Pandora (56 page)

Emerald, remembering the shoplifting of the Joseph dress, went scarlet as her eyes met Zac’s.

Jupiter, meanwhile, was showing Inspector Gablecross the alarm in the cellar which had been switched off. They also looked at the secret passage running from the upstairs landing down two flights of steps into the garden on the church side, both doors of which were discovered to be unlocked. The two-way mirror door leading to the Blue Tower was also swinging.

While they were up in the Blue Tower, Jupiter slid his foot over a gingham toggle beside the bed. His stepmother had been wearing it that morning – but he had no wish at this stage to shop her.

‘It’s a small painting,’ he explained, ‘cut out of its frame and rolled up, anyone could have slipped it under a dinner jacket.’

Footprints, he went on, had been found under an open dining-room window, making it possibly a burglary.

‘Could have come in that way, while the fireworks were going off,’ pondered Inspector Gablecross. ‘Thief could have turned off the alarm system. Who knows where it turns off?’

‘Practically everyone in the household,’ said Jupiter.

‘Who are?’

‘My father and stepmother, all the staff, my brothers Alizarin and Jonathan, my wife Hanna.’ Where was Hanna? he wondered. ‘My sister, Sienna. Our new sister Emerald Cartwright might not have done.’ Jupiter explained about the adoption. ‘She came into our lives about six weeks ago, along with her boyfriend, Zachary Ansteig, who I might as well tell you, Inspector, is claiming the Raphael’s his, looted from his great-grandfather’s house in Vienna in 1938.’

‘Ha!’ said Gablecross. ‘So you think he might have been more interested in tracking down the Raphael than his girlfriend’s natural parents?’

‘I’m not saying anything,’ said Jupiter. ‘But he was in the house all day. No, he went to pick up my brother Dicky from school, and he went out this afternoon.’

‘Could be an inside job,’ said Gablecross. ‘How much d’you reckon it’s worth?’

‘Must be insured for at least four million, but could be worth double or treble that.’

Gablecross whistled.

‘Who would have known the password into the secret tower?’

‘The immediate family did. Probably my sister Sienna, Jonathan would have forgotten it, Alizarin possibly.’

Alizarin had spent three hours with Zac yesterday, thought Jupiter darkly. Could he have tipped him off?

‘Who else might have known of the painting?’

‘My mother had lovers up there twenty-five years ago,’ sighed Jupiter, ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, Colin Casey Andrews, Etienne de Montigny, Joan Bideford.’ Then pulling a face, ‘My mother had catholic tastes, but I doubt any of them noticed the paintings much.’

‘I suppose someone could have come over the roof and dropped in through that skylight’ – Gablecross stood on the double bed to look – ‘but the cobwebs don’t seem to have been broken. We’d better print everyone.’

Going downstairs, they found Jonathan filling up people’s drinks.

‘The insurance company’ll recover it for you,’ Si Greenbridge was telling Raymond. ‘They know which Mafia’s got everything.’

‘The police certainly don’t.’ Jonathan drained the dregs of the brandy bottle himself. ‘They are absolutely useless at finding anything. The Yard have cut down their art and antiques squad to two piddling detective constables. The Italians have got thirty.’

‘Shut up, Jonathan,’ snapped Jupiter, flicking off the overhead light.

And I won’t turn a blind eye, young man, next time I catch you speeding through Limesbridge at four o’clock in the morning, thought Gablecross grimly.

‘Please find my picture,’ beseeched an almost weeping Raymond.

‘Someone wanted your painting, sir,’ Gablecross told him. ‘With such a valuable work, the thief possibly already had a buyer in mind. It could be at the coast by now, and smuggled out of the country by tomorrow, possibly to be sold on the black market, or used as a down payment for drugs or an arms deal.’

‘Say no more.’ Jonathan bowed in Si Greenbridge’s direction.

‘Detective Inspector Gablecross believes the thief,’ said Jupiter hastily, ‘came over the roof or through the house, turned off the alarm and knew the password to get into the Blue Tower.’

‘Unless Anthea or Dad left it open,’ said Jonathan.

‘Ay haven’t been there for weeks,’ squeaked Anthea.

‘Of course not,’ said Jupiter. Surreptitiously, so only she could see it, he opened his hand to reveal the gingham toggle.

Anthea gave a gasp of horror. Her world would collapse like a house of cards if anyone knew she and Zac had been making love in the Tower, or worse she had given him access to the Raphael.

The beast, she thought furiously. And on the pretext of snapping me in the nuddy, he photographed our lovely picture.

Jonathan’s mind was working in the same direction.

‘It’s a set-up,’ he said to Zac. ‘You planned the whole thing from the start, so you could nick the Raphael. There’s a gun in his top drawer, Inspector, and loads of illegal currency, not to mention three passports. And I don’t believe Emerald’s a Belvedon at all.’

‘That’s garbage,’ shouted Zac. ‘Why bother to steal my own picture? I was trying to recover it,’ he said to Gablecross. ‘Search my room if you like.’

While Gablecross’s minions belted off to have a look, Anthea, who’d been doing some rapid thinking, asked if she could have a private word.

Facing her across the study table, Gablecross thought how pretty she was. Her slender shoulders begged for a man’s jacket to warm them. The violet of her eyes was enhanced by the shadows beneath; he longed to comfort her.

Anthea in turn saw a tough, square, reddish farmer’s face, softened by curly brown hair and very green, long-lashed eyes, and wanted to put her trust in Inspector Gablecross utterly.

‘Ay could have left the door open some weeks ago,’ she confided. ‘Sir Raymond and Ay occasionally nip upstairs for a quickie. He’s very vigorous for his age.’

