Look Listen and Love

by Barbara Cartland

  “He has not suggested coming to London?” Tempera persisted.

  “No!”

  “And do you think he is likely to?”

  Lady Rothley put her hands up to her face.

  “Do not torture me, Tempera, I know exactly what you are trying to say. I am not so stupid that I do not understand! But how can I resist being with him whenever I have the chance? To sit beside him in his motor car is to be transported to Paradise! Oh, God, why do I feel like this? What am I to do?”

  There was a silence, then weakly Tempera sat down on a chair.

  “I do not know the answer to that, Belle-mère.”

  In fact, she told herself later, she did not know the answer to anything.

  It was all too complicated, too difficult, and even while she was talking to her stepmother she was haunted by the fact that below them the fake Van Eyck was hanging on the wall just waiting to be discovered.

  She knew, because her father had told her, that the Italians were very proud and strait-laced in matters concerning their family honour.

  If there was a scandal over the picture in which her stepmother became involved, Tempera could not help thinking that she would damage her chances not only with the Duke but also with the Count.

  ‘They are certain in the first excitement of knowing it is a fake to suspect me,’ she thought.

  It was obvious that suspicion would rest on her until she could clear herself, and it would be difficult.

  By the time she had revealed who she was and accused Lord Eustace it would be paramount to proclaiming in headlines in the newspapers the deception they had imposed on their host, besides the fact that they were so poor that it was difficult for Lady Rothley to afford a proper lady’s maid.

  Even her father would be involved, Tempera thought, because he had been unable to provide adequately for his widow and his daughter.

  The whole thing would be like an avalanche where a tiny pebble once dislodged would dislodge another and yet another until half the mountainside was hurtling downhill to destruction.

  Such an avalanche, once launched, would utterly destroy her stepmother in the Social world in which she wished to live – all that would remain for her in the future would be an obscurity which to her would be nothing but a living death.

  “I have to save her,” Tempera told herself, and at the same time thought frantically she could see no possible way of doing so.

  Her stepmother rose from the dressing table to begin taking off her clothes.

  “I might as well rest while I have the chance,” she said. “We are likely to be very late tonight.”

  “Why? Where are you going?” Tempera enquired.

  “We are dining in Monte Carlo with the Grand Duke Boris of Russia. He has a huge party at the Hotel de Paris. I expect afterwards we will dance before going on to the Casino.”

  “Then you had better wear your white gown,” Tempera said automatically.

  She felt as if, while her lips were speaking, her brain was elsewhere, going round and round as if on a treadmill, seeking for an escape which did not present itself.

  “Yes, the white will be very effective,” Lady Rothley agreed, then she yawned and stretched herself.

  “I want to go to sleep, Tempera, and when I wake up just to let everything happen without arguing with you or myself as to what is right or wrong.”

  “And that is what you shall do,” Tempera said tenderly. “I will not say any more, Belle-mère. just look beautiful and be happy.”

  Lady Rothley got into bed and Tempera pulled the curtains.

  As she did so, she wondered how long her stepmother’s happiness would last.

  Tempera walked down the passage to her own bedroom. The Chateau was very quiet. She knew all the Duke’s guests were resting and she longed to go downstairs and have one more look at the ‘Madonna in the Church’, just to make quite certain she was not mistaken.

  But someone was sure to find her there and anyway she thought it was quite unnecessary.

  She had known with an unshakeable conviction this morning when she held the picture in her hands that it was a fake.

  Although she had not her father’s experience or what amounted to his clairvoyance where pictures were concerned, she was certain that there was no chance in this instance of her being proved wrong.

  ‘Perhaps I had better tell the Duke the truth before he finds out,’ she thought.

  Then suddenly she saw quite clearly what she must do! She need not tell the Duke or anybody else! The obvious course was for her to exchange again the fake painting with the original which Lord Eustace had stolen.

  Even as she thought of it she knew that here was the answer to everything – to her anxiety, to her fear of discovery and most of all to the disaster of the Duke losing his picture.

  She thought not only of herself and of her stepmother, she thought of him.

  She knew that, just as she would have felt in similar circumstances, it would be agonising for him to have something stolen which meant so much personally.

  Tempera felt her heart begin to beat quicker, and now that the dark fog of uncertainty had lifted she could see daylight.

  Unless she acted quickly Lord Eustace would dispose of the picture.

  She tried to think what she herself would do in similar circumstances. She sat down on her bed and put her hands over her eyes, as if she forced herself to think clearly.

  He had removed the genuine picture for the fake. Having done so, he would have taken the Van Eyck upstairs with him to his bedroom. There he would put it in a safe place where it would not be seen while he carried on as a guest in the house party.

  Even though he now had in his possession what he wanted he would not leave precipitately, Tempera decided.

  To do so would mean that when the theft was discovered his departure would obviously arouse suspicion.

  No, she thought, he would behave quite normally and continue his visit.

  He might receive a telegram recalling him to England, but it was much more likely that he would leave at the end of the week or go to stay with other friends in the vicinity. It was then that the picture would leave the Chateau.

