The Old Fox Deceived Read online

  The room was bare except for the canvases stacked three and four deep all around the walls: landscapes, still lifes, paintings that looked like the painter had dipped fingers in a pot and flicked them at the canvas, and portraits. Certainly, Rees had talent. There was a traditional portrait of a woman in a long, green gown which testified to that. “That’s lovely,” said Jury.

  “Stately home stuff. Boring.” Adrian was hunkering down over a canvas. It was enormous, lying on the floor, tilted upwards and with a long receptacle, something like an aluminum pipe cut in two, to catch the paint drippings. He picked up a small bucket and poured; the cerise paint ran like a river of blood, trailing down the left side and running into the container at the bottom. Wiggins was fascinated.

  “You just toss the colors on and let them get all mucked about together. That it?”

  “That’s it, Sergeant.”

  Wiggins took out his handkerchief and turned watery eyes on Jury. “Am I allergic to paint, do you think, sir?”

  Jury really didn’t like being Wiggins’s apothecary. He sat down on one of the several available stools, all of them paint-splattered. “You saw Gemma Temple just before she was killed, Mr. Rees?”

  Intent upon running one of the red streams off to the left, Adrian nodded, then said, “I was walking up Grape Lane. From the Fox.”

  “Exactly where on Grape Lane? Near the Angel steps?”

  He nodded. “Just a bit after. I’d already passed them and she was coming down the other side.” Adrian got up from where he’d been hunched over the canvas and tried to relight the cigar on which he’d been chewing, by snapping a match with his fingernail. “I’ll tell you, she was a show-stopper. At first I thought I’d had one too many. Well, I always have one too many. But that night I was without funds.” He picked up a bucket of bright blue paint and poured it slowly down the canvas propped on the floor. He moved quickly to the other side and diverted the thin, blue stream with a large brush so that it crossed over the red paint, looped and came round again. “I only saw her across the pavement. And it was foggy. As usual.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t get a good look?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I got a good look all right. I’ll never forget it.” He got up. “Come here a moment.” Jury followed him to the other end of the room where Adrian pulled a covering away from a small canvas. The figure had not been fully painted in, but the background was impressive: darkness, mist, an aureole of light round a streetlamp, and the dim impression of a cloaked figure.

  “You mean this is her, Gemma Temple?” Adrian nodded. “I wish you’d finish it; it might be of some help.”

  Adrian covered it up again. “I’d forgotten it was the Twelfth Night party. I don’t go to those things, can’t stand them. But don’t tell the Colonel I said that. He’s a real patron of the arts, and he’s usually good for a no-interest loan. And a commission here and there.” They were back with the large canvas now, and Adrian was positioning a small bucket of green paint. He said to Wiggins, who seemed enthralled by the whole process, “Sergeant, help out a bit will you? When this green gets to your side, turn it back.”

  Wiggins seemed honored. “Oh. Well, if Inspector Jury—”

  Jury put out his hand for the notebook and Wiggins rolled up his sleeves and hunkered down. Jury shook his head and took out his pen. “Go on, Mr. Rees.”

  “I don’t think she saw me. She stopped for a second under the lamp near the steps.” He stood up, flung an imaginary cape over his shoulder. “Black cape, white shirt.” He clamped a hand over half of his face. “Face was white on the left side, black on the right. And a black mask to boot —”

  “But how did you know it was Gemma Temple?”

  “I didn’t. Not until I got back there a couple of hours later, rubbernecking with the rest of the villagers. I heard police sirens. Police sirens in Rackmoor? Couldn’t believe it. At first I thought it was an ambulance. Though I’ve never seen one of those in the five years I’ve been here. Nobody dies, I think. Percy Blythe is proof of that. I looked out the window and saw something going on. So I pulled on my pants and went for a look.”

  “Did you see the body?”

  “No. Who could? There were police crawling all over the Angel steps. But there was talk that it was one of the mummers, some woman in a black-and-white costume.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “Came back here. I was a bit nervous, couldn’t sleep. So I started in on this.”

  “You’d talked to her, hadn’t you? Once or twice in the pub?”

