The Hogarth Conspiracy (25 page)

Knowledge was danger. In this case only ignorance ensured safety.

I quickly finished my drawings, collected them together, and slid them into my portfolio. I gathered my tools and signalled the guard that I was ready to leave. The governor showed me out of Newgate Prison into the feeble city sunlight.

I looked ahead, watching the gibbet being erected from which Sarah Malcolm would hang. And as I hurried from that terrible place I thought, for some unaccountable reason, of the villain Overton. I thought of the Royal court and was suddenly sick to my stomach.

Above my head a grey cloud slowly shifted. A portentous sensation of doom crossed my heart, and the London air was wicked with malice as the clock struck ten.

Thirty-Two

“I
HAD IT
,” V
ICTOR SAID SIMPLY AS
T
ULLY OPENED THE DOOR.
“I
HAD
the Hogarth, and I lost it!” In silence, Tully passed him a whiskey as Victor, caught between confusion and rage, went on. “I've been set up. I was on my way to see Annette Dvorski—I was even talking to her on the cell phone, for God's sake—but when I got there, someone knocked me out.”

“
What!”

“When I came to—which I wouldn't have if it hadn't been as cold as hell in Bernie Freeland's apartment—Annette Dvorski had been murdered.” He could see the image of her body and quickly shook it away. “
I
was supposed to be found there, Tully. I was supposed to be taken for her killer. Jesus, I only just got away.”

“So you think someone set you up?”

Victor's expression was hostile.

“Of course.
Everything
's been set up. Everything. The only thing they didn't expect was that I'd recover in time to get away. Or that I'd take Annette Dvorski's case with me.”

“You took her case? Why?”

“I wasn't thinking clearly. It was an impulse; I just grabbed it.” He looked at his friend. “And you know what? The Hogarth was in it, smuggled into New York
inside
a baseball bat. It was a present from Bernie Freeland to Annette Dvorski. He was supposed to give it to Annette at their next meeting, but he was killed before he had the chance.” Victor finished his drink, surprised that he still felt jumpy—and sober—and that the wound on the back of his scalp was still aching. “I don't suppose they realized what was in the suitcase or they would have taken it earlier. Maybe they only realized afterward, when they saw me with it.”

“Who's
they
?”

“Whoever set me up. I took the case and went to JFK, got the first flight I could. But before I checked the bag in—”

An incredulous Tully interrupted, staring at him. “
You checked the bag in the hold?
”

Victor threw up his hands.

“I know, I know! But at the time I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought that if anyone was following me, they'd assume I had the painting on me, so before I checked the case in, I put new straps around it and a label with my name on it.” He leaned back in his seat, feeling the first pull of the alcohol. “When I got back to Heathrow, I was stopped at customs. They opened the bag, and it wasn't mine! It had been switched. Someone put my strap and label on another case. Annette Dvorski's bag—and the Hogarth—have disappeared.” Victor paused, looking intently at Tully. “You didn't tell Mrs. Fleet I was back in London, did you?”

“Of course not!” Tully replied, refilling both of their glasses. “Look, Victor, you
have
to go to the police now.”

“Oh, yes; they're going to listen to me,” he said bitterly. “Think about it, Tully. I was in Bernie Freeland's apartment. Annette Dvorski was murdered there. I haven't a leg to stand on.”

“Do the police know you were there?”

“I doubt it. There's no connection between me and Annette Dvorski. I dumped all her identification papers. No one in New York should be able to tie me to Annette unless they find out what I'm investigating. She only had a pay-as-you-go phone.” He held Tully's gaze. “Which is why I can't go to the police.”

“But you had no reason to kill the woman.”

“I took the Hogarth. How's that for a motive?” Victor said coldly. “They would assume that I killed her to get the painting. I'm a disgraced art dealer. A criminal with a record for fraud, remember? The perfect person to set up.”

Tully was thoughtful for a moment. “Who else knew you were in New York?”

“Only Charlene Fleet.”

“But why would
she
set you up?”

“To get me to find the Hogarth. As soon as I had the painting, I was no further use to her. Remember what I said on the phone, Tully? She didn't hire me to succeed; she hired me to fail.”

“But you
didn't
fail. You found the Hogarth.”

“Which was then taken from me.” Victor stared into the glass of whiskey, finally feeling the effect on his empty stomach. “She said she didn't give a damn about the painting, that she only wanted her girls safe to protect her business. She was obviously lying.”

“If it was she who set you up.”

“There's no one else it could have been. Apart from you.”

Tully's expression was bland.

“Victor, dear boy, don't even think about it. I'm on your side. I didn't tell anyone—either deliberately or accidentally—where you were or what you were doing.”

“So it has to be Fleet,” Victor concluded. “I haven't returned any of her messages; she doesn't even know I'm back in London. She might be thinking that I'm languishing in some New York jail at this very minute. Then she'd have the painting and I'd be blamed for Annette Dvorski's murder. It would be clever to hire me and pretend to have no interest in the painting, but one by one the passengers on that plane, the people who knew about the Hogarth, are being killed or silenced. Of course, she can't be doing it on her own, but Charlene Fleet has contacts everywhere and a lot of money. I know for a fact that her clients include Russian and Chinese dealers as well as Americans, not to mention the English. Think of Arnold Fletcher for a start. I suppose it's no coincidence that he brought me in on this case.”

