by Jilly Cooper
The big hand of the clock edged towards ten o’clock.
‘All rise,’ cried a pretty blonde usher. Like books crammed too tightly into their shelves, the court found it hard to struggle to their feet as Mr Justice Caradoc Willoughby Evans, a long name for a small, rotund but impressive man in red robes, came through crimson velvet curtains and was helped into his splendid red chair. Having breakfasted on bacon and eggs, black pudding, mushrooms, toast and Oxford marmalade served by a butler in the judges’ lodgings overlooking the park, Willoughby Evans was delighted by the turnout. A fine profile could always do with raising.
His wig looks as though a lot of grass has frozen on his head, thought Sienna drawing frantically. And with his plump square face and twinkling eyes, he looked like Ratty in Wind in the Willows after thirty years of picnics with Mole. Then she couldn’t suppress a scream of laughter as through the crimson velvet curtains, with his sword clanking, resplendent in white ruffled shirt, dark blue tail coat, knee breeches, black hose and with an expression of great self-importance on his face, came David Pulborough. It was the High Sheriff’s duty to look after visiting High Court judges and sit in on cases, particularly when they were as fascinating as this one.
Down below, Lily gave a snort of laughter.
Raymond’s shoulders heaved.
‘Shut up, both of you,’ hissed a grinning Jupiter as David, smoothing his hair, settled himself into the chair next to Willoughby Evans, solicitously lowering the judge’s microphone and pouring him a glass of water.
‘I’m sure he’ll put in a good word for us,’ whispered Raymond, wiping his eyes.
‘Like hell he will.’ Jupiter tapped Sampson on the shoulder. ‘Can’t we object? David’s bound to drip poison into the judicial ear, and he’ll try and flog him pictures. Willoughby Evans bought a van de Velde at Christie’s six months ago.’
Oblivious of the mirth and bitching around her, Anthea’s heart swelled. Never had David looked so manly. Imagine him whipping out his sword and challenging Zac to a duel in her defence.
Willoughby Evans immediately asked for the Raphael to be brought over, then shook his head. No wonder men were prepared to fight over such beauty. He’d never seen ‘so exquisitely fair a face’ as Hope’s.
‘That must be Sloth and that one Avarice.’
‘I’ve lived next to that picture for thirty years and never known of its existence,’ lied David, leaning forward to have a look. ‘Like the princess in the tower.’
The proceedings kicked off with Naomi opening her case by giving a short history of the Raphael’s journey from Vienna to New York. The first witness was Detective Inspector Gablecross, who described briefly how he’d been called to Foxes Court in July, when the Raphael had been reported stolen, how it had been recovered at the Commotion Exhibition and was now in possession of Searston police who under the Police Property Act would like guidance on where to dispose of it.
Gablecross was followed by Somerford Keynes. Oozing self-importance, only just fitting into the witness box, lecherous little eyes roving in Zac’s direction, the great critic dated the picture at around 1512.
‘Painted on panel, the fable of Pandora formed the lid of a box, on the bottom of which was painted a portrait of Caterina, a proud beauty whom Raphael was rumoured to have admired unrequitedly. Hence the lid’s caption: “Malum infra latet” or “Trouble lies below”.’ Somerford leered down at Zac.
‘In the seventeenth century,’ he went on, ‘this box consisting of both pictures belonged to the Roman Cardinal Aldobrandini, who, during a diplomatic mission to Vienna, presented it to an Austrian grandee, Count Heinrich von Berthold’ – Somerford’s slack lips watered at the thought of such august personages – ‘in whose inventory of 1695 both pictures are listed.’
‘Silly Old Master-bator,’ grumbled Sienna, who was furiously sketching Somerford in the witness box as a great pot-bound man-eating plant.
‘The lid,’ continued Somerford, ‘was probably separated from its companion picture in the late eighteenth century when both were transferred from panel to canvas to avoid cracks, woodworm and susceptibility to temperature changes. Caterina now hangs in the Abraham Lincoln Museum outside Washington, Pandora remained in the Berthold family’s castle in Hungary for some two hundred and forty years before being sold to Benjamin Abelman of Vienna for approximately ten thousand pounds.’
