by Susan Moody
I could hear frenzied barking from the house as the dog Marlowe – so named because of his former owner’s fondness for crime fiction – registered my arrival. Marlowe was about the size and shape of a toothbrush, more like a runaway moustache than anything else, and came up no further than my instep. The noise he produced was completely disproportionate to his diminutive size.
At the end of the long garden rose the canal embankment, where trees shifted in the slight wind. I could smell elder and wallflowers, a whiff of manure underlaid with diesel fumes from the tractors out on the fields.
I rapped on the open door and called out as I stepped inside the kitchen. I found the Major in a tweed-green cashmere sweater and cavalry twill trousers. A cravat pimpled with fox heads filled the space between the two edges of his open-necked shirt.
‘Good morning, my dear,’ he said. ‘Heard you coming – or rather, Marlowe did. I’ve just put the kettle on. How lovely to see you.’
He loaded up a tray with mugs, a milk jug and an old-fashioned brown teapot, together with a plate of his homemade chocolate chip cookies, and carried it all into his surprisingly unmilitary sitting room.
Having chomped down three cookies in short order, I said, ‘Have you ever considered setting up a cookie company? You make the best biscuits I’ve ever tasted.’
‘I can’t say I’ve—’
‘People love homemade biscuits. I bet you’d make a fortune.’
‘But think of the work involved. I’d be baking night and day. Never have time for a pint in the pub. And all the rules and regulations I’d have to take into account. Health and safety and such. And the equipment I’d need. Let alone publicizing the company. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘You could give batches of them as presents, and if anyone wanted to give a monetary gift back …’
‘Sounds a bit amateur to me. No, it’s a wonderful idea, but I think not.’
After some further desultory chat, I said, ‘All right, Major. What was it you wanted to show me?’
‘Finish your tea, wash your hands, then put on a pair of these …’ The Major produced a pair of blue plastic gloves, the disposable sort that colorectal doctors put on before doing some embarrassingly intimate probing. I, too, had used them when I was still on the force. Not to explore anyone’s personal spaces, but in order not to tamper with evidence.
‘This is all very mysterious,’ I said.
‘You just wait, m’dear.’ He tapped the side of his nose and then, as though the sight of the disposable gloves had for some reason reminded him, said, ‘By the way, I saw that husband of yours the other day.’
‘Doing what … directing traffic?’ I asked, caustic as lemon juice and not trying to hide it. I had thought that I was truly over DCI Jack Martin. That my broken heart had mended and even my anger had dissipated. Not so. The truth was that I was still pretty damn bitter about the defection of my former husband to the willing arms of a masseuse or poodle-parlour lady, something of that sort. ‘I thought he’d moved to Wales.’
‘He may well have done, but there he was, large as life, walking along the High Street.’
‘Alone?’ Not that I cared one way or another.
‘Well, no.’ The Major was looking like someone who very much wished they had never begun this conversational thread. ‘He was with a … um … not to put too fine a point on it … he was with a—’
‘Woman,’ I said.
‘Precisely.’
‘He did remarry, you know.’
‘Yes, indeed. I just got the impression that it probably wasn’t to this … uh … if I’m completely honest … floozy.’
Good old Jack, I thought, without any reminiscent affection. Still up to his old tricks. Unable to keep his dick in his trousers. Some people never learn.
‘Anyway, now you’ve finished your cuppa, let’s have a look at what I wanted you to see.’ The Major got up and went towards the next room, with me following. My stomach felt like a pickled walnut, all sour and twisted. What was Jack the Love Rat doing parading himself in Longbury? It was bad enough that he’d walked out on me more than three years ago, leaving me pregnant, and had gone off with someone else, the creep. Someone with whom he’d been having an affair the entire length of our three-year marriage. What I hated him for most was not the infidelity but the fact that once I found out, the knowledge had soured all the happy memories I had had of our time together. The bastard. And of course, when I lost our baby, although he knew about it, there was no sympathetic message from him, no hint of concern for me, let alone the loss of the child I’d been carrying. His child. The absolute sod. The other woman was more than welcome to the faithless son of a bitch.
