Chapter 29 #2
‘Yes, I know about that. He was in regular correspondence with the government. It was men from that department who searched his study. They were most aggrieved that nothing turned up. I told them what I’ll tell you now: the night before my parents died, as I left to come here, my mother was excited for the party and my father said it would be a very lucrative affair as he had something explosive up his sleeve. ’
‘What did you think he meant by that?’ asked Miss Austen.
‘It was my father’s way of saying he had valuable intelligence, something that many people would pay for. He had been saying for some time that his pension wasn’t sufficient and that he could augment it elsewhere.’
The theory that he had provoked a bidding war seemed a good one, noted Jacob.
‘Do you think it was something Lorenzo would kill for?’ asked Dora.
Julien sighed. ‘I don’t know, Miss Fitz-Pennington.
I thought he’d run mad, that my parents’ death was just a horrible, inexplicable tragedy, but since you raised the question with me the day before yesterday, I’ve begun to wonder.
I even discussed it with Count Vorontsov.
My father never completely trusted Lorenzo.
The Italian hadn’t been in service with him long enough to earn the trust, he said, but he found the man useful. ’
‘You mean by conducting ladies to his room discreetly?’ said Jacob. ‘Apologies to the present company.’ He looked to Miss Austen who kept her head down, pencil moving.
‘My father was no saint. I am aware he had his lady friends,’ said Julien.
‘We French are much more sophisticated than you English when it comes to relationships. Mother had her own amours – or did until I was born. Neither hid this from me. They loved each other and that was enough faithfulness for them both. They were each other’s best friend when it came down to it. ’
‘Was the countess or Miss Petrovna one of your father’s special ladies?’ asked Dora.
Julien gave a bark of laughter. ‘Definitely not the countess. Can you imagine her having the energy to pursue an amour outside of her marriage, or even in it?’ A wicked glint of amusement lit his eye, showing the witty man he normally was under better circumstances.
‘Miss Petrovna?’ asked Jacob.
He shrugged. ‘I never saw anything of that nature between them. My father loved music, and she is a talented musician; that was the bond between them, if anything. If there was more in Dresden, I’m afraid I do not remember.
But Yekatarina had only been in England a few weeks before they died so it doesn’t seem likely.
Besides, the countess keeps throwing her at me.
If that had been a known affair, it would not be in very good taste to suggest her as my wife, now would it? ’
‘But not impossible?’
Julien spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘Does it matter now?’
It might matter very much but there was nothing to be gained in distressing him with their suspicions. Jacob looked to Dora to take up the questioning.
‘If your father had something he wished to hide but keep close at hand, what do you think he would have done with it?’ asked Dora.
Julien got up and paced to the mantelpiece.
Jacob thought for a second that he might be going to open a secret compartment and solve the mystery for them, but instead he rubbed the dust off the clock which wasn’t ticking.
‘I need to wind this. The servants are cutting corners.’ He turned to look at Dora.
‘My father would never have forgotten to wind the clocks. He had a mind that noticed details. He loved playing games with me when I was little to encourage me to develop the habit of paying attention. It has helped with my music and in so many other areas of my profession, I can tell you.’
‘What game did he play?’
‘Oh, the usual one. No doubt you’ve played it yourself. He would invite me into his room and ask me to take note of where everything was, then ask me to leave and come back again a minute later. I had to pick out what he had moved or changed.’
‘We used to play that with objects on a tray,’ said Miss Austen. ‘Never with anything as challenging as a room.’
Julien smiled sadly. ‘My father liked a challenge.’
‘If we were to ask you now, what is different about the rooms your father used from how they usually were, what would you say?’ asked Jacob.
‘What? All of them?’ Looking thankful for the excuse to be moving, Julien didn’t wait for an answer. He got up and prowled the library. ‘I can’t see anything. I’ve moved a couple of books but that was over the last few days.’
‘This was his study?’
‘Yes, when in town. That’s his desk. We searched it thoroughly. There are hidden compartments, but I emptied those.’
‘What did they contain?’
‘His will – before you ask, I’m the only child so everything comes to me. Some coin. Nothing in the nature of a report or recent letters.’
‘Perhaps you should look downstairs in the room where the party was to be held,’ suggested Jacob.
‘The music room? Very well. Ladies?’ Julien opened the door for Miss Austen and Dora, and they descended the flight of stairs, through the hall and into the room where they had first met him with his Russian guests.
‘I see your father liked his theatrical works,’ said Jacob, noticing the Zoffany and the Watteau again.
‘He loved anything in that line,’ said Julien. ‘It was how he met Maman.’ He stood in the doorway of the music room and scanned it attentively. ‘Funny, doing this is like having him with me again. I can hear him telling me to look, really look.’