  In the meantime it was here, here in his bedroom, and what Tempera had to do was to get hold of it.

  She felt certain of one thing and that was that Lord Eustace was not very knowledgeable about pictures.

  His fake was a good one, but if he had seen it for the first time in a frame, it was doubtful whether he would have had the slightest suspicion it was not genuine.

  Someone, however, like the Count or her father, or perhaps the Duke, would know instinctively without making tests that the picture was not a real Van Eyck.

  Tempera was sure that to Lord Eustace and his like the only interest in a picture was how much money it would fetch.

  She suspected that he had a buyer already, perhaps a picture dealer or just as likely one of the rich Americans who were only too ready to accept Old Masters for their private Galleries and ask no questions as to how they were obtained.

  “I have to get into Lord Eustace’s room,” Tempera told herself, “find where he has hidden the picture, and put the fake back in its place.”

  It was not going to be easy, she was aware of that, and if she was discovered while she was changing the pictures over she would be accused and doubtless convicted of the crime however much she might protest her innocence.

  Nobody would believe for a moment that as her father’s daughter with her knowledge of painting and the fact that she had entered the Chateau disguised as a lady’s maid she was not a criminal.

  “It is a risk I shall have to take,” Tempera said aloud. The first difficulty was to find the right moment to search Lord Eustace’s room.

  It was helpful that, because unlike the rest of the male guests, he did not have a personal valet.

  Tempera had heard Miss Briggs and Miss Smith speaking of the valets who were in the house, and while Lord Holcombe and Sir William had
each brought one with them, Lord Eustace was, she knew, looked after by one of the footmen.

  When she remembered this she knew the exact moment when she must search Lord Eustace’s room.

  When the Duke and his guests dined in the Chateau the staff ate before dinner was served in the Dining Room, but when they dined out, the staff ate as soon as they had left.

  This suited the Chef who wanted a free evening when he had the chance and Tempera knew that the moment the guests drove away from the front door the male staff would all troop into their own Dining Room and sit down to a huge meal.

  That was the moment, she thought, when she could slip up into the Tower and try to find the stolen Van Eyck. There was still half-an-hour before she need call her stepmother and dress her for the evening which lay ahead.

  In the meantime Tempera concentrated every nerve on trying to imagine where Lord Eustace would have hidden the picture.

  He had been clever enough to steal one which was small. A canvas of only 10” x 8” was very easy to conceal. Then she remembered her father telling her of a huge theft that had been perpetrated on one of the Galleries in Rome.

  The thieves had cut a number of canvases out of their frames and had actually escaped from the Gallery with them.

  Their problem had then been to get them out of the City undetected.

  Sir Francis had explained the various devices they had used.

  “Of course the Police had some idea of what the villains looked like,” he said, “and they searched the luggage to be carried on every train for false-bottomed trunks and any bulky parcels which might contain a rolled-up canvas.”

  Tempera had listened with interest as her father had continued,

  “One man had a special walking stick made into which a picture, rolled very tightly, could be inserted. Another walked with a lame leg, which surprisingly proved to be the result of a canvas being wound from knee to ankle.” Tempera laughed.

  “Did they catch them all, Papa?”

  “I think nearly every one,” Sir Francis replied. “But the most difficult to detect was a man who had a landscape fastened to his bare back and another who concealed a very much smaller picture inside his tall hat.”

  He smiled as he added,

  “He would have got away with it, but one of the Police Officers noticed that when a lady stopped him to ask the way he did not raise his hat!”

  He laughed.

  “Such an act of impoliteness cost him a £10,000 piece of loot and seven years’ imprisonment!”

  ‘I must look in Lord Eustace’s hat,’ Tempera told herself now.

  She thought too that perhaps he might slip the picture under the edge of the carpet or hide it behind another picture on the wall in his room until he was ready to leave with it.

  “A good thief,” Sir Francis had said, “seldom uses a locked case – that is too obvious. And when it comes to smuggling diamonds there is nothing more effective than a hollowed out book.”

  But Lord Eustace was not smuggling diamonds. Nevertheless the ‘Madonna in the Church’ was so small that it could easily be wrapped up in a newspaper or slipped in the back of a photograph frame.

  Mentally Tempera made a list of all the places she must look and she could only wonder almost despairingly whether she would have time for her search before the servants finished dinner.

  “You are very pensive, dearest,” Lady Rothley said as Tempera arranged her stepmother’s hair.

  “I am making you look beautiful, Belle-mère.”

  “It is going to be a wonderful evening,” Lady Rothley said dreamily. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  An hour’s sleep had swept away her depression and now she was glowing with excitement.

  Tempera almost envied her as she stood up in her new white gown and looked as if she was stepping out of the Heavens on a white cloud.

  “You will eclipse everybody at the party tonight,” she exclaimed.

  As she spoke she wondered if it would be the last time her stepmother would have the chance to do so.

