by Amy Myers
‘My husband,’ Madeleine said, as the short plump bustling elderly man with twinkling eyes came over to kiss her. ‘You’re back early, caro.’
‘I could not miss our English visitor.’ He looked more like Danny DeVito than a Hollywood Italian count and Georgia warmed to him at once. ‘Zac, you are keeping our guest entertained?’ he asked.
‘Very,’ Zac said lazily, shooting Georgia a glance.
‘Unfortunately,’ Madeleine said tranquilly, ‘I discovered after you left this morning, darling, that our poor guest was once married to Zac.’
The count laughed delightedly. ‘So, we are one big happy family. As for me, I am too lazy for divorce, even if Papa allowed it. And Magdalena—’
‘Is too old for change,’ his wife supplied.
This was a madhouse, Georgia decided. A stalwart English lady in her mid seventies, a mad Italian count roughly the same age, and her own former husband all rattling around in a palace of antiques. And incidentally whose antiques were they?
‘We were talking about Lance Venyon and King Arthur, darling,’ Madeleine said. ‘And, guess what, Jago Priest is still alive and well,’ she added brightly. ‘And Zac has been contributing.’
A glance between husband and wife as though they had Zac’s measure, which was a good sign. ‘Do you remember Lance?’ she asked the count.
‘Of course. Who could not? The crazy Englishman who terrorized Europe to track down beautiful artworks.’
‘We’re looking for any hints that might explain his death in 1961,’ Georgia explained. ‘His wife thought he might have been murdered, and his working life might have provided reason for that.’
‘Si, signora.’
‘Do you,’ she asked in desperation, since he didn’t seem disposed to continue, ‘know of any cases he was working on in the late 1950s? He got very close to one gang, the Benizi Brothers.’
He beamed. ‘I know. I was an antiques and art dealer. Lance came in one day to ask if I have stolen goods. What, me? I said. No. Lance then tells me what he is looking for. I ask people about them, and give him what help I can.’
No mention of King Arthur yet, Georgia noticed. She would have to prompt him. ‘Jago said Lance was excited about some hitherto unknown Pre-Raphaelite paintings.’
‘There I can help,’ the count said grandly. ‘Then we all have luncheon.’
‘That’s very kind,’ she began, appalled at the idea of extending her exposure to Zac yet longer, ‘but—’
‘Wait till you see the garden, Georgia,’ Zac said enthusiastically. ‘We’ll be eating out there.’
She glanced at Madeleine, who nodded. It seemed Georgia had no choice, and as she had to eat lunch somewhere, she agreed. ‘I’d like that very much.’ Well, part of it, she amended to herself.
‘Now I have something to show you,’ the count said. ‘Come with me, Mrs Georgia.’
‘Darling,’ Madeleine began. ‘Surely not—’
‘Cara,’ he interrupted firmly. Another glance and Madeleine rose quickly to join Georgia and her husband.
As Georgia wondered what on earth this was about, she followed obediently in her host’s bustling wake. Madeleine took her arm, and Zac brought up the rear like an enthusiastic puppy. Naturally. He never liked losing touch with things, including wives.
Where was she going to find ‘the something’, she wondered, as the count led the way upstairs, with his entourage behind. The first storey of the house, and so far as she could see the second too, seemed to be understudying the Quai d’Orsay art museum, if the stairwell was anything to judge by. Paintings hung on pale lemon-painted walls, antique furniture on the landing gleamed with years of polish. The count flung open an ornately white-and-gilt-ornamented door and ushered her in.
‘Our bedroom,’ he announced. ‘Magdalena and I make children here.’
‘Not so many nowadays,’ Madeleine commented gravely.
The joke stopped Georgia from fully taking in her surroundings, but when she did she found herself in an austerely elegant ivory-painted room, with pale green shutters and bed linen, and minimal light furniture. There was only one painting in the room, on the wall facing the bed, and her attention was straightaway riveted on it. It was Pre-Raphaelite, and depicted an obviously dying knight on what looked like the deck of a ship. In the distant background were cliffs and a familiar-looking castle, other knights clustered round, and kneeling at the dying knight’s side was —
‘King Arthur,’ she blurted out in shock. ‘It must be Gawain and Arthur.’
