A Final Reckoning

by Susan Moody

‘Well, I’m going to have another piece. I hardly ever get cake any more: m’nephews have told La Derridge to keep me off that sort of thing.’

  ‘Tell me more about the Palliser family,’ I said, while crumbs dropped on to his ancient tweed jacket. ‘My sister wrote that the eldest son was murdered in his own flat by an intruder, and they never found who did it.’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Forshawe. ‘Excuse my language, m’dear. I mean the victim, not the burglar. Piers was an absolute bounder. Whoever bumped him off ought to get a medal for ridding the world of an unmitigated scoundrel and rogue.’

  ‘The thief stole some pictures, as well as silver, didn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I wonder what they were.’

  ‘I can tell you some of them. There was certainly a Modigliani, and an early Lucian Freud: Blue Nude, I believe it was called. And there were quite a few of poor Clio’s Scandinavian painters, four or even five. At least, she always said Piers had stolen them from her, and I know they weren’t in the man’s flat when they found him.’

  ‘That’s interesting. I’ve studied the Scandinavians myself.’ I wasn’t sure what I felt about the fact that Clio had too.

  ‘I’m entirely ignorant on the subject, I’m afraid. All bloody Vikings, far as I’m concerned. But Piers … He’d been dead for over a week by the time anyone thought to break in. No friends, d’you see? It was the smell that alerted someone else in the block.’

  There wasn’t a lot I could say to that. ‘The people who were there last night …’ I said. ‘Did you recognize any of them from the old days?’

  ‘Possibly. Of course, I knew that the Fields woman was a close friend of poor Clio’s, when they were both up at Oxford. She’s some kind of archivist, I believe. When she applied for the job, young David asked me if I knew anything about her. I made a few enquiries, friends of mine who might be in the know, and they said she was very sound. So he took her on. Good idea in my opinion. It’s about time someone catalogued all the stuff in that house. It’s been packed away for years.’

  ‘Just left in the house, do you mean?’

  ‘Some of the more valuable stuff was put into storage, I believe. Good thing too: there’ve been several attempted break-ins, people lurking round the property, that sort of thing.’

  I resolved to talk to Maggie Fields again the minute an opportunity came up.

  ‘And I’m not sure,’ he went on, ‘but I believe one of the people from last night was some kind of a policeman fellow who was around at the time. Investigated it, actually.’ His look was shrewd. ‘Forgive me for saying this, my dear, but it was a long time ago, now. You sound a little bit obsessed with the whole awful affair – not that one could blame you, losing your sister and so forth. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on these things.’

  ‘My husband used to say that too.’ I remembered evenings sitting on the tiny balcony of our flat in London as the sun went down over Kensington Gardens, Ham twining my long red hair around his fingers, blackbirds warbling. ‘You have to put it behind you, darling,’ he would say. ‘You mustn’t let it fester.’

  ‘Did he, now?’ His eyes were kind. ‘You do realize that there’s no reason at all why any of the people now staying at the Lodge should have had anything to do with what happened.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right.’ I gave a silly little laugh. On the other hand, so far four of them had a direct link, and two others (himself and Leeming) were indirectly involved. It couldn’t all be coincidence.

  ‘Look, if you’ve finished your coffee, why don’t we go and look at pictures? That’s what you’ve come for, after all.’

  That – although I didn’t say so – and a chance to talk about the woman who’d killed my sister.

  He walked towards the door leading out into the handsome hall, then stopped. ‘Last night you mentioned some miniatures,’ he said casually. ‘How did you know about them?’

  ‘My sister wrote to me about them. She mentioned a Henry Bone, a Richard Cosway. And even a Nicholas Hilliard.’

  ‘It was an early one,’ he said. ‘Nothing like the charming masterpieces he produced later in his career.’

  ‘Even so, you said last night that you wondered where they had gone.’

  ‘Indeed. I suppose anyone could have removed them from the house in the aftermath of what happened. Stick half a dozen in one pocket, half a dozen in another. Who’s to know? The place was full of people in the days following the … er … what happened.’

  ‘You think someone stole them?’

