The Lily-White Boys (24 page)

‘Quite possibly; when Webb was round earlier he was asking about it, making out he was thinking of joining, and so on.'

‘But that wasn't the reason for his visit, surely?'

‘No, he was interested in last night's do. According to Claudia, he seemed to think something was going on upstairs.'

Monica had a sudden picture of Tony Reid taking the Clériots on one side, and Dilys saying she'd been hurried back into the Gallery. All at once the whole business had assumed sinister proportions. She glanced at her brother-in-law, who was staring at the carpet and chewing on his lip. No point, though, in adding to his worries with what were, after all, mere suspicions. If something was seriously wrong, he'd know soon enough.

He sighed and rose to his feet. ‘Well, I'd better be getting back. I just wanted to talk it over with you and see what you thought.

‘By the way,' he added, as she showed him to the door, ‘a spot of good news for a change: Jeremy's landed quite a coup; his agency was anxious to get that new Italian tenor on to their books, and he's managed to pull it off. Vittorio Vinetti, his name is.'

‘I don't think I've heard of him.'

‘Hardly anyone has in this country but it seems he's destined for the top. All the big agencies were after him, so negotiations were very hush-hush. Apparently Jeremy took him and his agent out to dinner to finalize it, and things were just at a delicate stage when old George wandered across. It was all a little embarrassing.'

‘I can imagine,' Monica said drily.

He started down the steps, then stopped and turned. ‘Talking of George, will you two be getting married now?'

‘Yes,' she said.

For a moment longer he looked at her. Then he nodded and went on his way and Monica closed the door.

Tony Reid was alone in the Gallery when Webb and Jackson arrived the next morning. No longer the smooth, self-assured young man of the previous day, he regarded them with unease.

‘Mr Marlow's not here,' he said sullenly. The search of his home obviously still rankled.

‘It's you we'd like to see,' Webb said pleasantly. ‘I think it's time we got things sorted, don't you? Tell me, Mr Reid, why did you kill the White twins?'

The man stared at him wildly. ‘Me? I never killed anyone in my life! I didn't even know them!'

‘Come now, two nice-looking young men like that? You must have noticed them when they cleaned the windows.'

Reid moistened his lips. ‘I might have taken them a mug of tea once or twice.'

‘There you are, then. And they recognized you, didn't they?'

His eyes were darting about nervously. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Saw you by the plane, and recognized you.'

It was a shot in the dark, but it struck deep and true. Reid gasped and his face turned a sickly yellow. ‘What – what plane?'

‘The one you met on the Steeple Bayliss road on the twelfth of May.'

Reid swallowed convulsively and glanced desperately at the door. ‘Please – someone will come in any minute, I really can't –'

Webb nodded to Jackson, who stepped to the door and turned the notice on it from Open to Closed. ‘Now we needn't bother about interruptions,' Webb said comfortably. He pulled the chair out from behind the counter. ‘Sit down, Mr Reid, and take your time. We're in no hurry.'

The man had begun to whimper. ‘It was nothing to do with me; I was only doing my job.'

‘Mr Marlow gave the orders?'

A nod.

‘And he was with you, was he?'

Another nod.

‘When did you realize you'd been spotted?'

‘I
didn't
– I mean, we weren't! Everything went off just as usual.'

‘It was a regular practice, then?'

Reid muttered something and Webb leant forward. ‘Come again?'

‘Three or four times a year.'

‘And you used the hatchback to load the goods into?' Another guess.

‘Yes.' He was slumped in the chair, his whole attitude one of dejection.

‘Your car, or Mr Marlow's?'

‘His.'

‘Got a hatchback of your own?'

‘No, a small saloon.'

‘Now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and that's probably a low estimate. What were you unloading?'

Before he could answer, the door was pushed open and Marlow's voice said angrily, ‘Tony, it's nine-fifteen! Why haven't you opened?'

He was into the room before he saw them, since the counter was along the same wall as the door. He stopped short, and the woman behind him bumped into him. It was Eloise Teal.

‘Come in, both of you,' Webb said genially, ‘we're having a very interesting chat here.'

