by Susan Moody
‘But how do you think she knew of the existence of the drawings in the first place?’
‘Maybe Nell showed them round in the staffroom at school – look what I bought on my holidays, chaps, that sort of thing. And one of the staff members knew this other woman, and talked about it to her. The woman might even be a bona fide expert of some kind, as well as a con artist.’
‘Or a professional art thief. She somehow hears about the stolen sketches, makes it her business to find out all about Mrs Roscoe and the contents of her will, comes down here with a believable cover story and tries to con you into parting with them.’ I cast my mind back. I’d pulled the notion out of thin air, but it nonetheless had a plausibility about it. Change the eye colour with contact lenses, pull on a mop of unruly curls, dress up like one of the raggle-taggle gypsies and, with any luck, no one would give you a second glance.
‘You could be right.’ He smoothed his moustache. ‘Not that it matters. Believe me, whoever she is, the next time she came nosing round here, enquiring about those sketches, I gave her the big heave-ho in no uncertain terms.’ He seemed briefly regretful.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, that was probably a good idea. How did she take it?’
‘Badly. Started shrieking like a fishwife, if you can believe it. Accused me of every crime under the sun, from theft to pederasty. Pederasty … I ask you. Had to shut the door in her face in the end.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘No way to treat a lady, I know, but if you’d heard the language she was coming out with you’d realize she was no lady.’ He sighed reminiscently. ‘Makes a rattling good chocolate cream sponge, though, I have to say.’
‘It was good, wasn’t it?’
‘Anyway, got a big favour to ask you.’
‘Ask away.’
He bent his head closer to mine and dropped his voice. ‘Just wondering if I might be able to persuade you to be so good as to look after the sketches, drawings, whatever, just for a short while. I’d be eternally grateful.’
‘Well …’
He fossicked in his backpack and brought out an envelope. ‘Looks like one envelope, do you see, but in fact it’s two. Just in case one of them got lost – not that I’m implying for a moment that you might be careless enough to …’ He paused, unable to finish the sentence.
I wasn’t that thrilled at the idea, especially if there was a new ingredient now added to the mix, namely a person loitering at the Major’s gate, with or without intent. Nonetheless, I reluctantly took the envelopes and pushed them both deep into my bag, figuring that should such occur, I’d probably be as good as the Major at repelling attacks of various kinds, if not better. I gave a semi-salute. ‘Wilco, Major,’ I said. ‘Now, let me buy you the other half.’
Turning from the bar with the Major’s glass of beer in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, I was nearly knocked off my feet by some drunken moron with a watch cap pulled low on his head. Trainers which might once have been white and green were now dirt and grime, jeans well past their wear-by date. He lurched past, barging heavily into me as he went. ‘Here, watch it,’ I said to his retreating back, concentrating on not spilling our drinks. He didn’t even bother to apologize, just waved a hand behind him and carried on out of the door of the bar, where I saw him stand and glance up and down the High Street as though wondering where the hell he was.
‘What an idiot!’ I said when I reached our table.
‘There seems to be more and more of them about these days,’ said the Major. ‘Living off benefits at the taxpayers’ expense, gambling on the horses, drinking themselves stupid or getting high on illegal substances. It wasn’t like that in my day, I can tell you.’ He fingered some froth from his moustache. ‘At least, not all of it.’
We chatted of this and that. My earlier gloom had been swept away by the alcohol which was now coursing lightly through my system. If I banished Sam Willoughby from my thoughts, I felt much more cheerful. Eventually I looked at my watch.
‘Time to go, I think.’
He half rose from his seat. ‘Thank you for your company, Alex.’
I patted the bag slung over my shoulder. ‘And I’ll take very good care of these for you.’
‘Thank you, my dear. Now all I have to do is figure out the best course of action to take with them.’
‘Right.’