  ‘I think it’s very possible. As long as the police weren’t watching, or hadn’t impounded them or whatever policemen do in a case like that. On the other hand …’ Forshawe looked thoughtful. ‘They could equally have been hidden, while someone waited for an opportunity to retrieve them.’

  ‘Like this weekend, for example?’ That could explain the visit to the attic last night.

  ‘Goodness me, that never occurred to me. But of course you’re right.’ He led the way down a long corridor. ‘And I’ll tell you something which you doubtless already know, given your line of work,’ he said as he turned a corner into yet another passage, lined with indifferent portraits of what I assumed were long-dead Forshawes. ‘I keep a close eye on the sales and so on, and they haven’t come up for sale in the years since they disappeared.’

  ‘Not in England, at any rate,’ I said, the thought only just striking me.

  ‘Good point.’ He nodded. ‘Very good point. And they’ll always be collectable, having been just about wiped out by the invention of the camera. Eighteen thirtyish, that was, as far as I remember. Of course an artist could always flatter his subject better than a photographer.’

  ‘True. And in the last twenty years or so, some of the more well-known miniatures have quadrupled in value.’

  ‘Indeed they have.’

  I’d completely revised my opinion of Desmond Forshawe. Far from the bumbling persona he liked to project, it was obvious that, like my father, he was as sharp as a needle.

  The following hour or so passed in pleasant contemplation of the collections of paintings and objets that his wife and he had put together. As I was leaving, I gave him my business card. ‘I hope it never comes to it, but if you ever need to … to put anything up for sale, do give me a ring. We’re not as well-known as the bigger auction houses, but we have a pretty good reputation nonetheless and produce excellent results for our clients.’

  ‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘Chantal Frazer, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember the name.’

  I had absolutely no doubt that he would do so.

  Five

  In order to get back to Weston Lodge, I skirted the dark wood, instead of taking the path through it. I was almost back at the house when I found myself passing a small stone building surrounded by yew trees, holly bushes and bedraggled philadelphus shrubs in desperate need of pruning. The door was arched and a small stone cupola above the entrance supported a verdigrised bell. Was this the chapel which Sabine had mentioned, where she’d heard someone playing?

  Above the doorway, incised into the keystone, was a carving of a frowning male head, surrounded by acanthus leaves. I took it to be a Green Man, pagan symbol of fertility. Vine leaves emerged from his lips, together with what looked like tiny limbs, and grapes encircled his head. While I knew that the early Christian fathers had subsumed pagan images into the more benign religious God of Christianity – and Rosslyn Chapel notwithstanding – I had always found something too overtly sinister about the Green Man images. Not that this carving was. It reminded me very much of the hieratic work of someone like Eric Gill or some artist whose work I’d been scanning only the other day. Paul Somebody. Or Somebody Paul. Something to do with fairgrounds … What did it matter? He had nothing to do with this.

  And then, astonishingly, delightfully, through the open door came the sound of organ music, just as Sabine had described so long ago, a p
relude by Buxtehude, a favourite composer of mine. I crept in and sat down in the last of the ten pews which faced the front of the chapel. The organ was set into an alcove and hidden from the congregation, if there had been one, by a carved screen. Shields hung from the ceiling, and marble memorial tablets proclaimed the heroism of various Pallisers and Charterises over the centuries. I’d expected cobwebs and dust, a scatter of owl pellets, mummified flies and small feathers, but, like the attic in which I’d trespassed the previous night, the chapel was immaculate. It was very small, not much bigger than a tool shed, panelled in wood and vaulted with rough timber beams. Above the lace-topped table which did duty as an altar was a small stained glass window, arched and leaded: its design was defiantly pagan, another Green Man, this time with grapes and vines crawling over his face and three green putti lining the bottom frame. In the background were things which must have had some kind of esoteric meaning: a crucifix, a scythe, a snow-white lamb, an earthenware pitcher pouring golden coins. The whole thing was strangely unsettling, and I wondered who had created it. And why.

  The unseen organist came to the end of the piece, then began again, Bach this time, freeing me to move silently from my pew, up the aisle and out into the sunshine. All the way back to the house, I wondered who had been playing.

