The other policeman said, “The glass is smashed, Chuck.”
“Christ,” said Horan.
“Anything missing?” asked Cabot.
“No.”
“The alarm must have scared them off.”
“The alarm had to scare them off,” said Horan. “Nothing else would.”
“We can patch that up with of plywood and some tacks.”
Cabot said, “Let’s look around, anyway.”
Lights went on and off throughout the whole house as Horan showed them around.
The ground was cold. Fletch began to feel it in his boots.
The three men were fiddling about the back door. The policemen were helping Horan tack a piece of plywood on the inside of the door, over the window frames.
“You live here, or in Boston?”
“Both places.”
“You should get this window fixed first thing in the morning.”
“You’re no one to tell me my business,” said Horan.
The policemen came down the steps and ambled toward their car.
From the porch, Horan said, “Get here a little faster next time, will you?”
Turning, the car reversed and headed up the driveway. Its rotating blue lights went out.
Horan returned to the house and turned out all the lights.
He closed and locked the back door.
Moving slowly, he came down the porch steps, got into the car, reversed it a few meters, and drove up the driveway.
As soon as the Rolls taillights disappeared around the curve, Fletch hurried across the driveway and up the porch steps.
Using his handkerchief over his hand, he pressed on the plywood through the broken window. The tacks pushed free easily. The wood clattered onto the kitchen floor.
Stooping a little, at an angle, he reached his arm through the window as far as his elbow. He released the locks and opened the door from the inside.
Quickly, he snapped on the kitchen light.
Anyone roused by the alarm and still watching the house would think they were seeing a continuation of the previous action, Fletch hoped. The house had been completely dark for only a minute or two.
Turning on lights as he went, he ran up the back stairs, along a short corridor, and into the center back room. The light revealed what was obviously an antiseptic, unlived-in guest bedroom with a huge closet.
The closet door was unlocked.
Light from the bedroom caused shadows from what appeared to be three white, bulky objects—each leaning against a wail of the closet.
He pulled a chain hanging from a bare light bulb, in the center of the closet.
In the center of the closet, on the flood, was a Degas horse.
He lifted it into the bedroom.
Gently, he tugged the dust sheets away from the paintings stacked neatly, resting against each other’s frames, against the closet walls.
He lifted two paintings out of the closet.
One was the smaller Picasso.
The other was a Modigliani.
These were the de Grassi collection. Sixteen objects, including the horse.
He took the Picasso and the Modigliani downstairs with him and left them in the kitchen.
Then he ran to the tractor shed for the truck.
He backed it against the back porch and opened its back doors.
He put the two paintings from the kitchen into it, bracing them carefully, face down, on the tarpaulin.
It took him a half-hour to load the truck.
Before he left the house, he closed the closet door and wiped his fingerprints off its handle. As he went through the house, he turned off all, the lights, giving the switches a wipe with his handkerchief as he did so.
In the kitchen, he replaced the plywood against the broken window, fitting the tacks into their original holes and pressing them firm.
Driving along the highway, back into Boston, he maintained the speed limit precisely.
Fletch continued to have a professionally jaundiced view of the police, but, under the circumstances, there was no sense in taking chances.
Thirty-seven
“Mister Fletcher? This is Francis Flynn.”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Did I wake you up?”
It was quarter to twelve, midnight.
“Just taking a shower, Inspector.”
“I am in the process of exercising two warrants. Is that how a real policeman would say it?”
“I don’t know.”
“In any case, I am.”
“Good.”
“The first is for the arrest of Ronald Risom Horan for the murder of Ruth Fryer.”
Fletch kept listening, but Flynn said no more.
“What?”
“Horan killed Ruth Fryer. Would you believe that, now?”
“No.”
“It’s as true as the devil inhabits fleas.”
“It’s not possible. Horan?”
“Himself. He’s in the back of a car now on his way to be booked at headquarters. Sure, and there’s no knowing what’s in a man’s heart. A respectable man like that.” Fletch listened, breathing through his mouth. “We had to wait for the man to get home. He says he took a ride in the country by himself, on this beautiful moonlit night. And, of course, we had to use a pretext to get to see him at all, such an exclusive dealer in art he is, sitting here by himself in this castle. I borrowed a page from your book, if you don’t mind—the book you haven’t written yet—and made an appointment with him by saying I had a small Ford Madox Brown I had to sell. Do I have that name right?”
“Yes.”
“And I said it was a nineteenth-century English work, to show him I knew my potatoes. Was that right?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Anyway, it must have worked, because he made the appointment with me. Serving the warrant was the easy matter. I let Grover do it. The lad gets such satisfaction from telling people they’re under attest, especially for murder.”
“Inspector, something’s…”
“The second warrant is to search both this house and the house in Weston for the de Grassi paintings.”
“Weston? What house in Weston?”
“Horan has a house in Weston. That’s a little town about twelve miles to the west of us. So Grover says.”
“There’s no Weston address listed for him in Who’s Who.”
“I think your Mister Horan keeps his cards pretty close to his necktie, if you know what I mean. He’s not in the telephone book out there, either.”
“Then why do you think he has a house in Weston?”
“We have our resources, Mister Fletcher.”
“Inspector, something’s…”
“Now what I’m asking is this: Seeing you’re such a distinguished writer-on-the-arts, and all, and therefore can be counted on to recognize the de Grassi paintings, I wonder of you’d be good enough to join me in my treasure hunt? I’m at the Horan Gallery now.”
“You are?”
“We’ll have a look around here, and if we find nothing, we’ll go out to Weston together and have a look around that house.”
“We will?”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“Inspector, what makes you think Horan has the paintings? He’s a dealer. He works on assignments for other people.”
“I’ve sent Grover to your address. He’ll be sitting outside your door in a matter of minutes, if he’s not there already. If you’d pull up your braces, however late in the night it is, and let him drive you over here, I’d be deeply in your debt.”
“Inspector, something’s…”
“I know, Mister Fletcher. Something’s wrong. Will you come and correct the error in my ways?”
“Of course, Inspector.”
“There’s a good lad.”
Fletch left his hand on the receiver a moment after hanging up. It was sweating.
In the guest bedroom, he threw his jeans and sweater in the back of a bureau drawer and began to dress quickly in a tweed suit.