The Missing Old Masters Read online

  Inside were a few oddments, a little money, some keys and a folded note which read: Don’t play around any longer. We mean business.

  Mannering had never seen a more obvious blackmail ultimatum. He refolded it carefully, holding it by the edges as he slipped it inside an envelope which he placed in his pocket. Then he switched off the light, waiting for a few seconds before opening the door. No one was outside. He went down the secondary staircase and into the grounds by the side entrance, walking through the garden towards the cottage where Lady Markly lived. Mannering didn’t really believe she had anything to do with the missing paintings; nevertheless, with so much unsolved mystery, anything was possible, and this would be an excellent opportunity to search the cottage.

  Walking up to the cottage, he circled it, then stood for a moment motionless in the shadows. There were no lights in the windows, front or back. No one appeared to have followed him, nor was there any sound of movement. Stepping inside the tiny porch, he began to work on the lock of the cottage door with a piece of specially toughened steel. Practised as he was, it made very little noise; nevertheless he paused again, to make sure no one had been disturbed, before pushing the door open. He switched on a pocket torch and the beam stabbed like a white dagger through the darkness. Through the hall he crept, past the tiny kitchen, and into the room beyond.

  This really was a tiny place; he should be through in fifteen minutes, perhaps even ten. He moved forward as he shone the torch ahead – and kicked against something unyielding on the floor. He struck it so heavily that he tripped and fell, wrenching his shoulder, the torch weaving a wild pattern on the opposite wall.

  He put the torch out and got to his feet in darkness, listening, heart thumping.

  There was no sound.

  He switched on the torch again and, almost fearfully, directed it downwards.

  It flickered across a pair of highly polished black shoes, along a pair of trousered legs, a white shirt front, a bow-tie – a face.

  It shone on the face of Anstiss, thief and footman.

  Mannering was quite sure that Anstiss was dead, although he could not see immediately what had caused death. The man lay on his back, his head turned to one side. His mouth was slack, his eyes were nearly closed.

  Slowly Mannering groped for, and found, his wrist; the pulse was still.

  He straightened up and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. The sensible thing was to get away at once, before anyone discovered him here – and yet he wanted to search the cottage. Once the body was found the police would take over, and there would be no chance at all to make a search.

  The curtains were drawn.

  He shone the torch towards the door until it showed the light switch, crossed to it and flicked it down. The light fell on a charmingly furnished sitting-cum-dining-room. His gaze passed over a settee, two easy chairs, a small table, and came to rest on a writing-bureau. It was unlocked, but contained nothing to give him any help, only the kind of business documents that a woman living alone would have.

  She had a bank balance of eight hundred and seven pounds and a deposit account of a little over a thousand; hardly a fortune. She appeared to own a few building society shares and a few other securities, but she wasn’t a wealthy woman, on this evidence.

  It was time he went.

  Putting out the light, he went back into the hall and crept swiftly up the narrow, carpeted stairs. After a quick look round the tiny bedroom, he lifted the curtain, not expecting to see anything but the lights of the Manor and the shapes of trees.

  He stood appalled.

  Not far off were two police cars, their headlights pointing towards the cottage. Half a dozen men had alighted. Mannering saw the beams of other cars, the shapes of other men, turned in the same direction. The cottage was surrounded by the police; he had no chance to get away.

  Shocked, aghast, Mannering let the curtain fall. He could hear no sounds, for the men approached across grass, but it would not be more than two minutes before they reached the door.

  Who had sent for them?

  That thought passed through his mind as he went towards the landing, reached it and looked upwards. There, as he had hoped, he saw a hatch to an attic. He measured the distance with his eyes, and jumped, hands banging upwards, knocking the hatch cover to one side. Then he jumped again, gripped the edge of the hatch and hauled himself up, the pain in his shoulder almost unbearable. Yet he was able to climb through, scrambling over the side, then to push the hatch cover into place. It fell with a click.

  He had won a few minutes’ respite.

  Was there an attic window? The roof was of thatch, he remembered, but he had never been near the cottage by day. Cautiously he nicked the torch; the beam fell coldly, impartially, on two paintings. He caught his breath.

  These were the paintings he had taken from the studio, and which had been stolen in turn from the Mini after the crash.

  He paused long enough to make doubly sure, then shone the torch about the attic. The sloping roof reached to the floor on either side, and even in the middle there was hardly room to stand upright.

  There was a window, small but big enough for him to squeeze through, giving him hope that there was still a chance of getting out on to the roof and dropping down to safety.

  The alternative was to open the door when the knocking began, to tell the truth and hope that the police would believe him. Surely no one in their senses would seriously believe that he had murdered Anstiss!

  But whether they did or not, the police would have to hold him, and he would be able to do nothing more to help Joanna. He had a mental picture of Joanna, pale and still, and of Dr. Ignatzi, deeply worried because he believed that someone had poisoned the girl.

  The choice was already made; he had to try to get away. If he failed and were caught, then he could tell the truth; there would be almost as much hope of being believed then as now.