While I was thinking these venomous and fruitless thoughts, the Major was faffing about at the small oak gate-legged table in his dining room. He stood back, gesturing like a conjuror’s assistant. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you think of these, then?’
I looked at the two drawings in front of me. And looked again. My immediate thought was Wow! My second thought was Wow!
‘Can those possibly be what I think they are?’ I said. I bent closer. Surely I was staring at two pen-and-wash sketches by Tiepolo. I squinted at them again, carefully held them up to the light and sniffed them. Without speaking, the Major handed me a large round magnifying glass on a handle and I bent closer, moving the glass around until I had covered the entire surface of them. ‘I’m not an expert by any means,’ I said at last, straightening up and jamming my fists into the small of my back. ‘But those look authentic to me.’
And copies or genuine, at least one of them was easily recognizable as belonging to Tiepolo’s Pulcinella series. That would be Giovanni Domenico, not his father Lorenzo or younger brother Battista. The conical hat, the ruffed and buttoned clown suit, the grotesque mask, the hunched back, bulging midriff and misshapen nose were clear trademarks. I tried to remember how many of these drawings he had produced: over a hundred, I seemed to recall from my days as a student.
The other drawing, on grey paper, showed the head and shoulders of an old man, bearded and balding, his face in profile, with – as so often with Tiepolo – his back to the viewer. I was stunned. The artist had taken two chalks, a white and the famous red, or sanguine, and filled the space using no more than a few delicate strokes. Beautiful. I wanted more of them than just these two.
The Major had remained silent while I studied the pages spread out on the table. ‘So …’ he said eventually.
‘Where did you get them?’ I demanded. ‘Whose are they?’
‘Well …’ He coughed gently. Wiped an imaginary biscuit crumb from his moustache. Said, ‘Actually, I suppose they’re mine, really. Within the letter of the law, that is.’
‘But how? If they’re genuine, they must be worth a good deal of money.’ Though much more exciting than that was the possibility that I was looking at work which the eighteenth-century master himself had executed. That his fingers had moved across this paper, his hand had traced these figures.
He sighed. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, really.’
‘Major, where did you get them?’ I emphasized each word.
‘They must originally have belonged to Nell Roscoe. As you know, she left me her house next door and all its contents. Including the dog Marlowe, of course.’
At the sound of his name, Marlowe started prancing about and yapping.
‘And?’
‘Well, I’ve just begun to clear poor Nell’s place, which obviously entails going through her things, d’you see? Looking at the contents of the cupboards, setting aside the more obviously valuable stuff. And then yesterday, I started taking down some of the paintings she had on the wall. And blow me if the string on the back of one of them didn’t break, probably hadn’t been moved since she first put it up, smashed on to the floor, glass all over the show, splinters of wood everywhere, and now there’s three pictures lying there instead of one. An oil depicting a thatched farmhouse with cornfields and sheep an
d so forth, painted by the art mistress at the girls’ high school, as I happen to know since Nell showed it to me when she first acquired it. Plus, to my astonishment, these two. Nell must have hidden them behind the oil painting for safe-keeping.’
‘How amazing!’
‘I’ll say. I could see at once they must be something special.’
‘Of course, you’re going to have them valued.’
‘Yes, but I wanted you to look at them first.’
‘I appreciate your faith in me, Major. But you need to take them up to one of the big auction houses and ask them for an opinion.’
‘I realized that. But I’m not too keen on the thought of traipsing all the way up to London only to end up looking like an ignorant old fool in front of some whippersnapper fresh out of art school in a cheap suit. In fact …’ He looked at me with a pitiful expression. ‘I was wondering if you would take them up for me. I can’t be doing with the big city nowadays.’
