By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Tommy & Tuppence 4)

The door opened so suddenly that he nearly fell backwards.

A woman stood on the doorstep. At first sight Tommy's first impression was that this was one of the plainest women he had ever seen. She had a large expanse of flat, pancake-like face, two enormous eyes which seemed of impossibly different colours, one green and one brown, a noble forehead with a quantity of wild hair rising up from it in a kind of thicket. She wore a purple overall with blotches of day on it, and Tommy noticed that the hand that held the door open was one of exceeding beauty of structure.

'Oh,' she said. Her voice was deep and rather attractive.

'What is it? I'm busy.' 'Mrs Boscowan?' 'Yes. What do you want?' 'My name's Beresford. I wondered if I might speak to you for a few moments.' 'I don't know. Really, must you? WhaC is it - something about a picture?' Her eye had gone to what he held under his arm.

'Yes. It's something to do with one of your husband's pictures.' 'Do you want to sell it? I've got plenty of his pictures. I don't want to buy any more of them. Take it to one of these galleries or something. They're beginning to buy him now. You don't look as though you needed to sell pictures.' 'Oh no, I don't want to sell anything.' Tommy felt extraordinary difficulty in talking to this particular woman. Her eyes, unmatching though they were, were very frae eyes and they were looking now over his shoulder down the street with an air of some peculiar interest at something in the far distance.

'Please,' said Tommy. 'I wish you would let me come in. It's so difficult to explain.' 'If you're a painter I don't want to talk to you,' said Mrs Boscowan. 'I fund painters very boring always.' 'I'm not a painter.' Well, you don t look like one, certainly.' Her eyes raked him up and down. 'You look more like a civil servant,' she said disapprovingly.

'Can I come in, Mrs Boscowan?' 'I'm not sure. Wait.' She shut the door rather abruptly. Tommy waited. After about four minutes had passed the door opened again.

'All right,' she said. 'You can come in.' She led him through the doorway, up a narrow staircase and into the large studio. In a corner of it there was a figure and various implements standing by it. Hammers and chisels.

There was also a clay head. The whole place looked as though it had recently been savaged by a gang of hooligans.

'There's never any room to sit up here,' said Mrs Boscowan.

She threw various things off a wooden stool and pushed it towards him.

'There. Sit down here and speak to me.' 'It's very kind of you to let me come in.' 'It is rather, but you looked so worried. You are worried, aren't you, about something?' 'Yes I am.' 'I thought so. What are you worried about?' 'My wife,' said Tommy, surprising himself by his answer.

'Oh, worried about your wife? Well, there's nothing unusual in that. Men are always worrying about their wives. What's the matter - has she gone off with someone or playing up?' 'No. Nothing like that.' 'Dying? Cancer?' 'No,' said Tommy. 'It's just that I don't know where she is.' 'And you think I might? Well, you'd better tell me her name and something about her if you think I can £md her for you. I'm not sure, mind you,' said Mrs Boscowan, 'that I shall want to.

I'm warning you.' 'Thank God,' said Tommy, 'you're more easy to talk to than I thought you were going to be.' 'What's the picture got to do with it? It is a picture, isn't it - must be, that shape.' Tommy undid the wrappings.

'It's a picture signed by your husband,' said Tommy. 'I want you to tell me what you can about it.' 'I see. What exactly do you want to know?' 'When it was painted and where it is.' Mrs Boscowan looked at him and for the first time there was a slight look of interest in her eyes.

'Well, that's not difficult,' she said. 'Yes, I can tell you all about it. It was painted about fifteen years ago - no, a good deal longer than that I should think. It's one of his fairly early ones.

Twenty years ago, I should say.' 'You know where it is - the place I mean?' 'Oh yes, I can remember quite well. tNice picture. I always liked it. That's the little hump-backed bridge and the house and the name of the place is Sutton Chancellor. About seven or' eight miles from Market Basing. The house itself is about a couple of miles from Sutton Chancellor. Pretty place.

Secluded.' She came up to the picture, bent down and peered at it closely.

'That's funny,' she said. 'Yes, that's very odd. I wonder now.' Tommy did not pay much attention.

'what's the name of the house?' he asked.

