Faces of Fear (20 page)

But as she reached the coastal road, and started to drive northward to Kenmare, between caravan-sites and bed and breakfasts, the skies began to clear with almost unnatural swiftness; and by the time she drove into Kenmare itself, the sun was shining and the roads were dry, as if it had never been raining at all.

Kenmare was a small tourist town with two main streets, each of them lined with souvenir shops and
pubs and restaurants, all painted in solid reds and greens and yellows. O'Leary's Pub and O'Sullivan's Diner and Shamrock Souvenirs. Sarah drove through it slowly, looking out for antique shops. Even in a town as over-commercialized as Kenmare, it was still possible to discover good quality antiques at reasonable prices – especially chairs and sideboards that had been auctioned off from some of the local country houses. She saw a Regency chiffonier that she liked the look of; and made a note of the shop's telephone number. Then she drove out of Kenmare, heading westward on the narrow road that would take her out onto the Kerry peninsula.

She reached the grand gates of the Parknasilla Hotel and drove into the grounds. The afternoon was brilliant now, and the subtropical palms and bamboo bushes that lined the driveway gave her the feeling that she had driven out of Ireland and into some colonial other-reality, a memory of Mandalay. The hotel itself was a huge Gothic building, looking out over the glittering waters of the Kenmare estuary, with a view of the Caha mountains on the opposite side, still half-concealed by grey pillowy rainclouds.

The light was extraordinary. It was reflected from the ripples of the river in all directions, and gave the whole promontory a spangled, theatrical shine.

Sarah recognized several dealers from London and Brighton, and smiled in particular at Ian Caldecott, a dapper, florid-faced furniture expert from Surrey, who had taught her all about William and Mary chairs and card-tables. He raised his Panama and came over to greet her.

“My dear Sarah, I didn't know you were coming,” he said. “We could have traveled together.”

“I didn't know I was coming, either, not until the last
moment. Then Fergus told me that they were going to be selling two Daniel Marot chairs.”

“Really? They're not in the cataloge.”

“Late entries, apparently,” said Sarah. “They come from the Ballyclaran estate.”

“Well, well. I hope we shan't be bidding too frantically against each other.”

“We can always join forces.”

Ian tapped the side of his nose with his finger. “Very naughty, Sarah. We don't want to be accused of auction-rigging, now do we?”

“If the chairs are good, I want them,” Sarah warned him.

A porter came out to take her bag, and she went into the hallway to register. Inside, the hotel was as Gothic and grand as it was outside, with a wide staircase and sunlit lounges with deep, heavily-upholstered chairs. Sarah was taken to her room by a grinning boy with sticking-out ears.

“Hope you enjoy staying here twice as much as we enjoy having you,” he said. She tipped him a punt and he was gone before she understood what he had said; and even then she couldn't be sure that he had understood it himself.

She kicked off her shoes and started to run herself a bath. As she took off her jacket and unbuttoned her blouse she walked toward the window, which looked out over the gardens and the river, and the mountains in the distance. It was odd to think that less than two hours ago, she had been driving through those mountains in devastating rain, and yet here the weather was balmy and bright. She hung up her blouse and she had just reached behind her to unfasten her bra when she saw a man standing in the garden, partially hidden by the
shadow of a yucca tree – a man who appeared to be staring up at her window.

He was tall, and dark-haired, and dressed in black. His face was as white as a sheet of notepaper. He didn't move, but there was no way in which Sarah could tell for sure that he was actually watching
her
window. It was just that he looked so much like the man she had seen at the airport, and the man she had seen at The Russet Bull.

