From the opposite side of the road, Tommy surveyed the premises of Messrs. Partingdale, Harris, Lockeridge and Partingdale.
They looked eminently respectable and old-fashioned. The brass plate was well worn but nicely polished. He crossed the street and passed through swing doors to be greeted by the muted note of typewriters at full speed.
He addressed himself to an open mahogany window on his right which bore the legend INQUIRIES—
Inside was a small room where three women were typing and two male clerks were bending over desks copying documents.
There was a faint, musty atmosphere with a decidedly legal flavour.
A woman of thirty-five odd, with a severe air, faded blonde hair, and pince-nez rose from her typewriter and came to the window.
“Can I help you?”
“I would like to see Mr. Eccles.”
The woman’s air of severity redoubled.
“Have you an appointment?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m just passing through London today.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Eccles is rather busy this morning. Perhaps another member of the firm—”
“It was Mr. Eccles I particularly wanted to see. I have already had some correspondence with him.”
“Oh I see. Perhaps you’ll give me your name.”
Tommy gave his name and address and the blonde woman retired to confer with the telephone on her desk. After a murmured conversation she returned.
“The clerk will show you into the waiting room. Mr. Eccles will be able to see you in about ten minutes’ time.”
Tommy was ushered into a waiting room which had a bookcase of rather ancient and ponderous-looking law tomes and a round table covered with various financial papers. Tommy sat there and went over in his own mind his planned methods of approach. He wondered what Mr. Eccles would be like. When he was shown in at last and Mr. Eccles rose from a desk to receive him, he decided for no particular reason that he could name to himself that he did not like Mr. Eccles. He also wondered why he did not like Mr. Eccles. There seemed no valid reason for dislike. Mr. Eccles was a man of between forty and fifty with greyish hair thinning a little at the temples. He had a long rather sad-looking face with a particularly wooden expression, shrewd eyes, and quite a pleasant smile which from time to time rather unexpectedly broke up the natural melancholy of his countenance.
“Mr. Beresford?”
“Yes. It is really rather a trifling matter, but my wife has been worried about it. She wrote to you, I believe, or possibly she may have rung you up, to know if you could give her the address of a Mrs. Lancaster.”
“Mrs. Lancaster,” said Mr. Eccles, retaining a perfect poker face. It was not even a question. He just left the name hanging in the air.
“A cautious man,” thought Tommy, “but then it’s second nature for lawyers to be cautious. In fact, if they were one’s own lawyers one would prefer them to be cautious.”
He went on:
“Until lately living at a place called Sunny Ridge, an establishment—and a very good one—for elderly ladies. In fact, an aunt of my own was there and was extremely happy and comfortable.”
“Oh yes, of course, of course. I remember now. Mrs. Lancaster. She is, I think, no longer living there? That is right, is it not?”
“Yes,” said Tommy.
“At the moment I do not exactly recall—” he stretched out a hand towards the telephone—“I will just refresh my memory—”
“I can tell you quite simply,” said Tommy. “My wife wanted Mrs. Lancaster’s address because she happens to be in possession of a piece of property which originally belonged to Mrs. Lancaster. A picture, in fact. It was given by Mrs. Lancaster as a present to my aunt, Miss Fanshawe. My aunt died recently, and her few possessions have come into our keeping. This included the picture which was given her by Mrs. Lancaster. My wife likes it very much but she feels rather guilty about it. She thinks that it may be a picture Mrs. Lancaster values and in that case she feels she ought to offer to return it to Mrs. Lancaster.”
“Ah, I see,” said Mr. Eccles. “It is very conscientious of your wife, I am sure.”
“One never knows,” said Tommy, smiling pleasantly, “what elderly people may feel about their possessions. She may have been glad for my aunt to have it since my aunt admired it, but as my aunt died very soon after having received this gift, it seems, perhaps, a little unfair that it should pass into the possession of strangers. There is no particular title on the picture. It represents a house somewhere in the country. For all I know it may be some family house associated with Mrs. Lancaster.”
