Death by Sheer Torture (15 page)

‘Look, love, you can’t have been paid the housekeeping money each week by cheque, otherwise we’d have a record of the cheques in his account. There are long gaps, Chris.’

‘He must have had more than one account.’

‘In that case, there should have been more than one kind of cheque that he paid you with. Were there?’

‘Yes . . . Yes, I think there were.’

‘What was the other bank’s name?’

‘I . . . I can’t remember, Perry.’

‘Chris, what on earth
is
this? What are you trying to do? There’s no reason on earth why he should not have paid you in cash. Why are you denying it?’

‘Because he didn’t! He paid me by cheque, every week. You’ve got a cheek, Perry, coming and questioning me like this, and saying I’ve been lying. I’m the one who looked after him. I’m the one who knows. You resent my getting his money!’

That was so irrational it floored me. ‘I do not resent it, Chris. It’s what I’ve always wanted for you. We just stopped the outside men lifting off your Dali, by the way.’

‘The Dali!’

‘You’re going to have to fight to keep that, I’m afraid. But you should have a better chance with the Aunt Elizas. The trouble is, if you’re going to fight Lawrence, you’ll have to stay here. I still think it would be better to get out. In fact, I think you’d have done better to get out long ago.’

‘How could I? Who would have looked after him? It
was my job. Mummy said so.’

‘Mother? When did she say that?’

Chris, for some reason, looked as if she could have bitten out her tongue.

‘In . . . before she died. Before she died she said it was up to me to look after Daddy after she’d gone. Oh, go
away,
Perry. You said you’d save me from all those questions, and now you’re doing it yourself. I’m not well, you know. I shouldn’t . . .’

‘OK, OK, Chris. I’m going now. Look, just one more thing: remember, if there’s any trouble here, Jan and I are always there to help.’

She looked rebellious. Then, to get rid of me, she said: ‘All right. I know you mean well, Perry.’

But you blunder in in your copper’s boots where angels ought to fear to tread, seemed to be the general implication. I got up and wandered away round the lake and back to the house, deep in thought. What was it eating Chris? One thing I was pretty sure of: our poor mother had not commended Father to Chris’s care just before she died. For a start, Chris was only eight at the time. And secondly, we were about as close as it was possible to be, Chris and I, just before Mother’s death and in the years immediately after. Naturally. And she would have told me of a thing like that, because it’s the sort of trust Chris would take very seriously, and get a big conscientious thing about.

And yet I didn’t get the idea she was lying. In fact, it had come out seemingly involuntarily, regretted immediately. And though it might seem a pretty repulsive thing to do, calling on a girl like Chris to devote her life to looking after a nasty old crackpot like our father, nevertheless, the idea was perfectly typical of my mother: she was still emotionally in the world of 1750 or thereabouts, and the pious hope that Chris would devote herself to her father’s well-being would have seemed entirely natural,
indeed only right, to her. I asked myself how the wish had been communicated. And I came up with the answer: by letter.

I walked round and round the garden, thinking about this and other things: the pictures, the
mise-en-scène
of the murder, the scissors in the plant-pot. I spoke to the gardeners, who had finished their deeds of retrieval around the house, and were busy rehearsing the story of Aunt Sybilla’s pink fits for later retelling in the Marquis. I recognized one of them as being the most junior of the outdoor staff in my young days. We talked about the grounds, and what needed to be done, and how you couldn’t get the labour, in spite of all this unemployment, and how you couldn’t expect two men to do the work of eight, and so on. I began to feel like a member of the gentry, being matey with the peasantry. I was glad Jan wasn’t there to overhear. Finally I landed up round the front of the house and was hailed from the Gothic wing by Tim Hamnet.

‘’Morning, Perry. Back on duty, I hope? By the way, no luck with Philadelphia. The Museum’s closed until Monday, and no power on earth’s going to get them to open up and let the police photograph the thing. That’s the message; I suspect the cops themselves aren’t putting their backs into it.’

‘Damn their hides. I suppose with their murder rate the odd country-house killing seems an epicurean luxury. By the by, I had an idea about those pictures—bit of a long shot, but —’

‘Give.’

‘Well, if you’d got pictures like those to dispose of, who do you think would be interested?’

Hamnet was a bit at sea. ‘National Gallery?’

‘Wrong. They’ve got nothing British later than Turner.’

