Bombing in Belgravia

by Samantha Silver

  “Thank you for telling me,” I replied, trying to look like the news was shocking and saddening, and I practically ran out of the bookstore. As I took the train back to my basement suite, I felt a profound feeling of satisfaction for the first time in a long time. I’d had a problem to solve, all on my own, and I’d solved it. It was hard, and I almost gave up a couple of times, but in the end I persevered and I made it through. And I was also fairly certain that Stephen Shaw had no idea I wasn’t who I said I was.

  As soon as I got back home I typed the name “Fiona Stone” into my iPad. Thanks to a couple of old newspaper articles, I found out that a year earlier Fiona Stone had broken into three homes and stolen jewellery, and had finally been caught. It seemed that she had pled guilty to the offenses, and was sentenced to two years at Holloway Prison.

  “Look at that, Biscuit. Maybe I’m not completely hopeless at this after all,” I said to my cat as he pounced onto a little felt mouse sitting on the floor. Next time I saw Linda, I was finally going to be able to answer her question. I’d done some investigative work all on my own—granted, with some input from Violet—and I’d solved my case! I was surprised at how much pride I felt in myself. Maybe it was time for me to stop moping around and find something else to do with my own life for a little while, I thought to myself.

  Chapter 19

  The following day, around eleven in the morning, I got a text from Violet.

  Come to my house. We are going to find a stolen painting today.

  I did as Violet asked and ten minutes later we were standing in front of the entrance to Sloane Street underground station.

  “So what are we doing here?” I asked.

  “We are going to find a painting,” Violet replied.

  “And how exactly are we going to do that?” Sometimes trying to get information out of Violet was like pulling teeth.

  “I have no idea,” Violet replied.

  “You realize it’s raining, right? I could be indoors, watching Netflix right now.”

  “You have an umbrella, you have nothing to complain about,” Violet replied. “Besides, this is far more interesting than anything on the television,” she said, practically spitting out that last word. I had a feeling Violet wasn’t a fan of Supernatural or Game of Thrones.

  “So do we stand here and wait for the painting to find us?” I asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “We are going to walk through Belgravia. Walk me through the timeline of the crime,” Violet said, motioning to a bench that was hidden under cover well enough that we wouldn’t get rained on.

  “Well,” I started, closing my umbrella, “Jenny Lin has an appointment with Andrew Greenhouse.”

  “Yes.”

  “He goes to her house at nine pm. They argue, presumably over the painting, and he kills her. Still agreed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jenny Lin is dead, Andrew Greenhouse pulls the gas line from the back of the stove. He takes the painting, and leaves.”

  “Yes.”

  I had to think about the next bit for a little while before I came up with it. “Oh! Andrew Greenhouse stayed to make sure that Kevin Lin came home and blew up the house before noticing his sister was dead and sounding the alarm, but he didn’t get far enough away from the blast and was caught up in it!”

  “While I agree that this is what happened, you are forgetting one thing. What happened to the painting?”

  I sat in silence for a minute before the answer came to me. “Well, it had to be destroyed?”

  Violet shook her head. “No, that is the thing. It would not have been destroyed. Andrew Greenhouse was injured, yes. But the description of his injuries imply that he had the house fall on him, not that he was burned, do they not?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Brianne said.”

  “So in that case, the painting would be damaged, yes. But it would not be destroyed completely. There would have been evidence of the painting found near the body, and I guarantee you that had that sort of thing appeared we would have heard about it by now.”

  “That means the painting wasn’t near Andrew Greenhouse when the house exploded,” I said. “But where could he have put it? It had to be somewhere near here, and he couldn’t have gone home, or his wife would have mentioned it.”

  “Précisement! Andrew Greenhouse killed Jenny Lin, then set up the gas leak. He then left the house with the painting. He stored it somewhere, and returned to ensure both Lin children were killed, intending to return afterwards and take the painting back home. He must have thought it more prudent to hide the painting until he knew both Lin children were killed, in case Kevin survived the explosion and he had to kill him by hand. However, for some reason, Andrew Greenhouse was too close to the blast and found himself the unwitting victim.”

  “Which means that the painting he hid has to still be hidden where he left it, because he’s been sedated in a hospital bed until a couple of days ago, and there’s no way that he’d trust that sort of thing to someone else.”

  “Exactly. You do not tell even your wife that you have stolen one of the world’s most valuable paintings, especially when no one else knows where it is. If he has hidden it well enough, he will assume that it will not be found until he is recovered and can retrieve it himself.”

  “And that’s why we’re here, we have to try and figure out where he would have hidden it,” I said slowly, understanding.

  “Oui, exactement,” Violet said, nodding. “Andrew Greenhouse was not wearing gloves when he was found; I asked the policeman who had been in charge of the case previously. It means that if we manage to find the painting, it will have Andrew Greenhouse’s fingerprints on it. We will be able to prove he is the murderer, and a thief.”

  “Ok,” I said. “So what are we looking for?”

