by Amy Myers
‘One of the advantages, or some might say disadvantages, of being married to an antiques expert.’
So that explained it. ‘Is that how you met Lance Venyon?’ Georgia asked.
Madeleine didn’t answer directly. ‘Tell me what your interest is in Lance, Miss Marsh. Your website reveals a great range of subjects, but your books are apparently all about murders. I notice you’ve just published one stemming from the Second World War.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Is Lance concerned in your current case? You realize he died in 1961?’
‘Yes. There’s a possibility that he was murdered, and we’re looking into it to see whether there’s any evidence to support it.’ She had Madeleine’s full attention now. ‘Could you believe that?’ she continued.
‘Easily,’ Madeleine replied calmly.
‘Even though he is thought to have died in a boating accident with no suggestion that we can yet find to the contrary?’
‘Yes.’
Georgia quickly debated where to take it from here. She didn’t want to leap in baldly by asking who Madeleine thought the murderer might be, and laying one’s cards on the table could often be an advantage. ‘Most of our cases are about murders that have gone unsolved or where injustice has occurred,’ she told the countess. ‘Lance doesn’t come into that category yet. What does seem irrefutable is that he led a risky working life in a shady world, and there might well be fertile ground for the allegations to turn into evidence if we could get closer to that.’
‘A shady world,’ Madeleine repeated thoughtfully. ‘Could you explain that?’
This conversation wasn’t going well, Georgia realized. Madeleine was quietly taking control of it. Nevertheless it was early yet and although she’d made a bad choice of words herself, the situation might be redeemed. ‘His job, we’re told, was to chase up stolen and faked art works in Europe.’
‘Stolen? You mean by the occupying forces during the Second World War? I don’t know how long the Allied Commission to track down such works was active, but it’s true that Lance was still involved in that kind of work by the mid-50s when I met him.’
‘Art thefts were really coming into fashion by then,’ Georgia agreed.
‘And that’s all you think Lance was doing?’
Odd phrasing, since ‘doing’ was ambiguous. Georgia decided not to press the point. ‘Yes. Did you know Jago Priest, Lance’s friend?’
‘I did.’ The shortness of the reply and her body language suggested she was not a fan.
‘He thinks Lance’s line of work might have included art forgeries as well as theft.’
‘Thinks? Jago’s still alive?’ Madeleine asked sharply. She looked surprised, then said, ‘By forgeries you mean paintings intended to deceive by confusion with the original, rather than fakes of a style to gull the unwary.’
‘I don’t know,’ Georgia confessed, aware that she was being forced on to the defensive.
‘It’s quite possible,’ Madeleine continued, her composure regained. ‘As no doubt you know, the Allied Commission’s work produced interesting byways.’
Georgia seized her chance to take the battle into the opponent’s camp, which seemed well defended. ‘There was apparently one gang in particular whose trail Lance was hotly following about the time he died. The Benizi Brothers were his target.’
‘Or he theirs, from the way your thesis is running,’ Madeleine commented lightly.
‘It follows,’ Georgia agreed. ‘Did Lance talk about his job when you knew him?’
‘Sometimes he would make reference to a particular case. If I ever asked specifically whom he worked for, he didn’t tell me. With Lance one laughed and joked, one made merry. He was there or he was not. In those days we did not sit down for serious career talks. Let’s say he usually – not always – had plenty of money, and it was hardly polite to ask whence it came.
‘I met him about 1954 in Paris,’ Madeleine continued. ‘My parents were both British, but my mother had been in the SOE during the war, and my father was a Francophile. When post-war Britain became too gloomy they moved to France, and I moved with them. I was twenty-three by then, so I lived in an apartment of my own. That’s rather a splendid word for the nest of servants’ rooms usually found at the very top of the grand houses in central Paris. Mine was in the boulevard de Courcelles. I looked out of my attic window on to the rooftops of Paris – what a sight. All the mountains and valleys of the world could not compete. Such life, such colour, such sadness. Paris was mine. I was a secretary in the Louvre, and every day I drank up what Paris had to offer. I met Lance in the museum one day, and it went on from there. Where to, you might ask.’
