by Sara Rosett
“The police sergeant has rung up and needs to speak to Mr. Carter, so I went along to Mr. Carter’s room, but it’s a tip. It usually is a right mess—he doesn’t like me to clean in there. Quite particular he is, but . . .”
Olive had been double-checking a measurement, but she looked up at Mrs. Lum’s tone. “You’re worried.”
Mrs. Lum’s shoulders dropped. “Yes, miss. I don’t know what to do, what with the police ringing up and Mr. Carter nowhere to be found.”
Jasper pushed back his chair. “Shall I have a look?”
“Oh, yes. Please do. The room at the end of the hall, there.”
Olive capped her pen and followed Jasper and Mrs. Lum to the open door. Carter had occupied a spacious room with ornate Jacobean furnishings and rich damask wall coverings. “Goodness.” Olive paused on the threshold. Mrs. Lum was correct. The room was a mess, with the sheets in a tangled pile and several drawers hanging open.
Jasper opened the wardrobe and glanced at the bureau. “I believe Mr. Carter has done a bunk.”
“What?” Mrs. Lum exclaimed and went into the room. “You think he’s left?”
Jasper pulled open one of the wardrobe doors. “There’s no clothing in here and no shaving kit. I don’t see any luggage. Unless he stored it somewhere else?”
Mrs. Lum’s gaze traveled to the top of the wardrobe. “No, he kept his suitcase up there, and it’s gone. I didn’t notice it earlier. I was only looking at the mess. But how could he have left without anyone knowing?”
“Probably during the night,” Jasper said. “I’ll check the stables and see if one of the motors is gone.”
“And I’ll call Sebastian,” Olive said.
“What about the police?” Mrs. Lum asked.
“I’d be happy to contact them as well if you’d like, Mrs. Lum.”
She smiled at Olive. “Oh yes. Thank you, miss. I don’t like dealing with them. Talking to them makes me nervous, it does.”
Olive assured her she didn’t mind—and if it got her on the housekeeper’s good side, all the better. After all, she’d dealt with the police rather often, but she didn’t mention that to Mrs. Lum. She didn’t want to break the fragile bond that seemed to have formed between them.
As Olive and Jasper trotted down the stairs, Olive said, “Well, that explains who took the painting.”
“Yes. The local bobby was correct. It was an inside job.”
“Mr. Carter didn’t seem the most conscientious fellow. I can’t say I’m actually surprised by the outcome.”
“Neither am I. I’ll just toddle along and have a look in the stables to confirm whether or not any of the motors are missing. I suppose he might’ve set out on foot and had someone pick him up on the lane as the good sergeant speculated yesterday.”
They parted at the base of the stairs. Olive rounded the corner and went along the hall to the small telephone table. Once she reached the local police station, she explained the situation, then asked the operator to connect her to Blakely’s home in London. Sebastian’s man answered and informed her that Sebastian was not available.
“Please have him call Olive Belgrave at Hawthorne House as soon as possible. I have important information he needs to know.”
“I will pass on the message as soon as he returns home, miss,” the man replied in a sonorous tone that wouldn’t have been out of place announcing names at Court.
Olive replaced the earpiece and sat there a moment, lost in thought. She did hope that Sebastian wouldn’t blame her for the loss of his painting. Had her presence and attention to the paintings brought about the theft? Had Carter been planning it all along? Or was it a spur-of-the-moment action? Did her arrival make Carter realize the paintings would be under more scrutiny, and he’d seized his chance to take one?
Olive stood, shaking off her guilty feelings. Whether or not a man decided to rob a house wasn’t her fault. She may have hurried Carter along, but he hadn’t stolen the painting simply because she’d appeared on the scene. She was walking down the hall, lost in her own thoughts, when something made her stop. “No, surely not,” she muttered. She must have imagined it. She retraced her steps to the open door of the small sitting room.
The painting of the woman in the white fur hung on the wall between the two bookcases.
28
Zoe
Present Day
* * *
Zoe finished reading the last page of the report. “That’s it?”
