Honeybath's Haven (18 page)

But these were uncharitable sentiments to harbour about a woman so recently bereaved, and Honeybath repressed them. Melissa was standing at the bar, narrowly monitoring the barman as he mixed her some approximation to a martini. It was only when she had assured herself there had been no short measure that she evinced any knowledge of Honeybath's presence.

‘My dear Melissa, this is a very sad occasion, and I condole with you deeply.' It had been quite properly, Honeybath judged, that he had thus been left to speak first. And Melissa looked a good deal stricken; although separated and estranged from her husband for what was now a considerable period of time, she had presumably by no means lost all feeling for him.

‘I suppose I should be grateful to him,' Melissa said – to the surprise of the barman, who imagined himself to be addressed. ‘But he started it all, didn't he? Egging him on to go and live in that horrible place.'

‘Melissa, come and sit down.' As often before, Honeybath felt that intelligible conversation with poor Edwin's wife simply could not be conducted standing at a bar or anywhere else. So he took her by the arm, led her firmly over to a settee, and by way of letting her compose herself returned to the bar and ordered his own drink. ‘I know they have had to take Edwin's body away,' he said when he had himself sat down. ‘There always has to be an examination by doctors after a sudden and unattended death. But I am sure it will be possible to make normal funeral arrangements quite soon. Have you seen anybody at the house yet?'

‘What do you mean, Charles, by an unattended death?
Somebody
was there. We can be quite sure of that.'

‘Well, yes.' Honeybath took a moment to see that Melissa's last remark at least revealed a point of view close to his own. ‘I meant merely a death where there has been no medical attendance immediately beforehand.'

‘They have that doctor up there. The one I didn't care for, and who got thick with Ambrose.'

‘Ah, Dr Michaelis. Well, there is no suggestion that he was treating Edwin in any way. Or not since his return from abroad. By the way, Melissa, were you and Edwin writing to one another?'

‘It would be no business of yours if we were. But as a matter of fact we were not.' Melissa was getting rapidly through her martini – probably in the interest of being treated to another. ‘What do you want to know for?'

‘Because he might have said something about his painting. I was talking earlier this evening to a man – quite a knowledgeable man – who believes himself to have seen a distinctly good recent picture. Edwin, it seems, showed it to him. But my own impression is that nothing was coming back to Edwin of anything like his old power. It's puzzling.'

‘It's nothing of the kind. It was just something out of Edwin's secret store of the things from the old days. And the man you were talking to got a muddled idea that it was new. I'm convinced those pictures exist, you know. But what
I
don't know is how much Ambrose knows about it.' Melissa drained her glass and pushed it across the table towards Honeybath. He picked it up willingly enough. This act of necessary replenishment was going to give him a few moments in which to think. That there really was some mystery about Edwin's painting was now clear to him; and it looked as if he and Melissa were again on the same wavelength in the matter. But that the situation as he dimly saw it bore any relationship to the manner of Edwin's death seemed totally incredible. For the moment, he thought as he returned with the second martini, he'd change the subject, or at least approach it from another direction.

‘Why are you putting up at this pub, Melissa?' he asked. ‘It doesn't look at all promising to me. Surely they'd have thought it proper to find you a room at Hanwell Court.'

‘They probably did. I saw a man called Luxmoore. A gentleman – which is more than can be said for your Dr What's-his-name. He wanted to hand me over to his wife. But I wasn't going to spend a night under the same roof as
her
.'

‘As Mrs Luxmoore? My dear Melissa, you can't know anything about her.'

‘Not Mrs Luxmoore, Charles. That woman. The murderess.'

‘
The murderess
? In heaven's name…'

‘Lady Thingummy. You know how Edwin exhibited a funny picture of her. It wasn't a very decent thing to do, I daresay. He didn't deserve to be murdered for it, all the same. But Lady Thingummy…'

‘Lady Munden.'

‘Lady Munden is mad, of course. They're
all
mad at Hanwell Court. You shoved Edwin into a bloody bin, Charles. Morally, you are the murderer yourself.'

