A Painted Devil Read online

  ‘My name is Charles Wentworth.’

  ‘How thoroughly fascinating. Good day.’

  The visitor paused for a moment, taken aback by this unexpected attitude. He wore the hesitant half-smile of one who is not quite sure they haven’t made a mistake somewhere.

  ‘I say, you’re an odd kind of private eye.’

  Harris passed his eyes over the visitor, who in turn noticed that the spectacles perched on the don’s nose contained no glass.

  ‘I am no kind of private eye,’ responded Harris, and his sour disposition was tempered mildly by the sudden concern that his visitor might be mentally imbalanced and dangerous. ‘Why on earth would I be sitting in a don’s office in Magdalene College if I were a private eye? It would be a damn foolish place to be.’

  The visitor stared at him.

  ‘Are you sure? You are Harris? Dr Samuel Harris?’

  Harris rapped the desk in annoyance, the crossword for once not being his chief source of frustration.

  ‘Of course I am. And I repeat, what sort of idiot private eye would keep his office buried away in college digs? Do you think Magdalene is in the habit of renting its offices to private eyes? And,’ he blundered on, apparently asking any question that sprang to mind, ‘why all these ghastly Americanisms? Like most phrases coined in that dreadful country, “private eye” is an abhorrence to the English language.’

  This seemed to conclude his tirade and, with Wentworth momentarily speechless, an uneasy silence settled in the room. Whatever the latter had expected from his visit it was evidently not this. Also clear were the facts that he was not used to being spoken to in such a manner, and that his upbringing forbore him from making anything of it.

  ‘Then I am terribly sorry to have disturbed you,’ he said coldly. ‘I must have made a mistake.’

  ‘Dashed odd mistake to make, m’boy. What made you think of looking here? I mean, if you’ve got a differential equation that needs solving, this is certainly the place to be, but…’

  ‘An acquaintance led me to believe that you were in the business of performing detective work.’

  ‘Acquaintance? What acquaintance? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It was old Peversham – Eggcup Peversham, I mean, not his father. We were at Harrow together… Eggcup and me, I mean, not his father.’ The visitor stalled for a moment, to extract himself from this verbal chaos. ‘Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Eggcup told me that you helped Lord Peversham with that unfortunate incident of the headless body found in the grounds of his place. But apparently I must have got my wires crossed.’

  Suddenly Harris smiled at the memory.

  ‘Ha! What a case that was. Old Eggcup all right, is he? Good Lord, that business threatened to cause a stink.’

  Charles Wentworth, still standing awkwardly just inside the door and unsure whether the rickety-looking bookcase would take his weight if he was to lean upon it, now looked more confused than ever.

  ‘Then it was you? You are a private… er, detective?’

  Harris shook his head.

  ‘No, no. I’m a mathematician. I just helped out with that case as a favour to old Peversham.’

  This was quite simply a lie. Rarely was Harris quite as altruistic as he liked to imply (nor, for that matter, as misanthropic as he often appeared). The truth of the situation was that he took cases when he was bored and wanted the challenge, or when a fee was too obscene for him to ignore. The only person who could, on a regular basis, induce Harris’ participation in an investigation was his friend Chief Inspector Henry Rogers of Scotland Yard, and this was only because Rogers understood, and could manipulate, Harris’ private opinion that Scotland Yard could not hope to solve a case of moderate difficulty or above without the benefit of his genius. There was, Harris had once hypothesised to his friend, a direct proportion between the size of a person’s ego and the ease with which one can influence it. Rogers had resisted the urge to prove that theory with the use of a mirror.

  ‘Then perhaps you could be persuaded to help me also?’ suggested the young man. Harris was just about to comment that he could no doubt be persuaded to parade around the college in his bloomers, given the right circumstances, but that the notion was unlikely, when Wentworth added. ‘I would, of course, pay you handsomely.’

  The words died on Harris’ lips.

