, ‘he might have stumbled on what was going on.’
There were sacks in the garage of Pear Tree Cottage, and fragments of sacking had been found under Sam’s fingernails. But if he was trussed up at Pear Tree Cottage, why dump him in the Thames when the Avon was close by?
‘Have your colleagues got a lead on Sam?’ he asked.
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Colin. ‘You know how much of our work is dogged routine checking, Patrick.’
‘I had an idea about him,’ Patrick said. ‘But it’s so unlikely that I won’t mention it yet.’
‘Look for some evidence,’ Colin advised. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll send our art boys up to get your picture. We don’t want that trail to get cold.’
‘I doubt if Gulliver’s in it alone,’ said Patrick. ‘He’s the receiver and the despatcher. Others do the thieving, I surmise.’
‘Probably. I expect they’ll set some sort of trap to catch the lot of them,’ said Colin.
‘Have you seen Dimitris?’ Patrick asked. ‘He’s back in London now.’
‘I know. The business he came over about has just finished,’ said Colin. ‘His nephew died of drugs some time ago, over here. Dimitri came over for the hearing. He was in court today. He didn’t tell you, did he?’
‘No. How dreadful.’ ‘He wanted to see justice done, and report back to the family.’
‘I see.’
Patrick was sorry for what had happened, but obscurely elated because Manolakis had not gone to London solely to see Liz.
Part XV
1
Leila Waters looked across her desk at Patrick. A faint smell of hot cheese from the pizzeria below wafted into the office through the fractionally opened window.
‘Yes. I identified Sam,’ she said.
‘But why you? Wasn’t there a relative?’
‘We knew of no one. It was either me or someone from the company. I probably knew him as well as anyone.’
‘Yet you didn’t know much about his private life.’
‘No one did,’ said Leila. ‘The police were quite satisfied for me to do it – I’d known him for years.’
‘Wasn’t it rather a distressing experience?’
‘What do you think? Do you know what the water does to people?’
Patrick knew a lot about drowned bodies. Sam’s was not the only one he had seen.
‘He’d dyed his hair for Macduff?’
‘Yes – he preferred it to wearing a wig.’
‘But he didn’t grow a beard?’
‘No – he’d have had to dye that too, wouldn’t he? And that wouldn’t have been so easy,’ said Leila.
‘But he did wear a beard for Macduff?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was good at make-up, wasn’t he? He’s unrecognisable in some of his old photographs.’ Patrick leaned across the desk and handed her one of the theatre programmes appropriated from Tessa. It showed a fat, elderly man: Sam, padded in face and body, playing Falstaff.
‘True enough. Make-up does wonders. But that was gross miscasting,’ Leila said. ‘Sam wasn’t a good Falstaff.’
‘Why? Too much unlike his own personality?’
‘Yes.’
‘Surely that’s the test of an actor – to go against type?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘It’s easier to act a role like your own nature?’
‘Not necessarily. Sometimes it can be a release to play another sort of person.’ She tapped the programme. ‘It was a long time ago – before he lost his nerve.’
‘You had no doubts about his identity when you saw the body?’
‘No. Nor did the woman who recognised him when he was dragged out of the river. She knew him at once.’
‘Who was she?’ asked Patrick.
‘I don’t know her name. Some passer-by.’
‘Was she at the inquest?’
‘No. It wasn’t necessary – it was just a preliminary enquiry so that the funeral could take place. Perhaps she’ll be at the resumed inquest,’ said Leila. ‘Now, I really am very busy.’
Patrick departed; he was the object of interested scrutiny from the patient clients lined up in the outer office, and this time the receptionist even gave him a smile.
2
Sergeant Bruce was writing a report when Patrick was shown into the busy office where he occupied a corner.
‘Ah, good morning, sir,’ he greeted Patrick.
‘Good morning, sergeant. You remember we met at Sam Irwin’s flat?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘You asked me to let you know if I thought of anything pertinent to your enquiries.’
‘That’s right, sir. And you have, I take it.’
‘I wondered how you got on to Miss Waters. The theatrical agent. How you came to suggest that she should identify the body.’
‘They told us at the theatre. No one there was keen to do it. Seems they think that play’s an unlucky one.’
‘Oh.’ Now he mentioned it, Patrick seemed to remember hearing about some theatrical superstition concerned with Macbeth. ‘So you went to see her. What about the woman who recognised the body at the time it was found?’
‘Just a bystander. Knew him right away, but not in a position to give official recognition, legally speaking.’
‘I see. Who was she, sergeant?’
Sergeant Bruce looked at him, then made up his mind.
‘You were there, after all. Might have overheard her telling me, if you’d lingered on the spot,’ he said. ‘She was Mrs Amy Foster – from Putney. A hundred and eighty-seven, Montagu Court, that’s it – it’s a big modern block of flats up on the hill,’ the sergeant told him, referring to a note.
‘Keen theatregoer, eh?’
‘Yes, sir, so it seems. Quite a fan.’
‘Hm. Thanks.’
‘What’s on your mind, sir?’
‘I’m not sure. It might be worthwhile, though, sergeant, looking through the pathologist’s report. Or if it’s not mentioned, asking him.’
‘Asking him what?’
‘About the beard of the deceased. What colour it was. It goes on growing, doesn’t it, after death?’
3
Patrick drove straight to Putney, over the bridge and up the hill, where there were several blocks of flats, he knew. He pulled into a side road and soon found a postman who directed him to Montagu Court. It was a large, new block, and there was a porter.
‘Mrs Amy Foster?’ The porter shook his head. ‘We’ve no Mrs Amy Foster here. Of course, she could be staying with someone. But there’s not been any mail for her.’
‘A hundred and eighty-seven, that’s the number,’ Patrick repeated.
‘Well now, sir, you are asking
for something. You must have come to the wrong block.’
‘It’s the address I was given,’ said Patrick.
‘There’s no such number here,’ said the porter. ‘We stop at a hundred and sixty. I’m afraid Mrs Amy Foster’s been pulling your leg, sir.’
It took Patrick a second or two to realise that the porter thought Mrs Amy Foster must be someone who did not wish to encourage his pursuit of her.
‘Why not invent the name of the block, then, as well as the number?’ he snapped.
‘Why not, sir, as you say. Perhaps she didn’t want to tell too big a fib. You might know Putney quite well, eh?’
The porter could be right, for the police must know the various blocks of flats. The lady might not want to be traced for all manner of reasons. Perhaps she was not supposed to be in London at the time. Perhaps she was not Mrs Amy Foster at all.
Part XVI
It would be pleasant to spend the evening with Liz and Manolakis, Patrick decided, driving slowly back towards the river. Perhaps the Greek would be ready to return with him to Oxford that evening.
He found a telephone box, stopped, and rang up Liz. She sounded in a hurry, and said that they were just off to a concert.
Cast For Death Page 11