  Adrian looked at him for a long moment, smoking. “Once or twice, yes. She told me nothing about herself, except she was from London — Kentish Town, I think she said — and that she was an old friend of the Craels.”

  “You know them well?”

  “Yes. At least I know the Colonel well. I doubt anyone knows Julian well.” Adrian dabbed his brush in ocher paint, smeared it farther toward a corner.

  “And she didn’t mention why she was visiting Rackmoor?”

  Adrian shook his head. “Damned strange that is, too. Rackmoor in January is hardly the place for your hols, is it? I think she said she was a kind of an actress.”

  Jury thought for a moment. “Do you know Lily Siddons?”

  He looked up, surprised. “Yes, of course. Runs the Bridge Walk Café.”

  “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to kill her?”

  That got him off his knees. “Lily? For God’s sakes, no. Why do you ask?”

  Jury didn’t answer. He stood up, made a sign to Wiggins, who rose too from his position of contemplating the canvas. “Incidentally, Mr. Rees. Are you missing a piece of canvas that you know of?”

  “Canvas? Well . . . ” His eyes trailed off to a corner of the room in which were stacked paint pots, frames, canvas. “I haven’t looked, really. Why?”

  “Do you lock your shop up when you leave?”

  “Christ, no. The idea of anyone stealing paintings is a bit . . . ” He shrugged.

  “Thanks. I’ll be talking to you later.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Adrian wiped his hands on a rag and led them downstairs.

  As they walked back through the gallery, Wiggins stopped for another look at the nude. Or nudes.

  “Do you like that one?” Rees asked. “It’s called Dartboard.”

  “Interesting,” said Wiggins. “Looks like the center here’s got tiny holes in it. Is it something to do with using women as targets, or sexual playthings, that sort of thing?” He blew his nose thoroughly, one nostril at a time.

  Wiggins the Art Critic was a new persona to Jury.

  “Good guess, but, no. Actually, it’s because I got bored one night and stretched the canvas over cork and painted a dartboard on it. See—” They leaned closer. “You can just make out the rings under the flake white there. Only I couldn’t get rid of the holes. It’s rather a nice effect. Gives the nudes a kind of riddled look.”

  “Like they’d got the pox, or something.”

  “Hmm. I like that. That’s very good. I’ll call it Pox Britannica and raise the price fifty quid.”

  “If I were you, I’d toss a few more darts at that one’s face. Give her more of a poxy look.” Wiggins smiled and offered Adrian a cough drop.

  5

  The home of Sir Titus Crael, Bart., was an Elizabethan manor house, overlooking the giant, knobbled cliffs of the North Sea. It looked as if it were built of the same magnesian limestone as the walls surrounding the city of York, and was washed to a continuous whiteness by rain. It rose from a thick layer of ground mist, looming through great spoons of fog.

  Wiggins drove the police-issue Ford up the gravel drive and beside a large stable block, surprising a magnificent horse into rearing back. The elderly man on its back, tall, spare, and distinguished-looking, seemed in complete control of the horse, though, and dismounted. He walked over to the car.

  “You’re from Scotland Yard, aren’t you? I�
��m Titus Crael.” He held out a strong-fingered hand.

  Jury and Wiggins got out.

  “Don’t bother with the car. Just leave it there. Forgive me for meeting you at the stables, not very formal, I s’pose, but I’m not very formal. Anyway, I just wanted a word with you before you went in. You don’t mind talking out here, do you? Bracewood will turn a deaf ear.”

  Jury looked round for Bracewood, and then realized the Colonel was talking about the horse. Colonel Crael still had his leather-gloved hands through the reins and was leaning slightly against the horse, as some people do against others for support — physical or moral. “You don’t mind, do you, Inspector? Sergeant?”

  Jury assumed the Colonel meant to have the questioning done out here, and, though it was more damp than cold, he knew Wiggins would be a mask of misery. He said, “No, not really. I’ll just have Sergeant Wiggins go in and have a talk with the servants.”

  “By all means. Right through that door. Wood — my butler — will show you about.” He pointed to the formidable facade of the manor house as if it were no more than the entrance to some clay-and-wattle cottage. “Cook will give you tea, or something. You look cold.”

