Ironically, my husband, Thomas Curtis, has left behind a highly decorated career as the Commander of New Scotland Yard’s Investigations Branch. His white hair and blazing blue eyes had made him a recognizable media figure, present at every major bust, arrest, and announcement. He was respected as one of the Yard’s most talented senior detectives. But, come to find out, there was more to Thomas than met the eye. Much more. He had almost as many secrets and was as notorious as I. In his off-duty hours he stole unprotected, important, and sometimes even priceless works of art from the homes of people who had informed the police they would be out for the evening or out of town on holiday! It really was unfathomable to think such an upstanding, law-abiding, law-enforcing citizen as Thomas would do such an unscrupulous thing. But he performed these robberies as a service: The paintings would quickly and mysteriously turn up, unharmed, at nearby police stations in the wee hours of the morning with notes from the elusive “Samaritan Burglar” warning the owners to take better care of their valuables lest a real thief get his hands on them.
Everyone in London was wild about both of us—the Shamrock and the Samaritan, their hometown celebrity burglars. They adored us. Ourselves included. I loved reading about his exploits over my breakfast, seeing the words “Samaritan Rescue Turns Up in Mayfair Police Station,” stamped on the TV screen. And, in spite of the fact that New Scotland Yard was humbled by its inability to catch me, Thomas later admitted to me he loved hearing about my escapades, each robbery elegantly complemented by my signature, a lovely, crisp bouquet of shamrocks tied with an ivory satin ribbon in place of the missing goods. Who knew who either one of these dashing villains was? No one. Certainly neither one of us.
I had no clue who the Samaritan Burglar was—I’d suspected a fellow who visited the auction house only when we had sales of major paintings and looked like David Niven with a pencil-thin mustache, a debonair, country-gentleman style, and a knack for befriending elderly aristocratic strangers. I’d kept my eye on him for years—he never bought a single thing and only bid while things were lively and therefore kept him safely out of the running. But as far as I knew, the police had never noticed him and I certainly wasn’t going to tip them off about my suspicions, being unwilling to draw any attention to myself from the constabulary When I moved away from London, the true identity of the Samaritan Burglar was still a mystery. And so it is to this day. Except to me. And Thomas, of course.
And as I’ve already mentioned, nobody, Thomas included, had a clue who the Shamrock Burglar was, either. They never even got close. But, now, that’s why I was the best. I was pro- not re-active, setting my terms and conditions. I planned and executed my robberies meticulously and never took any chances.
Thomas and I met and grew fond—I shall say for lack of a better word—of each other when there had been a murder, followed shortly by a bombing, at Ballantine & Company He had been in charge of the lengthy investigations. During the course of these investigations, he’d invited me out twice—once to a concert, another time to see the Raphael cartoons at the V & A—such civilized and tempting invitations to someone like me who’d spent a highly sheltered lifetime within the walls of Ballantine & Company My lifetime had been dedicated to studying and appreciating the finest life had to offer, never venturing socially at all from my own little world, with the result being that not only am I a jewelry expert and a master jeweler, but I can also spot a fake painting or piece of furniture in a heartbeat. Everyone at Ballantine always remarked on my “natural” eye for quality and authenticity. In a perfect and proper world, Thomas and I would have been “naturals” for each other as well, but I’d turned down his invitations. Then one thing led to another and it was time for me to leave permanently for France without telling him, or anyone else for that matter, good-bye.
I settled very happily into my life of retirement as an unmarried woman. I had lots of friends, lots of invitations, two fast cars—a Jaguar XK convertible for fair weather and a small Mercedes wagon for foul—and a tiny, snow-white Westie named Bijou for companionship.
But I’d been unable to get Thomas Curtis out of my mind. I wasn’t obsessed with him, nothing of the sort. He just simply drifted to the surface every now and then and made me wonder if I’d made a mistake not getting to know him better. He’d been such a fine, distinguished, cultured, solid, unmarried man. The kind that’s hard to find.