She cast an amused glance at Georgia, who was indeed thinking just that. ‘But I would not reply,’ she continued, ‘since it is not relevant. For some time I had a spare room in my apartment and Lance became in effect a lodger. He travelled all over Europe, sometimes he talked of it, sometimes he did not. It was understood. And of course when he married in 1957 he would return to his Kentish home for weeks at a time.’
‘Was he still doing this in 1961?’ Georgia asked hopefully.
‘No. I had met my husband and had been married two years by then. I last saw Lance a few months before his death.’
At last Georgia felt that she was being offered a key, if not an open door, to Lance Venyon. It was her job to turn it. ‘Even if he didn’t talk much about his job, you must have formed an impression of your own. Was he a private investigator, for instance, specializing in art crime?’
‘Art crime?’ A male voice, and dear heaven, one she knew. Her whole stomach seemed to turn over as dizziness hit her and she had to struggle for control. The door to the room, which had been ajar, was now fully open – and in walked trouble. ‘What are you up to, Georgia?’
It was Zac.
Zac, her ex-husband, looking just the same as when she’d last seen him in prison twelve years ago to tell him that she was filing for divorce. Zac, the most incompetent con man one could imagine, Zac, who specialized in art and antiques – if specialized was the right word where he was concerned. Zac, with his infuriating lopsided grin, the floppy mop of dark hair and beguiling look of innocence.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she asked wearily. So many scenarios were whizzing through her head that she felt physically faint. This came of turning keys into unknown territory, but the last thing she had expected was Zac to be lurking behind the door. The last and most scariest thing is one’s own past rearing up.
‘I did tell you to keep away, Zac.’ Madeleine sounded furious.
‘Sorry, Maddy. I couldn’t resist seeing Georgia again.’ He was grinning at her, damn him.
What on earth was this set-up? Did this woman know she was harbouring a con man, Georgia wondered wildly. Was Madeleine a con artist too? Was Zac her toy boy? Surely to goodness he couldn’t be her husband? She’d said he was an antiques expert. Zac obviously was too young to have been her first husband, but maybe he was the second? Madeleine looked far too sensible, but she wouldn’t put it past Zac. Forty years’ age difference would mean nothing if Zac took the fancy into his mind. If only Luke were here – no, thank goodness he wasn’t. He’d pick up her confusion right away, and guess the reason. Old memories were stirring all too vividly within her.
‘I must apologize, Georgia,’ Madeleine said briskly, abandoning formality. ‘Zac is a colleague of my husband’s, and friend of my son’s. It is a complete coincidence and an unfortunate one that he is here at the moment.’
So at least the toy-boy theory was out of the way. But did this absent husband know what he was letting loose in his house of priceless treasures?
‘In case you are wondering . . .’ Zac had his little-boy look on and unfortunately Georgia knew it could be a genuine one. The trouble with Zac was to decide (since he could never decide himself) where make-believe began and sincerity abruptly ended. ‘Maddy does know about my nefarious past.’
‘Fo
rtunately,’ Madeleine said gravely, ‘my husband doesn’t need Zac’s advice on wine.’
Georgia laughed. Zac’s downfall had been over a particularly inept scam in this department.
Regardless of his lack of welcome, Zac threw himself down in the armchair next to Georgia, and it was all she could do to stop herself from edging away. Zac was good at body language. It went with his trade. Space invader, mind invader, was Zac. And now he was settling in, she realized to her horror.
‘I’m sure you’ll understand, madame,’ she said to Madeleine firmly, ‘that I can’t speak freely in front of Zac and as I don’t have long before I have to leave for my return train—’
‘But I can help you,’ Zac interrupted. He wore his hurt look now. (She remembered that one well: ‘What do you mean, stole?’)
The worst of all situations, and she had to turn the tables. ‘What about?’ she asked stonily.
‘Madeleine said you were coming to talk about Lance Venyon.’
And she had thought his offer to help was the worst. It wasn’t, this was. Left to herself, she’d get up and walk away, but she wasn’t alone in this. There was Peter to consider, and she was a professional. They’d agreed to take on this case. She plunged on, conscious that Madeleine was deliberately leaving the stage to her.