“Quite, quite,” said Mr. Eccles, “but I don’t think—”
There was a knock and the door opened and a clerk entered and produced a sheet of paper which he placed before Mr. Eccles. Mr. Eccles looked down.
“Ah yes, ah yes, I remember now. Yes, I believe Mrs.—” he glanced down at Tommy’s card lying on his desk—“Beresford rang up and had a few words with me. I advised her to get into touch with the Southern Counties Bank, Hammersmith branch. This is the only address I myself know. Letters addressed to the bank’s address, care of Mrs. Richard Johnson would be forwarded. Mrs. Johnson is, I believe, a niece or distant cousin of Mrs. Lancaster’s and it was Mrs. Johnson who made all the arrangements with me for Mrs. Lancaster’s reception at Sunny Ridge. She asked me to make full inquiries about the establishment, since she had only heard about it casually from a friend. We did so, I can assure you, most carefully. It was said to be an excellent establishment and I believe Mrs. Johnson’s relative, Mrs. Lancaster, spent several years there quite happily.”
“She left there, though, rather suddenly,” Tommy suggested.
“Yes. Yes, I believe she did. Mrs. Johnson, it seems, returned rather unexpectedly recently from East Africa—so many people have done so! She and her husband had, I believe, resided in Kenya for many years. They were making various new arrangements and felt able to assume personal care of their elderly relative. I am afraid I have no knowledge of Mrs. Johnson’s present whereabouts. I had a letter from her thanking me and settling accounts she owed, and directing that if there was any necessity for communicating with her I should address my letters care of the bank as she was undecided as yet where she and her husband would actually be residing. I am afraid, Mr. Beresford, that that is all I know.”
His manner was gentle but firm. It displayed no embarrassment of any kind nor disturbance. But the finality of his voice was very definite. Then he unbent and his manner softened a little.
“I shouldn’t really worry, you know, Mr. Beresford,” he said reassuringly. “Or rather, I shouldn’t let your wife worry. Mrs. Lancaster, I believe, is quite an old lady and inclined to be forgetful. She’s probably forgotten all about this picture that she gave away. She is, I believe, seventy-five or seventy-six years of age. One forgets very easily at that age, you know.”
“Did you know her personally?”
“No, I never actually met her.”
“But you knew Mrs. Johnson?”
“I met her when she came here occasionally to consult me as to arrangements. She seemed a pleasant, businesslike woman. Quite competent in the arrangements she was making.” He rose and said, “I am so sorry I can’t help you, Mr. Beresford.”
It was a gentle but firm dismissal.
Tommy came out on to the Bloomsbury street and looked about him for a taxi. The parcel he was carrying, though not heavy, was of a fairly awkward size. He looked up for a moment at the building he had just left. Eminently respectable, long established. Nothing you could fault there, nothing apparently wrong with Messrs. Partingdale, Harris, Lockeridge and Partingdale, nothing wrong with Mr. Eccles, no signs of alarm or despondency, no shiftiness or uneasiness. In books, Tommy thought gloomily, a mention of Mrs. Lancaster or Mrs. Johnson should have brought a guilty start or a shifty glance. Something to show that the names registered, that all was not well. Things didn’t seem to happen like that in real life. All Mr. Eccles had looked like was a man who was too polite to resent having his time wasted by such an inquiry as Tommy had just made.
But all the same, thought Tommy to himself, I don’t like Mr. Eccles. He recalled to himself vague memories of the past, of other people that he had for some reason not liked. Very often those hunches—for hunches is all they were—had been right. But perhaps it was simpler than that. If you had had a good many dealings in your time with personalities, you had a sort of feeling about them, just as an expert antique dealer knows instinctively the taste and look and feel of a forgery before getting down to expert tests and examinations. The thing just is wrong. The same with pictures. The same presumably with a cashier in a bank who is offered a first-class spurious banknote.
“He sounds all right,” thought Tommy. “He looks all right, he speaks all right, but all the same—” He waved frantically at a taxi which gave him a direct and cold look, increased its speed and drove on. “Swine,” thought Tommy.
