The Snares of Death (41 page)

David thought back to Geoffrey's series on Italian paintings, and wished that he'd managed to stick it out beyond the programme on the Renaissance. ‘An original, you say?'

‘Undoubtedly. A lost masterpiece, whereabouts unknown for over a hundred years. And it was hanging here, the gift of some pious fool who didn't know what he had. I spotted it when I was visiting Stephen back in March.'

‘Tiffani said that you spent a long time looking at all the paintings,' David remembered.

‘Unmitigated rubbish, most of it. A load of bad copies. I wouldn't have given any of it a second look, but I spotted the Guido right away – rather a speciality of mine, the Italian Counter-Reformation,' he added with perverse pride. ‘I had to pretend to be interested in all of the rubbish, so I could get a good look at the Guido. Unquestionably authentic.'

‘Mark Judd?' said David.

‘He saw me looking at the Guido. He said that if I liked it, I could have one just like it. The new Vicar at the church where he'd been working was going to be flogging off everything, he said, and there was an identical painting there. I could have it for next to nothing, he said. That's what gave me the idea.'

‘Of switching the paintings?' David said slowly, beginning to understand.

Geoffrey smiled appreciatively. ‘I can see that you're not as stupid as I thought.'

‘Thanks.' David raised his eyebrows ironically.

‘I went to the church a few days later, looked at the painting. It was a copy of this very painting, quite worthless. Worthless without the original hanging a few miles away, anyway, just waiting to be switched. I offered him a couple of hundred quid for it, which was more than it was worth. That was my biggest mistake – it made Judd suspicious. He was a clever lad, Mark Judd. He made a trip to the National Art Library, looked at the catalogue of Guido's work, found the reference to the missing painting – the lost masterpiece – and put two and two together.'

‘So he wanted in.'

‘Yes. He was also an ambitious lad – had his eye on higher office in the Church, and knew that money would help him get there. At first I thought it wasn't a bad thing, cutting him in. It would make things a great deal easier for me to have help on the inside, so to speak. It was a damned bulky painting – it would have been difficult to make the switch on my own. And I wasn't about to involve Stephen.'

‘Stephen wouldn't have had anything to do with a dishonest scheme like that!' Lucy protested indignantly.

‘No, you're right.' Geoffrey shook his head with a sickly smile. ‘My nephew, I'm afraid, has principles.' He made the condition sound extremely unpleasant. ‘Believe me, he didn't get them from
my
side of the family, unless it was a recessive gene. His friend Mark Judd, however, was not hampered by anything so inconvenient.'

‘But he got greedy?' David surmised.

Geoffrey nodded. ‘He still had the painting – it was more convenient to leave it in the church at South Barsham until it was time to make the swap. I was travelling on the continent, researching my Charles the First series. I was back in London for a few days, around the time that Stephen was arrested, but I couldn't get back to Norfolk until this weekend. We agreed to do it today, under cover of all the activity. During the Procession, while everyone was away. But you,' he shot Lucy a venomous look, ‘started following me. I had to get rid of you, or you would have ruined everything. And then Judd, as you say, got greedy. He decided that he could have it all to himself. He could make himself a big hero at Walsingham by suddenly producing the original of the supposed copy that they had hanging – by then, of course, it
would
have been the copy hanging here – and donating it to them. That would be even better than the money, he thought. So he enlisted some stupid broad to help him make the switch.'

‘Monica,' Lucy said faintly, remembering the girl's guilty look as she stood guarding the huge sign. A crudely painted sign, disguising an oil painting. Did she know what she was doing, or had the blessed Father Mark spun her some tale? That wouldn't have been difficult.

‘But they didn't make the switch.' David stated the obvious.

‘No. He said that they were interrupted. But he still had the painting. They would have switched it later. And he had to get rid of me. He told me to meet him at the Holy Well during Benediction. He was going to kill me . . .'

‘And instead you killed him.'

‘Where is the other painting, then?' Lucy asked.

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's not worth the two hundred quid that I paid for it.' He laughed ironically. ‘As a matter of fact, I never actually paid for it. I suppose that it still belongs to the church! They can bloody have it!'