She retreated back into the room so that he wouldn't be able to see her. She sat on the end of the bed and she suddenly found that her mouth was dry, and that her heart-rate had quickened.
Come on, Sarah, she thought: dozens of men dress in black; and dozens of men look at you; you're still quite attractive, after all
. It was probably a coincidence: three different men who just happened to look similar. Apart from the sheer logical impossibility of the man in The Russet Bull reaching Parknasilla before her, why on earth would anybody want to follow her? She didn't have very much money. She was attractive but she wasn't a movie star. And as far as she knew – even in the devious world of buying and selling antiques – she hadn't cheated anybody, or trodden on anybody's toes. She had once sold a bureau to a well-known horse trainer on the understanding that it was a Hodson; and when it had turned out to be a fake he had threatened to burn her shop down if she didn't give him his money back, but that was the most alarming thing that had ever happened to her. And she
had
given him his money back.

She bathed and washed her hair and changed into a light grey collarless suit. The first event of the day was a champagne reception for the dealers, to be followed by a viewing of some of the most important lots on sale. She went downstairs into the bar where she found most of the dealers already well into their third glass
of Lanson, telling each other jokes and laughing too loudly.

“—and I said, if you want to believe that's a jardinière, my dear, then who am I to say it isn't? But make sure you tell people to take out the potted palm before they piss in it!”

“—squeezed his nose to stop himself from sneezing and found that he'd put in the top bid for two elephant howdahs, parasols, ladders and all!”

Sarah took a glass of champagne from the waiter and circled the room. Although she knew so many of the dealers, very few of them acknowledged her with anything more than a nod, and only one came over to welcome her, Raymond French, an art dealer who specialized in paintings of dogs. Raymond was tall and thin and very intense, with a wonderfully hooked nose and an accent that could have cut diamonds.

“Sarah, you're looking as soignée as ever,” he said. “I didn't think this was your kind of thing.”

“I'm looking for some chairs,” said Sarah.

“Oh, chairs! Well, you were always
very
up on chairs, weren't you? I don't know. There's something about chairs that leaves me cold.”

“These are
supposed
to be Daniel Marots,” said Sarah, under her breath.

“Sorry, you've lost me. But ask me to find you a Stebbings. He did beautiful cocker spaniels, you have no idea.”

“Raymond, you don't understand. These chairs could be really significant. Daniel Marot was a French furniture designer, but he was forced into exile in Holland because he was a Protestant. He designed furniture for William of Orange, and when William of Orange acceded to the English throne, Marot came to England and had a
huge
influence on English furniture. He was totally Baroque. I mean, up until Marot, English chairs had been terribly plain; but Marot gave them high backs, covered in carving, and tasseled seats, and curved legs. His designs had so much
life
.”

“Oh, well, I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, Sarah, a chair is a chair. It may have four legs but there isn't much point in throwing a stick for it, is there?”

“You're impossible,” laughed Sarah.

It was just at this moment that Sarah became conscious that somebody else was standing very close to her. She could sense his tallness next to her shoulder. She half-turned to the left, and found herself face-to-face with the dark, thin man who had been staring up at her window.

Close up, he appeared much more handsome, in a black-eyebrowed, saturnine way. His skin was very white and pitted, but he had a sharply-cut profile and amber eyes. A white scar ran from the right side of his mouth all the way down his chin. His suit and his shirt were dead black, funeral black, and his necktie was black, too. He smelled of something faintly attractive but very old-fashioned, bay rum and lavender, and the tightly-closed rooms of expensive hotels.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” he said. His voice was deep and soft, Irish-accented, like rubbing up the fur of a big black cat in the wrong direction. “I couldn't help overhearing the name of Daniel Marot.”

“You're in furniture?” asked Sarah; and again she could feel her heartbeat quickening.

The man slowly smiled. “I'm in … finding people what they want.”

“And that includes Marots?”

“That includes everything, Mrs Bryce.”

Sarah felt herself blushing. “I'm surprised that you know my name.”

“You're the only woman dealer … it wasn't difficult to guess who you were. But let me introduce myself. Seáth Rider.”

“You're a dealer, too?”

“Well, in a sense, yes. But it's a strange business, isn't it, this matter of taking paintings and furniture from people's houses and selling it on, as if you were taking all of their lives to pieces, dismantling their existence so to speak.”

