Read Online Borrowed Time by Robert Goddard - Free Book Online Page A

Cot in his day without a pinched bottom to remember him by at the very least, Miss Timariot, believe you me. But then, as I say, he did have good taste in that regard if in no other.”
    This contrived compliment, risqué as Henley no doubt thought it, was followed by an outburst of chortling and the appearance in Bella’s eyes of the steely boredom I’d often seen before. It seemed like the cue I’d been waiting for. “You don’t make your uncle sound like a natural candidate for burglary, Mr. Bantock.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. He was probably splashing money around in some pub. Spending the price agreed for
Black Widow
before he’d actually been paid it. That would be his style. Some ne’er-do-well from London on a housebreaking tour of the provinces takes note and follows him home. Then things turn nasty. Uncle Oscar wouldn’t have backed down from a fight, especially not with drink on board.”
    “That’s how you see it, is it?”
    “That’s how the police see it. So I understand, anyway. He must have been out when Lady Paxton first called. Probably forgot the time they’d fixed to meet. It would have been unlike him not to. That would explain why she left home at lunchtime. Set on buying the picture, she went back later, I suppose. And walked straight into . . . well, something quite frightful.”
    “You think it’s open and shut?”
    “Presumably. The police must have had good reason to arrest this man Naylor. They seem certain he did it. I assume there’s clinching forensic evidence. What more is there to say? Apart from the acute distress Lady Paxton’s family must have suffered, of course. Identifying my uncle’s body was upsetting enough for me. What it can have been like for Lady Paxton’s daughter—a girl not yet out of her teens, I believe—to see her mother, well, in the state she must have been in, in a mortuary, in the middle of the night . . .” He shook his head, briefly sobered by the contemplation of such an experience.
    “Is she the daughter you’re seeing this afternoon?”
    “No, no. The elder daughter’s coming. Sarah, I think she said her name was. I’m not quite sure what she hopes to accomplish, but . . .” A point suddenly occurred to him. His nose quivered as it registered. “Are you acquainted with the girls, Mr. Timariot?”
    “No. I only ever met their mother.”
    “You knew her well?”
    I could sense Bella watching me as I replied. “I felt I did, yes. We . . . understood each other. So I thought.”
    “You shared her interest in Expressionism?”
    “We never discussed it.”
    “Never?”
    “We only met once, you see. Just once. Before the end.”
    “But . . . I thought you said . . .” He frowned at me, his mouth forming a suspicious pout. “When
exactly
did you meet her, Mr. Timariot?”
    “The early evening of July seventeenth.”
    “When?”
    “The day she died. Just a few hours before, as a matter of fact.”
    “But . . . I understood you to say . . . you were a friend of hers.”
    “No. I didn’t say that. You assumed it.”
    “You’re splitting hairs. You let me think . . .” He glared round at Bella. “You both let me think . . .”
    Bella glanced irritably at me, then laid a calming hand on Henley’s elbow and smiled sweetly at him. “When’s your appointment with Miss Paxton, Mr. Bantock?”
    “What? Oh, three o’clock. But—”
    “We’d better get you back, then, hadn’t we? We wouldn’t want her to be stood up.”
     
    It was half past two when we drove away from Whistler’s Cot. I’d assured Henley that the police knew all about my meeting with Louise Paxton, but I still reckoned he’d be on the phone to them before we reached the bottom of the lane. His wasn’t a trusting nature. Nor a grieving one, for that matter.
    It would be different for the Paxton family, of course. Louise had left a husband and two daughters, rather than one ingrate nephew. They’d be mourning her now, in full and genuine measure. And one of