not only that, it’s what else Rathbone could do. If you go out hunting something really dangerous, you either kill it with your first blow or you run like hell without firing, because you know that if you give it the chance to fight back, it would finish you. They see Oliver as that dangerous animal, and they just want to feel safe again.”
She felt the cold ripple through her as if no heat could ever quite get rid of it. “So what are we going to do?” Her voice wavered a little. “Sit here paralyzed? Isn’t that just what they want?”
He pulled a face of disgust, but it vanished after an instant. “Yes, but we don’t know who else is drawn into this.” He lifted his shoulders a fraction; it was barely a movement at all. “Not Byrne, I don’t think, but what if he has a brother in one of the photos? Or his favorite sister’s husband? Or his father, or son … people do terrible things when they’re afraid.”
“Or they do nothing at all,” Hester said very quietly. “And they let innocent people go to the wall.”
“Oliver
She knew that.
“He is guilty of being stupid! I’ve done lots of stupid things, and I didn’t have to pay for all of them like this. It shouldn’t be so easy to punish people when you know you’ve deserved worse yourself.”
He took her hand gently. “I love you.”
She smiled at him.
“That doesn’t make you right about this,” he added.
In spite of herself, in spite of the twisting sense of fear inside her, she laughed. “I know.”
He stood up. “I’m going back to the local police station nearest Taft’s house. It’s time I stopped asking nicely for favors and started demanding them.”
“I’m coming too.” She rose to her feet also. “I’ll wait outside while you talk to them.”
It took some considerable argument, and Monk did not tell Hester what threat or favor he had used, but after a heated forty-five minutes he emerged from the police station and found Hester on a bench in the sun, where she had been sitting waiting for him. He had been told not to touch anything. The police had already thoroughly searched the whole house at the time the deaths were discovered and found nothing of interest.
Monk and Hester quickly walked the short distance to Taft’s house.
“What are we looking for?” Hester asked as they lengthened their stride for the slight gradient in the road.
“I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “The only thing that gives me hope is that I’m told Drew still wants to get in-so he hasn’t found what he wants.” He was walking a little faster than she was, and she had to hurry to keep up with him. She was a little breathless and really had no useful reply to offer, so she said nothing.
The house was attractive, solidly built of brick, and in its own very well-tended garden. They walked up the driveway and Monk produced the key to the front door.
Hester was surprised almost as soon as they entered the hallway. Just inside the door was a vestibule with exactly the sort of things she would have expected: an umbrella stand; pegs for outdoor clothes of the heavier, winter sort and for casual hats; a long mirror, possibly to make last-minute adjustments as one was leaving. But farther inside, the room opened out into a wood-paneled hall of some size. From it rose a very gracious staircase with a large, heavily ornamental newel post and then a curved stair, which was wide at the bottom and swung around against the wall, up to a gallery with passages running off in both directions.
“My goodness!” she said in surprise. “Looks as if this is where at least some of the money went. Unless Mrs. Taft was an heiress?” She looked at Monk questioningly.
He was standing still on the polished parquet floor looking at the red-carpeted steps and then up to the various paintings on the wall, hung at different levels to complement both the upward climb and the different levels of the paneling.
She watched him with growing interest as he regarded the pictures more and more closely. They were all landscapes. One was of sloping parkland billowing with trees, another of a churchyard with soaring skies behind it, a third of a headland with a pale beach and open sea.
She waited for him to speak.
“If they are originals, not copies, then there’s a very great deal of money here,” he said at last. “Not to mention some excellent taste in art. If he sold this lot, he’d have enough to buy a new house. I wonder if there are more in the other rooms.”
“Are you sure?” she asked with surprise and a new eagerness. She moved forward to take a better look herself.
“If they’re not copies, yes,” he answered, standing in front of one of them. He stared at it for so long she grew impatient.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is it real or not?”
“I don’t know,” he answered thoughtfully. “It took me a moment or two to realize what’s wrong with it. It’s the proportion. The bottom three quarters of an inch or so has been cut off by the frame.
“So?” she said, puzzled as to why he was bothering with so minute an issue. “Maybe they are only copies, and not as good as you thought. I never understood why, if a thing is beautiful-and I think that is-it should matter so much who painted it.”
Monk shook his head. “I don’t understand why, if he is clever enough to paint something so lovely, he would cut it short like this. But more to the point, why he didn’t sign it.”
Then she understood. “You mean he did, and the framer has deliberately excluded it?”
He turned to her and smiled. “Exactly. Maybe Taft wanted the pleasure of looking at it, even showing it off a bit, without letting anyone know exactly how valuable it is. He probably told people it was a good copy, to explain his having it. No signature, so it’s not pretending to be real.”
“Couldn’t that be the actual explanation, though?”
“Of course it could. But I’ll wager it isn’t!” He stepped back. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
They separated, to save time. It was a large house and to search thoroughly enough to see anything the police had missed they would have to look very closely. Monk went upstairs, leaving the downstairs for Hester.
She started in the kitchen, not expecting it to be different from the one in the house where she had grown up. She found it was well appointed. The pots and pans were copper and had been carefully polished.
She searched the kitchen, scullery, pantry, and the larder cupboards and found nothing. All the food had been removed; only the various pieces of equipment remained. It was interesting only in that everything was of such high quality. The laundry was the same.
Next she moved to the dining room and again found excellent silverware and porcelain, crystal glasses, fine linen, most of it embroidered. She wondered what would happen to it, with no one left in the family. Had there been siblings who would inherit? It seemed no one was in a hurry to move all these beautiful things. Had grief frozen everyone? Or were there inheritances to debate and perhaps argue over?
The withdrawing room also was filled with beautiful carpets and furniture as well as ornaments, which Hester was not experienced enough to place a value on, though she suspected that some, at least, were collectors’ items and could be sold for very good sums.
She studied the pictures at greater length. One in particular was quite breathtaking: a wild seascape, with the waves so well depicted she felt as if she could have put out her finger to touch it, and it would come away wet. She imagined doing it and could almost taste the salt. She hoped that when it came to be sold-or inherited, if there were anyone to claim it-that it would end up in the hands of someone who loved it.
Had it been loved here? Or was it simply an investment? She had met Mrs. Taft, and yet she struggled to recall anything of her beyond the smooth face and fashionable clothes. What kind of a woman had she been? Had she loved her husband, or was it a marriage of suitability? They had daughters of sixteen or seventeen, so presumably they had been married close to twenty years. How much had they changed in that time? Had their feelings deepened, or faded?
She thought about herself and Monk. When they had first met they had irritated each other enormously. She had thought him cold and arrogant. He had thought her abrasive, unfeminine, and far too opinionated. They had both been right, to a degree. They had certainly brought out the least attractive qualities in each other. With a smile she remembered how angry he had made her back then. Was that because she had realized, deep down, he
