By Death Possessed Read online

  By Death Possessed

  Roger Ormerod

  © Roger Ormerod 1988

  Roger Ormerod has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1988 by Constable& Co.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  I might have known he would be there, peering disdainfully over shoulders and strolling around with that rolling gait of his, as though to claim as much space as possible. My son. You wouldn’t guess it, I hope, with that up-tilted little nose and the sneer he’d been experimenting with. Tatty, disorganized, contempt oozing from him; my son, Aleric: nineteen years of solid and inflexible loutishness. This was exactly the setting in which he excelled—an Antiques Road Show. There he could treat the excited throng to one undiluted dose of his practised disdain. Their precious possessions, which they’d brought to display to the experts, were nothing more than out-dated rubbish to him.

  I tried not to catch his eye, but it never works. He spotted me before the door swung shut behind me, and pushed his way through.

  ‘Hiya, Pop!’ His little eyes fell on the package under my arm. ‘You ain’t brought The Picture! Never! You’ve got a cheek.’

  The noise was appalling. The hall was large and echoing, and the swirling crowds made my head swim. For a moment I felt lost. Aleric always did that to me, denigrating everything I ever did. I didn’t answer. Suddenly I felt ashamed at having brought along The Picture.

  It had possessed capitals ever since my marriage, my fault I suppose for having given it too much importance. But it was important to me. My father had passed it on, with the implied suggestion that his mother had painted it, though he hadn’t seemed certain about that. It was twenty by sixteen inches, on canvas on stretchers, and in a rather poor frame. I hadn’t even been certain whether to be proud of it. Certainly I liked to look at it, but was it really Grannie’s work? The subject was a country cottage, early morning, the sun dappling the walls through the leaves of a tree. You could feel that sun on your cheek, and see the dapples moving to a slight breeze through the leaves. And it was mine, you see. The initials, an A and an F superimposed, could well have been my grandmother’s. It was dated 1910, and she had been Angelina Foote at that time. I knew that, but not much more about it.

  I stood there like a fool, suddenly convinced that I should turn about and retreat. But I was trapped. A man, dapper and placid in the chaos, touched my arm.

  ‘A painting, is it? You want Dr Dennis, over there on the right.’

  As Aleric at the same time told me his mother would be mad, me bringing The Painting, I was caught between the two speeches, not really registering either.

  ‘Come on!’ he said, grabbing my arm. ‘This is gonna be great. Wait till you get an eyeful of this picture expert.’

  I don’t know why crowds part to allow his progress, but they always do. It’s probably because he exudes the certainty that they will. There were protests and nasty remarks, aimed at me of course, and suddenly I was in a short queue, well towards the head of it, and when I looked round in apology all I saw were tentative smiles and nods. Already there was an air of expectancy, that here was a man of importance bearing, in now-torn newspaper, something special.

  Aleric was no longer with me. Then I spotted him, large ears and tip-tilted nose reaching over a shoulder in the spectator group. (Where had he got that nose from?) I looked away quickly, and it was only then that my eyes fell on Dr Dennis. Dr Margaret Dennis, I learned later. I don’t know what she was a doctor of, but the title clearly merited a suit: straight skirt, large-lapelled jacket with the shoulders cut wide, and the white shirt and stringy black tie of the almost obligatory uniform. But none of this hid the fact that she was a woman, every inch of her, out where she should go out, in where she should go in, every contour shouting out that there was a female body inside all that, yearning to get out. There was a feeling stirring inside me that I hadn’t felt for years, and I realized she was enthralling me with an exposition on the various imitators of John Sell Cotman. Art is not a subject that has ever seized me with enthusiasm. As a professional photographer, my concern has always been for how things look. Was the photograph balanced, appealing, and did it make its point? There appeared to be rather more than that to art.

  She was working at a small table with a couple of easels at her shoulder. To one side a TV camera was spying on the proceedings. I assumed they were recording everything for later editing and, suddenly seized by a fit of stage fright, I prayed that my bit would be cut.

