Free The Cézanne Chase by Thomas Swan Page B

and losing.” He sat in the pew with the date carved on the back and turned to face Oxby.
    â€œIt’s quiet here,” Zimmer said, his eyes slowly scanning the old windows and ancient carvings. “Too damned quiet if you want my opinion. Perhaps you can bring us a little excitement and solve a murder mystery sitting in our pew number twelve.” He stood and held out his hand. “Stay as long as you wish, but do us a favor and lock up when you leave.”
    Oxby gripped his hand and thanked him politely, then watched the pastor disappear behind the altar and presumably from the church. Left behind was the mild odor of alcohol mixed with the scent of peppermint that had doubtless come from the bits of candy the pastor surreptitiously pulled from his pocket. Perhaps he had come to taste the new communion wine, Oxby thought benevolently.
    His attention returned to Clarence Boggs. If the curator had fallen so deeply in debt as to cause his creditors to poison him, then careful inquiry would bear that out. Oxby had arranged for Jimmy Murratore to use his extensive contacts in London’s gambling community to look into whether Boggs had been made to pay the full price. Jimmy knew the bookies, the touts, the hangers-on, and the money lenders. Some lenders were respectable, others were tied to the syndicate operated by an unscrupulous element and inevitably involved in drug trafficking.
    Oxby turned his gaze to the window and the soft light that oozed
through the old stained glass. His thoughts were concentrated on the self-portrait and Boggs’s job as curator in the Pinkster gallery. Someone had been in the gallery and sprayed the painting. Approximately sixteen hours later Boggs was dead. Did all that go together with more significance than the fact that Boggs had large gambling debts? Whoever killed Boggs knew the man’s habits and either knew him personally or had observed him over a number of days. Again, Oxby was bothered by the strange use of a chemical that was not only difficult to buy but potentially lethal to whoever used it.
    Oxby began to write. He filled a half dozen sheets, then carefully read aloud what he had written. He asked himself questions, and the ones he could not answer he listed again on a clean sheet.
    It was like a school examination, and Oxby wanted to make a perfect score.
    Â 
    In the afternoon, Oxby found himself in a small meeting room in the banking offices of the Nationwide Anglia Trust in the town of Dorking, a half hours’s drive from Bletchingly. Keith Eustace, the branch manager, was assembling a record of Boggs’s banking activities covering a two-year period and began painting a picture of the curator’s tragic descent into financial ruin.
    â€œTwo and a half years ago he had twenty-four thousand pounds in savings and a checking account that carried a very nice balance at the end of each month.” Eustace licked the first two fingers of his right hand and flipped the pages. He had coal-black hair and white skin, which prompted Oxby to wonder if he ever dared walk in the sunshine. “In April, two years back, he took five thousand from savings. And—hmmm—let’s see.” He continued licking the two fingers and flipping the pages, “Except for December, January, and February, he went on withdrawing from savings without making a deposit until the funds were depleted.”
    â€œWhen was that?”
    â€œThis month, a bit over two weeks ago.”
    â€œHow were withdrawals made?”
    â€œNearly all withdrawals were transferred to his checking account.”
    â€œCan you tell me if he issued any large checks subsequent to the transfers?”
    Eustace looked and began shaking his head. “In most instances he wrote checks to himself and took cash, from what I see here.”

    â€œAllow me to see one month’s activity,” Oxby requested.
    Eustace demurred briefly, then put all of the records on the table.