In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(128)

“Yes. Yes. The art gallery. Of course. I remember. It was because you first said he was a sculptor, you see. The young man never identified himself as a sculptor when he came to see me. Or even an artist, for that matter. He only confided that he hoped—”

“You remember him?” Barbara broke in eagerly.

“It seemed like a rather dubious plan for someone who spoke so”—Sitwell glanced at her and quickly shifted gears—“well, who dressed so …” Sitwell hesitated altogether, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Clearly, he realised that he was bordering on giving offence. Barbara's accent betrayed her origins, which were very nearly identical to those of Terry Cole. And as to her manner of dress, she didn't need a full-length mirror to tell her she was no candidate for Vogue.

“Right. He wore black all the time and had a working-class accent,” Barbara said. “Goatee. Cropped hair. A black ponytail.”

Yes. That was the chap, Sitwell confirmed. He'd been at Bowers the previous week. He'd brought along a sample of something that he thought the house might wish to auction. The proceeds of such an auction, he'd confided, would help him fund the gallery that he wished to open.

A sample of something to auction? Barbara's first thought went to the box of call girl cards that she'd found beneath Terry Cole's bed. Stranger things had been sold to the public. But she wasn't sure she could name any of them.

“What was it? Not one of his sculptures?”

“A piece of sheet music,” Sitwell replied. “He said he'd read about someone selling a handwritten Lennon and McCartney song—or a notebook of lyrics, something like that—and he'd hoped to sell a packet of music he had in his possession. The sheet he showed me was part of that packet.”

“Lennon and McCartney music, d'you mean?”

“No. This was a piece by Michael Chandler. The boy told me he'd got a dozen more and was hoping for an auction. I expect he was imagining a scene in which several thousand fans of musical theatre queue up for hours, hoping for the chance to pay twenty thousand pounds for a sheet of paper on which a dead man once made a few pencil smudges.” Sitwell smiled, offering Barbara the sort of expression he must have offered Terry: one of tolerant and paternalistic derision. She itched to smack him. She restrained herself.

“So the music was worthless?” Barbara asked.

“Not at all.” Sitwell went on to explain that the music might have been worth a fortune, but it made no difference because it belonged to the Chandler estate no matter how it happened to come into Terry Cole's possession. So Bowers couldn't auction it off unless the Chandler estate authorised a sale. In which case, the money would go to the surviving Chandlers anyway.

“So how did the music come to be in his possession?”

“Oxfam? Jumble sale? I don't know. People sometimes throw out valuable belongings without realising, don't they? Or they shove them away in a suitcase or a cardboard box and the suitcase or box falls into someone else's hands. At any rate, the boy didn't say and I didn't ask. I did offer to track down the solicitors for the Chandler estate and turn the music over to them, to pass on to the widow and children. But Cole preferred to do that himself, hoping—he said—that there'd be a reward, at least, for handing over found property.”

“Found property?”

“That's what he called it.”

The only question the boy had at the end of their meeting was to enquire how best to find the Chandler solicitors. Sitwell had directed him to King-Ryder Productions since—as everyone who'd been even moderately conscious for the last two decades knew—Michael Chandler and David King-Ryder had been partners until Michael Chandler's untimely death. “I suppose I should have pointed him towards the King-Ryder estate as well, come to think of it,” Sitwell said contemplatively, adding “Poor sod,” in apparent reference to David King-Ryder's suicide earlier that summer. “But as the production company's still up and running, I thought it made sense to start with them.”

What, Barbara thought, an intriguing wrinkle. She wondered if it was on the blanket of the murder or part of another bed entirely.

Into her silence, Sitwell waxed apologetic. He was sorry he couldn't be more helpful. There'd been nothing sinister about the boy's visit. Nothing exceptional about it either. Sitwell had forgotten altogether that he'd ever met him and he still couldn't say how Terry Cole had come to have his business card because he still couldn't recall ever handing him one.

“He took one,” Barbara said, and indicated a card holder on Sitwell's desk with a nod of her head.

“Oh. I see. I don't remember him doing so, but I suppose he might have. I wonder why.”

“For his chewing gum,” she told him, thinking, And thank God for that.

She made her way back out to the street. There, she dug out of her bag the roster of employees that Dick Long had given her at 31-32 Soho Square. The list was alphabetical by employee surname. It included the office telephone number of the person in question, the home address and phone number, and the organisation for which each individual worked.

Barbara scanned the list till she'd come up with what she was looking for.

King-Ryder Productions, she read next to the tenth name down.

Bingo, she thought.