“Arnold's not a criminal,” Tully replied firmly. “He's not the type. Too careful, too private, too cagey. Everyone wants to know where his money came from, where
he
came from, but no one ever finds out. A very dark horse is Arnold.”

“He's not like Fleet's usual clients.”

“He probably gets lonely, like we all do.” Tully said, changing the subject. “Can you imagine how much that woman knows?”

“And how many people owe her, how many secrets she's hogging. Fleet could buy any amount of help.” Victor paused, thoughtful. “There was a peculiar Chinese man at the airport; I think he might have switched the suitcases.”

He touched the back of his head and grimaced.

“What is it?” Tully asked.

“I told you; I was knocked out.”

“You should get a doctor to look at that.” Tully was wondering if the blow to Victor's head had confused him. “You could have a concussion, you know. I remember an actor I worked with once was struck by a piece of scenery which hadn't been erected properly. He was in a dreadful state, couldn't remember his own name. Concussion can scramble your thoughts terribly.”

“Don't humor me, Tully. There
was
a Chinese man at the airport, behaving oddly. Said he was going to Paris, then got on my plane to London. And someone
did
force bleach down Annette Dvorski's throat, and I
did
run for my bloody life. So please,” Victor said wearily, “do me a favor and believe me. Because frankly, I need someone to believe me.”

Thirty-Three

I
N AN EXPANSIVE WHITE-FRONTED HOUSE SET BEHIND CLIPPED YEW
hedges in an exclusive enclave in Connecticut, Louis Freeland sat alone in his room. For a while he had been staring out the window and wondering when it would rain. The sky had been temperamental with clouds since ten that morning, but not a drop had fallen. He would, Louis promised himself, walk in the rain. When it finally came. He would not wear a hat but walk to the very bottom of the lawn and stand by the lake, feeling the cold water falling on his hair.

He liked the lake, had sometimes imagined that his mother might come there. That if he concentrated, he might catch a glimpse of a whitewater creature hiding in the long green reeds. It was an image that had shimmered throughout his childhood dreams: the accidental drowning of his mother. So long had he lived with the image that it had assumed a psychotic intensity. He could picture her clothes, always green in color, her drowning dress filled with water, her hair sleek to her head like a statue's. And the reeds, waving under the weight of the lake, taking her down.

None of Louis's doctors realized that he understood how his mother had died because he had the gift of listening, not of talking. He was often dumbly uncommunicative, but it wasn't through stupidity, just unwillingness to speak. For Louis, there was too much talk. People did it all the time, throwing out words like dry seeds on rocky ground, dead before they struck earth, making no impact. Sometimes he had wanted to put the words back into the speaker's mouth and get him or her to swallow them. To take them away again.

But he had been a child and knew that he had little power in a world of professional medical people or among the glistening cleverness of his father's acquaintances. Thinking of his father, Louis felt a thrill of expectancy that had never left him since he had been six years old. The joy of it! The joy of knowing that he—a solitary child, left alone, without a mother—possessed the whole of his father's attention. Louis felt a hum of satisfaction. Who had need of a mother with Bernie Freeland as a father?

Still looking up at the sky, Louis heard footsteps along the passage and turned to his computer. He would appear to be busy and with luck would be left alone. With studied concentration he stared at the wide screen, his searching brown eyes focused on the game he was playing. His narrow hands, small as a boy's, worked the computer keyboard like a concert pianist; only the sound of his soft intermittent cough broke the silence.

For all his insight, Louis had never realized that his life was a virtual secret. The staff and his doctors knew who his father was, but Bernie had been ashamed of his son, always ill at ease in his company. He had wanted the perfect heir to his hard-won fortune, but Louis had fallen short of his father's emotional and professional mark. Conceived as a result of a brief marriage, the boy had been born with learning difficulties. His mother had died in a freak drowning accident when he was six, and he had been raised by a nurse and Mrs. Sheldon, the housekeeper.

Louis was given the best treatment, the best therapy, and his difficulties gradually lessened as he grew into his teens until he was noticeably different only in his social diffidence. Emotionally awkward, he lacked his father's easy, boisterous charm but was devoted to him, a devotion that Bernie found it increasingly difficult to deal with.

At first Louis had lived with Bernie in Australia, his father's peripatetic lifestyle suiting them both. Louis spent his time either with his adored father or longing to see him. For a child with a limited emotional range, he existed in a state of continuous expectation that was heightened when he was moved to his father's home in Connecticut. Although Bernie insisted that he had found better tutors for his son, which had necessitated the move, his prime motive had actually been selfish.

With one failed marriage behind him and no other children, Bernie Freeland had found Louis's devotion unpalatable as he grew from a child into a young man. What had been affectionate, at times touching, in a child was embarrassing in an adult. He didn't understand that his son's whole existence was centered on him. Seldom demonstrative with anyone else, Louis would run to Bernie and sit adoringly at his feet, listening to every word. He was a constant appreciative audience of one.