  Wiggins also looked grateful. He walked towards the house.

  “To tell the truth, Inspector Jury, I just wanted a word with you about this mess before you talk to Julian. We disagree so completely about that girl, I didn’t want to go into it again when he was around. We simply infuriate one another.” The Colonel twined his fingers through the reins of the horse. “I’m certain this Gemma Temple was my ward. Dillys March.” He looked off over the mist-blanketed stones into the trees, tall beeches rising specterlike, and talked about Dillys March. He said she had come to them when she was only eight years old, after an airplane crash had carried off both mother and father. “They were great friends of Lady Margaret —” The Colonel stumbled over the name. “Margaret was my wife. There’s a wonderful picture inside. Adrian Rees did it, and from only a photograph. He really is very talented. It will appear to you as if he glamorized her — but he didn’t. She really was very beautiful. . . . ”

  “You were talking about Dillys March.”

  “Yes. She was a kind of. . . . adopted daughter, really. I mean, we treated her like our own, though we never legally adopted her.”

  “According to Inspector Harkins’s report — your own statement, sir — Dillys March was about to inherit money from your late wife’s estate. And then she suddenly left.”

  “It wasn’t all that much.” The Colonel shrugged off the sum. “Only fifty thousand pounds. When she was twenty-one.”

  “And is that money still held in trust?”

  “It reverted to the estate. Margaret left everything to Julian and Rolfe. And this fifty thousand pounds to Dillys. When Rolfe was killed —” He stopped.

  “The money went to Julian, then.”

  “Yes.” The Colonel swallowed, hard. “They were both killed, Margaret and Rolfe, in a motor accident.”

  Jury said nothing for a moment. “That must have been terrible, losing your wife and your son all at once.” Sir Titus did not reply, just looked off through the trees. Then Jury asked: “Was Dillys March the sort of person who would have walked off and left an inheritance behind? And it would have been more than fifty thousand pounds, wouldn’t it, eventually? She’d have got more from you.”

  “To answer both of your questions: No, she wasn’t. And, yes, she would. I admit her leaving that way surprised us. But there had been incidents before. Dillys would simply drive off. I gave her a red Mini for her sixteenth birthday and she was always going off in it. Once for as much as a week. We brought her back from London.”

  “Was she promiscuous?”

  “I . . . wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

  Meaning she was. “When she left this last time: you didn’t call the police?”

  “Actually, it was the police called us. They’d found her car in London, apparently abandoned. Not a clue as to where she was.”

  “What happened then?”

  “It was very . . . difficult. They quite naturally assumed that she’d left off her own bat, you know. But I suppose they’d also got to consider foul play. I had a chauffeur, Leo Manning. That’s Olive’s — my housekeeper’s — son. It turned out there’d been something going on between Dillys and Leo. And Leo was the last person to see her. She’d been with him, apparently. And that brought him in for rather a heavy dose of suspicion. His mother thinks it’s what sent him over the edge. Leo had a breakdown. He’s in an institution. And Olive has always hated Dillys March.”

  “What reason did she give — Gemma Temple, that is — for staying away so long?”

  “Remorse. Shame. Her life had not been, I judge, too savory. She took a room at the Fox Deceiv’d, she said, because she didn’t know if she’d be welcome. But of course she was. Look, Inspector. If this Gemma Temple or whoever she was was an imposter, how in God’s name would she have carried it off? How could she have known all of the things she did know — even little things — about Dillys’s childhood, those sorts of things?”

  “Collusion. Someone in Rackmoor, someone in your own house, possibly, who knew a lot about Dillys March. Someone who might have wished to split the profits. Or out of revenge, jealousy . . . there are other motives.”

  “But such a deception is unthinkable.” He sighed. “I see you agree with Julian.”

  “No, I don’t agree with anyone at the moment. I don’t know enough. But such deceptions have been worked before, Colonel Crael. Now, who might have known her well enough?”

