From the bed, Andy said, “Who was that?”
“The police. Flynn.”
“Where are you going?”
“He’s arrested Horan for the murder of Ruth Fryer.”
She sat up in bed.
“The girl?”
“He’s flipped his lid.”
Sylvia, in a flowing nightdress, was in the corridor.
Fletch got just a flash of her fenders as he dashed by.
“What happens? Where you go now? Angela! What happens?”
Fletch ran down the five flights to the lobby.
A black four-door Ford was double-parked in front of the apartment building.
Fletch glanced down the street, at where the black truck was parked in front of the Ford Ghia.
He got into the front passenger seat.
Grover turned the ignition key.
Fletch said, “Hi, Grover.”
Grover put the car in gear and started down Beacon Street.
“My name’s not Grover,” he said.
“No?”
“No. It’s Whelan. Richard T. Whelan.”
“Oh.”
He said, “Sergeant Richard T. Whelan.”
Going around the comer into Newbury Street, Fletch said, “Quite a man, your boss.”
Sergeant Richard T. Whelan said, “He’s a bird’s turd.”
Thirty-eight
The street door of the Horan Gallery was open.
Fletch closed it, aware what an open door would do to the building’s climate control, and ran up the stairs to Horan’s office.
Flynn was sitting behind Horan’s Louis Seize desk, going through the drawers.
The Picasso, “Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle,” was still on the easel.
“Ah, there he is now,” said Flynn. “Peter Fletcher.”
“This is one one of the paintings,” said Fletch.
“I thought it might be. Lovely desk this, too. Pity I haven’t a touch of larceny in me.”
Fletch stood between the painting and the desk, hands his jacket pockets.
“Inspector, just because Horan has this painting does not mean that he has the other de Grassi paintings.”
“I think it does.” Reluctantly, Flynn stood up from behind the desk. “Come. We’ll take a quick tour around the house. You’ll recognize anything else that belongs to the de Grassis?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then all we need do is walk around.”
“Inspector, this painting, this Picasso, is here because I asked Horan to locate it and negotiate my purchase of it. A man named Cooney sent it up from Texas.”
“I see.”
On the landing, Flynn was stepping into a small elevator.
“In talking with Horan, he mentioned that he had had ‘one or two other paintings from Cooney the last year or two.’”
“Hard quote?”
Flynn was holding, the elevator door for him.
“Reasonably.” Fletch stepped in.
Flynn pushed the button for the third floor.
“And you think those two other paintings he had from Cooney were the two de Grassi paintings that showed up in his catalogue?”
“What else is there to think?”
“Many things. One might think many other this.”‘
On the third floor, they stepped out into a spacious, tasteful living room.
“Isn’t this lovely?” said Flynn. “I can hardly blame the man for wanting to hold onto his possessions.”
Flynn turned to Fletch.
“Now what, precisely, are we looking for?”
Fletch shrugged. “At this point, fifteen paintings and a Degas horse.”
“The horse is a sculpture, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a sculpture of a ballerina on the first floor…”
“Yes. That’s a Degas,” said Fletch.
“But it’s not a horse. Saturday in your apartment, you said there were nineteen works in the de Grassi collection.”
“Yes. Two have been sold through this gallery. A third, the Picasso, is downstairs. So there are fifteen paintings and the one sculpture.”
“And do the works have anything in common?”
Flynn had walked them into a small, dark dining room
“Not really. They belong to all sorts of different schools and eras. Many of them, but not all, are by Italian masters.”
“This would be the kitchen, I think.”
They looked in at white, gleaming cabinets and dark blue counters.
“Nothing in there, I think,” said Flynn, “except some Warhols on the shelves.”
Back in the living room, Flynn said, “Are you looking?”
“Yes.”
There were some unimportant drawings behind the piano, and a large Mondrian over the divan.
Flynn snapped the light on in a small den off the living room.
“Anything in here?”
A Sisley over the desk—the usual winding road and winding stream. The room was too dark for it.
“No.”
“I rather like that one,” said Flynn, looking at it closely. He turned away from it. “Ah, going around with you is an education.”
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
“The houseman stood on the landing. Thin in his long, dark bathrobe, thin face long in genuine grief, he stood aside, obviously full of questions regarding the future of his master, his own future—questions his dignity prohibited he ask.
“Ah, yes,” said Flynn.
In the bedroom was a shocking, life-sized nude—almost an illustration—of no quality whatsoever, except that it was arousing.
“The man had a private taste,” said Flynn. “I suspect he entertained very few of his fellow faculty in his bedroom.”
One guest room had a collection of cartoons; the other a photography wall.
Fletch said, “You see, Inspector, Horan didn’t really own paintings. Dealers don’t. More than the average person, of course, a good deal more, in value, but a dealer is a dealer first, and a collector second.”
“I see.”
The houseman remained in the shadows of the corridor.
“Where is your room?” asked Flynn.
“Upstairs, sir.”
“May we see it?”
The houseman opened a corridor door to a flight of stairs.
His bedroom was spartan: a bed, a bureau, a chair, a closet, a small television. His bath was spotless.
An attic room across the fifth floor landing contained nothing but the usual empty suitcases, trunks, a great many empty picture frames, a rolled rug, defunct lighting fixtures.
Flynn said, “Are the picture frames significant?”
“No.”
Again on the third floor landing, Flynn said to the houseman, “Is there a safe in the house?”
“Yes, sir. In Mister Horan’s office.”
“You mean the wee one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve already seen that. I guess I mean a vault. Is there a vault in the house, something of good, big size?”
“No, sir.”
“You’d know if there were?”
“Yes, sir.”
Flynn put his hand on the old man’s forearm.
“I’m sorry for you. Have you been with him long?”
“Fourteen years.”
The old man took a step back into the shadow.
“This must be quite a shock to you.”
“It is, sir.”
They took the elevator to the second floor, and went through the four galleries there. One was completely empty. The others had only a few works in each, lit and displayed magnificently.
Flynn said, “Nothing, eh?”
He might have been taking a Sunday stroll through a sculpture garden.
“I wouldn’t say exactly nothing,” said Fletch. “But none of the de Grassi paintings.”
Despite the house’s perfect climate control, Fletch’s forehead was hot. His hands were sticky.
Flynn was in no hurry.
“Well, well go out to Weston now.” Flynn buttoned his raincoat. “The Weston police will meet us at their border.”