  In Scheherazade’s tales of the Arabian Nights, the story of Aladdin tells of a cave, a grotto containing untold treasure, which remained resolutely sealed to one and all unless they spoke the magic phrase “open sesame!” Charles Wentworth’s words had much the same effect on Harris.

  From the moment his visitor had given his name a corner of Harris’ mind had been busily working, and he had now placed the young man as a member of the Gloucester Wentworths, one of the richest families in the country. Payment from this young man might allow him to take that trip to the Caribbean he had read about. Besides, in Harris’ opinion the gentry usually were so paranoid that their “problems” were typically trivial and insignificant.

  ‘Well, let me hear about it,’ said Harris grudgingly, playing his cards close to his chest.

  Charles Wentworth fixed him with an intense and sincere gaze.

  ‘I think someone is trying to kill me.’

  Yes, thought Harris to himself, paranoid. Paranoid and filthy rich; his favourite kind of client.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked as he rose, cleared the large chairs by the fireplace and bid his guest to sit.

  ‘There have been several incidents in the last eight or nine months,’ said Charles. ‘The first one I originally dismissed as an accident. Even the second, by itself, could at a stretch have just been a bizarre prank or mistake or something like that, but together they seem a little too much of a coincidence -’

  Harris raised his hand.

  ‘If we’re going to do this properly we need some order and method, not a campfire free-for-all. Before you tell me anything else, I need to know some history. You are, I presume, related to Sir George Wentworth?’

  Charles looked impressed.

  ‘He is my father. We live at Blackwood Manor in a town called Upper Wentham in Gloucestershire.’

  ‘Are you the heir?’

  ‘Yes. I’m an only child.’

  ‘Then you are, in summary, sole heir to one of England’s largest estates,’ said Harris. ‘So, to brass tacks, who benefits from your death? Are you married?’

  ‘No. At least, not yet. My fiancée and I will marry in a few weeks.’

  ‘Well,’ said Harris, ‘that gives her a very good reason for not wanting you dead. Who would benefit from you dying before getting married? Who would inherit if you died today?’

  Charles shook his head, with a hint of bewilderment. A couple of minutes ago, it seemed that Dr Harris had no interest in helping him; now he was acting like a family biographer.

  ‘No one. That is, I have no idea. But it’s irrelevant...’ He stopped and ran his hand across his forehead in frustration, realising he was not expressing himself well. ‘What I mean to say is that there’s nothing to inherit. I’m heir to the fortune, but not a penny of it is legally mine. I have access to as much money as I want, but I’ve nothing to bequeath. If I died today my father would just change his will I suppose.’

  Harris wanted to clip the young man around the ear.

  ‘To whose benefit?’ he growled, trying to keep the frustration from his voice. Harris’ mind enjoyed problems, but grew irritated when relying on others for information who could not think at his pace.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea. Father’s only male relative of any kind is Richard Carmichael, his stepbrother, but he can’t stand the fellow at any price. There’s no chance he would leave any money or property to Carmichael.’ Charles looked genuinely puzzled at this question. ‘I honestly have no idea who he would leave it to.’

  Harris waved his hand as if to dismiss this line of speculation.

  ‘No matter. We can always find that out later.
Now then, about these incidents you suspect of being murder attempts. Tell me what happened.’

  A slightly awkward expression passed over Charles Wentworth’s face.

  ‘I hope I don’t sound too melodramatic. I suppose it is always possible that these incidents really were just accidents, but…’

  ‘You think it unlikely? Let me be the judge of that; you just give me the facts.’

  ‘The first incident happened... let me see, it would be just over eight months ago. I was in our local parish church, St. Anne’s, with a friend of mine, Ronald Asbury, doing some research for an article he wanted to write. It was a weekday and we were the only ones in the church. Reverend Johnson, the vicar, was outside tending to the graveyard or something. Anyway, Ronnie and I were sitting in a pew looking at some records, when he suggested we stretch our legs. Just as we were walking up and down the aisles a piece of masonry fell from the balcony and smashed into the pew exactly where we had been sitting.’

