by Annie Dalton
‘You saw her?’ Tansy said.
‘I think so. It was just a glimpse,’ Anna said. ‘And she obviously looked very different after …’
‘You never said you’d seen her.’ Tansy sounded slightly accusing.
‘I didn’t realize I had,’ Anna explained, ‘until someone else interrupted my interview and, like I said, it was just a glimpse. Some guy in a kilt was trying to chat her up and she shook him off and hurried outside. What else did it say in the Mail?’
‘That the police have been trying to trace Lili’s ex-husband, who was recently hauled up for stalking her, apparently.’
‘Might he have been the persistent man in the kilt?’ Isadora asked.
‘I suppose,’ Anna said doubtfully. ‘I didn’t get the impression that she knew him though. He was just a guy who fancied his chances, that’s what I thought.’
‘I suppose it will turn out to be the stalkery ex-husband,’ Tansy said.
‘That seems highly probable,’ Isadora agreed.
Anna nodded. Everyone knew that most murders were committed by close family members.
Odd though, Anna thought, that Lili’s former husband should have felt driven to murder her in the gardens of a once-grand house while a ball was in progress. A ball Lili had seemingly dressed up to attend, but for which she’d never actually bought a ticket.
Deprived of chicken, Bonnie had come to lie across her feet. Anna would need to move her before she got pins and needles.
‘The Mail published a photo.’ Tansy unfolded the paper, opening it to the inside page so Anna could see. A dark-haired woman in evening dress and pearls smiled up at them. She was raising a champagne flute as though making a toast at some kind of smart black tie do.
‘Does that look like the woman you saw?’
Anna tried to imagine the woman in the photo, with glossy scarlet lipstick, her dark hair put up in a 1940s Victory Roll.
‘I’m almost sure that’s her,’ she decided at last.
‘She looks like an interesting person,’ Tansy said. ‘Don’t you think?’
Anna studied Lili Rossetti’s small vivid face. Interesting, intelligent, complicated, she thought. What a stupid waste. She folded up the paper, returning it to the pile.
When nothing was left on their plates except for chicken bones and the odd shred of cardamom pod, Anna helped Tansy rinse the plates and stack them in Isadora’s dishwasher.
‘I would love to have the recipe for that dish,’ Anna said.
Isadora gave her a gratified smile.
‘A friend discovered this wonderful company that sells spice kits online. It’s almost as good as foreign travel!’ She fixed Anna with the pouncing expression that must have terrorised generations of undergraduates. ‘Talking of foreign travel, Tansy told me you spent your afternoon in London eating Sachertorte and strudel. Yet for some reason you didn’t invite me!’
Anna knew Isadora was just teasing but she felt a sudden wave of fatigue.
‘Oh, that is quite a story,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I should go into it now.’
‘Well, we disagree, don’t we Isadora!’ Tansy said. ‘Now you’ve made it sound so damn intriguing!’
‘I went to visit Hempels,’ she confessed.
Tansy’s eyes went wide. ‘Your dad’s auction house?’
Anna nodded. ‘I met the new owner and he insisted on taking me out to this amazing Viennese coffee house.’
‘But – what made you go to Hempels in the first place?’ Tansy asked. ‘Isn’t that the first time you’ve been there since—?’
‘Yes. The very first time.’ Anna went to drink from her glass, found it empty and poured herself more mineral water. ‘After I dropped you guys off on Sunday, I felt like I needed to see my grandfather and make sure he was all right.’
Isadora briefly touched her hand. ‘And I phoned my son and told him how much I loved him,’ she said. ‘This is what death does to us.’
Anna took a breath. ‘So, I told my grandfather an edited version of the murder mystery weekend.’
‘Playing up the fun parts and missing out the drowned woman?’ said Tansy.
‘Yes, and I asked him where he was on VE Day and he admitted, with obvious reluctance, that he was with the troops that liberated Bergen-Belsen.’
Isadora’s hand went to her mouth. ‘You never knew?’
