Murder for Treasure Page 9

  CHAPTER 10

  Treasure had the feeling that the dining-room at Mariner’s Rest was seldom used for eating—or for anything else except possibly funeral wakes.

  It was a dark room with a single window, lace-curtained against intrusive viewing from the lane outside. The furniture was highly polished, late Victorian Ugly supplemented by an unusual number of nondescript, unmatched chairs occupying most of the floor space including some that would have been better reserved for the movement of human beings.

  Constable Lewin knew Mrs Ogmore-Davies conducted her ‘meditation meetings’ here—events reportedly attended by beings unhindered in their movements by a deficiency of anything so cosmic as floor space, or even floor boards. He found the aura of disembodied spirits intimidating, particularly as he did not believe in such things. He had arrived early—before the others—to imply he was keen, and had been lectured for his pains. He was present as a favour to Mrs Spring and out of deference to the Judge. He had been careful to show a proper respect to Treasure and to stop short of overtly humouring the old baggage who had kept the whole festering subject open—this in the hope of getting it closed once and for all.

  Even without heavy oilskins Mrs Ogmore-Davies was a big woman, larger and older than her friend and remote relative Mrs Blanche Evans, and much less good-humoured.

  ‘It isn’t funny to be laughed at in your own village, Mr Treasure.’ She stared, probably accusingly, at Lewin: he had to assume as much, it being difficult to tell from the wrong side of the pebble lenses.

  Anna Spring, the fourth person present and seated at the oval table, looked deeply concerned as the speaker continued. ‘It’s not for myself, of course. I don’t matter, and who knows it better, as many will tell you. It’s for him who’s gone over.’ She paused. This gave Treasure the required moment to work out the identity of the subject and the permanence of the involuntary defection.

  ‘It’s not right, Mr Treasure. It’s not right that the widow of such a respected figure should be accused of seeing things. It reflects.’

  The lips tightened. The hands moved sharply to pull the unbuttonable cardigan across the massive bosom: again. The last action was symbolic only: the Ogmore-Davies upperworks were already decorously enough encased in high-necked flowered nylon.

  ‘You’re quite right, of course.’ Treasure continued to steel himself: after all, he was paying a small enough price for the Judge’s compliance over the Hutstacker deal. ‘Mr Lewin and I’ll go over the facts again and see if we can come up with a credible explanation.’ He nodded confidently. ‘The whole episode must have been very trying for you. But, you know, nobody doubts your word.’

  ‘We talk about it every day. Never a day goes by without we talk about it.’ Mrs Ogmore-Davies’s gaze was now fixed firmly on the large, hand-coloured photograph of her late husband that hung above the fire-place. He was smiling and it would have taken little to convince Treasure that the grin had broadened in the previous half-hour. ‘He’s always on about the body. He knows, of course.’

  ‘Not coming through clear enough, is it, Mrs Ogmore-Davies?’ It was difficult to tell whether Constable Lewin was being solicitous or sarcastic. He glanced towards Anna whose special regard he evidently courted.

  ‘They can only lead us, Mr Lewin. It’s not in the nature of things for them to tell.’ It was a kind enough rebuke, giving Lewin the benefit of the doubt.

  Mrs Ogmore-Davies now removed her glasses. Her eyes were closed and her hands she had placed palms downwards on the lid of a carved wooden box that lay before her on the table. There was an embarrassed silence in case she was communing with ‘them’. After a few moments she sighed deeply, opened her eyes, and sadly shook her head.

  ‘Ethel, I must go, I’m late already.’ Anna rose and kissed the older woman on the cheek: this produced only grudging acknowledgement. ‘I’m sure Mark will solve the mystery,’ she added unperturbed. ‘See you later, Mark. Oh, you coming too, Mr Lewin?’

  ‘Duty calls, I’m afraid—or rather my other duties,’ the policeman continued hastily as he climbed over several chairs. His supper break had started ten minutes earlier. ‘See you again then, Mr Treasure.’ He smiled at Mrs Ogmore-Davies and left, looking pleased to have escaped.

  ‘Not the calibre of policeman you’ve been used to working with and that’s a fact.’ Mrs Ogmore-Davies, clutching the box, was herself now picking her way towards the door.

