Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 9: Clutch of Constables, When in Rome, Tied Up in Tinsel

The Zodiac was berthed romantically in a bend of The River from which one could see the Long Minster itself against the stars. The lights of the old city quavered and zig-zagged with those of other craft in the black night waters. Troy and Bard could hear quiet voices in the saloon but they loitered on the deserted deck and before she could do anything about it Bard had kissed Troy.

‘You’re adorable,’ he said.

‘Ah, get along with you. Goodnight, and thank you for a nice party.’

‘Don’t go away.’

‘I think I must.’

‘Couldn’t we have a lovely, fairly delicate little affair? Please?’

‘We could not,’ said Troy.

‘I’ve fallen for you in a bloody big way. Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not. But I’m not going to pursue the matter. Don’t you, either.’

‘Well, I can’t say you’ve led me on. You don’t know a garden path when you see one.’

‘I wouldn’t say as much for you.’

‘I like that! What cheek!’

‘Look,’ Troy said, ‘who’s here.’

It was the Hewsons. They had arrived on the wharf in a taxi and were hung about with strange parcels. Miss Hewson seemed to be in a state of exalted fatigue and her brother in a state of exhausted resignation.

‘Boy, oh boy!’ he said.

They had to be helped on board with their unwieldy freight and when this exercise had been accomplished, it seemed only decent to get them down the companion-way into the saloon. Here the other passengers were assembled and about to go to bed. They formed themselves into a sort of chain gang and by this means assembled the Hewsons’ purchases on three of the tables. Newspaper was spread on the deck.

‘We just ran crazy,’ Miss Hewson panted. ‘We just don’t know what’s with us when we get loose on an antique spree, do we, Earl?’

‘You said it, dear,’ her brother conceded.

‘Where,’ asked Mr Pollock, ‘will you put it?’ Feeling, perhaps, that his choice of words was unfortunate, he threw a frightened glance at Mr Lazenby.

‘Well! Now!’ Miss Hewson said. ‘We don’t figure we have a problem there, do we, dear? We figure if we talk pretty to the Skipper and Mrs Tretheway we might be allowed to cache it in Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s stateroom. We just kind of took a calculated risk on that one didn’t we, dear?’

‘Sure did, honey.’

‘The Tretheways,’ Pollock said, ‘have gone to bed.’

‘Looks like we’ll have to step up the calculated risk, some,’ Mr Hewson said dryly.

Mr Lazenby was peering with undisguised curiosity at their booty and so were Troy and Bard. There was an inlaid rosewood box, a newspaper parcel from which horse-brasses partly emerged, a pair of carriage-lamps and, packed piecemeal into an open beer-carton, a wag-at-the-wall Victorian clock.

Propped against the table was a really filthy roll of what appeared through encrustations of mud to be a collection of prints tied together with an ancient piece of twine.

It was over this trove that Miss Hewson seemed principally to gloat. She had found it, she explained, together with their other purchases, in the yard of the junk shop where Troy had seen them that first night in Tollardwark. Something had told Miss Hewson she would draw a rich reward if she could explore that yard and sure enough, jammed into a compartment in an Edwardian sideboard, all doubled up, as they could see if they looked, there it was.

‘I’m a hound when I get started,’ Miss Hewson said proudly. ‘I open up everything that has a door or a lid. And you know something? This guy who owns this dump allowed he never knew he had this roll. He figured it must have been in this terrible little cupboard at the time of the original purchase. And you know something? He said he didn’t care if he didn’t see the contents and when Earl and I opened it up he gave it a kind of weary glance and said was it worth “ten bob”? Was it worth one dollar twenty! Boy, I guess when the Ladies Handicraft Guild, back in Apollo, see the screen I get out of this lot, they’ll go crazy. Now, Mrs Alleyn,’ Miss Hewson continued, ‘you’re artistic. Well, I mean – well, you know what I mean. Now, I said to Brother, I can’t wait till I show Mrs Alleyn and get me an expert opinion. I said: we go right back and show Mrs Alleyn –’

As she delivered this speech in a high gabble, Miss Hewson doubled herself up and wrestled with the twine that bound her bundle. Dust flew about and flakes of dry mud dropped on the deck. After a moment her brother produced a pocket knife and cut the twine.

The roll opened up abruptly in a cloud of dust and fell apart on the newspaper.

Scraps. Oleographs. Coloured supplements from Pears’ Annual. Half a dozen sepia photographs, several of them torn. Four flower pieces. A collection of Edwardian prints from dressmaker’s journals. Part of a child’s scrapbook. Three lamentable water-colours.

Miss Hewson spread them out on the deck with cries of triumph to which she received but tepid response. Her brother sank into a chair and closed his eyes.

‘Is that a painting?’ Troy asked.

It had enclosed the roll and its outer surface was so encrusted with occulted dirt that the grain of the canvas was only just perceptible.

It was lying curled up on what was presumably its face. Troy stooped and turned it over.

It was a painting in oil: about 18 by 12 inches.

She knelt down and tapped its edge on the deck, releasing a further accretion of dust. She spread it out.

‘Anything?’ asked Bard, leaning down.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shall I get a damp cloth or something?’

‘Yes, do. If the Hewsons don’t mind.’

Miss Hewson was in ecstasies over a Victorian scrap depicting an innocent child surrounded by rosebuds. She said: ‘Sure, sure. Go right ahead.’ Mr Hewson was asleep.

Troy wiped the little painting over with an exquisite handkerchief her husband had bought her in Bruges. Trees. A bridge. A scrap of golden sky.

‘Exhibit I. My very, very own face-flannel,’ said Bard, squatting beside her. ‘Devotion could go no further. I have added (Exhibit 2) a smear of my very, very own soap. It’s called Spruce.’

The whole landscape slowly emerged: defaced here and there by dirt and scars in the surface, but not, after all, in bad condition.

In the foreground: water – and a lane that turned back into the middle-distance. A pond and a ford. A child in a vermilion dress with a hay-rake. In the middle-distance, trees that reflected in countless leafy mirrors, the late afternoon sun. In the background: a rising field, a spire, a generous and glowing sky.

‘It’s sunk,’ Troy muttered. ‘We could oil it out.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Wait a bit. Dry the surface, can you?’

She went to her cabin and came back with linseed oil on a bit of paint-rag. ‘This won’t do any harm,’ she said. ‘Have you got the surface dry? Good. Now then.’

And in a minute the little picture was clearer and cleaner and speaking bravely for itself.