‘And?’ asked Miss Austen. ‘What do you see?’ Her pencil was poised over her notebook. She evidently found Julien fascinating.
‘On the day they died we’d cleared all the furniture to the side to make way for the guests.
We had hired chairs for the concert and those were stacked over there.
’ He pointed to a space along one wall. ‘Maman insisted we clear the small pictures as well. She said her admirers might steal her likeness – it had happened before, at the height of her fame.’
He was describing a room with many changes and footmen coming and going with the chairs and furniture – not an ideal place to conceal something.
Jacob stepped back into the hallway and considered the paintings.
Would the late comte hide a report behind a canvas?
That was too unwieldy to be useful, surely, and taking it on and off the wall cumbersome, requiring other people’s involvement.
‘How about those?’ He pointed to the prints on the side table.
‘Those are relatively new,’ said Julien. ‘Vesuvius and the Fountains of Versailles, my father’s new toys.’
Dora, who had been studying the portraits, came over. ‘A volcano. Could that be a pun on explosive?’
They had stood out as being very dull, Jacob remembered thinking when he’d seen the prints the first time. He then recalled the Battle of Trafalgar of yesternight. The man was passionate about the theatre and theatrical effects…
‘Are those transparencies?’ he asked.
Julien smiled. ‘They are. How clever of you to spot that, Dr Sandys. I was going to surprise you by holding one up to the light. My father got endless amusement from displaying them to his guests and teasing them that their assumptions about the picture were wrong.’
‘First impressions,’ murmured Miss Austen with a glance at Dora. ‘Please do show us,’ she said more loudly.
Julien took the one of the fountains. ‘It is best with a strong lamp in a darkened room, but this window will do as the sun is coming through it.’ He held it up and the dull dribble of a fountain shot into sparkling light.
‘My mother said it was very like the real thing when le Roi et la Reine were alive. After the revolution’—he took the picture away and the fountain vanished—‘and before!’ The fountains gushed again with the light behind them.
Dora brought him the one of Vesuvius. ‘Will this do the same?’
‘Mais oui. You will see what the poor people of Pompeii experienced in the terrifying moment before death.’ His French accent was becoming stronger as he enjoyed the little show he was putting on, memories of the best times with his parents.
‘My father had a very dramatic speech he would give on that explosion and then, voilà!’ He moved the picture to the window.
It did not change. ‘Quoi?’ He turned it over, then stared at it again.
Jacob’s heart thumped with anticipation as it did when he was close to solving a puzzle. ‘May I?’
Julien passed it to him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. Your father liked his games. He gave you a hint that it was explosive – it would amuse him to use a volcano print to hide it in plain sight as Miss Fitz-Pennington hinted. We’ve all been walking past it without giving it a second look – you because you knew the secret and did not feel like playing; we because we thought it a rather dull etching of the Bay of Naples.
’ He slid the tacks securing the frame out of their pinholes.
‘For a transparency to work, there must be a thin layer like gauze over the picture beneath and nothing in between. In this case, something has been placed between the two layers.’ He gently opened the back.
‘I imagine your father was planning a theatrical denouement just as you were doing, handing the lucky winner of the bid for his report the information at the party before the jealous eyes of their rivals.’
Julien grimaced. ‘That does sound like him. Is there something?’
Jacob gently eased out the folded page. ‘Indeed, there is.’
‘Is that what everyone is killing people to get their hands on?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’ Hesitating, Jacob then held it out. ‘It is yours. What do you want done with it?’
Julien took it, unfolded the sheet, and read.
‘Why kill for this?’ With a sigh, he handed it back to Jacob.
‘Such things do not interest me. I don’t even want it in the house.
My priority is to stop more deaths and these awful attacks, so I want you to let people know it has been found and handed to the government. ’
‘You don’t want to bargain for it? Demand to be paid?’ asked Dora, looking over Jacob’s shoulder as they both read the contents.
‘I have no wish to repeat the mistakes of my parents. My father miscalculated and that’—Julien’s voice hitched—‘that proved fatal.’
Jacob’s admiration for the young man went up many notches.
‘Then we will do what you ask. I’ll take this to my acquaintance at the Foreign Office.
I suggest you tell all callers about the game we played and pretend ignorance of the contents.
Say we whisked it away before you had a chance to read it and that it was addressed to the Foreign Secretary so you had no business reading it in any case.
Make it perfectly clear you are out of the business from which your father earned his reputation. ’
‘Make it clear to whom?’ asked Julien, puzzled.
‘Everyone,’ said Dora.
‘Especially the Russians,’ added Jacob.