by Sara Rosett
“I have no idea. I hope so. I’d have a terrible time backing off. I hope she has more willpower than I do.”
Jack grinned at her. “It was quite entertaining to watch you advising patience.”
Zoe groaned. “I know. I couldn’t believe those words were coming out of my mouth either, but it’s true. Look at Harrington—he’s been waiting for days to finish the job he’s on.”
“And look at you. You waited for months to find the Picasso and the Canaletto. You’re more patient than you think.”
“Only when I have no other choice,” Zoe said with a grin. “How much farther to the restaurant where we’re meeting Rolf? I’m ready to see those last pages of Olive’s report.”
Jack made a show of checking his watch. “I’d say about . . . now.” The taxi cruised to a stop at the curb near the Rembrandtplein.
Zoe reached for the door handle. “That’s the kind of wait I like—a short one.”
30
“It should be along this street here,” Jack said as they hurried through the rain to one of the streets that branched off the Rembrandtplein, a wide tree-lined boulevard. Restaurants filled one side of the boulevard, their open-air patios deserted. They dodged through the tables with furled umbrellas and into the gastropub Rolf had sent them to. They snagged the last open table. It was off to one side of the packed room, which pulsed with conversation and pop music.
Zoe scanned the room. “I don’t see Rolf anywhere.” A waitress arrived and was just pulling out her pad to take their order when Rolf appeared behind her shoulder. He said something to her in Dutch, and she left with a shrug.
Rolf wore the waitstaff’s uniform of black T-shirt and jeans with an apron tied around his waist. He grabbed an empty chair, pulled it to the end of their table, and took a seat.
He hunched forward and braced his crossed arms on the scarred wood tabletop, which was spotted with crumbs and wet rings of condensation left from the glasses that had just been cleared away. There was no aroma of weed about Rolf today. His gaze was clear and sharp as he surveyed them. Over the noise of the conversation and music, he asked, “You have the money?”
Zoe nodded. “As long as you have the papers.”
“I do.” Rolf pulled a crumpled envelope from his apron pocket and put it on the table, his hand positioned over it.
Zoe took out the envelope that contained the money, which she had buried deep in her messenger bag. She held it below the edge of the table at an angle that only Rolf could see. She lifted the flap of the envelope and fanned her thumb across the bank notes, then put it back in her bag and held it close to her body. “Does Mallory know you found the other pages of Olive’s report and that you’re selling them to me?”
“Nah. I didn’t want to get her hopes up in case you didn’t come through.” He reached for her bag, but she tucked it close to her body, crossing her arms over it.
“First, let me see what you brought.”
“It’s good.” A fake smile split Rolf’s face. “You can trust me.”
She gestured with her chin. “I’m sure I can, but why don’t you prove it to me?”
Rolf’s smile vanished. “You hand over the money first.”
Jack leaned forward, locking his gaze with Rolf’s. “Show her what’s in the envelope. That’s not that hard, is it?”
After a long moment, Rolf broke eye contact with Jack and opened the envelope. He flung the contents on the table. Zoe snatched them up out of the patchy circles of condensation. It only took a quick scan to see the pages looked like they were from Olive’s original report. The papers themselves were yellowed and fragile. The typed letters were faded, and the top line on the first page was exactly what Rolf had sent in his photo.
“Well?”
Zoe opened her bag and took out the thick envelope of money.
Rolf’s fake smile was back as he snatched the money from her hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.” He shoved his chair back and left it in the middle of the aisle as he strode out of the restaurant.
Zoe blotted the wet marks on the aged paper with a napkin from a dispenser on the table. “I wonder if Mallory even knows that he found them. I can see him taking these papers and selling them to us without ever letting her know.”
Jack reached over to push the empty chair out of the way of a passing customer. “I think if she didn’t know, she will soon. Take a look over there.”
