Pursued by Shadows (25 page)

“Why two—” Harriet started, with a nod at the closets.

“Isn't it interesting? I'm not sure why they did that. A passion for symmetry, I think. The temptation is to take off both closet doors and create wall niches, but I'm afraid it would look too cutesy. They're exactly the same size,” she added, and with that, she turned the key in the other door, flung it open briefly and closed it again. “And both filled with junk, of course.” She smiled. “Would you like to see the rest of the house? It's really a very interesting design.” Nina moved toward the door with soft, confident steps. John looked around once more and started after her, leaving a curious Harriet to follow slowly behind.

The fresh air poured over her again, only this time she recognized it as a sign that the door had opened. The door. She had to get out of that door. There were voices, new voices, fading away again into the distance, and suddenly she was able to put a name to them. She pushed herself up again, wobbled, and crashed sideways into the door. She stayed there for a second—or perhaps an hour, for time had lost all measure—and then raised a hand to pound on the wood. It landed soft as a feather, and with as much noise. A sob of frustration escaped her as she raised her fist again. Before she could test its power a second time, the door opened and she fell onto the bare floor at Harriet's feet.

“Jane!” she said. “I thought I heard something back here. Are you okay?”

“Where's Amos?” she mumbled. “Just wanna sleep,” and composed herself a little more comfortably to do just that.

Ed Dubinsky loomed up in the doorway of the room. “There's no one in back,” he said. “Not that I could find. But this thing was trying to get out of here in the station wagon.” And he pulled the handcuffed figure of Peter Bellingham forward from the gloom of the hall into the sunshine.

“It was her idea,” he shrieked, his eyes bright with tears. “I never even would have thought of any of it.”

“Whatever are you talking about, little one?” said Nina, in a voice of sweet surprise. “And what is that poor girl doing in my closet? And how long has she been there?”

McNeill looked up from his desk. “Did you get her?”

“Mmm,” said Sanders. “In a manner of speaking. She's closeted with Dubinsky and her lawyer, but I'm not sure we can put together anything more profound than forcible confinement against her at this point. She claims that the Sinclair woman came into the gallery screaming wild threats and accusations, frightening off customers, and in a panic poor little Nina slipped a couple of sleeping pills in Sinclair's coffee, and then asked Bellingham to whisk her up to the farm while she was asleep. Mrs. Smithson hoped she might be able to talk Miss Sinclair into a better frame of mind.”

“Bullshit,” said McNeill.

“Pure and unadulterated.” Sanders nodded in gloomy agreement.

“Some stuff came in from the UK,” he went on. “You might want to look at it before tackling her again.” Under his well-rehearsed deadpan exterior, a certain spark of amusement seemed to be animating McNeill. “They've pulled in two jokers in the art and antique business—a gallery manager by the name of Edward Brown and one of his employees—in the murder of that art restorer, Malcolm Whiteside. They've faxed us their testimony as far as it applied to us.”

“But it never did, did it? White was just a drinking buddy of our corpse, wasn't he?”

“More than that. The gallery manager has cut a deal with the crown and is talking. It seems his bosses came up with this idea and instructed him to commission Whiteside to create the map that Columbus might have used to sail to America. Can you believe it? They agreed to pay him forty thousand pounds, twenty to start with to cover his expenses—”

“Expenses?”

“Acquiring the right kind of materials, travel and so on. Including paying rent and eating while he was working on it. And then twenty on completion. But they ran into problems over expenses. Apparently it cost him more to do the research and get the materials than he had anticipated and he asked for an extra five thousand pounds. The gallery owners said not a chance. The manager thinks that Whiteside was pissed off and made a private deal with Beaumont for the remaining twenty plus whatever extra he felt he was owed. Then one of the gallery employees who has since left for South America and is therefore untraceable—”

“Sure.”

“—in a fit of irritation stabbed Whiteside because he had turned over the map to Beaumont, and they were out the map and the first installment they had already paid for it.”