They all turned at the sound of a breathy whistle from the back of the room. John Spring stared at the tatters of the painting, shaking his head. ‘Crikey! Someone's jolly well done a number on that!' he said with awe. ‘I wonder if it was that girl that I threw out of here earlier – that animal rights nut?'

Maggie, thought Lucy. Yes, that would make sense.

John Spring had noticed Lucy, holding fast to David's hand. He grinned at her appraisingly. ‘Well, Dave,' he said. ‘You're a sly one, aren't you? Where have you been hiding this little beauty?'

David glowered. He'd known he couldn't put this moment off for ever, but at least he could distract Spring. ‘I think,' he said, ‘that you might want to take this gentleman in for questioning in the matter of the death of Father Mark Judd.'

‘No kidding!' Spring's head swivelled to Geoffrey.

‘And while you're at it,' David added, ‘you should ask him what he knows about the murder of Bob Dexter.'

When Spring had taken Geoffrey Pickering away, David went to look for the other painting. He found it immediately, stashed behind the door in the corridor, its camouflaging sign draped over it loosely. They carried it between them into the dining room and propped it up against the table to have a look.

The Conversion of St Hubert. The saint-to-be was converted in the midst of a hunting party; the painting depicted him kneeling in awe in the foreground as the image of the crucified Christ appeared between the horns of a stag. Rotund baroque cherubs peered down in approbation from turgid clouds over the stag's head. But in the background of the painting the hunt went on uninterrupted by the vision, and a less fortunate stag was being dismembered by slavering dogs.

‘I still don't find it a very appealing painting,' David admitted. ‘Hard to believe that someone would be willing to kill over it.'

‘Not over this one, though,' Lucy reminded him. ‘Over the real one. This is the copy, remember?'

David looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder.'

‘What you said to that policeman about Bob Dexter – you don't think that Geoffrey killed him, do you?'

‘Oh, no. Most certainly not. I think that if you checked his story you'd find that he was in Europe when Dexter was murdered, just as he said.'

‘Then . . .'

‘I think,' said David, ‘that Geoffrey didn't tell us the whole truth. Oh, I think that what he told us was more or less the truth, as far as it went. But I think he knows a great deal more than he told us. I'm sure that Spring will get it out of him.'

‘That was your friend John Spring?'

David looked at her apprehensively. ‘Yes. Didn't you think he was attractive?'

She laughed. ‘Why, was I supposed to?'

‘Well, women do, you know. I've seen it with my own eyes.'

‘Oh, David! You must be joking!' Lucy went to him and put her arms around him. ‘It may come as a great surprise to you, my dear, but I prefer a man who has two brain cells to rub together.'

‘Anyone in particular?' David raised his eyebrows.

She favoured him with a radiant smile. ‘Come on, darling. Let's go home.'

CHAPTER 51

    
Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered.

Psalm 124.6

They were seven at dinner one evening, over a month later. Seven: a mystical number. David and Lucy, Becca and Elayne Dexter, Alice Barnes, Gwen Vernon and Stephen Thorncroft sat around a table together at the Old Schoolhouse in South Barsham.

It was Stephen who was hosting the meal, as a thank-you to David for his work on his behalf, and Stephen who had decided on the guest list. Fortunately Alice and Gwen had taken Becca to their hearts once again, now that it was evident that they'd been deceived by Father Mark just as she had.

Gwen hadn't been in the Old Schoolhouse since it had ceased to fulfil its original function. ‘Just fancy!' she'd exclaimed on arrival. ‘All those years that I spent in this place, and look at it now!'

The food was delicious, the company was congenial, and there seemed to be several things to celebrate. Stephen's release from prison, of course, and then there was the unexpected windfall from the painting.

To everyone's surprise, the painting that had been destroyed at Walsingham by Maggie Harrison had turned out to be the copy, and the one that remained had been authenticated as the original Guido Reni. Maggie had been arrested for criminal damage to a valuable work of art, but the charges had been quietly dropped when it was discovered that she had instead destroyed a virtually worthless copy.