SEVENTEEN
I arrived home just as the sun began to descend below the horizon, tingeing the evening clouds a rosy pink and staining the sea crimson. Before opening the door to the communal entrance hall, I cast a beady look behind me. I couldn’t see anyone lingering, let alone loitering. A few prams heading for home, a dog-walker or two, some giggling teenagers taking selfies in front of the fishing boats, a couple of bicyclists heading for the university up on the hill.
I picked up my mail and took it upstairs. I looked out of the window before I turned the lights on, but there were no suspicious figures to be seen. I therefore drew the curtains across, switched on a couple of lamps and fetched myself a cup of good strong coffee before checking my correspondence. The only item of any interest was a card informing me that although the police had not yet released her body, Dominic and Maddalena Grainger would be holding a small assembly in honour of Katy Pasqualin.
After that, I tugged on a pair of disposable gloves and pulled out of my bag the two envelopes the Major had given me – or at least tried to. Tried but didn’t succeed. Like it or not, one of them had gone missing. A flush of heat and apprehension swept up from my knees to my neck. A tingle of embarrassment fluttered along my arms. It was impossible! I’d been entrusted with something really precious and I’d already managed to lose part of it.
I emptied my bag on to the table. No sign of a second envelope. How the hell could this have happened?
Over and over again I went into every compartment of my bag but no second envelope magically appeared. I sat down, closed my eyes and went over what I’d done after I left the Major. Came up with nothing. After leaving the Fox and Hounds, I’d bought a loaf of bread from the specialist baker behind the castle. Picked up two beef tomatoes, a bag of new potatoes and an oak-leaf lettuce from the greengrocers. A piece of fillet steak from the butchers, and cheese from the French cheese shop. At no point did I delve into my bag, since I was carrying cash in the zipped pocket of my anorak and therefore didn’t need to. So where was that second envelope? And how was I going to tell the Major that I’d lost it?
Once again, I emptied my bag. Once again, I dug into all the compartments, felt for a torn lining (there wasn’t one), shook the bag, slapped it. The second envelope still failed to materialize.
Where was it? Could someone have nicked it? It seemed unlikely. I’d taken special care to shove both envelopes deep into the recesses of my bag. I’d separated them as I did so, so that in the extremely improbable event of one of them going missing, at least the other, in a separate compartment, would still be safe. But how could a random pickpocket have known that either of them contained a valuable piece of art? Unless it wasn’t a random theft but a highly focused one.
Belatedly, alarm bells began to sound. Suppose someone had been watching me? Suppose someone had seen the Major passing me what appeared to be a single envelope and was pretty sure what it contained? Suppose another someone had been turning away from the bar with her hands full of coffee and beer, and had been fallen against by a half-drunk punter in grubby jeans and a moth-eaten sweater with a watch cap pulled down over his ears? And suppose that second someone was trying to keep her drinks from spilling, how easy it would be for the first someone, who was only pretending to be pissed, to fish an envelope out of the second someone’s bag?
I tried to recall him. Tallish, well-built, but not by any means the Bald Baker of Burano. I hadn’t noticed his features, only his clothes, plus a definite impression of surliness and belligerence. Was it him who had taken the Tiepolo from my bag? Looking back, it seemed increasingly likely, especially since I couldn’t se
e where else the loss might have occurred. More importantly, since he must have been the errand boy for someone else, who was it that was pulling the strings? And what was likely to be the reaction when it was discovered that only one drawing had been stolen from me, not both of them?
Considering the risks already taken, it seemed there was more at stake than mere money. But I couldn’t begin to work out what it might be, or who the ruthless puppet master was. On serious reflection, none of Sandro’s friends seemed to fit the bill. On the other hand, back in Venice on the occasion of Sandro’s ill-fated dinner, it would have been all too easy for any one of them to have snuck around the Marchese’s salone and found the drawings. Small and easily portable: which of them would be most likely to recognize their worth? Certainly Katy Pasqualin had the requisite knowledge … could that have been the reason she’d been murdered? Or did she know who was after them, and possibly even why? Maybe actually caught the thief in the midst of nicking them? Even though Nell Roscoe had purportedly bought them from a coffin-sized bookshop in Venice.
