In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

She'd managed to find Cilia Thompson in her railway arch studio applying her talents to a canvas on which a cavernous mouth with tonsils like bellows opened upon a three-legged girl skipping rope on a spongy-looking tongue. A few questions had been enough to ascertain fuller information about the “gent with good taste” who'd purchased one of Cilia's master-works the previous week.

Cilia couldn't remember his name off the top of her head. Come to think of it, she reported, he'd never told her. But he'd written her a cheque which she'd photocopied, the better-Barbara thought-to prove to the world of artistic doubting Thomases that she'd actually managed to sell a canvas. She had that photocopy taped to the inside of her wooden paintbox, and she showed it off willingly, saying, “Oh yeah, the blokes name's right here. Gosh. Look at this. I wonder if he's any relation?”

Matthew King-Ryder, Barbara saw, had paid an idiotically exorbitant amount for one dog of a painting. He'd used a cheque drawn on a bank in St. Helier on the island of Jersey. Private Banking was embossed above his name. He'd scrawled the amount as if he'd been in a hurry. As perhaps he had been, Barbara thought.

How had Matthew King-Ryder happened to turn up in Portslade Street? she'd asked the artist. Cilia herself would admit, wouldn't she, that this particular row of railway arches wasn't exactly heralded throughout London as a hotbed of modern art.

Cilia shrugged. She didn't know how he'd happened upon the studio. But obviously, she wasn't the sort of girl who looked at a gift horse cross-eyed. When he'd shown up, asked to have a look about, and demonstrated an interest in her work, she was as happy as a duck in the sun to let him browse right through it. All she could report in the end was that the bloke with the chequebook had spent a good hour looking at every piece of art in the studio-Terry's as well? Barbara wanted to know. Had he asked about Terry's art? Using Terry's name?

No. He just wanted to see her paintings, Cilia explained. All of them. And when he couldn't find anything he liked, he asked if she had any others tucked away that he could see. So she'd sent him round to the flat, having phoned Mrs. Baden and told her to show him up when he arrived. He went straight there and made his selection from one of those paintings. He sent her a cheque promptly by post on the following day. “Gave me the asking price as well,” Cilia said proudly. “No dickering about it.”

And that point alone-that Matthew King-Ryder had gained access to the digs of Terry Cole, for whatever reason-made Barbara push the accelerator floorward as she whipped through Battersea back to Cilia's flat.

She didn't give a thought to what she was supposed to be doing instead of reversing into a parking space at the end of Anhalt Road. She'd got the search warrant as directed, and she'd put together a team. She'd even met them in front of Snappy Snaps in Notting Hill

Gate and put the whole boiling kettle of them in the picture on what the inspector wanted them to look for in Martin Reeve's home. She'd merely omitted the information that she was supposed to accompany them. It was easy enough to justify this omission. The team she'd assembled-two members of which were amateur boxers in their free time-could shake up a house and intimidate its inhabitants far better if they had no female presence among them, diluting the threat implied by their imposing physiques and their tendency to communicate in monosyllables. Besides, wasn't she killing two birds-three or four, perhaps-by sending officers to Notting Hill to shake up and shake down the Reeves without her? While they were doing that, she would be using the time to see what information could be harvested from the Battersea end of things. Delegation of responsibility and the mark of an officer with leadership potential, she called the situation. And she pushed from her mind the nasty little voice that kept trying to call it something else.

She pressed the bell for Mrs. Baden's ground floor flat. The faint sound of hesitantly played piano music halted abruptly. The sheer curtains in the bay window flicked an inch to one side.

Barbara called out, “Mrs. Baden? Barbara Havers again. New Scotland Yard CID.”

The buzzer sounded to release the lock. Barbara scurried inside.

Mrs. Baden said graciously, “Goodness me. I'd no idea detectives were expected to work on Sundays. I hope they give you the time to go to church.”