  Then I was into it before I was emotionally prepared, tearing at the wrapping, determined not to waste one second of the precious time of this splendid doctor of whatever it was. Numbly, I handed it over. The camera eye leered at me. It’s strange that photographers so rarely experience the frightening side of the lens. I wondered how I would manage to register the correct amount of delight—or disappointment as appropriate—when the fatal decision was made on the value of The Painting.

  ‘Well!’ she said. ‘What have we here?’

  She placed it on one of the easels. Her voice, close to, had been a soft and liquid burr. Now I was hearing nothing of the background din. There had been a momentary relaxation of her on-camera smile as her hazel eyes fell on my offering, a pucker of her delicately moulded lips, a blink, a nod. Then she’d recovered, standing back from the easel with one finger to her lips, and taking what seemed to me a devil of a time on the scrutiny.

  ‘It’s very dirty,’ she observed at last. She swivelled her head at me. ‘I bet it’s been hanging in a living-room—and you smoke ...’

  I inclined my head, patting the pipe in my pocket. My mouth had gone dry, my teeth felt sore, and I didn’t think my lips would unseal again. She nodded severely, and turned back to it.

  ‘Of course, since he’s become famous there have been dozens of copiers. Only six have survived, you know, so, from a rarity value alone, the prices have rocketed. He sold six before he died. That would be in 1917. He enlisted in the French army, a poilu, and was killed in the trenches. This is really a very good fake, though. Where did you get it?’

  I coughed to clear my throat. ‘Who?’ I croaked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ I asked, shaking the hair out of my eyes.

  ‘Frederick Ashe, of course: 1887 to 1917. British. Really post-Impressionist, but the style is pure French Impressionism. This is remarkably good, I must say. The brush strokes have all the power and confidence of Frederick Ashe. Where did you get it?’

  ‘My father,’ I whispered. The way she was talking, I was beginning to feel like a crook. Fake indeed! ‘From his mother.’

  She turned and considered me with some severity. I realized she was only an inch short of me, which would make her five feet nine. Her make-up was subdued and perfect. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it, she being an art expert. Behind her eyes she was making calculations, assessing my age, probably within a month of my true forty-one. They’re good at ages, these people. She wouldn’t need to carbon-date me.

  ‘But that would make it ...’ Her voice faded away.
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  I could appreciate her difficulty. She had already hinted that this Frederick Ashe, of whom I’d never heard, had become collectable, and therefore worth forging, only in recent years, and here was I claiming it had been painted in my grandmother’s days.

  Abruptly she turned away, and snatched the canvas from the easel, turning it over, examining the deterioration to the back of the picture, fingering the wooden stretchers. What she discovered seemed to upset her.

  ‘But of course,’ she said to herself in exoneration, ‘it’s always possible to obtain a canvas of the correct period. Your grandmother?’ she threw at me.

  I nodded. There seemed nothing to say.

  She turned the canvas back, licked her finger, and wiped it across the lower right-hand corner. The superimposed initials and date appeared.

  AF 1910

  ‘Not just a fake,’ she said fiercely. ‘A forgery. It’s even got his signature. An F and an A overlapping. Nineteen-ten,’ she said. ‘He went to France in 1910.’

  ‘So he painted it in England,’ I suggested, helping her out.

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s always looked very English to me.’ I was feeling more relaxed, probably encouraged by her uncertainty. ‘The cottage, I mean.’

  ‘It must be a forgery. Well worth the effort—the last genuine Ashe fetched eighteen thousand at auction.’

  At that I gulped. Then recovered. After all, it wasn’t a Frederick Ashe, it was a Grannie Angelina.

  ‘It’s not F.A.,’ I ventured, before she took it too far. ‘And it can’t be a forgery.’

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded.

