by Amy Myers
‘I liked Lance very much. Dear friend,’ Antonio announced. ‘My brother and I have chain of antique stores, Rome, Vienna, Paris, London. Easy for Jago to think of us as a gang, but we are honest traders. Always, we were that. Many good things came from the East then, so Vienna was well placed. We go there to live after we leave Rome.’
‘Were antiques smuggled out when Eastern Europe was still in the Communist bloc?’
‘We not see it as smuggling,’ he replied blandly. ‘No contact between East and West then. Lance knew the Benizis had their ears to ground, but that we know what is right, and what is wrong. The Benizi Brothers believe there is more money in being on right side. Too much danger in being bad. But – your glass empty, Georgia.’ He reached over to remedy this.
‘But,’ she prompted him.
‘But you must know bad side too. I knew good men, I knew bad men, and they both trusted me.’
‘It sounds a difficult line to walk,’ she observed frankly. ‘And,’ she reasoned, ‘if the bad men trusted you, what help could you give Lance? You couldn’t tell him anything without betraying the bad men. You’d soon be a dead man.’
Antonio laughed delightedly. ‘You have a clever wife, Zac. Ah, sorrel soup.’ He kissed his fingers to signify his pleasure. ‘Made in heaven, like marriage. It looks good, yes?’
‘It does,’ she agreed wholeheartedly. Nothing so reassuring and comforting as a whole tureen of soup and large chunks of bread to accompany it.
‘I am good too, am I not, Magdalena?’
‘A paragon of virtue,’ his wife agreed. ‘That’s why Lance liked your advice.’
‘Si,’ Antonio agreed. ‘He often came to me about stolen pictures. I told him whether he had any chance of getting them back or not. I tell him whether it was a private theft for ransom or whether it has gone to a collection. I tell him how much value it had on market. All this and I do not betray the bad men.’
‘Lance was a good man? Never bad?’ Georgia was conscious that she was slipping into this framework very easily.
‘Good, yes, but just a little of bad,’ Antonio replied.
How to get to the bottom of this? She decided it could only be by plunging in headlong. ‘That painting you kindly showed me . . .’ she began, deliberately hesitantly.
‘Ah yes, Mr Rossetti’s.’
‘Was it in your possession when Lance discovered it? Were you the family,’ she said, treading on eggshells, ‘that had owned it since 1855?’
‘No, no.’ Antonio shook his head vigorously. ‘It was not owned by Big Bad Benizi gang. Lance brought it to me to ask if I thought it genuine. Is it fake? It has good provenance, he told me. In 1855 Rossetti’s lady friend Lizzie Siddal came to Paris, but spent too much money. So Rossetti painted a picture quickly, sold it and brought money to her here. He was very pleased, because the poet Mr Robert Browning was in Paris too so Rossetti have a friend here. He stayed with Lizzie ten days, but she was not well and kept to her room. He needed more money for his lovely lady, so he painted another picture. He used the studio of the artist Purvis de Chavanne, later very famous but not then. He had an atelier to teach students, and he let Rossetti paint his picture there in return for lessons to pupils. The picture was the death of Sir Gawain, and very good. He sold it to a cafe in Pigalle to get money for Lizzie. Rossetti was very fond of King Arthur. He painted his Arthur’s Tomb watercolour that year, the Lady of Shalott drawing the following year, and designs for Oxford Union. Busy man, and greedy lady. A sad story, because the poor lady died young.’
Antonio had tears in his eyes. ‘I ask Lance to buy the painting of Gawain for me,’ he continued. ‘I liked it. Also, I heard rumours in Paris about the goblet in the picture being real, so I asked Lance about them. He said he had heard them too. So if painting was genuine, Rossetti must have known about the goblet story.’
‘Do you believe the painting is genuine? Have you had it tested?’
‘No. For Magdalena I break my own rules,’ Antonio declared. ‘She liked the painting too, and there were not so many tests in 1959, as there are today. Also, I did not want to know. When insurers come, I tell them it is a true painting and so pay more than I need. But I am happy to do that, because Magdalena and I believe it true, and so it is true.’
‘Did the rumours circulating about the goblet in the 1950s begin with this painting? Lance was waiting for some news to tell Jago about it, when he died.’