Tony Reid started out of his chair. ‘I didn't tell them anything, Mr Marlow! They – they seemed to know!'

‘Shut up!' Marlow turned to Webb. ‘For your information, Chief Inspector, I'm filing a complaint of police harassment. Not content with turning over my house and business premises on a whim, you come back here and start badgering my assistant. I was very patient with you yesterday and let you snoop round to your heart's content. And what did you find? Nothing! And that, my friend, is because there's nothing to find. Can you get that into your suspicious mind? Because I've had just about enough of this, and I know Mr Teal feels the same. In fact, he told me he'd already been in touch –'

‘Perhaps you'll be good enough to fill in a few gaps for us,' Webb interrupted smoothly. ‘We've got as far as your meeting the plane with the hatchback and unloading the goods. I gather they're stolen artefacts, but I'd be grateful for a few more details.'

Eloise gasped. Marlow stared at him, and Jackson, struck by how dark his eyes were, realized it was in contrast to the sudden pallor of his face. After a moment, Marlow rallied.

‘What a fertile imagination you have, Chief Inspector. You can't have any evidence for these wild accusations.'

‘We also believe,' Webb continued, ‘that contacts are made during your trips abroad with the Arts Society, who, I'm pretty sure, have absolutely no knowledge of what you're up to. And since you fly in planeloads three or four times a year, you must be on to a nice little earner.'

‘What's all this nonsense about a plane?' It was a brave try, but his voice had lost its arrogant confidence.

‘We've had reports of low-flying aircraft on numerous occasions. On the twelfth of May there were several, plus a complaint from a farmer whose field had been churned up. All in all, you've led us quite a dance.'

Eloise Teal stepped suddenly forward. ‘Congratulations, Mr Webb. I never thought you'd crack it.'

Marlow turned sharply, gripping her arm. ‘Eloise, don't be a fool! They can't prove a thing!'

‘Nonsense, Harry. Apart from dotting the i's and crossing the t's, they're home and dry. We can't complain, you know: we've had six good years, and quite honestly the excitement has worn off anyway.'

‘For God's sake listen to me! Don't say anything! You don't know what's involved!'

Tony Reid had been staring at her in amazement. ‘You?' he demanded. ‘
You're
the one he spoke of as The Boss?'

She gave a little laugh. ‘Guilty. It was my idea and I masterminded the whole operation.'

She's actually enjoying this, Webb thought in wonder. It was as though, now the game was up, she was trading its stimulation for the notoriety that would follow, eager for the admiration, albeit grudging, which she expected her ingenuity to arouse.

Marlow tried once more. ‘Eloise, just let me –' but she shook him off. Behind those large spectacles her eyes were glistening. She leant against the corner of the counter, her arms lightly folded.

‘You see, Chief Inspector, I was tired of being written off as a dimwit. Everyone thought Monica had the brains, but she's always had to work harder than I have for what she's wanted. At school she spent all her time studying. I hardly did any work, but I got the same exam results. In fact, I used to sell answers to the other girls – it was quite lucrative.

‘Then Monica went into the business but because I was lazy, Father thought I hadn't a brain in my head. I didn't bother to correct him – in any case, I married straight from school. But gradually I felt the need of mental stimulation. That's why I joined the Arts Appreciation Society, and persuaded Harry and Claudia to do the same. As time went on I became very involved with it, chairing committees and helping to arrange trips and outings. And that, as you guessed, was how this business started. I used to go over before every tour to check arrangements, and one night in a restaurant I started chatting to a German couple at the next table. After the meal they invited me back to their home for coffee. And that,' she ended softly, ‘was where I saw my first mosaic.'

Marlow, having given up the attempt to stop her, was now leaning against the wall staring down at the floor.

Webb said, ‘They were dealers?'

‘Yes, Munich's an important centre for that kind of thing. Seeing how interested I was, they told me how to set the whole thing up; you need only a small organization – three or four to obtain the goods, a couple of middle men, and the buyer, which would be me. But I needed someone by me I could trust implicitly, someone I knew I could depend on. And I chose Mr Marlow.'

She glanced at him, but he gave no sign of having heard her.

