A Case of Spirits (2 page)

‘Nothing at all. Strange, that. Dr Probert has a number of other paintings in his house at Richmond, all of classical subjects. Alma Tadema, Leighton, that sort of thing—’

‘Mostly young women like this one in a state of nature?’ Cribb suggested.

‘That’s neither here nor there, Sergeant. Dr Probert went to Charterhouse. He had a schooling in the classics.’

‘And the Etty was the only picture that went,’ said Cribb, returning crisply to the matter under investigation. ‘Do we have any other information to go on, sir?’

‘Only a rather strange coincidence. The picture was stolen last Friday evening, when Dr Probert was giving a lantern lecture at University College Hospital. His wife and daughter were in the audience and only one of his servants was at home, an old woman, prone to deafness. She noticed nothing irregular, but when the Proberts returned, the Etty was gone. The curious thing is that the previous Saturday the Proberts had given a dinner party for a number of their friends, and on the same night one of them, a Miss Crush, returned to find that
her
house had been burgled.’

‘Could be interesting,’ said Cribb. ‘What was stolen?’

‘Ah.’ Jowett wagged a cautionary finger at Cribb. ‘You think I’m going to say that it was a picture. It was not, Sergeant. It was a Royal Worcester vase in the Japanese style.’

‘Valuable, sir?’

‘Not outstandingly. It was worth perhaps thirty pounds. On the same sideboard from which it was taken was a Minton vase by Solon valued at more than a thousand guineas.’

Cribb whistled. ‘What sort of a cracksman misses a chance like that?’ Shaking his head at such criminal negligence, he asked, ‘What did he fill his sack with, for Heaven’s sake?’

‘Interestingly enough,’ said Jowett, ‘the house-breaker contented himself with a single object—as did the picture-thief at Dr Probert’s, you will have observed.’

Thackeray nodded his head to show that he, at any rate, had not missed the point.

‘This Miss Crush, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘She’s obviously a rich woman. Would you describe her as a close friend of Dr Probert’s?’

Jowett gave a small sigh. ‘Sergeant, you must not permit your animosity to anyone of a superior social status to yourself to vitiate your deductive processes. No, Miss Crush is not a close friend of Dr Probert’s. She is merely an acquaintance. They met three weeks ago at a small gathering at her house in Belgravia. The doctor was invited in his capacity as an eminent man of science.’

‘For his conversation?’

‘No, Sergeant. He was there to bring the scientific mind to bear on a phenomenon that is rarely, if ever, examined by the analytical methods of the laboratory. Miss Crush’s “At Home”, and the dinner party that was subsequently held at the Proberts’ house, were both arranged for a similar purpose. A spiritualistic seance.’

‘Well, I’ll be jiggered!’ said Thackeray.

Who finds a picture, digs a medal up,

Hits on a first edition
—
he henceforth

Gives it his name, grows notable: how much more,

Who ferrets out a ‘medium’?

Cribb understood the reason. There was a reputation to protect. Local bobbies talked too freely to the Press. Probert didn’t want to pick up his
Richmond and Twickenham
Times
and read about the gallery of naked nymphs and goddesses and the communications with the spirits at the house on Richmond Hill.

But it was not the peculiarities of the present case that brought the smile to Cribb’s lips. It was his relish for a burglary. Unlike murder or assault, housebreaking was a bit of a game, and self-respecting cracksmen played it with sufficient skill to test the best detectives. The prize was property. Occasionally the game was spoiled by unnecessary violence, but generally it was splendid entertainment. As good as an evening at the Poker table.

Probert’s house, tall, detached and Georgian, was near the top of the Hill, almost opposite the Terrace. Below, a persistent river-mist obscured the Thames Valley, but at this level you could see for miles above the mist. It produced a disturbing impression of isolation.

Before pulling at the doorbell, Cribb cast an eye over the ground floor windows. They were all equipped with substantial shutters. The thief hadn’t entered that way if the servants had done their work. It would have made more sense, anyway, to break in from the back, where there was no chance of attracting the attention of promenaders on the Terrace.

Like any police officer worthy of the name, Cribb had a confident way with servants, but the one who opened the door looked difficult from the start. She was far too long in the tooth for a parlour-maid, and she knew it. He judged it wise to try the straightforward approach, politely introducing himself and stating his business. He might have saved his breath. She told him in a firm, toneless voice that Dr Probert didn’t buy things at the front door and they didn’t want him trying the tradesmen’s entrance either. Plainly she was deaf. He remembered Jowett mentioning a servant who had heard nothing on the night of the burglary. He tried a second time, with gestures, but made no more impression. Then, feeling in his pocket for pencil and notebook, he brought out the handcuffs he habitually carried. They worked as well as a visiting-card.

