Pursued by Shadows
Read Pursued by Shadows Online
Authors: Medora Sale
A John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries Mystery
Medora Sale
To Barbara, Charles, and Robert for their help and support through the worst of times and camaraderie through the best
“You're early, gentlemen. But come in, come in.” In a sketchy, spiderlike fashion, Malcolm Whiteside filled the doorway of his London flat, one long arm holding open the door, the other leaning on the lintel, blocking their entrance. “Don't hang about on the doorstep.” Whiteside was addressing two dark shapes, one broad-shouldered and almost as tall as he was, the other smaller and more delicately formed, and as he pronounced each separate word its hostile leaden echo reverberated and then died in the gloomily lit hall. Joint by joint, seeming to grudge every inch of room, Whiteside pulled himself out of his visitors' path.
“Is it ready?” asked the younger of the two men, who had eased his slender form across the threshold first and was looking curiously around him.
The voice made Whiteside jerk upright. He stared, speechless with astonishment, recognizing the men as they stepped into the light. “Peter,” he said at last, in a choked voice, nodding at the man who had spoken to him. Whiteside's pale cheeks coloured. “Guy,” he added tonelessly, with ever-increasing suspicion clouding his face. He half-raised his hand in greeting to the larger man and let it drop again. Yet his two visitors looked harmless enough; more like a traveling comedy act than a serious threat to anyone's peace of mind. The exaggerated shabbiness of the larger one, who had covered his heavily muscled frame with an ancient sweater and paint-stained trousers, made his companion's tweedy elegance look disarmingly absurd. “Yes, it's ready,” Whiteside admitted at last. “But I certainly wasn't expecting you two.”
As he spoke his eyes flickered toward the north end of the room, where the sloping ceiling was almost entirely given over to a grime-streaked skylight that let in a stingy portion of the diffused brightness of a May evening. Under the skylight stood a broad drafting table; beside it was a caddy with drafting tools and instruments, tiny bottles and tubes of colour, and miscellaneous artists' materials. Otherwise the room had a desolate air. It had been decades since anyone had concerned himself with the bare wood floors, splintered and soft with neglect, or the chipped and peeling paint on the walls.
But neither visitor had eyes for deficiencies in the decor. The two men hustled over to the drafting table; as Peter reached for the prize, Guy flicked him out of the way with a sideways thrust of his well-padded biceps and sharp elbow. The younger man, surprised by the attack, swerved, stumbled, and caught himself in mid-dive by grabbing onto a three-legged stool; red with embarrassment, he retired from the field of battle. Now that Guy had established possession of the space, he pulled a clean handkerchief out of the pocket of his paint-stained trousers and wiped his hands with it. Without a word he picked up the manila envelope sitting on the table.
“Careful with that,” said Whiteside automatically.
Guy ignored him. He lifted the unsealed flap and pulled out a document, brown and dirty, about twelve inches long and perhaps half as wide, folded first in half, and then in thirds. He laid it down, spreading the two flaps with the backs of his fingers and then lifting the folded-over top to open the entire piece out on the table; taking a magnifier out of his jacket pocket, he set about examining every square inch. “Good,” he said at last, the slight satisfaction on his face barely discernible in the fading light. “And as for usâwe were sent to check the work and do the pickup. Can't have the same faces turning up on your doorstep every time. Neighbours might remember them.” He folded up the document with the same care he had taken in unfolding it, and slid it back into its cover. “Didn't they tell you? I'm connected with the gallery operation, you know. Overseas. There are quite a few of us. But it's not a thing you can talk about in the pub, is it?” As he spoke, he reached inside his back trousers pocket and extracted a thick white envelope.
Whiteside's eyes narrowed.
“Twenty-five thousand pounds was what we owed you, I believe,” said Guy, his tones as educated and courtly as Whiteside's, in spite of their slight North American overlay.
“Twenty-
five
?”
Whiteside let the question hang in the dusk.
“Yes. Twenty plus the extra five thousand for your expenses. You remember,” his visitor said briskly. “You might want to take the time to check that no error has been made.” He held out the envelope.
