by Amy Myers
‘Trust you to upgrade it,’ Georgia remarked. ‘Not even Rossetti claimed it to be the Grail. It’s a goblet.’
‘Apart from that painting—’ Peter began.
‘Which Lance Venyon was connected with,’ Zac continued for him. His nose was positively twitching, Georgia thought.
‘I’m here merely to indulge a private passion of my own,’ Peter finished airily, ‘which Georgia does not at the moment share. And so far as you’re concerned, Zac, no more.’
Georgia could say nothing, since Zac knew very well this visit must be linked to Venyon. Zac chatted happily about Pre-Raphaelites as they made their way down to the statue of Vice-Admiral Ramsay which stared out over the harbour to the Channel he had done so much to protect during the Second World War. Here it was easy to think in terms of King Arthur’s fleet sailing back from France to save England from the Saxons or from Mordred’s army, according to history or legend respectively. Looking seawards, not much could have changed in the view, although inland the rivers would have been much wider. On Barham Downs, though, the wind still howled as it would have done fifteen hundred years ago.
‘It all seems most interesting,’ Zac continued provokingly. ‘You’re hooked on King Arthur, Peter. Georgia is badgering Roy Cook about Lance Venyon, of whom he’s probably never heard, Antonio Benizi had a Rossetti painting brought to him by the said Lance Venyon. Lance Venyon fell off a boat, by means unknown, and Sandro Daks is murdered. There must surely be a link?’
‘Perhaps.’ And that was all he was going to get in answer, Georgia decided.
‘Call me a fantasist – as I’m sure you do, Georgia – but why therefore aren’t you as fascinated as Peter in King Arthur?’ Zac promptly replied.
She opened her mouth to explain, and found that she couldn’t. Peter was doing his best not to laugh and Zac wasn’t bothering to restrain himself. Another Zac trick. Divide the opposition. She shrugged, holding on to such dignity as she could muster, and turned the tables. ‘And now Mark Priest takes a bow into Cook’s gallery.’
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ was all Zac said – which instantly made Georgia suspicious. He usually liked beating an idea to death, not dismissing it.
Peter obviously thought so too. ‘Very odd. Again, the link has to be the art world. You know Benizi, Zac, you know the Cooks, and you know Mark Priest. Now, let’s consider this. According to Georgia, Antonio told her that he decided to keep that painting to see if anything developed over the discovery of the goblet, for that would mean the value of the painting would rise.’
‘Did he?’
Zac had his blank expression on, but Georgia knew him well. That meant Zac knew something that they didn’t.
‘And,’ Peter added, ‘there were more paintings, weren’t there? In Budapest.’
That was a leap and a half. Georgia hadn’t expected that, but if Peter had hoped to catch Zac he was on a hiding to nowhere.
‘Were there?’ was all he replied.
‘Roberto works in Budapest.’
That split-second pause that would be indiscernible to most people, but which Georgia recognized immediately, told her Zac was retreating into con-man mode.
‘Right,’ he said lazily. He could hardly deny it, so his only way out, Georgia realized, was for him to display no interest.
‘Seen him recently, Zac?’ Peter asked.
‘Not in Budapest. Vienna maybe. Some time ago.’
Peter let it go, announcing that he was off to the wartime tunnels, but the point was made so far as Georgia was concerned. There were more paintings, they were in Budapest not Vienna – and Zac was somehow involved.
Perhaps Peter was hoping that by going to the tunnels next, Zac would get bored and leave them before they tackled King Arthur’s stronghold, the church. If so, he was disappointed, and when after lunch and a long tour, Zac was still at their heels like a faithful puppy, Peter gave up, and made no demur when he followed them up to the Pharos and the Church of St Mary. He was actually a help in getting the wheelchair into the church and then stood by while Peter took centre stage.
‘It must have been here, where the arch of the chancel of the early church had been, that the empty coffin was found during the restoration of the church in the 1860s.’ Peter pointed to the spot. ‘It was buried quite near the surface, which suggests this wasn’t its original burial place. Wasn’t Jago’s theory that the chaplains might have taken its contents, bones, goblet and grave goods, if any, and left the heavy lead coffin behind?’
