“Of course,” he agreed. “There are unfinished canvases that the butler does not recognize as ladies who ever called at the house for sittings, or any other purpose. And there is a camera—”
He was quite sure her surprise was genuine. “A camera! But he was an artist, not a photographer!”
“Exactly. And yet one presumes it was his. It is very improbable someone else’s camera would be there in his studio. The butler is quite positive he has not permitted anyone else to use it.”
“I don’t understand,” she said simply.
“No, ma’am, neither do we, as yet. I take it Mr. Jones never took photographs of you, say to work from when you were not available?”
“No, never.”
“Perhaps I could see the portrait, if you still have it?”
“Of course, if you wish.” She stood up and led him to the withdrawing room where a large portrait of her sat over the mantelpiece.
“Excuse me.” He went forward and began to study it carefully. He did not like it much. The pose was quite good, if rather stylized. He recognized several of the props from the studio, especially a piece of pillar and a small table. The proportions were correct, but the colors lacked something, a certain clarity. They seemed to have been mixed with a permanent undertone of ocher or sepia, giving even the sky a heavy look. The face was definitely Gwendoline’s; the expression was pleasant enough, and yet there was no charm in it.
He began to study the background and was just about to leave it when he noticed in the bottom left-hand corner a small clump of leaves quite clearly drawn with a beetle on one of them, distinct and stylized, precisely like one of those he had seen in the notebook at least four or five times.
“May I ask you what it cost, ma’am?” he said quickly.
“I cannot see what that has to do with Mr. Jones’s murder,” she said with marked coolness. “And I have already said he is an artist of excellent repute.”
Pitt was aware he had mentioned a subject socially crass. “Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged. “You did say so, and I have already heard that from others. Nevertheless, I have good reason for asking, even if only for comparison’s sake.”
“I do not wish half London to be familiar with my financial arrangements!”
“I shall not discuss it, ma’am; it is purely for police use, and then only should it be relevant. I would prefer to find it out from you rather than press your husband, or—”
Her face hardened. “You are overstepping your office, Inspector. But I do not wish you to disturb my husband with the affair. I paid three hundred and fifty pounds for the picture, but I don’t see what possible use that can be to you. It is quite a usual price for an artist of his quality. I believe Major Rodney paid something the same for his portrait, and that of his sisters.”
“Major Rodney has two pictures?” Pitt was surprised. He would not have imagined Major Rodney as a man who cared for, or could afford, such an indulgence in art.
“Why not?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “One of himself, and one of Miss Priscilla and Miss Mary Ann together.”
“I see. Thank you, ma’am. You have been very helpful.”
“I don’t see how!”
He was not quite sure of himself, but at least there were other places to search, and in the morning he would call on Major and the Misses Rodney. He excused himself and set out in the returning fog to go back to the police station, and then home.
If Lady Cantlay had been startled to hear of Godolphin Jones’s murder, Major Rodney was shattered. He sat in the chair like a man who has nearly been drowned. He gasped for breath, and his face was mottled with red.
“Oh, my God! How absolute appalling! Strangled, you say? Where did they find him?”
“In another man’s grave,” Pitt replied, unsure again whether to reach for the bell and call a servant. It was a reaction he had been totally unprepared for. The man was a soldier; he must have seen death, violent and bloody death, a thousand times. He had fought in the Crimea, and from what Pitt had heard of the tragic and desperate war, a man who had survived that ought to be able to look on hell itself and keep his stomach.
Rodney was beginning to compose himself. “How dreadful. How on earth did you know to look?”
“We didn’t,” Pitt said honestly. “We found him quite by chance.”
“That’s preposterous! You can’t go around digging up graves to see what you will find in them—by chance!”
“No, of course not, sir.” Pitt was awkward again. He had never known himself so clumsy. “We expected the grave to have been robbed, to be empty.”
Major Rodney stared at him.
“We had the corpse whose grave it was!” Pitt tried to make him understand. “He was the man we first took to be Lord Augustus—on the cab near the theatre—”
“Oh.” Major Rodney sat upright as though he were on horseback in a parade. “I see. Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Well, I’m afraid there is nothing I can tell you. Thank you for informing me.”
Pitt remained seated. “You knew Mr. Jones.”
“Not socially, no. Not our sort of person. Artist, you know.”
“He painted your picture, did he not?”
“Oh, yes—knew him professionally. Can’t tell you anything about him. That’s all there is to it. And I won’t have you distressing my sisters with talk about murders and death. I’ll tell them myself, as I see fit.”
“Did you have a picture painted of them, also?”
“I did. What of it? Quite an ordinary thing to do. Lots of people have portraits.”
“May I see them, please?”
“Whatever for? Ordinary enough. But I suppose so, if it’ll make you go away and leave us alone. Poor man.” He shook his head. “Pity. Dreadful way to die.” And he stood up, small, slight, and ramrod stiff, and led Pitt into the withdrawing room.
Pitt stared at the very formal portrait on the far wall above the sideboard. Instantly he disliked it. It was grandiloquent, full of scarlets and glinting metal, a child in an old man’s body playing at soldiers. Had it been intended as ironic it would have been clever, but again the colors were unsubtle and a little cloudy.
He went up to and found his eye drawn without consciousness to the left corner. There was a small caterpillar, totally irrelevant to the composition but cleverly masked in the background, a brown-bodied creature in a brown, mottled shadow.
“And I believe there is also one of your sisters?” He stepped back and turned to face the major.
“Can’t think what you want to see it for,” the major said with surprise. “Quite ordinary painting. Still, if you like—”
“Yes, please,” Pitt went after him into the next room. It was on the facing wall, between two jardinieres, a larger work than the first. The pose was fussy, the scenery cluttered with far too many props, the colors a little better but with too much pink. He looked in the left corner and found the same caterpillar, exactly the same stylized hair and legs, but green-bodied, to hide against the grass.
“What did you pay for them, sir?” he asked.
“Sufficient, sir,” the major said huffily. “I cannot see that it concerns your investigation.”
Pitt tried to visualize the figures after the caterpillars in the little book, but there had been so many of them, more caterpillars than anything else, and he could not remember them all.
“I do need to know, Major. I would prefer to ask you personally than have to discover by some other means.”
“Damn you, sir! It is not your business. Inquire as you like!”
Pitt would get nowhere by pressing the point, and he knew it. He would find the figures in the notebook in the column under £350, in line with the beetle, and total all those next to caterpillars. He would then try Major Rodney with that sum and observe his reaction.
The major snorted, satisfied with his victory. “Now, if that is all, Inspector?”
Pitt debated whether to insist on seeing the Misses Rodney now and decided there was little to learn from them. He could more profitably go and question the other person who had bought a Jones portrait, Lady St. Jermyn. He accepted the major’s dismissal and, a quarter of an hour later was standing rather uncomfortably in front of Lord St. Jermyn.