‘My dear Melissa!' It came to Honeybath with a shock of horror that there was perhaps some atom of truth in this macabre suggestion. He had undeniably landed Edwin among a funny crowd from which he had himself shied away. ‘Never mind about it morally,' he said. ‘Just consider the matter practically. How on earth could Lady Munden, even if feeling like Lady Macbeth, have managed to murder Edwin?'

‘By setting a booby-trap, of course, in her horrible pool. Filling it with things like Deadly Nightshade, only of a watery sort. Then she took him for a quiet evening walk – probably on the strength of the most disgusting and shameful enticements – and simply tipped him in. Stuff like that can sting, can't it, just like jellyfishes? Poor Edwin died instantly.'

‘In that case, the post-mortem would reveal…'

‘It won't reveal anything. She'd make sure that the stuff is unknown to science. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'

At this point of extreme irrationality on Melissa's part Honeybath was made aware of the barman as making covert beckoning signs to him. He picked up his own empty glass and went over to the man. Melissa, he thought, was quite as mad as any of the residents at Hanwell Court admitted on Michaelis' quota system. And it was clear that he had to spend the rest of the evening with her. It was a dis-heartening thought. He put down his glass with a gesture indicating that it should be filled again.

‘Well,' he demanded brusquely, ‘what is it?'

‘All arranged, sir.' The barman spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘The missus has arranged it. In the next room, the lady will be. And there's a nice quiet communicating door.'

‘My good man…' Outraged, Honeybath was at a loss for further words.

‘And no reason for your not having your dinner at the same table, sir. Very quiet we are just now – very quiet indeed. And nobody answers questions here if any of them private 'tecs come. Discreet, we are – and just hope you'll remember us kindly.'

This shocking revelation of the
mores
and assumptions of the Hanwell Arms was almost too much for Honeybath, who was a man of unimpaired probity in matters of sexual conduct. In addition to which he couldn't conceive himself as wanting under any circumstances whatever to get into bed with Melissa. He had a strong impulse to bolt from the place and vanish into the night. But he managed to control himself.

‘You are under a vulgar misapprehension,' he said with grim dignity. ‘The lady and I are very old friends. And her husband, as it happens, died this morning.'

He picked up his drink and returned to Melissa. The ideas in her head were as dotty as those in the barman's, although of a different character. He was most unlikely to get a single sensible thought out of her about the horrible business in which they were both involved. But for the rest of their encounter he would be as kind to her, as patiently tolerant, as he could possibly be.

 

 

 

The virtuous resolution just recorded turned out to involve keeping Honeybath from his bed until midnight. Melissa had a great deal on which to unburden herself – and most of it concerned the criminality of Lady Munden and the means that must be taken to unmask her. Honeybath didn't for a moment believe that Lady Munden had carried out a cold-blooded murdering of Edwin. It might just be possible to conceive that, enraged by the memory of the insult that had been offered her on the walls of Burlington House, she could have picked up a paperweight or a candlestick and brained its perpetrator forthwith. But that she had prepared the macabre booby-trap of Melissa's imagining was entirely beyond credence. It seemed to Honeybath that some curious guilt-mechanism was operative in Edwin's widow. She had to have a woman in the picture upon whom she could unload, as it were, the ditching of Edwin – and this in a quite literal sense.

It would normally have given Honeybath considerable satisfaction to achieve a psychological insight of this order. But now a curious thing was happening to him. Although resolved to solve the mystery of Edwin's death, he was really more concerned about the mystery of Edwin's pictures. Just what had been going on? That
something
had been going on, he was now convinced. He even suspected that it was something which, if not cleared up, might somehow impair Edwin's posthumous reputation. And to safeguard that was even more important than to bring Edwin's killer to justice. He got no further with this thought until he was in bed, and it then occupied his mind for some hours before he got off to sleep. What, for a start, did he know with tolerable certainty? It seemed necessary to believe that certain hitherto unknown early Lightfoots did exist. But that there was a whole bunch of them that had never been sold or even exhibited was highly improbable. Indeed, something like certainty came in here too. Though he could have given no precise year-by-year account of Edwin's output during his great period, he did have a clear sense of what might be called its tempo. He knew Edwin's working habits then, and the extent of the periods during which, like any other artist, he had to let his full creative power take time off. Half a dozen fully achieved major pictures might possibly exist unknown to Honeybath himself. More than that would require the positing of a secretiveness and evasiveness on Edwin's part which would surely be foreign even to so quirky and freakish a character as he had frequently exhibited. Even so, half a dozen such pictures, if brought together and put on show for the first time, would create a sensation in the art world and undoubtedly be worth a great deal of money. So suppose some of them had been in the possession of Edwin himself, and without anyone else being aware of their existence. A thief who got hold of them could put up any story he pleased about how they had come to be his lawful property. And nobody could contradict him.
Or nobody except Edwin himself
.