‘It's a fascinating business, Mr Webb. Any place where there's been social upheaval or war is a rich picking-ground – the Lebanon, Greece, Cyprus.' She smiled slightly. ‘As you discovered, we didn't confine ourselves to mosaics. We've handled icons, vases, frescoes, coins. Sometimes we sold through auction houses, but mostly to private customers.'

‘Who came and viewed them upstairs here?'

‘Yes; it's always worked perfectly, but this time we had to change the date at the last minute. An important customer could only come on the evening of the twenty-ninth, and asked us to bring the date forward. Since there was an item he was particularly interested in, we'd little choice. By that time the Private View had been arranged and all the invitations were out. We knew it was risky to combine the two, but it was a challenge and as long as we were careful it should have been all right.' She looked at Reid, who flushed and turned away.

‘So what went wrong, Mr Reid?' Webb prompted.

He glanced for guidance at Harry Marlow, who continued to stare at the floor. But after Mrs Teal's speech, he must have felt the time for caution was past. ‘My job was to show up the customers – separately, to preserve confidentiality.' His voice took on a defensive tone. ‘But Mr Marlow just said “The French couple”, and when I heard Miss Tovey talking French to those men, I thought it was them. They shouldn't have been there, anyway. I found out later Mr Teal invited them.' And he looked accusingly at Eloise.

She shrugged. ‘Anyway, there you have it, Mr Webb. I don't regret a thing; I've proved what I set out to, that I'm as astute as the rest of the family, and able to play for much higher stakes.'

‘Let's hope it'll sustain you over the next few years,' Webb said drily. ‘One more point, though; we were closing in, but the thing that clinched it was seeing that mosaic on your wall. Why in the name of goodness did you risk that? If you'd hung it in your bedroom, say, I'd never have seen it.'

‘But you miss the point; half the fun was displaying it under everyone's eyes. What enjoyment would there have been in hiding it away?'

It seemed she was as much a gambler as Miss Tulip. ‘Well, that's cleared up that side of it; now we come to the more serious part. Tell me, did you meet the plane yourself?'

She frowned, glancing back at Marlow, who still hadn't moved. ‘No; Harry needed an assistant, which was why he brought in Tony Reid. I always kept in the background. As you saw, Tony'd no idea I was involved.'

‘Right, then it's your turn, Mr Marlow. It was you the twins recognized, wasn't it?'

At last Marlow looked up, his face grey, and Eloise drew in her breath sharply.

‘Twins?' she repeated urgently. ‘The ones who were killed? That's nothing to do with us!'

Marlow said flatly, ‘I did tell you to keep quiet.'

‘But –' she glanced wildly from him to Webb, the pride she had shown in her enterprise abruptly fading.

‘Let me tell you what happened, Mrs Teal, since Mr Marlow seems reluctant to. He can correct me if I'm wrong. The first fact to establish is that the Whites cleaned the Gallery windows, along with many other business premises in town. And not unnaturally they'd seen Mr Marlow here.'

‘But I don't –'

He lifted a hand and she fell silent. ‘They had two principal interests in life, football and burglary. On Saturday May the twelfth they'd been to Steeple Bayliss for the last match of the season, which I think I'm right in saying Shillingham won. They stayed on to celebrate after the other supporters had left, and when they eventually did set off for home, they happened to see an invitingly empty house, which they naturally stopped to burgle. All in all, they must have thought they'd had a most satisfactory day. But then things went disastrously wrong, though at first it would have seemed the opposite.'

He paused, looking round at the intent faces. ‘So far we've been dealing with fact. Now we come to conjecture, but I reckon it's pretty close to the mark. As they were driving along with their loot, they noticed a plane flying very low overhead, and realized it was in fact about to land behind the small wood which lined the road. So they stopped and went to see what was going on. Two men had met the plane and were engaged in unloading its cargo into their hatchback car. Now, this is the bit I'm not sure about. I doubt if the boys broke cover, and the marks of the plane are some fifty yards from the edge of the wood where they were presumably hiding. It was a full moon, but even so it would be relatively difficult to recognize someone they didn't know well from that distance. Therefore – and I'm guessing – I think one of the men – Mr Marlow – went over to the edge of the wood for some reason?'