  Harris had been busily scribbling away on a notepad, but now looked up.

  ‘When you say “a piece of masonry”…?’

  ‘The balcony has a stone balustrade and there are some fairly ornate carvings protruding from it; gargoyles I suppose. Or are they only on the outside of a church? I forget. Well, regardless, one of them had apparently come loose and fallen off.’

  ‘A big piece?’

  ‘Pretty large. Over a hundred pounds, I’d say. It smashed a hole in the pew. St Anne’s is several hundred years old and to be honest, it’s not in the best condition, and some of the stonework is crumbling.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Harris, ‘that piece of masonry had had a couple of centuries to fall, and yet only missed you by a matter of minutes.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Had there been any other instances of bits of masonry falling?’

  ‘Rev. Johnson said nothing like that had happened in his time at the church, and he’s been there for decades.’

  ‘Then you certainly would have been extremely unfortunate to be hit by the carving if it was a freak accident.’

  ‘My thoughts precisely. But there’s something more: when I looked up at where the piece had fallen from… I could have sworn that I saw a figure up in the balcony running away.’

  ‘Did you see who it was?’

  Charles shook his head.

  ‘It was all shadows. And before I could cry out, Rev. Johnson came racing in to see what all the noise was. He couldn’t believe it when he saw the stonework and smashed pew, and we told him what happened.’

  ‘But surely you went to investigate the balcony?’

  ‘We did, eventually, but there was no one there.’

  Charles explained that the layout of St. Anne’s featured a small balcony running around the back half of the church. Two staircases led down from this balcony: a larger one at the back which descended to the church’s main door, set towards the rear of the nave; and a narrower one not typically used which dropped from the front of the balcony on the right. The latter emerged by a small side door which stood open, since the vicar had left that way to tend to the graveyard, and through which he later returned to see what had happened.

  ‘When the masonry fell I saw the figure at the far end of the balcony, and Ronnie and I raced to the back of the church to intercept whoever it was. But no one came down and then Ronnie saw that the figure had continued around to the side staircase and was running down that way instead. We got to the side door just as Rev. Johnson came in to see what had caused the crash he had heard. But there was no sign of the mysterious figure,’

  ‘The vicar hadn’t seen anyone coming out of the door when he returned?’

  ‘No, and he was certain he would have if anybody had left that way. He clearly thought that shock had caused us to imagine a figure in the balcony. I suppose that is possible. It’s very dark up there and the architecture casts lots of strange shadows. If it had just been me, then maybe I would have doubted my senses. But we both saw someone up there, Dr Harris.’

  ‘How do you explain the fact that this mysterious figure left the church without the vicar seeing him or her?’

  Charles Wentworth shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure. There are plenty of gravestones close to the door they could have ducked behind. To be honest, at the time I probably decided I really had imagined the figure after all, and wrote the thing off as an accident.’

  ‘What does your friend Mr Asbury think about it now?’

  ‘He doesn’t think anything about it,’ replied Charles morbidly. ‘He committed suicide two months ago.’

  ‘Eh?’ Harris’ face showed amazement. He was about to tackle this new development when Charles interrupted.

  ‘I know that sounds suspicious, but he had left Upper Wentham months earlier. Not long after the incident in the church, in fact, but for unrelated reasons. Anyway, he committed suicide. There was no foul play.’

  Harris inspected his coffee mug studiously and returned from his aborted tangent.

  ‘So, in summary, a frightening brush with death, with the slightest possibility of foul play?’

  ‘Just so. I put it down to one of those lucky escapes you read about and thought nothing more of it. It’s only now, after the subsequent incidents, that I have more confidence in my instincts that somebody definitely caused that masonry to fall.’

  ‘Let us move on to those incidents. Tell me about the next one.’

  ‘That was about three months later. This one occurred in the grounds of Blackwood. It was a pleasant afternoon and I was outside with my fiancée -’

  ‘What is her name?’ interrupted Harris.

