Flynn was holding, the elevator door for him.
“Reasonably.” Fletch stepped in.
Flynn pushed the button for the third floor.
“And you think those two other paintings he had from Cooney were the two de Grassi paintings that showed up in his catalogue?”
“What else is there to think?”
“Many things. One might think many other this.”‘
On the third floor, they stepped out into a spacious, tasteful living room.
“Isn’t this lovely?” said Flynn. “I can hardly blame the man for wanting to hold onto his possessions.”
Flynn turned to Fletch.
“Now what, precisely, are we looking for?”
Fletch shrugged. “At this point, fifteen paintings and a Degas horse.”
“The horse is a sculpture, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a sculpture of a ballerina on the first floor…”
“Yes. That’s a Degas,” said Fletch.
“But it’s not a horse. Saturday in your apartment, you said there were nineteen works in the de Grassi collection.”
“Yes. Two have been sold through this gallery. A third, the Picasso, is downstairs. So there are fifteen paintings and the one sculpture.”
“And do the works have anything in common?”
Flynn had walked them into a small, dark dining room
“Not really. They belong to all sorts of different schools and eras. Many of them, but not all, are by Italian masters.”
“This would be the kitchen, I think.”
They looked in at white, gleaming cabinets and dark blue counters.
“Nothing in there, I think,” said Flynn, “except some Warhols on the shelves.”
Back in the living room, Flynn said, “Are you looking?”
“Yes.”
There were some unimportant drawings behind the piano, and a large Mondrian over the divan.
Flynn snapped the light on in a small den off the living room.
“Anything in here?”
A Sisley over the desk—the usual winding road and winding stream. The room was too dark for it.
“No.”
“I rather like that one,” said Flynn, looking at it closely. He turned away from it. “Ah, going around with you is an education.”
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
“The houseman stood on the landing. Thin in his long, dark bathrobe, thin face long in genuine grief, he stood aside, obviously full of questions regarding the future of his master, his own future—questions his dignity prohibited he ask.
“Ah, yes,” said Flynn.
In the bedroom was a shocking, life-sized nude—almost an illustration—of no quality whatsoever, except that it was arousing.
“The man had a private taste,” said Flynn. “I suspect he entertained very few of his fellow faculty in his bedroom.”
One guest room had a collection of cartoons; the other a photography wall.
Fletch said, “You see, Inspector, Horan didn’t really own paintings. Dealers don’t. More than the average person, of course, a good deal more, in value, but a dealer is a dealer first, and a collector second.”
“I see.”
The houseman remained in the shadows of the corridor.
“Where is your room?” asked Flynn.
“Upstairs, sir.”
“May we see it?”
The houseman opened a corridor door to a flight of stairs.
His bedroom was spartan: a bed, a bureau, a chair, a closet, a small television. His bath was spotless.
An attic room across the fifth floor landing contained nothing but the usual empty suitcases, trunks, a great many empty picture frames, a rolled rug, defunct lighting fixtures.
Flynn said, “Are the picture frames significant?”
“No.”
Again on the third floor landing, Flynn said to the houseman, “Is there a safe in the house?”
“Yes, sir. In Mister Horan’s office.”
“You mean the wee one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve already seen that. I guess I mean a vault. Is there a vault in the house, something of good, big size?”
“No, sir.”
“You’d know if there were?”
“Yes, sir.”
Flynn put his hand on the old man’s forearm.
“I’m sorry for you. Have you been with him long?”
“Fourteen years.”
The old man took a step back into the shadow.
“This must be quite a shock to you.”
“It is, sir.”
They took the elevator to the second floor, and went through the four galleries there. One was completely empty. The others had only a few works in each, lit and displayed magnificently.
Flynn said, “Nothing, eh?”
He might have been taking a Sunday stroll through a sculpture garden.
“I wouldn’t say exactly nothing,” said Fletch. “But none of the de Grassi paintings.”
Despite the house’s perfect climate control, Fletch’s forehead was hot. His hands were sticky.
Flynn was in no hurry.
“Well, well go out to Weston now.” Flynn buttoned his raincoat. “The Weston police will meet us at their border.”
Double-parked, Grover waited outside in the black Ford.
“We’ll both get in back,” said Flynn. “That way we can talk more easily.”
Grover drove west on Newbury Street.
Fletch was sitting as far back in his dark corner as he could.
Coat opened again, knees wide, Flynn took up ‘a great lot of room, anyway.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll miss two o’clock feeding this morning. At least I know Elsbeth can’t wait. Have you ever been to Weston?”
“No,” said Fletch.
“Of course you haven’t. You’re a stranger in town. And we’ve been watching you as if you were a boy with a slingshot since you arrived. I hear it’s a pretty place.”
Flynn chuckled, in the dark.
“All this time poor Grover up there thought you were the guilty one. Eh, Grover?”
Sergeant Richard T. Whelan did not answer the bird’s turd.
“Well,” said Flynn, “So did I. More or less. When was it? Wednesday night, I think. I thought we were going to get a confession out of you. Instead, you invited us for dinner. Then that day on the phone, when I couldn’t get around to see you, I felt sure I could convince you of your guilt. I decided I had to get to know this man. So on