Anna shook her head. ‘After he’d told me, I felt I should tell him what really happened at Mortmead Hall instead of, you know, treating him like a feeble old man, who might keel over from the smallest shock. And somehow this led on to him …’
Anna took a calming breath and started again. ‘He told me that my father had been worried about some people I was mixing with that summer. Particularly someone called Dominic Scott-Neville.’
‘Wasn’t he—?’ Tansy started.
‘The boy whose family took out a restraining order against me when I went nuts? Yes.’ Even now Anna felt herself go hot with shame. ‘My grandfather said my dad didn’t feel able to intervene because he was – well, apparently at some point, Dominic’s father, Ralph, had saved my father’s auction house from going under.’
Tansy reached for the bottle of mineral water and refilled her own glass.
‘And you never knew any of this?’
‘I had no idea that my dad had any contact of any kind with the Scott-Nevilles. It’s such a horrifying thought, that now I almost feel like I didn’t know him at all.’
‘So you went to the auction house to see what you could find out?’ Isadora said.
Anna nodded. ‘Unfortunately, I got there just after some wild-looking guy was ranting about some painting, a Vermeer, that he is convinced my dad knew about. Alexei said it couldn’t be true, that the guy was just deluded but …’
‘Who is Alexei?’ Isadora interrupted.
‘Alexei Lenkov. He is a director at Hempels. He said my father had too much integrity to ever do anything underhand and I really want to believe him. But then I think; why would someone of such integrity ever involve himself with Dominic’s dad?’
‘You knew him?’ Isadora said.
‘I didn’t exactly know him,’ Anna said, ‘but Nat and Max and I hung out with his son, so I ran into him now and then.’
‘You didn’t take to him,’ Isadora said.
‘There’s something very wrong with that whole family. I think I knew it even then. I just didn’t want to see.’ If you think I’m a monster, Dominic is the devil. ‘Then, around the time my family …’ She had to stop to gather her thoughts. ‘Barely a fortnight later, if what I heard was true, Dominic’s father whisked him off to his wife’s relatives in Argentina, allegedly to learn about the wine trade.’
‘You don’t think Dominic might have had something to do with their deaths?’ Isadora said.
‘Sometimes I do,’ Anna said. ‘After it happened, I was seeing evil conspiracies coming out of the walls.’
‘Oh, Anna.’ Isadora’s voice held so much compassion, that Anna suddenly found herself dangerously close to tears.
‘I was off my head,’ Anna said, being brutal because her other option was to lay her head down on the table and weep. She quickly gulped more water from her glass. ‘Anyway, the reason this all got stirred up is that Dominic’s dad died last year and so Dominic has come back to take over his father’s estate.’
‘That’s got to suck,’ Tansy said.
Anna gave a tight nod. ‘It does. Especially now I know my dad had got mixed up with his family in some unknown way.’
‘Keep talking,’ Isadora said, getting up. ‘I need to put finishing touches to our pudding.’
‘Ok, but can we please talk about something else?’ Anna reached down to stroke her White Shepherd, who came to lean against Anna’s knees, instinctively sensing Anna’s distress. Just why this was so comforting, Anna could never have explained to anyone except to Jake. She simply accepted now that her most private feelings were an open book to her dog.
‘Well, pe
rsonally,’ Tansy said, diplomatically taking her cue, ‘I need to know about this super-smart coffee house you were telling us about. Just please tell me it wasn’t Pfeffers?’
‘It was Pfeffers,’ Anna said apologetically.
‘That is so unfair! I have always wanted to go there!’
‘Seriously? But Pfeffers is like an anti-vegan shrine – it’s all meringues, cream and chocolate – and more cream!’
Tansy nodded vehemently. ‘Believe me, I know!’
‘Oh, my God, it must have been so hard for you being vegan,’ Anna said with real sympathy.
‘Not at the time,’ Tansy said. ‘But when I stopped – I was like the Cookie Monster! I was like: “Universe, give me EVERYTHING you’ve got!”’
Isadora set down three mismatched, but pretty, china dishes, each one holding a moist dark square of some dense, chocolatey confection. If Tansy was Anna’s sister from another mister, Isadora was her eccentric aunt, Anna thought, given to force-feeding everyone who came through her door.
