Priceless

by Olivia Darling

  “He was definitely coming to the party,” said James. “I saw him getting into the lift with Sarah Jane. They were on their way up. But that was hours ago.”

  “Where’s Sarah Jane?” asked someone else.

  “Oh my God,” said Marcus. “You don’t suppose …”

  Almost everyone at the party had complained about having to walk up the stairs to the boardroom that night because the lift had been taking forever to reach the ground floor. Maybe that was because it was broken.

  A search party set out at once to discover whether Nat and Sarah Jane had met the same fate as the poor dowager duchess. And it was soon confirmed that the lift was indeed stuck between floors.

  Together with Harry Brown, Marcus, and Olivia, Lizzy went to the maintenance room to let Nat and Sarah Jane know that their predicament had been noted and help was on the way. There was some kind of speaker-phone that would allow them to send their encouragement.

  Lizzy felt terrible that she had allowed herself to get swept up in the excitement of the party while poor Nat languished in the elevator. She hoped he would see the funny side.

  The building’s caretaker switched the CCTV camera so that they were able to see inside the lift. And there was Nat with Sarah Jane. Though they didn’t look particularly bothered about having been stuck for at least a couple of hours.

  Lizzy felt the blood drain from her face as, behind her, Marcus started humming Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator.”

  “Good God. Don’t they know there’s a camera in there?” asked Olivia with distaste.

  Inside the elevator, Nat had Sarah Jane up against a mirrored wall. Her tight white cotton shirt was undone, revealing the magnificent creamy white breasts, perfect E cups, that every man at Ludbrook’s dreamed of getting his hands on. Sarah Jane seemed to have forgotten all about the back injury that had made it impossible for her to do any of the donkeywork around the department, as she wrapped her long strong legs around Nat’s waist and threw her head back in ecstasy while Nat ground into her, his face buried in her neck, his trousers around his ankles. It was an X-rated extravaganza.

  “Nice arse,” said one of the girls from fine wines.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Lizzy, covering her mouth.

  “Too much champagne?” suggested Harry.

  “God, Harry,” said Olivia as she followed Lizzy out, leaving the boys to their viewing. “Are you really so bloody oblivious?”

  Though the image of the man she loved screwing another woman in a lift would be with her for quite some time, Lizzy’s tears dried surprisingly quickly. She agreed with Olivia that Nat was an absolute bastard, but she refused to condemn Sarah Jane too badly. Lizzy knew how persuasive Nat could be, and she also knew that Sarah Jane would probably have to contend with the footage from that CCTV camera turning up on YouTube. (In fact, Marcus would make sure of it.) It would be faintly embarrassing for Nat too, of course, but nothing like as bad as it would be for his companion. The imbalance in the world’s view of male-female sexuality persisted. Nat would be a stud, while Sarah Jane … There were still no good words for a woman who enjoyed sex as thoroughly as Sarah Jane seemed to.

  “You could make a complaint about sexual harassment,” said Olivia, when her suspicion that Lizzy had been subject to Nat’s charms too was at last confirmed. Olivia was keen to see Ludbrook’s golden boy fall from grace. Not least because he had resisted her so thoroughly. She’d had not so much as a wink in her five years at the house.

  “No,” said Lizzy. “I was a willing accomplice in my own heartbreak. Nat never promised me anything.”

  “God. If I were you, I would be waiting at the bottom of the lift shaft to claw his eyes out. And hers.”

  There was no love lost between Olivia and Sarah Jane.

  Lizzy decided that her revenge would be much more subtle.

  CHAPTER 55

  The following morning, neither Sarah Jane nor Nat was in the office when Lizzy arrived. It was a good thing. Seeing either of them might have made it harder to do what she knew she had to. Lizzy called John Ludbrook’s office and requested a meeting. His personal assistant, Genevieve, was unusually helpful for once and suggested that Lizzy come upstairs right away.

  Lizzy knew, as she climbed the staircase, that Genevieve’s eagerness to help was more out of prurience than anything else. Genevieve had doubtless heard about the incident in the lift and wanted to know more. All the really gory details.

  But Lizzy hadn’t requested a meeting to talk about Nat and Sarah Jane. She had already decided that there was little point trying to gain sympathy from the man at the top of Ludbrook’s. The old-school-tie network was alive and kicking. Affairs were rife. She had heard that John Ludbrook himself was cheating on his wife with the woman who headed up the textiles department. But much more important to any of these men than their marriages was the reputation of the house. That was taken very seriously indeed. And Lizzy was sure that she had information that would compromise it.

  “And all these paintings were consigned by the same person?”

  “Yes. Julian Trebarwen. Nat Wilde was at school with his brother.”

  • • •

  John buzzed Nat’s office directly. Nat was upstairs in less than three minutes, red-faced and out of breath from having bounded up the stairs two at a time. His agitation was compounded because he’d tripped in his hurry and had banged his knee—his “bad knee,” the one that had made it “impossible” for him to shag Lizzy of late—hard on the stairs. And when he walked into the office and saw Lizzy there, Nat was pretty sure he knew what was coming. It was inevitable.

