Chapter Two — The Painter of Jewels
Mr. Thaddeus Wren's studio occupied the top floor of a tall house on the Promenade, and it looked as though a rainbow had exploded in a lumber room.
Canvases leaned against every wall, brushes bristled from seventeen pots, and in the centre, on a vast easel, stood a half-finished painting: a lady's gold silk gown, exquisitely rendered, rising to shoulders — and stopping.
Where the face should have been there was only bare canvas, like a letter left unsigned.
"I never paint the face till last," said Mr. Wren, a wiry man with paint in his eyebrows and both cuffs. ""Faces argue. Gowns do not."
"A study for the portrait?" asked Verity.
"My working study. The finished portrait showed Lady Amelia complete — face, hands, parure in all its glory. This is the scaffolding; the face was to come this week.""
Alexander bent to examine a sketchbook lying open on a paint-stained table.
Page after page showed the same subject drawn over and over: a necklace of five matched golden topazes, each stone drawn from a dozen angles, with notes in a cramped hand.
Beside the sketchbook lay a small brass jeweller's loupe.
"Yours?" asked Verity lightly.
Wren glanced at it and snorted. "Not mine. I paint what the good Lord gives me — I never loupe a stone. That must be Tom's." He raised his voice. "Tom! Is this loupe yours?"
Tom Pye, the apprentice — sixteen, earnest, with a smudge of umber on his nose — popped up from behind a canvas. "Not mine, master. Never seen it before yesterday."
"Yesterday?" said Verity.
"It was tucked in your sketchbook yesterday morning, master," said Tom. "After the London gentleman called."
Wren waved a dismissive brush. "Flick. Jonas Flick, the frame-maker.
In and out all week with the great frame.
Yesterday he kept asking how true the jewels were.
'Would a jeweller know each stone from the painting, Mr. Wren?
' I told him —" Wren drew himself up proudly, "— a jeweller could set the whole parure from my canvas and never mistake a stone. "
Verity and Alexander exchanged a look.
"And what did Mr. Flick say to that?" asked Verity.
"Said 'remarkable,' very quiet, and looked at the portrait a long time through —" Tom stopped.
"Through what, Tom?" said Alexander gently.
"Through a little brass glass. Like that one." Tom pointed at the loupe.
Verity picked up the loupe between thumb and forefinger, as though it were a clue, which it was. "Mr. Wren — when Lady Amelia sat for you, was the real parure here, in this studio?"
"Every sitting. Brought by her maid in a locked box, worn for the hours she sat, taken home again. Five sittings." Wren sighed. "The necklace of five topazes, the earrings, the sunburst brooch — I know those stones better than I know my own teeth."
At this point Mr. Wren decided that the light was perfect, that Verity's profile was "a gift," and that he simply must sketch her this instant. Alexander, helpful as ever, immediately struck what he believed to be an artistic pose — chin high, hand on heart — directly between Wren and Verity.
"My lord," said Wren, squinting, "are you part of the composition?"
"I am moral support," said Alexander.
Verity escaped by bribing Wren with three peppermints and the promise to return, and on the stairs down she said quietly, "A frame-maker who loupes jewel studies and asks how true the jewels are. Alexander, Mr. Flick was not admiring the painting. He was reading it."
"Reading it like a book?"
"Like a pattern-book," said Verity. "Come. I want to see those topazes — and that cocoa tin."