  Wedging the two pictures inside his jacket, he edged towards the window.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fire! Fire!

  From the window Mannering could see two of the cars, the beams of their headlights very bright. He noticed with relief that they were focussed no higher than the ground floor. He also saw the men halfway between the cars and the cottage, approaching with great caution; others hovered near the cars, and it was more than likely that behind the lights were still more.

  Once outside, he could crouch on the window recess, for the window, a dormer type, was built deep into the thatch. Not until he dropped upright was he likely to be seen – though there was always the possibility that someone would take a single glance upwards and raise the alarm. But this was a chance he would have to take.

  Once out of the window, where should he go?

  He saw the wire netting which covered the thatch to keep the birds from nesting. So thatch and wire would give him some kind of hold.

  He would have to climb out backwards.

  With two sound shoulders he would not have given the risk a moment’s thought. Now, flexing the sound one, he opened the window to its widest extent and began to ease himself through. As he did so, he heard a banging from below; the police were at the front door of the cottage, and would probably break in at any moment.

  He heard a shout.

  Had they seen him?

  He could not hope to get away if they had.

  He lowered his legs so that soon the lower part of his body was resting against the roof, the top half on the window ledge, head still inside the room. The banging was repeated; so was the shout, but he could not distinguish any words.

  He heard a car horn blare.

  He edged himself to one side, and at last was outside the window, spreadeagled, his feet overhanging the thatch, his fingers entwined in the wire; at least there was little risk of falling.

 
More shouting came.

  My God! They were shouting: ‘Fire, fire!’

  He heard more car horns and an excited babble of voices, with the single word fire repeated over and over again. Still edging away from the window, terrifyingly aware that the fire must be in the cottage or there wouldn’t be so much excitement, he could look neither down nor behind him.

  He had a vivid recollection of Eliza Doze’s roof disappearing in wild billows of smoke; could almost hear the roaring of the flames and see the lurid glow.

  There was a red glow – on the right.

  Near by was a big tree, one branch almost touching him. A flickering red light danced on the leaves.

  Someone bellowed: ‘Get back. Get back!’

  Someone else called clearly: ‘Get those people away!’

  Another car was approaching, and a man spoke in a tone of alarm.

  ‘There’s Colonel Cunliffe! … And Lady Markly.’

  Mannering could hear these voices as he edged away from the window. The fire was fierce enough now for the glow to be reflected on the tree and back on to him. He could feel the heat. He glanced towards the tree and saw the big overhanging bough only two or three feet away from him.

  Would it support his weight?

  At least it would hide him.

  He dropped his legs over the edge of the roof, and at arm’s length was only a few feet off the ground. Swinging his body as far as it would go, he lurched sideways, falling almost directly beneath that big branch. He heard the roaring of fire and the honking of horns as he staggered up, leaves and twigs brushing his head and face. He could see the huge trunk of the tree in the red glow, rounded it, and kept moving. If he had to run for it, it would be the end; he was already gasping for breath, his damaged shoulder aching badly.

  No one seemed to look his way.

  He broke cover of the branches, stealthily. Now the whole of the grounds seemed to be illuminated in that ominous red light, and he felt the stench of smoke in his nostrils. He could see a car and a group of people to the right, but no one was in front of him. He quickened his pace and reached a spot behind the quickly gathering crowd. Soon, he was near the side entrance of the Manor. The lights were on, and the door was wide open, but no one was about. He went in, walking swiftly up the secondary staircase.

  A woman nearby said: ‘What a frightful thing.’

  ‘That’s the second one,’ Betsy Doze said tearfully. ‘The second one.’

  Mannering reached his own room and went inside.

  This time, he put the two canvases behind the wardrobe. Then he undressed, bathed, brushed the leaves and straw out of his hair, put on pyjamas and got into bed. At the last moment he remembered to set his alarm for seven o’clock.

  He would probably be disturbed before that, anyhow.

  But no one disturbed him, and he woke to the alarm.

  For several minutes he lay on his back, staring at the shaft of sunlight on the ceiling. Then he rang the bell, and in a few moments Betsy Doze came in with tea. She wore the pale blue linen dress that was the uniform of the maids at the Manor.

  ‘Hallo, Betsy! So you work here now?’

  Must temporary, sir,’ Betsy said, putting the tray on the bedside table. ‘Oh, you are lucky!’

  ‘What am I lucky about?’ asked Mannering.

  ‘Sleeping through it all.’

  ‘All through what?’

  ‘The fire, sir!’

  Once she had started, there was no stopping her, and Mannering learned that the cottage had been gutted ‘Just like Gran’s’ and that all Lady Markly’s lovely possessions had been lost.

  She went away at last, excited as much as perturbed.

  Mannering got up, bathed, found his shoulder much-less uncomfortable than he had feared, and at twenty minutes to eight went out, taking Joanna’s two pictures with him. There was no sign of Middleton. He wondered whether the police knew that there had been a body in that cottage – even whether they would ever know.

  It was a crisp, bright morning, after a heavy dew.