‘And the golden goblet,’ Zac added smugly.
She looked at it first in disbelief, and then in admiration. She knew some of Rossetti’s work, though not specifically the Arthur drawings, and could see that this was a fine painting. It was not as heavily romanticized as some of his work, but full of passion and yet at the same time peace. As with his Arthur’s Tomb the figures were sharply defined, almost angular, but here the eyes were not focused on the other knights or even on Gawain, but on a golden goblet. King Arthur was holding it at Gawain’s lips, and it was so positioned that it became the focal point. Small, gold, ornamented but not heavily, it shone out, demanding the viewer’s attention.
‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Italian artist,’ the count joked. ‘This is what you seek, Mrs Georgia.’
‘The painting Lance Venyon discovered?’
‘Si,’ agreed the count.
‘The painting that the Benizi Gang was after?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed again.
‘But how—?’
‘I should formally introduce my husband,’ Madeleine said softly behind her in a sudden inexplicable chill.
‘I do it myself, cara. How do you do, Mrs Georgia. I am,’ the count said proudly, ‘Antonio Benizi.’
Chapter Six
The rear garden of the house had far less formality than the front. Here bushes, grass, winding paths and arbours lived together with no apparent design. A terrace under an awning ran the width of the house and on it was a table laid for four. It looked instantly attractive. Georgia was still getting over the shock of learning who the Count of Orvona was, made easier by the fact that Antonio had waved aside an apology. She suppressed an image of Luke at his desk, sandwich at his side. Nevertheless she wondered how she was going to explain today away to him. Omit all mention of Zac? Confess? But what to? Being the victim of circumstance or to the lurch of excitement that she was trying to ignore? She’d think about that later, she decided. At present she had enough to cope with in seeing Zac’s grinning face across the table. With Antonio and Madeleine at the two ends, it made an intimate setting that was all too familiar. At least Zac wouldn’t be crass enough to say, ‘How like old times,’ but she had her retort ready in case he did. Instead, she asked him politely:
‘Have you known Madeleine and Antonio long?’
‘Five or six years. I met Roberto, their son, much earlier, probably while we were still married, Georgia.’
Trust him to slip that in, she thought crossly, with its implication of an ongoing link between them.
‘I turn up now and again to ask Antonio’s advice,’ Zac continued.
Antonio (Georgia already thought of him that way) looked pleased, as though it were the greatest honour in the world to be giving advice to a con man. As a gang leader himself – if he was – she supposed that was natural. It was hard to believe that this was all happening. Even her sense of chill in the bedroom had vanished. One thought of villains creeping along dark alleyways, plotting in secret hideaways, not having lunch on a terrace in the sunshine. Madeleine had an old cotton sunhat on, Antonio’s shining bald head was equally well shielded, and Zac didn’t care. Nor did she, aware that she was beginning to relax.
What did Zac ask Antonio’s advice on, she wondered. Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be legal.
‘Zac asks me about art,’ Antonio explained, ‘and the wicked things that men do for it. I am an old man, so it is most flattering.’
‘Infor
mation is all Lance came for?’
‘Of course,’ Antonio replied. ‘What else? This gang story, Georgia,’ he added seriously, ‘Jago has it wrong. Very wrong, but then he would. He did not like us, and we did not like him. Perhaps he killed Lance.’
Georgia was taken back, and obviously seeing this, Madeleine leapt into the breach.
‘Darling, just because we don’t like Jago that doesn’t make him a murderer.’
Antonio shrugged. ‘He loved King Arthur. He was very interested in gold goblets. If Lance was in his way, Jago could kill.’
‘He was very affable to us,’ Georgia said defensively, ‘but of course he’s much older now. In his younger days he might have been very different.’
Antonio, having made his point, became the happy host again. ‘We not like him because of Jennifer.’
‘His wife?’ Georgia’s interest quickened. Was she the forgotten factor in the story?
‘Jennifer was my friend when I first came to Paris,’ Madeleine explained. ‘We shared the flat in the boulevard de Courcelles and I stayed on when she married Jago in 1956. She’d known him a long while, and he badgered her into marrying him. I didn’t think she would be happy. Jennifer was a lovely woman, both to look at and in her nature.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s foolish. How can one describe a friend when they are, or were, part of you? Is she still alive?’
