The Baroness
Amanda Cross
T he invitation to dinner at the House of Lords was startling enough, and the more so in that the Baroness knew perfectly well I was in New York City and would have to make my way to Parliament and the Peers’ entrance at considerable expense and effort. True, she had no reason to doubt that I could afford both the time and the money, but that hardly served to minimize my astonishment. Phyllida—though I liked, since her elevation, to call her “my lady,” exhibiting an American’s scorn for British titles—must have had something very serious on her mind, the more so since she had been in New York not many weeks before, and we had met then, although for a shorter visit than we usually allowed ourselves: Phyllida was on some sort of business visit and had almost to do a turnabout. She well understood—I had known her through five decades—that I would come at even a moment’s notice if summoned by her. As it happened, being essentially old-fashioned in the best sense—that is, regarding electronics and not morals—she had written a short letter and sent it by ordinary post. (I can never convince Phyllida how unreliable New York mail is; I shudder to think the letter might never have arrived.)
She had written simply enough, in her pleasant, legible hand: “My dearest Anne: Please come to dinner at the House of Lords in a month, about a fortnight after you are likely to receive this letter. I must talk to you, and somehow the terrace at the House of Lords seems the place. (I shall also offer you dinner, though the food, I warn you, is quite uninspired. But I seem to remember that you always liked what you call ‘plain English food.’ You will get it.) Do not disappoint me. I shall await you at six-thirty [and she gave the date] at the Peers’ entrance. If you cannot come, a message can be left for me at …”
Dear, dear Phyllida. Her extraordinary tact had only matured, like wine, with the years. She knew that a letter left me time to think and to refuse if I had to; she knew that a more direct message would, were refusal necessary, have required immediate personal explanations and apologies. Phyllida, my dearest friend.
Of course I went—was, if truth be told, glad to go. I lead an extraordinarily pleasant life, but a sudden summons is exactly what it needs from time to time for spice and the right amount of excitement. One does not want too much excitement in one’s sixties; certainly I don’t. On the other hand, the occasional adventure, if sufficiently benign, is not to be lightly shunned. The question of how benign this adventure would be was one I determined not to engage with.
I was early at the Peers’ entrance, partly because, since England was having one of its regular railroad strikes, thus putting extra pressure on London taxis, I had left more than ample time; and partly because I rather anticipated, if early, a chance to look around. I found I could not imagine what the Peers’ entrance or, for that matter, the House of Lords would be like; the House of Commons, through films and television news, was a far more familiar ambience.
I watched the Lords come and go, all smoking, all assertively male, all moving under the watchful eye of a man in white tie and stiff shirt front, with a large medallion hanging round his neck. Sitting there, I contemplated England, which I had left—permanently, however often I visited—at the age of twenty. Phyllida and I, friends since the age of ten, had married brothers; mine had immediately decamped with me for the United States. Both brothers had been obsessed by flying since boyhood, but hers, remaining in England, had managed fatally to crash himself and his plane some ten years after my departure, leaving her with children to support and no professional preparation for supporting them. My husband, although he too remained enamored of planes, had gone to work in a small airfield and ended up owning both the field and an airline or two. I was a wife and mother as they used to say before the women’s movement, but both Phyllida and I had the usual Englishwoman’s competence, then (and I suspect still) too often revealed only in the comfort and success of her husband.
Phyllida went to work for the government, eventually achieving one of those administrative positions that runs the whole show and does not change with elections or parties. She became immensely valuable, if underpaid, and when, after the women’s movement, they wanted one or two women on various important boards and such, she was appointed. Phyllida, as I never ceased to remind her, was a natural conservative and did not, therefore, flutter the dovecotes—that is to say, frighten the men. She was firm but gracious, ladylike, and, more to the point, with a natural deference to the male and his need to dominate, or appear to dominate. We argued the point frequently, but Phyllida might have been said to have won when England showed its appreciation of her opinions and capabilities by making her a baroness.
