A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  “Sure,” I said. “There were weavers who specialized in only making borders. Because some tapestry patterns, like the ones based on Greek myths or Bible stories, were used again and again, sold to different clients, only with customized borders. You know, you could have your own family crest or coat of arms put onto the borders of a tapestry, to make it more personalized. Besides, borders sometimes wear out, from hanging on nails and poles, with the whole weight of the tapestry pulling on them. They can be repaired . . . or sometimes, replaced.”

  “So, if the top border, which is now on the tapestry, is merely a replacement,” Jeremy said, “then maybe the guy who made the new border didn’t bother to duplicate all of the original, complicated artwork from the old one?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “From what I can see in these photos, the current top border is a lot simpler—and probably cheaper—than the bottom one. I don’t see any gilt, for instance, and there’s plenty of gilt on the bottom. In fact, the existing top border bears more resemblance to the side borders than the bottom one.”

  “Couldn’t Armand just have run out of the good thread?” Jeremy asked. “He was in a bit of a hurry, you know.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “This is a wedding tapestry. Why would he spoil it at the very top, with chopped- off pictures and all?”

  “Well, now you say so, I must admit it does look as if there’s something amuck with the top of this thing,” Jeremy agreed.

  “Which might indicate that the replacement border was made in a totally different workshop,” I said excitedly. “Possibly even in a completely different time period! After all, the tapestry was missing for centuries. Who knows which owners might have done the deed, all those years before—”

  I stopped. Then I said briskly, “Well. I’d say it’s time we paid another little call on Venetia.”

  “It’s a long way to go if she’s not home,” Jeremy warned. “What if she’s, say, on vacation?”

  “Honorine says she never goes away,” I said. “The element of surprise is essential. I want to look her in the eye when we ask her. How soon can we get to Paris?”

  Part Nine

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  When we rang the buzzer, Venetia’s husky voice cried, “Come in, Justine!” and she buzzed us in. “I’ll bet Justine is one of her ballet students,” I whispered to Jeremy. I felt a trifle guilty, but not enough to resist taking advantage of the situation, and we sneaked right in.

  The maid must have been out doing the day’s marketing, because Venetia herself came to the door, leaning on a straight cane like an old-fashioned ballet master. She glanced up expectantly, then saw who it was, and her face changed. She looked fearful, apprehensive, but not angry.

  “I am expecting a student at any minute,” she said defensively. “You really should have called ahead. I will be happy to see you, but some other time . . .”

  I began talking in halting French. She listened attentively, not, I think, because of what I was saying, but more out of the fascinated horror of listening to French being spoken by someone with an Anglo-American accent and cadence. Nevertheless, I ploughed on, having composed this little speech on the way over. Basically, the gist of what I said was, “I am so sorry about the theft of the tapestry. I feel responsible, and wish to make amends. We think we may have some hope of recovering the tapestry, but we really need your help.”

  “Oh, mon dieu!” she cried, with theatrically exaggerated despair. “Haven’t I done enough, putting up with that awful big ape of a man you sent to investigate me, asking his policeman questions, as if it were I who were the thief? Believe me, I told him everything I know. If it’s gone, it’s gone, there’s nothing more I can say or do to bring it back.”

  “If you answer our questions, there won’t be any need for Monsieur Felix to come back and bother you,” Jeremy said, in that lawyerlike way that is ostensibly reassuring but is also is a threat.

  Venetia eyed him cunningly, then sighed, and allowed us to follow her into the back room, where she enthroned herself again on her satin daybed. She closed her eyes as if prepared to endure the unendurable. “Make it quick,” she advised.

  “We need to know,” I said simply, “if the tapestry was ever changed or remade.”

  Jeremy was watching her carefully. She opened her eyes slowly, and said, as if stalling for time, “What do you mean? Can I be expected to know its entire history, when I only owned it a short time?”

  I laid out a few photos on the low table in front of her. “You see,” I said helpfully, “here are pictures of the tapestry’s border when it hung in Oncle Philippe’s house. Take a good look, especially at the top border. I hope that these pictures will help you to remember, because we think it’s important.”