  ‘If the existing six genuine Frederick Ashes were sold in Paris, and he didn’t go there till 1910, it’d be a bit stupid to forge one and date it before he sold any abroad. You’d at least have the sense to date it around 1913, I’d have thought.’

  She considered me again. I might look stupid, but I do like logic, and that seemed logical to me. Her eyebrows lifted delicately, not disturbing the smooth, high forehead. ‘Very well.’ She was brisk, turning back to the painting and attacking it with her licked thumb, her tongue flicking out vigorously. Portions of the original colours began to appear, and indeed it had become dirty. I resolved to treat it to a toothbrush and washing-up liquid when I got it home.

  ‘They’re his colours,’ she declared. ‘This yellow. Surely it’s his yellow! You’d never be able to match ... And the chairoscuro! This play of light on the wall! The shadows in the doorway—the luminosity! But it must be a Frederick Ashe. Oh dear Lord, a seventh! They’ll go wild at Christie’s.’

  It’s not,’ I said quietly, ‘a Frederick Ashe.’

  ‘What?’ She didn’t turn.

  ‘It’s not F.A. It’s A.F.’

  Then she swung round. ‘What are you saying?’

  I twisted my head and looked into the camera, making it a statement for posterity. ‘I said it’s not F.A., it’s A.F. My grandmother. Angelina Foote.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  I shrugged. I think I smiled. ‘My father gave it to me. He was under the impression that his mother painted it.’

  ‘Under the impression?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Have you got it insured?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’d advise you to do so. To a value of around twenty thousand pounds.’

  It was at this point I was supposed to register shocked delight. I regret to say that I laughed. ‘Gerraway,’ I said. ‘It’s my grannie’s.’

  ‘It’s a pity, then, you can’t ask her,’ she said, her voice acid. Who could blame her, being laughed at in front of the camera? ‘I’ll stake my reputation on the fact that it’s a genuine Frederick Ashe.’ She mentally added a number of years to my age. ‘If she was alive, your grandmother would agree, though how she got hold of it ...’

  ‘Oh, but she is. Alive, I mean. Around ninety-five, but alive. Maybe I’ll take your advice, and go and ask her.’

  ‘You do that, Mr ...’

  ‘Hine,’ I said. ‘Tony Hine.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Hine.’ She reached into a shoulder bag, which had been sitting on the floor between the easels, and produced a small wallet, extracted a business card, and handed it to me. ‘And when you’ve discovered the facts—the provenance, we call it—I’d be very pleased if you’d contact me again. Any time.’

  I took it, and slid it into my jacket breast pocket, producing one of my own with the same two fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘A photographer? Hmm!’ Was there disapproval there? She leaned closer. This was for my ear alone. ‘Guard it with your life,’ she whispered.

  Then she was all teeth and encouragement for an old dear behind me, who was presenting a tightly-rolled canvas I could hear crackling as it was forcibly straightened out.

  I looked round for Aleric. When I wanted him—pretty rarely, I must admit—he was never on hand. Now I did, but he’d gone. Dr Dennis had impressed me. Guard it with my life? She must have been certain that I was carrying a seventh, and unknown, Frederick Ashe. No doubt he’d painted dozens in his life, short as it had been, and apart from the known six the rest had been assumed to be lost. So perhaps I really was carrying something very valuable. Nah! It was Grannie’s. How else could she have given it to my father? The art lady was mistaken, put it like that.

  Nevertheless, I would have felt more comfortable with Aleric at my shoulder. All right, so he was moronic, obstinate and unpredictable, but he was six feet of bone and muscle and heavy boots and hard fists. You have to exploit what you have available, and heaven help us, my wife and I had been presented with this. So I would have liked to encourage him in a little exploitation of his abilities. Trust him to disappear.

  Hugging the canvas close, now without wrapping because I’d been too confused to collect it up, I sidled towards the door. I’m usually inconspicuous. I vanish into backgrounds, an ability that can be useful to a photographer. It didn’t help me then. A hand touched my shoulder and a hoarse voice said: ‘Got a minute?’

