Chapter 46 #2
She laughed. ‘Goodness me, yes. The very valuable little blue and yellow painting that Mrs Albery had given her simply because she had a fondness for it. As you know, girls, we searched downstairs to see if there might be another such here, but found nothing of any importance. Yet still the idea persisted in my mind – that a person who had bought one great work of art might easily have acquired another. And when I scoured the rest of the house on my own, because I knew there were other pictures here and there on the upstairs walls that we had not properly looked at, I found that hanging in an obscure corner of your chamber, my dear.’ She rose, and turned the heavy gilded frame with reverent hands.
‘It’s a late self-portrait, and you should know that we are privileged to look upon it. ’
Even Alistair could see that it was extraordinary.
It seemed lit from within. A tired, weathered old man looked out at them with a direct gaze, every wrinkle and mark of time portrayed with unflinching honesty.
He was wrapped in velvet robes trimmed with fur, beautifully recreated, but it was the wise old face that held the attention.
Miss Macintyre smiled on it, as if it were a loved one.
‘And when I found it, I thought I had discovered the intruder’s motive at last. It must be, I thought, someone who came here in Mrs Albery’s lifetime and had the opportunity to see it and recognise its worth – therefore likely a member of your family, Major, or Lord Pallant, whose own sister told us he visited frequently, or one of the former indoor servants.
It could have been the old lady’s doctor, I suppose, but he has recently died, has he not, and was in any case an elderly man?
I dismissed the Bartrums when it became plain to me that you had not the least idea what you already had.
I didn’t imagine you’d recognise a Rembrandt under your nose, if you didn’t know a Vermeer that you live with every day, and I doubted a heedless young maidservant would either.
That essentially left His Lordship, whom I believed to be sharp-eyed, capable of anything, and certainly desperate for money. ’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, inclining his head gravely.
‘I am glad my entire family’s abysmal ignorance of art and culture absolves us of any evil intent.
’ He wasn’t drunk, but he felt as though he were.
He’d better switch from brandy to tea, or he’d be giggling in front of the magistrate, which was bound to look bad and raise questions.
‘But now that we know there is a secret passage,’ Cecilia objected, ‘we must realise that there was nothing to stop Lord Pallant – or anybody else who was aware of its existence; it makes one shiver from head to toe to discover ourselves to have been so vulnerable all this time without knowing it – coming and taking the painting at any time after Mrs Albery’s death.
Why wait till we arrived, when one of us might easily occupy the rooms, as indeed Bea did?
And having senselessly waited, why come once, that first night, and not take it? ’
‘I considered that, of course,’ the old governess said.
‘And for a while, I thought as you do, Cecilia. It was a puzzle and I had no clue to it. But then I realised, perhaps there is an inventory of the goods in the house, or at least he might fear there was. And even if there is not, Mrs Pritty is nobody’s fool; she’d be sure to notice if a painting vanished from under her care, from her late mistress’s own chamber, even if she had no idea of its value; she’s worked here most of her life and misses nothing.
No. I thought that the visit on our first night was made in a spirit of reckless daring to see if it was still here, still in place. And it was.’
Bea said in stunned tones, ‘So we don’t know – and perhaps we never will – if when you were searching downstairs for him, he had already left the way he came – or if he was hiding in my room, in the darkness, listening to you whispering to each other and setting your silly trap with the vase, listening to me breathing… Good God!’
Miss Macintyre said soberly, ‘It’s quite true.
Thank heaven he left you unharmed. For all we know, it wasn’t his first midnight excursion into the house.
He could have come here often and prowled about in the dark in this place his family once owned and lost. Do you not think that His Lordship was just the sort of man who would enjoy the danger of a clandestine visit, and relish even more the sense of superiority that came from knowing something that everyone else in the world did not?
Imagine him standing here chuckling silently to himself; he may even have been watching us through some spyhole in the panelling as we ran about like a pair of fools looking for burglars and finding none.
And then, of course, he could relax, as he thought, because he could see that we knew nothing. ’
‘Yes. Because he thought if he married you, Ceci, and his brother married Bianca, and… so on, he would gain possession of the painting, along with everything else,’ Beatrice said slowly.
‘There was no need to steal it when it would, or so he thought, soon be his anyway. A wife’s possessions belong to her husband, as does a woman herself. ’
‘Precisely, Beatrice. But last night, that possibility of great wealth was taken from him utterly by Cecilia. He not only lost the hope of her hand and her fortune, but the painting too. And I thought he was the sort of man who simply could not endure such an affront to his pride. I suppose that we will never know now if he had any other more sinister purpose in mind in coming here at dead of night when we were supposedly all sleeping – but at any rate, he would not be cheated of the painting. I stayed up all last night – luckily, I am able to nap during the day, so it was no great hardship to me – and again tonight. I was convinced both that there was a secret entrance we had not been able to find because it locked from the inside, and that he would find himself compelled to use it sooner or later. It is excessively gratifying to be correct on both counts.’
‘And of course you had your pistol, ma’am,’ the Major said. ‘And it was loaded. And you are a sharpshooter.’
She scoffed. ‘Hardly, at that little distance. Anyone could have done it, with sufficient practice. And as I’m sure you’ll agree, sir, there is no earthly point in a pistol that is not loaded.
What was I to do, throw it at him? But I am to be a foolish old lady, if you please, who in her panic, shot the horrid burglar down by the merest chance.
We must have no more talk of sharpshooters.
Let us agree to tell the magistrate a story he will understand and readily accept.
You – out walking, as is your nightly habit – saw a sinister figure and followed, fearing for the safety of a houseful of helpless women; I am terrified of burglars, as timid old ladies often are, and kept a gun of my dear father’s for that purpose; we have not the least idea who the dreadful robber could possibly be.
It will cause a little bustle, no doubt, when his identity is discovered, but it is a coherent story and nobody will have any cause to doubt it.
He was here, disguised, in the middle of the night, and his purpose could only have been sinister.
The whole county will agree that he is no great loss. ’
‘“A houseful of helpless women”,’ Alistair repeated with a wry smile.
‘Thank God it was not so.’ He could not look at Cecilia in that moment.
He thought that Miss Macintyre at least suspected with some justice that Pallant had had another darker intention in mind beside burglary, and the idea of it chilled him to the bone.
The wicked Baron could have done anything his twisted mind could devise, and then escaped with his loot, and nobody would ever have been any the wiser.
He could have left one or more or all of the Constantines dead.
It was a truly appalling thing to contemplate.
But he would not say it aloud and make it real.
If Cecilia and her sister had not thought of it yet, he could only be glad.
‘The worst of it,’ said his love with a faint, brave smile, ‘is that we will have to wake Bianca presently, before the authorities arrive. Nobody who does not know her would believe she slept through all this. A gunshot right outside her bedroom. A dead man in Bea’s chamber.
And I daresay she will be most annoyed that she missed all the excitement. ’
‘Probably best if she does not tell the magistrate that,’ he responded in the same effortfully light tone.
‘I fear he might not understand her bloodthirsty sentiments. It’s Marjoram, you know, and he harbours some sadly antiquated ideas about the ladies that would be shaken to their foundations by a better acquaintance with all of you.
Let us not disillusion him if we can help it.
’ And then he began to laugh helplessly.
‘He has had enough of the duty, not being as young as he was, and asked me to consider taking it over. Thank God I have not yet done so. That would not mend matters in the least – a man shot in your house and the local magistrate here to witness it in highly suspicious circumstances.’