‘Tom wasn’t being all that welcoming either,’ said Hugh. ‘He seems to be holding everyone at Vielleroche responsible for Venetia’s behaviour, which is unfair. To start off with, Napier didn’t ask her to come; she insisted it was the least she could do to aid a family friend.’
‘Really?’ I asked with interest. That wasn’t what she’d told Janey. ‘Even so, Tom still thinks Napier’s taking advantage of Venetia’s good nature.’
‘Tom needn’t worry. Napier isn’t taking advantage of anything,’ Hugh said shrewdly. ‘It’s separate bedrooms and all that; she’s even been put in the guest suite across the courtyard. Short of having a Spanish duenna sitting outside her door all night it couldn’t be more proper.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Except that instead of the Spanish duenna we’ve got Carlton, whom I doubt is anything like as keen on preserving Venetia’s virtue. He turned up this afternoon to talk to Napier about taking over the winemaking, and seemed to me to be paying more attention to Venetia’s legs than to what Napier was saying about his winemaking practices.’
‘Can you blame him? Her legs are well worth looking at,’ Phil murmured reminiscently, then whipped around to see if Maggie had heard with such a comical look of apprehension that we all burst out laughing.
In my absence it had been decided that since none of us felt much like squaring up to domestic duties we should go out for dinner. I had no quarrel with this, especially since I was down to do the washing up (again), and the arguments were flying over where we should go. Maggie and Sally appeared to be missing the sort of haunts they frequented in London, for they wanted to try a highly recommended place with two Michelin stars where the speciality was lobster. Much to my relief, since a two-star restaurant would make my bank account implode, Charlie said it was too hot for rich food like lobster and foie gras. When Sally began to disagree, Oscar cut in saying he was sure somewhere as smart as that wouldn’t be able to fit us in at such short notice, and why didn’t we try the place in the village that Janey said was simple but good?
This was agreed to, but Maggie said in that case we must all celebrate a fantastic holiday by going out somewhere special on our last evening. I couldn’t help wondering if she was choosing that particular night for celebration because with luck, and the agreement of the gendarmes, I’d be well away in Cumbria for Granny and Grandad’s anniversary. I let the restaurant talk wash over me and allowed my thoughts to drift.
I came back to earth and the conversation as George laughed abruptly and said, ‘All this stuff about someone coming in through the window or a gang of thieves has got to be so much guff! Is it really likely? I’ll bet you that, whatever the police are saying, the reason they aren’t letting any of you leave the country yet is that their chief suspects are those who were in the château last night around the time the picture was taken.’
There was an uncomfortable silence as we looked uneasily at each other.
‘Are you suggesting that one of us did it?’ Charlie asked curiously. ‘Me, for example?’
‘Doubt it. Didn’t you say you left early to take Sally back because she had fallen asleep?’ asked Hugh. That was one way of putting it; other people might have said ‘passed out’.
‘You can’t rule him out entirely, Hugh,’ George said reprovingly. ‘Any one of them could have stolen the picture.’ He looked at us all with the confident air of the man who knows he is beyond suspicion.
Sally gazed at him reproachfully. ‘None of us is a thief, George.’
‘I know that. Besides, if any of you were, the thief would have to have done it while leaving the room under the pretence of doing something else - going to the loo, say. That wouldn’t have given much time for getting the thing off the wall and hidden somewhere, and it would have been incredibly risky. Someone else might have come out at any moment.’
‘You’ve obviously thought about this,’ Phil remarked, filling up his glass as he spoke.
‘Well, it’s interesting to stretch your brains over a problem like this,’ George said modestly. I wondered as he raised his head and looked meaningfully out over the garden if he was imagining himself as some Golden Age amateur sleuth - Lord Peter Wimsey for instance. They certainly had similar noses.
‘And since Venetia’s talked about virtually nothing else all day it’s been difficult not to think about it,’ Hugh said simply.
‘So if it isn’t one of us, who are you suggesting did it?’ I asked, sure that I already knew the answer.