I considered. ‘I’m going to London next week,’ I said, ‘but I do feel that as the owner of the drawings, it would be much better for you to go up yourself.’
I was conscious of a thrill which was obviously not shared by the Major. The two sketches must be worth quite a bit. Hard to see just how they could have been transferred from Italy to this small country cottage in the south-east of England. After all, they must be art museum pieces. Which made me wonder if I was entirely wrong in believing them to be authentic. I bent over the two sheets once more. They certainly appeared to be genuine. I turned them over, noticed the small smudge of blue in the left-hand corner of the one featuring a ruffed clown – paint? ink? – and once more studied the two images.
‘Have you examined any more of Mrs Roscoe’s pictures?’ I asked. Maybe the former high school headmistress had other treasures hidden behind the everyday stuff she had displayed.
‘Only a few. Haven’t found anything else so far.’
‘I wonder where she got these.’
‘Just what I thought. Though truth to tell, I don’t know much about art, but I know I don’t like this one.’ He slapped a hand down on the Pulcinella. ‘Nothing more than a clown in a weird mask prancing about in his pyjamas. I ask you.’
‘I suppose that’s one way of putting it.’ Whatever your views on their artistic merit, they must be pretty valuable, and the late Nell Roscoe must have been aware of that or she wouldn’t have hidden them. ‘As well as the clown, there’s this wonderful head of an old man. You have to admit it’s pretty stunning.’
‘I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly.
‘I wonder how they got here,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘I should imagine that she picked them up on that holiday she went on, to Italy, back in the spring. Poor old Nell – the heart attack occurred soon after she got back.’
‘She might not have acquired them in Italy, of course.’
‘Very true.’
‘Major, there’s no way she could have stolen them, is there?’
The Major looked at me. I looked back. We both shook our heads. Nell Roscoe and stolen property did not belong in the same sentence. Not even on the same page.
‘Did she have any other valuables?’
‘Not much. Some silver. Bits of jewellery … a couple of decent diamond brooches, two or three nice rings, some good pearls – you know, the kind of thing that women of her generation liked to wear.’ He put a blue plastic-gloved hand on the table, where it lay like some rare sea creature dredged from the depths of the ocean. ‘Not that I’m an expert on that sort of thing. Give me a firearm and I’d be much more useful.’
I could see his army days gathering behind his eyes, that increasingly distant epoch when Major Norman Horrocks still meant something, had significance, was somebody. A chill skittered briefly along the back of my neck. Was that what growing older was all about – losing one’s sense of self-worth? Realizing that one’s time in the sun was over?
I wanted to put my arms round the Major’s broad chest, but reckoned he would be completely flummoxed if I did. ‘I can’t really see Mrs Roscoe collecting guns,’ I said.
At our ankles, Marlowe bounced about, barking and fussing about at the mention of his late mistress.
‘As a matter of fact, you’d be surprised.’ The Major walked over to a sideboard and fished about in its recesses before bringing out a heavy black pistol. ‘Look at this. It was in her bedside drawer, believe it or not.’
‘Is it real?’
‘I should say so. And loaded, when I found it.’
‘Good heavens! I wonder why.’
‘Well, that’s just it. If these drawings are as valuable as you think, is it possible that someone knew – or suspected – that she had them? Which might explain why she hid them. Maybe the poor old girl was afraid that someone was aware of them, and likely to break in, force her to reveal them, tie her up and torture her until she revealed their … um … whereabouts.’ He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Who could she possibly suspect? Who was likely to be aware that an elderly retired teacher might possess what are undoubtedly works of art? Did she ever say how they came into her possession? I’d love to know.’ I had a sudden, vivid mental image of a distressed former pupil knocking at the door late at night, terrified features concealed beneath a rain-slicked hood, begging her former headmistress to help her, staring wildly about her to check whether she’d been followed by whoever it was she was fleeing. ‘Take them!’ she might have said, in this unlikely scenario. ‘Keep them hidden until I get back! And, if I don’t, they’re yours to keep.’ Then hurrying off into the storm, never to return.