Thomas had not been able to forget me, either, and after he retired, he set out to track me down, using the only clue he had: Late one afternoon, he’d come to my flat in London to discuss the bombing case. He admired the Van Gogh above my fireplace, and I mentioned how much I loved Provence. That’s all there was to that part of the conversation. Months later, we bumped into each other in Les Baux at a cocktail party at my good friend Flaminia Balfour’s farm—Ferme de la Bonne Franquette—and, corny as it sounds, fell in love right there on the spot. It was an authentic coup de foudre.
Later that same evening, back at my house—while I was making a tarte tatin, and he’d poured us each a glass of Chateau dTquem—he called me to join him in the living room and thereby subtly informed me that not only was he the Samaritan Burglar, but also that he knew I was the Shamrock. He imparted this knowledge by hanging a special painting over the fireplace. I recognized it immediately. Polonaise Blanche by Renoir. The only painting he’d stolen and been forced to keep because, unbeknownst to each other, we’d been robbing the same house at the same time and I’d had to tap him unconscious over the head with my little rubber mallet. He’d regained consciousness just in time to escape by the skin of his teeth, but was too late to get to the police station where he’d planned to leave the painting during the hubbub of their shift change.
“It was at that moment I realized the Shamrock Burglar was a woman.” He smiled. “And I surrendered myself to you completely.”
“What do you mean you knew the Shamrock Burglar was a woman?” I was amazed.
“Only a woman would be so thoughtful as to use a rubber mallet. A man would have garroted me or broken my neck. You simply gave me a hard thwack in exactly the right place to make me fall like a stone and made your escape.”
“Of course I wouldn’t break your neck. I’m interested in jewelry, not murder.”
After a small wedding in the little Anglican church in St. Rémy and a beautiful seated dinner for twelve at Flaminia and Bill’s, we settled nicely into our country-life marriage, setting a solid course to become good, rehabilitated citizens. I taught English at the St. Rémy library four days a week and he helped deliver meals to senior citizens. We were a model couple.
We’d even hosted a charity benefit—a picnic in the orchard for two hundred—for the hospital to purchase a new ambulance. All the leading citizens came, thereby endowing us with their imprimatur of social acceptance and respectability. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I occasionally miss my former life, the thrill of the perfect heist, the payoff of feeling beautiful gems cascade through my fingers like smooth pebbles from a stream, listening to their distinctive bright, reverberating click. Occasionally I get the itch to test my skills, keep them sharp, because I’ve dreamt that I’ve gotten rusty and gotten caught, and I wake up so out of breath I’m sure I’m having a heart attack. I miss the solace of being by myself, of independence, of having exclusively my own agenda, and I miss my privacy. But even that had improved drastically since we’d added a small wing onto the house so Thomas could have his own study and bath. It helps keep the romance in our marriage.
As the afternoon grew warm in the orchard, we settled across from each other on the shady ground cloth and Thomas poured the white burgundy. I set the cold chicken—a roasted poulet de Bresse—on a platter and arranged chilled artichokes, asparagus, and tapenade-stuffed tomatoes around it. I laid out napkins that matched the cloth, pale yellow with red roosters and hens.
“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, Kick.” He handed me a glass of wine. There was an edge to his voice but—there it i
s again, the wisdom that comes with maturity and experience—thank God I’m now old enough to know enough about men to know that usually whatever the edge is, it has nothing to do with you. Usually the preoccupation has to do with changing the oil in their cars, or did their shirts get picked up at the laundry, or in Thomas’s case, making sure his shoes were perfectly shined.
“You know it’s no trouble.” I raised my glass. “To us, Thomas Curtis.”
“To us, Kick Keswick. I absolutely adore you.”
We leaned across the lemon meringue pie to kiss. Just as I closed my eyes, it seemed to me that a look of sadness crossed his face.
T H R E E
Two mornings later, bands of sunlight filtered through the shutters and warmed my face and I stretched my arms and legs in all directions as far as they would go before opening my eyes.
It was the first time since we’d gotten married that I’d had my bed, our bed, all to myself. And it was quite wonderful.