‘It’s possible,’ Georgia agreed, conscious that Zac’s ears were flapping.
‘You old romantic,’ Zac teased her.
Perhaps he was right. Standing here, she found that Jago’s theory seemed tenable, as Peter pointed out where the foundations of the earlier church had been. As for romantic, on an impulse she had actually read the passage in Le Morte D’Arthur last night:
‘And then was the noble knight sir Gawaine found in a great boate lying more then halfe dead. When king Arthur wist that sir Gawaine was laid so low, he went unto him; and there the king made sorrow out of measure, and took sir Gawaine in his armes, and thrice hee sowned . . . And when paper and inke was brought, sir Gawaine was set up weakely by king Arthur, for hee had beene shriven a little before; and hee wrote thus unto sir Launcelot: “Floure of all noble knights . . . And at the date of this letter was written but two houres and halfe before my death, written with mine owne hand, and so subscribed with part of my heart blood . . . And I require thee, as thou art the most famous knight of the world, that thou wilt see my tombe.” And then sir Gawaine wept, and also king Arthur wept; and then they sowned both. And when they awaked both, the king made sir Gawaine to receive his Saviour . . . And then the king let bury him in a chappell within the castle of Dover; and there yet unto this day all men may see the skull of sir Gawaine, and the same wound is seene that sir Launcelot gave him in battaile. Then was it told to king Arthur that sir Mordred had pight a new field upon Barendowne. And on the morrow the king road thither to him, and there was a great battaile betweene them, and much people were slaine on both parts. But at the last king Arthurs partie stood best.’
The first point that had struck her – irreverently – was that Sir Thomas’s imagination had clearly run away with him if Gawain could foretell his own death so exactly in his letter. The second was that as Rossetti had followed the Malory story so precisely as to produce a watercolour of Lancelot and Guinevere at Arthur’s tomb it wasn’t a great stretch of the imagination to believe that he might also have produced a fine oil painting of the death of Sir Gawain.
She left Peter still musing in the church while she went to have a look at the Pharos at its side from the viewing platform, where she was interrupted by a shout from Zac.
‘Come up here, Georgia.’ He was standing on the grassy battlements looking out to sea, a spot where Peter’s wheelchair would not be able to follow, she noted, perhaps unfairly.
She decided to accept the challenge, if that’s what it was. If there was a battle coming with Zac, she must win it, and there was no point shirking the issue.
‘Are you glad you came?’ he asked, as she scrambled up the embankment to join him.
‘In a way.’
‘Which way would that be?’
Her exit line from this was easy. ‘Your point about links between Lance, Arthur and Sandro Daks. I was almost ready to give up on the Venyon case before that.’
Zac was apparently intent on watching the ships going in and out of the harbour. ‘And now?’ he asked.
‘It’s easier to believe there’s a story there, but I’m still not sure.’
‘You never were.’
‘Uncalled for,’ she whipped back.
‘Agreed. Do you miss me?’
‘Irrelevant.’
‘And thus the question is answered.’ He grinned in victory.
It was too late to redeem the situation, so she ignored it, sensing he was about to make his move.
‘I mis
s you,’ he continued.
‘I’m sure you haven’t lost your technique with women.’
‘Women in general aren’t you. What’s this man of yours like?’
‘He’s not this man. Luke’s my partner. I live with him, and I love him. OK by you?’
‘Much too defensive, sweetheart.’
‘I’m not,’ she exploded. The crunch had come, and she had lost the plot.
‘No need to cry,’ he said maddeningly.
Cry? To her horror she realized that she felt dangerously near it, but already he had taken her into his arms and was kissing her. Not on her cheek this time, and for one terrifying moment her body flared up, remembering, wondering what on earth might happen next. Wanting to know . . .
Then it was over. His lips were still on hers with the same intensity, but now she felt nothing in response. She had been crazy, but it was finished. Shakily she disengaged herself, sensing that she was free for ever, but hardly daring to believe it.
