The Art of Theft

by Sherry Thomas

  “Oh look, there’s Grandmaman’s darling,” said Charlotte. “Shall we approach?”

  Now that he was barehanded, the bulges they’d seen earlier under his left glove proved indeed to be large rings. He was otherwise dressed without undue flare, but those rings . . . Each would have been enough to mark the owner’s wealth and importance; four together formed a picture of almost comical pomposity.

  “We meet again, Monsieur du Vernay,” said Lieutenant Atwood warmly. “Where is your majestic grandmaman?”

  “Monsieur du Vernay” made a face. “Away from youth and vitality, obviously.”

  Grandmaman, from across the gallery, stared at him with a mixture of distaste, anxiety, and yet, also hope.

  Charlotte, as Mr. Hurst, nodded sagely. “I find myself admiring, dear sir, your collection of magnificent rings. Are some of them signet rings?”

  The young man raised his hand and turned it so that light from the chandeliers—electric chandeliers, so bright as to be harsh—caught and reflected in the rings. “Only one is—this one, which once belonged to Grandmaman’s grandfather. Lost his head to the National Razor, alas.”

  “And the others?”

  “This one was the episcopal ring of a cousin of the beheaded. This one, with the amethyst, a favorite of my grandfather’s. And this one, with the carnelian cabochon, is my favorite, a gift from the Sun King to an even more remote ancestor.”

  “Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous,” enthused Charlotte. “I envy you such connections to the past—and such illustrious forebears! A hundred years ago mine were mere yeoman farmers, without any entrée to the halls of power. But if I may be so blunt, is it not a little inconvenient to wear such large rings side by side all on one hand?”

  “Oh certainly, a little. But what’s a little inconvenience when such a display could be had?”

  Again, he rotated his hand so that everything sparkled.

  “I cannot disagree with that at all.” Charlotte raised her glass. “To an unmistakable display of pedigree.”

  The young man grinned. They clinked their champagne glasses and drank.

  “You mentioned, Monsieur,” said Lieutenant Atwood, “that your grandmother was interested in three paintings here. Do you happen to know which ones?”

  Grandmaman had glared at him earlier not because he might betray her interest, but because by speaking too much, those with sharp ears might hear his wharfs-of-Marseille origins. But now Grandmaman was forty feet away, seated on a tufted chaise, her hands gripped rigidly around the head of her cane.

  “Oh, this one, of course,” the young man pointed at the sentimental Bouguereau tableau before which he stood. “And the Fragonard. And the Watteau.”

  They circulated away soon afterward but Charlotte kept both the young man and his “grandmother” in sight and noticed that neither paid much attention to the three pictures he’d named, but kept studying a portrait by Jacques-Louis David.

  David had been an ardent supporter of Robespierre and sent many to the guillotine. Why would the grande dame want anything to do with the work of the man who might very well have signed her grandfather’s death warrant?

  * * *

  There was no rain this time, a very great mercy.

  Lord Ingram leaped over the fence and walked quietly but quickly toward the chapel, its dark silhouette haloed by light from the château. He couldn’t hear the sounds from the reception, but the air seemed to hum subtly, the difference between being in the vicinity of a nearly empty manor and a fully populated one.

  He made his way to the front door of the chapel, which was not visible from the château. He’d brought a pocket lantern. Now he risked opening a panel slightly, letting out a tiny stream of light.

  But even without the light, he could smell the new paint on the door frame. He took off one glove. A quick touch showed that the paint still hadn’t dried fully. The hasp and the mounting plate both felt smooth, as did the padlock itself, scarcely exposed to the elements. In fact, both the door and the door frame might be new. The painted surfaces did not seem to have ever been subjected to enough violence to unmoor bolts and lock plates.

  If Holmes was correct, then the person escaping the château emerged in the chapel, rushed to the door, found it locked from the outside, and with a mighty kick or three, forced it open.

  But although the fugitive had come close to freedom, Holmes believed that his attempt had failed. That he’d been caught at the fence and brought back into the chapel. Otherwise Lord Ingram and Mr. Marbleton, under the bridge, should have seen or heard something of the pursuit beyond the fence.

  The pocket lantern held between his teeth, Lord Ingram picked the lock. The estate was quiet, the chapel quiet, the goings-on inside the château a barely perceptible vibration. He wondered what Holmes and Leighton Atwood had found out by now.

  The padlock clicked, opening. He entered the chapel, closing the door behind himself. Light escaping the château and the grounds brightened the south-facing stained-glass panels slightly, but failed to penetrate beyond. The interior of the chapel was as dark as a nightmare.

  There was no carpet in the pews. The floor underfoot was stone, and sounded solid when he tapped it with the heel of his boot. With the pocket lantern back inside his pocket, he groped his way to the front. The place was too small for a separate vestry, so he turned his attention to the altar, a rather sizable one for this space. It had an antependium of drapery. And behind the drapery, only an empty space.

  He crawled under the space, set all the drapes back in place, struck a match, and lit the lantern. He was sitting on a thin rug. And when he’d rolled up the rug, there it was: a trapdoor.

