Confess, Fletch Read online

  “Yes, Two have been sold through this gallery. A third, the Picasso, is downstairs. So there are fifteen paintings and the one sculpture.”

  “And do the works have anything in common?”

  Flynn had walked them into a small, dark dining room.

  “Not really. They belong to all sorts of different schools and eras. Many of them, but not all, are by Italian masters.”

  “This would be the kitchen, I think.”

  They looked in at white, gleaming cabinets and dark blue counters.

  “Nothing in there, I think,” said Flynn, “except some Warhols on the shelves.”

  Back in the living room, Flynn said, “Are you looking?”

  “Yes.”

  There were some unimportant drawings behind the piano, and a large Mondrian over the divan.

  Flynn snapped the light on in a small den off the living room.

  “Anything in here?”

  A Sisley over the desk—the usual winding road and winding stream. The room was too dark for it.

  “No.”

  “I rather like that one,” said Flynn, looking at it closely. He turned away from it. “Ah, going around with you is an education.”

  They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

  The houseman stood on the landing. Thin in his long, dark bathrobe, thin face long in genuine grief, he stood aside, obviously full of questions regarding the future of his master, his own future—questions his dignity prohibited he ask.

  “Ah, yes,” said Flynn.

  In the bedroom was a shocking, life-sized nude—almost an illustration—of no quality whatsoever, except that it was arousing.

  “The man had a private taste,” said Flynn. “I suspect he entertained very few of his fellow faculty members in his bedroom.”

  One guest room had a collection of cartoons; the other a photography wall.

  Fletch said, “You see, Inspector, Horan didn’t really own paintings. Dealers don’t. More than the average person, of course, a good deal more, in value, but a dealer is a dealer first, and a collector second.”

  “I see.

  The houseman remained in the shadows of the corridor.

  “Where is your room?” asked Flynn.

  “Upstairs, sir.”

  “May we see it?”

  The houseman opened a corridor door to a flight of stairs.

  His bedroom was spartan: a bed, a bureau, a chair, a closet, a small television. His bath was spotless.

  An attic room across the fifth floor landing contained nothing but the usual empty suitcases, trunks, a great many empty picture frames, a rolled rug, defunct lighting fixtures.

  Flynn said, “Are the picture frames significant?”

  “No.”

  Again on the third floor landing, Flynn said to the houseman, “Is there a safe in the house?”

  “Yes, sir. In Mister Horan’s office.”

  “You mean the wee one?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve already seen that. I guess I mean a vault. Is there a vault in the house, something of good, big size?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’d know if there were?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Flynn put his hand on the old man’s forearm.

  “I’m sorry for you. Have you been with him long?”

  “Fourteen years.”

  The old man took a step back into the shadow.

  “This must be quite a shock to you.”

  “It is, sir.”

  They took the elevator to the second floor and went through the four galleries there. One was completely empty. The others had only a few works in each, lit and displayed magnificently.

  Flynn said, “Nothing, eh?”

  He might have been taking a Sunday stroll through a sculpture garden.

  “I wouldn’t say exactly nothing,” said Fletch. “But none of the de Grassi paintings.”

  Despite the house’s perfect climate control, Fletch’s forehead was hot. His hands were sticky.

  Flynn was in no hurry.

  “Well, we’ll go out to Weston now.” Flynn buttoned his raincoat. “The Weston police will meet us at their border.”

  Double-parked, Grover waited outside in the black Ford.

  “We’ll both get in the back,” said Flynn. “That way we can talk more easily.”

  Grover drove west on Newbury Street.

  Fletch was sitting as far back in his dark corner as he could.

  Coat opened again, knees wide, Flynn took up a great lot of room, anyway.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll miss two o’clock feeding this morning. At least I know Elsbeth can’t wait. Have you ever been to Weston?”

  “No,” said Fletch.

  “Of course you haven’t. You’re a stranger in town. And we’ve been watching you as if you were a boy with a slingshot since you arrived. I hear it’s a pretty place.”

  Flynn chuckled, in the dark.

  “All this time poor Grover up there thought you were the guilty one. Eh, Grover?”

  Sergeant Richard T. Whelan did not answer the bird’s turd.

  “Well,” said Flynn, “so did I. More or less. When was it? Wednesday night, I think. I thought we were going to get a confession out of you. Instead, you invited us for dinner. Then that day on the phone, when I couldn’t get around to see you, I felt sure I could convince you of your guilt. I decided I had to get to know this man. So on Saturday I invaded your privacy for the purpose of getting to know you—an old technique of mine—and damnall, you still turned up as innocent as a spring lamb,”

  They went down the ramp on to the Turnpike Extension and proceeded at a sedate pace, well below the speed limit.

  “When I heard your voice on the phone early Sunday morning, I thought sure you were calling from a bar ready to confess.” Flynn laughed. “Unburden your soul.”

  “I might yet,” said Fletch.

  Grover sat up to look at him through the rear-view mirror.

  Still chuckling, Flynn said, “Now what do you mean by that?”

  “I hate to spoil your time,” said Fletch, “but Horan couldn’t have killed Ruth Fryer.”

