The Dancing Druids

Chapter Twenty-Two

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‘He asked the chamberlain why the wind had murmured so in the night:

Ibid. (The Lady and the Lion)

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I admit I’m as dumb as a brick, but I can’t see how it all comes about,’ said Laura. ‘What was your pointer to Cassius? You tumbled to him before Mike recognized his voice as the Con of the murder.’

‘I think I was struck by the behaviour of the boy Ivor.’

‘When I was struck by the pebbles? Only, I don’t think he hit me. What was the point of it, I wonder? Why should he attack a perfect stranger? Because I was a stranger to him then.’

‘Perhaps not perfect, though, child. I think, of course, that Ivor is Cassius’ son.’

‘Then why does he call him his ward?’

‘An interesting question. I don’t know the answer. I am inclined to think, however, that he is not particularly proud of the lubberly boy. And that suggests a criminal characteristic, does it not?—that of a vanity so profound that he prefers not to acknowledge a son who does not do him credit.’

‘And how did you decide that the older Battle was not dead?’

‘That was a shot in the dark, as I think I have already made plain. The bearing of the woman—we may call her Mrs. Battle, for there is no doubt of her name—on the occasion of our visiting Newcombe Soulbury struck me then as suggestive and peculiar. Besides, as it turned out, either she or David Battle must have been lying. David denied any knowledge of her, you remember, whereas she seemed to know a very great deal about him.’

‘Is she his mother, do you think?’

‘Oh, no. I am certain she is the older Battle’s second wife. I think David genuinely resented the life his father led his mother, but does not hate his father for that alone. The true hatred is rooted in the fact that his father, having taught him to paint, developed his talent and then prostituted it.’

‘Ah! Made him paint phoney pictures and pass them off as Old Masters!’ said Laura, with deep comprehension. ‘Whereas David wanted to be an artist in the true sense.’

‘Instead of which, he had to learn the art which conceals art, like George,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘One of the chief sources of income to this crew of thieves and double-dealers lay in painting over the surface of genuine Old Masters so as to be able to ship them out of the country. These superimposed pictures (not bad in themselves, for, after all, they had to employ artists to do them) bore no resemblance in subject-matter or in treatment to the originals. You remember the picture bought for ten shillings a year or so ago, and exhibited later at the Antique Dealers Fair at Grosvenor House?— ’

‘With the contemporary portrait of Henry VIII underneath the top layer? Gosh, yes! said Laura, with great interest. ’Well, but how does Toro come into it? Was he one of them?

‘Mr. Allwright was first suborned and then victimized, child, I fancy, but that remains to be proved. We also have to discover the whereabouts of the older Battle.’

‘Now the game’s up, David will give him away, if he hates him as much as you say,’ pronounced Laura, with confidence. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

‘I know I said he would risk being hanged to do so, but I’ve changed my mind. David’s is not a strong character, and he is himself too deeply implicated to be in a position to give anybody away.’

‘But he doesn’t know yet that he’s suspected, unless Cassius can get a message through to him.’

‘Which Cassius, I think, would be very foolish to attempt. What charge will be preferred against Cassius himself in the matter of the pictures I do not know. The police have a good deal of work to do there, and may even have to grant him bail while they do it. But— ’

‘But to pin the murder, or any complicity in the murder, on him at present is a vastly different matter,’ said Laura. ‘I get it. In fact, as I see it, it won’t be possible, you know, to prove anything much against him, even in the matter of the pictures. I should think he’s a downy old bird, and not very likely to walk into any traps. Who is there who might blow the gaff on him?’

‘I don’t imagine that there is anybody, child. He was not even the person who cut off the head and hands of the dead man up at the Druids’ Circle. That was the older Battle. One could tell by his voice, which we heard, you remember, on the dig.’

‘Pity Mike wasn’t there. He’d have jumped on him at once. Still, there may be another chance of that. Oh, well! Here’s hoping!’

‘And yet, you know,’ said O’Hara, when he also discussed the case with Mrs. Bradley, ‘I feel we ought to be able to get those fellows for Toro’s death. I mean, by that, that they’ve made a good many mistakes. Surely we can trip them up on one of them!’

‘What mistakes would you say they have made?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

‘To begin with, there was the shocking error of mistaking me for somebody else on the day of that run. By the way, I’ve never seen the bloke in that car since. You know—the one who misdirected me.’