  “Anything that looks as if a person could hide something. It does not have to be big; the painting was quite small. It does, however, have to be secure,” Violet said as we began walking up Cliveden Place, a commercial street only a couple blocks away from the explosion. “We sadly cannot visit Bourne Street itself at the moment; I imagine that Agent Tompkins would love to find us near the scene of the crime. However, we are permitted to shop in Belgravia.”

  Next to an upscale homewares store was a large, somewhat secluded space, but Violet clucked when I mentioned it.

  “No, no, no. It is all wrong. He would have left the painting somewhere that would have been completely safe. This is too exposed. It cannot be here.” We continued to make our way through the streets. Violet’s eyes darted from side to side as she searched for somewhere suitable.

  “What if he had a lover or someone who lives near here?” I asked. “Then we’d never find it.”

  “Do not say never! He may have, but we do not yet know. We must exhaust this method, first.”

  “I’m definitely starting to feel exhausted,” I muttered to myself. Not to mention I was getting wet, and I was hungry. I looked up and saw the closest thing to a miracle I’d ever seen. There was a pub directly in front of us! Called The Antelope, the exterior was dark brown paneled wood, with flowers above the black sign indicating the name in gold lettering. The apartments around it were all white, and it stood out in the middle of the street. I wondered if I could convince Violet to eat here.

  I turned to look at her, but her face had taken on that look she got when she was thinking. She was looking directly ahead, her fingers drumming against her leg. I let her think for a bit, and as her eyes began to sparkle with delight I asked her what it was.

  “This is it!” she said.

  “What’s it?”

  “This place. We must go in and eat.”

  “Wow, this place truly is a miracle,” I said, heading for the door. As soon as I stepped inside the warmth hit me like suddenly being enveloped in a warm blanket. The place was small and cozy; a couple were seated at a small table off to the side of the bar, and a group of friends were obviously having a late lunch at one of the two larger tables
right by the bar. Violet and I settled ourselves at a small round table on the far side of the bar, and I set my coat down and asked Violet what she wanted before going up to the bar to order.

  “I’ll have the Chicken Caesar Salad, no dressing, and a glass of water please,” Violet asked me. I went up and placed her order, along with a Chalcroft Farm Beef Burger and a beer for myself. I hadn’t spent two hours walking around in the rain to eat a salad.

  I made my way back to our table and sat down across from Violet. “So why are we here?”

  “What was missing from the crime scene?” Violet asked in reply.

  “Ummm… the painting?”

  “No, we have already deduced that it was hidden. What should have been at the crime scene, and wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, completely confused.

  “The food!” Violet replied. “Think! You are Andrew Greenhouse. You are hiding from your wife the fact that you are going to steal a painting and kill the person keeping it. You do not want her to get suspicious, so you tell her that you have picked up dinner from the place near your work where you always eat. However, if he had actually done that, what would have happened?”

  “The food would have been cold by the time he actually got home,” I replied.

  “Yes! So he has to get new food. The Inn of Court, it is a Fuller’s pub. They are a chain.”

  “Oh!” I said, realizing suddenly. “The food from here and from there would have been the same!”

  “Exactly. If Andrew Greenhouse left his work, got the food and went home, it would still be warm. So he killed Jenny Lin, took the painting, and he came here.”

  The waitress came by with our food just then and placed it in front of us. My mouth watered as I looked at the burger; I had absolutely earned this by wandering around in the rain for like, two hours, and I ignored Violet’s look of scorn as she took a bite of what I was certain was an incredibly unsatisfying salad.

  “Excuse me,” Violet told the waitress before she left. “You wouldn’t happen to have been working the night of the explosion, were you?”

  “Ohhh, yes, I was,” the waitress answered. “Bad night, that one. Those poor people. I’m glad one of them is going to be all right. He was just in a few minutes before the explosion, too.”

  “Oh was he?” Violet asked, her eyes gleaming.

  “Yes, he said he wanted to bring some food home to his wife. Ordered a burger and fish and chips to go, then he went to use the loo, went back out and told me he’d be back in a little bit to pick up his food. He left and never came back. About fifteen minutes later the explosion happened; we heard it from here. It was bloody terrifying, I must say.”

  “Did he have anything with him?” Violet asked. “The man, I mean.”

  “Oh yes, he did. A shopping bag, from Harrods. I figured he’d just had a long day at the office and stopped to get something for his wife as an apology to go with the late supper.”

  “Thanks,” Violet told her, taking out her phone while I munched on a hot, crispy French fry.

  “Who are you texting?” I asked.

  “DCI Williams,” Violet told me. “He’ll be here shortly, we can eat our meal until then.”

  I was amazed at the detachment Violet was able to manage while we ate our food. “So I see that you have solved your problem of your friend’s boyfriend and the lie he told her?”

  The fry that was halfway to my mouth paused in midair. “How could you possibly know that?” I asked. There was no way. She couldn’t know. She had to be guessing.

  “You went out yesterday afternoon. You never go out, unless it’s with the cat, or to get food. You looked far too thoughtful to be going to get food, which means you were doing something important to you. You are still depressed; you do not do much on your own, so it must have been that. When you came back an hour later, you walked with more confidence; you were obviously a lot happier. I took that to mean that you had found a solution to your problem.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m not sure what part of that is more insane. The fact that you actually figured out where I was going, what I was doing, and what the result was based on my body language when I left the apartment and came back or the fact that you were spying on me.”

