Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  “Notice anything different?” Chief Burke asked when we were all standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “It was a lot dryer yesterday,” I said, stepping out of the puddle in which I’d landed.

  “Sorry about that,” Chief Featherstone said. “We did have a pretty serious fire to put out.”

  “Not a complaint, just an observation,” I said. “The outside door was closed yesterday, and hidden behind those black curtains.” I pointed to the waterlogged remnants of the curtains, which had been partially dragged down from their rods. “There were a lot of pictures hanging on the walls—probably knocked off by the fire hoses. And that case at the end wasn’t smashed,” I added. “It was full of jewelry.”

  “Valuable jewelry?” Chief Burke sounded slightly incredulous. Looking around at the rest of the museum I could see why.

  “Only one piece that’s actually valuable,” I said.

  I pulled out my phone and clicked through the pictures until I’d reached the one of the jewelry case. The chiefs inspected it, and then we made our way carefully to the other end of the room. Between the broken glass and the stuff that had been knocked off the walls and shelves by the force of the fire hose, there were a lot of obstacles underfoot.

  “Try not to touch anything if you can help it,” the chief reminded us. “Horace is still processing the outside. Normally I’d be keeping all of us out until he’d finished in here, but the crime scene’s already pretty compromised by the firefighters’ efforts. Unavoidably, of course,” he added, with a nod to Chief Featherstone.

  We reached the case, and I held out my phone again so we could all compare the photo with the real thing.

  “Aha!” Chief Featherstone said. “That huge ruby ring is missing.”

  “Appears to be the only thing missing,” the chief said, flicking his eyes back and forth between the picture and the case.

  “Then whoever took it wasn’t a very savvy jewel thief,” I said. “The ruby ring’s a fake.”

  “Then which is the valuable piece?” Chief Burke asked.

  “Wait,” Chief Featherstone said. “Let me guess. That black sparkly thing.” He pointed to a black necklace. “Henry, what’s your guess?”

  “I wouldn’t begin to know,” the chief said. “Maybe that crown?”

  “The black sparkling thing is a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry,” I said. “The sparkly black stones are jet, which is not all that valuable. And the crown is the one they used to use to crown Miss Caerphilly County back in the fifties and sixties. Rhinestones.”

  “And you know this how?” Chief Burke asked. “I don’t see any information tags.”

  “There were yesterday,” I said. “And I read them. And also I can zoom in on the pictures on my phone, so I don’t need to worry about the tags that probably got washed away by the fire hoses.”

  “The tags are here.” Chief Featherstone was peering into the case. “They’re just not waterproof. So which one is the valuable piece?”

  “The cat,” I said.

  They both stared at it.

  “That thing?” Chief Featherstone said. “Looks like a piece of yard-sale bargain-box crap.”

  “The gems are real,” I said. “It was specially made for the Duchess of Windsor.”

  Chief Burke was peering over his glasses at it.

  “No accounting for taste, is there?” he remarked. “I’d have taken it for a cheap dime-store trinket.”

  “And evidently so did our intruder,” I said. “So the good news is that we don’t have a brilliant, successful international jewel thief plying his trade in Caerphilly.”

  “And the bad news is that someone may have killed one person and seriously injured another to gain possession of something that actually is a dime-store trinket,” Chief Featherstone said.

  “I doubt that the ring was the actual motive for the break-in,” Chief Burke said. “More likely the perpetrator snatched it in the hope of distracting us from his real motive.”

  “Which was?” Chief Featherstone asked.

  “Well, if I knew that, I’d be making an arrest right now,” the chief said. “Instead of scouring this blasted basement for any clue to what could possibly be worth burning down a building, killing one human being, and trying to kill another. To say nothing of the possibility that it’s all related to yesterday morning’s murder.”

  “Sorry,” Chief Featherstone said.

  “No, I’m sorry.” Chief Burke sighed and massaged his forehead for a moment. “Sorry to both of you. I woke up with a headache and it’s not getting any better. But there’s no use taking my mood out on the people who are trying to help. Jim, anything you can tell me about the origin of this fire could help solve the murder. And Meg—apart from the worthless ring, can you spot anything missing?”

  Chief Featherstone handed me his large flashlight and I began to run it over the jumbled contents of the museum.

  At first we had a couple of flurries of excitement as I spotted things in my photos that were missing from the museum. A Civil War–era spittoon that had been displayed on a side table. A pen once used by someone-or-other to sign some kind of important document. Nearly the entire collection of photos of Caerphilly soldiers from past wars. But as we continued to study the wreckage—study it, not sift through it, because we were still waiting for Horace to do his official forensic sifting—we managed to spot the spittoon, the pen, and several of the missing photos. They weren’t missing at all, just blown out of place by the fire hoses. Odds were Horace would find the rest when he processed the scene.

  “We’ve probably done as much as we can for now,” the chief said. “Jim, you want to stay here and work with Vern and Horace?”

  Chief Featherstone nodded.

  “I’ve got to get back to the station,” Chief Burke said. “See if news of this second murder makes Mr. Klapcroft rethink his decision to talk to me.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said. “He’ll probably be terrified that you’ll suspect him of being involved and be more determined than ever to wait for an attorney.”