He was shown through an ill-lit hall into a drawing-room where a fire blazed, its flames reproduced in miniature on multitudinous ‘brights’—brass, copper and silver ornaments and embellishments. He crossed to the fireplace, an immense black marble structure with an overmantel of gilded wood that reached to the ceiling, and spread his palms to warm them, assuming (quite erroneously, as it turned out) that Dr Probert reckoned detective sergeants suitable persons to shake by the hand.

It was his practice on entering a strange room to make a rapid mental inventory of its contents and their positions. One like this, so closely lined with furniture that not an inch of skirting-board was visible, and with every ledge and shelf covered with a silk runner and crowded with objects, presented a severe test. He decided to take it by sections, starting with all he could see reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Principally, this was a tall black lacquered cabinet with mother-of-pearl inlay. He was surveying its contents in the mirror when he noticed with surprise that the object beside the cabinet, quite eclipsed by an adjacent potted palm, was no object at all, but a woman, sitting perfectly still.

‘I must apologise, ma’am,’ he said, turning. ‘I quite failed to notice you as I came in.’

‘People frequently do,’ she said. ‘There is no need to apologise. My husband has failed to notice me for years now. I am quite resigned to it. You must be the inspector from the police.’

‘Sergeant only, ma’am,’ he admitted. ‘Cribb is my name.’

‘And mine is Probert—although it might as well be anything else,’ she said, easing her wedding-ring absently along the length of her finger. ‘I am quite unsuited to play the part of Dr Probert’s wife.’

Cribb frowned and rubbed his side-whiskers. This was not a form of drawing-room conversation he had met before. Clearly he was obliged to say something to bolster Mrs Probert’s self-respect. But what? Looking at her under the palm fronds, pale, slight and even-featured, with the faraway expression artists gave the models in corsetry advertisements, he could understand perfectly how her husband failed to notice her. ‘That’s a handsome plant you’re sitting under, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I like to sit here away from the fire. I don’t have any faith in complexion-shields. There’s one in the hearth there that I embroidered myself, but I have never risked using it. They are not an adequate protection for a delicate skin, Sergeant. Just as dangerous as parasols.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Cribb. ‘You’ll pardon me for mentioning it, but I wondered whether I made the purpose of my visit quite clear to your servant. She seems slightly . . .’ He patted his right ear.

‘Yes, we have noticed it,’ said Mrs Probert. ‘She has been with us for nearly twenty years, though. You may be quite sure that she has told my husband you are here. If I bore you, please don’t hesitate to tell me.’

‘No fear of that, ma’am,’ said Cribb emphatically. ‘Do you have any other servants?’

‘Two house-maids and a cook, naturally. They were all out on the night the picture was stolen, except Hitchman, whom you have met. We try to give them an evening off once a month and it suited us to arrange it that night, when we attended my husband’s lecture at the Hospital. Hitchman didn’t hear a thing, of course. My husband was most awfully discomposed by what we found when we returned, and said some unrepeatable things. I was more than a little grateful Hitchman could not hear them.’

‘And you informed the police next morning, I understand.’

‘Yes, it was much too late to do anything about it that night, so we went to bed.’

‘A pity, that,’ said Cribb. ‘There’s always an officer on the beat in the locality. You could have sent a servant to find him. The thief might well have been hiding somewhere in your garden.’

‘Really? What a gruesome thought!’

‘He’d be unlikely to take to the streets with a stolen picture before midnight. I dare say there’s people moving about until the small hours up here on the Hill.’

‘Yes, one hears footsteps and voices. Even carriages. I cannot think what attracts people to the Terrace so late at night.’

It was no part of Cribb’s duty to enlighten her, so he turned to another matter. ‘I believe the entry was made through a window in the basement, ma’am.’

‘That is so. I am sure my husband will wish to show you. It was a most audacious crime. Do you know, he got in through a barred window?’

‘I expected it, ma’am,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s the easiest means of entry, short of using a latch-key. All you need is a length of rope and a strong metal rod. You pass a double loop round two bars, insert the rod between the strands and twist it round to draw the bars together. I see that you have shutters at the front of your house. Pity you don’t have them at the back as well. Bars are a false economy, in my opinion.’

‘Your opinion was not asked for, Policeman. You are here to solve a crime, not to redesign my house.’ The speaker, just inside the door, must have been standing there for several seconds. ‘In case your deductive powers are not equal to the task, I should tell you that my name is Probert.’

‘And this is Sergeant Cribb, Augustus, from Scotland Yard,’ said his wife.

Ignoring her, Probert flung open the door and left the room.

‘You had better go with him,’ Mrs Probert advised. ‘He intends to show you his picture-gallery.’

‘I see. Will you be coming too, ma’am?’

She shook her head firmly. ‘That is not permitted. Doubtless I shall see you later, Sergeant. Please hurry. He is not a patient man.’

‘In here, Policeman,’ boomed Probert from across the hall. Cribb entered a narrow room carpeted in crimson and furnished with sideboard, black chaise longue and in the centre a fine example of the curiosity known as a flirtation settee, shaped like the letter S, with seats in the curves, so that sitters would face opposite ways, yet be side by side. Probert already occupied one section and was impatiently beating the other with his right hand.

