The Art of Theft

by Sherry Thomas

  It unsettled her.

  She set aside her water glass. “I learned something new this morning. Earlier the maharani hadn’t given us the full picture because she didn’t truly believe we would carry through with the task. But today she admitted that there would be no incriminating evidence on or behind the Van Dyck at Château Vaudrieu. That we must exchange the painting for her letters.”

  He considered her, though it seemed to her that he was thinking as much about her suddenly brisk and businesslike tone as about what she had said. “Well, retrieval was always a euphemism for theft.”

  She didn’t think this would surprise him. Lieutenant Atwood had learned of the situation from him, and everything Lieutenant Atwood had said on the topic at dinner the other night had involved the wholesale removal of the painting.

  “And then what?” he asked. “What do we do once we have the painting?”

  “We will know only then.”

  He frowned. “I told my children I would be back in a fortnight. Not to mention, invitations have already gone out for a house party I’m giving after Christmas.”

  “I also don’t want to be gone much longer than a fortnight. Mr. Mears mentioned that Bernadine has been faring tolerably since I left, but I’d prefer to be there myself.”

  They were silent for some time. She allowed her gaze to linger for a moment where his shirt opened to show the hollow at the base of his throat.

  “Do you think this is but a clever mastermind using others to steal works of art?” he asked, still frowning.

  “I wish I knew. I wish I could be certain of something—anything—about our purpose at Château Vaudrieu.” She looked into his eyes. “The only thing I’m certain of is that I don’t know enough to judge the situation yet.”

  * * *

  The company gathered in the library that afternoon. There was a rich spread of delicacies, both sweet and savory, but only Mr. Marbleton approached it with anything resembling glee. He made a plate for Livia with a few miniature quiches and gougères, and brought her a glass of mineral water.

  Lord Ingram had fetched punch and cake for Livia on various occasions, but he did that for any wallflower he happened to know. Sympathy, however, did not seem to factor into Mr. Marbleton’s motives. He spoiled her because he enjoyed spoiling her, an experience completely novel to Livia, and almost as alarming as it was pleasurable.

  She smiled at him. The smile he returned was so brilliant, she immediately wished that they were alone—yet was relieved that they weren’t. She looked away, feeling like a train hurtling full bore toward the horizon: The railway was unfinished and she was about to run out of tracks at any moment.

  Across from her Mrs. Watson nursed a finger of cognac, looking a little wan. Behind her settee, Lord Ingram stood by the window in a dove-grey lounge suit. Charlotte walked about slowly, examining book spines, sometimes running a finger along the edge of the shelves.

  When she reached the door she looked into the corridor outside, closed the door again, then strolled back to stand behind a Louis XIV chair to Livia’s left, where she could see everyone in the room.

  Mrs. Watson exhaled and set down her cognac. “I have called everyone here because I am an old fool who took on a task that is much too big for me. It has already proved far more perilous than I anticipated and I must hereby release everyone from any further obligation.”

  “I would like to continue, if you don’t mind, ma’am,” said Lord Ingram.

  “As would I,” said Mr. Marbleton, grinning, “for the handsome reward I’ve been promised.”

  Livia had been with him earlier, when Mrs. Watson came to apologize, wholly unnecessarily, and to offer to let him go. He’d given the same cheeky answer then.

  “I plan to stay with Charlotte,” she said.

  “And I,” said Charlotte, “will stay with you, Mrs. Watson.”

  Mrs. Watson’s throat moved. “In that case, you all have my profound gratitude. Miss Charlotte, would you discuss our next steps?”

  Charlotte inclined her head. “I’ll be happy to do that, ma’am.”

  She was in one of the dresses Livia had smuggled out from home, a dusty rose velvet adorned with at least fifteen tiers of scarlet flounce. Despite their sheer yardage, the flounces were narrow enough that the ensemble was almost elegant, considering that this was Charlotte.

  “We have learned some things,” Charlotte began. “One, I visited a Parisian art dealer yesterday. From speaking to him, I gather that Château Vaudrieu has a reputation of achieving higher prices than elsewhere. Also, that the dealer was personally wary of Château Vaudrieu, for reasons he did not specify but which, to my ears, had nothing to do with art.

  “Two, I believe everyone knows that Mrs. Watson and I called on her friend this morning. But you may not know that the friend has revised the description of what she needs from us. Getting to the painting is not the end, but only the beginning. Once we have the painting we will receive further instructions.”

  Livia hadn’t heard this before. Mr. Marbleton raised a brow. Lord Ingram gave no reaction, and Mrs. Watson’s expression of general unease did not change.

  “This complicates matters, obviously. Earlier it was understood that come the ball, whether we succeeded or we failed, our task would be finished that night. Now, even if we succeed, we will only have succeeded in part.

  “But while we must keep that in mind, at the moment what we need to do remains essentially the same: to locate this painting and create enough of a distraction that we can take it out of the château.

  “To that end, we must accomplish a number of goals simultaneously. The first is that Lord Ingram’s ally and I will attend the reception, two nights hence at the château, for the most likely buyers. We will try to familiarize ourselves with the château, but I fear that the guests will be heavily herded and that we will not be free to move about.

