The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries (7 page)

Claresby Fair was scheduled to start at noon. The weather was sunny with just the hint of a cooling breeze and a scattering of light, white, fluffy clouds. As Rupert returned to the grounds he saw that everything was taking shape and there was a tendency for people to gravitate to the refreshments tent, which was already serving coffee to the participants. He could see that Conran was helping Jinny and, knowing what he knew, felt a reluctance to go over there. Unfortunately for him, Conran caught his eye and beckoned.

“Is Floyd up and about?” asked Conran.

“No,” replied Rupert. “You look like you are managing well enough.”

“On this sort of occasion, Floyd is an optional extra,” smiled Jinny, a slight and pretty woman in her thirties. “We just have prints of some of his most famous paintings. Sebastian said that Floyd might be setting up an easel and painting the house. I’ll wander around and look for him later. I can see Sebastian over there; I think he has started before the crowds arrive. Is there an official opening?”

“Not really; just gates open at twelve. The highlight of the day is the award of prizes in various categories at four this afternoon. Would you like me to fetch you a coffee?”

“Oh, yes please!” Jinny smiled at him.

Once Rupert had done this, he went over to see Sebastian. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but somehow he thought that the artist might give him a clue to what had happened to Floyd – after all, he too had looked at the ring, and he had been sleeping right next to Floyd’s room and might have heard something. He found Sebastian at the point of having set up his easel and placed a small folding table beside him with his paints lined up, his palette already sporting bright worms of colour squeezed from the tubes and a scent of turpentine in the air. Sebastian himself was striking in cream chinos and a white linen shirt, his shock of white hair and pale skin emphasised by a bright red neck cloth which protected the back of his neck from the sun, and a light straw hat with a red band around it. His face also showed a red tinge about the cheeks. His large canvas already looked imposing and the artist had taken a thick brush and was boldly marking out the area of sky in what looked like purple lake and the foreground in patches of raw sienna and burnt sienna. If Rupert hadn’t had more important things on his mind he might have been tempted to watch Sebastian Fullmarks at work. Famous mostly for his controversial modern work, there might have been cynics who questioned whether he was actually capable of good, solid, conventional painting. Still, he seemed confident enough with easel and brush, so perhaps he was about to prove his detractors wrong.

Still vigorously applying purple paint to the sky, Sebastian indicated another table. “See – I have set out some limited edition replicas of my latest work:
Plate of Meat!
The original is in the Tate Modern, of course, but any money I raise from these today will be donated to repairing Claresby parish church.”

Rupert glanced at what he had originally taken to be Sebastian’s lunch, but at the same time acknowledged the generosity of the gesture. If the Claresby villagers bought these from Sebastian today at whatever they paid for them, they would be able to resell them for a great deal more; Sebastian was, after all, very famous. And Laura would be happy for the donation to the church.

“No sign of Floyd then?” Sebastian asked casually.

“No; perhaps he had a bad night.”

“Well he certainly slept – he was snoring continuously from midnight until four in the morning.”

“Any sounds from him after that?” asked Rupert.

“Well someone went for a pee in the bathroom at our end of the house at about six. Why, are you worried about him?”

“Not really; Floyd was never the most reliable man around. Still, it would have been nice to watch him paint.” Rupert’s eyes travelled to the new colour that Sebastian was squeezing onto his palette. “Goodness! Is that actually gold? I didn’t know you could get a gold oil paint.”

“Oh yes,” smiled Sebastian happily. “This is actually a renaissance gold – I find the Winsor and Newton gold a little too buttercup coloured for my taste. I have a tube of silver too: nice in clouds.” He proceeded to dab some of the gold into the foreground as highlights. Somehow the picture that was beginning to take shape seemed to bear no resemblance to the view of Claresby Manor as it stood in front of them, but Rupert supposed that this was all part of the great artist’s modern interpretation, or perhaps he was just building up an under-painting. Rupert didn’t really know much about paintings and was inclined to go for photorealistic scenes of the English countryside left to his own taste.

Rupert could see Laura a little way off, standing with a cup of coffee in her hand and surveying the scene before her with some satisfaction. He left Sebastian and went over to join her.