‘So would I be in his position,’ said Gablecross admiringly. ‘You can’t remember the last occasion? We’re just establishing the time of theft.’

Anthea gave a squeak of amazement.

‘Now I remember. I did nip upstairs to peak out of the window, just before Emerald’s replacement parents arrived. You can’t see the front of the house from our bedroom, but the Blue Tower looks straight down onto it. I was very nervous, Inspector, after all they had cared for my Emerald for twenty-six years.’

‘Quite understandable,’ said Gablecross sympathetically. ‘And you used the code to get into the tower?’

‘Yes, definitely, but I may not have shut the door, I was so anxious to run downstairs and welcome them.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Around half past six.’

‘That’s very valuable evidence.’

David Pulborough was hopping. As someone who regarded paintings as expensive commodities and who fought for his commission as fiercely as any Bond Street crone selling Zandra Rhodes, he had never understood the Belvedons’ obsession with the Raphael. But had he overplayed his hand? Had he galvanized Raymond into taking his own painting, knowing it was looted and he could pass it on to Si who would probably pay him the full whack without bothering about provenance? Or could the old fool really not bear to part with it? And what the hell was Anthea rabbiting to Gablecross about?

Raymond wandered distractedly up and down. Jupiter was making lists of people to ring first thing, Jonathan was sketching everyone. Alizarin gazed moodily into space. Geraldine was looking through the
Art Newspaper
for references to herself. Somerford was discussing Raphaels with Si, who’d put his dinner jacket over Rosemary Pulborough, asleep on the window seat beside him. Visitor, impossibly rotund from finishing up other people’s dinners, but aware of tension and distress, laid his fat paw on as many knees as possible. Diggory had gone hunting. Grenville the greyhound, tranked up to the eyeballs, lay cross-eyed in the corner. Sophy wished she had a tranquillizer for Emerald, who was shuddering convulsively.

The only person in a worse state was Sienna. How could she have slept with Zac? To wind people up, she and Jonathan had snogged endlessly in public. In private, unwilling to risk her getting pregnant, they had done everything, except go the whole hog. This had only occurred in her darkest dreams and she always woke up dying of shame. But now the citadel had fallen in a couple of minutes to the fiendishly manipulative Zac, who was now aware of her illicit passion. God knew what use he would make of it. Not to mention those moments when she’d believed him to be Jonathan, which had been the most wonderful of her life. She started to cry again.

‘It was my last link with my mother.’

‘I know, darling.’ Jonathan ruffled her hair. ‘But just stop going on about it.’

‘Art theft is still dismissed as a gentleman’s crime by the police,’ said David pompously.

‘Which means they certainly won’t suspect you,’ snapped Jonathan.

To his disappointment the police found nothing in Zac’s room.

‘There was a gun earlier, I swear it,’ protested Sienna.

‘And what were you doing in my room?’ asked Zac bleakly.

Emerald was suddenly jolted out of her torpor. Running across the room, she viciously slapped Zac’s face.

‘You bastard,’ she screamed, ‘you bastard! No wonder you found Anthea so quickly. I told you my birth name was Rookhope, you’d probably looked at the cuttings, and knew it was Anthea’s maiden name almost from the start. All you were after was your bloody picture. Well, you’re too late, I’m glad someone’s stolen it from under your nose.’

‘I’m sorry.’ For a second, a flicker of pity joined the finger marks reddening Zac’s ashen face. ‘Anyone who has learnt to hate as much as we have, can never love again.’

Emerald gazed at him aghast, gave a sob and fled from the room.

‘We’d like a word with you, Mr Ansteig,’ said Gablecross.

So it seemed would Anthea, when an hour and a half later she found Zac packing.

‘You traitor,’ she hissed. ‘How dare you lead me on? How d’you think this makes me feel?’

‘Well and truly fucked,’ said Zac brutally. ‘What have you done with my picture?’

‘Ay haven’t touched it.’

‘I went up to the Blue Tower fifteen minutes after the fireworks started, and it was gone.’

Raymond’s ability as a host was sorely taxed on Thursday morning. He was touched that Anthea had sobbed all night over the loss of the Raphael, but irked she had proved too inconsolable to get up in the morning. Neither Emerald nor Sienna emerged to help him. Mrs Robens, deeply huffy because Anthea had implied she, Robens and Knightie might have stolen the Raphael, had not come in to work. Somerford and Geraldine, who’d been anticipating Finnan haddock and kidneys sizzling in entrée dishes, had to make do with burnt croissants and instant coffee.

But nothing could dim their euphoria that they had been present at the theft of the decade, about which they could regale the art world for years to come. They were also flattered that the notoriously brusque and impatient Si Greenbridge, grateful no doubt to be relieved from that dreary Rosemary, had spent so much time with them – such a powerful contact and with such a murky reputation, probably also grateful they could provide him with an alibi.

Raymond, huddled over a cup of black coffee, was distraught.

‘It’s ironic how I had planned to give Pandora to the National Gallery.’

‘Doubt if they’d have accepted it with such a dubious provenance,’ said Somerford nastily. ‘How did you say you’d acquired it?’

Ian Cartwright joined them and, out of habit, forced down a bowl of cornflakes. After the very humiliating press he’d received when he’d been sacked and when Emerald had sought out Anthea, he was appalled to be gathered up into a further maelstrom of publicity. Now he was sober, he’d decided he didn’t like the Belvedons one bit. He hated the way they’d sniped at Emerald, and although Raymond seemed a nice chap, one couldn’t trust a fellow with so many books.

They had been invited to meet the natural parents of their adopted daughter, he told Gablecross tersely. He had never heard of the picture, and had no idea it was in the house, nor had his wife. He was furious with Patience for being sick and pleased she was being punished by a brain-crushing hangover.