by Jilly Cooper
Leaving the door containing the two-way mirror ajar, racing down the stairs, she collapsed onto her bed, wondering what to do. She felt terribly frightened. Raymond would never forgive her if he found out, and she wouldn’t be Lady Belvedon any more. She’d better pretend she’d come upstairs to freshen up, found the door open, gone upstairs and discovered the Raphael was missing.
‘Help, help,’ cried Anthea, rushing onto the landing, slap into Jupiter.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’
‘The Raphael’s gone.’
‘What the fuck?’ Jupiter barged into their bedroom and bounded up the stairs. ‘How the hell did this happen? When did you last see it?’
‘About ten days or a fortnight ago. I found the door ajar when I popped upstairs to freshen up just now.’
Being Jupiter, he had time to take in other pictures around the walls. His father had certainly been squirrelling. Outside, the flambeaux had sprung to life again; there was chattering on the terrace.
‘Why didn’t the alarm go off?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve no idea.’
Together they raced downstairs. Inside the cellar door, Jupiter found the alarm switched off and, swearing, switched on his mobile.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Anthea in horror.
‘Calling the police.’
‘Oh don’t do that, please, Jupiter!’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘It might be a joke, Sienna could have taken it or Jonathan after that stupid drawing, or Alizarin, you know how cross they were about Emerald getting the necklace and the Augustus John earlier.’ Anthea was trembling violently.
‘Let’s ask the family first,’ she begged, ‘they all know the code to the turret room, we don’t want a scandal!’
But Jupiter was already through.
‘I want to report the loss of an extremely valuable picture.’
At that moment Jonathan wandered in. He was drenched and there was mud on his trousers and shoes.
‘Lily was so pissed she fell in the pond. I’m not mixing that cocktail again.’
Anthea didn’t even notice Diggory lifting his leg on her new curtains.
‘The Raphael’s been stolen,’ she whispered.
All the laughter drained out of Jonathan’s face.
‘I don’t believe it, or, Christ, rather I do.’
‘Go and round everyone up,’ ordered Jupiter. ‘The police’ll be here in a few minutes.’
Gradually people in states of disarray were shepherded into the library.
‘An Old Master has gone missing from an upstairs room,’ Jupiter told them. ‘I’d like you all to stay in here.’
Raymond appeared utterly demented.
‘How could anyone have taken my lovely Raphael?’
Sienna was equally distraught.
‘It can’t have gone,’ she sobbed hysterically, ‘the Raphael was the last link with my mother.’
‘I was just telling your father earlier, Jupiter,’ said David smugly, ‘that the word on the street is that you had a looted Raphael here. Perhaps the owner’s taken matters into his own hands?’
‘You could have taken it!’ Raymond turned on him furiously. ‘You seem to know the picture bloody well. How did you know Hope had rubies in her hair?’
‘Dad,’ warned Jupiter.
Next moment Zac had erupted through the french windows. Suave and laid back no longer, he had turned into a snarling, maddened tiger, teeth bared, yellow eyes blazing.
‘Where’s the Raphael? Who’s taken it, for fuck’s sake?’
‘What’s it to do with you?’ asked Jupiter coldly.
‘It’s my picture, you asshole.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘That picture was on my great-grandfather’s wall in 1938. It was confiscated by the Nazis.’
‘So?’
‘I’ve got the documentation,’ yelled Zac. ‘Look, here’s a stat of the invoice dated the tenth of May 1931’ – he brandished it under Jupiter’s nose – ‘showing my great-grandfather bought the painting from an Austrian count, and the name of the Viennese gallery who brokered the deal. And here’s also the stat of the certificate showing the Nazis confiscated it in 1938.’
‘You have been a busy boy,’ drawled Jonathan. ‘Those could be faked, how do we know it’s the same picture?’
‘Like this.’ Zac slapped a copy of a faded black and white photograph on the table.
‘Can’t tell from that,’ snapped Jupiter.
‘How about this then?’ Zac brandished the photographs of the Raphael he’d had developed in Searston that afternoon, which were in full colour, and showed the Boucher on the right.
Anthea looked as though she was going to faint.