She herself had attended the early service, the woman confided without waiting for a response from Barbara. And afterwards she'd joined a meeting of the wardens in order to put forward her opinions on the subject of establishing bingo nights to raise money to replace the roof of the chancel. She was in favour of the idea, although in general she didn't approve of gambling. But this was gambling for God, which was altogether different to the sort of gambling that lined the secular pockets of casino owners who made their fortunes by offering games of chance to the avaricious.

“So I've no cake to offer you, I'm afraid,” Mrs. Baden concluded regretfully. “I took the rest with me to serve at the wardens' meeting this morning. It's far more pleasant engaging in debate over cake and coffee than over grumbling stomachs, don't you agree? Especially”- and here she smiled at her witticism-“when grumbling enough is already going on.”

For a moment Barbara looked at her blankly. Then she recalled her previous visit. “Oh, the lemon cake. I expect that went down a real treat with the wardens, Mrs. Baden.”

The elderly woman lowered her gaze shyly. “I think it's important to make a contribution when one's part of a congregation. Before these dreadful shakes of mine began”-here, she held up her hands, whose tremors today were making her look like a victim of ague-“I used to play the organ at services. I liked the funerals best, frankly, but of course I wouldn't have admitted that to the wardens, as they might have found my taste a bit macabre. When the shakes started, I had to give all that up. Now I play the piano instead for the infant school's choir, where it doesn't much matter if I hit a wrong note from time to time. The children are quite forgiving about that. But I suppose people at funerals have far less reason to be understanding, don't they?”

“That makes sense,” Barbara agreed. “Mrs. Baden, I've just seen Cilia.” She went on to explain what she'd learned from the artist.

As she spoke, Mrs. Baden went to the old upright piano at one side of the room, where a metronome was tick- tocking rhythmically and a timer whirred. She ceased the metronome's movement and turned off the timer. She put the piano's bench back into place, tapped several sheets of music neatly together, replaced them on their holder, and sat with her hands folded, looking attentive. Across from the piano, the finches twittered in their enormous cage as they flew from one perch to another. Mrs. Baden glanced at them fondly as Barbara went on.

“Oh yes, he was here, that gentlemen, Mr. King-Ryder,” Mrs. Baden said when Barbara had concluded. “I recognised his name when he introduced himself, of course. I offered him a piece of chocolate cake, but he didn't accept, didn't even step over my threshold. He was quite intent on seeing those pictures.”

“Did you let him into the flat? Terry and Cilia's, I mean.”

“Cilia phoned me and said that a gentleman was coming round to look at her pictures and would I unlock the door for him and let him see them? She didn't give me his name-the silly child hadn't even asked him, can you imagine?-but as there's not generally a queue of art collectors ringing my bell and asking to see her work, when he showed up, I assumed he was the one. And anyway, I didn't let him stay in the flat alone. At least not until I'd checked with Cilia.”

“So he was alone upstairs? Once you'd checked with her?” Barbara rubbed her hands together mentally. Now, at last, they were getting somewhere. “Did he ask to be alone?”

“Once I took him up to the flat and he saw how very many paintings are in it, he said that he'd need some time to really study them before he made his selection. As a collector, he wanted-”

“Did he say he was a collector, Mrs. Baden?”

“Art is his abiding passion, he told me. But as he isn't a wealthy man, he collects the unknowns. I remember that especially, because he talked about the people who'd bought Picasso's work before Picasso was… well, before Picasso was Picasso. ‘They just went on faith and left the rest to art history,’ he said. He told me that he was doing the same.”

So Mrs. Baden had left him alone in the flat upstairs. And for more than an hour he'd contemplated Cilia Thompson's work until he'd made his choice.

“He showed it to me after he'd locked up and returned the key,” she told Havers. “I can't say I understood his choice. But then… well, I'm not a collector, am I? Aside from my little birds, I don't collect anything at all.”

“Are you sure he was up there as long as an hour?”

“More than an hour. You see, I practise my piano in the afternoons. Ninety minutes every day. Not very much