  “Ah, but he did.”

  “How?”

  “He hit her over the head with a whisky bottle. A full whisky bottle.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, Flynn.”

  “It does. It was his purpose to frame you.”

  “He didn’t know me.”

  “He didn’t have to. And, to a greater extent than you realize, he did know you. Although you’re a great investigative reporter …”—Flynn took coins for the toll out of his pocket and handed them to Grover— “… you made a mistake, lad.”

  “You have to pay tolls?”

  “This road is in the state system, and I work for the city. We’ve got enough governments in this country now to spread thinly around the world.”

  “What mistake?”

  “Matter of days after Count de Grassi is reported kidnapped, then murdered, Horan gets this innocent wee letter, from Rome of all places, asking him to locate one of the de Grassi paintings.”

  “He knew nothing about the de Grassi murder,” Fletch said. “The local papers didn’t carry it. I checked.”

  “I did, too. Earlier today. So I asked the man tonight what paper he reads, and he said the New York Times. The Times did carry the story.

  “Christ. I knew he read the Times.”

  “You had even been mentioned by name, as Peter Fletcher, that is, as the de Grassi family spokesman the day you had the ladies reveal their most intimate finances to convince the kidnappers they couldn’t come up with the exorbitant ransom. The Times printed it.”

  “Why would they have? From Italy?”

  “You’re the journalist. There’s no end of interest in crime, my lad.”

  “Ow.”

  “You were undone by the press, my lad. You’re not the first.”

  “Horan would have noticed even a small it
em concerning the de Grassis.”

  “Precisely.”

  Fletch said, “He must be in cahoots with Cooney.”

  “I doubt any man would go to the extent Horan did to protect another man. It’s possible, of course,” Flynn said. “Anything’s possible.”

  “It’s still not possible.”

  “So you write him this innocent letter of enquiry from Rome, telling him which painting in all the world has caught your fancy, what day you’ll arrive in Boston, and where you’ll be staying.

  “On the day you’re due to arrive, the handsome, sauve, sophisticated Horan, probably with an empty suitcase, went to the airport, probably pretended he had just arrived from someplace, picks up the Trans World Airline Ground Hostess….”

  “I didn’t tell him what airlines I was flying.”

  “If he knows what day you’re arriving, he can find out what airlines, what flight number, and what arrival time with a single phone call. Surely you know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “As handsome a man as he is, looking as safe as your favourite uncle, he suggests Ruth Fryer join him for dinner, at some fancy place obviously he can afford. Probably he mentions he’s a widower, an art dealer, on the Harvard faculty. Why wouldn’t she go with him? Her boyfriend’s not in town. She’s in a city she doesn’t know. Dinner with Horan sounds better than sitting in her motel room manicuring her fist.”

  “You haven’t gotten to the impossibilities yet.”

  “There aren’t any. Ach, another toll.” He rummaged in his pocket again. “Don’t they ever stop their infernal taxing?”

  He handed more coins to Grover.

  “He taxies Ms. Fryer to her motel. Allows her time to change. Waits for her in the bar. When she reappears, he has a drink all poured and waiting for her. He buys her more than one. It’s his point to give you time to get into your apartment and out again. He’s perfectly sure that you, a man alone in a strange city, an unfamiliar apartment, of course will take himself out to dinner. And you did.”

  Grover steered into the side road which curved up through the woods into Weston.

  “Mister Horan was a pretty good predictor,” Flynn said.

  Ahead, a car was pulled off the road, showing only its parking lights.

  “Is that a police car, Grover?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’d be waiting for us. Not only do they have to effect the warrant, but surely we’d never find the house by ourselves in this woodsy place.”

  Grover stopped behind the parked car.

  “Using the excuse of dropping off his suitcase, I’m sure, Horan takes Ruth Fryer to what he says is his apartment, but which is really your apartment. An innocent enough excuse to get a girl home with you.” A uniformed policeman from the other car was striding towards them. “You might remember it yourself.”

  “Flynn,” Fletch said. “Horan didn’t have a key to that apartment.”

  “Ah, but he did. A few years ago he arranged some restoration work on Bart Connors’ paintings while the Connorses were vacationing in the Rockies. And who’d ever demand a key back from a man like Ronald Risom Horan, or even remember he had it?” Flynn rolled down the window. “You should see the number of keys in his desk. Hello!” he said through the window.

  “He told me he had done restoration work for Connors.”

  “Inspector Flynn?”

  “I am that.”

  “Weston Police, sir. You’re here to enter the Horan house with a warrant?”

  “We are.”

  Flynn was hunched forward, blocking the window.

  “If you’ll just follow us, sir.”

  “We will. And what is your name?”

  “Officer Cabot, sir.”

  The policeman returned to his car, Flynn rolled up his window, and they started off in tandem at a slow pace.

  Fletch said, “Well.”

  “You see, all the time you thought you were leading him down the garden path, he was leading you down the garden path.”

  “Because he reads the Times.”