‘How did you get hold of those?’ gasped an appalled Raymond.
‘I had a tip-off. It’s in the room above your bedroom.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ spat Jonathan.
‘I didn’t want you lot to spirit it away.’
‘Who tipped you off?’ asked a quivering, white-faced Jupiter.
‘A journalist never reveals his sources,’ said Zac sarcastically. Then he went berserk, grabbing Jupiter by his lapels, shaking him like a rat. ‘What have you done with it, you bastard? My great-grandfather was clubbed to death for that picture.’
‘My daughter, o my ducats!’ said Jonathan mockingly.
‘Shut up,’ howled Zac. Throwing Jupiter against the wall, he leapt on Jonathan.
Emerald, who’d been huddled, frozen with horror, on the window seat, the rips in her beautiful dress concealed under Sophy’s purple pashmina, suddenly remembering Zac was a black belt, heard herself screaming, ‘Don’t hurt him!’
Zac, who was about to smash Jonathan’s face in, lowered his fist.
‘One of you’s nicked it,’ he snarled. ‘It’ll be an inside job to get the insurance.’
‘Rubbish!’ screamed Sienna. ‘You took it yourself.’
A sulphuric smell of fireworks was drifting in through the windows. Had the devil passed by?
Fortunately, a natural break occurred when Knightie banged on the door and excitedly announced the police were here.
‘They’ve sent that Detective Inspector Gablecross,’ she whispered to Anthea, ‘the hunky one that cracked Rannaldini’s murder in 1996. He catches everyone.’ Then, as Anthea turned even greener: ‘You’ll get your picture back, Lady B.’
The arrival of the police created a diversion, enabling Alizarin to feel his way in through a side door. Sophy noticed grass mowings on his shoes and mud down the back of his trousers; perhaps he had fallen over? He had also taken off his smoking jacket and put on a sweater. A moment later Si and Rosemary came in from the garden, followed by Somerford and Geraldine, who’d all ended up having a jolly party down at the boathouse.
‘Have we missed anything?’ asked Geraldine in excitement.
As Jupiter explained about the Raphael going missing, Sienna was watching Si. For a second he had looked elated, then, glancing across the library, he had clocked Zac’s demented, twitching, ashen face and his own for a second blackened terrifyingly. Then he pulled himself together.
Geraldine and Somerford meanwhile were going into raptures comparing Zac’s black and white photograph with his recent colour ones.
‘This is definitely the same picture, Inspector,’ purred Somerford. ‘It’s a historic painting: the Raphael Pandora. Been missing for centuries. If I’m not mistaken an American museum, the Abraham Lincoln, has the other half.’
‘What are you going on about?’ asked Jonathan crossly. ‘Our picture’s complete in itself.’
‘Pictures painted on panel in Raphael’s day were sometimes constructed in a similar way to pencil boxes,’ continued Somerford reprovingly. ‘Raphael would have painted the myth of Pandora on the lid, along with the jokey caption: “Malum infra latet”, or “Trouble lies below”. As indeed it did. Slotted into place this lid would have concealed the painting on the bottom of the box, which was a portrai
t of a lady who gave Raphael a lot of trouble.’
‘If my memory serves me right,’ chipped in Geraldine, not to be outdone, ‘the young woman in question was called Caterina and nicknamed La Smorfiosa – the Proud One. I’ve seen it at the Abraham Lincoln – a lovely portrait. La Smorfiosa was rumoured to be a beauty—’
‘Like yourself,’ chipped in David gallantly. ‘—who resisted Raphael’s advances.’ Geraldine smiled at him warmly.
‘At some time,’ suggested Somerford, ‘Pandora must have become separated from Caterina, her other half. Fascinating.’
‘Collectors and museums would give the world to get their hands on this picture, Inspector.’ Geraldine waved the colour photographs. ‘You must get it back.’
‘Well, he won’t if you both waste any more of his time rabbiting on about pencil boxes,’ exploded Sienna. ‘For Christ’s sake, let the Inspector do some detecting.’
‘Be quiet, Sienna,’ rapped out Jupiter, and proceeded to whisk Gablecross off on a tour of the house.
Jonathan meanwhile was counting heads.
