Murder in Abbot's Folly (22 page)

‘Let me explain,' Douglas said blithely. ‘When I say the collection is fake, there is as in all the best scams a strong element of truth. It began with the portraits. I had no need to fake the large oil painting of William Harker, which you have probably seen in Abbot's Folly. It is undoubtedly of a Captain William Harker of the
Rhea
who died at Trafalgar. It is by John Opie, and you will find it listed in his
catalogue raisonné
. The sitter's brother did indeed own the Edgar Arms. The painting belonged to the Harker family and was found by Max Tanner in one of the pub's attics. That does happen, you know. There is unfortunately no known connection between Harker and Jane Austen, although with the help of that portrait it was easy for me to convince Bob Luckhurst that there was. The Luckhursts had collected Austen memorabilia for some years, although it was of little value, consisting of occasional references to her in letters of the time and some early editions of the novels and so forth. Bob had longed to add his own contributions. With my help he was able to find so much more. I naturally allowed him to make some of his own discoveries to purchase, prearranged and faked by myself.'

‘And the two watercolours?' Even now Georgia could not bear to think of those delicate paintings being part of a fraud.

‘They are true eighteenth-century watercolours. All that is fake about them are the sitters attributed to them and the signatures they bear, thanks to my handiwork. My motives are altruistic. I believe in illusion, Mr Marsh, Miss Marsh. Illusion is a force for good in this world – not always, it is true, but often. Illusion can inspire hope, create art and ease troubles. It was in order to make dreams come true that I began my trade. So I did with Jane Austen. I made Bob's dreams come true over a period of ten years or so.'

‘But at the expense of deluding those who value truth.'

‘You are wrong. What did Bob do with the collection I found for him? He kept it, he loved it. He did not force it on the world.'

‘But Amelia employed you in order to exploit it.'

‘Wrong again. Amelia did not employ me. Bob did. Not Amelia and not Tanner either. I never met Tanner – I deemed it expedient not to – but it was only when he and Amelia entered the story that a darker side began which I was powerless to prevent. I am giving you the wrong impression, however. There was no wish on Bob's part to deceive anyone except himself. The illusion just grew, as so often it does. For Bob it began with those two watercolours, which he found amongst the family archives and showed to me. There had always been a family legend, he said, that Jane Austen had known Stourdens well and loved the folly, just as she had the Temple in the gardens of Godmersham Park; family papers mentioned her visits, and one indicated she had attended a dance at the Edgar Arms Assembly Rooms. Without doubt she knew the Edgar family well from her visits to her brother Edward at Godmersham, who, as you know, had married into the Knight family. That was a solid basis for me to work on.

‘Then,' he continued, ‘Tanner showed Bob the oil painting he had found at the Edgar Arms. Bob fancied he saw a resemblance between the captain and the subject of the watercolour. He contacted me as a Jane Austen specialist, and I agreed with him. There was a likeness, if not a conclusive one, as there was between Cassandra's known drawings of her sister and this watercolour. Bob was so enthusiastic that it would have been a crime to disappoint him, especially as I had skills at my command to help him. In my profession as antiquarian bookseller I had access to numerous old books or parts of them that were valueless in themselves but which often afford blank flyleaves. Provided they were published before 1806, when resin size was introduced with machine-made paper, I had the perfect base for my work. I even managed a few watermarks – an extremely difficult process and hence most satisfying. The ink was right, the paper was right – and the handwriting was not difficult as I chose letters and diaries of people whose writing would be little known if at all.'

‘But the signatures are very well known,' Peter said.

‘How often are your own signatures identical, Peter? Seldom, I suspect. So the art lies in controlling the pressure, stroke quality, the loops and angles of the characters, the way the signature is concluded and begun, making the spacing uneven as would normally happen and so on. Too exact a copy of a signature is suspect. It is the overall impression of the true signature that is required.'

‘They were authenticated, however.'