‘I’ve been wondering about that, child, but I cannot believe that he was merely a genuine busybody who believed he was doing a good turn. If he was, the police will trace him and get him to tell his story. I did have one other thought about him. How did he speak? What kind of voice had he?’

‘He hadn’t an American accent,’ replied the intelligent O’Hara. ‘I suppose their market for those pictures was on the other side of the pond?’

‘I should think so. I have a friend at the National Gallery and he is going to make some enquiries, privately, of the experts in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, to find out whether they have any suspicions that faked or stolen pictures have been making their way over there.’

‘I should say that’s a pretty long shot, you know. They probably won’t have any information,’ said Gascoigne, who was present with his cousin. ‘Some of the private collectors are such brutes that they’d buy what they thought was good stuff and not let the reputable people—the expert dealers and the museum staffs—have a sniff at anything that happened to come their way, especially if they had reason to believe it might have been stolen.’

‘Yes, if they know the source is tainted they’d be hardly likely to broadcast the news,’ agreed Laura. ‘But Mike’s certainly right in thinking that this crew made a record blunder when they used him to help them carry a corpse. Why, but for that, we’d never have known anything at all about the business from first to last. Dashed odd, when you come to think of it. What do you say, Mrs. Croc? That’s always been the queerest thing in the case, I think.’

‘I agree,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Still, murder will out, you know.’

‘I wish this one would,’ said Laura. ‘I want to go to the ballet at Covent Garden, and I can’t do that, stuck here, with murderers and picture-fakers all round me.’

‘But go, child, go! Take a fortnight’s holiday and enjoy yourself! Why not?’

‘Because I couldn’t bear to miss the finish of this. Having had all the fun so far, I’d be a mutt to fade out of the rest of it. It was just a passing whiff of the vapours, that’s all.’

‘ “Uncertain, coy and hard to please!” ’ said Gascoigne, accusingly. ‘Go on, Mike. Further errors?’

‘Well, the woman—Mrs. Battle?—at Newcombe Soulbury seems to have acted like a pretty far-gone lunatic. Fancy her giving you a letter to post which was addressed to Cassius.’

‘Ah, but she had no idea that we should go to Slepe Rock and contact this Cassius,’ said Laura.

‘She may have been justified in the supposition,’ Mrs. Bradley observed. ‘Either she had forgotten, or else she was not aware of the fact that a man had disappeared from Slepe Rock, just as a man had disappeared from Newcombe Soulbury.’

‘Besides, she didn’t know we were investigating disappearances, did she?’ Laura demanded.

‘That may be true,’ said O’Hara. ‘Well, another mistake I think they made was to allow this Mrs. Battle to move about. She was at the farm, where I first saw her; she was at the cottage at Newcombe Soulbury when Mrs. Bradley met her; then she was at the house with the four dead trees—Cottam’s you know—when Laura, Gerry and I went along there— ’

‘I’m sorry the four dead trees didn’t work out right,’ said Laura. ‘They ought to have been significant, but they aren’t.’

‘We don’t know that they aren’t,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I’ve been thinking things over, and it seems to me that they do represent four dead people.’

‘I think so, too,’ said O’Hara.

‘You can’t count the man that the stone fell on,’ Laura pointed out. ‘That was sheer accident. Ah, and by the way, that reminds me! Why couldn’t they risk having that man identified? What was there about him that would have incriminated them?’

‘That is a most fascinating question, and it will not be answered until the police track down the head and hands, child.’

‘But will they ever do that?’

‘If they do not, we must. I say that in no civic spirit. I want to know the answer to your question. Why should that man’s dead body have been so dangerous? I think I know the answer, but Michael is the only person who can prove it.’

‘But how do you mean that the four dead trees do represent four dead people?’ demanded Laura of O’Hara, ignoring Mrs. Bradley’s interesting statements.

‘Well,’ said O’Hara, hesitating a little and glancing at Mrs. Bradley, ‘it struck me—I expect I’m wrong, mind you, and it may not be what Gerry means—but it did strike me that the deaths that really ought to be investigated are those of the drowned couple in the yacht. I mean that we’ve allowed for the disappearance of the fellow who owned the cottage—now the garage at the pull-in—but nothing has been said about the young couple who got drowned in their yacht; and yet it was just as important for these picture merchants that those two should “disappear” as that the previous bloke should have been got out of the cottage so that they could have it. If that couple inherited or bought it, the smugglers were no better off.’