Zoe followed the direction of Jack’s gaze. Mallory was crossing the grassy boulevard that stretched in front of the restaurant, juggling her umbrella as she untied the strings of a half apron as she walked. Rolf jogged up to her, caught her by the waist, and swung her around in a circle. He set her on her feet and pulled the fat envelope out of his pocket. They both bent over it for a moment, then she flung her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. They paced off, arms wrapped around each other, the umbrella sheltering both of them.
Zoe shook her head as she wiped down the table with a fresh napkin. “That would have been touching if they weren’t both thieves.”
Jack grinned. “They’re amateurs. I don’t think they’ll make a career out of it. More than likely, they’re off to the first coffee shop they can find to splurge.” Jack came around to her side of the table. “What does Olive’s report say?”
Zoe put the pages down so they could read the final pages at the same time. “Let’s find out.”
Olive
7 November, 1923
Hawthorne House
* * *
Jasper strolled into the small sitting room, his hands in his pockets. “One of the estate motors is gone. I had a chat with Hendricks, and he said it was there last evening—” Jasper halted beside Olive, his gazed fixed on the painting. “I say, you found it. Good show.”
Olive couldn’t help but laugh. “Not really. I had nothing to do with it. I just happened to notice it as I walked down the hall. I’m glad it’s back, of course, but it’s decidedly odd.”
“Indeed. It was hanging there on the wall?” Jasper used a knuckle to lift the edge of the painting and look at how it was attached to the wall.
“Yes. It looks as if it has never been moved, doesn’t it? Almost makes me think I’m going barmy.”
“You’re not mad, old bean. I can attest it wasn’t here yesterday.”
Olive turned to Jasper. “But if Mr. Carter didn’t make off with the painting, why did he leave?”
“And where was the painting yesterday?”
A new masculine voice sounded behind them. “You mean I’ve come all the way from London for no reason?”
“Sebastian!” Olive went across the room to shake his hand. Sebastian had a thin build and a rather sickly appearance that reminded Olive of a skeleton because the skin of his face seemed to stretch so tautly over the bone structure of his skull. “I rang London this morning. I spoke to your man, but he said you weren’t available.”
“I was on my way to visit a friend nearby and decided to drop in and see how the inventory was coming along.” Despite his rather cadaver-like appearance, Sebastian had a busy social life. As far as Olive could tell, he wasn’t actually ill, just pasty and anemic. “It sounds as if something interesting has been happening here.” Sebastian surveyed Woman in a White Fur. “The painting has been missing, has it? You’d better tell me about it.”
While Olive told him how the painting had disappeared, Sebastian peered at the canvas, his nose inches from the painting. When she finished, Sebastian said, “Jasper, may I prevail on you to give me a hand? I’d like to take this down and examine the back. I could manage on my own, but since you’re here. . .”
“Of course, old boy. It’s a stunning painting. Wouldn’t want to take any risks and damage it. But perhaps we shouldn’t handle it without gloves.”
“Ah, yes. Fingerprints. Good point.” Sebastian hadn’t removed his coat, and he took his gloves from his pockets. Jasper picked up a blanket from the back of one of the sofas and covered his hands before they took the
painting down from the wall. They propped it up in one of the chairs, then Sebastian studied the back as Jasper brushed down his jacket where he’d bumped against the dusty wall. After a few moments, Sebastian stepped back. “Whatever its travels yesterday, it’s undamaged and in order. It looks exactly as it did when I purchased it before the War.”
“That’s good news,” Olive said.
Sebastian nodded to Jasper, and they returned the painting to the wall.
Jasper again brushed at his suit coat. “All’s well that ends well.”
“Indeed,” Sebastian said, but he didn’t sound satisfied, which Olive completely understood.
She felt the same way.
“Why was the painting removed then returned? And why has Mr. Carter left?”
Jasper said, “Perhaps Mr. Carter didn’t realize the painting had been returned, and he was worried about your reaction, Sebastian.”