‘Lance said they began before, then he find painting. Rossetti knew the goblet was real – Lance was sure of that.’
‘How? Is this something to do with Ruskin and old scripts?’ Georgia was getting more and more intrigued.
‘Si. Rossetti was a great amico of John Ruskin, who as you know was very important man in art world. He live in London, south of the big river Thames, and Rossetti go to visit him often. Ruskin was a big collector maps and texts. In the year Rossetti went to Paris, Mr Ruskin visit Deal to study harbours, so he could easily have visited Dover too, which is very near. In Dover at that time there were many historians and collectors, and Lance told me there was a letter from Ruskin to Rossetti telling him he had been given a scrap of old manuscript about goblet, and where it was buried.’
‘Where was that?’ Georgia almost croaked. This must certainly have been the news Jago had been waiting for. The script written by the chaplains of St Mary-in-the-Castle as a record, which had later been lost.
Antonio chuckled. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Georgia. Lance did not have either the letter or the script. He looked for them both for me and for Jago; he looked for two years but then he died.’
‘Oh.’ Anti-climax. The end of the story missing. The trail cold. Unless of course Lance had found them . . .
Antonio was watching her. ‘You have some of this nice pasta, Georgia. It will cheer you up.’
He was right, and as pasta replaced the soup tureen, and red wine flowed, the afternoon began to take on a surreal quality. The Benizi gang faded across a distant horizon together with any leads it might have to Lance Venyon. Instead she, a retired antiques dealer, his wife and Zac were having a friendly lunch in the sunshine in what seemed an Eden of delight. If there was a serpent amongst them, he was keeping his fangs to himself. Or were they just hidden, ready to strike? One never knew with serpents.
She tried to focus on the fact that she had to leave shortly, that she still hadn’t heard much about why Zac was here, and that she had let down her own guard in discussing the Venyon case. Well done, Georgia, she congratulated herself. All she had achieved, once again, was a discussion on King Arthur.
‘Remember that Manet of mine, Georgia,’ Zac was prattling. ‘I kept it under the bed because it was so beautiful I wanted to feel I owned it.’
She remembered it all too well, but it was a step too far on Zac’s part to mention it, since it forced her once more to recall all the other lovely things ‘of his’ in their home, that Zac had assured her were trifling gifts from clients. In those days she didn’t know a Ming from a Minton but she was wiser now. Although, if she were so clever, what on earth was she doing here, she wondered. She toyed with the notion that the entire King Arthur story was a red herring to divert them from the truth about Lance Venyon.
‘So you’re a PI now, Georgia,’ Zac said idly, ‘Bulldog Drummond, Philip Marlowe and good old Sherlock all in one.’
‘Hardly a PI,’ she said mildly. ‘Peter and I write books for a living.’
‘Any time you want my input,’ Zac offered generously, ‘you have only to ask.’
‘How good of you,’ she replied warmly, secure in the knowledge that sarcasm always passed Zac by. ‘About what?’
‘This Venyon fellow.’
As so often in the past, she’d walked right back into it. ‘Do you know anything about him, other than the rumours about the goblet?’
‘Not much.’ He gave her a disarming smile.
It didn’t succeed. ‘Then I’ll hold on a while before taking advantage of your offer,’ she replied. L
ike when hell freezes, she thought savagely. Still, it had given her an opening to return to Antonio on the question of Lance.
‘If you believe Lance could have been murdered, both the painting and the goblet could have been reasons for it.’
Antonio chuckled. ‘You think I killed him because of that painting? That I stole this Ruskin letter and script?’
Damn. That wine had not been a good idea, and she was covered in confusion. ‘I didn’t mean to imply—’
‘I forgive you. We wicked Benizi brothers go in with our guns going pop, pop, pop. This is how we live every day, don’t we, Magdalena?’
‘Of course.’ Madeleine laughed. ‘And I don’t blame Georgia for believing it.’
The sticky moment had passed. ‘Do you know who Lance bought the picture from?’ Georgia asked hastily.
‘He say it came from the Milot family,’ Antonio replied promptly. ‘They owned it from the time Rossetti painted it. The family ran the cafe in the Place Pigalle, and kept the picture. When the Milots became rich, they bought a chateau near Orléans and there Lance found the painting.’
