“Mr. Wilberforce, you are a wonder,” Bushell said.
“I do endeavor to provide what assistance I can, sir,” Wilberforce answered. Now armed, Bushell found Samuel Stanley, gave him a notebook and pencil, and said. “Let’s divide ‘em into two groups and run straight through it: who they are, where they live, telephone number, what they saw, and whom they saw it with. If we have a few people nobody else saw, or a small group who saw only one another - ”
“Then that may give us something to go on,” Stanley said. “Or it may not mean a bloody thing, depending.” He hesitated, then asked. “Have you rung up Lieutenant General Bragg yet?” At Bushell’s nod, he tried another question: “How did he take it?”
Bushell searched for a judicious word, and by luck found one: “Professionally.”
“Could be worse,” Stanley said, nodding. “Did you ring Sir Martin, too?”
“No. Sir Horace told me to get on with the investigation here - he’d telephone the governor himself.”
“Did he? That’s a conversation I wouldn’t mind listening in on. It should be - interesting.” Samuel Stanley’s face bore a peculiar expression, or rather lack of expression: it didn’t quite fit the prospect of the RAM commandant’s having to announce the disappearance of The Two Georges to the King-Emperor’s chief official in the North American Union. Bushell almost asked him about it, but the pressure of other matters of greater urgency and consequence drove it from his mind. The ubiquitous and apparently omnicompetent Harrington Wilberforce found him and Stanley adjoining offices. The New Liverpool constables rounded up the picketers, the reporters, the guests, and the staff of the governor’s mansion and split them into two groups, one for each RAM officer. Then the grilling started.
Hiram, the RAM guard, was the second man Bushell questioned. He was still pale and shaky from the chloroform he’d had to breathe, but eager to tell what he knew. Unfortunately, that added little to what Bushell had learned from his comrade. All three of the false RAMs had been white men. . . . Hiram managed a wan smile. “No surprise there, not if the sons of bitches are Sons of Liberty, eh, sir?”
“No.” Bushell bared his teeth, too, but more in a snarl than a smile. Not only did the Sons of Liberty want North America free from Britain, they wanted it free of Negroes, Jews, East Indians, Chinese . . . everyone but the pure and original settlers of the land - or so they said. Just how they managed to want to be rid of the Red Indians, too, Bushell wasn’t quite sure, but they did; one of their grievances against the Crown was that it had acted to slow white settlement of the continent and let a few Indian nations remain intact and locally autonomous, much like the princely states of East India. Hiram said, “Sorry I didn’t observe more closely, sir, but I didn’t give the buggers a second thought till it was too late.”
“You did the best you could,” Bushell said, sighing. “Go on, get home, get some rest. Your family will be worried about you when they hear the news, I’m sure. If you’re a praying man, spend a minute thanking God you’re alive.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Thank you, sir.” Still a bit wobbly on his pins, Hiram left the office. Before Bushell questioned the next witness, he slammed a fist down on his borrowed desk, hard enough to make pain shoot up his arm. He had more for which to reproach himself than Hiram did. Sam Stanley had said extra RAMs were about. He’d assumed they’d either come from the New Liverpool office or were traveling with the exhibition. He hadn’t asked any questions about them. That the guards had made the same mistake didn’t excuse his own negligence.
The next person in to see him was Marcella Barber, the wife of the town council head. He threw questions at her until she snapped, “See here, Colonel, I assure you I am quite as sorry as anyone else to see The Two Georges stolen, but you have no cause to address me as if you were certain I personally carried it away in my handbag.”
“How large a handbag do you carry, madam?” he asked, deadpan.
She stared, then laughed, but her eyes were shrewd as she said, “You’d sooner be screaming at yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“Mrs. Barber, whatever makes you think I’m not?” he replied mildly. She pursed her lips, then nodded, like a judge pleased with an obscure but telling citation. Bushell finished interrogating her in a much softer tone of voice.
After her came Kathleen Flannery. He couldn’t take out his anger on her; she had every right to take out her anger on him. “We’re doing everything we can to get that painting back, Dr. Flannery,” he said.
“I’m certain you are,” she said in a tone of brittle politeness. “It should never have been lost in the first place, though.”
He flipped to the next page in the spiral-bound notebook Harrington Wilberforce had given him. Scrawling Kathleen’s name at the top of the page, he asked, “Where are you staying while you’re in New Liverpool, Dr. Flannery?”
“I’m at the Hotel La Cienega, here on the west side of town. They’ve put me in room 268. It’s very close to the mansion here, and . . . Why are you smiling, Colonel?”
“People in New Liverpool have a habit of using Spanish names to make a place or a business sound exotic,” he answered. “They often don’t care what those names mean. That one, for instance, means ‘the swamp.’“
“Does it?” she said. “That is amusing - or would be, under other circumstances.”
Under other circumstances, Bushell would have tried to find out where she was staying for reasons which had nothing to do with police business. As it was, he said, “I know you were part of the crowd at the entrance to the mansion when the alarm went off. I saw you there, and heard you cry out.”
“That’s correct,” she said tonelessly.
Bushell jotted the information on the page under her name. He already knew it, but his would not be the only eyes examining these notes. He asked, “Whom did you recognize as also being there?”
She frowned in thought. “So much has happened since then - Let me see. The lieutenant governor had just stepped on my foot, and apologized very handsomely for it. One of the town councilmen was right in front of me, blocking my view. I don’t recall his name, but he was the wide-shouldered chap with the walrus mustache.”
“That’s Lionel Harris,” Bushell said, writing it down. “Was his wife with him?”
“She was in the teal, wasn’t she? Yes, she was there. And I remember noticing the viola player from the string quartet, and thinking he shouldn’t have left the Drake Room.”
“I agree with you. You’re certain it was the viola player?” Bushell had enjoyed the Vivaldi, but hadn’t paid much attention to the musicians performing it.
Kathleen Flannery nodded decisively. “Yes - he was the blond with the hair spilling down over his collar.”
“I shall take your word for it.” Bushell wondered if she’d noticed the man because she found him attractive. She had the right, of course. Somehow that only made the idea more irksome. “Anyone else?” he asked. “Any of your colleagues from the exhibition?”
“No, I didn’t see any of them,” Kathleen said, “but I resent the implication that they might somehow be involved in this, this - horrible crime.”
“Dr. Flannery, you may condemn me for allowing The Two Georges to be stolen, or you may condemn me for being too zealous in pursuit of the thieves.” Bushell held the pencil between his two index fingers, one at the point, the other at the rubber. “In logic, though, I truly don’t see how you can condemn me for both those things at once.”
“Logic, at the moment, has very little to do with it,” she retorted. “I do know, though, that my assistants would no more harm The Two Georges in any way than I would.”