“I’ll go and help sell programmes at the gate come twelve,” she commented, glancing at her watch. “How is Sebastian getting on? I want the painting for in the Great Hall if it is any good; we need a modern interpretation of Claresby Hall.”

“Hard to tell,” said Rupert, absentmindedly. “He is using gold paint – the writing on the walls in Floyd’s room was in gold.”

“Is that relevant?” asked Laura, squinting her eyes against the sun as she looked questioningly at him.

“Probably not; I just happened to notice.”

“Did you find out anything new? You were saying something about the junk room earlier.”

“Well, it linked to that fact that there were Egyptian hieroglyphs on the wall. Just before you called us down for that Chinese takeaway, when we were looking for an easel, Floyd somehow managed to unearth an old suitcase belonging to Tom Mortimer.”

“There has been more than one Thomas Mortimer over the centuries.”

“This one was a nineteenth century Tom. There was a sketch book in there covering a trip to Egypt. It would have been in the eighteen-nineties.”

“I think there was a Thomas Mortimer who used to be a bit of an artist. There are a couple of his watercolours in the library – of Cornwall, not Egypt. I think he was the one who had a perfect fetish for knick-knacks; he used to collect Dresden shepherdesses, that sort of thing.”

“Well, he had collected an Egyptian artefact; a ring. When I looked through his writings he seemed to think that it had belonged to Nesperennub.”

“Nesperennub? I know that name. Is it from one of
the Mummy
films?”

Rupert smiled. “No, you remember the name from the time I dragged you around the British Museum. Nesperennub is the mummy who is famous for having been subjected to a CT scan so that his body could be examined in a non-intrusive way. He is thought to have been a priest of Amun-Ra in the temple at Karnak.”

“You said that one of the hieroglyphs on the wall in Floyd’s wall represented Amun-Ra: is someone playing games, or should I expect some of those squealing resurrected mummy things to start popping out of the windows?”

“I would be interested to know if the ring is genuine. As far as I remember, Nesperennub was discovered at Luxor at about the same time Tom was in Egypt. The fact that the mummy was sold to a curator of the British Museum suggests that someone was happy to flog the bits and pieces; at a price, no doubt.”

“But,” mused Laura, “even if this ring is genuine, you are not seriously suggesting that the discovery of it has anything to do with Floyd’s death? I know that mummy curses make for good television, but does anyone really take them seriously?”

“Lord Carnarvon may have done. He died a year after the celebrated excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb – as a result of a mosquito bite. But you have to hand it to the ancient Egyptians, they just knew how to write a curse: “They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can cure!” and “Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King!” – these are quality curses. There are a host of rational explanations given, such as a deadly fungus growing in enclosed tombs and infecting those who enter. It is a case of sceptics and believers – take your pick – and perhaps belief in a curse is enough to bring a man down; that is the basis on which any good ancient gypsy curse could work.”

“Yes, but we didn’t open the tomb; so no curse and no nasty bacteria. We don’t even know what killed Floyd.”

Rupert sighed. “You are right, and I am going to have to inform Dr Lowe that he is dead. Sooner or later someone will go and find him, so it is better I sort things out quietly and tell Jinny. Like you I am a sceptic about curses – and yet I did pick up that ring pretty gingerly. Mike from Cambridge works at the British Museum; I’ll get him to look at it and see if it is genuine.”

“Who did touch the ring then: just Floyd?”

“Well, Sebastian wanted to look at it, but I’m not sure if he did, because we all came downstairs. Anyway, he is still happy, healthy and painting. I won’t panic unless he dies mysteriously too!” And with that Rupert gave his wife a fond kiss and made his way back to the house.