Jack had caught up with the other pages and was reading over Zoe’s shoulder. His gaze tracked along the last lines, then he swiveled toward Zoe, the iron legs of the café chair screeching on the concrete. “There’s no more? No summary, no wrap-up?”
“No.” Zoe shook the paper. “Nothing like that. This is the last page.” She fell back against the chair. The sidewalk café was now buzzing with activity. The tables around them were full, but no one turned a head at Zoe’s frustrated outburst. “The painting went missing for a few hours, then was put back? Why take it and put it back almost immediately?”
“Could it have been copied?”
“I wouldn’t think so. It was done in oils. It would take time to dry. Oh, here comes the waiter again. I’ve never had such attentive service.” She glanced at a nearby table where plates were being positioned in front of diners with a flourish. The restaurant had been empty earlier in the afternoon when Jack had first arrived, but it was gradually filling with customers as evening approached. “Let’s order some food. My head hurts. Maybe eating will help.”
“Sure. Let’s get something to eat. The food looks good, and if we leave here and go to another restaurant, we’ll just have to wait for a table.” Jack asked for menus, and they decided on meze, a selection of small plates, so they could sample lots of different foods. Zoe skimmed back over the pages and double-checked that she hadn’t overlooked a page and accidentally left it in her messenger bag while they waited, but she didn’t turn up any more pages. Their food arrived—olives, skewers of grilled lamb, fresh pita bread, cheese, stuffed peppers, and meatballs—and they ate without speaking, savoring the different flavors and textures.
After they’d devoured the sampling of Greek food, Zoe waved her fork at the last bite of saganaki, fried feta drizzled with honey. “Split it with me?”
Jack said, “No. You go ahead. I want to look at this again.” Jack reached for the pages of Olive’s report.
Zoe swirled the wedge of cheese through the golden trails of honey. “Why have we never thought of drizzling honey over cheese? It’s delicious.”
“No idea,” Jack said, but Zoe doubted he’d really taken in what she’d said. His head was bent over the last page of Olive’s report as he reread it.
Zoe put down her fork and sat back with a satisfied sigh. She ordered coffee for them, then flicked her fingers along the stacked pages of Olive’s report. “It has a narrative style to it. It’s as if Olive is telling a story. She wouldn’t just end it there.” Zoe tapped the last line of the page Jack held. “There’s no conclusion.”
“I agree.” He handed her the paper. “Look at the last line again. The copy isn’t the highest quality. It’s a bit blurry, but look, there, after the last word on the page. That could be a period at the end of the sentence . . . or it could be a comma.”
Zoe angled the paper to the light, holding it so it was outside of the shadow of the umbrella. The setting sun was bright enough that it reflected off the white paper, making her squint. It also showed a dot of ink with a faint line, what could be the faded tail on a comma, after the last word. She skimmed up the page, checking the other commas. “Yes, you’re right. Look at this comma near the top of the page. It’s exactly the same. It’s only because it’s in the middle of a sentence and surrounded by lower case letters that I read it as a comma, not a period.” Zoe dropped the paper to her lap. “This isn’t the last page of Olive’s report. There’s more.”
The waiter cleared their plates, and they fell silent as he worked, but
once he moved away, Zoe hunched forward. “Do you think Ferris Thompson kept the last couple of pages of Olive’s report? Did we miss them?”
Jack looked up from the credit card bill. “It’s a possibility. But why would Thompson separate some of the pages?”
“I don’t know. They were the most valuable?” Zoe tucked the last page in with the rest of the report and tapped the edges on the table to align them. “Thompson should have arrived in New York yesterday. If he kept any pages back, he should have handed them over to Mr. Best’s office already.”
“You’re going to call Mr. Best’s office? If you contact him, you’ll have to let him know that you know he hired you as well as someone else to go after the pages.”