  He shook his head ever so slightly. Though he couldn’t deny that in some ways he deserved it. Harry Brown had warned him a thousand times that girls today weren’t like the girls who used to come to Ludbrook’s by the dozen. This new breed were serious about their careers, and if you fucked them and dumped them and left them thinking that you might promote someone else over their heads, they would think nothing about crying harassment.

  But Lizzy? Nat would never have imagined that Lizzy would go crying to the big boss. What had he really done wrong? He’d never pretended their relationship was anything more than a pleasant diversion for him. He’d assumed that she understood what he was like, and when the time came and it was over, she would move aside without causing too much fuss. She should have known that he would have done his best to help her move ahead in Ludbrook’s, not least because now he wanted her out of his department.

  “Come on,” said Nat as he stood in front of Lizzy and his boss. “This is madness. I think I can safely say that it was mutual.”

  “What was?” asked John Ludbrook.

  “It happens all the time. You yourself …”

  Nat was ready to bring up the affair the managing director was having with the head of the textiles department, when he realized, in the nick of time, that the man who held Nat’s career in his hand genuinely didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “This isn’t about you and me,” Lizzy confirmed in a low voice. “You didn’t matter that much.”

  Nat glared.

  “Miss Duffy has been sharing her concerns about some possible forgeries sold through your department.”

  “The suspension bridge painting.” Nat sighed. He’d already been through this. He’d already sat in this very office and apologized until he was blue in the face that the damn thing had slipped through on his watch. “I know, I know … I can’t believe I didn’t spot the discrepancy.”

  “Not just the suspension bridge,” said Lizzy.

  Nat bristled.

  “John.” Nat appealed to his boss. “How long have we known each other? Thirty years? How long have we worked together? How many times has a fake gotten past me before? I don’t remember all of the paintings that Lizzy is talking about, and I don’t suppose she remembers them all that clearly herself. You know how seriously I take my job, John. I would not let anything I had the slightest doubts abou
t pass. I’d send it over the road to Ehrenpreis,” he added in an attempt at levity.

  But levity was not working that morning.

  John Ludbrook looked through a pile of papers on his desk. Things that Lizzy had printed out to support her case.

  “Miss Duffy has told me that she raised her concerns about these other paintings with you not so long ago. She said that you told her you would deal with the matter yourself. But I don’t recall having been informed, nor does it seem that the proper investigations were undertaken. I don’t need to tell you that these allegations of forgery are very serious indeed and should have been investigated with commensurate gravity.”

  “I didn’t think it was worth bothering,” Nat told him. “There was one documented incident. Just one. Lizzy’s suspicions are pure conjecture. She’s very conscientious but she doesn’t have my experience.”

  “Regardless, she should have been taken more seriously.”

  “I resent being told how to do my job,” said Nat.

  “I never thought I would have to tell you how to do it,” said John Ludbrook.

  As he walked out of the room, Nat shot Lizzy such a look you might have thought she had just condemned him to death.

  CHAPTER 56

  The sale of so many possible fakes through Ludbrook’s had the potential to bring the house down if Lizzy’s suspicions were not acted on swiftly. The very next day the police were called in, and everyone in the art department was formally questioned (despite Nat’s protests). Of course Julian Trebarwen was wanted for questioning. A police car was soon outside his little house in Fulham, but the house was empty and a neighbor said that he hadn’t seen Julian in a couple of days. His car was nowhere to be found.

  A deputation was sent down to Cornwall. They arrived at Trebarwen House that night.

  The gray stone house was cold and empty. No cars in the driveway. No lights on. One of the officers peered through the long narrow windows that flanked the grand door. A pile of post suggested that no one had been there for quite some time.

  “He’s not here,” said the constable decisively.

  “There’s a light on in the house over there,” his partner pointed out. “Isn’t that place part of the estate?”

  Serena had just put Katie to bed when the officers knocked on her door.

  “We’re sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Macdonald.”

  She wondered for a moment how they knew her name. Then she remembered that these guys probably knew a great deal more about her than that.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Please don’t let it be Tom, she prayed silently. Though she had wished him dead a thousand times since he’d left to live with Donna, the idea that something might actually have happened to him made her legs feel unsteady. But so far they hadn’t asked her to sit down. They hadn’t even asked to come in. They always came in and told you to sit down if there had been a death in the family, didn’t they?

  “Are you familiar with the people in the big house?” asked the younger officer. “The Trebarwen house?”

  “Yes,” said Serena. “I was friendly with Louisa.”

  “And her sons?”

  Serena stiffened. Already she was reacting to the changing complexion of the thing. There was no reason why the police would turn up to tell her that one of the Trebarwen brothers had been killed, was there?

  “Which one?” she answered, stalling for time.

  “Julian.”

  “I met him, yes. At his mother’s funeral.”

  “My name is Detective Constable James from the Arts and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police. And this is DC Havelock. You wouldn’t happen to know where we could find him?”

  Arts and antiques. Serena felt her cheeks flush as she heard the words. What should she do? She and Julian had agreed when they’d first started their little business that they would act dumb if ever questioned. Even regarding their relationship with each other. They’d deny everything to save each other’s skin. Art and antiques. It was obvious what this was about.