‘How much would you now estimate the value of the picture?’ asked Willoughby Evans.
‘At auction, it could possibly fetch between eight and ten million pounds.’
Everyone gasped and craned their necks. The police flanking Pandora edged closer. Naomi Cohen adjusted her wig and, having asked permission of Sampson Brunning, gave further background to events.
‘Austria,’ she explained, ‘was the recipient of Hitler’s worst hatred, because Linz Academy of Fine Arts had refused him admission as a student. In 1938, his secret police had therefore moved into Vienna, humiliating and arresting Jews and stealing their treasures. The collection of Benjamin Abelman was one of the first to go.’
Mr Justice Willoughby Evans, meanwhile, was making notes on his laptop, proving judges could be computer literate too. What a case! he thought happily. A beautiful picture and some beautiful women to admire if the proceedings got boring. Lady Belvedon was a cracker. Being small, Willoughby Evans liked little women, and he liked Naomi Cohen’s flashing dark eyes. Once she got into her stride, her voice had lost that harsh, high, nervous edge. He must ask her and Sampson Brunning to dine at the judges’ lodgings later in the week.
Peregrine, Sampson Brunning’s junior, also on his laptop and supposed to be keeping track of the evidence, was playing Solitaire.
Now it was Zac’s turn. Naomi smiled up at him reassuringly as he tugged at his hideous yellow tie before being sworn in on the Old Testament.
I hate her, thought Sienna, drawing Naomi as a crow in her black robes.
Zac was so pale that his white knuckles didn’t show up as he gripped the rails of the witness box, but he performed sensationally. Only rarely, like a bonfire under wet leaves flaring up and dying down, did he show his aggression and desire for vengeance. His love for the Raphael, and his desperate need to repossess it, were obvious to everyone.
With a set face, his deep husky voice quivering with emotion, he made the court weep as he described how Benjamin was cudgelled to death because he tried to hide the Raphael, how Benjamin’s seventy-five-year-old wife had been forced to clean pavements with a toothbrush before her frail body was chucked into a gas oven, and how heroic Uncle Jacob had sworn he would avenge them by recovering the Raphael but instead had been murdered by the Gestapo for smuggling out Jews before he could join his beloved Leah in the States.
I’ve heard all this before in the Four Seasons, thought Sienna, I’m not going to feel sorry for him. Zac, she decided, was not so much a tiger burning bright, as a narrow-eyed, flaring-nostrilled unicorn, quite capable of stabbing his horn into anyone’s front or back.
‘What d’you think happened to the Raphael after it left your great-grandfather?’ asked Naomi.
‘Hitler ordered everything confiscated in Austria to stay in the same country to stock his new FührerMuseum in Linz,’ answered Zac, ‘but I figure the Raphael ended up with Goering, an obsessively avaricious collector, who managed to siphon off many looted paintings for his own private collection. In the records that came back from Karinhall, Goering’s mansion, after the war, the Raphael was listed as having been taken there. After that, there is a question mark by its name.
‘Goering knew little about painting,’ went on Zac disdainfully, ‘and often handed the most exquisite pictures, not realizing their true worth, on to his trusted advisors. He had already rejected one Raphael, A Portrait of a Young Man, looted from Cracow, in favour of a Watteau. Perhaps Hope and Pandora’ – Zac pointed across the rapt court at the picture – ‘were not nude or fat enough for the crude taste of the Reichsmarschall.’
‘Have you
been back to Vienna?’ asked Naomi gently.
‘I went back to the family apartment in Singer Strasse and to Jacob’s gallery. They had both been bombed flat and replaced by modern buildings.’ For a moment Zac, white and cavernous-eyed as an El Greco, couldn’t speak. ‘All my life, I have had a sense of loss,’ he whispered finally. ‘The Raphael is the only part of my past left.’
A very good morning for Zac.
‘Poor boy looks awfully upset,’ sighed Raymond.
‘Ought to be given a scholarship to RADA,’ snorted Aunt Lily.
The judge called an adjournment and bore a clanking David off to lunch, which made the Belvedons very twitchy.
Outside the court, the photographers and reporters swooped on Zac.