Could I see Katy herself stealing them on the night of Sandro’s dinner party and the next day flogging them somewhere in Venice? She was half-Italian, after all, niece of the Marchesa Allegra – she would know her way around Venice. In retrospect, I could easily see how it all went down. Tears or no tears. She was the kind of girl who had perfected the craft of eye-welling and lip-trembling from an early age. Thinking back, her demeanour when she and I had lunch together had not only been coolly collected – for the most part – she had also exhibited signs of guilty knowledge of the doge’s ring and the missing Botticelli. And for all her innocent manner, there were those sugar daddies to take into consideration. Not to mention boob jobs. Neither was something you’d associate with the shrinking violet persona she presented to the world. The long blonde hair, the big blue eyes, the air of fragility were probably no more than a front to help her achieve whatever it was she was after. Money, probably. On the other hand, the terror and the tears she’d displayed, and tried to hide, at Sandro’s party in London had not been fake in the least.
I wondered what, if anything, the boyfriend had to say about her. I dialled Fliss Fairlight’s number.
‘Fairlight,’ she said.
‘Did Pasqualin’s boyfriend come up with anything useful?’ I asked.
‘Hello to you, too.’
‘Hello, Fliss. Did he?’
‘As far as we could tell, nothing particularly germane to her death,’ she said.
‘The girl was very different to the image she projected. Actually, a bit of a tough cookie,’ I said.
‘So they’ve discovered.’
‘On the other hand, she was genuinely scared of something or someone.’
‘We’ve already taken that on board.’
‘Does the boyfriend know about the older man or men in her life?’
‘Not sure. He mentioned how lucky she was to have several generous uncles and how close she was to them. We’re still not certain whether he was having us on or is just suffering from a serious dose of naivety.’
‘Or perhaps he knew and didn’t mind.’
‘There’s that, of course.’
‘Well, good luck with the investigation,’ I said, and broke the connection.
I rang Sandro, now safely back in London and presumably reunited with his doting mamma. ‘Oh, Alessandra,’ he said, when he heard my voice. ‘Thank you again so much for all you did for us.’
‘My pleasure,’ I said. I didn’t feel it necessary to mention the euro-stuffed envelope which his uncle had forced on me. ‘Sandro, there are still so many questions left to answer.’
‘Such as?’
For heaven’s sake … ‘Such as whether they’ve found out who was behind your kidnapping,’ I said patiently. ‘Or whether they’ve discovered who killed your cousin.’
‘My cousin? But Val is—’
‘Who’s talking about someone called Val? I meant Katy. Katy Pasqualin,’ I added, in case he didn’t remember.
‘God, yes. I’d almost forgotten, what with recent events and so on. Poor, poor Katy. This has all been so terrible. And the police still have no idea who was responsible. Are we going to see you the day after tomorrow?’
‘Most certainly,’ I said. ‘What time?’
I wondered who else would attend this get-together to mark the untimely death of a young woman. I also wondered how many were aware of her proclivities. And also who stood to benefit monetarily from her death.
I called Fliss again. ‘Hel-lo,’ I said, exaggeratedly. ‘I’ve got another question for you. Any idea how much Katy Pasqualin had in the bank – or anywhere else? Or whether she had made a will?’
‘Funny you should ask. With a bit of pressure applied and some finagling – all above board, I may add, we – the police, that is – have just managed to get information from her financial manager, who—’
‘Financial manager?’
‘One of those guys who manage your financial affairs,’ Fliss said kindly.
‘I haven’t got any financial affairs for anyone to manage.’
‘Me neither. But Katy Pasqualin did. I suppose when you’re looking at well over quarter of a million quid, someone needs to—’
‘Quarter of a million quid?’ I said. ‘But she was only twenty-three years old.’
‘And according to her parents, hasn’t been left any money, as far as they know.’
‘Are we thinking blackmail?’