I, eventually (but hardly soon enough), bored with my husband and no longer needed by my children, carved out my own life working for a law firm. What I became, in fact, was a kind of private detective, working on behalf of the lawyers in the firm who defended criminals, or those accused of crimes. Most of these clients were guilty, but that did not stop them or me from seeking out evidence that brought their guilt into question at the trial. I became very good at this.
Phyllida’s and my children flew back and forth constantly to visit one another and became friends. Most of the flying was at my expense; I used also to help Phyllida out when circumstances grew tight. I will say for Phyllida that she did not make a fetish of taking money, recognizing perfectly well that had our situations been reversed, she would have expected me to be a courteous recipient. Besides, she agreed with me that a friendship such as ours deserved to be extended into the next generation.
Waiting just inside the House of Lords, and staring alternately at a television monitor reporting on the current debate or question before the house and, beyond the formal man in the white tie, at endless coat racks, I thought how nearly our situations had reversed themselves. Phyllida was now well off, and a prominent figure in many circles, a baroness by god. I, with an interesting job devoid of status, and alimony (which I took gladly, feeling I deserved it after so many years advancing my husband’s career) to pad my meager salary, was clearly the less exalted of us two.
Phyllida greeted me with a modest hug that to anyone observing us would have seemed cool; we had never gone in for those dramatic embraces with which in the States even men greet each other these days. But the love I felt for her, and she for me, was—although Phyllida would never have dreamed of saying any such thing—stronger than family bonds. Not only sisters-in-law, Phyllida and I had long been the chief members of each other’s family.
When we were seated on the terrace, when, on the way there, I had admired the continuous red carpet (green for Commons, Phyllida told me), when the server had taken our order, when we had expressed our shared admiration for the Thames and answered each other’s perfunctory questions about our children—perfunctory not because we did not care, but because we recognized that the children were not, this evening, our subject—only then, when we had raised our glasses, did Phyllida come to the point. That she came to it so directly—for Phyllida was a mistress of the indirect approach—bespoke her sense of urgency.
“The most awful thing has happened,” she said.
“So I have somehow gathered. Whatever it is, Phyllida, knowing will be better than this suspense.”
“You know the small Constable drawing that was stolen with the Vermeer a short time ago in New York, from that elegant small museum?”
I nodded, mystified. The theft had indeed been widely publicized, mainly because the main haul had been a Vermeer—there are less than forty of them in the world—and no trace of it had been found. The robbers had taken, in addition, one other item, valuable but not altogether beyond price as the Vermeer was. I had remembered about the drawing because it was by Constable, a favorite of mine, and with all the strange delicacy that an initial drawing may have that the finished painting, however magnificent, always lacks.
“Well,” Phyllida took a large sip of her drink and could be clearly seen to be gathering all her forces for the next annou
ncement. “I have it,” she said.
I admit that for one frightful moment I was simply worried about Phyllida, not because she had, it seemed, stolen a valuable drawing if not a Vermeer, but because she gone mad—quietly mad, but mad nonetheless.
“Oh don’t look at me as though you thought Yd grown a brain tumor,” Phyllida said, annoyed.
“So you stole the Constable because we had always admired him even as girls,” I snapped, cross at having my mind read. We used to joke, in school, that Turner, who painted fog, had produced endless pictures, but Constable, who painted English sunshine, had, inevitably, painted fewer.
“Of course not. As you know, I was exceedingly busy when I was last there—no time for even a small museum.”
“I’m well aware of how busy you were,” I said with some asperity. “Phyllida, for God’s sake, what happened in New York? Someone gave you the drawing as a gift and you thought it was a reproduction?”
“Well, at last you’re thinking about the problem,” she said. “That’s not true, but at least not insulting.”
I determined to wait for further information before uttering another syllable.
“What I think happened is that the rolled-up paper was slipped into my bag, the one I carried on the plane with me, and of course no one examines luggage these days, at least they never examine mine. Yours?”