Dora and Dicky had disappeared. There was no sign of Patience, Ian or Hanna. Apart from that, everyone else was present. Raymond had aged a thousand years. Anthea was shaking so violently Sophy ran upstairs and found her a cardigan. But as she came back into the library, Anthea was saying, ‘The Cartwrights have probably taken it, we know how poor they are. Patience could have pretended to be drunk, to give herself an excuse to be upstairs in bed while the fireworks were going off.’
‘We have not taken your rotten picture.’ Sophy hurled the cardigan in Anthea’s direction. ‘My mother, I’m afraid, has passed out, and my father’s been reading Wisden in the loo, he often disappears in there for hours on end. He has now gone to bed. Anyway, he wouldn’t know a Raphael from a rhinoceros. My family have never stolen anything in their lives,’ she added furiously.
Emerald, remembering the shoplifting of the Joseph dress, went scarlet as her eyes met Zac’s.
Jupiter, meanwhile, was showing Inspector Gablecross the alarm in the cellar which had been switched off. They also looked at the secret passage running from the upstairs landing down two flights of steps into the garden on the church side, both doors of which were discovered to be unlocked. The two-way mirror door leading to the Blue Tower was also swinging.
While they were up in the Blue Tower, Jupiter slid his foot over a gingham toggle beside the bed. His stepmother had been wearing it that morning – but he had no wish at this stage to shop her.
‘It’s a small painting,’ he explained, ‘cut out of its frame and rolled up, anyone could have slipped it under a dinner jacket.’
Footprints, he went on, had been found under an open dining-room window, making it possibly a burglary.
‘Could have come in that way, while the fireworks were going off,’ pondered Inspector Gablecross. ‘Thief could have turned off the alarm system. Who knows where it turns off?’
‘Practically everyone in the household,’ said Jupiter.
‘Who are?’
‘My father and stepmother, all the staff, my brothers Alizarin and Jonathan, my wife Hanna.’ Where was Hanna? he wondered. ‘My sister, Sienna. Our new sister Emerald Cartwright might not have done.’ Jupiter explained about the adoption. ‘She came into our lives about six weeks ago, along with her boyfriend, Zachary Ansteig, who I might as well tell you, Inspector, is claiming the Raphael’s his, looted from his great-grandfather’s house in Vienna in 1938.’
‘Ha!’ said Gablecross. ‘So you think he might have been more interested in tracking down the Raphael than his girlfriend’s natural parents?’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ said Jupiter. ‘But he was in the house all day. No, he went to pick up my brother Dicky from school, and he went out this afternoon.’
‘Could be an inside job,’ said Gablecross. ‘How much d’you reckon it’s worth?’
‘Must be insured for at least four million, but could be worth double or treble that.’
Gablecross whistled.
‘Who would have known the password into the secret tower?’
‘The immediate family did. Probably my sister Sienna, Jonathan would have forgotten it, Alizarin possibly.’
Alizarin had spent three hours with Zac yesterday, thought Jupiter darkly. Could he have tipped him off?
‘Who else might have known of the painting?’
‘My mother had lovers up there twenty-five years ago,’ sighed Jupiter, ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, Colin Casey Andrews, Etienne de Montigny, Joan Bideford.’ Then pulling a face, ‘My mother had catholic tastes, but I doubt any of them noticed the paintings much.’
‘I suppose someone could have come over the roof and dropped in through that skylight’ – Gablecross stood on the double bed to look – ‘but the cobwebs don’t seem to have been broken. We’d better print everyone.’
Going downstairs, they found Jonathan filling up people’s drinks.
‘The insurance company’ll recover it for you,’ Si Greenbridge was telling Raymond. ‘They know which Mafia’s got everything.’
‘The police certainly don’t.’ Jonathan drained the dregs of the brandy bottle himself. ‘They are absolutely useless at finding anything. The Yard have cut down their art and antiques squad to two piddling detective constables. The Italians have got thirty.’
‘Shut up, Jonathan,’ snapped Jupiter, flicking off the overhead light.
And I won’t turn a blind eye, young man, next time I catch you speeding through Limesbridge at four o’clock in the morning, thought Gablecross grimly.
