Portrait of Shade

by Benjamin Ford

  Benjamin Ford

  Portrait of Shade

  Copyright © Benjamin Ford 2006

  First published 2006

  This edition published 2014

  All rights reserved

  Cover illustration by Chris Blatch Gainey

  Novels by Benjamin Ford

  Master of the Scrolls

  Portrait of Shade

  The Master of Prophecy

  The Five Tors

  Chapter One

  Eudora Donat knew something was wrong when the two policemen entered the art gallery and removed their helmets, their good looks marred by their sombre faces. As she crossed the polished marble floor, hardly hearing the clicking of her Italian stilettos against the black and white checkerboard, Eudora tried to remain calm. Through the window, in which her ghostlike reflection stared back pale and misty eyed, she saw Nola Clayton, the gallery's apprentice, talking to a kind-faced WPC. When Nola wiped her eyes and peered into the gallery, her face etched with abject despair, Eudora knew all was indeed not well.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said to the two constables, her voice barely more than a cracked whisper. Clearing her throat loudly, she repeated her greeting and asked how she might be of assistance.

  His neatly trimmed hair as black as Eudora’s, the taller of the two fixed her with his gentle grey-blue eyes. ‘You are Miss Eudora Donat?’ he asked, his voice filled with pity. Eudora’s voice failed, and she found she could merely nod mutely. ‘I’m afraid I am the bearer of distressing news.’

  Eudora’s heart somersaulted within the confines of her chest; her throat seemed constricted, and she suddenly had difficulty breathing. The last distressing news a police constable had imparted concerned the death of her father, twenty years earlier. She had been eighteen at the time; two years younger than both her sister, Isadora, who was presently in Paris on an art-buying trip, and their cousin, Gaia, who was currently upstairs in the apartment above the gallery.

  Eudora felt dizzy as she wondered what the distressing news could possibly be. She hoped it was that her mother had died as horribly as her father had, because then it would not be quite so distressing, and her heart lifted slightly at the thought. She had hated her mother ceaselessly, ever since she had walked out on the family over thirty years earlier to live with her German lover. In all that time, Eudora had seen her only once, twenty years ago, and she had no desire to meet the woman again.

  She fought for breath and managed hesitantly to construct a coherent question. ‘What… what’s happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid your sister has been killed.’

  For a few moments his words failed to register, but when they did, Eudora thought she was going to faint, and as her knees began to crumple beneath her, both of the policemen caught her. They helped her over to her antique oak desk at the rear of the gallery, behind which she slumped heavily into an overstuffed, equally antique chair. A dull roaring resounded within her ears, her eyes blurred with tears, and her stomach felt as though it was about to reacquaint her with her previous meal. She must have turned white, because suddenly the taller of the two policemen was handing her a glass of brandy, poured from the bottle on the antique drinks cabinet beside the desk.

  Eudora downed the fiery liquid in a single gulp, shaking her head to clear her mind of the disbelief that enveloped her conscious thoughts. ‘Izzy?’ she gasped. ‘Dead? Oh God – are you sure?’

  The taller man nodded sadly. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmured with genuine remorse.

  Eudora wiped her eyes, but gave in to the tears and allowed the salty torrent to cascade down her cheeks, her body wracked with sobs. ‘How… how did it happen?’ she sniffed, sucking her tears into the corners of her mouth as she feebly fought the losing battle to control them. Feeling light-headed in the stuffy, claustrophobic gallery she rose unsteadily to her feet, crossed the floor to wedge open the door, and inhaled deeply the fresh air, trying not to catch Nola’s eye as she did so. The young girl had clearly been privy to the awful news, and Eudora could not cope with her tears as well.

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be seated?’ asked the tall constable as he tried to steer her by the elbow back towards the chair, worried that she might actually pass out, as happened so often in this situation.

  Eudora shook off his grasp irritably. ‘If I’d wanted to be seated, don’t you think I’d sit down myself?’ she snapped, her distress causing sudden anger to well up amid the tears.