“Look, McNeill, this is all fascinating, but unless you're trying to tell me that I've arrested the wrong woman, and that Beaumont was murdered by some gang of art forgers who followed him from England—”

“No. Not at all. The really interesting things are the names of the owners of the art gallery—

well, actually, one of the names means nothing to me—”

“McNeill!”

“But the other one is Nina Smithson.” He paused for a second to let that sink in. “The only real question is whether Guy Beaumont was working on his own to do in the boss lady, putting up his own capital to buy the map—and there's no trace so far of a sum as large as twenty-five to thirty thousand pounds moving out of any of his well-lined accounts—or if he was helping Nina to do in her partner so she wouldn't have to split the profits when the map was sold.”

“Who's the partner?”

“He's a rich bastard, a Sir somebody-or-other.” McNeill ran his finger down the pages in front of him. “Here it is. Sir Christopher Grantley. They sent us a picture, in case anyone at this end can come up with something on him that might stick. They'd love us forever if we could. They've been watching that gallery for months.”

Sanders looked at the picture and grinned. “There's one thing we could stick him with just on sight.”

“What's that?”

“Young Christopher Smithson. He looks like a clone.”

“One problem that I had was my lamentable tendency to accept stereotypes,” said Sanders, as he filled everyone's glass with white, rosiny Greek wine. “That's my confession of weakness for today, and you can't expect any more.”

“Stereotypes?” said Amos, trying the wine with great caution.

“Drowning Beaumont appeared to call for tremendous physical strength, and so we all kept looking for some kind of incredible hulk.”

“And Peter doesn't look like a hulk,” said Harriet.

“No. But he's remarkably strong and keeps himself in shape.”

“You're damned right,” said Dubinsky, whose bruises were just developing. His heartfelt words were interrupted by the arrival of a huge plate of salad, plates of feta and black olives, and a basket of bread.

“And he wasn't alone, of course,” said Jane, helping herself and passing the plate on to Sally Dubinsky.

“Nina is no slouch, either,” Sanders admitted. “Maybe we should have wondered about the fact that she was just coming back from the gym when we were over there.”

“All kinds of women go to gyms and never get anywhere near muscle building. She looks so damned feeble,” said Harriet, crossly. “As if the wind would blow her over.”

“You were taken in by her clothes. Just because she doesn't slouch around the gallery in sweats and jeans—”

“Watch that, John Sanders. Before you say what I'm sure you're going to say.”

“The woman next door said that Nina used to cart stuff out to the car herself and deliver it all the time. Heavy, awkward stuff. She wore nice clean smocks to do it, so she wouldn't get her clothes dirty,” remarked Ed.

Sally Dubinsky looked around the table with a demure smile that was entirely out of character. “Just because a woman is neat doesn't mean she's weak and helpless,” she said sweetly. The statement was so manifestly true when applied to Sally that Nina's claim to strength and self-sufficiency went undisputed.

“They should bring back hanging,” muttered Harriet. “Even it's too good for someone like her. Burning at the stake.”

“Because she killed Beaumont?” asked Sanders. “Bellingham said she was the one who misjudged how much water he could take, by the way.”

“He would. Little worm,” she said casually. “No—for making the rest of us look like slobs.” Harriet looked down at her relatively decent pants, considered Sally's flawless exterior, and decided to change that topic. “Has she admitted it?”

“Killing Beaumont? Not on your life. She's made of sterner stuff than that. She's still trying to deny kidnapping Jane. But Peter is babbling all over the place. When the poor bastard who forged the map was killed, little Peter admits he crept into his studio and swiped the twenty-five thousand pounds Beaumont had paid him for it.”

“But Nina told me that she paid thirty thousand pounds for the map,” said Jane. “She was genuinely indignant about it. Plus a commission up front to Guy for making all the arrangements.”

“Jane, sweetheart,” said Harriet, “you should know by now you can't believe a word Nina says. But it is possible. It just means five thousand of it stuck to Guy's fingers. But why did Peter admit to stealing it? A sudden surge of conscience?”

