A Case of Spirits by Peter; Peter Lovesey Lovesey Page B

excitedly. ‘The silly blighter cracked his foot against the transformer and shot 400 volts into Brand, poor beggar.’
    ‘Impossible!’ said Probert with a glare. ‘Brand was perfectly all right when we pulled aside the curtain. The accident happened later, between the time when we withdrew and closed the curtain for the second time and when the Sergeant came in through the library door. At that time Quayle was definitely not in the study.’
    ‘He’d given me the slip, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘The next I heard from him was the creaking of a floorboard upstairs after we discovered what had happened in here. He couldn’t get out through the basement because Captain Nye was down there switching off the current, so he went upstairs instead.’
    ‘As we discovered,’ said Probert.
    ‘As I did,’ his wife corrected him.
    ‘What nobody has made clear,’ said Alice, ‘is why Professor Quayle came into the house at all. If it wasn’t to assist Mr Brand, as now seems clear, what was the purpose of his presence here?’
    Cribb shot an inquiring glance at his superior. ‘I was rather hoping to extract that information from the professor himself, miss. If Inspector Jowett was proposing to collect statements from you all, I wondered if I might be spared to put some questions across the kitchen table downstairs. Only, of course, if you were planning things that way, sir.’
    Jowett nodded, the first positive thing he had achieved in ten minutes. ‘That was precisely what I was coming to, Sergeant.’
    ‘Thank you, sir. It looks like being a long night, so while I’m down there, I’ll put the kettle on, if I may. I’ll stand it on the range beside the professor and see which one sings first.’
    AS IT TURNED out, the interview could not take place in the kitchen. Hitchman, the Proberts’ deaf maidservant, had returned from her evening off and was threatening the professor with a meat-hook when Cribb got down there. The kitchen was her domain and she was clearly quite intractable, so he side-stepped her, unlocked the professor, marched him upstairs and obtained the key to the picture-gallery from Probert.
    ‘Sit down, sir,’ he said, poking the professor in the chest with sufficient firmness to park him in the flirtation settee. ‘I shan’t join you. Nothing personal intended, but I like to see a man’s eyes when I ask him questions. In case you wondered, we ain’t here to look at the ladies on the wall, and I don’t propose to compete with ’em.’ He pulled the draw-string at the side of one of Dr Probert’s naked goddesses, who was partially in view, then smartly turned about, pointed a finger at Quayle and asked ‘What have you done with the Etty?’
    ‘The what?’ asked Quayle, in a voice so thin nobody would have believed it had harangued an audience from the platform of the Store Street Hall.
    ‘ Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs. Occupied a place on the wall behind you until last Friday week. Dr Probert wants it back. I hope it ain’t mutilated.’
    ‘I don’t know anything about this, Constable.’
    ‘Sergeant, if you please. Cribb’s the name. Don’t waste my time. I want some sleep tonight. Etty was the artist, you see.’
    ‘I don’t think I have heard of him.’
    ‘That’s evident,’ said Cribb, ‘or you wouldn’t have walked out with the canvas you did. There’s better things on these walls than Ettys, I can tell you. You and I might say there isn’t much to choose between buxom wenches in the buff, but we’d be wrong. There’s some here worth ten of your Ettys. French ones. No man of culture would have helped himself to an English nymph when there was madamoiselles to be had. And why take only one, when you could have had an armful? You gave so much away, you see. You’re no picture-thief. You can’t even cut a canvas neatly off its frame. You’re a raw beginner, Professor, no doubt of it.’
    Quayle said nothing, but his tongue raced nervously round his lips, moistening