‘Tansy, I will treat you and Anna to coffee and cakes at Pfeffers,’ Isadora said. ‘Perhaps for my birthday? But just now I feel I need to know more about this man and his imaginary Vermeer.’ She reached for her laptop. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘His name was David Fischer,’ she said, remembering Alexei and Thomas Kirchmann murmuring together in the back of the car.
The three women hitched their chairs closer together so they could all see the screen.
‘You type. Your fingers are faster,’ Isadora told Tansy.
Tansy was too kind to mention that a three-year old child’s fingers were faster on a keyboard than Isadora’s.
Google offered them an artisan cheesemaker, an American astrophysicist and an experienced practitioner of Five Elements Acupuncture in Nottingham. After it had offered them four or five times, Isadora said, ‘I’m so stupid. Try the German spelling. “Fischer” with a “c”.’
Tansy typed the new spelling into the search engine.
‘And put in “Vermeer”,’ Anna said.
‘Ooh.’ Tansy sat up straight. ‘This could be his website. It’s got a link to Vermeer’s paintings.’
‘Click on “About”,’ Anna said.
Tansy clicked and they read in silence for a few moments.
‘Wow!’ Tansy turned to Anna. ‘This is like the speech you heard at Hempels, word for word.’
Anna felt her stomach clench as she read what amounted to David Fischer’s mission statement.
For the last forty years, my life has been dedicated to the restitution of the Vermeer. It once hung in my grandparents’ dining room, in Vienna, and my father saw it as a young boy, every Friday night, when the family came together for shabbas. Every one of those aunts, uncles and cousins, who ate and prayed together in that peaceful candlelit room, was murdered in Hitler’s death camps. Every one, except for my father. This priceless painting, (it was previously thought that Johannes Vermeer produced only twenty-five in his lifetime) along with everything else of value in my grandparents’ house, was looted by the Kunstschutz.
Against all odds, my father survived the camps. He met and married my mother and eventually they came here to England. He lived well into his eighties, despite suffering serious ill health as a result of his time in the camp, but his mind remained needle-sharp to the end. He was able to exactly describe the painting, which had the title A Study in Gold.
I have been to all the major auction houses and art galleries and renowned art historians, and they all tell me, ‘David, nobody has ever heard of this painting. It’s like the unicorn. It is a fairy-tale, a myth, a delusion.’ But my father was the most honourable man I ever met. He detested all liars and fantasists and, up to the day he died, he had such perfect recall of every object in his grandparents’ apartment, he even drew me a detailed plan. So, despite everything the so-called experts tell me, I have no choice but to believe that my father was telling the truth.
Fischer went on to describe unsuccessful attempts to get to the bottom of this mystery. In the early 1980s, he was approached by one of Hempels’ porters, who claimed to have seen a painting in the office of Charles Hopkins, Anna’s grandfather. This painting matched the description of one of the three stolen paintings mentioned by Fischer senior. The porter remembered it because: ‘Mr Hopkins, was usually such a gentleman, but on this occasion, he practically threw me out. So I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right.’
Anna pushed back her chair.
‘I’m not buying this. Thomas Kirchmann would never have bought Hempels if there had been any hint of corruption.’
‘He was the man who took you out to Pfeffers?’ Isadora asked.
‘Yes.’ Anna told them how Herr Kirchmann’s father had hidden the forbidden paintings from the Kunstschutz and that Thomas Kirchmann was now also involved in helping to return stolen artworks to their rightful owners.
Isadora listened nodding.
‘I have heard many stories of this kind,’ she said. ‘Thousands of precious artworks were looted from Jewish families which have never been found.’
‘Thousands,’ Tansy echoed. ‘Seriously?’
‘Thousands upon thousands,’ Isadora repeated sombrely. ‘But Anna, even if this porter was right and Fischer’s Vermeer had somehow come into your grandfather’s possession, that doesn’t mean he was involved in buying, selling or nefariously profiting from it.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Anna felt a spark of hope.
‘There could be any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for this painting to be in his office.’
‘But he virtually threw the porter out. Allegedly,’ Anna added.
