Free A Better Quality of Murder: (Inspector Ben Ross 3) by Granger Ann Page A

covered.’

    ‘I could not order that one veiled,’ said Benedict in the same quiet voice, ‘it would be like burying her. I shall be doing that soon enough. Won’t you sit down, Inspector?’

    He gestured towards a chair and sat down again himself in the winged chair from which he’d risen when I’d entered. His back was to the window and the shaft of light so that I couldn’t see him clearly. What little light there was fell on me, so that he had the advantage. I wondered if that had been intended. He seemed a slightly built figure, certainly some years older than his wife. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw that his hair was thinning. When he had stood up, I had noticed that he was of only medium height. I thought of the woman I had seen, still a beauty though disfigured by a dreadful death.
     
    I opened my side of the conversation by extending my condolences. He received these in a lacklustre way. He did not care whether I sympathised with him or not. His own grief was sufficient.

    ‘Mrs Benedict was an Italian lady?’ I ventured next.

    He inclined his head. ‘Yes. If you find there are a large number of paintings in this house, it is because I specialise in fine arts, Inspector, as you may already know. I have a gallery in Piccadilly, on the south side, near . . .’ He broke off, paused, and recommenced, ‘Near to the Piccadilly limits of the Green Park.’

    ‘Were you at your gallery on Saturday last?’

    He shook his head. ‘No, I never go up to town at weekends. Most of my clients, you see, go down into the country on Friday night.’

    ‘To their country houses and estates?’

    ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

    ‘But the gallery is open on Saturdays?’

    ‘Yes, I have an excellent manager, George Angelis. He is there on a Saturday until six o’clock. The gallery is then closed until the following Tuesday.’

    It did no business on a Monday, then. But, of course, the clients were returning to town from the country on Mondays. I took my notebook from my coat pocket and wrote in it that the gallery closed at six on Saturdays.

    ‘May I ask how you met your late wife, sir?’

    He raised his eyebrows at what he obviously found an unexpected question. But he replied easily enough, ‘Of course. We met in Italy. I visit the Continent every year, looking for items of interest for the gallery. I also have a great love of the country. I first went there as a very young man, not much more than a boy. I was making the usual European tour, you know.’

    I knew this was a habit among the wealthy. Young men would be sent off to finish their education, probably with some tutor in tow to keep an eye on them.Young men of my background, however, were busy earning a living at a similar age, and had been doing so from childhood.

    ‘My wife’s father, sadly now deceased, was also in the fine arts business,’ Benedict was saying. ‘I called on him regularly when in Italy and became a friend of the family. When I first met my wife she was no more than a child, a girl of fourteen. She was exquisite . . . lovely and vivacious, full of life and laughter, intelligent . . . to know her was to adore her.’

    He looked towards the portrait and fell silent.

    ‘Was that her age when it was painted?’ I prompted.

    Benedict turned his head and looked at me as though he had forgotten who I was. ‘Oh,’ he said at last. ‘No, she was a little older when she sat for that. Fifteen, I think.’

    ‘And, forgive me, sir, but I have to ask intrusive questions: how old was the lady when you married?’

    ‘Eighteen.’ Benedict gave me an ironic smile. ‘I see how your mind is working, Inspector. Yes, I am – was – somewhat older than my wife. Fifteen years older, in fact.’

    So when the portrait of fifteen-year-old Allegra had been painted, her future husband had already been a man of thirty. Had the portrait been commissioned at his request?

    ‘When, may I ask, did you acquire the painting?’

    He