“I suppose it is, if you put it like that.” Sarah couldn't help but feel conscious of Seáth Rider's aura. He was charged up, almost electrical. She felt that if she touched him, sparks would crackle out of her fingertips. She had never felt like this about a man before, and she didn't know what to make of it. It was partly sexual; but it was partly to do with fear, too. He didn't seem like a man who could be easily disagreed with; or crossed.

“There are two Marot chairs and I've seen them,” he said.

“Do you know about furniture? What kind of condition are they in?”

He made a circle with his finger and thumb; and gave her a smile that barely curled his lips. “They're perfect, Mrs Bryce. Seventeen-oh-five or thereabouts. I'd say, soon after Marot published his collection of designs. They were made in London by Shearley, so far as I know, on a special order, and brought out here when Ballyclavan House was first built.”

“Are you bidding?” asked Sarah, bluntly.

Seáth Rider shook his head. “I've no interest in them myself, Mrs Bryce; although I know that you have.”

“And how do you know that?” She watched him as he lifted his champagne glass and took a small sip. There
was a heavy silver ring on his finger, embossed with the design of a beast's face. She couldn't have sworn that it was identical to the ring worn by the man in The Russet Bull, but all the same, it was almost too much of a coincidence to be true.

“I'm always here and there, back and forth,” Seáth Rider told her. She liked the delicate Irish way he said tort' instead of ‘forth'. “I know when people have their heart set upon something, and the lengths to which they'll go to get it.”

“Do you have a shop?” Sarah asked him.

“Not a shop as such. But a sort of imaginary market, where you can buy whatever you want. Here,” he said, and handed her a business card.
Seáth E. Rider, Acquisitor, Dublin & London.
There was no address, only a mobile telephone number. “For instance, if you had urgent need of an eighteenth-century teapot, I could find you one and bring it to you within the blink of an eye. Or if you had urgent need of anything else for that matter.”

“Well, that's very interesting, Mr Rider. Perhaps I can keep you in mind.”

Seáth Rider gave her the faintest hint of a smile. “I was hoping that you'd do that, Mrs Bryce.”

With that, he gave her a nod, and disappeared into the crowds of dealers, almost sliding rather than walking, like a character in a children's cut-out theatre.

“Well, what do you make of
him
?” asked Raymond. “Rather
louche
, wasn't he? And what's an ‘Acquisitor' when it's at home? I don't think there's any such word.”

“I don't know,” said Sarah, still trying to see where Seáth Rider had gone. “I thought he was quite attractive, in a shifty kind of way.”

“That's the trouble with women,” Raymond retorted.
“Give them a good, trustworthy man and they won't look twice at him. But give them a rat, and they fall on their backs with their legs in the air.”

Sarah looked at him narrowly. “Do you know something, Raymond, I do believe that
you
thought he was attractive, too.”

That evening, after dinner, when the sun was sinking over the Kenmare estuary, Sarah went for a walk in the hotel gardens. There was a light breeze blowing from the south-west, but the air was warm and smelled of the sea, and gulls were still circling overhead. She walked through a succession of small, secret gardens, each surrounded by a high hedge. In each there were cast-iron Victorian chairs and tables, all empty now, some tipped over. She felt that she was walking through a garden from
Alice Through The Looking Glass
, or one of Edward Gorey's drawings of Gashlycrumb Hall.

She thought how much her father would have loved this place. He had always adored a bit of grandeur, and she had never forgotten the first time he had taken her for dinner at the Savoy. He hadn't been wealthy: in fact he had run a toyshop in a suburb of South London. But he had always been kind, and smartly-dressed, and gentlemanly, and Sarah had been devastated when he died last year, only sixty-one years old, of a massive heart attack.

As she walked between the dark, enclosed gardens, Sarah was sure that she could hear people talking; but every garden was empty, and growing darker, too, as the sun began to sink even lower. She could hear a girl's voice, persistently arguing, and a man trying to reason with her. Yet she couldn't work out where they were. Perhaps they were somewhere behind the hedges, and their voices were being carried on the breeze.