“Oh, I don’t think I should call him. Harrington has been the point of contact. Harrington should be the one to reach out to Mr. Best.” Zoe picked up her phone and sent a text to Harrington, explaining what they needed to know. “I don’t think Mr. Best will take my call. I haven’t had any interactions with him. I imagine Mr. Best will be happy to talk to Harrington, though. And if Mr. Best will be straight with anyone, it will be Harrington.”
They left the restaurant and made their way back to the hotel. Jack reached for her hand. “You’re quiet.”
“There is one other person who might have the last pages.”
Jack’s steps slowed. “Mallory? You think the rest of Olive’s report could still be in the houseboat?”
“What if Mallory didn’t find all the pages?”
“Her place was a mess.”
“Right. What if she looked at that page we have and thought that was the last one, like we did?”
“It’s possible.”
Zoe took out her phone. Jack looked doubtful. As she dialed, she said, “It’s a long shot, but I have to give it a try.” The phone rang and rang. Zoe shook her head at Jack and mouthed no answer.
“Not surprising.”
“Well, we didn’t part the best of friends.” Zoe shifted the phone to speak into it as the call went to voicemail. “Mallory, this is Zoe Andrews. I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but after we left, Jack and I were able to track down the pages of the report that were stolen from your houseboat. But I think there’s at least one page—maybe more—missing. Perhaps they were separated from the others and are still in your houseboat. If you can locate any more pages, I’ll pay for them. Give me a call back.”
Zoe hit the End button. “Well, I hope that will at least get her attention.”
Zoe awoke with a jerk. It took a second for it to register that she was in the hotel in Athens and it was her phone on the nightstand that was ringing, its shrill tone cutting through the darkness like a fire alarm. She grabbed her phone, and Jack propped himself up on an elbow. “Who’s calling?”
“Unknown number.”
Jack collapsed back onto the pillow. “Send it to voicemail.”
“Can’t. I have a message out to Mallory, remember?”
Jack rolled over as Zoe answered.
She expected to hear Mallory, but it was a male voice on the line. “I found them—those extra pages you want. Had to turn the place upside down, but I have them. Same price as before.”
“Rolf?”
“Yes, of course it’s Rolf. Who else would shift through all Mallory’s junk? Not Mallory, that’s for sure.”
“So you found more pages.”
The bed creaked as Jack rolled back toward her.
“That’s right.”
Zoe pushed her hair out of her face. “What do they look like?”
“Old. All yellow, and the ink is faded.”
“Typed or handwritten?”
“Typed.”
“Great—”
“And you’ll pay for them—the same amount.”
“That’s fine, but I need—”
“Be here tomorrow at seven. You can get them then.”
“Tomorrow?” Zoe struggled into a sitting position. “But we’re not in Amsterdam at the moment.”
“Don’t matter to me where you are. Either you’re here by tomorrow night, or I start asking around on the internet. I’m sure someone else will be interested.”
Zoe looked at Jack as she said, “Okay. I’ll be there.”
Rolf said, “Good.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up. Before I travel back to Amsterdam, I need proof that you actually found more pages.”
“I’m not going to send you photos of the pages.”
“No, of course not. Just send a photo of a few lines—” A dial tone buzzed in Zoe’s ear. “He hung up on me!”
“Maybe he doesn’t have them after all.” Jack’s voice was muffled because his head was burrowed into his pillow. “He must have heard the message you left for Mallory and saw an opportunity to take some money off you.”
Zoe’s phone pinged. “He texted an address and an image.” She clicked through to it. A type-written page had been laid out on a table. Another sheet of blank paper covered everything on the sheet except for the first line of text: which, as you can imagine, was rather a shock!
Zoe shook Jack’s shoulder. “Jack, I think he did find it. The line begins with a lowercase word. The paper looks old, and the phrasing sounds like Olive’s.”
Jack shifted to a sitting position. She looked up, expecting him to be hunched over her shoulder, but the blue glow of his phone lit up his face as he tapped away on it.
“What are you doing?”
“Booking us a flight to Amsterdam tomorrow. Have to be there by seven, you say?”