Yesterday, Thomas went down to Marseilles to have lunch with an old friend, the chief of the Marseilles police, and to attend an afternoon art auction. I spent the entire day experimenting in the kitchen, trying to perfect some little chewy, gooey chocolate cakes I’d invented and had dubbed “bagatelles” because they were shaped like giant, three-hundred-carat, emerald-cut diamonds. I sealed in their moistness with a covering of silver leaf—an extremely intricate undertaking. Silver and gold leaf are the devil to work with, very fragile, temperamental, and nerve-wracking. And when nicely done, very rewarding. I’ve found that a glass of champagne while you’re working with the foil has a steadying effect. Two glasses of champagne is even better. Three? You simply say to hell with the foil and eat the cakes.
I love to be in the kitchen. Almost as much as I loved stealing jewelry. I thrive on beautiful food. Years ago I gave up worrying about my waistline. It’s part of my charm.
Thomas called at dinnertime last night to say the auction had gotten off to a delayed start and was going longer than expected. Did I mind if he spent the night and wasn’t home before lunchtime today?
“Of course not,” I said. “Has that little Chaumière come up for bid yet?”
“Next group.”
“I’d love it if you could get it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be home by noon.”
So now, I had to fight the urge just to lie here all morning in my beautiful pale yellow and white bedroom and finish up the bagatelles or get up and make us some sort of welcome home lunch that we could spend the major part of the afternoon enjoying and then go to bed and forget about dinner.
It was completely quiet. I could hear the bees buzzing in the lavender beds right outside the window and the distant hum of a tractor.
I reached across to Thomas’s pillow and grabbed a handful of warm fur and a cold nose and kisses from Bijou. I opened my eyes. It was late. Past nine. Thomas would be home In three hours.
I took a hot shower, fixed my hair and makeup—I always get totally put together before I do anything because you never know what’s in store and you don’t want to have a big opportunity or encounter come your way and not look as though you’re ready for it. To tell the truth, even though I’m retired, I can’t seem to accept the fact that I don’t need to be ready at all times to have my mug shot taken. That my capture and incarceration are right around the corner. And we’ve all seen how bad those pictures can look if you don’t have your hair combed and your lipstick on.
And when it comes to cooking? I’m artist-as-chef, and what artist wants to work on a less than perfect canvas? The conditions must be ideal and I certainly couldn’t put together a proper meal wearing my bathrobe, even if it is washable silk, salmon-pink, my favorite color.
I’d thought up an ambitious menu in the shower: cold cucumber and watercress soup, similar to vichyssoise, and as labor-intensive as a chilled soup can get, what with all the peeling, chopping, boiling, and pureeing required; lamb’s lettuce with garlic, olive oil, lemon and crunchy crystals of Fleur de Cel; cheese soufflé, and one of Thomas’s favorites: a rum-soaked pineapple upside-down cake. Oh, and a bottle or two of Domaine Tempier Bandol ’96, Cuvée Paradis, the softest, most elegant red you can drink with a cheese soufflé.
I dressed in loose persimmon silk slacks and a comfortable faded cotton shirt, pearl necklace and earrings. White espadrilles and a crisp, snow white apron.
The kitchen was cool and hushed. The blue and white tiles, gleaming and spotless. I started a pot of coffee, fed Bijou her breakfast, and poured myself a glass of grapefruit juice. My caretaker, Pierre, had left the morning paper—the International Herald Tribune—a pain au chocolat, and a fresh baguette, but they would have to wait until I got the lettuce rinsed, the cake in the oven, and the soup in the refrigerator. The soufflé was all last-minute.
It’s hard to describe how I feel about my kitchen in Provence without sounding a little New World, or whatever it’s called. You know—the people with the crystals and wavy music and so forth. Whether I’m standing at the sink washing dishes or at the counter chopping vegetables, I feel rooted right down to the center of the earth. It’s extraordinary. A sense of peace and complete rightness fills me. This is my one perfect spot on the planet. This is where I belong.