‘Jago told me she died two years ago.’
‘I’m sad to hear that.’ Madeleine was clearly upset. ‘Antonio and I married three years later, and Lance took over my flat until we moved to Rome in late 1960. I lost touch with Jennifer after Lance’s death.’
‘The marriage seems to have worked out, at least from what Jago says.’
‘He would say that,’ Madeleine said wryly. ‘Lance had been passionately in love with her, of course, and she with him, so I never understood why she married Jago. Lance married Mary a year later, so I suppose all was well.’
Lance had been Madeleine’s part-time lodger for four years then, between 1956 and 1960. She wondered again how close Madeleine had been to him. It was relevant, regardless of what Madeleine had said earlier. Nevertheless Georgia reproved herself for her prurient mind. The two had been close, whether as friends or lovers. Did it matter? Yes, because a possible theory then arose of whether Jennifer had been preferred over her.
‘I liked Lance very much. Dear friend,’ Antonio announced. ‘My brother and I have chain of antique stores, Rome, Vienna, Paris, London. Easy for Jago to think of us as a gang, but we are honest traders. Always, we were that. Many good things came from the East then, so Vienna was well placed. We go there to live after we leave Rome.’
‘Were antiques smuggled out when Eastern Europe was still in the Communist bloc?’
‘We not see it as smuggling,’ he replied blandly. ‘No contact between East and West then. Lance knew the Benizis had their ears to ground, but that we know what is right, and what is wrong. The Benizi Brothers believe there is more money in being on right side. Too much danger in being bad. But – your glass empty, Georgia.’ He reached over to remedy this.
‘But,’ she prompted him.
‘But you must know bad side too. I knew good men, I knew bad men, and they both trusted me.’
‘It sounds a difficult line to walk,’ she observed frankly. ‘And,’ she reasoned, ‘if the bad men trusted you, what help could you give Lance? You couldn’t tell him anything without betraying the bad men. You’d soon be a dead man.’
Antonio laughed delightedly. ‘You have a clever wife, Zac. Ah, sorrel soup.’ He kissed his fingers to signify his pleasure. ‘Made in heaven, like marriage. It looks good, yes?’
‘It does,’ she agreed wholeheartedly. Nothing so reassuring and comforting as a whole tureen of soup and large chunks of bread to accompany it.
‘I am good too, am I not, Magdalena?’
‘A paragon of virtue,’ his wife agreed. ‘That’s why Lance liked your advice.’
‘Si,’ Antonio agreed. ‘He often came to me about stolen pictures. I told him whether he had any chance of getting them back or not. I tell him whether it was a private theft for ransom or whether it has gone to a collection. I tell him how much value it had on market. All this and I do not betray the bad men.’
‘Lance was a good man? Never bad?’ Georgia was conscious that she was slipping into this framework very easily.
‘Good, yes, but just a little of bad,’ Antonio replied.
How to get to the bottom of this? She decided it could only be by plunging in headlong. ‘That painting you kindly showed me . . .’ she began, deliberately hesitantly.
‘Ah yes, Mr Rossetti’s.’
‘Was it in your possession when Lance discovered it? Were you the family,’ she said, treading on eggshells, ‘that had owned it since 1855?’
‘No, no.’ Antonio shook his head vigorously. ‘It was not owned by Big Bad Benizi gang. Lance brought it to me to ask if I thought it genuine. Is it fake? It has good provenance, he told me. In 1855 Rossetti’s lady friend Lizzie Siddal came to Paris, but spent too much money. So Rossetti painted a picture quickly, sold it and brought money to her here. He was very pleased, because the poet Mr Robert Browning was in Paris too so Rossetti have a friend here. He stayed with Lizzie ten days, but she was not well and kept to her room. He needed more money for his lovely lady, so he painted another picture. He used the studio of the artist Purvis de Chavanne, later very famous but not then. He had an atelier to teach students, and he let Rossetti paint his picture there in return for lessons to pupils. The picture was the death of Sir Gawain, and very good. He sold it to a cafe in Pigalle to get money for Lizzie. Rossetti was very fond of King Arthur. He painted his Arthur’s Tomb watercolour that year, the Lady of Shalott drawing the following year, and designs for Oxford Union. Busy man, and greedy lady. A sad story, because the poor lady died young.’