  I turned. He was a weasel of a man, smelling strongly of tobacco and something else less pleasant, draped in tattered cast-offs and with a battered cap over one ear.

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Five thousand,’ he said. ‘On the nail. Used fifties.’

  I had never met anyone who spoke in terms of fifties, plural. And used fifties suggested a close acquaintance with such wonders.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Sod off,’ I said.

  He shrugged, and melted into the crowds.

  But he’d done something for me. Probably he was a man who followed these Antiques Road Shows around, pockets packed with used fifties, in search of quick bargains. His offer indicated confidence in the abilities of Dr Dennis. He, to the tune of six thousand, was prepared to back her judgement. This disconcerted me.

  A woman held open the door for me. Fresh evening air brushed my face. I smiled my thanks. She slid a card into my breast pocket, her fingers like claws, her eyes meeting mine with obdurate impersonality. ‘Insurance,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Give me a ring. Any time.’ She smelt of violets.

  I nodded, and headed for my Mini, hoping it would start reasonably quickly. I wanted to get away from there, to think, to decide on my attitude. The impulse to take The Painting along for appraisal had been urgent. Somewhere in the back of my mind must have been lurking an uncertainty about the history of it, and the opportunity had presented itself. So why, you ask, hadn’t I thought of going to ask my grandmother? Well, to tell you the truth, I hadn’t visited her for over twenty years—not since, just before I married Evelyn, I drove her to Wiltshire to show her off to Grannie, and for some reason the two women had hated each other on sight. Grannie Angelina had at that time been over seventy, an age when the restraining of one’s opinions had become an effort not worth making. She had expressed herself on my choice of a wife in pre
cise terms, as though Evelyn had not been in the same room. The journey back had been strained. The fact that Grannie turned out to be pretty accurate in her assessment didn’t help at all. So I’d refrained from visiting her only from a sense of loyalty to Evelyn, but I’d refrained for too long. Now it would be embarrassing to visit, particularly if I used the painting as an excuse, thus indicating self-interest. Yet clearly such a visit had now become urgent and imperative.

  All these things I intended to consider on the way home, but the time for that had disappeared when my car finally started. The garage had spoken about a new starter motor, but I really had to get a zoom lens for my Olympus, so ... I’d discovered that I could get action by first striking the starter with a spanner, which entailed lying on my back in a dark car park—it always didn’t start in the dark—and bashing away blindly.

  When I got to my feet there was a tweedy gentleman with a tweedy moustache watching me with interest, his business card already in his fingers.

  ‘Security,’ he said. ‘Give me a ring. Doors and windows. Direct alarm to the nearest cop-shop. Satisfaction guaranteed.’ He nodded, and stood back as I climbed into the car. It started. He waved me goodbye.

  Heavens, I thought, I couldn’t afford to own a valuable painting. It was like winning a Rolls-Royce in a raffle; you’d have to sell it in order to have enough money to run it. But I didn’t own a valuable painting, did I! I owned the same old picture I always had, an Angelina Foote, worth nothing more than its sentimental value to me. But unfortunately ... ah, there was the snag ... unfortunately, the clever Dr Margaret Dennis had broadcast the general idea that I was the owner of a unique and previously unknown Frederick Ashe. If that hall had contained insurance touts, tatters and security buffs, then there was a good chance it had also had its share of crooks and ruffians, eyes and ears well open for the useful snatch.

  I peered into the rearview mirror. Nothing was following me.

  The canvas sat on the passenger’s seat. It hadn’t changed. All that had changed was my life, and that by the strange coincidence of the initials: F.A. and A.F. No, more than that ... the coincidence of the matching style, if Grannie Angelina had painted the picture. Two coincidences were too much to accept. It had to be a Frederick Ashe. My scalp tingled. Around twenty thousand pounds sat on the seat beside me.