  Treasure followed intending to take his leave and glad to quit the depressing room. There was no purpose in his insisting that he seldom worked with policemen, that he was a banker with really no business at Mariner’s Rest. ‘I’ll be on my way then,’ he said instead, but not before he had been guided to the sunlit sitting-room.

  ‘Sit down a minute. This is for you, Mr Treasure.’ A ready-poured glass of what he took to be sherry was thrust into his hand. Resigned, he settled on a deep, comfortable armchair near the open french windows. There was a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the bay. ‘You felt the hostile vibrations next door? A very sensitive room, that is.’

  Treasure smiled. ‘I know very little about these things, I’m afraid. This is excellent sherry,’ which to a connoisseur might have suggested a second area of ignorance.

  ‘I was trying hard to get help from loved ones passed over. Those close to me, and Anna, and the Judge even. They’d all want to help, you know.’ She nodded confidently. ‘They’re all in here.’ She touched the box that now lay on a table beside her.

  Treasure tried not to indicate disbelief or mental discomfort. Recklessly he wondered whether the box might hold assorted ashes.

  ‘Pictures, letters, little mementos,’ Mrs Ogmore-Davies continued. ‘Keep a wedding photo safe always, Mr Treasure,’ she counselled earnestly, ‘in case of need. They’re best in my experience.’

  The banker nodded seriously, wondering if he should go through the charade of making a physical note as a prelude to leaving. He leant forward earnestly.

  ‘But there was hostility, Mr Treasure. And we know from which quarter. Oh yes.’ The lips pursed bitterly. ‘I’d shown Mr Lewin the little items I’d put in the casket before our meeting. Asked if there was anything he’d like to add. People often have little keepsakes on them.’ She paused. ‘Not interested or impressed. Prejudice and ignorance are nasty things. Closed minds some people have got, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘One meets it everywhere,’ he agreed warmly, seeking not to prolong the exchange.

  ‘But he was with us the whole time, of course,’ she added unexpectedly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Captain Ogmore-Davies. Pouring his heart out he was. And not just about the murdered man I saw in the harbour.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Treasure.’ The tall upright chair chosen by Mrs Ogmore-Davies offered a dominating advantage in the conversation. ‘Contrary to what you may have been told, my late husband was not inebriated when he met his death. That came out clear at the inquest.’

  ‘No one has suggested anything to me . . .’

  ‘Well, Mrs Pugh at the Boatman wouldn’t be above implying. That and other things. And it’s not true. Sober as a judge he was when his heart failed. He might still have been saved, too, if he hadn’t fallen back down those steps.’

  The huge bird flew in dramatically out of the sun, skimmed Treasure’s head, and settled, with a squawk, on the shoulder of Mrs Ogmore-Davies. The homing Gomer examined the visitor suspiciously first with one eye and then the other.

  ‘The question the Captain is asking,’ continued the formidable widow, leaning forward with enough of a jerk to agitate her feathered companion, ‘the question he’s asking us’ she embellished, unruffled by the wings flapping around her head, ‘is did he fall, or was he pushed?’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ said Treasure, but under his breath.

  ‘Pick a card,’ said the Judge, ‘any card.’ He fanned out the pack he was holding towards Treasure who dutifully made his selection.

 
It was nearly seven o’clock, and the two men were standing at the drinks table in the drawing-room of New Hall. Thanks to the protracted interview with Mrs Ogmore-Davies, the banker had only that moment entered after bathing and changing at a furious pace. He had postponed his planned visit to the church, found he had forgotten to pack a favourite tie, and was in greater need of a Scotch and soda than a Nine of Diamonds.

  ‘Put it back without my seeing it. . . That’s it. I cut the pack three times . . . so . . . and shuffle . . . so . . . and voila, your card, sir, was the Two of Spades.’

  ‘Actually . . .’

  ‘No, no, I see my mistake. It was this one, the—er—the King of Clubs?’ Treasure shook his head. ‘Wrong again? I think perhaps that trick’s too advanced for me. Have a drink. Help yourself, my dear chap.’ The Judge waved his hands over the array of bottles. ‘How was Mr Ogmore-Davies?’

  ‘Was it possible her husband was drunk when he died?’

