In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(127)

Sitwell turned out to be the major-domo of the day's activities. He was a rotund figure with a rug on his head that made him look like a bloke wearing yesterday's road kill. When Barbara came upon him, he was on his haunches inspecting a frameless painting of three hunting dogs capering beneath an oak tree. He'd placed his clipboard on the floor and stuck his hand through a large rip in the canvas that ran from the right corner like a bolt of lightning. Or a commentary on the work itself, Barbara thought: It looked to her like a fairly dismal effort.

Sitwell withdrew his hand and called out, “Take this to Restoration. Tell them we'll want it in six weeks,” to a youngish assistant who was rushing by with several other paintings stacked in his arms.

“Right, Mr. Sitwell,” the boy called back. “Will do in a tick. These're going to Suitable. I'll be right back.”

Sitwell shoved himself to his feet. He nodded at Barbara and then at the painting he'd been inspecting. “It'll go for ten thousand.”

“You're joking,” she said. “Is it the painter?”

“It's the dogs. You know the English. Can't abide them myself. Dogs, that is. What can I do for you?”

“I'd like a word, if there's a place we can talk.”

“A word about what? We're overwhelmed at the moment. And we've two more deliveries coming in this afternoon.”

“A word about murder.” Barbara offered him her identification. Presto. His attention was hers.

He ushered her up a cramped stairway, where his office occupied a cubbyhole overlooking the showrooms. It was furnished simply, with a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. Its only decorations—if they could be called such—were the walls. These had been covered with cork board from floor to ceiling and on them were pinned and stapled a veritable history of the enterprise in which Mr. Sitwell worked. It appeared that the auction house had a distinguished past. But like a less noticed child in a home of high-achieving siblings, it needed to shout about itself to be heard above the notoriety given to Sotheby's and Christie's.

Barbara brought Sitwell quickly up to speed with regard to the death of Terry Cole: A young man—found dead in Derbyshire—had evidently kept a business card with Neil Sitwell's name on it among his belongings, she said. Would Mr. Sitwell have any idea why that was the case?

“He was something of an artist,” Barbara added helpfully. “A sculptor. He banged about with gardening tools and farming implements. For his sculptures, I mean. That's how you might have met him. P'rhaps at a show … Does this sound familiar?”

“Not in the least, I'm afraid,” Sitwell said. “I attend openings, naturally. One likes to keep abreast of what's current in the art world. It's rather like honing one's instincts for what will sell and what won't. But that's my avocation—following the latest trends—not my main line of work. Since we're an auction house and not a gallery, I'd've had no reason to give a young artist my business card.”

“Because you don't auction modern art, you mean?”

“Because we don't auction work by unestablished artists. For obvious reasons.”

Barbara mulled this over, wondering if Terry Cole had attempted to present himself as an established sculptor. This seemed unlikely. And while Cilia Thompson had claimed the sale of at least one of her rebarbative pieces, it didn't seem likely that an auction house would be trying to win her over by wooing her flatmate instead. “Could he have come here—or even met you elsewhere—for another reason, then?”

Sitwell steepled his fingertips beneath his chin. “We've been looking for a qualified picture restorer for the past three months. As he was an artist—”

“I'm using the word in its broadest sense,” Barbara cautioned the man.

“Right. I understand. Well, as he considered himself an artist, perhaps he knew something about restoring pictures and came here for an interview with me. Hang on.” He wrestled a black engagement diary from the top middle drawer of his desk. He began going back through the pages, running his index finger down the days as he examined the appointments listed for each. “No Cole, Terry or Terence, I'm afraid. No Cole at all.” He turned next to a dented metal box in which index cards were filed behind dog-eared alphabetical dividers. He explained that it was his habit to keep the names and addresses of individuals whose talents he'd deemed useful to Bowers in one way or another and perhaps Terence Cole was among those individuals …. But no. His name wasn't among those on the index cards either. He was terribly sorry, Neil Sitwell said, but it didn't appear that he was going to be able to assist the detective constable with her enquiry at all.

Barbara tried a last question. Was it possible, she asked, that Terry Cole had come across Mr. Sitwell's business card in another way? From what she'd learned from speaking to the boy's mother and sister, he had dreams of opening his own art gallery. So perhaps he'd run into Mr. Sitwell somewhere, got into a conversation with him, and found himself on the receiving end of one of Mr. Sitwell's cards with an invitation to call in sometime for a chat and some advice …

Barbara said it all encouragingly, without much hope of striking gold. But when she said the words “opening his own art gallery,” Sitwell held up an index finger as if a memory had been jarred loose in his brain.