Zoe leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re awesome. You know that, right?”
“There’ll be time for that later, after I’ve got us checked in.”
The steep marble steps to the entrance to the Acropolis were still in shadow early the next morning. Zoe zipped up her jacket against the cool and breezy air. They’d gotten an early start and were packed and checked out of their room. Their bags were back at the hotel, stored away by the concierge, waiting for their return and the taxi they’d booked for eleven o’clock to take them to the airport. They had a few hours in Athens before they had to leave, and they’d decided to make the most of them.
After a quick breakfast, they’d made the trek up the hill to the Acropolis, stopping at Mars Hill. Stepping carefully over the smooth stones, they’d had an amazing view and were able to see down into the Agora, the hub of ancient Athens, which was quiet with only a few tourists moving among the ruins.
“Impressive,” Jack said a little later as they approached the Doric columns and the carved triangular pediment of the Propylaea, the entry to the Acropolis.
“And we’re not even inside yet.” Zoe snapped photos of the gate, which was flanked by the Temple of Athena Nike and a square tower-like structure.
Jack flipped pages in his pocket guide. “That’s the Monument of Agrippa, but it sounds as if it was more of a rotating display for whoever was in charge.” He skimmed the page. “Originally, there was a bronze statue of a chariot, then it was replaced with a statue of Antony and Cleopatra. When Agrippa took over, he switched that out with a statue of himself.”
“And it’s empty now.” Zoe put her phone away. “Almost as if it’s a statement—you can’t hold onto power. Time goes on. Leaders fade. Everything changes.”
“Well, unless you build on the scale of the Athenians,” Jack said as they moved between the towering Doric columns and into the open area of the hilltop where the Parthenon rose in front of them, the west side shrouded in shadows and scaffolding. They crossed the stony ground to the east side, which was free of scaffolding. The stones glowed golden in the morning sun. It looked both massively impressive and fragile. The sturdy columns looked as if they’d stand for another thousand years, but the gaps in the pediment and the pieces of column sections and hunks of marble scattered around the base showed the structure wasn’t impervious.
Only a smattering of tourists moved around the flat mesa-like hill. Zoe and Jack
circled the Parthenon, then ambled around the limestone plateau to see the elegant caryatids, columns that were sculptures of women. “Copies,” Jack said. “The originals are in the Acropolis museum, except for one, which Lord Elgin carted off to England.”
“Along with a good portion of the pediment from the Parthenon,” Zoe said. “I wish we could go to the Acropolis museum, but we won’t have time before our flight.” Jack had found them a flight that departed in the early afternoon.
“We’ll just have to come back.” Jack checked his watch. “We do have time to look at the views.” From under the Greek flag, they spotted the Temple of Olympian Zeus with its tumbled column, then they moved around to the south side and looked down onto the ruins of the Theater of Dionysus, a semicircle of stone seating rising in an open-air amphitheater around the stage. Jack tucked the guidebook into his pocket. “Sophocles’ plays were performed there. It was originally grass, but the Romans added stone seating for about 17,000 people. Want to take a closer look? It’s included in our Acropolis ticket.”
“Yes, let’s.”
As they made their way back across the stony ground of the hilltop, Zoe’s phone buzzed. “It’s a text from Ava,” Zoe said, then read the message aloud. “Keeping you up-to-date because I know watching the news is the last thing on your mind right now.” Zoe skimmed the news article Ava had attached, then said to Jack, “Vokos has gone to the media.”
Zoe hit the Play button on the video of Vokos that accompanied the story. His signature smile was missing as he looked into the camera and said, “My grandmother bought this painting in the twenties. It’s very dear to our family. The thought that there’s a fake out there—I have impeccable provenance for my painting—pains me greatly. My grandmother would be so disturbed. She loved Woman in a White Fur. It held a special place in her heart. It was the first painting she bought, the first of what became an impressive collection. You see why I must speak out. All this coverage of a theft! It’s nothing but a fake. My painting is the real one, and anyone who says otherwise must answer to me.”