“Leonard’s scampered, has he?” Sebastian asked.
“You look genuinely surprised,” Olive said.
“I am.” Sebastian’s manner turned contemplative. “Well, I suppose his reasons will become apparent in time.”
Olive glanced at Jasper. “You don’t think it might be because of the missing painting?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I doubt that. I’ve always given Leonard a lot of leeway. Look at the drawing room. I asked Leonard to take care of removing the extra pieces of furniture months ago, and he hasn’t even made a start on hiring someone to shift it. Of course, it’s difficult when one hires a family member—even a distant one. One can’t fire a relative, even if that relative is several times removed. I can’t imagine he’d take to his heels simply because something went missing.”
Olive was surprised at his words. Sebastian didn’t seem the least bit sentimental, but apparently he kept his distant cousin on in the capacity of an estate manager simply because Carter was a relative.
Sebastian glanced at the painting one more time, then turned away from it. “So how is the inventory coming along?”
“It’s nearly complete. We’re working on the second floor. Do you want me to check the attic as well?”
“There shouldn’t be much up there, but take a quick look, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. Jasper has typed the reports for me, so we should have everything ready for you later today.”
“Excellent, Olive. I knew I could count on you to sort it out.”
As they worked their way through the last rooms upstairs, Olive’s mind was more occupied with questions concerning Carter than the descriptions of the paintings and their measurements. As they finished in the final room, a little-used guest room with only three small botanical prints, she gave her notes to Jasper and sat down in a chair to wait as he typed them. When he rolled the paper out of the typewriter and added it to the thick stack, she said, “I can’t help wondering if Mr. Carter planned to take the painting, then got cold feet when the theft was discovered.”
“So he returned the painting and did a bunk?” Jasper said. “It’s possible.”
The door opened, and Mrs. Lum arrived with a tea tray. “What a turn of events, that painting showing up again.”
“It certainly surprised us,” Olive said as Mrs. Lum put down the tray. She was clearly bursting to talk about it. Olive thought it must be lonely for her, working in Hawthorne House with no other women around. Olive reached for the teapot. “Care to join us for a cup of tea?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. Wouldn’t be right to sit down with you.”
Jasper grinned at her. “We won’t tell.”
She flushed all the way up to the tips of her ears under her escaping wiry curls. “Thank you, sir, but I have to get back to the kitchen. I have bread in the oven.” She moved away, then paused at the door. “I don’t understand it, myself. That picture isn’t pretty like a nice view of the hills or the ocean, is it? But to each his own, as they say. I don’t pretend to understand these things. After all, there was the foreign gentleman who telephoned about it too. The picture must be art if foreigners are ringing up, inquiring about it.”
Olive put down the teapot. “A foreign gentleman telephoned about it?”
“Yes. It must have been . . . oh, several months ago. I’d forgotten all about it until today. Rude, he was. Wouldn’t give his name so I could pass on a message.”
“And he was interested in the painting?” Olive stirred her tea.
“He said he wanted to speak to the owner about acquiring it, but when I said I’d inform Mr. Carter, who would pass on the message, the gentleman became . . . well, huffy and rang off.”
Jasper asked, “What sort of accent did he have?”
“Foreign.”
“Yes, but perhaps you detected a trace of what country he might be from?” Jasper suggested. “American? Or did he sound more continental?”
“Not American,” Mrs. Lum said decisively. “Somewhere in Europe, I suppose. I really couldn’t say. I must check on my bread.”
Olive held out a plate to Jasper. “That’s rather intriguing. I wonder if Sebastian knows about the foreign gentleman.”
Jasper reached for a biscuit. “I bet Carter didn’t tell him. Perhaps, as you speculated, Carter had arranged to sell the painting to this foreign gentleman, but decided it was too risky with our arrival.”
