Chapter 33
It rained through the night, and Maeve, more than a little tipsy, slept so soundly she never heard a sound until she woke the next morning to the soft sound of fingertips tapping on a keyboard.
She yawned, stretched, and blinked.
Therese was sitting cross-legged on her bed, with Maeve’s laptop open. Scattered around her were sheets of the inn’s letterhead, covered in her nearly illegible scribbles.
“Morning,” Maeve croaked. “What are you up to over there?”
“Research!” Therese said. “And hey, Maevey, you’re not going to believe what I figured out!
I’ve been thinking about how we keep wondering how there could be two authentic portraits of Lady Geraldine, right?
I couldn’t sleep last night—probably because I was trying to decide if I should call Interpol about my missing sister—but anyway, while you were out having your so-called nightcap, I decided to find out more about the artist. Valerian DeJongh. ”
Maeve didn’t comment on the casual dig. “Good idea. What did you find out? And how did you manage to fire up my laptop without a password?”
“That part was easy. You use the same password for everything. Maxxy05. You really should be more careful about that, you know. What if I was a criminal who managed to hack into your bank account?”
Maxine was the name Maeve had given the kitten she’d found hiding behind their garbage can in the lane when she was a little girl.
She’d somehow convinced their mother, who disliked cats, to allow her to keep this one, possibly because their dad had died the same year, and Mary Helen realized her daughters were grieving.
Maxxy had led a long, pampered life until she’d died in her sleep sixteen years later.
“I’ll get right on the password thing,” Maeve said.
“Okay, so I found out there’s a museum in Amsterdam…”
Therese tapped some keys and pulled the museum’s website onto the computer screen.
“The Rijksmuseum; I know about it. They’ve got a huge collection of Old Masters,” Maeve said.
“Yeah, anyway, they have four DeJongh paintings in their collection. Two are of the same man, a rich banker named Nicholas Oosteriech.”
Therese scrolled down through an index of the museum’s collection and clicked on the listing of works by Valerian DeJongh.
“I took a look at the paintings, and at first glance, they look the same. But then I read the captions, which thankfully were in English, and I saw that one portrait was painted two years before the second. The description of the first painting calls it a preliminary study.”
“Like an author’s first draft,” Maeve said.
Therese clicked a key and now they were looking at an impressive portrait of an important-looking gentleman, probably in his early fifties. The colors were dark and moody, and the subject was seated at a desk of some kind, looking every inch the prosperous businessman.
“Look at the first portrait, the one they call a study. In this first one, the banker looks a little jowly. And he’s got a definite potbelly. And his hair, which is silvery around his face, is parted on the left. See how he has his hand resting on a book?”
Therese clicked over to the next painting.
“Now here,” Therese said, “this is the finished portrait. Look at the hand on the book. Now he’s wearing a thick gold signet ring.
And if you notice, there’s a pocket watch strung across the vest of his suit that wasn’t there in the study.
Also, his face and body are now miraculously slimmed down, and his hair is parted on the right and the gray’s gone away. ”
“Like the nineteenth-century version of Photoshopping,” Maeve said. “Let me guess. You’re saying you think one of the portraits of Lady Geraldine was the finished painting, and the other was just a preliminary study?”
“Bingo,” Therese said triumphantly. “But there’s more. From my research I knew that DeJongh’s most famous painting was a portrait he did in the late 1800s of Ernest, Lord Philpott, who was a member of Parliament. So I did some digging. That painting is in the National Gallery in London.”
Therese’s face was alight with barely suppressed excitement.
She opened another tab, and now they were looking at the National Gallery’s website, and then, after some more typing in the museum’s search engine, they were looking at a striking portrait of a handsome youth in his late teens, perhaps.
Unlike the formal, seated portraits of the banker, DeJongh had painted a full-length version of the young nobleman.
Philpott was posed standing in a verdant field, dressed in shooting gear, with a shotgun braced against one shoulder.
A sporting dog, maybe a setter or a spaniel, sat on its haunches, looking up at his master, who was holding a large, dead pheasant in his gloved hand.
“He looks like something out of the first season of Downton Abbey,” Maeve commented.
“I looked it up. The painting was commissioned by Lord Philpott’s father, and it was exhibited, to much praise, at the Paris Salon of 1889,” Therese said.
“This was probably a few years after he painted Lady Geraldine. I’m no art expert, but this painting seems more complex, and more compelling than his earlier work. ”
“Did you find any studies of this painting?” Maeve asked.
“No. But maybe, by the time he painted Lord Philpott, he no longer felt the need to do a first draft.”
“That sounds like a reasonable assumption.” Maeve gave her sister a high-five. “Look at you, turning into a real art historian. This is great, Therese.”