‘I think not, Zac,’ she said steadily, as he fell into perspective for her at last. He was a good-looking charmer, a weak con man, who deserved her compassion, but nothing more. It was past. It was over, thank heavens, and any tears he might arouse now would be those of relief, not passion or regret.
He must have read her tone of voice correctly – con men were good at that.
‘Only a bit of fun. We had that, didn’t we?’ He sounded almost as if he were pleading with her.
Fun? She thought back to the agony of those years, but then she saw it in another way. Not the half-empty glass but the half-full one. She had clung to the bad times, and spewed out the good ones as invalid. But they weren’t, and they had been fun.
‘Yes.’ She smiled at him with what she recognized with surprise as affection. ‘Yes, we did.’
‘That’s what King Arthur is too, just Peter’s fun.’ It was hard to tell what Zac was thinking, but he looked amused as if he’d been somewhere else all the time. Although perhaps that too was Zac all over.
‘Not where Lance Venyon is concerned,’ she said as they strolled on.
‘Maybe it was his fun too.’
‘Well?’ Peter asked when they returned to him, looking almost benevolently from one to the other. ‘Found that missing link yet?’
‘No, but it’s there somewhere,’ Georgia told him. ‘Like Excalibur.’ Perhaps someone would arise waving it before them. Or perhaps somebody just had. Perhaps, it occurred to her, Excalibur was in Budapest.
Chapter Eleven
‘How was the day?’ Luke was burrowing down in the cupboard for a saucepan lid, and Georgia couldn’t see his face. Was it her imagination or guilty conscience that made her think Luke had been unusually silent since her return? He had been hard at work until gone seven and had then returned from the oast house with only a brief greeting before disappearing into the den – the name for their joint nest of books and computers. She told herself that the words guilty conscience hardly applied, and that therefore some preoccupation of his own or end-of-the-day weariness was all that was amiss.
‘Very good.’
‘Solved Daks’s murder, have you?’
‘I meant the Dover Castle visit. Peter was in his element.’
‘But not you?’ Luke stood up, his face flushed.
‘Yes, in a way.’ She pushed the memory of the battlements out of her mind.
‘Something new on Lance Venyon?’
‘Only firming up on Jago’s theory.’
‘So why go?’
There was something wrong.
‘You sound very clipped.’ Georgia took the bull by the horns. ‘Peter wanted to put the theory into perspective by seeing the terrain for himself.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes.’ He had explained it to her, once they were alone. ‘He said that if one imagined the boats lying offshore in the present harbour, the old fortress on the hill, with its chapel and Pharos beacon, would have been the obvious place to take the dying Gawain. And, he added, why should it be so incredible that forces should come by sea, whether from France or the west of England, to see off Saxon invaders? Or that their leader be remembered for this great deed on Badon Hill, otherwise known as Barham Down?’
Usually Luke would have entered into this discussion animatedly but tonight all he grunted was, ‘Cui bono?’
‘To whom the benefit?’ Georgia picked up, and then, as Luke didn’t seem eager to expand, continued, ‘You mean where does that get us? It gives a solid base for the discussion about the provenance of the paintings and the goblet.’
‘Possibly,’ was all he replied.
She held back the inevitable, ‘Is anything wrong?’ as Luke continued with obvious effort: ‘Did you go all round the castle?’
‘The lot,’ she replied more cheerfully, and proceeded to tell him about the wartime tunnels.
‘And Roy Cook? What happened there?’ he asked, when she’d finished.
‘I’m the proud owner of a Sandro Daks original.’ She waited for him to ask more, but he didn’t. ‘Not much more. There was no reaction to Lance Venyon’s name.’ Still no comment. ‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Not bad.’
‘I didn’t see the beautiful Kelly,’ she added, anxious to provoke a response.
No answer for a moment. Then: ‘What about Zac? You didn’t mention that he was jaunting along with you.’
So that was it. The worst. How on earth had Luke found out, and why on earth hadn’t she told him earlier? So much for Luke the reasonable. From the expression on his face he had all cannons ready to fire. ‘Because I didn’t know he was coming,’ she replied.