  When I came in through the front door, David Charteris was standing in front of the hearth, looking very much at ease. The receptionist had gone.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Chantal Frazer. How are you doing? Are you enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Very much,’ I said. ‘You’ve created a marvellous ambience here. You must have spent a great deal of time getting it right.’

  He smiled. ‘Thank you. I bought it from the Palliser Trust that had been set up after … Well, my partner and I thought about it for years before actually starting on the renovations. How we wanted the rooms to be, what modifications were needed, installing central heating, planning the garden and so on. Mind you, it wasn’t really all that difficult: the place was like a beautiful woman who was losing her looks. It still had wonderful bones. We only had to give it a facelift here, some Botox there.’

  ‘I’ve just seen the chapel.’

  ‘Nice, isn’t it? A real sense of history about it. It’s supposed to be haunted, you know.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t see any ghosts.’

  ‘Aural ghosts,’ he said. ‘They say that some long dead Palliser plays Bach on the organ, mourning for his son who died in the Crusades.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did hear someone playing, but I don’t think it was a ghost.’ I gave him a smile. ‘I was intrigued by the Green Man above the lintel. And that decidedly weird window above the altar.’

  ‘Very strange pieces of work, I agree. And you will probably be surprised to hear that they’re not Green Men at all. At least, not the window. It’s Cronus.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, we’ve got time, come into the bar, and we’ll have a pre-prandial sherry. I’ll explain it to you then.’

  Since I was here to immerse myself in Weston Lodge – I doubted I would ever come here again – and because Dad always liked to have a glass of sherry before lunch, I happily followed him into the bar, which was furnished, gentleman’s club style, with deep, soft leather sofas and armchairs.

  ‘Happy days!’ He tapped his glass against mine. ‘And many of them.’

  ‘Hear, hear.’ How fervently I hoped that happiness lay ahead.

  ‘Now, that chapel.’ He leaned back. ‘As you noticed, both the lintel carving and the altar window are rather unusual, to say the least.’

  ‘They certainly are.’

  ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, Cronus is the god who was encouraged by his mother to scythe off his own father’s … erm … family jewels. And later in his narrative, he devoured his own children. Notice those little green kids at the bottom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three of them, right? Two boys, one girl: the story goes that the artist was a young art student who supposedly was madly in love with Cl … erm … the daughter of the house. Forty years ago this was, or thereabouts. He did both the window and the carving. He based the features of Cronus on old Sir Gerald Palliser, a bastard of the very finest vintage, even if he was a relative of mine. A drunk, a philanderer and, so rumour has it, a wife-killer.’

  ‘Not to mention an offspring-devourer.’

  ‘Oh, he did plenty of that as well. Metaphorically speaking.’

  I sipped my sherry. ‘Did Sir Gerald realize that the artist’s portrait of him was hardly flattering?’

  ‘One of his vile sons – one of my second cousins – pointed it out later. As so often, the old boy flew into an apoplectic rage. By this time Clio, his daughter –’ using the name was an oversight, I felt sure; I kept my face neutral – ‘had married the art student and that was that. When the student, by now the father of two sons, left for parts unknown, Gerald was all for having the window smashed, until his legal adviser pointed out that the young man was considered to be a very promising sculptor. In which case, as this sage gentleman (my father, as it happens) pointed out, his early work was likely to fetch a pretty penny one of these days.’

  ‘So whatever happened to Sir Gerald? And why did you call him a wife-killer?’

  ‘Poor old Aunt Jane, as we called her … He was an absolute brute. Browbeat her unmercifully. He bullied her into her grave, in my opinion. She had the two boys – Piers and Miles – who took their attitudes from their father. Handsome devils, all three of them, and absolute sods into the bargain, if you’ll excuse my language. And then some years later, she produced Clio. We all watched her … well, deflate is the only word. Even though I was a child then too, I could see it. And then she fell out of a window – though my father was always convinced she couldn’t take any more of Sir Gerald and killed herself – leaving poor little Clio to the mercy of her father and her two horrible brothers.’

  It sounded like a charming family. I could almost feel the stirrings of pity for my sister’s murderer. ‘And what happened to bad Sir Gerald?’