  “The only others besides Julian and me would be Olive Manning, Wood the butler, and an old maid, Stevens. But the thought of any of them . . . well . . . I suppose I have talked a great deal about her to Maud Brixenham, a good friend of mine. Lives in the village, on Lead Street. And Adrian Rees, when he was doing Margaret’s portrait. I used to go down to his studio and watch. . . . ” He rubbed his hand down Bracewood’s neck. “This house was quite a different place when Margaret was alive. Always a lot of people. And there were Rolfe and Julian. Rolfe was older by fourteen years. They both looked like her; it was that spun-gold hair. The gold-dust twins, people would call them. Julian looks exactly like her; I only wish he were like her in other ways. I don’t know who Julian’s like, really. Rolfe was much more fun-loving. Perhaps too fun-loving. Women, you see. And then there was Dillys. Margaret simply transformed her from a rather puddinglike child into, well, someone very like herself. Dress, manner, that sort of thing. Oh, she wasn’t beautiful like Margaret. Or even Julian, if it comes to that. Though Margaret wasn’t necessarily what you might call good—” He looked off; his face clouded. “But Julian adored her. People who look like that . . . their sheer physical beauty — it seems to put them beyond the pale of common morality. Don’t you agree?”

  Jury studied the older man, his strong face, strong hands on the reins of the horse, iron-gray hair and mustache. “No, I don’t.”

  The Colonel looked down at the mist-shrouded courtyard. They seemed to be floating there as the silence lengthened, their feet and the horse’s hooves lost in a lake of mist. Finally, the older man looked up, smiled bleakly. “Aren’t you going to ask me, ‘Where were you on the night in question?’ Inspector Harkins seemed to favor that question.”

  “I was coming to it,” Jury said, smiling. “You had a Twelfth Night party, right? I suppose you were busy with your guests.”

  “That’s a somewhat more polite way of putting it.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be polite. I’ve read your statement, that’s all.”

  “Ah. Well, I can only repeat my statement, then. Yes, I was in and out and busy with my guests. Can’t say I have an alibi, though; I mean I can’t account for myself completely during the times in question. Not” — and he looked squarely at Jury — “like Julian.”

  “I see. I think I should talk to Julian now.” Jury looked towards the front of Old House. “I can find my own wa
y. If you were about to go for a ride?”

  “If you’re sure. Yes, I was. There’s a hunt in three days’ time and I was just going over to the kennels. Wood will find Julian for you, if he’s back. Julian walks out a great deal, no matter the weather.” He mounted up, rubbed the neck of the horse. “I’ll be off, then. I’m always here if you need me.”

  “I expect I will. And there’s one other thing. You have a visitor staying with you?”

  Sir Titus looked surprised. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact. An old friend — well, rather, the son of an old friend, Lord Ardry. Fine person, loved the hunt, of course. This Lord Ardry — the son, I mean — just goes by the family name. Melrose Plant he calls himself.”

  Jury smiled. The Colonel made it sound like a pseudonym.

  “Anyway, he gave up the title — don’t know why; took me long enough to get mine and I’m only a baronet. Hardly worth noting, eh? But Plant —now he’s—”

  “I know. I’ve met him. In Northamptonshire, as a matter of fact.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right; he was telling me about it. Quite a nasty business, wasn’t it?”

  “Murder usually is.”

  • • •

  The butler took Jury’s coat, told him that Mr. Julian had not yet returned, but that, yes, he would certainly fetch Lord Ardry. Jury reflected as he looked the hall over — an imposing mixture of dark panels and Doric columns — that Plant might have given up the title, but everyone else seemed to be giving it back to him. He looked down at the black-and-white design of the marble floor and wished that his own thoughts would assemble themselves into such neat, geometric patterns. To his right was a gallery. He wandered through it, past the fan vaultings and the paintings. He wondered if the portrait of Lady Margaret Crael were in here. . . .

  • • •

  “Why are you standing there dreaming, Chief Inspector?”

  Melrose Plant stood at the entrance to the Long Gallery, leisurely smoking a cigarette. He was far enough away that he had to raise his voice, and it echoed from the stuccoed ceiling, the scagliola columns and gilt mirrors. He was wearing a gray suit made up by some God-bespoke tailor.