His eyes roved up and down the street, seeking for a more obliging vehicle. A fair amount of people were walking on the pavement. A few hurrying, some strolling, one man gazing at a brass plate just across the road from him. After a close scrutiny, he turned round and Tommy’s eyes opened a little wider. He knew that face. He watched the man walk to the end of the street, pause, turn and walk back again. Somebody came out of the building behind Tommy and at that moment the man opposite increased his pace a little, still walking on the other side of the road but keeping pace with the man who had come out of the door. The man who had come out of Messrs. Partingdale, Harris, Lockeridge and Partingdale’s doorway was, Tommy thought, looking after his retreating figure, almost certainly Mr. Eccles. At the same moment a taxi lingering in a pleasant tempting manner, came along. Tommy raised his hand, the taxi drew up, he opened the door and got in.
“Where to?”
Tommy hesitated for a moment, looking at his parcel. About to give an address he changed his mind and said, “14 Lyon Street.”
A quarter of an hour later he had reached his destination. He rang the bell after paying off the taxi and asked for Mr. Ivor Smith. When he entered a second-floor room, a man sitting at a table facing the window, swung round and said with faint surprise,
“Hullo, Tommy, fancy seeing you. It’s a long time. What are you doing here? Just tooling round looking up your old friends?”
“Not quite as good as that, Ivor.”
“I suppose you’re on your way home after the Conference?”
“Yes.”
“All a lot of the usual talky-talky, I suppose? No conclusions drawn and nothing helpful said.”
“Quite right. All a sheer waste of time.”
“Mostly listening to old Bogie Waddock shooting his mouth off, I expect. Crashing bore. Gets worse every year.”
“Oh! well—”
Tommy sat down in the chair that was pushed towards him, accepted a cigarette, and said,
“I just wondered—it’s a very long shot—whether you know anything of a derogatory nature about one Eccles, solicitor, of the firm of Messrs. Partingdale, Harris, Lockeridge and Partingdale.”
“Well, well, well,” said the man called Ivor Smith. He raised his eyebrows. They were very convenient eyebrows for raising. The end of them near the nose went up and the opposite end of the cheek went down for an almost astonishing extent. They made him on very little provocation look like a man who had had a severe shock, but actually it was quite a common gesture with him. “Run up against Eccles somewhere have you?”
“The trouble is,” said Tommy, “that I know nothing about him.”
“And you want to know something about him?”
“Yes.”
“Hm. What made you come to see me?”
“I saw Anderson outside. It was a long time since I’d seen him but I recognized him. He was keeping someone or other under observation. Whoever it was, it was someone in the building from which I had just emerged. Two firms of lawyers practise there and one firm of chartered accountants. Of course it may be any one of them or any member of any one of them. But a man walking away down the street looked to me like Eccles. And I just wondered if by a lucky chance it could have been my Mr. Eccles that Anderson was giving his attention to?”
“Hm,” said Ivor Smith. “Well, Tommy, you always were a pretty good guesser.”
“Who is Eccles?”
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you any idea?”
“I’ve no idea whatever,” said Tommy. “Without going into a long history, I went to him for some information about an old lady who has recently left an old ladies’ home. The solicitor employed to make arrangements for her was Mr. Eccles. He appears to have done it with perfect decorum and efficiency. I wanted her present address. He says he hasn’t got it. Quite possibly he hasn’t . . . but I wondered. He’s the only clue to her whereabouts I’ve got.”
“And you want to find her?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think it sounds as though I’m going to be much good to you. Eccles is a very respectable, sound solicitor who makes a large income, has a good many highly respectable clients, works for the landed gentry, professional classes and retired soldiers and sailors, generals and admirals and all that sort of thing. He’s the acme of respectability. I should imagine from what you’re talking about, that he was strictly within his lawful activities.”
“But you’re—interested in him,” suggested Tommy.
“Yes, we’re very interested in Mr. James Eccles.” He sighed. “We’ve been interested in him for at least six years. We haven’t progressed very far.”
“Very interesting,” said Tommy. “I’ll ask you again. Who exactly is Mr. Eccles?”