  The shorter constable fidgeted uncomfortably on his feet while his hands fiddled nervously with the strap on the helmet he held in front of him. He could not meet Eudora’s gaze, and was clearly relieved when Eudora muttered an almost inaudible apology for her outburst as she sank once more into the chair, having unconsciously allowed herself to be manoeuvred away from the door.

  Eudora softly repeated her request to know how Isadora had died.

  ‘She was murdered. Do you want all the details?’

  Eudora shook her head wildly. Isadora was dead; murdered: that was all the information she needed to know, except – ‘Have they caught her killer?’

  The question startled the men, who had fully expected Eudora to be too grief-stricken to pose any coherent questions, especially after her display of tears moments earlier. ‘I’m afraid not, Miss Donat. The police in France told Scotland Yard only that an unknown assailant had murdered Isadora,’ said the taller of the two.

  All cried out for the present, Eudora dried her eyes. ‘Why was she killed?’

  Glancing at one another, the two constables finally shrugged. ‘We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on that, Miss Donat. Could you tell us what your sister was doing in Paris?’

  Eudora faced the taller man. ‘Look around you, Constable,’ she muttered. ‘My cousin, Gaia, and Isadora and I own this Gallery: we buy and sell paintings, old and new; valueless and priceless. Sometimes we even unearth a painting that turns out to be spectacularly valuable, like the lost da Vinci we found in Geneva eighteen months ago.’

  The tall constable interrupted. ‘I remember reading about that. You bought it cheap, and sold it for a small fortune.’

  Eudora managed a sad smile. ‘I hardly think twenty million pounds is a small fortune! The trouble is, we buy things that look nice, and sometimes they’re just not worth the money we pay, and might not sell for a profit.’

  ‘And most of your acquisitions come from abroad?’

  Eudora nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Isadora was in Paris on a buying trip?’

  Eudora glanced up at the taller man. ‘Yes, that’s right. A Château just outside Paris was recently sold and its contents auctioned privately at the weekend. Izzy went out there to see if there was anything of interest. That sort of auction usually unearths something fabulous. She called on Friday evening to tell me that she was going to bid on one of the most beautiful paintings she had ever seen, and I’ve not heard from her since.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Now I know why!’

  The tall constable thought this was interesting. He turned to his silent colleague. ‘Get in touch with our friends in Paris; see if Miss Donat attended that auction, and if so, did she purchase this painting? I want to know who was bidding unsuccessfully against her!’

  ‘Do you think an unsuccessful rival bidder killed my sister?’

  ‘It seems likely, Miss Donat, and at the moment we must inspect every possibility!’

  As the shorter constable left, Nola rushed into the gallery and tearfully threw herself into Eudora’s arms. ‘Oh, Dora, it’s awful! I’m so very sorry,’ she sobbed.

  Eudora had always felt protective towards Nola, ever since the sixteen-year-old orphan first started working at the Donat Gallery after dropping out of college six months ago. Eudora had neve
r met the perfect man and had no children of her own, yet felt instinctively maternal towards the girl, who loved her back almost as warmly. Their relationship was very much as a mother would love her daughter, but since they knew absolutely nothing about Nola, Isadora and Gaia had warned her of the dangers, but nothing they could say or do would sway Eudora’s feelings for the girl. She had only to look into Nola’s large sad eyes to know instinctively that the fears of her sister and cousin had been completely unfounded, and so she mothered Nola and forbade any further discussion on the subject.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Eudora whispered, stroking Nola’s straw-coloured hair. ‘We’ll get through this somehow!’

  Nola looked up into Eudora’s eyes. ‘But who would want to kill Izzy?’ she whispered plaintively.

  Eudora glanced at the constable as he loomed over them. ‘That’s what the police are going to try and find out.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you Constable,’ Eudora said. ‘I’m going to close the gallery early today, and then I must break the news to Gaia.’ She sighed, despondent at the thought.