Isadora shrugged. ‘Perhaps your grandfather thought it was better for the porter not to know about something that could put him in harm’s way?’
Tansy stared at her. ‘You mean it could have put him in danger?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’ Isadora picked up Hero, cuddling her and the little dog immediately tried to lick her ear. ‘Anna, if you want – and only if you want – I could ask my friend Geraldine, who knows everyone in the art world, to look into it. In case she’s heard anything about your David Fischer and his quest.’
Tansy made tea for them all and the conversation moved on to other things. A friend of Tansy’s had just started up a company running tours of Vietnamese street food and that had made Tansy restless.
‘Working at Gudrun’s art gallery is not really that different to being a waitress. I’m scared I’m going to get stuck in a rut.’ Tansy tugged at a loose strand of her hair. ‘I’m still young, I should be having adventures. Ideally, adventures that don’t involve anyone’s violent death,’ she added with a grimace.
‘I’ll go along with that,’ Anna said wryly.
Tansy’s smile faded. ‘It doesn’t help that Liam is permanently stressing these days. We’re like two pacing lions in a cage.’
‘Why is Liam stressing?’ Isadora asked.
‘I don’t know. He’s gone into his man-cave. He says if I want to talk about anything touchy-feely I should talk to my girlfriends.’ She made an impatient gesture.
‘That doesn’t sound like Liam,’ Anna said.
‘Not the old Liam, no,’ Tansy said gloomily. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have moved in with him so soon? But at the time it felt so right.’
Isadora gently scratched her little dog between her ears. ‘It’s probably just spring fever.’
‘Is spring fever an actual thing?’ Tansy asked hopefully.
‘Absolutely!’ Isadora assured her. ‘It makes everyone restless and discontented. The same force that drives the green fuse through the flower or whatever that Dylan Thomas quote is, makes us hideously aware that we are not immortal.’ She flashed them an enigmatic smile. ‘In other – not unrelated – news, I heard from an old friend, the other day, completely out of the blue.’
‘An old friend or an old lover?’ Tansy said at once.
‘Is there any reason it
can’t be both?’ Isadora gave her one of her undergraduate-quelling looks.
‘No reason at all,’ Tansy said laughing.
‘It wasn’t Valentin?’ Anna said, remembering a conversation she’d had with Isadora soon after they’d met. Valentin had been the love of Isadora’s life at an age when she’d given up all hope.
Isadora shot her a startled look. ‘You have an alarmingly good memory.’
‘It was Valentin?’ Tansy was instantly intrigued.
‘Yes, it was Valentin,’ Isadora said irritably. ‘He wants me to visit him in Prague, help him with a book he’s writing!’ She gave one of her dark hoots of laughter. ‘Quite ridiculous after all this time. Anyway, I couldn’t possibly put Hero into kennels.’
‘No, Isadora, you must go!’ Tansy said eagerly. ‘Seize the day, seriously! You can take Hero on the train, get her a doggie passport. Anna’s got one for Bonnie, haven’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Jake made me.’
‘Hero will be happy wherever you are,’ Tansy insisted.
‘Well, I have no plans to leave Oxford,’ Anna said, adding jokingly, ‘you two go off, have adventures and me and Bonnie will solve all the crimes on our own!’
Isadora dropped Anna off in Park Town on the way to taking Tansy back to St Clements.
It was late and Anna was stupidly tired after her day, yet, against her better judgment, she found herself opening her laptop. With a cup of camomile tea steaming at her elbow and peaceful snores coming from Bonnie’s basket, she did another search for David Fischer, but this time she just trawled through images.
‘David Hasselhoff?’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Really?’ She scrolled on past a host of equally random Davids. It was hopeless, yet she kept futilely scrolling. What was that motivational quote? How you spend your days is how you spend your life?
Give it up, Anna, she advised, then found her attention being pulled back to a small pixelated photo. She zoomed in. Then she went to fetch a magnifying glass, but still couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The photograph belonged to the archives of the Wennekes Institute for Preserving Art in Times of War and it showed a dishevelled David Fischer standing next to a dark-haired woman, with a vivid, intelligent face.