‘That other one—the Tate.’

‘Right. But if there was anything shady about the deal, you’d be a bit wary at approaching anywhere so well known. Their purchases tend to be well publicized. Then there’re several provincial galleries with a strong line in Victorian stuff—Birmingham, for example—and of course we ought to approach them. But on the whole the same applies. What would be better would be to approach somewhere a bit less . . . how shall I say? . . . exposed. See what I mean? Somewhere not quite so well known.’

‘I get you. Could a small place afford them?’

‘They could afford the Allan. He has no particular market value. And it occurs to me that the place that would be most likely to be interested in
Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Turkish Fisherman After Having Swum the Hellespont
would be —’

‘Yes?’

‘Newstead Abbey. Byron’s home.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Not far from Nottingham. Do you think it would be worth while giving them a tinkle?’

‘Surely. We don’t lose anything by it. I’d do it myself, but I’m waiting to interview little Mordred. Anyway, you know your stuff on that sort of thing. You’d do it better.’

So I trolled off quite happily and entered the house. Then I was presented with a poser. Where did I phone from? I had intended using the phone in the Main Hall, but if there was an extension in the kitchens, as I suspected, that was about the last thing I ought to do. I ruled out Sybilla as too agog, and Peter as all too conceivably implicated, and I landed up with Aunt Kate. So I made for the Georgian wing, and of course found her thoroughly delighted to be of help.

‘Ring from here? ’Course you can, Perry! tickled pink, really. Don’t trust the others, I suppose. Is it top secret? Anyway, come on in.’

I went in, averting my eyes from the signed photograph of the late German Führer, given a place of honour in the cluttered little hallway.

‘It’s not exactly top secret, but I would like it to be private. It’s not just an extension you’ve got here, is it?’

‘Not on your life. We each have our own phone, pay our own bills. Old stingyboots Lawrence sees to that. You can have the study phone if you like. Come on, we’ll take the lift. Upsadaisy!’

I’d forgotten the lift. Lifts had been installed in the Georgian wing after the car accident in 1939 which killed my grandmother and left my grandfather an invalid for the rest of his life. Kate was the only child at home, and she had taken care of him, at least until her internment, in this wing that had later become her own (or rather her own, subject to the whim of Lawrence, or—rather more dangerously—Peter, in the not too distant future). We got out at the third floor, and she popped me in through the study door.

‘There it is,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You can have a look at my collection while you’re talking. Be worth a lot When The Time Comes. I’ll be downstairs. Toodle-oo.’

No wonder she made a quick escape. Her ‘study’ in fact housed her proud collection of Nazi mementoes. As I got on to Directory Enquiries my eye rested on medals from the desert campaign, Iron Crosses, and pictures of the heroic action against the Polish ghetto. I closed my eyes. Really, I had to try to think of Aunt Kate not as she was now, an overgrown product of St Trinian’s, but as she had been for much of her adult life, a besotted admirer of a regime that even the most morally undeveloped could perceive as evil. Could that old Kate have been totally obliterated by the ‘breakdown’ of last year?

I got the number of Newstead quite easily, but after that things did not go quite so well. I was answered by a helpful but rather hesitant male voice, which was obviously
not at all pleased when I said I wanted to ask a question about the house.

‘Look, could you ring back Monday? There’ll be someone around then. I’m just a student, sitting in, you know, and none of the regulars will be back till next week.’

‘It’s quite a simple question, about a picture. It’s a big one, I’d guess, so you ought to be able to locate it.’

‘Yes, well, you see I’m a student of psychology. My mum knows one of the gardeners. The fact is, most of the visitors here know more than I do.’

I sighed. I knew that sort of literary shrine. ‘Look, my name is Trethowan. I’m a policeman and it’s an urgent matter.’

‘I say, are you
the
Trethowan? Whose dad got done in when he was getting himself a bit of sado-masochistic fun? That case is just killing me. I’ve just been reading all about you in the
Excess.’

‘Oh, God,’ I said.

‘They call you Big Perry. Your aunt told the
Excess
you gave her the most wonderful feeling of safety.’

‘My aunt gives me the most wonderful feeling of a pain in the arse,’ I said.

‘Would you like a snap diagnosis of your father’s mental condition?’ asked Little Brightness at the other end.