‘I flatter myself that my work is so good that it would pass the keenest eye. Fortunately, there was no need for that, as I myself was asked to authenticate the original small collection, together with Bob's acquisitions, and to re-authenticate them for the Fettises and Clackingtons. As regards the Austen script and signatures, I composed a letter from a fictitious friend who was a graphologist who had submitted the letters to computer analysis as well as his own considered opinion.'

Amidst this avalanche of mind-boggling claims, Georgia managed to seize on one point. ‘Those watercolours had been in the family for a long time, though, and they had signatures on them.'

Douglas nodded his head approvingly. ‘Forged, I'm afraid, by me. When Bob first found them in the Stourdens' attics or wherever, they had no signatures on them. I therefore had to pretend I had exposed the watercolours to a microscopic examination with a jeweller's loupe, which had revealed signatures that had vanished with age. I pretended my skills stretched to restoring their visibility. Bob was a simple man at heart, and with my help the idea grew that there must be some story behind these watercolours. I must confess that the challenge began to appeal to me. I began to believe in this great love affair myself. I discovered that Captain Harker had indeed married Lady Edgar of Stourdens, a widow considerably older than himself, but that he died two years later at Trafalgar and that after her brief marriage Her Ladyship had reverted to her previous name. When I thought of
The Watsons
, well, it quickly became apparent to me what had happened. While morally if not legally bound to Lady Edgar, William Harker had met someone younger, the delightful witty Jane Austen, who had a meddlesome sister, Cassandra. And so the collection sprang into being. It was an intriguing puzzle to fit fictitious dates, houses, and people with the known facts. Many of the people actually existed, of course: the Wildmans at Chilham, the Kemble family and so on.

‘It is a strange phenomenon,' he observed, ‘that after a while fact comes to the illusionist's aid. I explained to Bob that, as is true, very little is known of Jane Austen's life between the years of mid 1801 to 1804 and no letters were known to exist. All I did was to fit clues together from established facts. Not
all
the facts, I admit, but Bob was happy. I explained to him that Cassandra was always vague about the gentleman with whom Jane had fallen in love for reasons of her own. It was Cassandra who wove the fiction, not us. We were just filling gaps in order that the truth might come to light.'

Georgia struggled to tread a tightrope between wanting to hurl contradictions at him and succumbing to his persuasive tongue.

‘So how did Amelia and Tanner affect this harmonious arrangement?' Peter asked drily.

‘Tanner was desperate to realize his own dreams.' Watts smiled. ‘As desperate as his son is now. I'm sure you're aware of that. Stourdens and Jane Austen are their own personal property. Ideally, Max wanted to live in Stourdens, but if that were not possible then he wished to restore the Edgar Arms to run as a tourist attraction side by side with Stourdens. Unfortunately, Bob threatened his plans. Bob did not want to exploit Stourdens and Jane Austen. He wanted to treasure his collection alone.'

‘He knew it was mostly fake then?'

‘Not at all. He believed in the basic truth of it and understood that gaps had to be filled.'

‘The moral issue didn't affect him?' Georgia found that hard to believe.

‘It disappeared. Bob did not want to share his dream with anyone, even me. He reached the point where he could blank out the fact that I had faked documents to link to the true ones. The gap between what was fact – the original watercolours and oil painting and the few letters that had long been in the Luckhurst collection – and what I had produced in my studio grew narrower and narrower, until it began to vanish altogether, like the Cheshire Cat's smile.'

‘But then Bob died,' Peter said bluntly. ‘Murdered by Amelia?'

‘I would not know.'

‘You heard that man in the Bat and Trap say there was a woman's voice in the folly just before Bob was murdered.'

‘I so enjoyed our chat in the pub, Miss Marsh, but I don't recall that.'

Georgia glared at him. Never had she felt so impotent in the face of brazen nerve.

‘How long have you lived in this area, Mr Watts?' Peter asked abruptly.

‘I was wondering if that would occur to you. Ten years. Before that I lived and worked in south London. Are you by any chance wondering whether I might be Max Tanner? After all, I am a declared illusionist.'