  The chief sighed.

  “She’s right, Henry,” Chief Featherstone said. “At least if I were the wayward young rapscallion I was at his age, that’s how I’d be thinking.”

  “Well, then maybe one of those forty-’leven local lawyers I called yesterday will have returned my call by the time I get back to the station,” Chief Burke said. “We should be getting out of Horace’s way.”

  I assumed that by “we” he meant mostly me, so I began picking my way back to the stairs.

  “Don’t take off just yet,” the chief said. “I want to ask you something, but I want a word with Horace first.”

  “I’ll wait in the foyer,” I said.

  Chapter 16

  Of course, I have always been constitutionally incapable of merely waiting, so I passed the time by strolling up and down the foyer, peeking into the adjoining rooms to see how much damage had been done. Not much, actually, which probably meant that we could open the Haunted House again shortly after the chief released it. Assuming he did release it before the rapidly approaching end of the festival. And also assuming that news of a second murder didn’t send the tourists fleeing.

  I was peering down the cellar stairs—okay, I was trying to eavesdrop on what the chief and Horace might be saying—when I was startled by a voice behind me.

  “Oh, dear. Dr. Smoot didn’t tell me there had been a fire.”

  I turned to see an odd figure standing in the doorway—a man who would probably have been close to seven feet tall if he stood up straight, but with such a pronounced stoop that he could probably have looked Michael straight in the eye—and Michael was six foot four.

  Our visitor was elderly. He had taken off his hat upon entering the Haunted House, and I could see that he had a neat, closely cropped fringe of gray hair around the perimeter of his otherwise bald head. He was holding his hat in fingers so unusually long as to look positively freakish. Under h
is tent-sized dark gray raincoat I could see gray flannel trousers and galoshes.

  “May I help you?” I asked.

  “I’m Dr. Cavendish,” he said. “I have a seven o’clock appointment with Dr. Smoot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I began. “Dr. Smoot isn’t available.”

  “He was expecting me.” Dr. Cavendish hunched his shoulders defensively, which had the unfortunate effect of increasing his resemblance to an oversized vulture.

  “I’m sure he was,” I said. “Unfortunately, Dr. Smoot isn’t here right now. He’s in the hospital. Can you tell me what he was expecting you for?”

  “Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish pulled the left side of his raincoat open, revealing a well-worn Harris Tweed jacket beneath. He fished in the jacket pocket with two of those unusually long fingers—was it just my imagination, or did his fingers have more joints than usual? He pulled out a business card, then held it with both hands and presented it to me with a slight bow.

  “Thank you.” I glanced down at the card, which read G.Q. CAVENDISH. FINE ART CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION followed by the usual address, telephone, fax, and e-mail information. “Oh! I remember. Dr. Smoot and Mrs. Paltroon both mentioned that you were coming by today to take a look at the portrait.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Cavendish sounded relieved that at least someone was aware of his mission. “May I see it?”

  “Let me ask Chief Burke,” I said.

  “What is he chief of?” Dr. Cavendish looked anxious.

  “Chief of Police,” I said. “The painting’s in the basement, which is technically still a crime scene.”

  “Crime scene?” Now Dr. Cavendish looked positively alarmed. “Dr. Smoot didn’t tell me that there was a crime involved.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long night and I’m probably not explaining anything very well. There probably wasn’t a crime when Dr. Smoot called you. I assume he called a day or two ago to examine the painting, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “He and Mrs. Paltroon both. They informed me that it is a late eighteenth-century family portrait done by an unknown itinerant painter, on loan to the museum. As soon as it arrived, Dr. Smoot noticed that it showed some signs of deterioration. He notified Mrs. Paltroon and they agreed to have me come as soon as possible to determine the cause of the problem and assess whether it was safe to exhibit it here in his museum.” He looked around at the waterlogged contents of the living room. “I gather this is not the museum’s normal condition.”

  “We had a fire last night, remember?” I said. “Actually just a few hours ago. Dr. Smoot was injured and another person, apparently an intruder and possibly the cause of the fire, was killed.”

  “Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish shook his head in dismay. “They were after the portrait, weren’t they? They didn’t take it, did they? Or—was it damaged in the fire?”

  He looked so pale that I hastened to reassure him.

  “If they were after the portrait, they didn’t get it,” I said. “And the portrait wasn’t damaged. Not by the fire, anyway.”

  He breathed a sigh of such relief that you’d have thought I’d just told him his beloved mother was unharmed.

  “Of course,” I went on, “it did get a little wet.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” He went pale again. “I must see it. Take me to it at once!”

  “Just a second.” I walked over to the basement door and called downstairs.

  “Chief? May I see you for a moment?”

  “Coming.”

  Chief Burke appeared at the top of the steps, looking distracted. I introduced the two and explained Dr. Cavendish’s mission.

  “I’d like to see the painting right away,” Dr. Cavendish said.

  I could tell the chief didn’t like being ordered about at his own crime scene.

  “And his expert opinion might help you figure out if the painting is valuable enough to have been a motive for what happened last night,” I suggested.

  The chief studied Dr. Cavendish for a few moments.