  At first, she almost refused to look at the photos. She waved her hand and said airily, “It was so long ago. What possible difference can it make now?”

  “Did you change the border?” I asked eagerly. Venetia glanced at Jeremy, perhaps mindful of his warning. She studied me carefully, then made an elaborate ritual of reaching for her eyeglass case, and adjusting her reading glasses, and peering at each photo, one by one. She was silent the whole time, and there was a long pause when, at last, she had examined each one. Then she looked up at me imploringly. I gave her my most encouraging, sympathetic smile.

  “Ah,” she said finally; then she coughed, somewhat guiltily. “Now that you mention it . . . I suppose . . . yes . . . I would say . . . come to think of it . . . of course, it was so very long ago . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. I tried not to pounce. “There was a different border, then?” I asked. She nodded. “Why was it changed?” I persisted.

  “Oh, I suppose we wanted to tidy it up for Philippe and Leonora’s wedding,” Venetia said vaguely, hoping she could get away with only that much. “It was worn out and in need of repair.”

  “But it wasn’t just repaired, it was replaced, right?” Jeremy asked. She nodded.

  It was obvious to all and sundry that Venetia was hedging. But why? On a hunch, I asked, “Did something unusual happen to the tapestry?” I held my breath, knowing that, at any moment, her door buzzer might ring again, and if the student came up, then Venetia would seize on the distraction; and this opportunity for a confession might never come again.

  Venetia looked at Jeremy, embarrassed. Then she stuck that pointy little chin defiantly in the air. “Well, if you must know, I’d caused it some . . . damage.”

  “What did you to do it?” I asked, fascinated.

  “I shot it!” she cried.

  “Why did you shoot it?” I asked calmly, as if I were asking why she’d gotten a haircut.

  “Well, I didn’t do it on purpose!” she exclaimed. “I meant to shoot my husband!”

  “Good Lord,” Jeremy marvelled.

  “I had no intention of killing my new bridegroom,” she assured us. “I only wanted to scare him.” She looked at me conspiratorially. “Sometimes,” she said, “a man has to know that you mean what you say, when you tell him that there are certain things you will not tolerate.”

  “Another woman?” I guessed.

  “Not just any woman,” she snorted. “Do you think I would bother over just any other woman? Mais non, this little upstart was another ballerina in my company! This I could not overlook!”

  “When did it happen?” I asked.

  “Only a month after our wedding!” Venetia said. “I couldn’t stand for it. Would you?”

  “Certainly not,” I said stoutly. We both looked at Jeremy, as if to say J’accuse! to his entire wayward lot of males, from the beginning until the end of time.

  “Ah,” said Jeremy, not to be outdone. “Un crime de passion.”

  Venetia shook her head. “No, not quite,” she said. “If it were passion, then I would have killed him. This was merely a warning. As it was, I simply aimed for the bottle of champagne, which my husband and that chatte had been drinking.” Even after all these years, she could st
ill picture it, and her eyes flashed with fury at the image of the other female who had dared to trespass.

  “As I am by nature a woman of peace,” she continued, totally seriously, “I was not accustomed to shooting. So, I shot the tapestry instead. As soon as I touched it, the gun went off three times—tactac-tac! —before I even realized. Which, as it turns out, made the point very well.” She sighed and bowed her head dramatically, as if she’d just confessed to an actual murder.

  “Did your husband stop seeing the other woman?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “Absolutement! But more importantly, my rival believed I was quite mad, and she did not wish to test her luck with me again, nor make a permanent enemy of me,” Venetia said, still relishing the successful vanquishing of a professional rival as well as a competitor for her husband’s affections.

  “Then I’d say you hit the target right in the bull’s-eye,” I said. She stared for a moment, then burst into an appreciative, deepthroated laughter.

  “You women are amazing,” Jeremy muttered.

  “I think it’s amazing that she stayed married to the guy,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.