Turning over restlessly in a bed that audibly protested against his slightest movement, Honeybath faced this grim thought. He also faced the disturbing image of Ambrose Prout and the dubious name of Mrs Gutermann-Seuss of Brighton. It must be supposed that the lady really existed, since Prout could not be so foolish as simply to make her up. But wasn't there something suspicious, a kind of faking of verisimilar detail, in the story of this person's first producing a forged Lightfoot and later an authentic one? Had Prout simply stolen the little batch of pictures, either piecemeal or at one fell swoop, and then selected Mrs Gutermann-Seuss to fabricate a title to them? Had he done this from a rash persuasion that poor Edwin was sufficiently gaga not to become aware of his loss – and had this proved not to be the case, with fatal consequences?

But then there was the testimony of Colonel Dacre, that unexpected connoisseur of the fine arts. He had been shown, and had greatly admired, a picture which Edwin had described to him as recent work. But this, unless Edwin had in some totally abnormal way intermittently recovered his former power, must have resulted from a rather pathetic and wholly innocent impulse of deception on Edwin's part. The incident afforded strong evidence that unknown pictures did exist; that they had been in Edwin's possession; and – an important point – that Edwin had been by no means forgetful and unconcerned about them.

There was the chronological aspect of all this to consider. Although he had failed to question Dacre closely on the point, it was Honeybath's impression that the incident to which he had referred was of comparatively recent date; that it had taken place, in fact, shortly before he and Edwin had departed for Italy. Edwin had then been in a state of considerable distress – that, indeed, had been the reason for their pilgrimage; and the fact added to the curiosity of his having been prompted at least not to correct a misconception as to the dating of the picture. But what about the whole hypothesis that unknown early Lightfoots existed? It had lodged itself in Ambrose Prout's mind a long time back: Honeybath couldn't recall quite when. The first definite date had been that of Prout's abortive visit to Brighton; then there had been his letter received in Rome to the effect that with Mrs Gutermann-Seuss he had struck lucky after all, and hinting that there might be, so to speak, more treasure-trove in the pipe-line in that quarter. And it had been in Rome that Melissa had announced that this expectation had been fulfilled, and that her brother now possessed three early Lightfoots all told. This, of course, might have been untrue. Honeybath had the impression that there were plenty of lies blowing around.

Among the manufacturers of these he was inclined – but on grounds that remained obstinately indefinite – to accord Michaelis an honoured place. But if the Medical Superintendent was indeed implicated in some conspiracy, it could only be, surely, because Hanwell Court was the place – or at least had been the place – where those precious canvases were located. And from this, if it were so, there would follow the fairly secure inference that the Brighton lady was either implicated in the conspiracy or had in some way been made an innocent dupe. Mrs Gutermann-Seuss ought to be investigated. Honeybath fell asleep resolving to seek her out.

It was a resolve still with him when he woke up next morning. So was the conviction that, for the present at least, he wanted to have nothing more to do with Hanwell Court. Melissa's arrival on the scene appeared to be the controlling factor here. It was a little odd, since she was pretty well the only person around whom he continued to judge incapable of harbouring one dark design or another. But Melissa had decidedly said nothing to suggest that she welcomed his having turned up in any way, and it could be only in an awkwardly intrusive role that he continued on the scene. He rose early, scribbled a note to be handed to her, and contrived to secure a conveyance to take him to the railway station. He was in Brighton by lunchtime and provided with a room for the night – but this time in a reassuringly solid hotel understood to have been extensively frequented by the nobility of a former time. Brighton had later become, of course, something of a gangsters' haunt – at least if one were to accept the testimony of Mr Graham Greene. But nothing of the kind was in evidence. Honeybath looked back on the Hanwell Arms without regret.