“You mean what do we suspect Eccles of? Well, to put it in a sentence, we suspect him of being one of the best organizing brains in criminal activity in this country.”
“Criminal activity?” Tommy looked surprised.
“Oh yes, yes. No cloak and dagger. No espionage, no counterespionage. No, plain criminal activity. He is a man who has so far as we can discover never performed a criminal act in his life. He has never stolen anything, he’s never forged anything, he’s never converted funds, we can’t get any kind of evidence against him. But all the same whenever there’s a big planned organized robbery, there we find, somewhere in the background, Mr. Eccles leading a blameless life.”
“Six years,” said Tommy thoughtfully.
“Possibly even longer than that. It took a little time, to get on to the pattern of things. Bank holdups, robberies of private jewels, all sorts of things where the big money was. They’re all jobs that followed a certain pattern. You couldn’t help feeling that the same mind had planned them. The people who directed them and who carried them out never had to do any planning at all. They went where they were told, they did what they were ordered, they never had to think. Somebody else was doing the thinking.”
“And what made you hit on Eccles?”
Ivor Smith shook his head thoughtfully. “It would take too long to tell you. He’s a man who has a lot of acquaintances, a lot of friends. There are people he plays golf with, there are people who service his car, there are firms of stockbrokers who act for him. There are companies doing a blameless business in which he is interested. The plan is getting clearer but his part in it hasn’t got much clearer, except that he is very conspicuously absent on certain occasions. A big bank robbery cleverly planned (and no expense spared, mind you), consolidating the getaway and all the rest of it, and where’s Mr. Eccles when it happens? Monte Carlo or Zurich or possibly even fishing for salmon in Norway. You can be quite sure Mr. Eccles is never within a hundred miles of where criminal activities are happening.”
“Yet you suspect him?”
“Oh yes. I’m quite sure in my own mind. But whether we’ll ever catch him I don’t know. The man who tunnelled through the floor of a bank, the man who knocked out the night watchman, the cashier who was in it from the beginning, the bank manager who supplied the information, none of them know Eccles, probably they’ve never even seen him. There’s a long chain leading away—and no one seems to know more than just one link beyond themselves.”
“The good old plan of the cell?”
“More or less, yes, but there’s some original thinking. Some day we’ll get a chance. Somebody who oughtn’t to know anything, will know something. Something silly and trivial, perhaps, but something that strangely enough may be evidence at last.”
“Is he married—got a family?”
“No, he has never taken risks like that. He lives alone with a housekeeper and a gardener and a butler-valet. He entertains in a mild and pleasant way, and I dare swear that every single person who’s entered his house as his guest is beyond suspicion.”
“And nobody’s getting rich?”
“That’s a good point you’ve put your finger on, Thomas. Somebody ought to be getting rich. Somebody ought to be seen to be getting rich. But that part of it’s very cleverly arranged. Big wins on race courses, investments in stocks and shares, all things which are natural, just chancy enough to make big money at, and all apparently genuine transactions. There’s a lot of money stacked up abroad in different countries and different places. It’s a great big, vast, moneymaking concern—and the money’s always on the move—going from place to place.”
“Well,” said Tommy, “good luck to you. I hope you get your man.”
“I think I shall, you know, some day. There might be a hope if one could jolt him out of his routine.”
“Jolt him with what?”
“Danger,” said Ivor. “Make him feel he’s in danger. Make him feel someone’s on to him. Get him uneasy. If you once get a man uneasy, he may do something foolish. He may make a mistake. That’s the way you get chaps, you know. Take the cleverest man there is, who can plan brilliantly and never put a foot wrong. Let some little thing rattle him and he’ll make a mistake. So I’m hoping. Now let’s hear your story. You might know something that would be useful.”
“Nothing to do with crime, I’m afraid—very small beer.”
“Well, let’s hear about it.”
Tommy told his story without undue apologies for the triviality of it. Ivor, he knew, was not a man to despise triviality. Ivor, indeed, went straight to the point which had brought Tommy on his errand.
“And your wife’s disappeared, you say?”
“It’s not like her.”
“That’s serious.”