“Before we popped in, Mr. Carter had the run of Hawthorne House. No one used the small sitting room. Carter could have taken the painting, sold it off, and the theft might not have been discovered for months.” Olive sipped her tea, her thoughts spinning. “But why would Carter remove the painting while we were still here? Why not wait until we’d left?”
“He asked you if we were finished in the small sitting room, remember? Perhaps he was on a deadline and assumed we wouldn’t go back into the room.”
“It does explain his reluctance to call the police and to contact Sebastian. But then why did Mr. Carter abandon his plan?”
Jasper gestured with his cup. “As you said earlier, cold feet. It became too risky.”
“I suppose so.” Olive returned her cup and saucer to the tray. “Ready to get on with the inventory?”
“Yes, on to the attics.”
They climbed the narrow flight of plain white-painted treads to the attic’s full-size walk-in door. Olive pushed it back, expecting to see a gloomy room jammed with furniture—something akin to the drawing room but on a larger scale. However, most of the attic area was open, and a hint of a pine aroma hung in the air. Wooden floorboards stretched from one end of the open room to the other. Rows of dormer windows on each side let in plenty of daylight. A smattering of worn trunks, some wooden crates, and a few pieces of furniture were stacked along the walls, but it wasn’t anywhere near the plethora of items that Olive had expected.
Jasper, typewriter under one arm, surveyed the space. “Surprisingly pleasant up here.”
“Probably a result of the flights of stairs between the ground floor and here.”
Jasper said, “Yes. Much easier to chuck something into the drawing room than heave it up several flights of stairs.”
Olive moved around the attic, checking behind steamer trunks and ragged chairs. “Only a few paintings.” Olive made notes on the three paintings that were stacked against the wall. She handed her notes off to Jasper, who had set up his typewriter on a rickety table and was pulling a scarred straight-backed chair into place in front of it.
While he typed, Olive wandered around the room. As she neared a bureau that would have been quite nice if it had been refinished, her foot slipped. There was a slick spot on the floor—paint, she realized, as she tracked some of it away on the sole of her shoe when she stepped back.
She leaned closer. A thin line of rich purple merged into iridescent white. The colors ran in a single narrow strip with a sharp edge on one side. The other side was blurred and wavy.
“Jasper, come look at this.”
The typewriter bell dinged, and Jasper spooled the paper out. He ca
me and peered over Olive’s shoulder, then let out a low whistle, his gaze meeting Olive’s. “Those colors look familiar.”
“I thought so too.” She pointed to the place where the sole of her shoe had smeared the line. “Fresh too.” She scanned the attic. “If someone set a wet oil painting down on the floor and propped it up against this bureau, it could leave a mark like that on the floorboards.”
Jasper leaned close to the bureau. “Yes, there are a few daubs of white and purple paint here as well.”
Olive turned to Jasper, her hands on her hips. “I wonder if Mr. Carter was artistic.”
“You think he made a copy of Woman in a White Fur.”
“I think someone did. We haven’t seen anyone else around except Mr. Carter, Mrs. Lum, and Mr. Hendricks, but someone could have stayed up here out of sight.”
Jasper pivoted, his gaze running over the discarded furniture. “There’s no evidence that anyone has been staying up here, but I suppose someone could have slept on blankets on the floor.”
“Let’s have a more careful look around.”
They went over the room a second time and didn’t find any evidence of a bedroll or makeshift bed, but Jasper discovered an easel, and Olive found squashed tubes of oil paint in the drawers of the old bureau along with a jar of turpentine and several paint-stained rags. Olive pushed the drawer shut, closing off the potent turpentine smell. “That’s where the pine aroma is coming from.”
Jasper returned from examining the far corners of the attic. “It doesn’t look as if Mr. Carter invited someone else in to live in the attic. Mr. Carter is the most likely candidate for the person who was painting up here.”
“I agree,” Olive said. “But there’s still another question—is the painting downstairs an original or a copy?”
The easel began to slip, and Jasper repositioned it against the bureau. “It takes quite a while for an oil painting to dry.”