Murder in Oils 3

 

Chapter 3

 

Ida led Alexander into the curtained off side of the largely open lower floor.

“Where’s the kitchen?” asked Alexander. “I didn’t see that being open.”

Ida laughed.

“Oh the servants’ wing is at the back and not open-plan at all,” she said. “Here’s where Basil was accustomed to sit, and... and that’s the piece he was working on.”

Alexander pulled up a chair and sat, as if in a wheelchair. He could see the whole of the staircase through a crack in the curtain, from the railings of what Ida called the mezzanine down the stairs which turned towards the door, or from his perspective, to run from left to right.

“Mezzanines are usually at half height,” he said, absently.

“Well, balcony, then,” said Ida. “This house doesn’t fit normal rules of architecture.”

“No, it looks as if it was designed by a drunkard with a hangover and a fixation for straight lines,” said Alexander.

“David designed it; he’s an architect,” said Ida. “I think he got out of the war by designing better bunkers for the top brass to hide in.”

“More than likely,” said Alexander. “I can figure out the stairs in that painting, and what look like sliding legs. She came down on her backside; why did she die?”

“According to the coroner, she must have turned and hit her head on the way down. But this is how she landed,” said Ida, reaching behind the painting for a scrap of paper. “I had to recreate it; David burned the original.”

“He has no idea how many things I could arrest him for,” said Alexander, studying the sketch. It showed the lower flight of the stairs from head on, from the direction of the front door, and showed a woman’s body sprawled out onto the lower half dozen steps as if her momentum had carried her round the corner and down as well as across the stairs.

“This discolouration on her head...?” he asked.

“The wound which apparently killed her,” said Ida. “I did not see her fall, but I cannot see how she ended up in this position if she had hit her head there on the way down unless she rolled and somersaulted, but Basil’s picture clearly shows her sliding.”

“Who knows about this painting?” asked Alexander.

“Only me – and Campbell. And he sleeps in here so nobody could extract it,” said Ida. “And here he is, Campbell, this is Mr. Armitage.”

“Major Armitage! I knows you,” said Campbell.  “I wish you might of got here before all this to-do, that I do.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” said Alexander. “I am here to investigate what happened, and if you will help me, I’d be most pleased.”

“Ho! Well I’ll do what I can,” said Campbell. “Couldn’t stop them killing my master, though.  I was in town, buying paints for him, and whoever did it knew that.  I got home just before he died, and I’ll go bail it weren’t Laudanum he was dying of. Paralysed, he was, but consherous, oony he couldn’t seem to get enough breath to speak.  He said, ‘Helen!’ which was Mrs. Henderson’s name, and then he started going blue.”

“The hell! That sounds like hemlock,” said Alexander.

“Plenty of it in the hedgerows,” said Campbell. “And the edible ones too.”

“I suppose it could be an accident,” said Ida. “He smoked wild parsley and elder tobacco he dried himself; could he have made a mistake?”

“Was he smoking when he died?” asked Alexander.

“Yessir, I took his pipe when it fell out of his mouth,” said Campbell.

“Bring it to me, and his tobacco pouch, and if I parcel them up to go to the laboratory at New Scotland Yard, can you get them in the parcel post soonest?” asked Alexander.

“I’ll take my motorbike and take them myself,” said Campbell. “You should be safe for a while.”

“Thank you,” said Alexander. “And I don’t have a gentleman’s gentleman at the moment so perhaps....”

“I’d be delighted,” said Campbell.

He brought the items, and Alexander sniffed, and recoiled. He wrote a short note, and folded paper bags for each item separately before parcelling them up.

Campbell grabbed a long leather duster and a leather flying helmet, and was away.

Alexander sat down again and stared once more at the painting and its surroundings.

There were other paintings hung on the wall portion which held the door and was a support for the heavy curtains.  Leaning against the wall was a cubist painting of a dancer, or dancers; hanging above it was a painting of a seagull skimming the waves, in heavy impasto; and above that was a young woman with a piquant, intelligent face, dark eyes, and brown hair with gold lights.