Whiteside hesitated a second, took the envelope, and then stepped over to the window to count the notes it contained. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said finally. “All present and accounted for, it seems.” And with a sweep of his long arms, he ushered the two men out the door and into the hall with as much haste as he could manage.
Malcolm Whiteside had almost finished packing his suitcases when another two menâthe men who, months earlier, had commissioned his very last piece of work on this earthâarrived to pick up the finished document. They, too, were early.
“Where in hell are you going?” said the first one, pointing at the suitcases.
The expression on Whiteside's face said everything.
“And where is it?” The first man grabbed him by the arms and shook him, like a terrier shaking a rat.
“I don't have it,” Whiteside replied in terror as soon as he could speak. “Two men picked it up. They said you sent them.”
And thirty minutes later, when they thought they had wrung the last scrap of information out of Whiteside, one man grabbed him by the upper arms, yanking him backward; the other thrust a long, thin knife up and behind his ribs. “Drop him, fast,” said the first one and stepped aside just as the blood began to well up from the wound.
“We shouldn't 've done that, you know,” said the second man. “We'll never find 'em on our own.”
“Why not? How many Canadians named Guy and Peter booze down at the Flag? Both painters. For chrissake, what more do you want?”
“What about the money? We already gave him twenty thousand. They'll want that back, alongside of what's here.” He patted his pocket.
“Those two must have paid him. The greedy bugger would never have handed it over without getting the other half of his money.”
“He saidâ”
“To hell with what he said. Start looking.”
Two or three unproductive minutes later, a long, discordant ring of the bell stopped the search. “Out,” muttered the first one and nodded in the direction of the partially opened window.
As they hustled onto the fire escape, blood began to soak into the soft, uncared-for wood of the London garret.
Peter took a deep breath and knocked for the second time on Whiteside's door. There was still no response. Cautiouslyâhe was by nature not a brave manâhe tried the handle. The door opened with a slight squeak of the hinges and he stepped into chaos. In the semidarkness, he could see that Malcolm was lying on the floor, making queer, upsetting little noises, bathed gruesomely in his own blood. Around him lay broken easels, tipped over tables, collapsed chairs. Peter's eyes flickered back and forth in panic, but there it was, on the floor, where he must have dropped it under the drafting table when he stumbled and almost fell. His wallet. He scooped it up, pale with relief.
Peter stared down at the dying man with distaste, his hands twitching and catching at each other with indecision. At last, clenching his teeth, he bent over him, and with delicate fingertips raised up the left-hand side of his jacket. Blood had soaked the rough cloth and he gagged. Then with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand extended as far as they would go, he reached in and searched the breast pocket where Malcolm had slipped their envelope an hour ago. It was empty.
He paused to listen, hard, before righting a chair, and placing it under the exposed beams in the north section of the ceiling. He climbed onto the chair and with absolute concentration began running his fingers along the top edge of each rafter. Halfway down the third one, he felt a space. Delicately he extracted the envelope and shoved it into his own pocket. As he withdrew his hand, his eyes caught sight of his fingers, smeared with soot and blood, and a horrible thought occurred to him. He jumped down and grabbed a towel beside the tiny sink and began, with frantic intensity, to polish the surfaces that those telltale hands had touched. He hardly noticed the final gasping, liquid noise from the thing on the floor as he busied himself about the flat. By the time Peter had finished washing his sticky fingers, Malcolm's glazed eyes were fixed upward at the grimy skylight.
A fleeting expression of dismay passed across Jane Sinclair's face as she stepped into the semi-deserted coffee bar. It reeked painfully to her sensitive nostrils of a singular combination of disinfectant, wet wool, and stale cooking, but at least it offered shelter from the thin, nasty, penetrating London rain. As the door swung shut, she half-turned to peer out through the streaky glass. Water oozing from her white running shoes and dripping off her bright red raincoat formed a small puddle at her feet by the time she was satisfied with what she sawâor did not see. Blank-faced once more, she shook the water off her coat and headed for the table nearest the back wall. She dropped her handbag onto the chair beside her and called to the pale, spotty-faced child behind the counter. “I'll have a coffee, please. Black.”
