David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

‘I would remind you, Mrs Bridge,’ he said firmly, ‘that Christopher Montague is dead. So is his greatest friend, a man called Thomas Jenkins of Emmanuel College, Oxford. They will, unfortunately, be in no position to attend any more exhibitions in future. Tell me, Miss Bridge,’ he turned to look at Alice, still staring sullenly at the carpet, ‘when was the last time you saw Mr Montague?’

Alice Bridge took a deep breath. ‘Mama says I’m not to answer any more questions.’

Her mother drew herself up to her full height. Some mighty broadside was about to be delivered into the centre of HMS Powerscourt. He just managed to get in first.

‘I put it to you, Miss Bridge, that you were perhaps very close to Christopher Montague in the last months of his life. I put it to you that you had kept your family in the dark about the affair. I put it to you also that refusing to answer any perfectly innocent questions may make people suspicious, more suspicious than they would have been if they knew the true story.’

‘Mama says that I’m not to answer any more questions.’ Powerscourt wondered if the answers would have been forthcoming if her mother wasn’t there. He felt sure that Christopher Montague would not have seemed a very desirable catch to the mistress of 16 Upper Grosvenor Street. Powerscourt heard a sort of blowing sound from Alice’s right. The broadside was coming.

‘Suspicions? Suspicions, Lord Powerscourt?’ Mrs Agatha Bridge was in full cry. ‘Are you saying that you suspect my daughter of being involved in some way in this murder? I tell you, Lord Powerscourt, I never met the young man. I would not have considered him a suitable escort for Alice, or indeed any other respectable young woman. People like Montague are a danger to the nation’s morals. Look at that terrible man Wilde. They should all be sent to prison.’

‘Nobody is suggesting that your daughter is involved with the murder,’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is why I find this refusal to answer any questions so very strange. Miss Bridge, I am asking you for the last time, how close were you to Christopher Montague?’

Powerscourt thought later that she might have been on the edge of tears. Perhaps it was Montague’s name that did it. But the answer was the same.

‘Mama says I’m not to answer any more questions.’

As he made his way back to Markham Square, Powerscourt wondered just how close Alice Bridge had been to the dead art critic. He thought again about the clues and the suspects in this case. He thought about de Courcy and Piper and the benefit their gallery had derived from the death of Christopher Montague. He thought about Roderick Johnston, a man who might have lost most of his considerable income if Montague had lived. He thought about the wine glasses and the tea the murderer must have washed up each time he struck. He thought about the tie in Thomas Jenkins’ rooms on the Banbury Road in Oxford. He resolved to summon reinforcements of a sort in the person of William McKenzie, a tracker who had worked with Powerscourt and Fitzgerald in India and on several other cases since.

Afternoon rain had replaced morning rain in the bleak countryside of North Norfolk. Orlando was staring at his preliminary drawing for the Bellini on his easel. Imogen, still exultant from her morning discovery, was staring out at the woods behind the house.

‘I’ve been here for months,’ had been Orlando’s verdict on his past record, ‘and I never saw that milestone. You come here and find it on your first morning in the place. I’m ashamed of myself.’

‘Never mind, darling,’ Imogen had whispered back, fearful of being overheard by their captors. ‘At least we know where we are.’

Later that afternoon, when Orlando had finished his work, they were to go on a reconnaissance mission up into the woods at the back.

Inching his way forward through the same woods, Johnny Fitzgerald was beginning to wish that Norfolk could be moved somewhere else, somewhere drier, the south of Spain perhaps, maybe even the Sahara, where the damp wouldn’t work its way through the toughest clothes he possessed. He could see the back of the house now. If he moved another thirty feet to his left he would be able to see if any of that part of the house was inhabited. He dare not go any closer in case one of the guards came out on afternoon patrol.

Now he could see clearly through his glasses the Long Gallery on the first floor, the five great windows, some with their shutters half open, looking out on the sad remains of the garden and the lake to his right. He worked his way slowly across the windows. There, at the end furthest away from him, was the girl he had seen that morning. Next window, nothing, only a dark interior. Third window, he thought he made out a small sofa, by an enormous fireplace. Fourth window, he could see a door in the far corner. Fifth window . . . Johnny took his glasses off and wiped the lens with the only dry cloth he still possessed, tucked in under his shirt. The cloth felt warm against the surrounding damp. He put the binoculars back to his eyes and squinted through.

There was a man and an easel. Johnny was sure it was an easel. Making a minute adjustment to the aperture he thought he saw a line of paintings stacked up against the wall next to the door. The man was now working at his easel with a pencil or a brush, Johnny couldn’t tell. But he felt strangely exultant up there in the squelchy mud of the de Courcy woods, rain dripping down his forehead, finding its own way into his boots. Had Powerscourt known all along? Had he divined somehow that here, in this remote spot, guarded by an unbroken length of redbrick wall and a couple of unfriendly lodges, was the man who might hold the key to the whole investigation? Johnny Fitzgerald put the glasses back in their case and began to crawl up the hill towards safer ground. Johnny didn’t think any strangers found in the de Courcy woods would be invited in for a comforting glass of sherry.

Ten minutes later he was lying in a clump of trees at the top of the hill. The house was only just visible through the trees. It was the voices he heard first, the girl’s voice asking the man if he had walked up this way before. Then he heard the man reply, saying something about not having gone very far up this path as it was so damp. The wind was carrying their voices up the hill. Johnny peeped out. On his left he saw the long red-brick walls of the home garden, unpruned fruit trees and untended vegetable patches no doubt concealed within. Christ, they were coming straight for him. If they kept walking for another ten minutes they would virtually fall over his feet.

Run or stay? Johnny wormed his way deeper and deeper into the sodden earth. He heard the girl wondering what they would see when they reached the top. Five minutes now. Johnny wondered if he should write a quick message and hand it over to them as they passed, his hand rising out of the undergrowth like the hand that came to take King Arthur’s sword in the lake at Avalon. He wondered what it should say. Hello Forger perhaps. Hello Mrs Forger. Do you want to get out of here?

Three minutes. Johnny Fitzgerald was wriggling deeper into the earth. Then he heard the voice of salvation.

‘I’m afraid that’s as far as we can go today.’ The redhead was twenty paces behind them. The walking party turned round, reluctantly Johnny thought, and headed back towards the house.

Johnny waited another fifteen minutes before he extricated himself from his earth. He noticed he had been sweating profusely in spite of the rain and the sodden ground. He patrolled the grounds at very long range for the rest of the afternoon. No one, prisoner or captor, ventured out of the house.

Back in the hotel of the bored, looking out at the grey waves rolling up the beach, the seagulls squawking in unison fifty feet above the water, he composed his message to Powerscourt.