“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap,” Reggie opened large, plaintive eyes. “Belief is a serious operation. I believe you haven’t found anything. That’s all. I should say you didn’t look.”
“Thank you,” said Lomas acidly. “Bell raked it all over.” He spoke into the telephone, and Superintendent Bell arrived with a fat folder. “Mr. Fortune thinks you’ve missed something, Bell,” Lomas smiled.
“If there was anything any use, I have,” Bell said heavily. “I’ll be glad to hear what it is. Here’s some photographs of the place, sir. And an inventory.”
“You might pick up a bargain, Reginald,” said Lomas, while Reggie, with a decent solemnity, perused the inventory and contemplated the photographs.
“Four oil paintings, fifteen water - colours. Untrained,” he read, and lifted a gaze of innocent enquiry to Bell.
“I’d call ‘em clever, myself,” said Bell. “Not nice, you know, but very bright and showy. Nudes of ladies, and that sort of thing. I should have thought he could have made a tidy living out of them. But a picture dealer that’s seen ‘em priced ‘em at half a dollar each. Slick rubbish, he called ‘em. I’m no hand at art. Anyway - it don’t tell us anything.”
“I wouldn’t say that. No,” Reggie murmured. “Builds up the character of Mr. Farquhar for us. Person of no honour, even in his pot - boilin’ art. However. Nothing else in the flat?”
“Some letters - mostly bills and duns. Nothing to show what he was up to. Nothing to work on.”
Reggie turned over the correspondence quickly. “Yes. As you say.” He stopped at a crumpled, stained card. “Where was this?”
“In a pocket of a dirty old sports coat,” Bell said. “It’s only a menu. I don’t know why he kept it. Some faces drawn on the back. Perhaps he fancied ‘em. No accounting for taste. Looks like drawing devils to me.”
“Rather diabolical, yes,” Reggie murmured. “Conventional devil. Mephistopheles in a flick.” The faces were sketched, in pencil, with a few accomplished strokes, but had no distinction: the same face in variations of grin and scowl and leer: a face of black brows, moustache, and pointed beard. “Clever craftsman. Only clever.” He turned the card to the menu written on the front. “My only aunt!” he moaned, and, in a hushed voice of awe, read out:
DINER
Artichauts a 1’Huile
Pommes de Terre a 1’Huile
Porc frais froid aux Cornichons
Langouste Mayonnaise
Canard aux Navets
Omelette Rognons
Filet garni
Fromage a la Creme
Fruits, Biscuits.
“Good Gad! Some dinner,” Lomas chuckled.
“I don’t say I get it all,” Bell frowned. “But what’s it come to? He did himself well some time.”
“Well!” Reggie groaned. “Oh, my dear chap! Artichokes in oil, cold pork, lobster, duck and turnips - and a kidney omelette and roast beef and trimmings.”
“I’ve got to own it wants a stomach,” said Bell gloomily. “What then?”
“Died of indigestion,” said Lomas. “Or committed suicide in the pangs. Very natural. Very just. There you are, Bell. Mr. Fortune has solved the case.”
“I was taking it seriously myself,” Bell glowered at them.
“Oh, my Bell!” Reggie sighed. “So was I.” He turned on Lomas. “Incurably flippant mind, your mind. This is the essential fact. Look for Mr. Farquhar in Brittany.”
Bell breathed hard. “How do you get to that, sir?”
“No place but a Brittany inn ever served such a dinner.”