“Serious to me all right.”
“So I can imagine. I only met your missus once. She’s sharp.”
“If she goes after things she’s like a terrier on a trail,” said Thomas.
“You’ve not been to the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well, first because I can’t believe that she’s anything but all right. Tuppence is always all right. She just goes all out after any hare that shows itself. She mayn’t have had time to communicate.”
“Mmm. I don’t like it very much. She’s looking for a house, you say? That just might be interesting because among various odds and ends that we followed, which incidentally have not led to much, are a kind of trail of house agents.”
“House agents?” Tommy looked surprised.
“Yes. Nice, ordinary, rather mediocre house agents in small provincial towns in different parts of England, but none of them so very far from London. Mr. Eccles’s firm does a lot of business with and for house agents. Sometimes he’s the solicitor for the buyers and sometimes for the sellers, and he employs various house agencies, on behalf of clients. Sometimes we rather wondered why. None of it seems very profitable, you see—”
“But you think it might mean something or lead to something?”
“Well, if you remember the big London Southern Bank robbery some years ago, there was a house in the country—a lonely house. That was the thieves’ rendezvous. They weren’t very noticeable there, but that’s where the stuff was brought and cached away. People in the neighbourhood began to have a few stories about them, and wonder who these people were who came and went at rather unusual hours. Different kinds of cars arriving in the middle of the night and going away again. People are curious about their neighbours in the country. Sure enough, the police raided the place, they got some of the loot, and they got three men, including one who was recognized and identified.”
“Well, didn’t that lead you somewhere?”
“Not really. The men wouldn’t talk, they were well defended and represented, they got long sentences in gaol and within a year and a half they were all out of the jug again. Very clever rescues.”
“I seem to remember reading about it. One man disappeared from a criminal court where he was brought up by two warders.”
“That’s right. All very cleverly arranged and an enormous amount of money spent on the escape.
“But we think that whoever was responsible for the staff work realized he made a mistake in having one house for too long a time, so that the local people got interested. Somebody, perhaps, thought it would be a better idea to get subsidiaries living in, say, as many as thirty houses in different places. People come and take a house, mother and daughter, say, a widow, or a retired army man and his wife. Nice quiet people. They have a few repairs done to the house, get a local builder in and improve the plumbing, and perhaps some other firm down from London to decorate, and then after a year or a year and a half circumstances arise, and the occupiers sell the house and go off abroad to live. Something like that. All very natural and pleasant. During their tenancy that house has been used perhaps for rather unusual purposes! But no one suspects such a thing. Friends come to see them, not very often. Just occasionally. One night, perhaps, a kind of anniversary party for a middle-aged, or elderly couple; or a coming of age party. A lot of cars coming and going. Say there are five major robberies done within six months but each time the loot passes through, or is cached in, not just one of these houses, but five different houses in five different parts of the countryside. It’s only a supposition as yet, my dear Tommy, but we’re working on it. Let’s say your old lady lets a picture of a certain house go out of her possession and supposing that’s a significant house. And supposing that that’s the house that your missus has recognized somewhere, and has gone dashing off to investigate. And supposing someone doesn’t want that particular house investigated—It might tie up, you know.”
“It’s very far-fetched.”
“Oh yes—I agree. But these times we live in are far-fetched times—In our particular world incredible things happen.”
II
Somewhat wearily Tommy alighted from his fourth taxi of the day and looked appraisingly at his surroundings. The taxi had deposited him in a small cul-de-sac which tucked itself coyly under one of the protuberances of Hampstead Heath. The cul-de-sac seemed to have been some artistic “development.” Each house was wildly different from the house next to it. This particular one seemed to consist of a large studio with skylights in it, and attached to it (rather like a gumboil), on one side was what seemed to be a little cluster of three rooms. A ladder staircase painted bright green ran up the outside of the house. Tommy opened the small gate, went up a path and not seeing a bell applied himself to the knocker. Getting no response, he paused for a few moments and then started again with the knocker, a little louder this time.
