"Insofar as he knows about you."
"I don"t think he"ll be any problem."
He accepted my judgment with a curt nod and closed his eyes against the curling smoke. "Tomorrow I shall make a nuisance of myself to Lieutenant Blair and see what his plans are concerning Adrian. He will have collected a number of reports on Sandra Robley"s other friends by then, perhaps he will also have a better suspect upon which to focus his attention."
"I hope so."
"Indeed. I have serious doubts that the present judicial system would accept your unorthodox method of arriving at the truth as viable evidence."
"Especially since I"m not available during day sessions."
"I foresee another possible problem: You were with Adrian when he found the body. It is entirely possible you"ll have to give evidence to that effect."
"Oh, s.h.i.t."
"Or be held in contempt if you fail to show up."
"Couldn"t I give a written statement or some kind of proxy?"
"I"m not sure, I"ll talk to my lawyer about options. This was an occurrence I had not foreseen when I asked if you would like to work with me."
"Same here, but I was the one who asked you for help this time."
"I appreciate your confidence in me but fear it is misplaced this time. In essence, this is a tragic business, but of the sort that the police are best suited for dealing with."
"Even if they arrest the wrong man?"
He drew and puffed smoke, thinking carefully. "I doubt they will be able to sc.r.a.pe up a strong enough case against him to bring it to court. He has no alibi, to be sure, but he has that in common with a lot of people, including myself."
"Yeah, but you didn"t know Sandra and you have no motive."
"True. Then who did? Who would want to kill such a woman? The violence preceding her death and the violent manner in which she was dispatched indicate that she aroused a great deal of emotion in her murderer. Who among her circle possesses such a temper?"
"Alex.""Of course, always back to him, and you are absolutely certain of his innocence?
Yes, then we must look elsewhere." He tapped the pipe against his teeth a few times and opened his eyes to look at me. "Do you fancy another outing tonight?"
"Where?"
"To the Robleys" flat."
"Any reason why?"
"Because I wish to have a better look at it. Circ.u.mstances were such that I had no chance for a good look "round on the night of her murder."
Oh Lord, it looked like he was going into one of his energetic moods again. All I wanted to do was lie around the rest of the night and think about Bobbi. "Won"t the cops have cleared away everything important by now?"
"I"m certain of it, but I wish to see what they deem unimportant." He put his pipe aside and stretched out of the chair, looking like a stork unfolding from its nest.
"Charming as it was to entertain Miss Steler, I feel I"ve been vegetating here all evening. A drive in the cool air will do me a world of good."
"It"s kind of late to be waking up the super in their building."
"I"ve no intention of disturbing that worthy man"s rest."
"You need me along to go through the door and let you inside?"
"Not as long as I have my burgling kit. I would like your company because you had been there only a scant hour or so prior to the crime and can so inform me of any differences that might impress themselves upon your memory."
"After all this time?"
"You underestimate yourself, though I do see the point that for you, the period between has been amply filled with activity. Are you really that tired?"
An answer to that question might lead to a dozen other questions, none of which I wanted to go into at the moment. "I think I can last till morning."
"Excellent! I"ll just fetch my keys-" stopped him before he got too far along.
"Let"s take mine, it"s already warmed up, and I wanted to move it closer to the house anyway."
Quite so. I daresay it will be less conspicuous in that neighborhood than my Nash." He tossed me my hat and settled his own at a rakish angle over his brow. Now that he had something to do he was impatient to be off, so I speeded up a little, but my heart wasn"t in it. The next time Bobbi and I exchanged, I was going to make d.a.m.n sure I had nothing else to do for the rest of the night but recover from the celebration.Escott opened the front door and practically bounded down the steps. I moaned inwardly and did what I could to keep up.
We walked into the building normally. Escott was of the opinion that in this case stealth would draw more attention than if we acted like we belonged. No one bothered to poke their heads out as we climbed the stairs, and after a short moment of listening, I was satisfied no one would.
The police had sealed off the flat, which was hardly a barrier to me. I saved Escott the trouble of working with his skeleton keys and picks and went on through the door to open it for him from inside. He slipped in, shut the door quietly, and flipped on the light.
Sadness hung in the air like a fog. Things had been moved and shifted but not cleaned up. Fingerprint dust was still everywhere and the chalk outline still lay on the floor, a pathetic marker of her presence. Escott frowned furiously at it, shook his head sharply as if to clear his mind, and moved on to search the kitchen.
He did not take long and moved through the two small bedrooms and the bath just as quickly before coining back to the front again. "Does anything draw itself to your attention?" he asked.
"Evan"s painting has been moved."
Apparently some fastidious soul had seen the big self-portrait at just the right distance and had turned it to face the wall. I reached for it.
"A moment." Escort had come prepared and gave me a thin pair of rubber gloves, the kind surgeons use. He was already wearing some himself, I just hadn"t noticed when he"d put them on. I shook myself inwardly and tried to pull on an att.i.tude of professional detachment along with the gloves. In this depressed state I was no good to anyone.
I tipped the painting out enough to see that it was undamaged and checked the other vertical racks and their contents. As far as I could tell, nothing was missing or marred, though as elsewhere, many of the paintings had fingerprint dust on them.