  ‘Andrea. Andrea Ketterman.’

  Harris made a note. ‘Thank you. Continue.’

  ‘We were in the folly, just sitting quietly and talking, when suddenly there was a loud bang close by that made me jump. I presumed it to be a car backfiring, although I heard no engine noise. Andrea said she saw something in the bushes across from our position and we went to investigate.’

  Harris held his hand up again.

  ‘One moment. Describe this folly please.’

  ‘Oh. Well, we call it the folly. It’s more of a small circular pavilion I suppose. It’s set into the bushes by the east wing of the house, made of white stone with Corinthian pillars and a bench around the inside. A gazebo, you’d probably call it.’

  ‘Is it private?’

  ‘Well, like I say, it’s set into the bushes so on the house side it is. But it’s clear on the other side and there’s a good view out onto the hills.’

  ‘And you said the bang came from the bushes?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, we went to investigate, just out of curiosity at the time. We didn’t find anyone, but there were signs of the branches being disturbed, and I discovered a pistol lying on the floor. By that time my father had joined us after hearing the bang from his study, and when we returned to the folly we found a small bullet hole in the column just by where we had been sitting. It can’t have missed my head by more than a few inches; frankly both Andrea and I were amazed we hadn’t felt the bullet whiz past.’

  Harris nodded as he noted these facts, but asked nothing.

  ‘Once again, I’ve no proof of what happened. The pistol could have been dropped at anytime, and I couldn’t say for certain that the bullet hole wasn’t already in the column. But I’m quite certain that somebody fired a shot at me while I was sitting with Andrea.’

  ‘How far from the folly was the pistol?’

  ‘Only just inside the bushes, so perhaps twenty five or thirty feet.’

  ‘And had you been there long?’

  ‘Perhaps half an hour or so. Why?’

  ‘And were you moving around? Standing?’

  ‘We were sitting still. Why?’

  ‘In short, whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ear?’

  Charles Wentworth’s temper was rising.

  ‘Dr Harris, what is the point of these questions?’

&nb
sp; Harris looked up from his notebook, surprised to find he had annoyed his visitor.

  ‘I’m just trying to picture the scene. It seems odd that someone concealed in bushes, barely thirty feet from a stationary target, managed to miss.’

  ‘I’m sorry his inefficiency troubles you,’ retorted Charles, frostily.

  Harris tapped his pen on the chair arm and fixed his visitor with an unapologetic expression.

  ‘If you’re looking for concern and sympathy, then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. If you want me to solve a mystery, however, then I am going to need facts, and I make no apologies for viewing them abstractly and dispassionately.’

  For a moment a battle of wills threatened, before Charles Wentworth nodded his acceptance of this.

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. I can’t expect you to be emotionally invested in this. In fact that probably wouldn’t help, would it?’

  ‘No,’ said Harris, with what he hoped was a reconciliatory smile. ‘Probably not. I assume that nobody saw or heard anything of our gunman leaving the scene?’

  ‘No, nothing. But we were all rather shocked, as you might imagine, and not really thinking straight. And there are hundreds of trees and bushes he could have hidden behind until the coast was clear.’

  ‘It seems odd that he should drop the gun after firing it. What reason could there be to leave it behind rather than take it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ admitted Charles. ‘To be honest I hadn’t really considered that question before.’

  ‘No matter,’ declared Harris. ‘Before you tell me about the next occasion, can I get you a drink?’

  A heartfelt response to this question led to a pause while Harris poured two glasses of whiskey. The men enjoyed them in a few moments of reverent silence, before Harris brought the focus back to the third incident.

  ‘The last episode was only two weeks ago. I’ll need to explain some history first, though. I’ve an old friend from Harrow who is originally from Belgium, and lives back there now. His father was a diplomat of some kind and lived in England while we were at school. Anyway, this friend knows that I love Belgian chocolates, and he always sends me a box every summer around my birthday.’