  The trapdoor didn’t budge when he tried to lift it. But he’d come prepared: not to force it, but to remove its hinges from the other end. Once he had done so, he was able to raise the trapdoor enough to slide a hook into the space underneath and undo the slide bolt.

  He screwed the hinges back and stared at the pit before him. A stale odor rose from its unseen depths. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He had to force himself to reach in and feel for the ladder.

  The ladder went down and down. He didn’t dare use the pocket lantern. The darkness seemed infinite, his footsteps on the rungs, as loud as drumbeats.

  When he finally reached the bottom, the tunnel that greeted him was scarcely three feet wide and too low for him to stand up straight. Should anyone come from either direction when he was in the tunnel, he would be doomed.

  He expelled a shaky breath and took a step forward. At least, if he should disappear tonight, Holmes and Leighton Atwood would know where he was, which was more than he could have said for certain risks he’d taken elsewhere.

  The tunnel’s interior was brick. For a structure burrowing beneath a lake, it was watertight, no moisture seeping or collecting anywhere. The air was at once thick and somehow not enough. Hunched over, he shuffled along, already regretting his choice. His neck ached, and his calves, too, from proceeding on half-bent knees.

  At last he arrived before a door. He risked a little light and saw that it was of heavy oak panels reinforced with ironwork. The wood looked to be hundreds of years old, but the thick bolt and the large padlock that must weigh half a stone were so new they shone, unmarred by rust or scratch.

  He frowned. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see that something was wrong with the picture: The two doors at the two ends of the tunnel were both locked from inside.

  He frowned some more and turned around. Had he felt any branching along the way? Or a door of some kind? He was certain he hadn’t. But then again . . .

  Swearing under his breath, he retraced his steps and found what he sought twenty feet away: a small trapdoor on the ceiling.

  This one did not have fastenings on either side and lifted at a push of his hand. He hoisted himself up—into another tunnel.


  If he wasn’t too wrong about the distance he’d covered, then he must already be underneath the island. The tunnel he had been in earlier was probably the original tunnel that had been the fort’s escape route. The one he was currently in was much lower and narrower: In the other one he’d proceeded on his feet, however uncomfortably; here there was no choice except to advance on his stomach.

  Was this a newer branching, so that those in the château didn’t have to go all the way to the basement—the dungeon?—to access the escape route? It was also much more crudely constructed, braced with timber to the side and overhead, but he was crawling over unimproved earth.

  It sloped gradually upward. Where would it take him?

  He stopped.

  Faint thuds.

  Was he under a hall and the guests at the reception were walking overhead? No, it was too weak and solitary a sound for that. Wait. Was the tapping in Morse code?

  He let out some more light from the pocket lantern, found his notebook, and jotted down what he heard. There were no three-unit gaps to indicate how to break the signal for letters, or seven-unit gaps to show the space between words.

  It was not a long message. He recorded for three pages in the small notebook, even though he could see that after the first page, the message began to repeat. He would have kept on documenting for another few pages, but the signal disappeared abruptly.

  He waited for it to come back. It didn’t.

  Ahead the tunnel went on, leading only into darkness. He put away his pencil and notebook, exhaled, and crawled on.

  Twelve

  The maharani was silent for some time. “You mean, why I did not tell you that I was not and had never been content with the fact that Britain ruled India?”

  At last, that question out in the open. Mrs. Watson swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I suppose one reason was that you were so earnestly unaffected by the currents that governed my life that I was, if not happy, then at least not unwilling, to let you remain in that state of blissful innocence. If you had been somewhat aware or mildly curious, then I might have decided differently.”

  “I . . . I was unforgivably ignorant.”

  The maharani sighed. “It is a profitable arrangement for Britain to have colonies. At the heart of the empire, in the homeland, even those without any connection to the colonies benefit from the general prosperity that comes of a ready supply of raw material to feed the fires of industry, and then ready markets for the sale of finished products.

  “But the British have convinced themselves that in taking over India, they themselves were the benefactors and the natives of the Subcontinent the beneficiaries. Who would dare tell them otherwise?

  “We have met Englishmen and -women of superlative education and refinement, who discuss the philosophies of the Enlightenment and the general human condition with piercing insight and clarity. Those same individuals then prove themselves perfectly willing to regard the people of the Subcontinent as subhuman, far better off as second-class citizens in their own land than as masters of their own destiny.

  “By the time I visited Britain, I’d given up on changing British minds. By the time we were . . . part of each other’s lives, I was almost glad not to know what you thought on the matter. That way I could pretend that if you knew, you would be sympathetic to my position.”

  “I would have been. I would!” cried Mrs. Watson.

  Now that she thought about it, all those evenings they’d spent together, she had asked questions. But the maharani had seemed less interested in talking about herself and her life in India than in learning about the wider world, and Mrs. Watson had been happy to let her guide the direction of their conversation, never guessing that she had intentionally avoided certain subjects.

