“This,” said Mr Tillottson, “is Superintendent Alleyn of the CID, Jo. He wonders if you can help him.”
“‘Ere,” said Mr Bagg, “that’s a type of remark I never expected to have thrown at me on me own premises. Help the police. We all know what that one leads to.”
“No, you don’t, Jo. Listen, Jo—”
Alleyn intervened. “Mr Bagg,” he said, “you can take my word for it there is no question of anything being held against you in any way whatever. I’ll come to the point at once. We are anxious to trace the origin of a picture which was sold by you yesterday to an American lady and her brother. We have reason to believe—”
“Don’t you start making out I’m a fence. Don’t you come at that one, mister. Me! A fence—!”
“I don’t for one moment suggest you’re anything of the sort. Do pay attention like a good chap. I have reason to believe that this picture may have been dumped on your premises and I want to find out if that could be so.”
“Dumped! You joking?”
“Not at all. Now, listen. The picture, as you will remember, was in a bundle of old prints and scraps and the lady found it when she opened the door of a cupboard in your yard. The bundle was rolled up and tied with string and very dirty. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched for donkey’s years. You told the lady you didn’t know you had it and you sold it to her unexamined for ten bob and nobody’s complaining or blaming you or suspecting you of anything.”
“Are you telling me,” Mr Bagg said with a change of manner, “that she struck it lucky? Is that the lay?”
“It may be a valuable painting and it may be a forgery.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“Now, all I want to know, and I hope you’ll see your way to telling me, is whether, on thinking it over, you can remember seeing the roll of prints in that cupboard before yesterday.”
“What I meantersay, no. No, I can’t. No.”
“Had you never opened the cupboard, or sideboard is it, since you bought it?”
“No. I can’t say fairer than that, mister, can I? No. Not me, I never.”
“May I look at it?” He grumbled a little but finally led them out to his yard where the very dregs of his collection mouldered. The sideboard was a vast Edwardian piece executed in pitchpine with the cupboard in the middle. Alleyn tried the door which had warped and only opened to a hard wrench and a screech that compared favourably with that of the front door.
“She was nosey,” Mr Bagg offered. “Had to open everything she saw. Had a job with that one. Still nothing would do—nosey.”
“And there it was.”
“That’s correct, mister. There it was. And there it wasn’t if you can understand, three days before.”
“ What?”
“Which I won’t deceive you, mister. While my old woman was looking over the stock out here, Monday, she opened that cupboard and she mentions the same to me when them two Yanks had gone and she says it wasn’t there then.”
“Why couldn’t you tell us at once, Jo?” Mr Tillottson asked more in resignation than in anger.
“You arst, you know you did, or this gentleman which is all one, arst if I never opened the cupboard and I answered truthfully that I never. Now then!”
“All right, Jo, all right. That’s all we wanted to know.”
“Not quite,” Alleyn said. “I wonder, Mr Bagg, if you’ve any idea of how the bundle could have got there. Have you anybody working for you? A boy?”
“Boy! Don’t mention Boy to me. Runaway knockers and ringers, the lot of them. I wouldn’t have Boys on me property, not if they paid me.”
“Is the gate from this yard to the road unlocked during the day?”
“Yes, it is unlocked. To oblige.”
“Have many people been in over the last two days, would you say?”
Not many, it appeared. His customers, as a general rule came into the shop. All the stuff in the yard was of a size or worthlessness that made it unpilferable. It was evident that anybody with a mind to it could wander round the yard without Mr Bagg being aware of their presence. Under persuasion he recalled one or two locals who had drifted in and bought nothing.
Alleyn delicately suggested that perhaps Mrs Bagg—?
“Mrs Bagg,” said Mr Bagg, “is in bed and asleep which game to rouse her, I am not. No more would you be if you knew how she can shape up.”
“But if your wife—”
“Wife? Do me a favour! She’s my mum.”
“Oh.”
As if to confirm the general trend of thought a female voice like a saw screamed from inside the cottage that its owner wanted to know what the hell Mr Bagg thought he was doing creating a nuisance in the middle of the night.
“There you are,” he said. “Now, see what you done.” He approached a window at the rear of the cottage and tapped on it. “It’s me,” he mumbled. “It’s not the middle of the night, Mum, it’s early. It’s Mr Tillottson of the Police, Mum, and a gentleman friend. They was inquiring about them Yanks what bought that stuff.”
“I can’t hear you. Police! Did you say Police? ’Ere! Come round ’ere this instant-moment, Jo Bagg, and explain yerself: Police.”
“I better go,” he said and re-entered the cottage.
“The old lady,” Mr Tillottson said, “is a wee bit difficult.”
“So it would seem.”
“They make out she’s nearly a hundred.”
“But she’s got the stamina?”
“My oath!”
The Baggs were in conversation beyond the window but at a subdued level and nothing could be made of it. When Mr Bagg re-emerged he spoke in a whisper.
“Do me a favour, gents,” he whispered. “Move away.”
They withdrew into the shop and from thence to the front door.
“She’s deaf,” Mr Bagg said, “but there are times when you wouldn’t credit it. She don’t know anything about nothing but she worked it out that if this picture you mention is a valuable antique it’s been taken off us by false pretences and we ought to get it back.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the view she takes. And so,” Mr Bagg added loyally, “do I. Now!”
“I dare say you do,” Mr Tillottson readily conceded. “Very natural. And she’s no ideas about how it got there?”
“No more nor the Holy Saints in Heaven, and she’s a Catholic,” Mr Bagg said unexpectedly.
“Well, we’ll bid you good night, Jo. Unless Mr Alleyn has anything further?”
“Not at the moment, thank you. Mr Bagg.”
Mr Bagg wrenched open the front door to the inevitable screech which was at once echoed from the back bedroom.
“You ask them Police,” screamed old Mrs Bagg, “why they don’t do something about them motor-biking Beasts instead of making night hijjus on their own accounts.”
“What motor-biking beasts?” Alleyn suddenly yelled into the darkness.
“You know. And if you don’t you ought to. Back-firing up and down the streets at all hours and hanging round up to no good. Jo! Show them out and get to bed.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“And another thing,” invisibly screamed Mrs Bagg. “What was them two Americans doing nosey-parkering about the place last week was a month back, taking photers and never letting on they was the same as before.”
Alleyn set himself to bawl again and thought better of it. “What does she mean?” he asked Mr Bagg.