‘Did he tell you he thought it was genuine, as Jago recalls?’
‘Jago wrong. Lance was not sure at first. We both thought there would be a big market for it if the rumours about the goblet were true, whether the painting was fake or genuine. So I asked Lance to buy it. You know King Arthur was a French king?’
‘I didn’t.’ Once more Georgia was taken off guard.
Madeleine laughed. ‘The Grail story originated in Europe, so naturally the French would like to think him French. Historically, as Jago would confirm, one theory of Arthur is that he was actually a king of Brittany, or more particularly of the British colony in the peninsula. He was called Riothamus, and popped over with his troops to give the Britons a hand in fighting off the Saxons.’
‘Is that included in Jago’s thesis?’ Georgia asked. It didn’t ring a bell, but would fit his story well.
‘Probably, since he was lecturing in Paris at the time, and was getting very excited over Gawain’s bones. I don’t think Lance ever showed him the paintings. He was—’
‘Eh, Magdalena,’ Antonio interrupted chidingly. ‘You bore our guests with talk of Arthur.’
‘And you also, Antonio,’ she shot back.
‘Only because, cara, Lance brought Arthur to me.’
Jago described Madeleine as temperamental, Georgia remembered, and for a moment she had seen a brief suggestion of it. ‘So didn’t Lance want Jago to see the Rossetti?’ she asked, to break the pause that followed. Had she misheard, or had Madeleine referred to paintings in the plural, just as Jago had?
‘I think not,’ Madeleine replied promptly. ‘Lance said he wanted to find the Ruskin evidence before he got Jago too excited over the painting. We and Lance were at one over Jago. We refused to accept balderdash from him about King Arthur.’
‘So neither of you believed in the golden goblet?’ Georgia’s head began to spin in earnest. ‘And yet you bought the painting.’
‘Caught you, Magdalena,’ Antonio chortled.
‘I did believe in it. I still do,’ Madeleine replied calmly. ‘As much as I believe in the golden statue of Woden. All legends have a basis of truth, so Jago could be right. Lance doubted it, but nevertheless he brought that picture to show us, just in case.’
The story was circling back again, and Georgia knew she had to break through it. ‘Everyone seems a cog in the story of Lance Venyon, not a principal, so who would want to murder him?’
‘Perhaps,’ Madeleine pointed out gently, ‘no one did. The fact that Antonio and I could believe it happened doesn’t make it a fact.’
‘That’s what my father and I have to sort out,’ Georgia said ruefully. She decided to take a risk. ‘Would anyone else have known about Lance’s work? Venetia Wain, for example.’
Madeleine stiffened, as only an affronted Englishwoman can. False step, Georgia realized – or perhaps not. ‘Venetia was the sort of woman who would claim to know everything and in fact understand nothing,’ Madeleine declared.
Antonio laughed delightedly. ‘Magdalena not like Venetia. Me, I love her.’
‘Nonsense,’ Madeleine replied calmly.
‘So quiet, so sweet, so—’
‘Catlike,’ his wife finished for him. ‘In Lance’s Garden of Eden that Eve didn’t need a serpent to tell her how to cause trouble.’
‘Trouble for Lance or for others?’ Georgia had nearly said rivals, but fortunately caught herself in time.
‘The same thing. For Mary, certainly.’
‘Could Mary have thought Venetia murdered Lance?’
Madeleine shot her a glance and Antonio was frowning, unusually for him. ‘I can’t say. I hardly knew Mary,’ Madeleine said at last. ‘And she’s no longer alive, you say.’
No, Georgia thought with resignation, and yet Mary was the only reason that she was sitting here today. If Lance’s murder was fantasy on Mary’s part, then there was no case to answer. Apart from the mysterious and probably innocent visitor he was meeting that afternoon, there wasn’t an atom of evidence that Lance had died other than by accident. The creepy atmosphere in the churchyard bore no connection to him, and even if Gawain himself lay buried deep beneath its ground, there was little Marsh & Daughter could do to avenge his death.
And then she saw Zac was about to speak. Trouble?
‘Exciting life you lead, Georgia.’