On the wall the other side was a fine portrait of Ida, her long hair tucked up and made to look as if it had been cut into a fashionable bob. Alexander thought it the best picture of some very fine artwork. It looked as if it had been painted either before Ida’s brush with opium, or from memory, as the girl in the picture was healthy and vivacious. There was a touch of the haunted to her eyes though.

“Done after your illness but from a picture of you younger as well as from life?” asked Alexander.

“How clever you are! Yes, Basil painted it to remind me that I could get back to where I was,” said Ida. “Is it any wonder he’s my favourite brother?”

“With David as the other, it would be hard for him not to be, unless he was someone like the Kaiser,” said Alexander, with heavy irony. He resumed his inspection of the paintings, to give him more feel of Basil since he had last seen the man.

 A landscape in the style of Constable but with a tractor, not horse-drawn transport reminded him of Basil’s impishly cynical sense of humour; a ballet dancer in the style of Degas had chickenpox. A chicken cavorted on the stage as well.

“He was damned good,” said Alexander, viciously. “Killing him was a crime against art, as well as being a crime in any case.”

“I think so,” said Ida. “Mr. Armitage! David was going to burn all of his paintings!”

“Is he a man or a machine?” demanded Alexander.

“I asked if I could keep what I wanted as a keepsake and he said yes,” said Ida. “But I want it all! Do you think you could take it away for me to keep it safe?”

“Certainly,” said Alexander. “I know how to take it off the stretchers; new stretchers are easy enough to get, and flat canvases will travel more easily. I’d put in a bid for them, but your other brother is so pigheaded I swear he’d either overprice them or refuse to sell, just to spite me.”

“Yes, he would,” said Ida. “I know how to take them off the stretchers too, I’ll help you.  If we paste brown paper over Basil’s trunk, we can pretend it was brought in for you and put your name and address on it.”

“You’re a good plotter; I’m glad you didn’t kill your sister-in-law.”

“You can’t know I didn’t.”

“Unless you’re hardened, I know for certain that you did not kill Basil, and I also know you did not kill Helen.”  She had spoken of each in the present tense, and corrected herself.

So, too, had David, but he was such an odd fellow, Alexander did not rule out the possibility that he knew enough psychology, as the family seemed to read psychology books, to do so deliberately.

And David was looking exceedingly suspicious.

Alexander could not take his eyes of the legs descending the staircase.  What was that painting he had seen when fresh out of university? Marcel Duchamp, ‘Nude descending a staircase,’ which  looked to him more like a pile of boxes in the evidence room overtoppling from being badly piled up. ‘Legs sliding down a staircase’ did not have the same ring.  Were there other portions of the body as it fell? A figure at the top of the stairs? Was that the falling woman before she fell?

“Portrait of Helen?” he asked.

Ida pointed.

A portrait of a fine-featured blonde with her arms around the woman whose portrait was above the seagull. It was in the style of someone like Alma-Tadema, thought Alexander.

There were a lot of paintings of seagulls, and dancers, including the one Alexander guessed was the one which had been the original of the one stood against the wall. It was giving him clues as to how the artist thought.

One of a biplane coming back through itself in the cubist style was a painting of the famous  Immelman turn.

“Birds and dancing legs,” said Alexander. “He painted what he could not have.”

“You understand,” said Ida.

“I understand,” said Alexander. “I wonder when the murderer realised he had seen the whole thing, and decided to kill him.  It was pretty quick witted. Have the funerals happened yet?”

“No,” said Ida. “They’re supposed to be the day after tomorrow. There had to be an inquest on both of them, you see. The bodies are in the lady chapel at the church.”

“Well, at least it’s coldish,” said Alexander. “I’ll walk down to the vicarage and present my credentials, make some phone calls, and see if we can’t get the autopsies done and dusted in time for the funeral. Who is your coroner?”