  Venetia heard this, but shrugged. “L’amour,” she said cheerfully. “So, now you know all I can tell you about the tapestry,” she added sheepishly. “You can see why I had to replace it quickly, so that there would be no evidence of any ‘assault’, which my rival could claim I’d attempted. That is why the new border was so much simpler, and less costly. And as I said, the old one was all worn out anyway,” she added reasonably. “It was time to replace the selvage.”

  “Is there any record of the tapestry’s original border? Paintings, sketches, photographs?” I said.

  “Non, non,” Venetia replied, “nobody, not even the auction house, could come up with any other records, no modello or cartoon, there was nothing, because Armand made it for his daughter, not for a client. Whatever sketches or plans he’d had, he must have destroyed, so that no one could copy it.”

  Or find the treasure, I thought. Then I added, “I meant, do you have any pictures of your wedding with the tapestry in it?”

  She shook her head. “Not of the wedding, because we were married in a church, and we took no pictures of the religious ceremony. Ah, but wait!” she cried, reaching out to grasp my hand in hers, which had those chunky rings, and long nails painted blood-red. “There was a replica of the border pattern—painted right into my private wedding car on the train bleu!”

  “What?!” I nearly shouted.

  “Oh, yes,” Venetia recalled. “When my husband bought the private train car, it was very luxurious, but the walls were simple and austere; too much like a businessman’s wife’s idea of luxury—so, so, so very provincial. Therefore, my husband hired my artist friends who had painted all the wonderful stage sets in my ballets! Ah, they made my private car très, très bon for my wedding.”

  The dreaded buzzer now rang, and Justine the ballet student had arrived. Venetia distractedly told her to come up. Then she directed Jeremy to go to the chest of drawers in the corner, and open the middle drawer, and get the red scrapbook—no, not that red one, the other one—and bring it to her.

  “What about the artists?” I prodded. Venetia explained that her pals at the ballet theatre replicated the motif of the original tapestry border, all along the interior wall moulding of her wedding car on the train. Excited now, she thumbed through the scrapbook that Jeremy had deposited into those red-taloned hands, and she became so engrossed that, when Justine popped in, apologizing profusely for being late, Venetia said, without looking up, “Yes, yes, go do your warm-ups and we’ll start soon . . .”

  Justine glanced at us, grateful that we’d managed to distract and entertain Venetia so that she hadn’t bothered to scold the student for being late. Obediently, Justine trotted off to the far side of the enormous room, deposited her dance sack on the floor against the wall, peeled off her sweat-jacket, and began to do her limbering work at the ballet barre.

  “Ah!” Venetia cried suddenly. “I have it!” She plucked out a black-and-white photo that had been stuck in a pocket with other photos. She leaned over to the lamp next to her, and squinted at it. “Quel dommage! It is not a very good picture,” she admitted. “But at least it is something.”

  I wanted to snatch it out of her hands, but I waited until she passed it to me.

  “Oh, it’s the interior of the car!” I said eagerly, leaning under the lamp myself now.

  “It’s hard to make out, but I assure you the car’s marquetry is Art Deco,” Venetia said. “And, see the pretty mirrors, made of pale blue glass, etched with opaque figures of dancers in the classical manner, like Isadora Duncan? And see the bed? The very finest linen, embroidered by Spanish nuns.”

  It was dazzling, but I did not want to be distracted by the other decor. All I cared about now was the strip of painted border on the walls. I stared at the blurry image where, tantalizingly, I could just about make out some swirling, artistic designs on a painted strip running along the moulding atop all four walls of the carriage. But it was too blurry to discern anything like a cartouche or a Latin inscription. It was frustrating, to be so close to seeing the pattern. I wished the photographer had focused on the walls in the background—instead of the bride and groom, damn it.

  Jeremy peered at the photo, then said to Venetia, “And what has become of this great wedding railroad car?”

