“Thank you, Styles. I shall be on parade at eight.”
BEFORE THE GONG sounded he would set in motion the plans he’d made with Hunnyton, and he’d start in the kitchen. He looked at his watch. The lull between tea and drinks. This was the right time to catch Ben and Mrs. Bolton and explain what he wanted from them.
Two hours to go before he could disappear to his room and be certain he would not be disturbed. At seven he would go up and do his packing, preparing for a quick exit. Lagonda back to Cambridge and then whatever train was available to get him back to reeky old London. He could be back at his desk by midmorning on Monday, checking one last time the wording of the resignation that he kept permanently in his drawer undated and ready to be delivered to the chief commissioner. He could be taking one last look at the plane trees lining the Thames Embankment. Like them, he’d absorbed year on year the contamination of his surroundings and finally, in a moment of release, he’d throw off the whole layering of filth to reveal the pristine white trunk beneath. If his core did indeed remain unsullied. He couldn’t be certain that the rot hadn’t begun to penetrate.
In an odd mood of self-doubt and nostalgia, spiked by an edge of excitement and anticipation of change, he first made his way to the Great Hall. He passed the crowd of disapproving ancestors in review one by one, countering their superior stares with his own knowledgeable gaze. He moved on down the corridor to the dining hall, where he annoyed a couple of footmen who were putting the finishing touches to the dinner table by taking up space in front of the Canaletto landscape of the Thames. Saying a quiet farewell? There hadn’t been much he’d enjoyed at Melsett but he’d been glad to see this.
The enchantment was broken by a confident voice at his elbow. A low and intimate voice that sent a shiver down his side. “So here it is! I’d never seen one of his views of London before. It’s superb, of course. Though I have to say, once one has seen any of his sunlit pictures of Venice, the contrast with a grey northern cityscape is striking but unwelcome. The dome of St. Paul’s seems reduced, the architecture uninviting, the water murky, don’t you think?”
The voice was accompanied by a trace of perfume matching in its sophistication. Cuir de Russie? Masculine tones of birch and amber were sharpened by a top note of jasmine. It spoke to Joe of Paris, of leather jewel cases spilling over with diamonds, tickets for the Opéra and champagne. He’d last encountered it in the plush, enclosed comfort of a first class sleeping carriage on the Train Bleu heading south. The women who wore it gave and expected no quarter. They relished an armed flirtation and they knew how to deal with irony.
“If the subject is dear to one’s heart and the artistry sublime, I claim no disappointment, Miss Despond. If I had the resources to buy it, I would think I’d died and gone to heaven.”
“Call me Dorothy. I remember that you’re Joe. Anyway, Joe, I don’t think it’s for sale so we both have to put heaven on hold.”
Joe had the clear impression she was trying to provoke him.
“There are others perhaps more attainable … Did the Stubbs take your fancy? The Gainsborough? Cecily Lady Truelove is, as we speak, locking up her Lancret, secreting her Seurat, I believe.”
He meant it to sting and, hearing her sharp intake of breath, he guessed he’d been successful. She disengaged with a fencer’s flourish and stepped between him and the painting. Her eyes locked on his in disdain. “What are you? Cecily Truelove’s guard-dog? You are very rude, even for a policeman!”
“I apologise. I acknowledge that the goods you deal in are vastly more expensive than a pound of pippins. The last thing I’d want to do is ruin Truelove’s chances of selling off his birthright. Suffering from straightened financial circumstances, as he is at the moment, he may be minded to do just that.”
She had not known.
The pallor of her face, the long silence before she replied told Joe all he wanted to know. Was he being an utter cad, revealing Truelove’s position? Yes, he was. He could make out a case with no difficulty. It was a caddish thing to do and far outside his usual meticulous manners. But the rebellious streak in Joe took up arms alongside his unfashionable belief in the rights of women to live their lives with the freedom accorded their male counterparts. The men in Truelove’s world could learn of his imminent destitution by the simple exchange of information from one deeply buttoned arm chair to the next in a St. James’s club, between the rows of leather-covered benches in the Houses of Parliament, between shots on the grouse moor. Who would whisper a lifesaving truth in Dorothy’s ear? No one. She and her father were not on the circulation list when it came to scurrilous confidences, distanced from the English establishment as they were by class and nationality. Even set apart by their wealth, which brought with it a certain mistrust and, in these hard times, envy. If Joe slipped away into the dark now and left this girl, however worldly and uncongenial, to be hoodwinked by Truelove, he would hold himself guilty of neglect of duty for ever more.
At last, Joe had chosen to pick up the gauntlet thrown down at his feet some time ago. A l’outrance, Truelove! To the end, however bitter!
“What are you trying to say?” she asked.
“That Lavinia Truelove, who largely—and generously—financed her husband’s activities during their married life, died having almost exhausted her resources. James may have been her sole heir but he inherited no more than the few thousand that remained of the marriage settlement with which to run his estate and his academic and altruistic concerns.” He kept his voice level, the tone that of a trusted family lawyer. “A Lavinia remaining alive might well have been able to intercede with her father on her husband’s behalf when the bottom was reached, but with her death in questionable circumstances being whispered about on all sides, it’s unlikely that he would find himself able to help a man suspected of killing his daughter. The pay of a government minister will hardly maintain a staff of five in Town, let alone the fifty he presently employs in the country. You will be aware of the present straightened circumstances of the English landowner, indeed, the whole nation? James Truelove, I think, will have calculated to the nearest thousand what he can get for his Canaletto and all the other glories. I suggest that if you have an interest, you seek out the man himself and verify what I have just told you. If I correctly understand your circumstances, the truth ought not to be kept from you.”
He would have sworn she hadn’t known about Truelove’s dire financial circumstances and he thought, from her silence, that she was in confused retreat but her answer, when it came, parried his attack. It was delivered with a growing assurance, even scorn. “Oh, old news! Yes, you’re right. James is contemplating auctioning off one or two of his paintings, but we’re hardly talking of a closing-down sale. He’ll be buying others to replace them. More modern in taste maybe. Pictures degenerate. They have to be moved on before they near the end of their useful existence. Before boredom and decay set in. I would certainly advise James to dispose of this Canaletto. It’s of England but it’s not English. It’s … displaced. Rootless. A refugee. Like me,” she added, revealing an unexpected crack in her confidence. “Maybe you’d like to buy it? You don’t seem to be a friend of his, but he could probably let you have it for … ten thousand pounds. Do you have ten thousand pounds, Commissioner?”
“If I had cash to spare I’d spend it on a Whistler,” he said blandly. “Tell me, now you’ve done your audit—how do you value the ancestors in the Great Hall? There are some impressive signatures on those canvasses.”
At last a feeling look and a half smile. “No idea. I’ve looked, of course. But I’m not very keen on selling off … people. One’s own people. I have no ancestors I can name, let alone look at. My father doesn’t even remember who his grandparents were. I feel the lack of background acutely. At home, I drink cocktails with men whose people crossed the ocean aboard the Mayflower; here, I take tea with the bony descendants of the Norman Conqueror. I expect you know—we are …” She reached for a word and came up with two—both of them French. “Parvenus … arrivistes … Why does it sound so much less insulting to confess it in French?”