Antonio had tears in his eyes. ‘I ask Lance to buy the painting of Gawain for me,’ he continued. ‘I liked it. Also, I heard rumours in Paris about the goblet in the picture being real, so I asked Lance about them. He said he had heard them too. So if painting was genuine, Rossetti must have known about the goblet story.’
‘Do you believe the painting is genuine? Have you had it tested?’
‘No. For Magdalena I break my own rules,’ Antonio declared. ‘She liked the painting too, and there were not so many tests in 1959, as there are today. Also, I did not want to know. When insurers come, I tell them it is a true painting and so pay more than I need. But I am happy to do that, because Magdalena and I believe it true, and so it is true.’
‘Did the rumours circulating about the goblet in the 1950s begin with this painting? Lance was waiting for some news to tell Jago about it, when he died.’
‘Lance said they began before, then he find painting. Rossetti knew the goblet was real – Lance was sure of that.’
‘How? Is this something to do with Ruskin and old scripts?’ Georgia was getting more and more intrigued.
‘Si. Rossetti was a great amico of John Ruskin, who as you know was very important man in art world. He live in London, south of the big river Thames, and Rossetti go to visit him often. Ruskin was a big collector maps and texts. In the year Rossetti went to Paris, Mr Ruskin visit Deal to study harbours, so he could easily have visited Dover too, which is very near. In Dover at that time there were many historians and collectors, and Lance told me there was a letter from Ruskin to Rossetti telling him he had been given a scrap of old manuscript about goblet, and where it was buried.’
‘Where was that?’ Georgia almost croaked. This must certainly have been the news Jago had been waiting for. The script written by the chaplains of St Mary-in-the-Castle as a record, which had later been lost.
Antonio chuckled. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Georgia. Lance did not have either the letter or the script. He looked for them both for me and for Jago; he looked for two years but then he died.’
‘Oh.’ Anti-climax. The end of the story missing.
The trail cold. Unless of course Lance had found them . . .
Antonio was watching her. ‘You have some of this nice pasta, Georgia. It will cheer you up.’
He was right, and as pasta replaced the soup tureen, and red wine flowed, the afternoon began to take on a surreal quality. The Benizi gang faded across a distant horizon together with any leads it might have to Lance Venyon. Instead she, a retired antiques dealer, his wife and Zac were having a friendly lunch in the sunshine in what seemed an Eden of delight. If there was a serpent amongst them, he was keeping his fangs to himself. Or were they just hidden, ready to strike? One never knew with serpents.
She tried to focus on the fact that she had to leave shortly, that she still hadn’t heard much about why Zac was here, and that she had let down her own guard in discussing the Venyon case. Well done, Georgia, she congratulated herself. All she had achieved, once again, was a discussion on King Arthur.
‘Remember that Manet of mine, Georgia,’ Zac was prattling. ‘I kept it under the bed because it was so beautiful I wanted to feel I owned it.’
She remembered it all too well, but it was a step too far on Zac’s part to mention it, since it forced her once more to recall all the other lovely things ‘of his’ in their home, that Zac had assured her were trifling gifts from clients. In those days she didn’t know a Ming from a Minton but she was wiser now. Although, if she were so clever, what on earth was she doing here, she wondered. She toyed with the notion that the entire King Arthur story was a red herring to divert them from the truth about Lance Venyon.
‘So you’re a PI now, Georgia,’ Zac said idly, ‘Bulldog Drummond, Philip Marlowe and good old Sherlock all in one.’
‘Hardly a PI,’ she said mildly. ‘Peter and I write books for a living.’
‘Any time you want my input,’ Zac offered generously, ‘you have only to ask.’
‘How good of you,’ she replied warmly, secure in the knowledge that sarcasm always passed Zac by. ‘About what?’
‘This Venyon fellow.’
As so often in the past, she’d walked right back into it. ‘Do you know anything about him, other than the rumours about the goblet?’