‘Oh, dash!’ said Laura, annoyed. ‘If you’re right, that destroys the nine-year cycle.’

‘The four dead trees spoil the number nine, anyway,’ said Gascoigne. ‘And now we see whom they represent, if they represent people at all.’

‘I’d like to know who’s at the bottom of all that symbolism said O’Hara.

‘Young David Battle,’ said Mrs. Bradley positively. Her audience looked at her with enquiry and interest in their eyes.

‘How come?’ asked O’Hara gently.

‘It is a theory at present,’ Mrs. Bradley replied, ‘but I have little doubt of its truth. David has a warped and terrified mind, and I daresay it was some sort of comfort to him to write his father’s guilt in some such way, even though no one, except our intelligent Laura, whose mind is powerful and not warped, might ever read what was written.’

‘But Mike read it, too, when he saw the four dead trees, and so the four dead trees,’ said Laura, looking happy again, ‘do represent dead people. They represent the poet who disappeared from Slepe Rock, the yachting couple, and, now, Toro. Tell me,’ she continued, looking at her employer, ‘how the business of my two portraits fits in, and how you tumbled to the picture-smuggling racket.’

‘The second question first: my attention was attracted to a remarkable imitation of an Old Crome— ’

‘Do you mean a copy of an Old Crome?’ asked O’Hara.

‘No, child. That is the point. The subject of this particular picture is not one which Old Crome could have painted. I happened to recognize the subject, which chances to be a bit of the Isle of Wight, and Old Crome, so far as we know, never stayed there, but spent the greater part of his life in his native Norwich. I imagine that the picture was not painted by Battle with any intent to deceive, as, although it portrays a pastoral landscape with no view of the sea, Battle would have been the first to realize that the master would not have visited the island and therefore could not have chosen the subject. I am no expert, of course, but I have a fair knowledge of English painting of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and to me the imitation of style was unmistakeable. But, as I say, I think it was painted as a tour de force, and not with any intention of trying to deceive buyers into believing that it was a genuine Old Crome. I say this because it is evident that the artist has forgotten the picture. If it had been painted to defraud, he would have got it back from the dealer long before this, I fancy.’

‘You mean, then,’ said Laura, ‘that somebody—Cassius, I suppose—discovered that Battle could do that sort of thing, and persuaded him to come into partnership?’

‘That is what I believe must have happened. David Battle, acting on the principle of publishing his father’s disgraceful flouting of the Muses, kept a couple of genuine seventeenth-century picture frames on view in his rooms, so that whoever ran might read, and those frames and the Old Crome fake put me on to the track of the frauds. The discovery of the cave clinched the matter, so far as I was concerned.’

‘But the murder of Toro?’ asked O’Hara.

‘That was rather interesting. As soon as a connection was established between your big man at the farm and Cassius-Concaverty, it seemed likely that, if the fat man had been murdered, then Cassius was involved in the murder. Somewhere, throughout all this, Cassius has been hoist by his own petard—his greed for money. He received a lucrative offer from the Gonn-Brown film company for the use of his house, Cottam’s, during the summer, and could not bear to turn down the offer. But for that, we should never have known anything about the business, I feel. And when Michael and Gerald talk of mistakes, I am inclined to suggest to them that the greedy and unnecessary letting of Cottam’s was the greatest mistake this man made.’

‘And now where does Firman come in?’ demanded Gascoigne.

‘That is for you and Michael to discover. I rely on you to find out where Mr. Firman was, and what he did, on the Saturday you had your now famous run. We know that he is David Battle’s cousin, and that fact alone throws suspicion on him, of course. One other thing: remember that the older Battle is still at large, and that it is most unlikely that a gambler like Cassius will turn King’s Evidence. Battle is a very dangerous and quite unscrupulous man, and has nothing further to lose if once he suspects that we know he murdered Allwright.’

‘Keep your weather eye lifting,’ said Laura to O’Hara. ‘I hope you’ve taken it in.’

‘You, too,’ said her employer seriously. ‘You are in just as much danger as the young men.’

‘Ditto, ditto, Brother Schmitt,’ said the irrepressible Laura.