The door opened so suddenly that he nearly fell backwards. A woman stood on the doorstep. At first sight Tommy’s first impression was that this was one of the plainest women he had ever seen. She had a large expanse of flat, pancakelike face, two enormous eyes which seemed of impossibly different colours, one green and one brown, a noble forehead with a quantity of wild hair rising up from it in a kind of thicket. She wore a purple overall with blotches of clay on it, and Tommy noticed that the hand that held the door open was one of exceeding beauty of structure.
“Oh,” she said. Her voice was deep and rather attractive. “What is it? I’m busy.”
“Mrs. Boscowan?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“My name’s Beresford. I wondered if I might speak to you for a few moments.”
“I don’t know. Really, must you? What is it—something about a picture?” Her eye had gone to what he held under his arm.
“Yes. It’s something to do with one of your husband’s pictures.”
“Do you want to sell it? I’ve got plenty of his pictures. I don’t want to buy any more of them. Take it to one of these galleries or something. They’re beginning to buy him now. You don’t look as though you needed to sell pictures.”
“Oh no, I don’t want to sell anything.”
Tommy felt extraordinary difficulty in talking to this particular woman. Her eyes, unmatching though they were, were very fine eyes and they were looking now over his shoulder down the street with an air of some peculiar interest at something in the far distance.
“Please,” said Tommy. “I wish you would let me come in. It’s so difficult to explain.”
“If you’re a painter I don’t want to talk to you,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “I find painters very boring always.”
“I’m not a painter.”
“Well, you don’t look like one, certainly.” Her eyes raked him up and down. “You look more like a civil servant,” she said disapprovingly.
“Can I come in, Mrs. Boscowan?”
“I’m not sure. Wait.”
She shut the door rather abruptly. Tommy waited. After about four minutes had passed the door opened again.
“All right,” she said. “You can come in.”
She led him through the doorway, up a narrow staircase and into the large studio. In a corner of it there was a figure and various implements standing by it. Hammers and chisels. There was also a clay head. The whole place looked as though it had recently been savaged by a gang of hooligans.
“There’s never any room to sit up here,” said Mrs. Boscowan.
She threw various things off a wooden stool and pushed it towards him.
“There. Sit down here and speak to me.”
“It’s very kind of you to let me come in.”
“It is rather, but you looked so worried. You are worried, aren’t you, about something?”
“Yes I am.”
“I thought so. What are you worried about?”
“My wife,” said Tommy, surprising himself by his answer.
“Oh, worried about your wife? Well, there’s nothing unusual in that. Men are always worrying about their wives. What’s the matter—has she gone off with someone or playing up?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Dying? Cancer?”
“No,” said Tommy. “It’s just that I don’t know where she is.”
“And you think I might? Well, you’d better tell me her name and something about her if you think I can find her for you. I’m not sure, mind you,” said Mrs. Boscowan, “that I shall want to. I’m warning you.”
“Thank God,” said Tommy, “you’re more easy to talk to than I thought you were going to be.”
“What’s the picture got to do with it? It is a picture, isn’t it—must be, that shape.”
Tommy undid the wrappings.
“It’s a picture signed by your husband,” said Tommy. “I want you to tell me what you can about it.”
“I see. What exactly do you want to know?”
“When it was painted and where it is.”
Mrs. Boscowan looked at him and for the first time there was a slight look of interest in her eyes.
“Well, that’s not difficult,” she said. “Yes, I can tell you all about it. It was painted about fifteen years ago—no, a good deal longer than that I should think. It’s one of his fairly early ones. Twenty years ago, I should say.”
“You know where it is—the place I mean?”
“Oh yes, I can remember quite well. Nice picture. I always liked it. That’s the little humpbacked bridge and the house and the name of the place is Sutton Chancellor. About seven or eight miles from Market Basing. The house itself is about a couple of miles from Sutton Chancellor. Pretty place. Secluded.”
She came up to the picture, bent down and peered at it closely.
“That’s funny,” she said. “Yes, that’s very odd. I wonder now.”
Tommy did not pay much attention.
“What’s the name of the house?” he asked.