‘You weren’t born till the late 1960s,’ she told Zac flatly. ‘You can’t have met him.’
‘Of course not.’ Indignation at being misjudged oozed from him. She knew all his expressions. ‘But I’ve moved in his world long enough, and he’s not forgotten. And I have contacts.’
Sure he had, all of them either doing stir or temporarily out planning the next disaster. Despite herself, however, she had wanted to hear more.
Zac obviously hadn’t missed her sudden interest. ‘There’s a lot of talk in the cafes I hang out in in Paris, just as there was in the 1950s, only now it’s done in cyberspace too. Lance was mixed up with some golden cup mysteriously supposed to be buried in Kent, like that one they found a year or two back. This one wasn’t Bronze Age. It was—’
‘Fifth or early sixth century. King Arthur’s goblet,’ Georgia finished for him resignedly. Trust Zac still to be sailing in the good ship Fantasy.
Zac looked disappointed. ‘You know.’
‘A little.’ She decided it might be wise to backtrack. How odd, though, that she could even be talking to Zac on a normal basis.
‘Of course the Arthurian buffs have been getting excited.’
That was Zac. Trust him to convey the impression that he moved in the midst of powerful groups with his ears flapping. ‘What do they collect?’ she asked. ‘Bits of the Round Table?’
‘Scripts, old books, archaeological finds, some specialize in the medieval resurgence of interest, some in the Anglo-Saxon historical side. The Arthurian world is vast, ranging from the ultra-respectable Arthurian Society to those who live in a Camelot of their own.’
Georgia was momentarily silenced. Did Zac really know his stuff over this? It would be the first time ever, if so.
‘Zac’s right,’ Madeleine said. ‘There are whispers, and what’s more I do remember Lance burbling on about it in the 1950s.’
If Madeleine was in on this, then grudgingly Georgia was prepared to admit she might be wrong about Zac on this occasion. Had he got this from Jago, Georgia wondered, or did he have independent sources? It had to be the latter, because Jago would see through Zac in a minute. In any case, she reminded herself, Jago’s researches had led him to the wrong place.
The wrong place? She caught her mistake. So she thought there was a right place, did she? This was ludicrous. Any minute now and Zac would vanish into thin air like the nightmare he was, and take King Arthur with him.
‘Hang on, Zac,’ she said. ‘Rumours start somewhere. Any idea where the current ones did?’
He shrugged. ‘Not a clue. How could I? There’s a blog devoted to it, though.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’
‘Not meant for every Tom, Dick and Harry,’ Zac continued, ‘or all the treasure hunters in the world would be out there with their metal detectors. Only the cognoscenti. You have to know their blog codes. The golden cup – or goblet as you call it – is referred to as Prester John, King Arthur is the Crusader, and Gawain is Indiana.’
‘You are joking, Zac.’
‘I am not.’ Great dignity here.
‘Prester John was a hoax.’
‘Precisely,’ Zac was triumphant. ‘To fool the uninitiated.’
‘More than you can do.’
She was instantly ashamed of herself for this childish retort, but nothing could have brought back her early disastrous marriage more clearly. A union of ill-matched kids, Peter had grumpily called it when they married, and, sure enough, he’d been right. It had ended up with his having to arrest his own son-in-law for fraud.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘And thanks. How do I get on to the blog?’
‘Dunno.’
She closed her eyes in disbelief. ‘Do you think—’ Talk about entering the maze one more time. Nothing, but nothing, with Zac was ever concrete. Anyway, Sam’s pet name for Jago was Prester John too, which suggested he contributed to the blog, and Google would no doubt oblige anyway, now she had the code words.
She made a determined effort to try again. ‘Do you think Lance seriously thought he was going to find this goblet, Madeleine? Or was it Arthurian paintings he was after, as Jago said?’ She stopped abruptly. It was all too easy to chat in front of Zac. It was when he was silent that he could be at his most dangerous.
