Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(14)

She smiled and lifted her teacup from its saucer; yes, the little finger crooked away.

Resnick waited. He could smell basil, over the scent of the Earl Grey. “Who, Miss Johnson?” he finally asked. “Who mentioned the magnolia?”

“I didn’t say?”

Resnick shook his head.

“I could have sworn …” She frowned as she issued herself an internal reprimand. “Vernon Thackray, that was his name. At least, that was what he claimed.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“Mr. Resnick, if he had told me it was Wednesday, I should have looked at both my calendar and the daily newspaper before believing it to be so. Though it was …” Her face brightened and her voice rose higher. “Isn’t that interesting, it was a Wednesday. Maurice was here, tending the garden. I should never have let this Thackray into the house otherwise, not if I had been on my own.”

“You didn’t trust him? He frightened you?”

“My fears, Mr. Resnick, would not have been for myself, rather for the family silver. As it were. A metaphor. All the good things, unfortunately, had to be sold long ago.”

“Then it was the paintings, that’s why he was here?”

“Absolutely. From somewhere, obviously, he had heard about the Dalzeils and presented himself on my doorstep as a serious collector, imagining that I would be this dotty old maid, bereft of her senses thanks to Alzheimer’s disease and happy to let him take them off me for a pittance.”

Resnick grinned. “You gave him short shrift.”

“I told him I appreciated his interest but that the paintings were not for sale. That was unconditional.”

“How did he react to that?”

“Oh, by telling me how much safer they would be in someone else’s hands, how fortunate I had been not to have had them stolen. At my advanced years—he actually said that, Inspector, that phrase, my advanced years indeed—wouldn’t I be more sensible, rather than risk losing them altogether and ending up with nothing, to take what I could get for them and enjoy the proceeds while I was still able.”

Indignantly, she rattled her cup and saucer down onto the table.

“When he was saying this, did you get the impression he was threatening you?”

“Oh, no. Never personally, no.”

“But the paintings—was he implying, sell them to me or I’ll get my hands on them some other way?”

Miriam Johnson took her time. “One could place that construction upon what he said, yes.”

“You let him see the paintings?”

“Of course. His admiration for them was genuine, of that I am sure.”

“And you heard from him again?”

“No.”

Resnick uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “Did he leave you an address, a card?”

She had it ready for him, in the side pocket of her Pringle cardigan. Vernon Thackray in a slightly ornate purple font and with only a telephone number underneath. An 01728 code. Suffolk, somewhere, Resnick thought.

“You didn’t contact him?”

“Nor he, me, Inspector. Not to my certain knowledge, at least.” She smiled at him, bright eyed.

“How’d it go with Mark?”

Millington was at his desk, troughing into what looked suspiciously like an M & S chicken and mushroom pie.

Resnick was still filling him in when the duty officer phoned up to say that Suzanne Olds had arrived.

“Know more in a minute, Graham.”

“Happen he should’ve stuck with seeing the shrink more’n the couple of sessions he did.” Pausing, Millington eased a piece of something unchewable to one side of his mouth with his tongue. “Mind you, what with Lynn still trotting off for therapy rain or shine, only needs you to crack up and we can run the whole CID room from the psychiatric unit.”

Me, Resnick thought. Why me? But then Millington was so much less likely a candidate. Disregard his avowed intention of happily resettling in Skegness and Resnick doubted a more unimaginatively sane man existed.

Suzanne Olds wrinkled up her nose at the offer of longmashed tea. She and Resnick had been crossing swords for years, Olds capable of raising her well-modulated voice in anger while rarely losing her cool; each respected the other’s integrity, their underlying sense of what was right.

“They’ll be ready to charge him this evening, push him through court tomorrow. Preliminary hearing. There’s nothing I can say will talk them out of keeping him in the cells overnight.”

“Charges?”

“Affray. Causing grievous bodily harm.”

“And the knife?”

“If we’re lucky, possession of an offensive weapon, nothing more.”

“He’ll get bail?”

“Given his police record, yes, I’d be surprised if he didn’t. There’ll be conditions, of course. It’s difficult to know yet how stringent.”

“And then Crown Court.”

“Uh-hum.”

“One month, two.”

“Try two.”

In that time, Resnick thought, who was to say what havoc Divine might wreak upon himself and other people?

“There’s no way,” Resnick said, “when it comes to trial, of defending him without hauling all that happened back out into the open?”