  “I don’t see why you can’t take a look at the painting,” he said finally. “But don’t touch anything else.”

  He led the way down into the basement and then through the waterlogged room to the end where the painting hung. Dr. Cavendish kept looking around him with alarm, as if expecting something to pop out of the shadows, and his freakishly long fingers twitched convulsively.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “Such a lot of damage. Those firemen with their jackboots! Couldn’t they have been a bit more careful?”

  “They put the fire out before it burned up the whole house and the painting with it,” I said. “And if they had to do some damage in the process, it’s the arsonist’s fault.” I decided not to mention that one of the jackbooted firefighters was my husband.

  “Here’s the picture,” the chief said, gesturing toward the wall on which it hung.

  “Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish stood for a few moments and stared, his face disconsolate.

  I could see why. Most of the Paltroons looked much the same, misshapen and awkward, with insipid smiles on their heavy-jowled faces. It was probably just my imagination that their painted smiles looked more forced this morning, as if they were resenting the indignities inflicted on them during the night but bravely putting on a good show. And I was definitely only imagining that the painted Mrs. Paltroon had made progress in her attempt to slip off the right side of the painting and escape from her overlarge brood.

  But something had changed. All those areas where the paint had been merely a little puckered yesterday were now looking seriously the worse for wear. The wall behind the family was being transformed as little bits of the bland tan color flaked off, revealing that something else had originally been painted underneath. And Mr. Paltroon’s fawn-colored coat was almost completely gone, revealing that he’d originally worn a green jacket.

  “Fascinating,” Dr. Cavendish breathed. “Pentimenti!”

  “I beg your pardon?” the chief said.

  “A pentimento is a place in a painting where the artist changed his mind,” Dr. Cavendish said. “Or repented. Pentimento comes from the Italian for ‘repentance.’ The artist originally painted something in the background—a landscape would be most common, or possibly a fireplace or fountain. But then for some reason he painted it over with that rather atypical and compositionally unfortunate blank wall. And then changed the green coat to tan.”

  “Maybe the family didn’t like whatever he’d done in the background,” I suggested.

  “Very possibly.” Dr Cavendish was rummaging in his pockets. He fished out a small flashlight and a pair of tweezers. He turned the flashlight on and ran its beam slowly over the damaged areas of the painting.

  “Of course,” he added, “we usually discover a pentimento in less dramatic ways. Some paints become more transparent over time, so that what was completely obscured begins to be revealed. Other pentimenti are revealed by X-rays or infrared photography. Letting the top layer bubble up from damp conditions and then blowing it off with a fire hose is not a recommended method for investigating pentimenti. But now that it’s happened …

  Here he fell silent, stepped closer to the painting, and studied it with the light of his little flashlight for several minutes.

  “I take it back,” he said. “Not pentimenti after all. I think it’s highly unlikely that the original artist made these changes. I can’t be sure until I’ve done a full analysis, but I would not be surprised at all to find that these alterations were made years, if not decades, after the painting was completed, and by a different hand.”

  “But why?” The chief sounded puzzled. And I could tell by his expression that he wasn’t at all sure any of this would be of the slightest use to him in solving his two murder cases.

  “Well, it’s possible…” Dr. Cavendish’s voice trailed off as he reached up with his tweezers to Mr. Paltroon’s shoulder and gently took hold of a large paint flake that was clearly on the verge of falling.
Removing the flake revealed something else. Mr. Paltroon’s coat wasn’t just a coat. It had epaulets and gold frogging.

  “That’s a uniform, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Why yes, it is.” Dr. Cavendish seemed to find my question hilarious. Or maybe it was something about the uniform that had set him off. He went from a giggle to a guffaw and ended up leaning against the opposite wall with tears streaming down his eyes.

  “What’s so funny about the uniform?” the chief asked.

  This seemed to set Dr. Cavendish off again. The chief and I waited with growing impatience until Dr. Cavendish recovered his composure. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I forget sometimes that not everyone lives in the eighteenth century as much as I do. I should explain.”

  “Please do.” The chief was clearly getting impatient.

  “It’s just that the uniform is so obviously the reason they defaced the portrait,” he said.

  “I don’t understand,” the chief said. “The Paltroons are quite proud of their ancestor’s service in the Continental Army. Why should the uniform upset them?”

  “Mrs. Paltroon is pretty much president-for-life of the local DAR,” I added.

  “Then the restored painting is going to come as rather a shock to her,” Dr. Cavendish said. “Because that’s the uniform of the British Legion. And an officer’s uniform to boot—looks like a captain.”

  “The British Legion was not on our side, I presume,” the chief said.

  “No, indeedy,” Dr. Cavendish said. “The British Legion was a loyalist regiment. They fought in the South Carolina campaign, under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Known to the Americans as ‘the Butcher,’ because of his involvement in the so-called Waxhaw Massacre. He’s supposed to have had his men slaughter several hundred American soldiers after they’d surrendered. The British side of it is quite different, of course, and we’ll never know for sure what happened. But suffice it to say that if Mrs. Paltroon joined the DAR on the strength of this gentleman’s service in the Continental Army, she was flying under very false colors.”