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?’
‘Oh no. That’s the picture that William painted. “House by a Canal”, I think he called it in the catalogue. But it isn’t as it was. You see, there’s something wrong with it.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
Mrs Boscowan stretched out a clay-smeared f’mger and jabbed at a spot just below the bridge spanning the canal.
‘There,’ she said. ‘You see?’ There’s a boat tied up under the bridge, isn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy puzzled.
‘Well, that boat wasn’t there, not when I saw it last. William never painted that boat. When it was exhibited there was no boat of any kind.’