‘A thrill a minute,’ she cautiously agreed.
‘What about current crimes? Have you heard the big story about the art thefts in Kent?’
She racked her brains in vain. ‘No.’
‘That’s what I’m working on,’ Zac said nonchalantly, one arm hooked over the back of his chair. ‘There’s a scam in progress. The latest thing is not merely stealing the originals, but replacing them with copies so good they’ll never be questioned. There’s a break-in, one or two minor originals are pinched but left unreplaced so that it looks convincing but the real aim is the switch of the major paintings.’
‘How do they get exposed as copies?’ she asked.
‘Tests, Georgia dear. At any point suspicion could arise, and then the tests are made. That brings an insurance problem because it can’t be proved when the switch was made. It could be years later the query arises. Sometimes, like Antonio, the owners don’t care if it’s fake or genuine and keep it anyway, but sometimes they’re extremely narked.’
‘Naturally enough. How is the job planned?’
‘Sometimes with some insider help, but usually through scouts passing information.’
‘But if they go to the trouble of breaking in, why not take all the originals?’
Zac looked at her pityingly. ‘Elementary, my darling. It buys time to get the hot stuff away and sold before the news hits the hot list. If they’re unlucky of course they switch paintings only to find the original was a fake too.’
She wouldn’t mind betting that Zac himself had fallen foul of that. ‘How do the copyists get to know the picture so well that they can copy it to that standard?’
‘Preparation, preparation, preparation in tracking down who has pictures famous enough to be in good reproduction, somewhere. If it’s a house or museum open to the public one browses round, first with one’s Aunt Agatha, secondly with one’s squalling kids, thirdly in a tourist group; that gives an indication of the true colours and condition of the painting, and then the reproductions kick in as guides.’
‘And how did you get drawn into this?’
‘Believe it or not, Georgia, because I was a suspect.’
She began to laugh. Then he looked so indignant that she couldn’t stop. ‘I do believe it.’
‘It’s not a joke,’ he replied crossly. ‘I was questioned by the Art and Antiques Unit in the Specialist Crime Directorate, part of the Metropolitan Police, on the grounds I was the inside man. I do valuations for insurance companies and auction houses.’
‘You mean you’re living
in Kent?’ she asked, aghast.
‘Sussex.’
Relief, close though Sussex was. ‘Did they arrest you?’
‘Naturally I was able to prove my innocence.’
‘That’s a change.’
‘I offered to help them, to keep my nose to the ground.’
‘Does it sniff anything?’
‘Of course. You don’t believe me, do you?’ He put his mysterious look on. ‘Well – and this goes no further, you understand – the centre of suspicion is a chap called Roy Cook.’
‘In Dover?’ She was jolted out of her afternoon stupor. This was getting very close to home.
‘Do you know him?’
‘Of him,’ she said guardedly. ‘I met his wife.’
‘You know darling Kelly? Well, well, what a small world.’
‘I’ve met her, but your secret’s safe with me. How are the Cooks linked to the thefts?’
‘I’ve a theory, not yet proven, that he’s the organizer or at least a high-up operator. I’m pretty certain he arranges the painting of the copies.’
Mike’s words came back to her with sickening clarity: ‘He’s an excellent copyist, his tutor said.’
‘By Sandro Daks?’ she asked warily.
He looked impressed. But then Zac was good at that. ‘Yes, the poor chap who was murdered. Did you know him?’
‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘I found his body.’
‘My poor Georgia,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry. What a shock. It had occurred to me,’ he added, nose almost visibly twitching, ‘that his death could be something to do with the thefts.’
What on earth was she doing discussing this with Zac? Ten to one it hadn’t occurred to him until she put her big foot in it by mentioning Sandro. ‘Could he have been one of Cook’s copyists? I know Cook sold his tourist drawings.’
‘I’m sure he was. I met Sandro once. Didn’t take to him. Bit of a chancer, I’d say.’
‘Pots calling kettles black, Zac?’
‘I’m never underhand,’ he said, with dignity.
No. That was the trouble. He just forgot to mention things. He steamed ahead without thinking round or through a problem. That was why he was so incompetent. If the Arts and Antiques Unit was using him its success ratings would seriously decline.