‘I'll consider that possibility,' Peter said evenly. ‘Could you tell us why Laura Fettis visited you?'

‘Of course,' Watts said agreeably. ‘Amelia guessed long ago, as did Tanner, that the collection was fake, but she scented money. On the strength of the Jane Austen story, she sold Stourdens at an inflated price to the Fettises, leaving Tanner in prison. Recently, she must have read about the increased visibility of Stourdens and decided to raise a little more cash. I can't be sure, but I suspect her visit to Laura was therefore less altruistic in nature and more for reasons of blackmail. She had long known who had worked with Bob on the faked collection and tried to put a little pressure on me a week or two before the Gala, hence her telling Laura that she knew the collection was fake but not mentioning my real name. I told dear Amelia to publish and be damned, knowing nothing could be proved against me, and gave her my Jane Austen business number in case other interested victims wished to speak to me. Laura Fettis was not a woman to be easily blackmailed, however. She had a warped sense of morality, whereby everything had to be judged by the law of the land. It is a point of view, but not one I share.

‘After Laura knew the collection was faked,' Douglas continued, ‘she decided to call all the plans for Stourdens off, having refused to be blackmailed. But first, as Amelia had predicted, she had to confirm this extraordinary story with me on the number Amelia provided. Not under the name of Douglas Watts, naturally, whom she knew as a retired antiquarian, golfing friend of Roy's, Jane Austen expert and her proposed trustee if she died young.'

‘How could you accept that position?' Georgia asked. ‘Trustee means just that – trust.'

‘Correct. I am trustee to ensure the good of Stourdens. What would you judge to be in Stourdens' best interests?'

‘Making money to keep it going,' Georgia groaned, seeing the trap ahead.

‘And the best way to achieve that?'

‘Follow the original plans and ignore the faking aspect, but—'

‘Quite. However, Laura's death put a spoke in that wheel. Once I had confirmed that the collection was fake, she was all for stopping the exploitation, as she called it, in its tracks, no matter what harm was caused to innocent people. She would rewrite her will, she told me, cancelling the trust, or at least removing me as trustee, although that naturally only came into effect after her death.'

‘And what was your reaction?' Georgia asked.

‘I tried to make her see sense, that there was more good in going ahead than in calling it off. She would not have it. She was going to tell all those most closely concerned before the Gala, which was the next day. I suggested she keep my name at least temporarily out of it, and she reluctantly agreed when I pointed out she had no proof and that libel and slander are powerful weapons of offence as well as defence. I gather she slept on the problem and the next morning told Tim, Roy, Jennifer – and probably Philip, Jake and Barbara too – that she had changed her mind about developing Stourdens commercially.'

Not Jennifer, Georgia remembered, because Laura asked her to take her own place supervising the catering tents. She had been going to talk to her later, obviously about the commercialization issue and perhaps even about the fakes – if, of course, Douglas Watts was telling the truth about them.

Peter picked on the same point. ‘How do we know that what you're telling us isn't just another game for your amusement?'

‘I am still Laura's trustee,' he said complacently. ‘I have the future of Stourdens to consider.'

‘Even though you know the collection is faked and that Laura had changed her mind over developing Stourdens?' Georgia asked in amazement. ‘I presume that's why Jennifer was kept away from the meeting yesterday.'

‘Possibly. I would not know. I did not attend as I understood it was focused on the planning of the film.'

‘Which as trustee you would allow to go ahead.'

Any sarcasm fell on deaf ears. He simply replied: ‘As trustee, yes.'

‘Even though it's based on a lie?' This was unbelievable.

‘I dislike the word lie. That too is an illusion. It depends which world one is living in at the time. I was hoping you wouldn't use it. I can prove it to you that I am telling you the truth, about the collection. Do you wish me to do so?'

Peter glanced at Georgia and nodded.

‘Then we have one difficulty. I need you to travel in my car, as I have no wish for you to identify where we are going. However, my car is—'

‘Not equipped for wheelchairs,' Peter finished for him. ‘In that case, I will follow your car.'