“I can’t really remember. It got renamed, you know. Several times. I don’t know what there was about it. A couple of rather tragic things happened there, I think, then the next people who came along renamed it. Called the Canal House once, or Canal Side. Once it was called Bridge House then Meadowside—or Riverside was another name.”
“Who lived there—or who lives there now? Do you know?”
“Nobody I know. Man and a girl lived there when first I saw it. Used to come down for weekends. Not married, I think. The girl was a dancer. May have been an actress—no, I think she was a dancer. Ballet dancer. Rather beautiful but dumb. Simple, almost wanting. William was quite soft about her, I remember.”
“Did he paint her?”
“No. He didn’t often paint people. He used to say sometimes he wanted to do a sketch of them, but he never did much about it. He was always silly over girls.”
“They were the people who were there when your husband was painting the house?”
“Yes, I think so. Part of the time anyway. They only came down weekends. Then there was some kind of a bust-up. They had a row, I think, or he went away and left her or she went away and left him. I wasn’t down there myself. I was working in Coventry then doing a group. After that I think there was just a governess in the house and the child. I don’t know who the child was or where she came from but I suppose the governess was looking after her. Then I think something happened to the child. Either the governess took her away somewhere or perhaps she died. What do you want to know about the people who lived in the house twenty years ago? Seems to me idiotic.”
“I want to hear anything I can about that house,” said Tommy. “You see, my wife went away to look for that house. She said she’d seen it out of a train somewhere.”
“Quite right,” said Mrs. Boscowan, “the railway line runs just the other side of the bridge. You can see the house very well from it, I expect.” Then she said, “Why did she want to find that house?”
Tommy gave a much abridged explanation—she looked at him doubtfully.
“You haven’t come out of a mental home or anything, have you?” said Mrs. Boscowan. “On parole or something, whatever they call it.”
“I suppose I must sound a little like that,” said Tommy, “but it’s quite simple really. My wife wanted to find out about this house and so she tried to take various train journeys to find out where it was she’d seen it. Well, I think she did find out. I think she went there to this place—something Chancellor?”
“Sutton Chancellor, yes. Very one-horse place it used to be. Of course it may be a big development or even one of these new dormitory towns by now.”
“It might be anything, I expect,” said Tommy. “She telephoned she was coming back but she didn’t come back. And I want to know what’s happened to her. I think she went and started investigating that house and perhaps—perhaps she ran into danger.”
“What’s dangerous about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy. “Neither of us knew. I didn’t even think there could be any danger about it, but my wife did.”
“E.S.P.?”
“Possibly. She’s a little like that. She has hunches. You never heard of or knew a Mrs. Lancaster twenty years ago or any time up to a month ago?”
“Mrs. Lancaster? No, I don’t think so. Sort of name one might remember, mightn’t it be. No. What about Mrs. Lancaster?”
“She was the woman who owned this picture. She gave it as a friendly gesture to an aunt of mine. Then she left an old people’s home rather suddenly. Her relatives took her away. I’ve tried to trace her but it isn’t easy.”
“Who’s the one who’s got the imagination, you or your wife? You seem to have thought up a lot of things and to be rather in a state, if I may say so.”
“Oh yes, you can say so,” said Tommy. “Rather in a state and all about nothing at all. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? I suppose you’re right too.”
“No,” said Mrs. Boscowan. Her voice had altered slightly. “I wouldn’t say about nothing at all.”
Tommy looked at her inquiringly.
“There’s one thing that’s odd about that picture,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “Very odd. I remember it quite well, you know. I remember most of William’s pictures although he painted such a lot of them.”
“Do you remember who it was sold to, if it was sold?”
“No, I don’t remember that. Yes, I think it was sold. There was a whole batch of his paintings sold from one of his exhibitions. They ran back for about three or four years before this and a couple of years later than this. Quite a lot of them were sold. Nearly all of them. But I can’t remember by now who it was sold to. That’s asking too much.”
“I’m very grateful to you for all you have remembered.”
“You haven’t asked me yet why I said there was something odd about the picture. This picture that you brought here.”
“You mean it isn’t your husband’s—somebody else painted it?”