  ‘As a lord, I should think.’

  Not for the first time Treasure considered how much satisfaction news of a drunken judge must bring to sober lords. ‘But you don’t know for a fact. I gather the coroner . . .’

  ‘Gave him the benefit.’ Nott-Herbert nodded. ‘Drunk or sober, the fellow died of a heart attack. No point in stirring up gossip. Any special reason for asking?’

  The banker decided to let this Parson Woodforde type summary pass. He shook his head. ‘Those are very thick lenses Mrs Ogmore-Davies wears.’

  ‘Thick enough to imagine things through?’

  ‘Mm, I thought rather perhaps to make mistakes through.’

  ‘It’s been suggested. The problem is getting her to accept it. D’you think that’s the answer?’

  ‘It could be. Constable Lewin seems to think so. Anyway, I’m going to view the scene first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Very good of you. Very good of you indeed to take this trouble. Come and see this picture,’ the Judge added as though in compensation. He drew his guest towards the empty hearth and pointed to the large landscape that hung above it. ‘Marcel Jefferys, Belgian Impressionist, oil on board. Magnificent, don’t you think?’

  ‘Quite beautiful and an unusual composition. He must deliberately have sat himself down with a silver birch a yard ahead and just off centre mucking up his view . . .’

  ‘To paint the farm-house and so on a hundred yards beyond. I thought the same thing. But it worked. Incidentally it’s a larch not a birch.’

  Treasure bowed. ‘I stand corrected. I don’t think I know Jefferys. The Belgian School of Impressionists . . .’

  ‘Definitely Deuxieme Cru but, like claret, not necessarily inferior for that.’ He looked around the comfortable room. ‘You’ll find others of Anna’s discoveries about the place. Nice little Cassatt sketch over there, for instance.’

  Treasure walked over to examine the drawing. ‘And the pictures in my room?’

  The Judge pondered for a moment. ‘The Utrillo’s mine, bought by my grandfather. The Vuillard’s one of Anna’s. Like the Jefferys, it won’t be here long.’ He read the question in his guest’s expression. ‘It helps Anna if I take on some of her special finds for a bit. Keeps her capital from being tied up until the right buyers are about, and I enjoy having the pictures here.’

  ‘I should think it also improves their provenance to have them come from the collection of Judge Nott-Herbert.’

  ‘D’you think so?’ The Judge seemed genuinely surprised and flattered. ‘My grandfather was the collector, not me. I’m very small beer.’

  ‘But you are a British Judge.’

  ‘Oh, quite . . . quite so. I suppose Americans might. . .’ The speaker stopped in mid-sentence. His free hand moved in a nervous gesture to the broad forehead. ‘Americans. Americans. I quite forgot. We are about to be invaded by your friend Grabtop, or some such name, and Crutt, the most boring man on God’s earth.’

  ‘They’re coming here?’

  ‘My dear fellow, they should be with us already. There was a telephone message. Grabtop—’

  ‘Crabthorne, I think.’

  ‘That’s it. Crabthorne and his wife are passing through, staying the night at the gin palace up the road. Crutt rang to ask if he could bring them to call. He spoke to Mrs Evans, explained they were friends of yours. Since I was incommunicado rehearsing Stanley, she naturally invited them to dine.’

  The ‘naturally’ implied that if in doubt Mrs Evans could safely extend Nott-Herbert courtesy and hospitality to all comers.

  ‘Fortunately we’re having cold salmon and we need to leave for the cathedral at eight-fifteen.’ There was some doubt in the Judge’s eyes as he pondered whether he had remembered to tell Treasure about the organ recital. ‘They can all come with us. Do ’em good. So we shan’t be put upon for too long,’ he ended on an encouraging thought just as the peal of the New Hall door-bell echoed through the house.

  Some minutes later Treasure was giving minimal attention to an earnest soliloquy from Albert Crutt, and feeling distinctly put upon.

  Crabthorne’s dissembling explanation of his presence in Panty offered on his arrival had been hardly softened by his insistence that he had tried to reach Treasure before leaving London.

  It was plain the American had reason to be uneasy about the progress of negotiations over Rigley & Herbert—reasons the banker was certain would prove unfounded and which had almost certainly been invented by Crutt: who else?

