“There’s a kind of savagery about it,” I said, “that I don’t like. It looks as though it had been done in a fit of maniacal rage.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought.”
“What is the portrait?”
“I haven’t the least idea. I have never seen it before. All these things were in the attic when I married Lucius and came here to live. I have never been through them or bothered about them.”
“Extraordinary,” I commented.
I stooped down and examined the other pictures. They were very much what you would expect to find—some very mediocre landscapes, some oleographs and a few cheaply-framed reproductions.
There was nothing else helpful. A large old-fashioned trunk, of the kind that used to be called an “ark,” had the initials E. P. upon it. I raised the lid. It was empty. Nothing else in the attic was the least suggestive.
“It really is a most amazing occurrence,” I said. “It’s so—senseless.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “That frightens me a little.”
There was nothing more to see. I accompanied her down to her sitting-room where she closed the door.
“Do you think I ought to do anything about it? Tell the police?”
I hesitated.
“It’s hard to say on the face of it whether—”
“It has anything to do with the murder or not,” finished Anne. “I know. That’s what is so difficult. On the face of it, there seems no connection whatever.”