“Wait ’til you see what else I dug up. I searched all through the National Gallery’s database and didn’t find any other DeJongh paintings, which was kind of a letdown, but then I remembered, there are other big art museums in London.”
“Like the Victoria and Albert?” Maeve said.
“Exactly. And guess what? The V and A has three DeJonghs in its collection.”
She’d bookmarked the museum’s index and started reading off the descriptions of the paintings.
“Portrait of Letaetia, Lady Moulthorpe, painted 1910. Two children with puppy, Primrose and Cordelia Simmons, 1899, and lastly, Pencil sketch of a lady, 1882.” Therese clicked on a key and pointed at the computer screen. “Guess who the lady is?”
The likeness was unmistakable. The subject of the sketch had to be Lady Geraldine.
“It’s her,” Maeve said, unable to take her eyes away from the sketch.
“Right? All of this, together, proves our portrait is the original, real deal. The painting that was auctioned off has to be the one the IRA stole, and it’s got to be a study, because that’s how DeJongh worked.”
Therese jumped off the bed and did a creditable version of an Irish jig. “And that means our finished painting of Lady G has got to be worth way more than the study that sold for one point two million.”
She flopped backward onto the bed and kicked her arms and legs in the air. “We’re rich, Maeve!”
“Maybe.”
Therese glared. “What the fuck does that mean? I should have known you’d find a way to piss on my parade. Can’t you, for once, trust my instincts?”
Maeve instantly regretted her word choice.
“I do trust your instincts,” she said. “And you’re right, it does look like our portrait is the real deal.
But remember what Wyllona told you when you showed her our portrait?
For a painting as potentially valuable as this, we have to be able to authenticate the chain of custody. And that’s going to be dicey.”
“We have Kathleen’s letters to her brother, telling him that the painting was given to her by Lady Delia,” Therese said. “That should be good enough.”
“Hey,” Maeve said, her voice softening. “I’m on your side, remember?
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Therese snapped.
“Okay, here’s the issue. Now, don’t shoot the messenger, but our great-grandmother’s name is still notorious in these parts.
The first time I mentioned Kathleen’s name to Liam, when he and his cousin Maddie were showing me around the home farm?
They exchanged this funny look. I finally asked him about that last night, and he informed me that local legend has it that Kathleen was a murderer and a thief. ”
“That’s crazy,” Therese protested.
“According to Liam, the Rossingtons were the local equivalent of the Kennedys—rich, powerful, connected. They owned everything around this village, and they were not universally liked. Lord Rossington was an Englishman who only bought the manor house in the late 1860s. But Lady Delia was universally beloved; she founded a hospital, donated the money to build the local library, and, of course, took in a poor village girl to be raised and educated with all the privileges of the wealthy. As far as the locals were concerned, Kathleen was an ungrateful, murderous thief, who fled the country after robbing the family that took her in out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“The locals don’t know what we know,” Therese replied hotly. “That their darling married Lord Rossington seduced an innocent teenaged village girl and knocked her up. Kathleen was one of theirs, whether they like it or not.”
“Not according to Esme Rossington, whom I happened to meet at the Willow Tree when I was there with Liam last night,” Maeve said.
“You met Esme? Did you ask about the portrait?”
“I didn’t get a chance. The first thing she said when she met me was that I was a pushy American, and the last thing she said, as Liam and I were dropping her off at her cottage, was that I should stop ‘mucking about’ in things that didn’t concern me.”
“Why were you and your boyfriend giving Esme Rossington a ride? Doesn’t she drive?”
“Her pal Reggie, whom Liam described as her jack-of-all-trades, passed out drunk in the bathroom, and I suggested we should take her home, thinking a good deed might make her a little less antagonistic toward me.”
“Didn’t work, huh?”
“She warmed up to Liam, because she liked his late mother, but she was cold as ice to me, especially after I mentioned Kathleen’s name. So it’s still the same old story. Kathleen’s word against the Rossingtons’. And there’s nobody left alive who can prove Kathleen was innocent.”
Therese was flipping through the museum websites she’d bookmarked on the computer. She looked up, her expression stricken.
“You don’t think the Rossingtons, or the Irish government, or whoever, could try to make us give back the portrait, do you?”
“I’m guessing they couldn’t, but I’m no expert. Somehow, there’s got to be a way for us to prove that Kathleen didn’t steal that painting, or murder Lady Delia.”
“How do we prove a double negative?”
“We’ve got to do more legwork while we’re here where everything began. Liam says there’s a small historical museum at the library. His mom used to work there. Wonder if it’s open on Saturdays?”
Therese jumped up from the bed. “Let’s go find out. I’m getting cabin fever sitting around in this room. I know where the library building is. It’s in the village proper, next to a teashop, which reminds me, I’m starved.”