‘I think we are. The bugger of it is that we have no idea who she might have been blackmailing. If indeed she was. At this point, it’s not much more than conjecture. Our experts have been through all the papers and documents they could find, and there’s no clues, nothing.’
‘No encoded entries in diaries? No lists taped to the underside of drawers?’
‘Nothing. Or if there is, they haven’t stumbled across it yet.’
‘Would logic suppose that there might have been more than one bank account?’
‘Logic would, and indeed has. But it’s hard to know where to start. And she was obviously pretty astute. About her financial affairs, I mean.’
‘Has her bank – the one we know about – been helpful?’
‘Yes, but not, unfortunately, informative. They say that she used to show up every now and then with wodges of cash and pay them into her account.’
‘Wodges?’
‘Not so large that she could be considered to be breaking any laws. They started to wonder about money-laundering of some kind, but they couldn’t quite see how. The one time the manager did ask about it, she shrugged her pretty shoulders – this is the bank’s words, not mine – and murmured something about gifts from relatives, or a lucky streak at cards.’
‘Her family’s pretty well-off, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. So, it seems, are most of the people we’ve questioned. Her friends. The boyfriend-stroke-fiancé. Her wider family … There’s a whole network of cousins, aunts and uncles.’
‘I’d dearly love to know who these sugar daddies are.’
‘So would we, if only to eliminate them from our enquiries. You’re on intimate terms with at least some of her friends, et cetera, so if you get any leads, let us know.’
‘Will do.’
Sugar daddies, I reflected as I ended the call. How many sugar daddies can one girl handle? I was aware that these days students quite often peddled their bodies in order to get their fees and university expenses paid. Nothing wrong with that. I’m not a prude about prostitution, when entered into willingly. If you have a saleable commodity and someone’s willing to buy, why not? It’s one way to earn a living. But when you get right down to it, this was the higher end of the scale. Much further down the sexual ladder, the consequences could be dire, the victims acquired and manipulated by unscrupulous gangs, the women turned into hopeless junkies and forced to sell themselves, sometimes just for their next drink or fix.
A few days later, at the home of Dominic an
d Maddalena Grainger, the mood was sombre and heavy with grief. There was some black draping, as though we’d been transported back to Victorian times, and various arrangements of lilies and white carnations standing here and there. Sandro’s friends were there, plus the one I’d not met before, Fabio, the Milanese fashion designer. Uncles, aunts, quite a lot of cousins. The Marchesa, black-veiled and be-pearled. No diamonds today. No husband, either. The young folk I’d met before. There was some sniffing, a lot of tears. I felt a little weepy myself. Poor girl, cut off so young.
There were three or four excruciatingly thin females with immaculate make-up and hair becomingly arranged beneath hats of black straw or felt. In their early forties, I’d have said, and doing everything they possibly could to hide it. I wondered, as I always did when I saw women like that, what sacrifices in the way of fun and enjoyment they made in order to remain so fat-free. And whether the time and expense involved was worth it. Were they wives, or mistresses, or just women who felt they needed to look like that? They were drinking sparkling water, making believe it was prosecco or something. Not that it was the kind of occasion where people were knocking back the booze.
I expressed my condolences to Katy’s parents, and, belatedly remembering he was her cousin, as well as the only attendee at Sandro’s dinner party in Venice to whom I hadn’t spoken, introduced myself to Fabio, a nice-looking man in an obviously self-designed suit of black velvet embellished with big silver buttons and hoops of black velvet all over the sleeves, like a melancholy jockey. As a great believer in the striking of hot irons, I managed to bring up Sandro’s dinner party in Venice. He seemed to think it had been a sparkly occasion, everybody on their best behaviour, excellent food and drink, as always with one of Sandro’s events. Although he was wearing four rings of various kinds on his fingers, I was prepared to bet that he had absolutely nothing to do with the doge’s.
‘Sandro,’ he said. ‘He is a … um … bon viveur, that one. Always happy, always kind and … um … smiling. Even when Valentina came in so unexpectedly.’