Not privy to my lurid imaginings, the Major wrinkled his forehead. ‘Talking about it, it’s coming back to me. I seem to remember that she did pick them up in Venice, but I can’t be sure. My memory these days … I vaguely recall her telling me that she and her friend the art mistress went into this antiquarian bookshop – Fiona something or other. Or was she called Philippa?’
‘Was who?’
‘The art mistress. I was very fond of her, and we enjoyed many an alcoholic beverage together – this is Nell I’m talking about now – but she was always extremely sparing of any personal information.’ Shared shepherd’s pies danced briefly behind his eyes.
I jerked him back to the here and now. ‘This bookshop …’
He laughed. ‘She said it was about the same size as a coffin. Young man in there, apparently. Minding the shop while his father ran to the bank. Nell picks these drawings out of a folder, pays what he asked and away the two ladies go. She didn’t show them to me at the time, but she told me all about it.’
‘What about that cousin of hers who … um … died?’ I asked. ‘Did she have any idea that Mrs Roscoe might have stumbled on a real treasure?’
‘Very much doubt it, my dear.’
We were silent for a moment, both of us probably remembering Lilian, the late cousin, who had horribly killed herself in the most painful way possible by drinking Drano.
‘What about the husband?’ I asked.
‘Nell disliked him intensely. I’d rather keep him out of it, if you don’t mind, especially as I can’t see that he could possibly have anything to do with it.’ The Major dusted his hands together.
‘Understood.’
‘Heigh-ho,’ the Major said eventually. ‘Let’s go into the garden, and I’ll show you my latest offering in the bush-clipping line.’
‘Do I get a prize for guessing what it is?’
‘It ought to be perfectly obvious, m’dear.’ His face fell. ‘But I know it’s not. I wonder if anyone locally offers evening classes in topiary.’
FOUR
The walls of my brother’s Chelsea dining room were a dark olive green, handsomely accentuated by white-painted wood and elaborate plasterwork. White drapes splashed with what looked to me like giant artichokes hung at the two floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything was most exquisite, from the two crystal chandeliers suspended
above the table to the few small but precious paintings on the walls, including half a dozen charming originals from Carl Larsson’s Lilla Hyttnäs series.
Hereward and Lena, my sister-in-law, like everything just so, and on the few occasions they have visited me in my own home, have had a hard time concealing their disgust at what they call my ‘clutter’. But I’m grateful for the family tie whenever I go to theirs, because otherwise I doubt if I would have had the opportunity to socialize with the august and esoteric people who are their friends, most of whom seem to be heavily creative. Authors, playwrights, theatre directors, artists, musicians – the company is always distinguished. That night, for instance, there was a brace of novelists, an ambassador, an opera singer and her husband, two renowned TV journalists, a couple of other odd bods. And me!
The table was as sumptuously set as those in any palace, chateau or palazzo you cared to name. The heaviest of silver cutlery. The finest of Orrefors glass. The thinnest of white porcelain bordered with a gold Grecian key pattern. I longed to tell Lena I’d just read in the style pages of the paper that very morning that proper dinner services were out and collections of oddly matched china were in. But why be needlessly cruel? In any case, neither she nor Hereward would have believed me. Or, for that matter, cared what hoi polloi had to say.
I was seated beside one of the odd bods, a stocky man called Renzo, who turned out to be an art dealer with premises in London and Rome. He had thick black hair on the back of his hands and quite a bit more on his head, alert, dark eyes and a body obviously worked on by a personal trainer and probably a masseur as well. Or, more likely, a masseuse. It was a pity that the body only came up to my shoulder. He was dressed in the kind of very English clothes that only someone who wasn’t English would wear. Added to that, even the most doting of Italian mommas couldn’t truthfully have called him anything but plumb ugly. Until he smiled. It was the difference between light and shade, between summer and winter.