“Oh no. That’s the picture that William painted. ‘House by a Canal,’ I think he called it in the catalogue. But it isn’t as it was. You see, there’s something wrong with it.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Mrs. Boscowan stretched out a clay-smeared finger and jabbed at a spot just below the bridge spanning the canal.
“There,” she said. “You see? There’s a boat tied up under the bridge, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” said Tommy puzzled.
“Well, that boat wasn’t there, not when I saw it last. William never painted that boat. When it was exhibited there was no boat of any kind.”
“You mean that somebody not your husband painted the boat in here afterwards?”
“Yes. Odd, isn’t it? I wonder why. First of all I was surprised to see the boat there, a place where there wasn’t any boat, then I can see quite well that it wasn’t painted by William. He didn’t put it in at any time. Somebody else did. I wonder who?”
She looked at Tommy.
“And I wonder why?”
Tommy had no solution to offer. He looked at Mrs. Boscowan. His Aunt Ada would have called her a scatty woman but Tommy did not think of her in that light. She was vague, with an abrupt way of jumping from one subject to another. The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal. Had she loved her husband or been jealous of her husband or despised her husband? There was really no clue whatever in her manner, or indeed her words. But he had the feeling that that small painted boat tied up under the bridge had caused her uneasiness. She hadn’t liked the boat being there. Suddenly he wondered if the statement she had made was true. Could she really remember from long years back whether Boscowan had painted a boat at the bridge or had not? It seemed really a very small and insignificant item. If it had been only a year ago when she had seen the picture last—but apparently it was a much longer time than that. And it had made Mrs. Boscowan uneasy. He looked at her again and saw that she was looking at him. Her curious eyes resting on him not defiantly, but only thoughtfully. Very, very thoughtfully.
“What are you going to do now?” she said.
That at least was easy. Tommy had no difficulty in knowing what he was going to do now.
“I shall go home tonight—see if there is any news of my wife—any word from her. If not, tomorrow I shall go to this place,” he said. “Sutton Chancellor. I hope that I may find my wife there.”
“It would depend,” said Mrs. Boscowan.
“Depend on what?” said Tommy sharply.
Mrs. Boscowan frowned. Then she murmured, seemingly to herself, “I wonder where she is?”
“You wonder where who is?”
Mrs. Boscowan had turned her glance away from him. Now her eyes swept back.
“Oh,” she said. “I meant your wife.” Then she said, “I hope she is all right.”
“Why shouldn’t she be all right? Tell me, Mrs. Boscowan, is there something wrong with that place—with Sutton Chancellor?”
“With Sutton Chancellor? With the place?” She reflected. “No, I don’t think so. Not with the place.”
“I suppose I meant the house,” said Tommy. “This house by the canal. Not Sutton Chancellor village.”
“Oh, the house,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “It was a good house really. Meant for lovers, you know.”
“Did lovers live there?”
“Sometimes. Not often enough really. If a house is built for lovers, it ought to be lived in by lovers.”
“Not put to some other use by someone.”
“You’re pretty quick,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “You saw what I meant, didn’t you? You mustn’t put a house that was meant for one thing to the wrong use. It won’t like it if you do.”
“Do you know anything about the people who have lived there of late years?”
She shook her head. “No. No. I don’t know anything about the house at all. It was never important to me, you see.”
“But you’re thinking of something—no, someone?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “I suppose you’re right about that. I was thinking of—someone.”
“Can’t you tell me about the person you were thinking of?”
“There’s really nothing to say,” said Mrs. Boscowan. “Sometimes, you know, one just wonders where a person is. What’s happened to them or how they might have—developed. There’s a sort of feeling—” She waved her hands—“Would you like a kipper?” she said unexpectedly.
“A kipper?” Tommy was startled.
“Well, I happen to have two or three kippers here. I thought perhaps you ought to have something to eat before you catch a train. Waterloo is the station,” she said. “For Sutton Chancellor, I mean. You used to have to change at Market Basing. I expect you still do.”
It was a dismissal. He accepted it.
Twelve. Tommy meets an old friend