‘I understood my father’s mental condition without benefit of psychiatry before I was into my teens,’ I said. ‘Look, about this picture —’

‘OK. But I don’t see what pictures have to do with it.’

‘Yours not to reason why. Read next Monday’s
Excess
and you might find out. It’s a picture called
Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Turkish Fisherman After Having Swum the Hellespont.
It must be fairly easy to identify.’

‘Hell, it’s not even easy to say! How am I supposed to identify it?’

‘Well, he can’t have much on, I would imagine. And
there must be a sort of Turkish element in the picture.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Hey, wait: there is a picture like that. Sort of sexy, in an ethereal Victorian kind of a way. Where is it, now?’

‘Could you trot round and have a look for it?’

‘Sure thing. Hold on.’

I hung on, and cast my eyes around my aunt’s loathsome souvenirs. The Turks and the Nazis—both rapists of Greece. There was a picture of tanks entering Athens. Before long my budding Freud came back on the line.

‘Yes. I’ve found it. It’s like what you said. Lots of white flesh. Hey, you’d have thought he’d have had a tan, wouldn’t you?’

‘Gentlemen didn’t tan in those days. White was sexy.’

‘Is that for real? I thought sexy was always sexy.’

‘You can’t have seen any silent films. Keep to the subject. Is there anything about the picture in the catalogue?’

‘Catalogue? . . . Oh yeah, wait a tick . . . Yes, here it is:
Lord Byron
etc by William Allan. Painted, 1831. Acquired for Newstead in 1979.’

‘It doesn’t say who from?’

‘Nope.’

‘Any idea who would know?’

‘Not a clue. Why don’t you ring Monday, eh?’

‘Look, is there a list in the catalogue of the Trustees, and the committee, and such like, for Newstead Abbey?’

‘Haven’t a notion. Where would it be?’

‘Try the first page.’

‘Oh yeah. Here they are. Local bigwigs and some professors.’

‘Could you dictate their names to me?’

And so, finally, I got them, and the other end rang off, very cheery, saying if I wanted more help, just to ring back. I decided that the checking of the list of trustees to see if they could help over the buying of the Allan could
be done by Tim or one of his team. The main thing was, I’d established that one of the pictures missing from Harpenden had indeed recently been sold (I was damn sure it hadn’t been given to Newstead!). Now we had to decide where to go from there.

I went down the stairs. I’m never entirely happy in rickety old lifts: they sometimes give the impression that my weight is something in the nature of a last straw. When I got down to the hall, Kate was waiting, like a well-set-up vulture.

‘Get what you wanted?’

‘Yes, Aunt Kate, I think so.’

‘I say, Perry?’

‘Yes?’

‘You haven’t inquisited me yet.’

‘I haven’t inquisited anyone, Aunt Kate.’

‘Oh, you fibber. You’ve talked to people. You’ve talked to Mordred and Peter, I know. The other one inquisited me, but I didn’t tell him much. There are things one doesn’t talk about outside the family.’

‘Well, we could have a little chat, Aunt Kate,’ I said, thinking she wasn’t so entirely round the bend that she couldn’t be useful.

‘Oh, spiffing! When?’

‘Well, I’ve just got to deliver this list to the Superintendent. I could be back in twenty minutes or so.’

‘Oh, goody,’ said Kate. ‘Then you can stay to lunch!’

CHAPTER 12

LOW CUISINE

Of course, I had to admit to myself that I’d asked for it. Walked straight into it with my chin out. One look at the
clock, then showing after twelve, should have warned me of the danger. Even then I could have said I’d come back at half past four, and she could have given me afternoon tea and we would have both been happy. You can’t do much with afternoon tea. But I was caught off balance, and all I could do was to produce a ghastly grin of acquiescence.

I went and shared my bit of news about
Lord Byron
with Tim Hamnet, and he set one of his men on to ringing round the various Trustees of Newstead to see if any of them had been involved in the buying of the picture. I also procured one of those little plastic bags that policemen use for sending specimens along to the forensic labs. I felt an awful coward. It was obvious that eating with Aunt Kate was an essential part of the Trethowan experience. One ought to face up to it, as to one’s first beating at public school, one’s first taste of fire in battle. It wasn’t as if I had a particularly delicate stomach: after all, I’d been eating in army and police canteens for most of my adult life. One develops a certain toughness of the gut.