  ‘Hunting accident. Broke his neck.’ He smiled. ‘The earth is a far better place now that he’s beneath it.’

  ‘And where’s the art student now?’

  ‘Nobody really knows. After his second son was born, he disappeared without so much as a fare-thee-well.’

  ‘So your poor cousin had to bring up her children on her own.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes. Obviously the house then belonged to her in trust for the boys. She soldiered on a bit, and then Redmayne came along. Plenty of money there, so my cousin was free to do what she really wanted, which was retreat into her own study and work. Even had the room soundproofed, if you can believe it!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So the noise of domesticity wouldn’t disturb her.’

  ‘What did you think of Mr Redmayne?’

  ‘Never met him, my dear. Always up in London. Not that Clio encouraged anyone to visit. I don’t think I saw her more than a couple of times after she went down from Oxford. Neither did most of the rest of the family.’

  We heard the sound of wheels on the gravel drive, and David looked at his watch again. His face lit up. ‘That’ll be Omar,’ he said. ‘He promised to be here in time for lunch.’

  ‘Omar?’

  ‘My partner.’ David got to his feet. ‘You will excuse me, won’t you?’

  Six

  Tidying myself up for lunch, I checked my watch and decided I just had time to read another of Sabine’s letters.

  Dear Little Sister,

  Big excitement yesterday! There was a rather elaborate dinner party here last night, loads of the rich and famous (or perhaps they only looked rich and famous) plus a few of the local gentry. Trevor Barnard, the tenant-farmer, who I met the other day. Some titled dude called Forshawe and his wife, a weird woman with hair like a fishing net. A couple of art dealer colleagues of Harry Redmayne’s, plus wives. Plus Clio’s publishers, who have a country cottag
e nearby, and some other people I can’t remember. There were eighteen guests in all: so the outdoor staff (I’m getting into the upper-class swing of it now!) opened up the massive dining room and put leaves into the huge mahogany table, while we women brought out the best crystal and the monogrammed silver and the most gorgeous hand-painted Spode dinner service. Gosh, I thought I was above materialism, but I would kill to own that Spode.

  Anyway, it was really grand. They had a caterer come in, and Jill and I helped out with drinks first. Harry said we had to wear black and put on these dinky little white aprons, which I kind of objected to, on democratic grounds, but of course I went along with it. The food was delicious. Jill and I gorged on leftovers. Especially the pheasant in a chestnut sauce, and funny little puffed-up potato slices, like flat-sided balloons, can’t remember their name, and fabulous asparagus hollandaise and soft-poached eggs with smoked salmon.

  The Hon Clio didn’t look particularly thrilled about her guests, I must say, but she looked totally fabulous, given how pale she is. She was wearing this dark green velvet dress with medieval sleeves, all decorated with gold, straight out of any illustrated manuscript you care to mention. In fact, now I think of it, she looked rather like that girl in the Uccello painting of George and the Dragon – without the silly hat and veil, of course.

  Anyway, I hope you guys are gearing up for the festive season over there in sunny California. I ought to miss you all, but I absolutely haven’t had time to do anything other than prepare for Christmas and keep an eye on those boys. Have to say they keep me pretty much occupied.

  Harry is almost never here at the moment. Finalizing some big art deal going down with a client in Japan, so he’s staying in his flat in town. And Clio’s working towards a deadline and rarely comes out of her study. So I’m very much in loco parentis. Jill told me yesterday, in the strictest confidence, that the study was soundproofed a few years ago, so Clio can’t hear the Hoover going or the boys shouting or anything. I suppose it’s one way to deal with unwanted noise. And, strictly entre nous, as they say, a good way for her to avoid being Mom to her children. Because I’m starting to wonder if that’s what’s at the root of all this weird behaviour of hers. I’ve got friends (well, you know Lindsay, and also Charlene, the daughter of Mom’s friend Megan) who say it can drive you mad, the relentless twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week thing with kids. ‘It’s the mindless repetition of it all,’ Charlene says. And Lindsay’s always saying things like, ‘To think I gave up a high-powered job for this.’