  “I was not spying on you,” Violet said. “I was watching the street.”

  “I have never, not once, seen the front blinds that look onto the street open. I swear you’re sneakier than Biscuit sometimes.”

  “I do not look physically. I have cameras. You have seen my line of work; it would be imprudent not to have extensive home security. Besides, in that particular situation, I was simply reviewing tapes to see if Agent Tompkins had been past or not.”

  “Does that really make things better though?” I asked.

  “Are you going to tell me what you discovered, or not?”

  Realizing that Violet was never going to understand just how creepy watching tapes of people going down her street really was, I told her about my trip to the bookstore and how I found out that Aaron Stone did have a sister, she was simply incarcerated for at least another year.

  “Excellent!” Violet said, clapping her hands happily when I told her about it. “You are taking initiative! You are doing things! It is good for you. I am glad that you did this.”

  Violet looked like she was going to say something more, but just then DCI Williams came in through the door and walked over to us.

  “You do realize that I’m not working the Lin murders, right?” he asked Violet, giving me a smile and a nod of hello, which I returned.

  “Of course,” Violet replied. “However, we are allowed to sit at a pub with a friend, are we not? Pull up a chair,” she said, and DCI Williams looked at me questioningly.

  “Has she gone off her meds or something?” he asked, and I laughed.

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Violet told him. “It is simply that a certain MI5 agent has had me followed for a number of days now, and I would rather they simply think this is a casual meal between coworkers.”

  “You know, the idea that British intelligence is following you is actually more realistic than you carrying on a normal human relationship,” DCI Williams replied, grabbing a chair from the empty table next to us and sitting down. The waitress came by and he ordered a beer. “What is this really about, anyway?”

  “There’s a painting worth tens of millions of pounds hidden in the bathroom here.”

  “You have got to be joking,” DCI Williams replied as Violet speared a piece of chicken onto her fork and ate it.

  “I most certainly am not.”

  “The Milkmaid? It’s here? That is the painting you’re talking about, right?”

  “Of course that’s the painting,” Violet scoffed. “And yes. It has been here the entire time. I thought perhaps you might enjoy taking the credit for its discovery.”

  “You know, some days I get phone calls from Violet and I think I need to find a new career. Then other days I get phone calls from her, and I get tempted to just grab her and plant a big fat kiss on her lips,” DCI Williams told me.

  “Please do not, a thank you would suffice,” Violet said, and I laughed at them both.

  “Well thank you,” DCI Williams told her, shaking his head. “I still can’t believe this is really happening. You seriously think the painting is in the bathroom here?”

  “I do,” Violet replied. “Come, we have spent enough time here now, let us go find us a stolen treasure.”

  The three of us went into the men’s bathroom. It was simple and small – and thankfully empty – with just a sink and a toilet. There weren’t exactly a million places to hide a priceless painting. However, it took Violet less than a minute to fixate on a small vent near the ceiling.

  “There,” she said, pointing. I noticed that one of the three screws had actually fallen to the floor; it looked as though the vent had been moved since the last time this floor was cleaned.

  DCI Williams’ height came in handy;
by standing on his tip-toes he could just reach the vent. He put on a pair of latex gloves, pulled a multi-tool from his pocket and worked on the other screws, and two minutes later, the vent had come off. Reaching into it, DCI Williams’ eyes suddenly went wide as he pulled out a Harrods shopping bag.

  I realized I wasn’t breathing as DCI Williams pulled out a mailing tube about a foot and a half long.

  “Let me,” Violet ordered as she took latex gloves out of her purse and slipped them off. DCI Williams looked more than just a little bit relieved at being able to hand the painting off to Violet. Carefully, with precise movements, she pulled the painting from the tube. Holding it open, the three of us gazed onto one of the greatest masterpieces from a Dutch Master still in existence. My breath caught in my throat at the sheer beauty of it.

  “I might not know much about art, but I know that’s a bloody good painting,” DCI Williams said. The colors and lighting were absolutely exquisite; it gave the painting a very realistic feel. The milkmaid in the painting poured the milk into a bowl, her frame lit by the sun pouring in through the window next to her.

  It was one of the most incredible moments in my life, to be only inches away from something worth so much money.

  “Now, we put it away,” Violet said, rolling the painting back up and carefully putting it back in the tube. “DCI Williams, this is yours now. Do with it as you must. However, I ask that you please not release to the media that the painting has been found for at least a few hours.”

  “Wait,” DCI Williams told Violet. “I need to know who stole it. I need some more details.”

  “Andrew Greenhouse stole it. He intended to pick it back up, along with his dinner, when he was certain Kevin Lin was dead, but he got caught in the blast instead. His fingerprints should be all over it; he was not wearing gloves when he was caught in the blast. However, I need a few hours to speak with him. I have proof he is a thief, but not a murderer. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “All right, how long do you need? I won’t be able to give you more than twenty-four hours.”

  “That should be plenty; I will need only a few hours.”