“No,” I said. “But that’s probably because—”
“Exactly. Old ladies with gray hair are hardly likely smugglers of stolen goods, or contraband, or drugs, or whatever does get smuggled these dreary days.” Neither Phyllida nor I thought of ourselves as old; but we had faced the fact that so we appeared to the unperceptive multitudes.
“But if the thieves know that, why don’t the customs people know it.”
“Because the thieves don’t know. I think the whole horrible thing was a mistake—the wrong carry-on bag. Mine is rather ordinary and so, I can only suppose, resembled the one designed to receive the stolen drawing.”
“How long have you had it?” I asked. I knew I had to get the facts, but my mind was mainly engaged with thinking of how the drawing might be returned with no one the wiser as to how or by whom. In this, as it soon transpired, I was, as is so often the case with us two, anticipating Phyllida. But she answered my question
“Since I returned from New York, of course.”
“Really, Phyllida.”
“I know; spare me representations of my stupidity, I know them all. But the whole thing has been a shock. Later, I just about decided to call the authorities and simply tell them what happened, how it had been a mistake, how I didn’t realize it was the actual drawing, how I was terribly sorry, had been frightfully busy, how I hoped that, since I am in the House of Lords, I would simply be believed when I turned it in. The, suddenly I realized with horror that because I was in the House of Lords, the whole scandalous matter would make a tasty headline in all the tabloids: ‘Baroness clings to stolen Constable for weeks.’ I got cold feet.”
“Well, it was a good idea to turn it in,” I said, “but I do see what you mean about the tabloids. There’s something about women doing hanky-panky, especially baronesses and royalty, that seems to be irresistible to the gutter press. It’s the same in the States.”
Phyllida rose to her feet and waited until I had risen to mine. “Shall we go in to dinner? I’ll tell you my plan.” We were about to leave the terrace but stopped a moment for a last glimpse of the Thames in the setting sun. Suddenly, an extremely noisy motorboat shattered the air with its cacophony. “I don’t steal art,” Phyllida said between her teeth, “but I would very much like to throw a bomb at that boat; a quick explosion and the noise of the motor would cease; it might even frighten off others. Come on, then.” I was suddenly back in our girlhood, when Phyllida would snap “Come on, then” after keeping me waiting. I said nothing, but myself composed another tabloid headline: BARONESS BOMBS BOAT FROM HOUSE OF LORDS TERRACE.
Feeling rather anxious, as though I had learned that Phyllida had been diagnosed with something fatal and hideous, I followed her along the red carpet, watching her nod amiably to a few acquaintances, until we entered a smallish dining room (“much better food than in the larger one,” she muttered as we were led to a table) and the waitress greeted her with dignity and called her “my lady.” The waitress smiled at me too, and I realized that I, who thought of myself as spectacularly out of place, probably resembled with alarming closeness most of the peers’ wives who were taken from time to time to dine in this hallowed place; indeed, a few of them, I noticed glancing around the room, were even now there.
“Phyllida,” I said when we had got to the Dover sole (“of course not filleted,” Phyllida told the waitress, “it tastes altogether different off the bones”), and I was concentrating on lifting the meat neatly from the skeleton—one does not seem to eat Dover sole frequently in New York—“where exactly is the drawing now?”
“Here,” she said.
“In this dining room?”
“The lady members’ cloakroom.”
“Are you completely mad?”
“It seemed the best place. I simply asked the attendant if I might leave a carrier bag there for a time, with things that I would need someday soon. Of course she said I might. It seemed the safest place, just in case the drawing had been ‘planted’ on me instead of getting into my bag by mistake. I do, of course, have to consider that possibility.” Phyllida had uttered this Americanism without a shudder; she was concentrating on her sole. “No doubt anyone from the police to the Mafia could search my home, but it’s a bit more difficult to penetrate the lady members’ cloakroom.”