  Gaia and Isadora had been so close it was as if they were the sisters rather than Isadora and Eudora. Their physical resemblance was as curious as the neo-sibling ambience that surrounded and followed them whenever they were together – and when they were apart. Gaia and Isadora shared a closeness denied to Eudora, because the cousins had both been born at ten to eleven in the morning on July 1st 1949.

  Their psychic bond, completed by the fact that their fathers were identical twins – as were their mothers – in some mystical sense made the girls almost twins themselves.

  Five years later Eudora was born, a month early, at ten to eleven in the morning of July 1st.

  The significance of this was lost on no one, least of all Eudora once she was old enough to know the facts. However, while the bond between Gaia and Isadora was unbreakable, there was a weaker link between them and Eudora, generated by the five year age gap, and though they all got on well enough, the younger girl had always felt like an outsider until they set up the gallery together, and then suddenly it was like they were triplets.

  This in no way diminished the sense of loss and grief she felt at the news of her sister’s death, and as the constable left the gallery, Eudora faced Nola, touched the girl’s shoulder, and told her she should go home. ‘There’s nothing more you can do here.’

  Nola frowned, her eyes still moist. ‘Are you sure? Will you be all right on your own?’

  ‘Gaia’s upstairs. We’ll be fine.’

  ‘All right, Dora, but if you need anything – anything at all – you only have to give me a call… okay?’

  Eudora smiled weakly and nodded, touched by the knowledge that someone as young and inexperienced in life as Nola would offer genuine heartfelt reassurance.

  As Nola departed, Eudora locked and bolted the door behind her, pulled down the blind that indicated the gallery was closed, then turned and surveyed the silent emptiness of the gallery. She shivered in spite of the sunshine streaming through the large floor to ceiling windows on either side of the door. It was not so much that she felt cold: it was more a feeling of desolation; a sense of loss that she put down to her grief. She fought to control her constricted breathing and when after a few moments the peculiar sensation passed, she crossed to the rear of the gallery and slowly climbed the wrought iron spiral staircase to the upper level where Gaia was working.

  * * *

  In looks, Gaia was the direct opposite to Eudora: almost a foot shorter than her six foot cousin, her hair was naturally white-blonde, shorn to within an inch of her scalp; while Eudora’s eyes were shallow pools of amethyst-blue, Gaia’s were bottomless pits of inky blackness, which somehow sparkled and shone, refracting light and reflecting everything.

  Seated at a large glass-topped desk in the white-walled office at the rear of the property, Gaia bent her head low as she struggled to balance the books, which seemed a never-ending struggle, because overall, the Donat Gallery did not sell enough of its expensively acquired stock to compensate the cost of their regular purchases.

  Now, just eighteen months after the spectacular sale of da Vinci’s Carmine, they had a fraction over one million pounds remaining in the business account by Gaia’s reckoning, and the ground rent of the gallery was due to be paid at the end of the month. Having stock worth several million pounds was not much use if it did not sell.

  Gaia glanced up as Eudora entered the office. ‘Dora,’ she muttered, ‘this painting Izzy’s looking at in Paris; if the cost is much more than a million, it’ll finish us, unless we can sell some of our current stock!’

  It was only once she had spoken, without really looking at Eudora, that Gaia realised her cousin had been crying. She arose and came round to the other side of her desk: since Eudora was not prone to tears, something terrible must have happened.

  Then she knew.

  Gaia was not entirely certain how she knew; instinct perhaps, or just a wild hunch, or maybe it was just blatantly obvious that only one catastrophe could have provoked such a reaction in her cousin. ‘Izzy’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Stunned, Eudora nodded. ‘How do you know?’