George steeled his fingers in best Sherlock Holmes fashion. ‘Tom and Janey wouldn’t have stolen their own picture, naturally.’ Phil muttered in an undertone that this sort of thing wasn’t entirely unknown, but George pretended not to hear him. ‘Apparently Venetia’s in the clear, something to do with a chap she gave a lift to the village to who was able to see that the only thing she had in the car was her handbag - it’s open at the back, nowhere to stash a picture. No, it’s obvious who the police must be looking at. And if they aren’t, they damn well should be - that Winwood fellow.’
Just because you’re expecting something doesn’t make it any more palatable. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say!’
George smiled patronisingly at me. ‘I know that Robert is an old friend of yours, Nella - a very old friend, from what I hear.’ Several heads turned to look at me in sudden interest. ‘Of course you don’t want to believe it, but you can’t let loyalty blind you to the facts. I daresay he’s changed a lot from the days when you knew him,’ he added kindly as if I should find this some consolation. ‘I’ve been analysing the facts and certainly they indicate that he warrants further investigation.’ He began counting off on his fingers. ‘Firstly, he had the opportunity, much more so than any of you. All he had to do was wait until everyone went to bed, then he’d have had all the time in the world to take the picture and conceal it somewhere.’
‘Robert was the one who raised the alarm. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d stolen the picture,’ Sally said, wrinkling her brow.
‘People do that sort of thing as a smokescreen all the time,’ George said authoritatively. ‘You read stories in the tabloids every week about men who tearfully report their wives as missing when they’ve actually murdered them and buried them under the patio.’
‘But you never read the tabloids, George,’ I said sweetly. ‘So where do you get to hear about these stories?’
He ignored me but that was nothing unusual; George never replied to inconvenient remarks. ‘Secondly, we all know that it’s a valuable picture but I ask you; which one of us has any idea where you can get rid of something like that without too many awkward questions being asked about its provenance? We don’t know, but an art dealer would.’
To my fury I saw a couple of heads being nodded in tentative agreement.
‘I suggest you don’t repeat that statement in front of Adam Thirkiss from Vanden’s next time we see him. He won’t appreciate you inferring that he knows how to unload a dodgy picture,’ Hugh said warningly, looking as if he could already see the slander suits raining down all about us.
‘Of course, I don’t mean people like him. He only deals in reputable stuff - even sold a couple of pictures belonging to my aunt once. But Winwood is another kettle of fish completely. The fellow admits quite openly that he sells fakes.’
‘Reproductions are not fakes,’ I said indignantly.
‘They are in my book,’ pronounced George as if this was the final word on the matter. I had a strong urge to wipe that smug expression off his face. ‘He might say that he always tells his clients that what they are buying isn’t genuine, but are you really so naive as to believe that?’ He looked around the assembled company, raising his eyebrows sceptically to show that he certainly wasn’t. The urge to do something was getting even stronger. I took a few deep breaths to try and calm myself.
‘There’s one problem with your theory, George,’ Maggie said coolly. ‘Robert isn’t stupid, and as you say he’s got resources we don’t have. If he had b
een planning to steal the Sydney, he’d have had one of his own copies painted first so he could put it in the original’s place, then no one would have realised it had gone.’
I stared at her in amazement and gratitude. It felt distinctly strange.
George looked nonplussed for a moment, then said in a voice of enormous generosity, ‘I’m not saying he planned it; it must have been a spur of the moment thing.’
‘Come on, George, be fair,’ Oscar broke in. ‘You don’t have any real reason to suppose that Robert isn’t as honest as the day is long.’
George snorted. ‘What about those calls in the cricket match? You know as well as I do that some of them were blatantly wrong. For instance, how about when I bowled you out and he said it was a no ball? Or when he said I was LBW? I certainly wasn’t,’ he huffed, obviously still smarting about this injustice. ‘Haven’t you heard of the old adage that if a man cheats at cricket then you can be sure that he cheats at other things too?’
‘Of all the stupid, pompous things to say!’ I took a step towards him.