'I can't really remember. It got renamed, you know. Several times. I don't know what there was about k. A couple of rather tragic things happened there, I r-lxink, then the next people who came along renamed it. Called the Canal House once, or Canal Side. Once it was called Bridge House then Meadowside - or Riverside was another name.' 'who lived there - or who lives there now? Do you know?' 'Nobody I know. Man and a girl lived there when first I saw it. Used to come down for weekends. Not married, I think. The girl was a dancer. May have been an actress - no, I think she was a dancer. Ballet dancer. Rather beautiful but dumb.

Simple, almost wanting. William was quite soft about her, I remember.'

'Did he paint her?'

'No. He didn't often paint people. He used to say sometimes .he wanted to do a sketch of them, but he never did much about it. He was always silly over girls.'

'They were the people who were there when your husband was painting the house?'

'Yes, I think so. Part of the time anyway. They only came down weekends. Then there was some kind ora bust up. They had a row, I think, or he went away and left her or she went away and left him. I wasn't down there myself. I was working in Coventry then doing a group. After that I think there was just a governess in the house and the child. I don't know who the child was or where she came from but I suppose the governess was looking after her. Then I think something happened to the child. Either the governess took her away somewhere or perhaps she died. What do you want to know about the people who lived in the house twenty years ago?

Seems to me idiotic.'

'I want to hear anything I can about that house,' said Tommy. 'You see, my wife went away to look for that house.

She said she'd seen it out of a train somewhere.'

'Quite right,' said Mrs Boscowan, 'the railway line runs just the other side of the bridge. You can see the house very well from it, I expect.' Then she said, 'Why did she want to fred that house?'

Tommy gave a much abridged explanation - she looked at him doubtfully.

'You haven't come out of a mental home or anything, have you?' said Mrs Boscowan. 'On parole or something, whatever they call it.'

'I suppose I must sound a little like that,' said Tommy, 'but it's quite simple really. My wife wanted to fred out about this house and so she tried to take various train journeys to fred out where it was she'd seen it. Well, I think she did fred out. I think she went there to this place - something Chancellor?'

'Sutton Chancellor, yes. Very one-horse place it used to be.

Of course it may be a big development or even one of these new dormitory towns by now.'

'It might be anything, I expect,' said Tommy. 'She telephoned she was coming back but she didn't come back.

And I want to know what's happened to her. I think she went and started investigating that house and perhaps - perhaps she ran into danger.'

'What's dangerous about it?'

'I don't know,' said Tommy. 'Neither of us knew. I didn't even think there could be any danger about it, but my wife did.' 'E.S.P.?'

'Possibly. She's a little like that. She has hunches. You never heard of or knew a Mrs Lancaster twenty years ago or any time up to a month ago?'

'Mrs Lancaster? No, I don't think so. Sort of name one might remember, mightu't it be. No. What about Mrs Lancaster?'

'She was the woman who owned this picture. She gave it as a friendly gesture to an aunt of mine. Then she left an old people's home rather suddenly. Her relatives took her away.

I've tried to trace her but it isn't easy.'

'Who's the one who's got the imagination, you or your wife?

You seem to have thought up a lot of things and to be rather in a state, if I may say so.'

'Oh yes, you can say so,' said Tommy. 'Rather in a state and all about nothing at all. That's what you mean, isn't it? I suppose you're tight too.'

'No,' said Mrs Boscowan. Her voice had altered slightly. 'I wouldn't say about nothing at all.'

Tommy looked at her inquiringly.

'There's one thing that's odd about that picture,' said Mrs Boscowan. 'Very odd. I remember it quite well, you know. I remember most of William's pictures although he painted such a lot of them.'

'Do you remember who it was sold to, if it was sold?' 'No, I don't remember that. Yes, I think it was sold. There was a whole batch of his paintings sold from one of his exhibitions. They ran back for about three or four years before this and a couple of years later than this. Quite a lot of them were sold. Nearly all of them. But I can't remember by now who it was sold to. That's asking too much.'

'I'm very grateful to you for all you have remembered.'

'You haven't asked me yet why I said there was something odd about the picture. This picture that you brought here.'

'You mean it isn't your husband's - somebody else painted it?'