I suddenly thought of something. “Phyllida, listen: In the States, the statute of limitations on theft runs out after five years. I suppose you can be prosecuted for possession of a stolen article, but not for theft. Do you think it’s worth looking into? Simply leave it in the cloakroom for five years?”
Phyllida, with a touch of hauteur, ignored this.
“All right,” I said, by now past amazement. “What do you want me to do? I can’t penetrate the lady members’ cloakroom, or so I assume. Naturally, there are special facilities for guests like myself.”
“Naturally, I’ll get the drawing and pass it on to you. You will then return it to the museum who owns it.”
“And why, when I wander in and say, pleasantly, ‘You’ll never guess what I found in my luggage,’ won’t they regard me with the same suspicion they would direct at you? And if your answer is that I’m not a baroness, forget it, Phyllida, it won’t do.”
“Do stop babbling, Anne.” Phyllida was six months older than me and had always considered that additional experience of the world endlessly significant. “Here’s the drill, as my father used to say. I retrieve the drawing from the cloakroom, which will almost certainly be deserted this time of night, and hand it to you in a large brown envelope I’ve also got in my carrier bag. You accept it happily, right in front of the man at the entrance.…”
“The one with the white tie and medallion?”
“That one. I say something like ‘Let me give you this now, in case I forget once we’re in the taxi/ you take it, we leave the building, a nice policeman will find us a taxi, and I’ll drop you at your hotel.” (I always stay at a hotel in London, not being fond of joining other people’s households, even Phyllida’s.)
“Why are you going to pass it to me so publicly?” I asked. I know I’m supposed to be a detective and am actually rather good at it, but the thought of being handed stolen goods by Phyllida—never mind that she hadn’t been the thief—was leaving me in a state typical of those who are only slowly emerging from shock.
“I’m confident you’ll manage to return it to the museum, Anne; I have no doubt. I’ve seen you at your most inventive, as well as on the trail, and I know you’ll pull this off”—Phyllida liked Americanisms delivered with her best upper-class English accent—“with your usual acuity. But, just in case you don’t, just
in case something goes, despite your most punctilious efforts, awry, we will have a witness to the fact that I handed the drawing to you and am, therefore, ultimately responsible.”
I opened my mouth to protest—we were at the dessert stage—but Phyllida held up an admonishing hand. “I’ve got it all worked out,” she said. “Just listen. You put the drawing in the bottom of your suitcase, and forget about it until you get home. Should you be, by the merest fluke, questioned by a customs person, you say you don’t know what’s in it, you were asked by me to deliver it to someone in New York. I’ve put the name of my American agent inside the envelope, just in case the worst occurs. But you will simply get home with the drawing.”
She seemed to wait for me to “babble,” as she unkindly put it, but I said nothing. “Coffee, my lady?” the waitress asked.
“In a few minutes, thank you,” the Baroness responded, waiting until the waitress had retreated to continue outlining her preposterous plan. “After that you do this. You go to the Metropolitan Museum, look around a bit, then drift into the gift shop and buy a number of small posters—that sort of thing. Pay for them in cash. Ask for a shopping bag, though they’ll probably give you one without being asked. Take it to somewhere—the cloakroom, a telephone booth, a deserted gallery—and drop the rolled-up Constable drawing into the bag. Then go to one of the places where you check your coat and packages, and check it. Walk about the museum a bit more, and then leave. End of assignment. What will happen is that eventually the unclaimed bag will be examined, the drawing found and returned to its proper owner. No doubt there will be sufficient brouhaha and much speculation, but none of it need worry you. Except, and I do emphasize this, Anne, if anyone should recognize or greet you while you are in the Metropolitan, instantly abandon the plan.”
“Suppose someone recognizes me while I’m checking the bag?”
“Then don’t check it, of course; wave to your acquaintance, leave the museum, bag in hand, go home, and try again, perhaps at the Museum of Modern Art.”
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