  “Doesn’t he have a house in London?” Serena asked, continuing to play down her acquaintance with her former lover.

  “He’s not there. And he’s not at the big house. We thought he might have come over here, you being his nearest neighbor, and told you if he was going to leave the house empty for any length of time. Perhaps he might have left a number you could call if you saw anything suspicious at the big house.”

  “No,” said Serena. “I haven’t seen him in weeks.” That much at least was true. The business with Yasha and the fake Ricasoli had driven them apart. Julian had tried endlessly to make amends, but despite having come to no harm and made fifty grand in the process, Serena couldn’t entirely forgive him, and Julian grew tired of being the bad guy.

  “Then we’re sorry to have disturbed you,” said DC James. “Enjoy the rest of your evening. Good night.”

  DC Havelock actually gave a small bow as he left.

  • • •

  The policemen gone, Serena closed the door behind them and, for the first time since she had moved down to Cornwall, turned the dead bolt. She picked up her phone. Julian’s number was still in it. She wanted to call him right then and find out what on earth was going on. Serena could feel her throat tightening. She wanted to cry. She wanted Julian to tell her that everything was okay and this wasn’t about their paintings.… But she couldn’t just call him. If the worst had happened and this was about their joint venture, then the last thing Serena wanted was to make a call from her mobile, one that could be traced straight back to her. She’d just told the police officers that she and Julian had met only once, at his mother’s funeral.

  But she needed to talk to him.

  There was a pay phone in the village. Serena had often marveled that it still existed. She’d never seen anyone use it. She wasn’t sure it was still operational, but she had to find out right then.

  Creeping upstairs so as not to wake her daughter, Serena looked in on Katie. She was sleeping soundly. Serena considered for a moment waking her up. She had never before left Katie alone in the house. The potentially horrifying consequences had made it impossible even to think about taking such a risk. But that was before two police officers had come by looking for Julian. Katie looked so peaceful. Serena calculated that if she took the car she could get to the pay phone and back in less than ten minutes. If Julian picked up, she would tell him to go out and find a pay phone and call her on her landline at home to tell her what on earth was going on.

  Uttering a small prayer for Katie’s safety in her absence, Serena tugged on her denim jacket and got into the car. She was shaking all the way as she drove into the village and located the phone booth, which unlike every box she’d ever been in before, had not been vandalized and didn’t smell of piss.

  The phone didn’t take cash. She put her credit card into the slot and dialed Julian’s number.

  “Please pick up,” she begged him,

  Julian’s phone rang and rang and finally went to voice mail.

  Serena put the phone down and bowed her head. She knew she shouldn’t leave a message. Where was he? What had he done to have a pair of policemen looking for him?

  She had to keep reminding herself of that: they weren’t looking for her.

  But if Julian had promised that he would keep her out of any trouble, he’d already failed in that promise by bringing Yasha to her door.

  Serena tried Julian’s number one more time. Maybe he wasn’t picking up because he didn’t recognize the number. If she persisted, however, surely he would recognize the regional code and put two and two together.

  No joy.

  It was starting to rain. And Serena had to get back to the house. She had left Katie alone for almost fifteen minutes already, and every minute longer raised the risk that Katie would wake up and wander downstairs and fly into a panic. That was when things could go wrong.

  The house was dark when she arrived home. That was a good sign, she
decided, since Katie was well able to turn all the lights on and would have done had she been worried. Still, Serena ran from the driveway to the front door. Inside, all was silent. She crept up the stairs and hovered by Katie’s door. The soft, snuffly in-out of her breathing was the most comforting sound Serena had ever heard.

  “I’ll never leave you alone like that again,” she promised.

  After checking on her daughter, Serena continued up the stairs to the top of the house and her studio. Opening the door, she couldn’t help but imagine how it would look to a policeman investigating an accusation of forgery and fraud. All Serena’s practice pieces tacked to the walls. Her experiments with pigment and producing craquelure. The pile of Victorian end papers waiting to be transformed into paintings. And on the easel the painting she had been working on most recently—a little pastiche of Ricasoli for herself, for her own pleasure—with a book about the work of the artist open for reference right beside it.

  It would have to go. All of it.

  Serena started by taking down the sketches and paintings she’d pinned to the walls. She made a pile, with the large painting from the easel on the bottom to make it easier to carry the whole lot downstairs.

  She would have to burn it. She lit a fire in the sitting room and fed the pictures into it one by one. It was hard to see her work going up in flames. There were little pieces there that she had been very proud of. But she couldn’t think of it like that anymore. More than anything else, the paintings and sketches could one day turn out to be evidence in a court of law.

  Only one little sketch remained. She couldn’t bear to burn this one. It was a sketch she had made of Katie while they were staying in Italy. It captured her daughter at her angelic best. Her head was bent over a book. Her profile was the perfect representation of childish beauty: tiny nose, the soft contours of her round cheeks.

  Serena could not burn this one. Not her own daughter’s pretty face. Instead she tucked it into the family Bible.