“It's in his London bank account and had to be explained,” said John. “Hard to hide that much, even in a mattress. I think he's afraid we'll think he killed the London artist and at the moment they're trying to establish that Guy's death was a regrettable accident and that they are merely excessively greedy rather than homicidal.”

“Who owns the map?” asked Harriet. “So many people seem to have paid for it, that I've lost track.”

“An academic question, isn't it?” said John. “Now that we know it's a fake, it's about worth the price of the parchment it's painted on, and it would take an army of lawyers and cost a fortune to sort out ownership.” He shook his head. “Maybe not, though. It seems to me that the people who commissioned it and paid the original twenty thousand pounds for it ought to be the rightful owners, that is Sir Christopher and Nina, but since claiming it is tantamount to admitting to fraud and possibly to homicide, I don't think they'll want it, somehow. We'll need it for the trial, and I suppose the Brits will too. Maybe it's part of Whiteside's estate or even Beaumont's estate. Do you want it?” he asked, turning to Jane.

“Thanks all the same,” said Jane. “But I've had enough of that damned map to last me a lifetime. Although it did bring a few nice things along with it,” she added with a covert smile in Amos's direction.

“Then if we end up with it,” said Dubinsky, “we'll shove it in the museum along with all the rest of the useless junk. Unless little Peter wants it to decorate the wall of his cell.”

“Have you noticed how we all keep calling him little Peter?” said Harriet. “I wonder why. He's not little at all. Even Nina called him ‘little one.'”

“She always called him that, apparently,” said John. “One of few things that Christopher Smithson has said to us is that his mother always called Bellingham ‘little one.' It really seems to have bothered him more than anything else about the relationship.”

“But, John, isn't that what Professor Martin said when he was dying? Didn't he say it was the little one?” Harriet's voice rose with excitement. “He must have meant Peter.”

“I was ahead of you on that. Finally. But I will admit that it puzzled the hell out of me at the time. I kept wondering who the big one was. I was not thinking in terms of cutesy names.”

“And Dean had nothing to do with it?” asked Harriet skeptically.

“Not that much. She told both sons that Beaumont had stolen the map. Christopher admitted to using Peter's key and searching your apartment while you were having morning coffee with his mother, and Dean was probably responsible for searching Jane's hotel room. Beyond that, she didn't seem to trust her kids. Or maybe, just maybe, she didn't want to involve them. After his death, she accepted Dean very gratefully as a scapegoat, since things were not working out to plan.” There was a pause as the waitress arrived with plates of moussaka, rice, and potatoes. “I don't think,” said Sanders, “that I have ever met a woman who felt less for her child, and I've met some real horrors.”

“He wasn't part of fate's grand plan for her,” said Dubinsky calmly, and began refilling wineglasses.

“Fate's grand plan?” said Sally. “What are you talking about?”

“I'll explain the whole thing to you,” he said. “Later.”

“What are you two going to do now?” asked Harriet as she waved goodbye to the Dubinskys and began strolling along the Danforth in the direction of her apartment. John caught up with her in one long stride and dropped an arm across her shoulders.

“Apparently there's nothing wrong with the gallery books,” said Jane. “Nina's lawyer is looking after things, like payments to artists, so Guy's lawyer will get the money fairly soon. We're going to pick Agnes up tomorrow and we'll drive back to Skaneateles as soon as she's comfortable with us and then we're getting married, I guess.” She stopped beside her car, parked in one of those miraculous spots that do turn up from time to time.

“Of course we are,” said Amos quietly. “And you must come down for the wedding.”

“Yes,” said Jane. “Since without you, I can't imagine what sort of mess I would have landed both of us in. Besides, you've never seen Agnes.” And she waved and climbed into the car.

“It's a beautiful night, isn't it?” said Harriet, after Jane and Amos had pulled out into the traffic and disappeared.

“Very,” said John, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “A beautiful June night.”

“Remember when we went away together?”

“Of course I remember,” said John. “It was only a few months ago. You make it sound as if it happened at the dawn of time.”