  He drove towards the highway, seeing no one at work, no one in sight, until he reached the drive gates. A policeman stood there squarely blocking his path.

  Mannering stopped – and recognised the man whom he had seen on the evening of the first fire.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’ The man peered through the car window. ‘Oh, it’s Mr. Mannering. Are you leaving for good, sir?’

  ‘No. I’m going to Salisbury to meet the manager of my London shop.’

  ‘I see, sir. I have to report all movements in and out of the Manor,’ the policeman went on. ‘You weren’t at the fire last night, sir, were you?’

  ‘No, I was tired out after a rough day, and slept like a log, but I’ve heard all about it.’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘There’s some talk of a man being burned alive.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Mannering, and had a quick mental glimpse of Anstiss, lying still and dead.

  ‘Yes, sir. A man was seen going into the cottage only half an hour or so before the fire,’ the constable added. ‘We went to get him as a matter of fact, sir.’

  ‘And he didn’t get away?’

  ‘No one saw him leave and the cottage was surrounded,’ announced the constable, not without relish.

  ‘Very nasty indeed,’ said Mannering.

  He drove on, wondering why the police had gathered in such strength outside the cottage and reflecting wryly that he himself could easily have been burned alive. Now that he was wide awake he opened his mind to urgent questions: who had started that fire, and why?

  Anstiss, he knew, was a fire-raiser. Had he planted a petrol-incendiary and then been attacked and murdered? Or had his killer left an incendiary so as to destroy the body and conceal the murder?

  There were really three questions. Who had killed Anstiss? Who had set fire to the cottage? And why had the police arrived so promptly and in such strength?

  He was turning towards the Market Square when he passed a police car; in it was Chief Inspector Fishlock. Fishlock, recognising him, nodded. A minute late Mannering pulled up outside the Red Lion Hotel. He parked almost at the entrance, passed under the hanging creeper which gave the inn its special charm and went into the small hallway which had not been altered substantially from the days when the Red Lion had been a coaching inn.

  Josh Larraby and Beverley Willis were standing by a huge, carved grandfather clock.

  Mannering shook hands, while Larraby said: ‘We arranged for breakfast in a private room, Mr. Mannering; we thought we could talk more freely there. Willis drove me down,’ he added. A waiter appeared, elderly, affable, and led them back across the courtyard and into a big room with chairs all about the sides, odd tables, and one set for breakfast in a corner away from the window.

  ‘And I ordered porridge, bacon, eggs and sausages, and coffee,’ Larraby went on.

  Mannering chuckled.

  ‘That sounds fine. I’m glad you’re here too, Willis, I wanted to have a word with you. Phoned you last night, as a matter of fact. But what made you come?’

  ‘Hester Cunliffe,’ replied Willis, languidly, but the expression in his brown eyes was intent. There was something unusually attractive about his saturnine face, his delusive foppishness and lean figure. ‘She talked to her father on the telephone yesterday and he told her about Joanna. How is Joanna, sir?’

  ‘I haven’t inquired this morning, but she’ll be all right. Did Colonel Cunliffe mention that it looked as if someone tried to murder her?’

  ‘Good God! No!’

  ‘That’s what it does look like,’ Mannering said. He paused as the waiter hovered over them, changing plates, and continued after the man had gone: ‘Willis, how much do you know about Joanna?’

  ‘Not very m
uch, in fact,’ answered Willis. ‘I’ve known her on and off since she was at school, but she’s younger than Hester and—but she’s a very nice person, sir.’

  ‘Has Hester ever said she was worried—that Joanna was worried, I mean?’

  They were eating.

  ‘She’s often said she was worried about Joanna; she seemed to think something was wrong. For one thing Joanna always appeared to be short of money, although she inherited quite a lot from her mother. Hester thinks she may have made some foolish investments.’

  ‘Any men in her life?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Willis, reflectively.

  ‘I want you to find out,’ Mannering said. ‘Can you talk to Hester this evening?’

  ‘No trouble about that!’

  ‘And I want to know if Hester knows of anything which happened about a year ago and affected Joanna or her father,’ Mannering went on. ‘It looks as if she’s being very cruelly blackmailed. Any love affairs, misdemeanours, anything which would give anyone power over Joanna? See what I’m after?’

  ‘Only too clearly,’ Willis said, unhappily.

  ‘Ask Hester to tell you everything she possibly can,’ added Mannering. He paused and looked very earnestly into the younger man’s eyes. ‘It could mean the difference between life and death for Joanna.’

  ‘If there’s anything at all Hester can do, she will,’ Willis said confidently. ‘She plans to come down for the weekend, but if it would help she could get off today.’

  ‘I think that might complicate things,’ Mannering answered. ‘I’ll telephone if there seems any need. And now’ – he turned to Larraby – ‘I’ve a couple of modern pictures which have been painted over older ones. I want you to examine them very closely—the new work and the old. The old ones may be very old indeed.’ He did not say that he thought Joanna might have painted over stolen pictures; there was a limit to how much he wanted to confide in Beverley Willis. ‘And I want to know as much about Harry Anstiss as you can find out.’