‘Odd then that he rang here to ask what time you’d be there.’
Her heart sank. ‘Zac was trying it on. He’s a con artist.’
‘So talented that he can appear out of the blue after umpteen years and you show no surprise?’
‘No, yes, I mean . . .’ Georgia tried again, but her own temper began to rise. ‘I met him again in France, he knew Roy Cook, he suggested we went to see him together, Mike vetoed it, I was glad. Zac still turned up. OK by you?’
‘No. Because you omitted to mention it to me.’ It sounded gentle enough, but she could see him stalking back from the barricades into a fortress marked ‘Keep out’.
*
Work was the best antidote to relationship problems. For the first time Georgia blessed the fact that she had kept her former home in Haden Shaw as an office. It seemed a paradise today, and gave her a chance to readjust to normality before facing Peter’s all too observant presence. On the way here she had convinced herself, Micawber-like, that all problems would solve themselves if she didn’t panic, even Luke. He must realize, as did she, that the rock of their partnership was solid.
When she finally went into Peter’s office next door, he took one look at her face.
‘Margaret,’ he said apologetically. ‘That’s how Zac knew.’
‘She’s no gossip about our movements.’
‘No, only if a con man rings up, announces he’s visiting Dover with Peter and Georgia and has forgotten which day they were going.’
Despite her annoyance, Georgia laughed. ‘Your fault for keeping an open diary on your desk. Anyway, it’s over. No problems.’ Except with Luke, but she kept that thought to herself.
‘Not entirely. There’s Zac and—’
‘Budapest,’ she finished for him. ‘Plus the fact that Cook only showed some interest in Lance Venyon when I mentioned Daks’s grandfather.’
‘Who died in Budapest. A city which boasts a branch of Benizi Brothers Antiques run by a chum of Zac’s. I wouldn’t mind betting he’s a runner between Antonio and son.’
‘Would a sensible man like Antonio choose Zac?’
‘Who better to tread a fine line between the respectable and non-respectable. Ex-con man, we hope, now working for Scotland Yard.’
‘Antonio wouldn’t stop to work all that out, surely.’
‘You have stars
in your eyes, Georgia, where Benizi is concerned.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said indignantly, but Peter laughed. Unwillingly she began to concede that he might be right. ‘What sort of go-between?’ she asked cautiously. ‘Email and phone take care of most business today.’
‘One can’t email paintings or objets d’art. I can’t help feeling it’s too much of a coincidence to have the Benizi Brothers and the Daks family in one city, both connected with the art world, both connected – however remotely – with Lance Venyon and both with a question mark, so far as Sandro is concerned, over the legality of their dealings.’
‘That’s a kangaroo jump as a theory. So what next?’ As if she couldn’t guess.
‘I’ve booked you on a package trip to Budapest for four days next week to see the Daks family and the Benizi emporium. It all seems very cosy, don’t you think?’
‘For whom?’ she asked, alarm bells ringing.
‘For the two of you, of course.’
For one crazy moment she thought he meant Zac. ‘For Luke?’ she checked. That was almost as bad at present.
‘Naturally. Who else?’ Peter smiled blandly.
*
‘Where first?’ Luke enquired.
As she stood on their hotel balcony in Budapest, this was a hard question to answer, since the city was new to both of them. Working visit or not, Georgia had been deep in guidebooks and tourist phrase books, partly as a ploy to avoid conversations with Luke. Consequently she had been less thrown than he had at the impenetrable Hungarian script when they arrived last evening. Furious at Peter’s gambit, she had been inclined to come alone but that would have been playing into his hands. (And what if Luke ever found out?) She had half expected, even hoped, in view of their present stand-off that Luke would turn down the chance, pleading pressure of work and the suddenness of the invitation. Unfortunately, he didn’t.
‘You’re not coming because you think I’ll be meeting Zac, are you?’ she had asked bluntly.
He had raised an eyebrow. ‘If, Georgia, I thought you’d be so stupid I wouldn’t come. As it is, I’ve always wanted to see Budapest. Any problem with that?’
