William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

going back to the local police station nearest Taft’s house. It’s time I stopped asking nicely for favors and started demanding them.”
    “I’m coming too.” She rose to her feet also. “I’ll wait outside while you talk to them.”
    I T TOOK SOME CONSIDERABLE argument, and Monk did not tell Hester what threat or favor he had used, but after a heated forty-five minutes he emerged from the police station and found Hester on a bench in the sun, where she had been sitting waiting for him. He had been told not to touch anything. The police had already thoroughly searched the whole house at the time the deaths were discovered and found nothing of interest.
    Monk and Hester quickly walked the short distance to Taft’s house.
    “What are we looking for?” Hester asked as they lengthened their stride for the slight gradient in the road.
    “I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “The only thing that gives me hope is that I’m told Drew still wants to get in—so he hasn’t found what he wants.” He was walking a little faster than she was, and she had to hurry to keep up with him. She was a little breathless and really had no useful reply to offer, so she said nothing.
    The house was attractive, solidly built of brick, and in its own verywell-tended garden. They walked up the driveway and Monk produced the key to the front door.
    Hester was surprised almost as soon as they entered the hallway. Just inside the door was a vestibule with exactly the sort of things she would have expected: an umbrella stand; pegs for outdoor clothes of the heavier, winter sort and for casual hats; a long mirror, possibly to make last-minute adjustments as one was leaving. But farther inside, the room opened out into a wood-paneled hall of some size. From it rose a very gracious staircase with a large, heavily ornamental newel post and then a curved stair, which was wide at the bottom and swung around against the wall, up to a gallery with passages running off in both directions.
    “My goodness!” she said in surprise. “Looks as if this is where at least some of the money went. Unless Mrs. Taft was an heiress?” She looked at Monk questioningly.
    He was standing still on the polished parquet floor looking at the red-carpeted steps and then up to the various paintings on the wall, hung at different levels to complement both the upward climb and the different levels of the paneling.
    She watched him with growing interest as he regarded the pictures more and more closely. They were all landscapes. One was of sloping parkland billowing with trees, another of a churchyard with soaring skies behind it, a third of a headland with a pale beach and open sea.
    She waited for him to speak.
    “If they are originals, not copies, then there’s a very great deal of money here,” he said at last. “Not to mention some excellent taste in art. If he sold this lot, he’d have enough to buy a new house. I wonder if there are more in the other rooms.”
    “Are you sure?” she asked with surprise and a new eagerness. She moved forward to take a better look herself.
    “If they’re not copies, yes,” he answered, standing in front of one of them. He stared at it for so long she grew impatient.
    “What is it?” she asked. “Is it real or not?”
    “I don’t know,” he answered thoughtfully. “It took me a moment ortwo to realize what’s wrong with it. It’s the proportion. The bottom three quarters of an inch or so has been cut off by the frame.
    “So?” she said, puzzled as to why he was bothering with so minute an issue. “Maybe they are only copies, and not as good as you thought. I never understood why, if a thing is beautiful—and I think that is—it should matter so much who painted it.”
    Monk shook his head. “I don’t understand why, if he is clever enough to paint something so lovely, he would cut it short like this. But more to the point, why he didn’t sign it.”
    Then she understood. “You mean he did, and the framer has deliberately excluded it?”
    He turned to her and smiled. “Exactly. Maybe Taft wanted the pleasure of looking at it, even showing it off a bit, without letting anyone know exactly how valuable it is. He probably told people it was a good copy, to explain his having it. No signature, so it’s not pretending to be real.”
    “Couldn’t that be the actual explanation, though?”
    “Of course it could. But I’ll wager it isn’t!” He stepped back. “Let’s see what else we can