‘Sit yourself down, man. I’m not too proud to share a seat with a public servant, but I’m damned if I want him staring me in the face.’

The sentiment was mutual, but Cribb refrained from saying so. What little he had seen of Probert, the squat physique topped by a disproportionately large bald head, the bulbous blue eyes and the sandy-haired moustache waxed at the ends, he did not like. The single thing in favour of the man was that his house had been burgled. For this, Cribb took his place on the flirtation settee.

‘I don’t propose to beat about the bush,’ said Dr Probert. ‘My wife misunderstands me.’

‘Really?’ said Cribb, uncertain what was required of him.

‘My own fault absolutely. Married her for her father’s money. She’s given me all of that, a handsome daughter and twenty-one years of boredom. So what have I done to keep my sanity? I’ve found distractions. Look at the wall ahead of you.’

It was a superfluous instruction.

‘What do you see?’

‘Curtains,’ said Cribb. ‘Black velvet curtains. At least a dozen sets of them.’

‘Get up and pull the draw-string at the side of any one of them.’

Cribb went to the largest, gripped the tassel and watched as the curtains parted at the centre and drew smoothly away to reveal the painting of a woman reclining face downwards among cushions on a sofa. She was naked.

‘What is the title on the frame?’ asked Dr Probert, from his side of the S.

‘Reclining Nymph,’
answered Cribb.

‘Ah yes, the Boucher. I went to Paris to buy that. A portrait by the artist of his own wife in a classical pose. She is exquisite. Draw the curtain again, please. One cannot be too discreet when there are ladies in the house. My wife and daughter clearly understand that they must not set foot inside this room, but you never know what’s going on where women are concerned. They are a perverse sex, I tell you, Policeman. They are quite capable of convincing themselves that something is going on in here that compels them to ignore my instruction. The most fanciful inventions—a fire, for example.’

‘Or a burglary?’ suggested Cribb, and quickly added, ‘Some of these pictures must be very valuable, sir.’

‘Indeed, yes, but they are all insured. Would you like to see some more? I have a magnificent
Rape of the Sabine
Women
on this wall.’

‘Thank you, sir, but not just now. We policemen come across quite enough of that sort of thing in our work. I should like to see where the stolen picture was hanging, if you don’t mind.’

‘The Etty?’ Dr Probert stood up and went to one of the larger sets of curtains on the wall in front of him and pulled the cord. An empty frame was revealed. ‘The scoundrel removed the canvas from the frame. I hope to Heaven that the surface wasn’t damaged. Oh, Policeman, the tone of that young woman’s skin! Pure alabaster. You’ll get it back, of course?’

‘I’m going to try,’ said Cribb. ‘Tell me, sir, was it your most valuable picture?’

‘My word, no! The value is sentimental. A mere three hundred guineas, if my insurers know anything about art. I have an Ingres worth ten times that.’

Cribb lifted the frame away from the wall and looked behind it. ‘He worked quickly. Look at the way these metal supports have been forced. He risked tearing the edge of the canvas as he prised it away from the frame. This is rough work for a picture-thief. As a rule they take more care. If a dealer sees that a canvas has been forced from a frame he has to be told a very convincing story before he’ll make an offer for it. This was the only picture that was touched—is that right, sir?’

‘That is my firm opinion,’ said Dr Probert, ‘and Inspector Jowett confirms it. I invited him here to make his own examination of every picture after I had refused the same facility to two constables from Richmond police station. I don’t show my collection to every Tom, Dick and Harry, blast ’em! I showed them the window that was forced, of course. I’ll show that to any damned fool. If you’ve finished in here I’ll take you down to see it straight away.’

After several years’ service with Jowett, Cribb was practically impervious to insults, particularly when they had the reassuring ring of spontaneity. He followed Probert into the passage and down the basement stairs. ‘I’ll have to light a candle,’ said Probert in a carrying voice. ‘We don’t have the new electric light down here.’ On cue, a maid appeared ahead, candle in hand. ‘That will do, Pearce,’ said Probert, taking it. ‘You can get back to your work now. Too damned inquisitive,’ he told Cribb. ‘You’d think they’d never clapped eyes on a common policeman before.’ He opened the door of a pantry stacked high with jars, tins and boxes. ‘There it is above the biscuits. Now tell me I should have had shutters instead of bars, like all the rest.’

‘Can I have the candle over here, sir?’ asked Cribb, moving to the window. ‘I see you’ve had some repairs done.’ He indicated the shining heads of fresh nails that had been used to hammer the close-meshed wire netting back into place.

‘Naturally! I wasn’t having the ruffian come back for all my other pictures,’ said Dr Probert. ‘If he isn’t a professional picture-thief as you seem to suggest, what on earth did he do it for? Was it anything to do with the subject of the picture, do you suppose? I believe there are men about who look at pictures like mine for the wrong reason, if you follow me.’