“Dr. Craiggie,” said Ida.

“Basil’s doctor? I’m not sure that’s legal,” said Alexander.

“Craiggie promised David to keep it short, quiet, and uncontroversial.”

“Compounding a felony,” said Alexander, grimly.

“You can’t think David killed Helen? They were devoted,” said Ida.

“There have been devoted couples before whose devotion was less than they wanted people to believe,” said Alexander.

“I can’t accept that,” said Ida. “Helen tempered David’s desires for autocracy. He has been in pieces, and takes refuge in being more controlling because he could not prevent her death.”

“He might have done, if Basil had noticed something wrong; and I don’t put it past him.”

“So he didn’t write to you?”

“Did you want to confess to giving your dragon the slip and coming to see me?”

“I... no,” said Ida.

“I’m someone Basil might have written to,” said Alexander. “I think it’s a small lie he’d approve of, to protect his sister. I do not like your other brother.”

“He doesn’t seem enamoured of you, either,” said Ida.

“I met him at University,” said Alexander. “He had accused one of the scouts – the servants who look after the students – of stealing, and was going all out to have him sacked and arrested.  I was able to show that not only was the scout innocent, but that David had, in fact, mislaid the items he said were stolen, having sent his trousers out for washing with his cigarette lighter, cigar case, wallet containing fifty quid, and pocket watch in the pocket. They had been removed before washing, and, on my recommendation, sent to the Dean. He got a severe wigging for taking away the character of an honest man, and some of us also debagged him to show him proper care for his trousers, ostentatiously emptying his pockets before we ran his trousers up the flagpole. But the rumours persisted and followed the poor scout, and he left the employment of the college, which is a relative sinecure, and managed, fortunately, to get a job in private service.”

“That could had ended very nastily,” said Ida, soberly. “Once David gets an idea in his head, it would take dynamite to shift it, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t have gone to him over my addiction if I’d had any other option; Basil was going through a difficult time himself at the time, and I didn’t want to burden him. And even so, he did more than David, whose idea of a cure was to lock me up on bread and water. Helen talked him out of that.”

“Just as well; it might have killed you,” said Alexander.

“Well, I had a heart attack, which enabled Helen to point out that starvation can cause such things, and that he was at risk of getting into trouble for it, if I died.  The hospital I was rushed to had a lot to say about my emaciated state.”

“Why on earth did a lady like Helen, who seems to have been well loved all round, marry him?” asked Alexander.

“Helen has – had -  difficulty making decisions, and David seemed so nice and positive to her,” said Ida, with a sigh. “She stood up to David over me, and against Gloria’s advice, and I will always love her for that.”

“Forceful lady, Gloria? The one in the picture as a romantic waif?”

“Yes, more of Basil’s irony, Gloria  Wandsworth goes on about gratitude and how she was plucked from penury, but it’s not really that bad. She was working for thirty shillings a week in a pharmacy, which when you consider she was studying chemistry, and only had to give up her degree because there was no money for her final year, is rather a come-down.”

“Indeed, yes, as is being a housekeeper. An unusual field for a woman to study.”

“Yes, she was also studying botany, hoping to go on to a Master’s degree and Doctorate and do research into the validity of folk medicine. Her loss is our gain, she makes marvellous cold cures and the like, and I have a tonic of hawthorn to help my heart. She devised Basil’s tobacco; sitting about he had... digestive problems, and was also prone to small infections, but the tobacco helped him no end.”

“A paragon,” said Alexander.

A stately woman who resembled the painting above the impasto seagull bustled in.

“Ida! You know you are too old to be found in the bedroom of another man, as I understand that policeman insists on foisting himself onto us!” she chid.

“Mr. Armitage is an old friend of Basil’s from the war,” said Ida. “That makes him almost family; and he’s a gentleman, not any old policeman,” she added.

“What nonsense you talk, child!” said Gloria Wandsworth. “Police are not gentlemen, and he will be more comfortable in the servants’ quarters.”