Confess, Fletch

Thirty-eight

The street door of the Horan Gallery was open.

Fletch closed it, aware what an open door would do to the building’s climate control, and ran up the stairs to Horan’s office.

Flynn was sitting behind Horan’s Louis Seize desk, going through the drawers.

The Picasso, “Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle,” was still on the easel.

“Ah, there he is now,” said Flynn. “Peter Fletcher.”

“This is one one of the paintings,” said Fletch.

“I thought it might be. Lovely desk this, too. Pity I haven’t a touch of larceny in me.”

Fletch stood between the painting and the desk, hands his jacket pockets.

“Inspector, just because Horan has this painting does not mean that he has the other de Grassi paintings.”

“I think it does.” Reluctantly, Flynn stood up from behind the desk. “Come. We’ll take a quick tour around the house. You’ll recognize anything else that belongs to the de Grassis?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then all we need do is walk around.”

“Inspector, this painting, this Picasso, is here because I asked Horan to locate it and negotiate my purchase of it. A man named Cooney sent it up from Texas.”

“I see.”

On the landing, Flynn was stepping into a small elevator.

“In talking with Horan, he mentioned that he had had ‘one or two other paintings from Cooney the last year or two.’”

“Hard quote?”

Flynn was holding, the elevator door for him.

“Reasonably.” Fletch stepped in.

Flynn pushed the button for the third floor.

“And you think those two other paintings he had from Cooney were the two de Grassi paintings that showed up in his catalogue?”

“What else is there to think?”

“Many things. One might think many other this.”‘

On the third floor, they stepped out into a spacious, tasteful living room.

“Isn’t this lovely?” said Flynn. “I can hardly blame the man for wanting to hold onto his possessions.”

Flynn turned to Fletch.

“Now what, precisely, are we looking for?”

Fletch shrugged. “At this point, fifteen paintings and a Degas horse.”

“The horse is a sculpture, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a sculpture of a ballerina on the first floor…”

“Yes. That’s a Degas,” said Fletch.

“But it’s not a horse. Saturday in your apartment, you said there were nineteen works in the de Grassi collection.”

“Yes. Two have been sold through this gallery. A third, the Picasso, is downstairs. So there are fifteen paintings and the one sculpture.”

“And do the works have anything in common?”

Flynn had walked them into a small, dark dining room

“Not really. They belong to all sorts of different schools and eras. Many of them, but not all, are by Italian masters.”

“This would be the kitchen, I think.”

They looked in at white, gleaming cabinets and dark blue counters.

“Nothing in there, I think,” said Flynn, “except some Warhols on the shelves.”

Back in the living room, Flynn said, “Are you looking?”

“Yes.”

There were some unimportant drawings behind the piano, and a large Mondrian over the divan.

Flynn snapped the light on in a small den off the living room.

“Anything in here?”

A Sisley over the desk—the usual winding road and winding stream. The room was too dark for it.

“No.”

“I rather like that one,” said Flynn, looking at it closely. He turned away from it. “Ah, going around with you is an education.”

They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

“The houseman stood on the landing. Thin in his long, dark bathrobe, thin face long in genuine grief, he stood aside, obviously full of questions regarding the future of his master, his own future—questions his dignity prohibited he ask.

“Ah, yes,” said Flynn.

In the bedroom was a shocking, life-sized nude—almost an illustration—of no quality whatsoever, except that it was arousing.

“The man had a private taste,” said Flynn. “I suspect he entertained very few of his fellow faculty in his bedroom.”

One guest room had a collection of cartoons; the other a photography wall.

Fletch said, “You see, Inspector, Horan didn’t really own paintings. Dealers don’t. More than the average person, of course, a good deal more, in value, but a dealer is a dealer first, and a collector second.”

“I see.”

The houseman remained in the shadows of the corridor.

“Where is your room?” asked Flynn.

“Upstairs, sir.”

“May we see it?”

The houseman opened a corridor door to a flight of stairs.

His bedroom was spartan: a bed, a bureau, a chair, a closet, a small television. His bath was spotless.

An attic room across the fifth floor landing contained nothing but the usual empty suitcases, trunks, a great many empty picture frames, a rolled rug, defunct lighting fixtures.

Flynn said, “Are the picture frames significant?”

“No.”

Again on the third floor landing, Flynn said to the houseman, “Is there a safe in the house?”

“Yes, sir. In Mister Horan’s office.”

“You mean the wee one?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve already seen that. I guess I mean a vault. Is there a vault in the house, something of good, big size?”

“No, sir.”

“You’d know if there were?”

“Yes, sir.”

Flynn put his hand on the old man’s forearm.

“I’m sorry for you. Have you been with him long?”

“Fourteen years.”

The old man took a step back into the shadow.

“This must be quite a shock to you.”

“It is, sir.”

They took the elevator to the second floor, and went through the four galleries there. One was completely empty. The others had only a few works in each, lit and displayed magnificently.

Flynn said, “Nothing, eh?”

He might have been taking a Sunday stroll through a sculpture garden.

“I wouldn’t say exactly nothing,” said Fletch. “But none of the de Grassi paintings.”

Despite the house’s perfect climate control, Fletch’s forehead was hot. His hands were sticky.

Flynn was in no hurry.

“Well, well go out to Weston now.” Flynn buttoned his raincoat. “The Weston police will meet us at their border.”

Double-parked, Grover waited outside in the black Ford.

“We’ll both get in back,” said Flynn. “That way we can talk more easily.”

Grover drove west on Newbury Street.

Fletch was sitting as far back in his dark corner as he could.

Coat opened again, knees wide, Flynn took up ‘a great lot of room, anyway.

“Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll miss two o’clock feeding this morning. At least I know Elsbeth can’t wait. Have you ever been to Weston?”

“No,” said Fletch.

“Of course you haven’t. You’re a stranger in town. And we’ve been watching you as if you were a boy with a slingshot since you arrived. I hear it’s a pretty place.”

Flynn chuckled, in the dark.

“All this time poor Grover up there thought you were the guilty one. Eh, Grover?”

Sergeant Richard T. Whelan did not answer the bird’s turd.

“Well,” said Flynn, “So did I. More or less. When was it? Wednesday night, I think. I thought we were going to get a confession out of you. Instead, you invited us for dinner. Then that day on the phone, when I couldn’t get around to see you, I felt sure I could convince you of your guilt. I decided I had to get to know this man. So on Saturday I invaded your privacy for the purpose of getting too know you—an old technique of mine—and damnall, you still turned up as innocent as a spring lamb.”

They went down the ramp onto the Turnpike Extension and proceeded at a sedate pace, well below the speed limit.

“When I heard your voice on the phone early Sunday morning, I thought sure you were calling from a bar ready to confess.” Flynn laughed. “Unburden your soul.”

“I might yet,” said Fletch.

Grover sat up to look at him through the rearview mirror.

Still chuckling, Flynn said, “Now what do you mean by that?”

“I hate to spoil your time,” said Fletch, “but Horan couldn’t have killed Ruth Fryer.”

“Ah, but he did.”

“How?

“He hit her over the head with a whiskey bottle. A full whiskey bottle.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Flynn.”

“It does. It was his purpose to frame you.”

“He didn’t know me.”

“He didn’t have to. And, to a greater extent than you realize, he did know you. Although you’re a great investigative report…”—Flynn took coins for the toll out of his pocket and handed them to Grover—“…you made a mistake, lad.”

“You have to pay tolls?”

“This road is in the state system and I work for the city. We’ve got enough governments in this country to spread thinly around the world.”

“What mistake?”

“Matter of days after Count de Grassi is reported kidnapped, then murdered, Horan gets this innocent wee letter, from Rome of all places, asking him to locate one of the de Grassi paintings.”

“He knew nothing about the de Grassi murder,” Fletch said. “The local papers didn’t carry it. I checked.”

“I did, too. Earlier today. So I asked the man tonight what paper he reads, and he said the New York Times. The Times did carry the story.”

“Christ I knew he read the Times.”

“You had even been mentioned by name, as Peter Fletcher, that is, as the de Grassi family spokesman the day you had the ladies reveal their most intimate finances to convince the kidnappers they couldn’t come up with the exorbitant ransom. The Times printed it.”

“Why would they have? From Italy?”

“You’re the journalist. There’s no end of interest in crime, my lad.”

“Ow.”

“You were undone by the press, my lad. You’re not the first.”

“Horan would have noticed even a small item concerning the de Grassis.”

“Precisely.”

Fletch said, “He must be in cahoots with Cooney.”

“I doubt any man would go to the extent Horan did to protect another man. It’s possible, of course,” Flynn said. “Anything’s possible.”

“It’s still not possible.”

“So you write him this innocent letter of enquiry from Rome, telling him which painting in all then world has caught your fancy, what day you’ll arrive in Boston, and where you’ll be staying.

“On the day you’re due to arrive, the handsome, suave, sophisticated Horan, probably with an empty suitcase, went to the airport, probably pretended he had just arrived from someplace, picks up the Trans World Airline Ground Hostess…”

“I didn’t tell him what airlines I was flying.”

“If he knows what day you’re arriving, he to find out what airlines, what flight number, and what arrival time with a single phone call. Surely you know that.”

“Yes.”

“As handsome a man as he is, looking as safe as your favorite uncle, he suggests Ruth Fryer join him for dinner, at some fancy place obviously he can afford. Probably he mentions he’s a widower, an art dealer, on the Harvard faculty. Why wouldn’t she go with him? Her boyfriend’s not in town. She’s in a city she doesn’t know. Dinner with Horan sounds better than sitting in her motel room manicuring her fist.”

“You haven’t gotten to the impossibilities yet.”

“There aren’t any. Ach, another toll.” He rummaged in his pocket again. “Don’t they ever stop their infernal taxing?”

He handed more coins to Grover.

“He taxis Ms. Fryer to her motel. Allows her time to change. Waits for her in the bar. When she reappears, he has a drink all poured and waiting for hear. He buys her more than one. It’s his point to give you time to get into your apartment and out again. He’s sure that you, a man alone in a strange city, an unfamiliar apartment, of course will take himself out to dinner. And you did.”

Grover steered into the side road which curved up through the woods into Weston.

“Mister Horan was pretty good predictor,” Flynn said.

Ahead, a car was pulled off the road, showing only its parking lights.

“Is that a police car, Grover?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They’d be waiting for us. Not only do they have to effect the warrant, but surely we’d never find the house by ourselves in this woodsy place.”

Grover stopped behind the parked car.

“Using the excuse of dropping off his suitcase, I’m sure, Horan takes Ruth Fryer to what he says is his apartment, but which is really your apartment. An innocent enough excuse to get a girl home with you.” A uniformed policeman from the other car was striding toward them. “You might remember it yourself.”

“Flynn,” Fletch said. “Horan didn’t have a key to that apartment.”

“Ah, but he did. A few years ago he arranged some restoration work on Bart Connors’ paintings while the Connorses were vacationing in the Rockies. And who’d ever demand a key back from a man like Ronald Risom Horan, or even remember he had it?” Flynn rolled down the window. “You should see the number of keys in his desk. Hello!” he said through the window.

“He told me he had done restoration work for Connors.”