‘Over thirty billion dollars of looted art is still missing,’ he was telling them. ‘We are determined to score a moral victory, so our case will give real support to other Jewish families for their own claims. Ouch,’ he howled as someone kicked him sharply on the ankle.
‘I hope you’re going to donate between eight and ten million pounds to helping their causes,’ mocked a voice.
Swinging round in fury, Zac found a ravishingly pretty girl, with a smooth brown face and Marmite-coloured hair drawn back in a neat French pleat. She was wearing a beautifully cut holly-green suit. Only the long legs were recognizable. It was Sienna, studless, ringless, tattoos concealed, Belvedon diamond hanging from her neck, pallor despatched by three days on the sun-bed, posing as a cool young Portia for the court.
‘Aren’t you sorry your side opted to cross-question me?’ she said, laughing in Zac’s face, before scampering off after Raymond for vegetable lasagne and a large vodka and tonic in the pub.
Zac was totally thrown. For the rest of the afternoon he couldn’t get his head together at all.
‘What on earth’s happened to Sienna?’ hissed an equally fazed Anthea.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black took her to the Ritz and told her to take the heavy metal off her face,’ said Jupiter in amusement.
‘Ay bet it wasn’t the only thing he asked her to take off,’ said Anthea furiously.
She had also noticed David engagingly crinkling his eyes at that uppity Naomi Cohen all morning. Life was very hard.
During a long hot afternoon, Sampson Brunning’s cross-examination took Zac apart. Why had he changed his name to Ansteig? Wasn’t it a shame his mother was dead and beyond a DNA test or Zac could have proved he was really Benjamin’s great-grandson rather than a wide boy on the make.
Naomi leapt to her feet. ‘That’s not a proper question,’ she cried reproachfully, then, peeping at Willoughby Evans under her lashes, ‘as my learned friend well knows.’
‘I agree. Mr Brunning,’ reproved Willoughby Evans, ‘you know how to behave; please do so.’
‘Sorry, m’lord,’ said an unrepentant Sampson.
Why, he asked, had Zac abused Emerald’s trust, using her to worm his way into the Belvedon household, accepting its generous hospitality as he snooped around spying?
‘I wanted my picture back, for Christ’s sake.’
How had he managed to photograph the Raphael?
Zac looked meditatively across at a terrified, tight-lipped Anthea. He would have been quite happy to drop her in it, but both Si and Naomi had persuaded him it would make him appear too much of a cad.
‘It was the day of Emerald’s birthday,’ he drawled. ‘Lady Belvedon must have been fazed because she was meeting Emerald’s mom and dad for the first time, and left the door up to the Blue Tower open.’
‘So you invaded her bedroom.’ Sampson must have put his upper lip in rollers during the lunch hour. You would have thought Zac had raped a Mother Superior.
‘A member of the family had told me I was getting warm. I had to check everywhere.’
‘Of course, ten million would come in very useful.’
‘The money was irrelevant.’
‘Are you acquainted,’ sighed Sampson, ‘with the English expression “pull the other leg . . .”? Why didn’t you take the painting at once?’
Everyone jumped as Lily’s mobile rang.
‘Hell-o?’ Lily held it like an unexploded bomb.
‘Lily,’ hissed Anthea in horror. An usher tapped Lily on the shoulder, waving a finger.
‘That was Rosemary,’ announced Lily, switching off. ‘She can’t make it. She’s awfully elusive at the moment.’
Everyone except David suppressed smiles.
Peregrine went back to playing Solitaire on his laptop.
‘That night of the theft,’ persisted Sampson, ‘you admitted, did you not, you had never loved Miss Cartwright and had used both her and her two families.’
‘I said,’ Zac answered bleakly, ‘that anyone who had reason to hate as much as I had, was incapable of love.’
‘And you admit you pressured her into the finding of her birth parents.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Shady, and cold as the grave,’ observed Lily, taking a swig from her brandy flask.
By the end of the afternoon, if Sampson had tarred and dropped him in soot, he couldn’t have blackened Zac’s character more effectively.
Keeping his laptop free for Solitaire, Peregrine, Sampson’s junior, wrote ‘Day two’ at the top of a lined foolscap pad. The temperature had plummeted. The day was grey and overcast, lamps were being turned on all round the court. Sienna was due first into the witness box.