‘I have a vague recollection, but too vague to rely on. Why not ask Jago? He was the King Arthur fan par excellence.’
‘Perhaps he did Lance in,’ Zac suggested helpfully. ‘Would he have had a motive?’
‘Who knows with that man,’ Madeleine said.
‘Why should he?’ Georgia asked. ‘He’d be interested in keeping Lance alive if he was on the trail of the King Arthur goblet. After Lance’s death his own efforts came to nothing.’
‘Poor Jago.’ Madeleine laughed for the first time. ‘I almost feel sorry for him.’
‘Depends where he looked,’ Zac said casually. ‘There’s sacks of Anglo-Saxon stuff dug up in Kent. Woodnesborough near where the Ringlemere Cup was found has always had a legend that a golden statue of the Norse god Woden was hidden nearby. Suppose the Ringlemere cup really was Arthur’s. Even if it was Bronze Age, it could have been a family treasure.’
Georgia laughed. ‘According to Jago, Arthur’s goblet and Gawain’s remains were in Dover Castle church until the sixteenth century, and only then rehoused. Rather too late to start a legend about Woden. In any case a gold statue is a far cry from a cup.’
‘Gold has a mysterious power over men,’ Zac pointed out.
And especially over him, Georgia thought, wondering why he was trying to impress with this solemn pronouncement. Change of subject, she decided. ‘Did Lance talk about his private life?’ she asked Madeleine. ‘His wife died some years ago, and his daughter knows nothing of her father save what her mother had told her – which wasn’t much help to us.’
Madeleine shook her head. ‘I suppose he must have done so from time to time. Lance was – well, rather like Zac. He came and he went. I remember him as a . . .’
A con man? Georgia nearly asked, but bit it back – which was just as well as Madeleine continued: ‘In that we never actually knew what he was up to. A fresh idea every minute.’
‘Nevertheless you’re sure that his job was to pursue real objects whether stolen or faked. In other words, not hunting objects as a collector. He wouldn’t chase fantasies because of an inner dream?’ Georgia asked.
‘How do you know the goblet’s a fantasy, Georgia?’ Zac enquired.
She rounded on him. ‘You mean you know there is a real goblet, Zac?’
‘Maybe.’
‘If you know, why not tell us?’
‘I like to keep you guessing. You owe me that.’
The phrase ‘takes your breath away’ came to mind. Georgia could hardly speak with irritation. Owe him? Owe him what? Five years before, subconscious doubts and fears rose to the surface with the certainty that he was lying and all the beautiful objects that passed through their small terraced house were the result of cons. She’d defended him fiercely when Peter had first broken the news to her. She’d spent four years of alternate bliss and bedlam. Four years of blind adoration blasted into shock and disillusion. Four years of sexual bliss blinding her to the truth – even the memory stirred her as she thought of it. So she wouldn’t. She’d think of Luke. Whose image for the first time ever failed to come to her rescue. She was on her own.
‘Of course,’ she replied mildly, which she was delighted to see disconcerted Zac. With luck he’d try to please her now, by offering a little titbit. Sure enough.
‘I met a chap whose father had known Lance in the 1950s. I think he’d seen the goblet,’ Zac offered.
‘Pull the other one, Zac.’ So even Madeleine found this hard to take, to Georgia’s relief.
‘All right, then,’ Zac backtracked, ‘maybe he hadn’t. But the story going round the cafes is that Lance Venyon knew where it was.’
‘Jago Priest also thought he knew where it was. Only it wasn’t,’ Georgia pointed out.
‘Is that right?’ Zac looked interested. ‘Where did he dig?’
‘Near Woodnesborough as it happens,’ Georgia lied through her teeth. That was the trouble with Zac. He reduced you to his level.
Zac laughed. ‘Is this Jago Priest any relation to Mark?’
‘His father, probably,’ Georgia said cautiously. ‘Do you know Mark?’
‘Yeah. A bit. He moves in the same world.’
‘The underworld?’
Zac gave her a pained look, just as another male entrant arrived, and no prizes for guessing who this was.
‘Signora Marsh, ciao, Zac, Magdalena . . .’