  “Our second goal is to get as many of us into the château as possible as temporary staff. Thanks to Lord Ingram and his ally, we now know which agency Madame Desrosiers uses for the extra waiters and maids required for the ball.

  “Lord Ingram is not suitable for the task, as his face has been in the papers of late. English papers to be sure, but we don’t want anyone at the château to recognize him by some chance. We will also need at least two of us to be among the guests, and it seems to make sense that our ally and I should serve in that capacity, given that we will already be expected to be there, based on our attendance at the reception.

  “So that leaves Mrs. Watson, Miss Olivia, and Mr. Marbleton. We are in luck—the staffing agency has dispatched most of its regular roster of personnel to a large house in Paris, for a visit by a foreign dignitary. Which means that they will need to hire extra people very soon. I expect the advertisement to be in the papers by morning. Will you three be willing to try for those positions? Lord Ingram will provide expertly forged letters of character.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Marbleton. “I can even provide my own forged letter of character, if Lord Ingram is busy.”

  “It’s only right that I do everything I can,” said Mrs. Watson.

  Livia was apprehensive. What if she was the only person whom the service wouldn’t take? Or worse, what if she was the only person they did take? “I will do my best.”

  Charlotte nodded. She took a slice of mille-feuille and set it on her plate. Livia hadn’t seen her choose anything so rich since they’d met again—and apparently Charlotte, too, realized her mistake. She gazed at the mille-feuille with a longing that would have been deeply poignant if its object weren’t mere pastry, and then she approached Lord Ingram and offered him the plate. “I made a mistake in my selection, my lord. Would you care for it?”

  Lord Ingram didn’t appear remotely interested. Yet he accepted the plate and, with his attention still squarely on Charlotte, bit into the mille-feuille.

&
nbsp; At the sight of his teeth sinking into the dessert, Livia’s face heated. She had long believed that Charlotte had no romantic interests. Certainly she’d never mentioned any such inclinations toward Lord Ingram—in fact, Livia had rarely seen them in one setting. But in Lord Ingram’s expression there was a certain . . . familiarity. Mr. Marbleton, for all his lively interest in Livia, did not look at her like that.

  Good gracious, the boy Charlotte had kissed when she was barely pubescent—Livia had long assumed him to be the very pretty and completely feckless Roger Shrewsbury, but what if it had been Lord Ingram? That made much more sense, didn’t it? Mr. Shrewsbury had no discretion at all. And Lord Ingram, other than Charlotte, was the most tight-lipped individual Livia had ever met.

  Rather abruptly, Lord Ingram strode across the room, set down his plate, and poured himself a glass of cognac.

  “And you, my lord?” Livia heard herself ask. “We haven’t heard what you would do yet.”

  He studied the amber liquid in his glass. “I’m not sure whether what I plan to do has any purpose.”

  Near the other end of the library, Charlotte ate a slice of orange and made no comment.

  “When Mr. Marbleton and I were hiding in the lake, under the bridge, we saw men and dogs running toward the chapel,” said Lord Ingram. “I believe they were chasing something. What do you think, Mr. Marbleton?”

  “I agree, but reluctantly, since I never saw what or whom they were chasing. Where did they all go when they vanished for several minutes? Did they catch their quarry? They certainly returned tamely enough, those that passed near us.”

  “Miss Charlotte’s opinion was that they all went into the chapel,” said Lord Ingram. “I don’t dispute that as a possibility. What I want to know is why. Why come running so urgently, in the middle of a wet, freezing night, to a chapel?

  “Miss Charlotte then told me what she thought of when she studied the architectural plans for the château. That it did not show another exit, which she believes must be there, as the château had been constructed atop the foundation of a fort.

  “She wondered whether, if such an exit indeed existed, it didn’t lead out via the chapel. I found the idea plausible, but it still didn’t give a reason for the chase. Then she said, what if, since the door of the chapel faced away from us, what we did not see that night was someone running out of the chapel toward the fence? In other words, the dogs weren’t chasing an intruder, but someone trying to escape from inside the château.”

  Eleven

  Livia had suggested that Mr. Marbleton dress up as a woman for his interview with the staffing company—that way, if they were both hired, they’d be able to work side by side. But he declined.

  “Alas, my disguise is good but too casual. For a stroll on a busy street, where everyone’s attention is elsewhere, or for an encounter that would only last a few seconds, it might serve. But it wouldn’t survive close scrutiny, and I don’t know that we won’t face such before we are let into the château.”

  His words proved prescient.

  Livia, Mrs. Watson, and Mr. Marbleton all passed the initial round of selection. Livia was surprised, although they looked convincing enough. Mrs. Watson was an expert at staging characters and a quick trip to a less affluent arrondissement’s secondhand shops had supplied her with enough clothes and other accoutrements to attire and style them at the correct level of impoverishment: needy enough to stoop to menial labor, but not so destitute as to lack all respectability.