Laura watched Rupert go with a mixture of fondness and concern and then promptly forgot about him as she returned her interest to her pet project: Claresby Fair. It was beginning to get hot and the colourful stalls stood out on the lawns like flower blooms. Even before the arrival of villagers and other visitors, there seemed to be a lot of people about the place. She let her eyes sweep over the displays of dried flowers, embroidered purses, exotic silk screen prints, woven baskets and polished carved wooden bowls. She could see Samantha chatting to members of the Claresby Art Club and wondered what they would make of the ferocious and blunt spoken art critic. She had deliberately chosen Conran Hawkes to judge the art because he was less likely than Samantha to say anything downright offensive in his critique. It had seemed fairly safe to put Samantha in charge of judging the flower arranging – after all, flowers were nice, what could she find to be scathing about? Nonetheless, Laura decided it was prudent to move Samantha away from the mild-mannered but sensitive amateur artists.

“It is so lovely to see some plain, honest good painting,” Samantha was saying in strong tones to Bill Smith, the top of whose head barely reached her shoulders. “One wonders who the real artists are – the likes of Sebastian Fullmarks and Floyd Bailey or the worthy members of your club. It is just a case of showmanship and cheap celebrity that makes them their money if you ask me. I’m not saying that Floyd can’t paint, but I would happily say that Sebastian can’t – or if he can, he never does.”

“And yet,” intervened Laura with a light smile, “he is currently working away at a painting of Claresby Manor. I have not seen it yet, but I’m sure it will be a work I can display with pride.”

“Let’s hope so,” replied Samantha, scepticism in every syllable.

“I was just going to ask you if you would help me at the entrance? We are due to open in five minutes.”

“Of course,” replied Samantha, and the two women made their way towards the sweep of the drive and the recently erected wrought iron gates at the main entrance of the manor. The next hour was a swirl of greetings and payments and despite growing heat and a pain starting to blossom behind her eyes, Laura experienced a swell of satisfaction at seeing how popular Claresby Fair was turning out to be. She also spared a grateful thought for Samantha, who worked hard beside her without complaint. Fortunately, come one o’clock two of the villagers Laura knew well came and took over and she and Samantha were able to repair to the beer tent for a glass of Pimms with a whole fruit salad floating in it. Then they made their way over to the hog roast and were gifted rolls with a mere smidgen of salad and a hunk of crispy meat. Laura felt herself perk up and even the immaculately groomed Samantha was tucking into the ungainly fare with enthusiasm. Then the two ladies drifted around the stalls and Laura made some courtesy purchases of handmade cards and a paperweight with an arrangement of rosebuds in it.

“Well,” said Laura as they thanked the woman who had made the cards, “perhaps we should venture up and see if Sebastian is making headway with his painting. I must confess to being curious as to how he will pull off a conventional landscape with building. I sometimes think he is more of an inventor at heart than an artist.”

“A charlatan, more like,” sniffed Samantha. “But I must confess that I was impressed that he was prepared to expose his talent to public view by painting alla prima in such a populous venue.”

They could both see his easel now, top heavy with its enormous canvas. A small group of people were looking and Frank Bowler, organist at Claresby church, moved away and caught sight of them.

“Nice painting,” he said with a wink. “I wonder where he spent his holiday!”

Bemused, Laura hastened up the slope and turned to look at the canvas. The painting that met her eyes depicted a turbulent sky of moody blues and purple. Below, emitting a sense of heat and menace, was the Sphinx.

“Well!” exclaimed Samantha. “I’m astounded. With art I cannot lie, and this is a wonderful work: strength, energy, brooding, ominous – brilliant! And I’m going to have to admit as much to Sebastian. How galling.”

“Yes, but aren’t you missing the obvious,” returned Laura. “What on earth was he thinking about? He is meant to be painting Claresby Hall.”

“What does it matter?” replied Samantha dismissively. “The painting is good.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I am just wondering what was in Sebastian’s mind. And where is he? The painting doesn’t look quite finished and he has left his little stall of...meat.”

“Perhaps he went to the beer tent; we’ll soon find him.”

But they didn’t. Exhaustive search of the fair, grounds, beer tent and kitchens did not reveal Sebastian and no one had seen him, nor had he spoken to anyone.

Laura sighed. “I’d better go and tell Rupert. Samantha, one more favour; could you just look after Sebastian’s stall. He is selling those replicas of
Plate of Meat
for the benefit of Claresby church. And his work is, after all, quite valuable.”

“What me? – Sell that?” Samantha was incredulous.