Borrowed Time by Robert Goddard Page A

was a slightly built man in corduroy trousers and check shirt, a narrow squirrel-like face framed by tufts of ginger hair. He peered out at me with raised inquisitive eyebrows and all I seemed able to say was a weak “Good morning.”
    “It’s afternoon, actually,” he replied. “The afternoon of a long and trying day. I’d be grateful—enormously grateful—if you didn’t make it any more trying than it already has been.”
    “Sorry. I—”
    “Was just nosing around the scene of the crime? Believe me, you’re not the first. And it would be unreasonable of me to expect you to be the last, wouldn’t it?”
    “We
are
sorry,” said Bella, walking boldly across to him, hand outstretched. “But we’re not what you think.”
    “No?” He sounded sceptical, but Bella’s smile was hard to resist. His head twitched slightly, as if he were about to bow, even kiss her hand. Instead, he merely shook it. “What then, might I ask?”
    “My brother—” She glanced towards me, acknowledging the misrepresentation with a faint flick of the eyebrows. “Knew Lady Paxton.”
    “Really?” Doubt wrestled for a moment with susceptibility, then gave way. “Well, pleased to meet you, Mr. . . .”
    “Timariot. Robin Timariot.”
    “Henley Bantock.” We shook hands. “Nephew and heir of Oscar Bantock.”
    “My . . . er . . . sister, Bella . . . Timariot.”
    “Delighted, I’m sure.”
    “Lady Paxton’s death came as a . . . a terrible shock. I . . . felt I had to . . .”
    “That’s quite all right. Why don’t you both come inside?” He led the way and we fell in behind, Bella treating me to a triumphant smirk. “I’m sorry if I was a little curt. This is the first day the police would allow me past the door and I’ve been attempting to sort things out. But the interruptions have been continual. Neighbours thinking I might be a squatter. Tradesmen flapping unpaid bills under my nose.” We were heading for the rear of the house, taking the same route the postman had that fateful morning. “And, just before you came, a well-dressed middle-aged man weeping—yes, I do mean weeping—on the doorstep. He was in floods of tears. It was quite pitiful.”
    “Who was he?” I asked.
    “I really couldn’t say. You might have known him. I’m surprised you didn’t meet him in the lane.” The studio was in front of us now, commanding a broad view to the south, where the garden sloped away. It was an airy structure, lit by enough windows to resemble a conservatory. The blinds were half down, but, through the gaps beneath them, I could see disorderly piles of canvases, large and small, covered in aggressive swirls of colour; Oscar Bantock had been nothing if not prolific. “As a result, I’ve made scant progress. Which is inconvenient, to say the least.” He opened the kitchen door and ushered us in. “Call me superstitious if you like, but I’ve no intention of staying here overnight.”
    And so we entered the house where two people had died—violently and recently. But their deaths had left no presence there, not one I could detect anyway. There were no bloodstains, of course, but, even if there had been, I’m not sure it would have helped me conjure up what had happened. The studio, bathed in sallow light, filled with half a lifetime’s unappreciated work and its impedimenta: canvases, frames, brushes, paints, palettes, easels, rags, pots of varnish, bottles of turps and a spattered smock gathering dust in its folds. I’d never seen Oscar Bantock alive and I couldn’t imagine him dead, a stark slumped form beneath one of the benches. There was no helpful chalk outline of the corpse to tell me where he’d been found and I hadn’t the heart to ask his nephew. Not that Henley Bantock looked or sounded like a man gripped by grief. He stood between us in the kitchen, watching calmly as we stared through the open doorway into the room where his uncle had been choked to death with a noose of picture-hanging