  Even now, as Treasure was obliged to countenance Crutt’s loquacious drivel and to contemplate the appearance of his brassy-looking wife, he could hear Crabthorne loudly and unnecessarily promoting the benefits of a ‘hands-across-the-sea’ merger to the Judge, and for a variety of wrong reasons.

  Patience Crabthorne, whom Treasure had met several times, had separated herself from the overt huckstering going on in the room by choosing to examine pictures on her own. Treasure liked Mrs Crabthorne: he abruptly excused himself to the Crutts and went to join her.

  ‘Mark, I do believe that’s a Mary Cassatt,’ she offered.

  ‘It is. Authenticated by a Judge.’ It went through Treasure’s mind he had just inadvertently acted out the purpose he had credited to Anna.

  ‘We have several Cassatts in the University Gallery at home. She came from the next State, born Pittsburgh 1845, daughter of a Pennsylvania banker of French descent, friend and protegee of Degas. How’s that for a newly enrolled docent?’

  ‘Bravo. What’s a docent?’

  ‘A vulture for culture like me, ready to bone up on the exhibits in her local museum and then blind conducted parties with the dazzle of her enlightenment and erudition. Actually it’s great fun.’

  ‘Then kindly enlighten this ignorant party about what you’re really doing here.’

  Patience Crabthorne glanced at her companion in amusement. ‘I’m here because your gorgeous and talented wife told me St David’s was worth the trip. Edgar’s here because that awful man Crutt thinks you’re swinging the deal with the Judge and he needs Edgar to blow it by acting the Ugly American.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘I didn’t, not until I met him when we arrived this afternoon. I really thought you were having problems and that Edgar might be able to help.’ She looked across at her husband who was in full flight on the benefits of Ealing and dove-tailed production. The Judge appeared distinctly put-upon. ‘I warned Edgar on the way here I thought he was being played for a sucker. If it’s any consolation he’ll figure it himself in a moment. He’s not stupid, just impetuous. You’re not offended, are you, Mark?’

  ‘Not so long as I can put the pieces back when this little charade is over. Shall we intervene?’

  It was at that moment that Anna walked into the room. She was momentarily surprised to see so many people but undeterred in her objective. ‘Mark, you’re a hero,’ she cried, making for Treasure. ‘I just heard on the local news how you defeated a gang of bandits on the train. Henry, did you know . . .’ She had turned seeking the J
udge, her voice faltered and faded as she caught sight of the man standing beside him. Crabthorne appeared equally nonplussed. There was a moment’s awkward silence. Anna looked back towards Treasure and this time noticed the woman at his side.

  It was Patience who broke the silence. ‘Why it’s Mrs Spring, isn’t it? How very good to see you again, and such a coincidence.’ She moved forward smiling warmly. ‘Edgar, you remember Mrs Spring, her husband used to pilot your plane. My dear, we were so dreadfully sorry to hear of the accident—weren’t we Edgar?’

  Crabthorne was doing his best to recover his composure.

  CHAPTER 11

  He examined his forehead in the bathroom mirror. Dusting the dried abrasions with complimentary Sunfun Tinted Talc did nothing to disguise the gunpowder wounds but it made him feel better. Thank God the swine missed burning his eyes.

  He had heard the report on the radio news. Two armed men had assaulted and robbed passengers at Whitland Station. They had been resisted by a well-known banker, and a group of railway employees. The men had escaped empty-handed but had so far evaded capture.

  So the police did have his luggage, which meant at some point they had had the passport. If he was to believe what he had just been told on the telephone the passport had since been ‘liberated’ and would be returned to him when he collected the money. Claiming the bag would be too complicated. Any communication with the police would be too complicated.

  He walked back to the bedroom and began to dress. He had ordered dinner from the room service menu. He could have eaten in the hotel dining-room except the opposition hadn’t figured yet where he was holed up and he was not going out of his way to tell them.

  The Sunfun was hardly the obvious choice for someone wishing to pass unnoticed. Since the assault he figured he would be safer in crowded places. It had not been until after he had checked in he discovered the hotel was practically empty. The Filipino floor waiter had blamed this on the tourist preference for local hotels with Welsh staff: so much for whirlpools.