‘Now come on, Nella, you can’t get upset over the reasonable analysis of a few facts.’ He stepped sideways a prudent pace or two, taking him to within a foot or so of the edge of the pool.
The temptation was too great. I put out both hands and pushed - hard.
CHAPTER 19
There can’t be many better feelings than the one you get when you’ve just scored a double whammy. Not only had I got George to shut up, he couldn’t help it with the amount of pool water he swallowed, but at the same time I had kiboshed Oscar’s matchmaking plans for once and for all. Not even that eternal optimist could imagine George was ever going to look on me with a kindly eye again.
I was peacefully enjoying a cup of coffee in the sun the next morning and reliving the highly satisfying moment when George hit the water with an almighty splash, when the gendarmes came back. There were three of them this time, the two who had been here yesterday and a woman whom I hadn’t seen before. Oscar heaved himself up off the sun lounger where he was recovering from a brisk swim and went over to speak to them, coming back a few seconds later looking worried.
‘They want to talk to you, Nella.’
‘Me? What for?’
He shrugged helplessly as the woman, dressed like her colleagues in blue shirt and trousers, her hair drawn back tightly in a pony tail, followed him and said slowly, ‘Mees Bowden? You will come with us, please. We have questions to ask you.’
For one wild moment I thought that George must have got his own back by making a formal complaint against me for assault, then it dawned on me that George wouldn’t do a thing like that. He might have his faults but he wasn’t petty; his French wasn’t good enough either.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ I asked in a squeaky tone. It was pretty obvious that it had to be something to do with the Sydney, but what?
‘You will find that out in due course.’
Hardly reassuring, I thought nervously. I said with what I hoped was a winning smile, ‘Shall we go somewhere more private to talk? Over there perhaps?’
‘The interview will be conducted at the gendarmerie,’ she said coldly.
‘Is Nella being arrested?’ Oscar asked.
The gendarme looked at him for a moment as if deciding whether to answer or not. ‘Not yet,’ she said finally.
‘But what’s it about?’ he persisted, not put off in the slightest by her forbidding tone. ‘What’s Nella supposed to have done?’
‘That I may not tell you, monsieur.’ She somehow implied that if Oscar went on badgering her he’d find himself hauled along to the gendarmerie as well and charged with something, probably annoying a member of the police force.
He opened his mouth again but I cut in, ‘It’s all right, Oscar. I daresay it’s nothing - just some mistake or other.’ I tried hard to believe that the gendarme’s expression wasn’t saying ‘oh no, it’s not!’ ‘But I need to get changed out of my swimsuit first.’
She nodded gravely. ‘That is permitted, but I will come with you.’
So that’s why they’d brought a woman with them, I thought as I walked into the cottage on jelly legs, so I could be decently accompanied into my bedroom in case I used the excuse I was looking for clean underwear to leg it out of the window. She was scrupulously polite, standing in one corner studiously not looking as I fumbled around for the bra that didn’t have the rip in the lace - I didn’t think it was likely I was going to be strip-searched, the Sydney was too big for even the most ample cup size, but there was no harm in covering all eventualities - but there was no mistaking that she was on the alert for any sudden movement. Why had they settled on me? I thought as I brushed my hair. It couldn’t be anything to do with what Janey and I had said, could it? Surely the art squad couldn’t be so desperate to improve their clear-up rate that they’d resorted to snatching at straws this soon in the investigation? Particularly since if Janey had already told them about it, she’d also have told them I left the house empty-handed.
I was going to find out soon enough, wasn’t I? I thought fearfully. I was about to say that I was ready to go, when the gendarme’s voice rapped out: ‘What are those?’
I started. ‘Er what?’ I asked, probably looking the very image of trying-to-gain-a-bit-of-time guilt.
‘Those!’ she snapped, pointing at Min’s wedding presents, now safely stowed away in the cases Robert had given me, which were leaning against the wall at the end of my bed.
‘My pictures. Do you want to see them?’ With a chopping motion of her hand she motioned me to stay away and whipped out a walkie-talkie affair. Within seconds, heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs and the other two gendarmes raced in, making the small room feel uncomfortably crowded.