  “Ah well, during the second World War, the military took over the railways, too,” Venetia said mournfully. “That war was the end of an entire world. Many friends gone, and never again such luxury and beauty like we had in the old days.” A more serious, meditative look came over her face. “So, the army commandeered many of the private railcars and refitted them to suit their purposes; and eventually the old cars were retired or destroyed. I lost track of it long ago, I do not know what became of it.”

  She fell silent again, then glanced at her student while saying to us, “If you need the picture, you may keep it a while. But, when you are done, I would like to have it back.”

  In the cab returning to the airport, my telephone rang. It was my father.

  “Bonjour, ma petite fille,” he said affectionately, but with a slightly scolding tone. “I know that you are on an important case, but someone has to worry about what we’re going to feed your wedding guests, and I could not wait for a girl with stars in her eyes to give me the go-ahead. So, I have decided to take charge.” He pronounced that last word as shcharzge.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said meekly.

  “I have, already, several recipes to tell you about,” he continued. “So if you have any special requests, now is the time, because soon the menu will be engraved in stone.” I smiled, picturing him seated at the kitchen table, poring over all his fabulous recipes from his days as a gourmet chef. Food was sacred to him, and to our French guests, too. So I pondered this very seriously.

  “Everything all right?” Jeremy asked, seeing my frown of concentration, as I listened.

  “It’s my dad. He’s planning the wedding food. Anything special you want?”

  “Everything he cooks is fantastic to me,” Jeremy said fervently; then suggested, “langoustines.”

  “Dad, Jeremy would like langoustines,” I reported. “And, I noticed that in France they have something wonderful called blue lobster. It’s not really blue on the plate, of course, but it’s so delicate.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, and I heard him mutter the notes he was jotting down. “Shrimp, lobster . . .”

  “Just don’t pick any fish that’s going extinct or is cruelly fished,” I warned, “or my Women4Water gals will be after me.”

  “Leave it to me,” my father said. “I will put the rest of my ideas on ze e-mail to you. You let me know tout de suite if there is anything you want to change.”

  “Thanks, Dad, you’re a peach!” I cried.

  “Peach, yes, well, that reminds me, dessert,” he replied. “The cake. Do you want a la
yer cake or the croquembouche?”

  “Oooh,” I said, visualizing the French wedding dessert that is made of small, ball-shaped cream-filled puffs or profiteroles, stacked high in a narrow, triangular shape like a little Christmas tree, and all “glued” together by caramel, which crunches delightfully when you eat it; hence the name croquembouche, or “crunch in the mouth”.

  Of course, on the other hand, I’ve always adored authentic Victorian layer cakes . . .

  “I could do some-zing like a combination,” my father offered, having guessed at my conundrum. “I’d make a white cake, lots of pretty layers going from larger-to-smaller, in the American wedding style; with buttercream frosting and flowers, and a bit of crushed hazelnut or pistachio. And on top, instead of little bride-and-groom figures, I could put two croquembouche ornaments . . . of doves, or swans . . . ”

  “Yes, swans!” I cried, thinking of Jeremy’s research on happy couples. “And, can the frosting flowers be the color of the burgundy roses I’m carrying for my bouquet?”

  “Très bien! Now you’re talking!” Dad chuckled. “What kind of ganache do you want between the cake layers—coffee, raspberry, apricot, chocolate?”

  “Can we get some chocolate on this cake?” Jeremy was already asking me. “Dark, of course.”

  “Dark chocolate ganache filling, Dad,” I said. “Honorine is coordinating all the wedding details,” I added, “so if you need anything at all, just let her know.”

  “Bon,” said my father approvingly, and we rang off.

  “Gosh,” I said to Jeremy, “we really are getting married, aren’t we?”

  He kissed me. “Looks that way,” he agreed, holding my hand in his.

  “Think it’ll change us?” I asked with a grin.

  “Only for the better,” he promised.

  “I’m marrying you for your finesse and diplomatic skills, naturally,” I responded.

  “Naturally,” he replied.

  “I wish we could solve this case before the wedding,” I added fretfully.