The crucial question, then, was this: had the two paintings actually been switched by Mark Judd before Maggie did her worst? There was no one who could settle the question definitively; Mark Judd was dead, and Monica Cooper had been so distraught by his death that the earlier events of the day were a complete blank to her. Geoffrey Pickering, too, was dead; he had hanged himself in his remand cell, unable to face the public humiliation of being charged with Mark Judd's death. The only basis for a decision as to the ownership of the valuable painting was Geoffrey Pickering's statement to the police that the paintings had not been switched, and thus the surviving painting was declared to be his, and Walsingham was left with the tatters of the copy. By Pickering's own admission, though, he had not paid for the painting, and thus it still belonged to St Mary's Church, which stood to be several million pounds richer pending its sale to the National Gallery.

It was David's private opinion that the paintings must surely have been swapped, for although the two paintings might have looked identical to an untrained eye, Geoffrey Pickering would not have been wrong in his initial judgement: he could not possibly have mistaken a mediocre copy for a genuine Guido, and vice versa. His shock at the painting's destruction, its ravaged condition, and his assumption that Judd had not had time to effect the switch could easily explain his mis-identification at the time of the crime.

John Spring, over a pint with David, had admitted that Mark and Monica might have remained behind for long enough to have made the switch. Spring was certainly not about to press for investigation of the possibility: a few uncomfortable questions might be forthcoming about his whereabouts during the time he was meant to be guarding the Shrine. So it would never be proved. St Mary's owned the painting, and the National Gallery wanted it. Their collection was notoriously weak in the works of the Italian Baroque, and they were willing to pay whatever price was necessary to obtain the Guido.

Alice and Gwen accepted the windfall at face value, assuming that the switch had not taken place and that the valuable painting indeed had been at St Mary's all along. They, naturally, were ecstatic. This meant that the church could be returned to its former splendour, or even improved. It was, understandably, a chief topic of conversation at that evening's dinner, as it had been at Monkey Puzzle Cottage for some time. ‘I still can't get over that painting,' Alice declared, shaking her head. ‘That old thing that had been hanging there since the year dot – worth all that money. Imagine it!'

‘Worth millions!' Gwen rhapsodised. ‘Just think what we can do at St Mary's!'

David and Lucy looked at each other, smiling. No one would ever know the truth about the painting, but it was better this way. St Mary's could do with the money, and Walsingham certainly didn't need it.

Lucy sipped her wine as her eyes moved around the table. Next to her, of course, was David, looking relaxed and handsome. Then Gwen Vernon, flushed and voluble with the unaccustomed wine. Sandwiched between Gwen and Alice was Elayne. Elayne had blossomed since she'd first met her, Lucy reflected. She was smartly dressed: Becca had taken her shopping for clothes, and had overseen the revamping of her image. She'd had her hair highlighted and cut becomingly; in short, Elayne was emerging from the chrysalis in which Bob Dexter had kept her wrapped for years, transformed from a nonentity into an attractive, self-confident woman.

Stephen sat on the other side of Alice, chatting to her familiarly. Since Alice and Gwen had been so disastrously let down by Father Mark, Father Stephen had become their new blue-eyed boy; he could do no wrong as far as they were concerned. Stephen, too, looked good, Lucy thought – he had lost his prison pallor, his ascetic face seemed a bit fuller, and his eyes sparkled behind his spectacles. Beside him, Becca was quieter than usual, but she seemed happier than Lucy had ever seen her. She inclined her head towards Stephen, and smiled at him with tentative, tremulous joy. Her hair no longer looked roughly hacked; it had grown out enough to be trimmed to a smooth, shining silvery cap which suited her very well, giving her face a gamine look.

Next to Becca, at this round table for eight, was the empty space. Who was the spectre at the feast? Lucy wondered. Was it Mark Judd, or was it Bob Dexter?

It was inevitable that the subject of Bob Dexter's murder should come up, for there were still a number of unanswered questions in the minds of various people at the table. Predictably, Gwen was the one who first mentioned it. ‘I'm afraid I still don't understand,' she said after several glasses of wine had loosened her tongue even more than usual, ‘why Father Mark should have killed Father Dexter. Perhaps you could explain it to me, Mr Middleton-Brown?'