“Go on,” said George peremptorily. “What did you say to his offer?”
“I refused it.” He was taking heart now from the very impetus of his own feelings, remembering his injuries and recovering his anger. The guarded voice warmed; there was even a note of Armiger’s well-tuned brazen music in it when he was roused. “I’d had it, I was done with the whole affair, it could stay as it was. It’s a pity it was poor old Shelley who got the blast, after all he’d tried to do for me, but there it was. So the old boy went off very upset. He even tried to get me to accept a loan out of his own pocket, but even if I’d have taken it in any case, and I wouldn’t, I couldn’t from him. I know him, even with all he makes he lives right up to his income, sometimes over it. We tried to soothe him down as well as we could, because, damn it, it wasn’t his fault. He said he hoped we wouldn’t cut ourselves off from him completely, couldn’t he come down and see us sometimes, he’d like to be sure we were all right, and of course we said come any time, if he could bear the place we’d be glad to see him. And we gave him all the gen, because the old bag downstairs objects to having to answer the door for our visitors, though she never misses taking a good look at them, in case there’s anything fat in it to shoot over the garden fence to the other harpy next door. She leaves the front door on the latch while she’s in, so that anyone who comes to see us can walk right up. And we even told him where to find the key of our room, in case he ever called a bit too early and wanted to wait for us. I know,” said Leslie, catching George’s faintly puzzled and inquiring eye. “You’re wondering if all this detail is really relevant. It’s relevant, all right! The day before yesterday, while we were both out in the afternoon, somebody got into this room and pinched my father’s letter.”
“The letter! The one accompanying the gift of the sign? But why should anybody want to steal that?”
“If you can think of more than one explanation you’re a better man than I am. There is only one. Because my father really wanted that sign back. That was why he sent Shelley on his errand. He wanted it, and it was even worth five hundred pounds to him to get it. And when that attempt flopped his next move was to remove the only proof that he ever gave it to me. Without that, its ownership would be a matter of his word against mine, and where do you think I’d be then?”
“That’s not quite true, you know,” said George reasonably. “Miss Hamilton typed that letter, she knows exactly what was in it, and has already told me all the facts about that gift. There would also be the testimony of the people who packed and delivered it to you. So it wouldn’t have been a matter of your unsupported word.”
Leslie laughed, with some bitterness but even more honest amusement. “Really, you don’t know the kind of set-up he had with his staff, do you? Hammie may have been beautifully open with you now he’s dead, but if he’d been still alive she’d have done and said whatever he wanted, she always did, it’s the cardinal point in her terms of reference. She wouldn’t have remembered anything that could make things awkward for him, don’t you think it, and neither would the lads in the office, or the bloke who drove the van. Oh, no, that wouldn’t complicate things for him. The letter was the only evidence in black and white. My father wanted that thing back, he was prepared to give five hundred to get it, and when that failed he started to clear the ground so he could claim the thing anyhow, even though I hadn’t seen fit to part with it.”
“Are you suggesting that Mr. Shelley was a party to this trick?”
“No! At least, not consciously. God, I don’t know! I’ve never known how far he was aware of the uses Dad made of him. It went on all the time, whenever he needed a nice, benevolent front that would soften up the opposition. You must have seen them in action. Can you be totally unaware when you’re being used as a cover man? For years and years? Maybe he shuts his eyes to it and hopes for the best, maybe he really doesn’t see. Naturally he didn’t simply go back and say: Easy, old boy, you just walk in, the door’s on the latch, and they keep their key on top of the cupboard on the landing. Nothing like that. But he told him, all the same, consciously or unconsciously, because there’s no other way he could have known. And he came, he or somebody else for him. Somebody’d been here, and the letter was gone.”
“You didn’t ask Mrs. Harkness if she’d seen the caller? She must have been in, or the street door would have been fastened.”
“She was in, and I bet she knows who it was who called, but what’s the good of asking her? She’d simply deny any interest in my visitors, and get on her high horse and turn nasty, because she knows damn’ well I know she’s always got her kitchen door ajar snooping and listening. I couldn’t even begin to ask her.”
“Yes, I see it would be easier for us to do it. Though probably no more effective. And then another question arises. I notice you haven’t mentioned the sign itself. If he was removing the evidence of the gift, why not remove the gift at the same time?”
“He couldn’t, it wasn’t here. I got sort of interested in the thing. It’s been overpainted so many times you can’t tell what may not be underneath, and there’s something about the shapes and proportions of the painting itself that isn’t nineteenth century by a long chalk. It isn’t that I think it’s worth anything, not in money, but I should like to know something about its history, and see if there’s something more interesting underneath the top layers. So I talked to Barney Wilson about it. He said how about that dealer who has the gallery in Abbey Place, the other side of town, he thought he’d be willing to have a look at the thing for us. So I got him to take the sign over to him for an opinion, and it’s still with him now.”
“When did you send it to him? Before the letter was abstracted, obviously. Was it also before Mr. Shelley came to see you?”
Leslie visibly counted days; colour had come back into his cheeks and something like excitement into his eyes. “Yes, by God, it was! Shelley was here on Thursday evening. Barney took the sign away with him in the van on Monday morning, three days before.”
“Suggestive, you think?”
“Don’t you? I’d had the thing six weeks, and Dad had shown no further interest in it. Then it’s deposited with this dealer, and three days later Dad opens a campaign to recover it. Wouldn’t you say there’s a connection?”
“You think he got a direct tip from the dealer that it might be of value after all?”
“Well, I don’t know that it need mean that, actually. It might be enough if it got to my father’s ears that I’d asked for an opinion on it. If he thought he’d accidentally given me something valuable and turned the joke on himself it would just about kill him.” He shied at his own choice of words, the sharp realisation of his position coming back upon him with a painful jolt.
“All right, leave it at that,” said George equably. “The letter vanished. What then?”
“Well, then, last night, as I said, I suddenly set off to tackle him about it, without saying a word to Jean. I didn’t want to go home to see him, and last night I knew exactly where he’d be, and I suppose I was in the mood to pick a fight, too, smouldering mad. Not that mad, though,” he amended with a wry grin, meeting George’s measuring eye. “I never touched him. I suppose I got there a bit before ten, and asked this waiter of yours to ask him if he could spare a minute. I didn’t give a name because I thought if I did he wouldn’t come, but most likely he would have, anyhow, the way it turned out. He came out bouncing and laughing when he saw me, and banged me on the back as though I was the one thing wanted to make his evening complete. He said he’d just leave his friends a message and then he’d be with me, and then he shoved me out of the side door and said go on over and take a look at the barn now, see if you recognise the old dump. Walk in, he said, the door’s unlocked, I was going over there in any case a bit later on.