Escort found that of interest and peered at the bright colors of an abstract through his pocket magnifier.
"It appears Mr. Robley used his fingers as well as his brushes to achieve certain effects."
"Sandra, too. Both of them had paint stains on their hands."
"Are these Sandra"s?" He indicated another stack of stored paintings against the opposite wall.
"I guess so, we only looked at Evan"s that night."
He sorted through them. "She would seem to be less prolific than her brother, as there is more than adequate storage s.p.a.ce available-or perhaps she sold more?" I nodded. "She said she was on some kind of WPA art grant. That was how they were able to live."
"Producing art for federal buildings?"
"Yeah. I think she also did stuff for interior decorators. There"s apparently a market for genuine oil paintings."
"I"ve heard of it, a.s.sembly-line oils, pretty pictures for the ma.s.ses at the cost of artistic integrity."
"Integrity is hard to afford when you don"t have food in the cupboard," I pointed out.
Yes, there are strong arguments in both directions, and who"s to say where one may safely draw the line?"
That called for a second look on my part, but I didn"t think he meant it as a pun. I flipped through Sandra"s work with Escott looking over my shoulder.
"She would appear to have a wide range of styles," he said. "This one is after one school and this after another. I wonder if she ever had time to develop a style of her own..."
"What do you mean?"
He set four different paintings out for view. "These for example: all are landscapes and all depict the same basic forms of hills, trees, and water, but they could have been painted by four different people. I"d be inclined to think so, too, but they are all out of the same palette." He darted to the other side of the room, where some painting supplies were kept, and drew out a thin flat of paint-stained wood, then held it up to the landscapes. The dominating colors of brown, green, and blue matched.
"You"re sure about that?"
"I"ve had a smattering of art in my time. A painter"s palette is often as identifiable as his fingerprints."
"Okay, so we know Sandra painted them all. Her work had to appeal to a lot of different people so she could sell. Is it important?"
"All information is important until proven otherwise." He returned the palette to its place and focused his attention on one of the big easels. "Is this one hers?"
"I think so."
He flipped off the dust cloth protecting the surface of the canvas beneath. The painting was an angular townscape in autumn, with wet streets and blowing leaves.
Escott peered at it closely with his lens, then with his beaky nose practically touching the surface, sniffed. He backed off, puzzled, sniffed again, covering a wider area this time.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking the state of the linseed oil." Is it stale?" I asked, amused.
"Indeed." He swept the flat of one hand across the painting and held his clean palm up for inspection. "It"s quite dry."
"Why would she have a dry painting on the easel?"
He didn"t answer but went back to her store of paintings and flipped through them, rapidly pulling out three, all the same size. They showed the same angular street, with variations of color and light.
"Winter, spring, summer and the one on the easel is autumn, obviously a series on the theme of the four seasons. I suppose it is just possible she was doing a little touch-up work, but it hardly seems likely."
"Why"s that?"
"Please note the top clamp of the easel: it stops a good five inches above the painting."
"Meaning that it was originally adjusted for a different-size canvas?"
"Exactly. Now I wonder what became of that particular work?"
"She could have taken it out herself."
"Then where is it? There are no wet paintings in this flat and she could not have sold them in that state."
"The cops took them."
He shook his head. "No, I stayed here and watched the forensic men. They did not remove any paintings. So unless Alex Adrian broke in and took them to his home for safekeeping or out of sentiment-"
"You figure the killer is some kind of art lover?"
"I"m not sure what to think. They were taken for a reason and unless he"s mad enough to want to retain a most dangerous souvenir of his crime, the only reason I can think of to justify his theft is-"
"That what he took incriminates him in some way. Then what was it, a quick portrait or something?"
He had no answer for me and flipped the dust sheet back onto the canvas, then turned and brooded over the chalk scrawl on the floor.It blocked my sight for only a moment, but I saw Evan again, standing in the same spot and swaying at the waist; Blair watching in shock, and Brett reaching to help him. That inhuman keening went through me once more and I shivered as though someone had walked over my empty grave.
Oh G.o.d.
Sometimes it happens that way, your mind hits on an answer with a sudden bright burst of insight, but won"t tell how it got there, and you"re left fumbling for an explanation. It eventually came tumbling out of my memory: words, looks, gestures...
all fell together, linked up, and formed into a solid composition.
"Oh G.o.d." This time it slipped out aloud.
Escott sensed something in my tone. His eyes snapped up, silently demanding to know what it was.
I told him.
He soaked it up without comment, having heard some of it before, but only presented as idle conversation, and mixed in with other events. In the end he could only shake his head.
"You have the answer, and if we find the paintings, we"d have enough circ.u.mstantial evidence for the DA to bring it to trial-"
"But I sure as h.e.l.l can"t come to court to tell it. The one thing I can do, though, is get the written confession you wanted."
"Before only a single witness?" he questioned, meaning himself.
But I had a second witness in mind even as he raised the point.
Chapter Twelve.
THE STREETS WERE dead and sheeted over with cold white reflections from occasional lights. It was after midnight and one look at the lead gray sky clamped hard over the city was enough to make you realize how far away dawn could get if it really tried.