  And they sounded convincing enough, Livia with her Alsatian accent, Mr. Marbleton with his slightly throaty inflections of Provence, and Mrs. Watson, the chameleon, now speaking French with a Spanish accent, pretending to be an unhappy widow stranded in Paris.

  Still, Livia hadn’t believed that they would all make it through to the next round. It would be too much luck, and she, not being accustomed to too much luck, found it unsettling.

  But bits of conversation between those who worked at the staffing agency, with the opening and closing of doors, drifted to her ears. And even though they were speaking too fast for her to make out every word, she grasped enough of what they were saying—and of the urgency and franticness of their tone—to realize that the agency was far more short-staffed than they’d let on.

  Apparently they had been losing people from their roster either to other agencies or to permanent employment. With the foreign dignitary taking up most of what remained of their personnel, they were scrambling to find suitable servants for the Château Vaudrieu ball. And now, at the very last minute, Château Vaudrieu decided to ask for temporary staff for the reception the next evening, when the agency already had two other functions to man.

  But this state of chaos calmed Livia’s jitters: It wasn’t that they were too lucky, but that the agency was too desperate.

  At about eleven in the morning, two hours after they first arrived, those who had been selected for the first round were herded into a room to be looked over by representatives from Château Vaudrieu.

  Three men entered and walked among ranks of candidates.

  Livia had always thought herself not particularly well respected. And she still believed she was correct in that assessment. But the slights and veiled disdain a not especially popular, not especially agreeable, and not especially solvent woman received on the marriage mart was nothing compared to the open rudeness she’d experienced this morning.

  The sense of absolutely replaceability she’d felt, when she’d been interviewed by the staffing agency, along with eleven other women in the room, proved to be again nothing when compared to the humiliation of being stared at by the three men.

  Thank goodness that their attention wasn’t—as of yet—prurient. All the same, to be looked over as a mere object, unable to tell the men to stop, and instead needing to school her face so as not to betray any discomfort or indignation—this was powerlessness of a sort she’d never tasted.

  And to think, she was only playacting. For others this must be an endlessly recurring theme, dignity and self-respect trampled underfoot for the sake of bread and a roof overhead.

  Even so, she almost marched over to give the men what for when one of them sneered to a staffing agent, “Why this old hag? You think anyone wants to look at that?”

  The “old hag” was the beautiful Mrs. Watson!

  Livia’s nails dug into her palms. She’d often heard the underclass described as prone to violence and had never questioned that assessment. But as her hand itched to grab the nearest umbrella and whack the man, she found herself suddenly understanding that the poor were prone to violence because it was the only tool remaining to them.

  She seethed with an impotent rage as the inspection continued.

  In the end, she and Mr. Marbleton were among those selected for the reception the next evening. And she could only be grateful, as they remained to listen to their instructions, that Mrs. Watson had already left.

  Even though Livia couldn’t possibly have tossed aside her pretense to defend her friend, she still felt deeply ashamed that she’d allowed it to happen in front of her, in front of so many strangers, that she couldn’t have in any way spared Mrs. Watson this very real humiliation.

  * * *

  Lord Ingram looked up at the woman on the other side of the desk. Leighton Atwood had gone to take possession of a house near but not too near Château Vaudrieu, so he accompanied Holmes to the archives of Le Temps—the work proceeded faster with two people, one searching the indexes and locating the articles, the other reading and taking notes.

  She worked with a concentration so pure it seemed to form a faint halo around her. She read each article twice in succession, then made her notes without referring back to it again. The notes were in shorthand, not her own modified version but the Pitman system that she learned a year or so after they started corresponding.

  One day a letter from her arrived and t
he only line in normal script was, I learned shorthand. Rather useful. Can you read this? It had not been a challenge—he’d understood her enough by then to know that she didn’t think in those terms. Rather, she had not yet outgrown the assumption that most others were able to do as she did: pick up a book on the Pitman system and write a letter in perfect shorthand the next day.

  It took him longer than usual to reply, also in shorthand, even though she’d never asked him to. As it turned out, shorthand had proved far more useful to him in his various endeavors than it had to her. Still, it didn’t change the fact that he first learned it because his pride had been too delicate to withstand the thought that she could now do something he couldn’t. Even knowing, a priori, that he was dealing with one of the sharpest and most competent individuals he—or anyone, for that matter—would ever meet.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked, without lifting her eyes from her notes.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just not accustomed to the two of us working together.”

  In adolescence they’d shared a space while each pursued a different interest. As adults sometimes they’d worked separately toward the same goal. When he’d been suspected of murder, she’d come to Stern Hollow to dig down to the truth of the matter. He’d very much been involved in the undertaking to clear his own name; but even then, they’d proceeded largely apart, as he couldn’t leave his front door without a constable tagging along.

  So this was a highly unusual experience. And yet it also didn’t feel at all . . . noteworthy, as if this was what they should have been doing all along.

  He smiled a little and bent his head to the indexes again. Down the corridor the newspaper’s staff ran in and out of offices, the usual organized disarray at a daily publication. But here in the archive room, which was barely larger than a broom cupboard, he and Holmes had the place to themselves and all the relative peace and quiet they could wish for.