‘Please find my picture,’ beseeched an almost weeping Raymond.
‘Someone wanted your painting, sir,’ Gablecross told him. ‘With such a valuable work, the thief possibly already had a buyer in mind. It could be at the coast by now, and smuggled out of the country by tomorrow, possibly to be sold on the black market, or used as a down payment for drugs or an arms deal.’
‘Say no more.’ Jonathan bowed in Si Greenbridge’s direction.
‘Detective Inspector Gablecross believes the thief,’ said Jupiter hastily, ‘came over the roof or through the house, turned off the alarm and knew the password to get into the Blue Tower.’
‘Unless Anthea or Dad left it open,’ said Jonathan.
‘Ay haven’t been there for weeks,’ squeaked Anthea.
‘Of course not,’ said Jupiter. Surreptitiously, so only she could see it, he opened his hand to reveal the gingham toggle.
Anthea gave a gasp of horror. Her world would collapse like a house of cards if anyone knew she and Zac had been making love in the Tower, or worse she had given him access to the Raphael.
The beast, she thought furiously. And on the pretext of snapping me in the nuddy, he photographed our lovely picture.
Jonathan’s mind was working in the same direction.
‘It’s a set-up,’ he said to Zac. ‘You planned the whole thing from the start, so you could nick the Raphael. There’s a gun in his top drawer, Inspector, and loads of illegal currency, not to mention three passports. And I don’t believe Emerald’s a Belvedon at all.’
‘That’s garbage,’ shouted Zac. ‘Why bother to steal my own picture? I was trying to recover it,’ he said to Gablecross. ‘Search my room if you like.’
While Gablecross’s minions belted off to have a look, Anthea, who’d been doing some rapid thinking, asked if she could have a private word.
Facing her across the study table, Gablecross thought how pretty she was. Her slender shoulders begged for a man’s jacket to warm them. The violet of her eyes was enhanced by the shadows beneath; he longed to comfort her.
Anthea in turn saw a tough, square, reddish farmer’s face, softened by curly brown hair and very green, long-lashed eyes, and wanted to put her trust in Inspector Gablecross utterly.
‘Ay could have left the door open some weeks ago,’ she confided. ‘Sir Raymond and Ay occasionally nip upstairs for a quickie. He’s very vigorous for his ag
e.’
‘So would I be in his position,’ said Gablecross admiringly. ‘You can’t remember the last occasion? We’re just establishing the time of theft.’
Anthea gave a squeak of amazement.
‘Now I remember. I did nip upstairs to peak out of the window, just before Emerald’s replacement parents arrived. You can’t see the front of the house from our bedroom, but the Blue Tower looks straight down onto it. I was very nervous, Inspector, after all they had cared for my Emerald for twenty-six years.’
‘Quite understandable,’ said Gablecross sympathetically. ‘And you used the code to get into the tower?’
‘Yes, definitely, but I may not have shut the door, I was so anxious to run downstairs and welcome them.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Around half past six.’
‘That’s very valuable evidence.’
David Pulborough was hopping. As someone who regarded paintings as expensive commodities and who fought for his commission as fiercely as any Bond Street crone selling Zandra Rhodes, he had never understood the Belvedons’ obsession with the Raphael. But had he overplayed his hand? Had he galvanized Raymond into taking his own painting, knowing it was looted and he could pass it on to Si who would probably pay him the full whack without bothering about provenance? Or could the old fool really not bear to part with it? And what the hell was Anthea rabbiting to Gablecross about?
Raymond wandered distractedly up and down. Jupiter was making lists of people to ring first thing, Jonathan was sketching everyone. Alizarin gazed moodily into space. Geraldine was looking through the Art Newspaper for references to herself. Somerford was discussing Raphaels with Si, who’d put his dinner jacket over Rosemary Pulborough, asleep on the window seat beside him. Visitor, impossibly rotund from finishing up other people’s dinners, but aware of tension and distress, laid his fat paw on as many knees as possible. Diggory had gone hunting. Grenville the greyhound, tranked up to the eyeballs, lay cross-eyed in the corner. Sophy wished she had a tranquillizer for Emerald, who was shuddering convulsively.