‘Don’t let her near the media,’ Sampson had begged Jupiter, ‘or she’ll cook all our geese.’
Sienna, however, rolled up at court wearing a little crocheted suit in the burnt orange of a robin’s breast. She was greeted by a chorus of wolf whistles from the press and a large bunch of flowers sent by Rupert.
‘Saw you on television looking sensational,’ he had written on the card. ‘Go and annihilate them.’
‘I’ll put them in water for you, Sienna,’ said Peregrine, adoringly.
She’s got some guy, Zac thought furiously as he passed them on his way into the courtroom.
Rupert’s flowers apart, Sienna was bubbling over. Charles Moore, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, had just faxed her saying how much they all liked her drawing which had appeared on page five next to the report of the case. Judge Willoughby Evans’s clerk had also called her asking if the judge could buy the original. This showed him, Sampson and the new High Sheriff ogling Naomi as she quizzed Zac, or rather an arrogant head-tossing unicorn, in the witness box.
‘I don’t have a double chin,’ complained Sampson.
‘I don’t have eyes so close together,’ fumed Naomi.
‘I think it’s an excellent likeness,’ said Willoughby Evans, who’d been absurdly flattered.
David, who had not, queried whether Sienna should be allowed to do any more sketches, ‘Bearing in mind what side she’s on,’ he added pointedly.
‘Oh, I don’t think I could be influenced in any way by a cartoon,’ said Willoughby Evans, smiling warmly at Sienna as she entered the witness box.
After she had been sworn in and told Sampson she had nothing to add to her witness statement, Naomi took over. Clocking Zac’s and everyone else’s partiality, she prepared for battle.
‘Miss Belvedon, why did you steal the Raphael on the night of the seventh of July?’
‘Pandora’s been in our family for nearly sixty years,’ began Sienna gently. ‘The court has heard about Emerald being pushed into finding her natural parents. But taking Pandora away from us would be like wrenching a child away from adopted parents, who’d loved and brought her up.
‘People in museums walk past pictures. We looked at the Raphael and lived it every day. It may be part of Zac’s past, but it is also a part of a mother we all lost. It inspired four artists: my two brothers, myself and my mother. Her paintings were so full of light, you can see how she was influenced by the Raphael.’
Sampson Brunning was looking up at her in ecstasy. What a transformation. Perhaps he should bed her rathe
r than Naomi on night three.
‘My brothers lay in my mother’s arms as it grew light,’ went on Sienna. ‘First they could see the moon, then Hope in her ivory dress, then Pandora in pale blue, a colour which emerges first from the darkness.’
With her back to the picture, Sienna described every detail.
‘My mother died when I was two days old, so I had to teach myself to love the Raphael.’ Her hands clenched on the brass rail to stop herself breaking down.
The windows had gone dark. Outside a deluge was assaulting the first soft leaves of the horse chestnuts. Willoughby Evans’s hands paused on his laptop.
‘Would you like five minutes to compose yourself?’ he asked Sienna fondly.
Sienna shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’
Good witness, thought Naomi, we’re not out of the woods yet.
Then she felt a tug on her gown and Zac was hissing in her ear, ‘She’s a hellcat, go bury her.’
‘Miss Belvedon,’ asked Naomi, ‘why did you really steal the Raphael?’
‘Because I was terrified someone else would. Zachary Ansteig had been prowling round the house for days. I kept finding him in upstairs bedrooms, so I searched his drawers, and found . . .’ Sienna ticked off the items on her fingers.
‘Do you usually snoop in the rooms of your guests?’
‘Not often, but I don’t often find them sauntering naked down the landing in the middle of the afternoon.’ She pulled a face at Zac, who scowled back.
‘You were worried about losing a ten-million-pound picture?’
‘No, a picture I loved.’
And so the sniping went on until finally Naomi said, ‘I suggest you stole the Raphael because you realized it was looted.’
‘In my father’s house,’ replied Sienna mockingly, ‘are many pictures. I have no idea how ninety per cent of them were acquired. I felt Pandora was in danger so I took her.’
At that moment a bright shaft of sunlight came through the window, falling on her face.
Raymond, who’d nodded off, woke up with a start.