  “You were a great threat to him. He had to get rid of you. If he murdered you outright, he’d be a natural suspect. You were coming to Boston to see him, and only him. So he contrived this magnificent circumstance to stop your investigation before it ever started. It’s a good thing I didn’t arrest you right away. Isn’t it, Grover? The man must have been mighty surprised to have you show up the next day at his office as free as a birdie in an orchard.”

  “I’m grateful to you.”

  “Well, we got our man, although I had to withstand more than one tongue-lashing from that boyo up there in the front seat. Terrible tongue-lashings, they were.”

  They were going down the driveway.

  “So Horan bopped the young lady over the head with a full bottle of whisky, before or after he tore the dress off her, put all the other liquor bottles away, put water in the carafe to make things as easy as possible for you to implicate yourself, knowing as sure as God made cats’ eyes any man coming into a strange apartment at night finding a naked murdered girl would go to the nearest bottle and pour himself a big one.”

  “Except you.”

  “I might be tempted myself.”

  The uniformed policemen were waiting for them on the gravel.

  “Here’s the warrant,” said Flynn.

  Cabot said, “There was an attempted burglary here tonight.”

  “Was there, indeed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “‘Attempted’, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. The burglar or burglars didn’t actually gain entry to the house. The alarm scared them away.”

  “And how do you know that already?”

  “Mister Horan came out earlier. We went through the house with him. He said nothing was missing.”

  “Is that where he was? Now isn’t that interesting? He said he was taking a ride in the moonlight. Now why didn’t he tell me?”

  Cabot said, “In fact, he was here when we arrived.”

  “Do you suppose he robbed himself?” Flynn squinted at Fletch. “Could he have known we were breathing down his neck?”

  Fletch said, “How would I know?”

  Flynn looked at Grover, helpless, and shrugged.

  “Well, let’s see what’s inside.”

  On the porch, Officer Cabot put his hand through the frame of the broken window and pushed the plywood free. It clattered to the kitchen floor. He reached around, released the locks, and opened the door.

  In the kitchen, they crunched on glass.

  Turning on and off lights as they went, the five men went through the house, the dining room, the living room, the library.

  The house was furnished in the worst country house style—ill-fitting, ersatz Colonial pine furniture, threadbare rugs which should have been retired long since.

  At the top of the stairs on the second storey, Flynn turned to Fletch.

  “Am I wrong, or is there nothing at all of value in this house?”

  The uniformed policemen were turning on lights in the bedrooms.

  Fletch said, “So far I’ve seen nothing of value.”

  Flynn said, “Then why the extensive, expensive burglar alarms?”

  They went through the bedrooms. Again like the worst New England country houses, they were all furnished like boarding school dormitories. Everything was solid, cheap, simple and unattractive.

  “From outside,” said Flynn, “you’d think this an imposing country mansion, stuffed with the wealths of Persia. Any burglar attracted to this house would be a swimmer diving into a dry pool.”

  As they had proceeded, Flynn had opened and closed the doors to empty closets absently.

  In the middle bedroom, in the rear of the second storey, he opened the closet door.

  “Now, that’s something. Look at the dust sheets, folded so neatly.” He pulled the chain to the overhead light. “Not much dust on the floor spaces near the walls. There’s a dust-free space in the cen
tre of the floor, too. Do you see?”

  Fletch looked over his shoulder.

  “Do you think the paintings were here?”

  “We’ll never know.”

  He pulled the chain and closed the door.

  Climbing the stairs to the attic, Flynn said to Officer Cabot, “Mister Horan was sure nothing was missing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You went through the house with him yourself, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you go through the closets in the bedrooms with him?”

  “Yes, sir. Every one.”

  After they looked around the attic rooms, Flynn asked Officer Cabot, “And are burglaries common around here?”

  “Yes.”

  The other policeman said, “Three on this road this month.”

  “Ah, things are getting to a terrible state.”

  Again standing on the back porch, waiting for the Weston policemen to close up the house, Flynn said, “I don’t think the man Horan ever lived here at all. What was the house for?”

  “Maybe he inherited it.”

  Slamming the door behind him, Officer Cabot gave Flynn a friendly nod.

  “What shall we say if Mister Horan asks us why we searched his house?”

  “Mister Horan won’t be asking,” said Flynn. “We arrested him earlier this evening for first degree murder.”

  They were driving east on the Turnpike Extension.

  “It’s a puzzle,” said Flynn. “It is. How could he have known enough to rob himself? And what did he do with the paintings?”

  Fletch said, “Perhaps you weren’t very convincing as a man who wanted to sell a Ford Madox Brown.”

  “I spoke to him in German,” said Flynn.

  “Inspector, I still don’t see that your evidence against Horan is any better than your evidence against me.”

  “It is. His fingerprints were all over your apartment.”

  “His? I asked you about fingerprints.”

  “And I told you that we had yours, Mrs. Sawyer’s, Ruth Fryer’s, and a man’s we presumed to be Bart Connors’. We were never sure of the man’s prints. Mister Connors, you see, has never been in the service and he’s never been charged with any crime. His fingertips are as virginal as the day he was born. There is no record of his fingerprints. And all this time he’s been enjoying your house in Italy.”

  “He certainly has.”

  “We had Mister Horan’s fingerprints because he had been a Navy Commander, you know.”