  And then she thought of what the maharani just said with an uncomfortable tightness in her chest. “You said that my lack of insight was one reason your true views never came up. What—what other reasons were there?”

  The maharani looked down for a moment and tucked a nonexistent strand of loose hair behind her ear. “There were those around me who worried that your friendship concealed ulterior motives.”

  Mrs. Watson blinked. What ulterior motives? Had the maharani’s underlings thought that she would have swindled her?

  “They suspected that you might have been planted by the British government.”

  Mrs. Watson’s jaw dropped. “To spy on you?”

  And then, her shock exploded into stupefaction. “Did you believe that?”

  “For a while I didn’t know what to believe: We had no evidence one way or the other. Which was yet another reason that I never brought up my true beliefs on the matter.”

  Mrs. Watson opened her mouth to argue her absolute innocence, but the maharani forestalled her with a raised hand. “I did believe you in the end. No spy would waste so much time on me and never get to the point. I especially believed you when you didn’t seize the chance to come with me to India.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. Your refusal devastated me. I’d never been in love before, and it took me a long time to recover from that loss. But at least afterward I knew that you had been with me for me, not playing a role at someone else’s directive.”

  Her eyes were frank and clear, her expression wistful.

  Mrs. Watson suddenly felt shy. “It took me a long time to recover, too. I felt the worst sort of mercenary, but I was no spy. I loved every minute of being with you.”

  The maharani shook her head slowly. “You were not mercenary. What I’d hoped for was the rainbow. But rainbows aren’t meant to last. Most beautiful things aren’t.”

  They fell silent.

  The past was never quite what one remembered it to be. Mrs. Watson had thought the love between herself and the maharani some of the purest, simplest emotions she’d ever experienced. But for the maharani, it would have been some of the most complicated. All the same, she’d been determined enough to make Mrs. Watson a permanent part of her life, to live with her own and her subordinates’ doubts as a price she was willing to pay.

  Mrs. Watson swallowed past a lump in her throat. She had better go before she did something embarrassing. She rose to take her leave, and only then remembered that she had not come merely to reminisce with the maharani.

  “Your Highness,” she said awkwardly, “I need something from you.”

  * * *

  Mr. Hurst and Mr. Nariman continued to circle the gallery, stopping from time to time to admire a particular work, savor a new glass of champagne, or replenish their plates with hors d’oeuvres from a table decorated with spruce garlands and olive wreaths.

  Not only had they not seen the Van Dyck, they hadn’t seen either Livia or Mr. Marbleton.

  This was not particularly surprising. No art dealer, not even one who opened for business only once a year, showed his entire stock to all the prospective buyers at once. It was only a matter of whether Mr. Nariman’s supposedly fabulous family wealth would let them see the better pieces.

  Lieutenant Atwood put on an expression of polite ennui, which almost slid to outright disdain when they passed by a well-dressed young man entertaining a pair of middle-aged ladies with a magic trick. He and Charlotte sat down on a padded bench to sip their champagne and eat caviar on toast, sighing with implied boredom between bites.

  “Since ours isn’t the only party in attendance with ulterior motives, I’m doubting everyone here,” murmured Lieutenant Atwood. “But most of them are probably legitimately interested in the art.”

  Charlotte had her eye on a pair of good-looking women with their aging uncle. Men of a certain age appeared from time to time with new “nieces.” That by itself wasn’t particularly notable. But Charlotte had never seen an “uncle” regard his two attractive “nieces” with both a great deal of timidity and almost as much self-reproach.

  She had also singled out
a solicitor who had been brought along by an aristocrat. She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with lawyers but she didn’t think the typical lawyer would be that interested in windows and fireplace flues.

  “The one that caught your attention.” She gestured subtly to the young man playing magic tricks. “Too good?”

  “Far too good for someone who isn’t a professional,” said Lieutenant Atwood from behind his champagne glass. “So good that he can no longer gauge how a dabbler does at these tricks.”

  Charlotte placed another piece of caviar toast into her mouth. As she chewed meditatively, Monsieur du Vernay walked by and raised his champagne glass in salute. Under the electric lights, his rings twinkled exuberantly.

  “I might know who that young man is,” said Lieutenant Atwood, speaking softly as Monsieur du Vernay joined his “Grandmaman.”

  Charlotte knew what the young man was, but she had not inferred his exact identity yet. There was no one immediately nearby; still she scooted closer to Lieutenant Atwood. “Go on.”

  “You yourself aren’t an agent of the Crown, but you consulted for Lord Bancroft, when he was still in charge of certain clandestine portfolios.”

  She nodded.

  “I have heard that our French counterparts sometimes use the services of a thief who has made a specialty out of making away with valuable objets before a crowd. In fact, that is the price for his current freedom, that he must come when called. He is said to have spent some time in prison as a juvenile and has Dieu, ne me quitte pas tattooed across the fingers of his left hand.”

  “I see,” she said.

  She was known for having a pleasantly blank countenance, reputed to be highly unreadable. But Lieutenant Atwood, after a quick glance, said, “You don’t agree?”