I was taken out onto the landing and one gendarme stood guard while the other two laid the cases on the bed with expectant expressions. Whether they were disappointed with what they found or not I couldn’t tell from their impassive expressions, though the man started scribbling down something in a notebook while the youth did a cursory search of all the more obvious places you might hide a picture. My heart rose into my mouth as he exclaimed in excitement and lifted up the mattress; this was all getting so surreal that I was beginning to believe there really might be a Post Impressionist hidden under there. I hadn’t even realised I was holding my breath until he held up a T-shirt I must have tucked into the bed by accident when I made it, and I took in a great big relieved gulp of air.
That was probably a mistake, for the woman frowned, as if by expressing relief I’d virtually confessed to hiding something, and her face went into even more severe lines as she informed me that a team was on its way to search the cottage. ‘And you will tell your friends that they may not enter the house until we are finished,’ she said to Oscar who, to her open displeasure, had followed us upstairs.
‘Wait!’ he said as we were about to leave. She turned to him in irritation. ‘When are you bringing Nella back?’
‘When we have finished with her.’ In the circumstances it was a reasonable enough answer, but hardly reassuring. ‘Step aside, please.’
Oscar didn’t move. ‘Does she need a lawyer?’
‘There will be time for that later on. She has not been charged with anything.’ I could hear the unspoken ‘yet’ reverberating in my ears and wondered if it was actually true that you could pass out from sheer tension. Sadly it didn’t seem to be so because I would have done almost anything to delay walking out of the house, a gendarme on either side of me, under the appalled eyes of Maggie, Sally, Charlie and Phil who were grouped uncertainly in the middle of the lawn talking in low voices. Oscar trotted alongside us, looking even more terrified than I felt, telling me not to worry, he was sure it wasn’t anything, the police must have mistaken me for someone else. I’d be back in half an hour and if I wasn’t he’d find me the best lawyer there was. If necessary he’d go to the consulate and get them on the case...
�
�That is enough, monsieur,’ the older gendarme said, not unkindly, as I got into the back of the car.
Oscar took no notice and was still going on making reassuring noises as the door was shut and cut him off. I mouthed, ‘Thanks,’ and made an effort to smile, though it was all I could do not to burst into tears of apprehension as we drove away.
At the gendarmerie, I was shown straight into an interview room, a different one from yesterday. It had a barred window that looked out onto an asphalt enclosure at the back and a one-storey breeze-block building with heavily barred windows. Was it intentional that every time I looked out of the window I couldn’t help seeing the cell block and the exercise yard? A sort of softening-up technique maybe? If so it certainly worked, for by the time someone came to interview me about two hours later, I was so wound up that if it was going to get me out of there any quicker, I would happily have confessed to being every single one of the armed robbers in the posters I’d memorised yesterday - even the bulletheaded one with Maman tattooed on his arm.
This time there were two detectives, the man from yesterday, again in jeans and open-necked shirt, and an elegant woman in her forties wearing a short-sleeved, short-skirted suit that was incredibly stylish but I bet was also practical enough to allow her to chase after and tackle any miscreant who was unwise enough to try and make a break for it.
‘Thank you for coming to see us, Miss Bowden,’ she said in English, making it sound as if it had really been my choice that I was here. ‘I hope that we have not kept you waiting too long?’
I mumbled something. She might have smiled at me as she came in, but she looked about as user-friendly and easy to deceive as my old headmistress. She introduced herself as Capitaine Dubesset, told me to sit down at the scuffed Formica table and took the seat opposite me, while a mousy little translator, who hardly seemed necessary given how good the detectives’ English was, sat on one side and Lieutenant Fournier sat at her right hand. For a minute or so there was silence while she frowned and rubbed at a scratch on the surface of the table with a fuchsia-pink fingertip which only served to remind me that I’d occupied some of the last two hours by peeling off my nail varnish. I hid my fingers in my lap as, satisfied at last, the Capitaine took out a pad and aligned it absolutely square in front of her, before looking up and beginning her questions.
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