  Perhaps tomorrow or the next day they would be scuttling back to England in disgrace, to hide themselves in the house in Curzon Street and wonder what they would do in the future.

  Then resolutely Tempera told herself this must never happen. She must save them both and in a strange way she felt certain that her father was helping and directing her.

  It was almost as if he stood beside her, and when her stepmother had gone downstairs and she waited to hear the carriage drive away she found herself praying as she had never prayed before.

  “Help me, Papa, do not let me make a mistake. Show me where the picture is hidden.”

  She felt, because she loved the ‘Madonna in the Church’ so much, that she would be able to pick up its vibrations and would therefore not waste too much time looking in a number of places in vain.

  At the same time it was hard to be certain of anything except that she was terribly nervous, her fingers were very cold and she was trembling.

  Even in her stepmother’s bedroom she could hear the voices and laughter of the house party below her in the Sitting Room.

  They would be having a glass of champagne before they left, Tempera thought.

  She could almost see her stepmother looking exquisitely beautiful in her white gown, while Lady Holcombe’s green eyes watched her jealously.

  Lady Barnard would be kind and sweet, as she always was, trying to make everybody happy, while the Count would undoubtedly be looking at Belle-mère with his dark, eloquent eyes and perhaps already paying her extravagant compliments which would sound utterly sincere.

  And what would the Duke be doing?

  The question seemed almost to flash into Tempera’s mind in letters of fire.

  Would he too be admiring her stepmother? Would he be vying with the Count for a smile from her lips and a look from her blue eyes?

  Somewhere deep in her breast Tempera had a pain that was almost like the stab of a dagger.

  “I am jealous!” she told herself honestly. “How can I be so absurd, so foolish as to be jealous of Belle-mère?”

  She could see herself reflected in the mirror, see her plain black gown, her pale face framed by her dark hair.

  Who was likely to look at her, she thought, when her stepmother was glowing like the sun itself – a sun gold and glorious, as Turner painted it?

  She thought she could distinguish the Duke’s voice, and although she tried to think it was her imagination the pain was still there. She forced herself to think of what she had to do.

  It was for his sake as well as for her own and her stepmother’s.

  How could she bear him to lose something he treasured? How could a picture which spoke to him in a way which only he could understand pass into alien hands which would be concerned only with its worth in terms of money rather than what its beauty meant to the heart.

  “I will save it! I have to!” Tempera murmured.

  She thought the voices downstairs were fainter and now she went to the door and opened it carefully.

  She was right.

  The party had moved into the Hall. The ladies were putting on their wraps and the gentlemen their satin-lined cloaks.

  She could hear the Duke’s voice speaking distinctly and the rest were listening to him.

  “Sir William, will you and your wife go in the first carriage,” he was saying, “and take Eustace with you? And, Count, I am giving you a special treat. You shall escort Lady Rothley in the brougham, and will you pick up the Lillingtons to whom I have promised a lift when you reach their Villa at Eza?”

  “I shall be delighted!” the Count replied.

  “How can the Duke send Belle-mère alone with the Count even if it is for only a short distance?” Tempera questioned indignantly.

  But she knew that her stepmother would be only too delighted and there was no need even to guess what the Count’s reaction would be.

  “And, George,” the Duke was continuing to Lord Holcombe,
“you and I will play escort to your lovely wife.”

  Tempera guessed that Lady Holcombe would be delighted to drive with the Duke and would feel in some way it was a score over her rival.

  Having listened to their host’s instructions there was chatter and laughter again and Tempera could hear the party moving towards the front door. After a few moments the first carriage was driving away.

  She waited, still with the door ajar.

  The brougham left, then the third carriage came to the door.

  “Goodnight, Bates,” she heard the Duke say to the Butler.

  “Goodnight, my Lord.”

  The footmen closed the carriage doors and Tempera could hear the horses moving over the gravel of the drive.

  The footmen came back into the Hall.

  “We’ll eat first,” Bates said in his pontifical voice, “and clear the table afterwards.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that, Mr. Bates,” one of the footmen remarked, “I’m feeling downright peckish !”

  Another man joked about people being greedy, and their voices and the sound of their footsteps died away as they walked down the corridor which led to the kitchen quarters.

  This was the moment for which Tempera had been waiting.

  She knew that Miss Briggs and Miss Smith would be having their meal at the same time and they would not be inquisitive about her absence for the simple reason that she was often late and they much preferred to gossip without her.

  She stepped out onto the landing, shutting her stepmother’s door, and hurried over the thick carpet towards the flight of stairs which led up to the Tower.

  She reached it, glanced down in the Hall to make certain there was still nobody about, then ran up the stairs which led to Lord Eustace’s room.

  The Tower room had three windows which, as the Duke had said, provided the most spectacular view in the whole Chateau. But for the moment Tempera was not interested in views.

  Everything had been tidied by the footman after Lord Eustace had gone down to dinner, and she guessed it would be a waste of time searching in the chest-of-drawers to which the man-servant had access or in the suits hanging up in the wardrobe.