  Gaia shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I just… sensed it. So, what happened?’ She was appalled at her own lack of tears. If anyone had cried a river of tears upon learning of Isadora’s death, Gaia would have placed money on it being she. However, the grief was there, but the tears were not. Maybe the grief was too strong. Perhaps the tears would come later. She did not know, and at that moment, as she threw her arms around Eudora to comfort her deeply distraught cousin with a hug, she did not really care. At that precise moment, all she cared about was finding out who had murdered Isadora and why.

  Who murdered her?

  Gaia blanched. Why had she drawn the conclusion that Isadora had been murdered? She could easily have died naturally, or in a tragic accident!

  ‘I don’t know why, but somehow I can feel Izzy was murdered,’ Gaia whispered in Eudora’s ear, giving her cousin no chance to reply to her question.

  Eudora moved away from Gaia slightly, clutching her by the shoulders as she looked deep into the inky blackness of her cousin’s eyes. ‘Can you see who killed her?’

  Gaia gasped. ‘Then it’s true – she was murdered?’

  Nodding, Eudora said, ‘The police have only just left. They think it might have something to do with the paintings Izzy was bidding for in Paris.’

  All three of them knew very well that countless dealers and collectors would stop at nothing to get their hands on a painting, sculpture, or any other priceless work of art that was too expensive for them. Even if it did not belong to them, even if it was not for sale, and especially if it did not belong to them and was not for sale, nothing short of murder would prevent the unscrupulous from obtaining what they desired.

  The art-world was a thieves’ paradise, even though the person who ultimately ended up the unrightfully unlawful owner could never publicly disclose his – or her – illegal acquisition: it was just a private ego trip.

  Whilst in the possession of the Donat Gallery, da Vinci’s Carmine was the subject of two daring but unsuccessful attempted burglaries.

  It came as no great surprise that there was more than a vague possibility of some devious, unscrupulous rival dealer resorting to murder so they could illegally acquire what might be a fabulous lost masterpiece by Van Gogh, or maybe another, altogether rarer portrait by da Vinci.

  Neither Gaia nor Eudora had any way of knowing the identity of the mysterious artist whose painting Isadora had uncovered, because she had neglected to inform them of that small piece of information. They could not overlook the possibility that it might even be by an unknown artist; that was, after all, how the gallery became stuck with so many paintings: however beautiful a piece of art might be, it was more likely to sell if it was by a well-known artist.

  Gaia collapsed into one of the comfortable pale blu
e sofas that littered the large office, clutching her temple as though in pain, her pale face coated in perspiration.

  Eudora sat next to her. ‘Are you all right, Gaia?’ she asked in concern. She had known the news would hit her cousin hardest, but she had expected tears, not this ashen faced blankness.

  Gaia did not hear her. In her mind’s eye, she was somewhere else.

  She stands in the darkened hotel room, staring at the large, ornately framed painting, which is propped against the end of the bed. Squatting, she gently touches the frame, tracing its finely etched contours, marvelling at the intricate craftsmanship; somebody has clearly taken great painstaking care in carving the frame by hand.

  She sniffs; the dark rosewood has retained its delicate scent, almost as though the frame – and so the painting – has been shut away from the air and the ravages of time for a great many years. She stands back slightly to admire the artistry. Another fact that signifies that the painting has been hidden away for too long – or maybe not long enough – is that the paint, though cracked with great age, has not faded in the slightest. The vivid colours are as clear and bright as the day the artist applied them to the canvas.

  Though there is no immediate indication as to the painting’s age, she instinctively knows it to be older than merely old, and quite probably priceless. It is almost certainly worth far more than the ten million French francs she has paid; an amount she knows she cannot really afford, but which she paid without hesitation… she had been unable to restrain herself. Something within the painting bewitched her; it caught her eye the instant she entered the grand dining hall of the Château Clétiàn, and no matter the cost, there had been no way she was going to be outbid!

  There had been only one other person interested in the painting; a man she had never seen before, and whose image has now long since vanished from her mind. All she can focus on is the portrait; all she wants to look at is the portrait.