Outdoors, morning was well under way—all the earliness was far gone and it was starting to get warm. Not only were the bees hard at work, but Pierre had already accumulated a large pile of weeds and trimmings on his tarp from the beds along the front of the house where Thomas thought he might like to put in a rose garden.
“Bonjour, Pierre,” I called out the window.
He turned and gave me a little salute. “Bonjour, madame.”
I turned on the TV set. Giovanna McDougal, SkyWord’s best-known tabloid reporter, was doing a story on the latest royal scandal. I switched it off and put on Glazunov’s Seasons ballet, Printemps, full-throttle. The Zephyr of Spring roared around me as I chopped up the watercress and cucumber for the soup, peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil, and assembled ingredients for the cake.
There are a number of ways to make a pineapple upside-down cake, which incidentally was invented by the Dole Pineapple Company in the 1940s, not—as we’d all like to imagine—by a desperate galley master aboard Captain Cook’s ship, wondering what on earth he was going to do with all those goddamned pineapples and coconuts that were rolling knee-deep around the deck.
Some cooks use regular cake pans but I prefer to bake mine in a heavy cast-iron skillet, the sort everyone’s grandmother used to use for everything. I like the density and heft of the skillet, the way it cooks evenly, and I also like the old-fashioned aura it gives to the presentation. There’s something very satisfying about pulling a sizzling hot skillet from the oven and turning out a caramelized cake or a round of skillet-bread. I unhooked my pan from the wall rack and set it on a hot burner and cut in a stick of butter. Then I crumbled in a cup of brown sugar, let the mixture bubble together for a minute or two, pressed drained pineapple slices onto the warm syrup, and proceeded with the batter. There are two secrets to this cake: You must use good, strong, dark rum, and the egg whites for the meringue must be beaten to stiff peaks before you begin to add the sugar, which must be done one tablespoon at a time, all the way to the end, no cheating.
A few busy minutes later, maybe ten, I poured the golden, rum-scented batter onto the brown sugar and pineapple—it looked and smelled like a ribbon of planter’s punch—and then eased the skillet into the hot oven very gently so as not to startle the eggs.
I got everything tidied up and finally—by now I was starving-picked up the Tribune and went into the garden for a cup of coffee and a bit of breakfast. I’d just opened the paper and taken the first bite of my pain au chocolat when the sound of a car turning onto the gravel drive came around the house.
Thomas.
Bijou gave a couple of halfhearted barks before returning to the rabbit hole she’d been unsuccessfully excavating for several weeks.
I dashed into the kitchen, pulling off my apron, smoothing my hair. At the kitchen mirror I pulled a lipstick out of my pocket and freshened that up, pinched up my cheeks to give them a few roses, and went to welcome him home.
“Bonjour, madame,” the Federal Express man said.
“Bonjour. Merci.” I signed and accepted the overnight envelope. While the truck sped back down the road, I looked at the airbill. It had come from T. Curtis, New Scotland Yard, London.
I turned it over and over in my hands. I didn’t want to open it. My head began to ache, a sharp pain bolted through my eyes from temple to temple like an electrical arc.
Inside was a sealed envelope on official stationery I tore it open and removed the handwritten note:
My precious Kick—By the time you read this, I’ll be in London. I’ve gone back to the Yard to help work on a case that has resurfaced. I couldn’t tell you in person. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Please don’t try to contact me. Forgive me.
Thomas.
F O U R
I called his cell phone.
“This is Commander Thomas Curtis of New Scotland Yard. Leave your name and number and I’ll return your call as soon as is possible. If this is an emergency, call 999 or the main office at 020-7230-1212.”
I hung up. What had happened to his cheery, “Thomas, ici”? What did it mean, “Commander Thomas Curtis of New Scotland Yard”? He’d retired. And what sort of message could I leave? I couldn’t get my breath and a roaring filled my head, a horrible haywire clanging, like fire bells.
I stared across the field. Tears flooded my eyes. I’d never felt abandoned before in my life, although I had been often, starting at an early age. But now the incredulity that filled me was like a giant void. A vexing I’d never experienced. I sat down on the bench next to the front door and in spite of my efforts not to, I began to cry.
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