Horan turned the car so the headlights flooded the back porch of the house. He dashed across the gravel and up the steps. His feet crunched on the broken glass. He stooped to examine the window. Using his key, he let himself into the house.
The kitchen light went on.
In a moment, the burglar alarm was turned off.
No lights went on in the front of the house.
Dim lights, as from a stairwell, mixed with the moonlight on the window surface at the back of the house, both downstairs and upstairs.
Then lights went on in an upstairs room at the back of the house. Light poured out of its two windows.
Other than the kitchen, the room in the center of the second storey was the only room fully lit.
There was a noise from the road to Fletch’s left.
Blue lights rotating on the top of a police car came down the driveway. ,There was no sound of a siren.
The light in the room on the second floor went off.
The policemen parked behind the Rolls. Going around it, one of the policemen brushed his fingers along a fender.
Horan appeared at the back door.
“You Mister Horan?”
“What took you guys so goddamned long?”
“We came as soon as we got the call.”
“Like hell you did. I got out from Boston sooner.”
“Is this your car?”
“Never mind about that. What the hell am I paying taxes for, if this is the kind of protection I get?”
The policemen were climbing the steps, their wide belts and holsters making them look heavy-hipped.
“You pay your taxes, Mister Horan, because you have to.”
“What’s your name?”
“Officer Cabot, sir. Badge number 92.”
The other policeman said, “The glass is smashed, Chuck.”
“Christ,” said Horan.
“Anything missing?” asked Cabot.
“No.”
“The alarm must have scared them off.”
“The alarm had to scare them off,” said Horan. “Nothing else would.”
“We can patch that up with of plywood and some tacks.”
Cabot said, “Let’s look around, anyway.”
Lights went on and off throughout the whole house as Horan showed them around.
The ground was cold. Fletch began to feel it in his boots.
The three men were fiddling about the back door. The policemen were helping Horan tack a piece of plywood on the inside of the door, over the window frames.
“You live here, or in Boston?”
“Both places.”
“You should get this window fixed first thing in the morning.”
“You’re no one to tell me my business,” said Horan.
The policemen came down the steps and ambled toward their car.
From the porch, Horan said, “Get here a little faster next time, will you?”
Turning, the car reversed and headed up the driveway. Its rotating blue lights went out.
Horan returned to the house and turned out all the lights.
He closed and locked the back door.
Moving slowly, he came down the porch steps, got into the car, reversed it a few meters, and drove up the driveway.
As soon as the Rolls taillights disappeared around the curve, Fletch hurried across the driveway and up the porch steps.
Using his handkerchief over his hand, he pressed on the plywood through the broken window. The tacks pushed free easily. The wood clattered onto the kitchen floor.
Stooping a little, at an angle, he reached his arm through the window as far as his elbow. He released the locks and opened the door from the inside.
Quickly, he snapped on the kitchen light.
Anyone roused by the alarm and still watching the house would think they were seeing a continuation of the previous action, Fletch hoped. The house had been completely dark for only a minute or two.
Turning on lights as he went, he ran up the back stairs, along a short corridor, and into the center back room. The light revealed what was obviously an antiseptic, unlived-in guest bedroom with a huge closet.
The closet door was unlocked.
Light from the bedroom caused shadows from what appeared to be three white, bulky objects—each leaning against a wail of the closet.
He pulled a chain hanging from a bare light bulb, in the center of the closet.
In the center of the closet, on the flood, was a Degas horse.
He lifted it into the bedroom.
Gently, he tugged the dust sheets away from the paintings stacked neatly, resting against each other’s frames, against the closet walls.
He lifted two paintings out of the closet.
One was the smaller Picasso.
The other was a Modigliani.
These were the de Grassi collection. Sixteen objects, including the horse.
He took the Picasso and the Modigliani downstairs with him and left them in the kitchen.
Then he ran to the tractor shed for the truck.
He backed it against the back porch and opened its back doors.
He put the two paintings from the kitchen into it, bracing them carefully, face down, on the tarpaulin.
It took him a half-hour to load the truck.
Before he left the house, he closed the closet door and wiped his fingerprints off its handle. As he went through the house, he turned off all, the lights, giving the switches a wipe with his handkerchief as he did so.
In the kitchen, he replaced the plywood against the broken window, fitting the tacks into their original holes and pressing them firm.
Driving along the highway, back into Boston, he maintained the speed limit precisely.
Fletch continued to have a professionally jaundiced view of the police, but, under the circumstances, there was no sense in taking chances.
Thirty-seven
“Mister Fletcher? This is Francis Flynn.”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Did I wake you up?”
It was quarter to twelve, midnight.
“Just taking a shower, Inspector.”
“I am in the process of exercising two warrants. Is that how a real policeman would say it?”
“I don’t know.”
“In any case, I am.”
“Good.”
“The first is for the arrest of Ronald Risom Horan for the murder of Ruth Fryer.”
Fletch kept listening, but Flynn said no more.