Pleased with their commission, O’Hara and Gascoigne decided to take the war to the enemy’s camp, and visit the house of Firman’s uncle. Here they learned that Firman had returned to his lodgings in London, but was expected to take part in the Club run on the following Saturday. They did not see the uncle, who, it seemed, was a permanent invalid, but obtained their information from the housekeeper.

‘Lets us out until Saturday,’ said Gascoigne. ‘What about a day or two on the river?’

Both young men were enthusiastic although rather inexperienced anglers, and Gascoigne’s aunt had married a man who owned a reasonably delectable stretch of water. The fishing project was doomed, however, by the announcement of an inquest upon the contents of the iron box from the Druids’ Circle.

‘We’d better look in on that,’ said O’Hara. ‘Can’t leave Laura and the old lady to cope.’

So Thursday in that week, which was to have been dedicated to trout, found them in the coroner’s court at Cuchester ‘to keep an eye on the ball,’ as Laura expressed it later. The proceedings, however, were purely formal. That the iron box contained human remains was undisputed. Whose remains they were was a matter which seemed likely to remain undecided.

Mrs. Bradley and Laura told their story, which was newspaper headlines next day, and the matter was adjourned for the police to make further enquiries.

‘David Battle’s the man to identify that body,’ said Laura positively. Mrs. Bradley did not contradict her. ‘What’s more,’ added Laura, on a vigorous note, ‘I’ve just had a marvellous idea!’

Mrs. Bradley, like her chauffeur George on a similar but previous occasion, flinched slightly and began to protest.

‘No, but really I have!’ said Laura. ‘An idea in a million! The only thing is—do you think David Battle is a suicide type?’

‘It is more than possible, child, but, without attending him professionally, and putting him under the “free association” treatment, I could not commit myself to a definite opinion, you know.’

‘Well, is it worth the risk?’

‘For you to put your idea into practice? It may be. Until I know the idea, I cannot say.’

‘I don’t want to put the responsibility on you,’ said Laura generously. ‘So I think I’ll just charge ahead, unless you forbid me. I’m sure it will get us what we want. Sort of Nemesis, you know.’

‘If he did commit suicide, it would perhaps be the best way out for the unfortunate boy,’ said Mrs. Bradley, pronouncing these sentimental words dispassionately.

‘Good enough!’ said Laura. ‘Then I’m going to get busy right away!’

She went to the art-dealer’s shop in Cuchester from which Mrs. Bradley had purchased the Toro, and at which she had seen the imitation by the older Battle of an Old Crome, and purchased a cheap copy of a very well-known picture. Then she said to the art-dealer:

‘My friend bought a picture here, a week or so ago, by Toro. Who was Toro, please?’

‘A local artist. He used to live at a place called Easey,’ the man replied.

‘What was he like?’

‘Like? Oh, like a good many painters, I suppose—moody, irritable, noisy, quarrelsome when he was drunk, certain of his own genius— ’

‘And what did he look like? Did he ever do any self-portraits? Most artists seem to,’ said Laura, playing the garrulous innocent but almost holding her breath for the reply. ‘I mean, did you ever see him? Did he bring his paintings here himself?’

‘Oh, yes, at one time. He was very badly off, I believe, and used to peddle his pictures round the countryside to all the big houses. He brought one or two canvases to me, but I think he made most of his money by pitching a hard-luck story and selling his stuff on the instalment system when he couldn’t get a ready-money settlement. He was a very fat man. Even when he was still in his twenties he must have weighed sixteen stone. I used to tell him to give up painting and go in for professional boxing. But he used to hold up his clenched fists, and say, “But my hands, man! My God-given hands!” I don’t think they were, mind you,’ the dealer continued. ‘Not in the sense that he meant. He was a talented fellow, in a way, but he was not one of those artists whose pictures are hoarded by my trade against future fame. Not much of a draughtsman, either. Personally, I like to see a picture well drawn, and in perspective, and that sort of thing. I’ve not much use for the Impressionists. Lazy dev—people, I call them.’

Laura was too good a detective, she flattered herself, to leave the subject at Toro. She wandered round the shop, asking various questions, and then, at the entrance of another customer, took her leave and said that she had had a very interesting morning.

She packed her picture carefully when she got back to the hotel, acquiring paper and string from her friend the porter. Then she wrote a short note to David Battle, and despatched both parcel and letter from the Welsea post office. The note read : Come clean. The game’s up. Laura Menzies. The picture was that entitled: When Did You Last See Your Father?