The alien twang in her voice reverberated, striking a discordant note in those quiet premises. She attracted a fleeting glance, incurious and hostile, from one or two regular customers, before the slight ripple made by her entrance disappeared again.
The echoing white-tiled walls and squeaky gray-tiled floor reminded her of a public washroom in an airport. And worse, the restaurant was cold, as cold and damp as she was; by the time her coffee arrived, she was trembling inside her wet raincoat. A tear ran down her nose. The coffee was lukewarm and bitter; she took a mouthful and grimaced. With another glance in the direction of the door, she pulled a small pad of airmail paper and a badly mangled ballpoint pen out of her bag. She began to write, pausing now and then for thought. As she thought, she stared into nothingness with bleak despairing eyes, chewing on the end of her pen.
Morning progressed toward noon and more people were washed in, umbrellas dripping, to add to the general dampness. The waitress drifted by to nudge her away from her table with a glare; she ordered another cup of undrinkable coffee to placate her. As new customers arrived, several darted looks of sharp appraisal at the slender woman with huge, unseeing, blue eyes whose belongings were spread arrogantly around a table for four. Each seemed to decide in the end that there was no welcome there, in spite of the jaunty angle of her black beret and the cheerful over-pink of her cheeks.
A thump made her pen jump and slide. Two drops of cold coffee splashing onto her paper. Her eyes moved from spilled coffee, to cup, to a sausage roll, and then to the oily-haired man who was now sitting across from her. “Cold for May, isn't it?” he said brightly.
“Mmm,” she answered, dropping her head back down and continuing on with her sentence.
“Writing a letter to the boyfriend?” he went on, through a mouthful of greasy pastry.
She paid no attention.
“Not very clever of him to leave you on your own, is it?” He raised his voice in an attempt to get through.
She signed her name with a flourish and looked up at him with an expression of great sweetness on her face. And smiled. “Why don't you just sod off, sweetheart?” she said, in the clear, precise tones of someone who has had plenty of practice in shooing unwanted men away. “Before I dump the rest of this shitty coffee on your head.”
“Oh, I will,” he said, softly. “I'm only a messenger. You go home and tell your boyfriend just what happened to the last person who tried to bugger up our arrangements, love.” He dropped a folded newspaper in front of her. “You tell him it's ours. We bought it and we paid generously for it, and we want it back,” he said. “And you tell him that we found you, love, and we'll find him too, just as quick, when we want him. And then ask him,” he whispered, leaning toward her like a lover, holding out his right hand, “how he'd like you without ears.”
A razor lay opened across his palm. In a gesture so rapid she hardly saw it, he closed his hand and slashed. The wind whistled by her left ear; it stung and she clapped her hand to it. By the time she had refocused her eyes on him he was gone.
Clenching her jaw to stop it from trembling, she reached for her coffee cup with a show of casual indifference and froze, appalled. Her fingers were smeared with blood. With a small gasp, she snatched up a paper napkin, clapped it to her ear to staunch the bleeding, and then stared down at the newspaper lying on the table.
It was Tuesday's paper. Tuesday had been the last straw, the day she had decided to leave. Guy and Peter prancing around the flat like children, whooping and laughing in triumph and running up hundreds of pounds in long-distance calls. Getting drunk and treating her, as usual, like a piece of furniture. She had been too busy figuring out what was going on to read the paper.
The headline on the four-inch, two-column story read, “Vicious killing of well-known illustrator and art expert.” It went on, “Mr. Malcolm Whiteside was attacked and stabbed to death in his London studio yesterday . . . in what was described by police as âan act of senseless violence . . .'”
Guy. Guy had been in that man's flat. On Monday. She snatched up the paper and her notebook with her clean hand, and shoved them with the pen into her damp handbag. With one quick look around her, she got up and ran out of the building. A small coin that she brushed off the table with her sleeve fell, bounced, rolled, and then heeled over, dead on the ground.
The same thin, nasty rain was falling on the expensive restaurant where Guy Beaumont sat finishing the Dover sole and declining the plum tart in warm, dry comfort. Two miles and an unleapable chasmâin crassly financial termsâfrom the street where Jane, drenched and shaking with cold, was still trying to lose herself. But he too was suffering.