But most of that constituted hopeful conjecture, Lynley thought. Only part of it skirted close to the truth. He tucked the canvas under his arm and went to the door.
Harry Rodger answered, Christian and Perdita at his heels. He said only, “It’s Pen you want?” to Lynley’s request, and then to his son, “Go fetch Mummy, Chris.”
When the little boy scampered up the stairway to do so, shouting “Mummy!” and bashing the worn head of a hobbyhorse against the balusters with additional cries of “Ker-blowey, Ker-blew!” Rodger nodded Lynley into the sitting room. He swung his daughter onto his hip and glanced without speaking at the canvas beneath Lynley’s arm. Perdita curled herself against her father’s chest.
Above them Christian’s footsteps thumped along the upstairs corridor. His hobbyhorse banged against the wall. “Mummy!” Small fists pounded on a door.
“You’ve brought her some work, haven’t you?” Rodger’s words were polite, his face deliberately impassive.
“I’d like her to look at this, Harry. I need her expertise.”
The other man’s lips offered a brief smile, one which accepted information without indicating that it was at all welcome. He said, “Excuse me, please,” and he walked into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
A moment later, Christian preceded both his mother and his aunt into the sitting room. Somewhere in his sojourn through the house, he’d picked up a totsized vinyl holster, and he was wrestling it inexpertly round his waist, its companion toy gun dangling to his knees. “I shoot you, mister,” he said to Lynley, dragging on the gun’s handle and knocking himself into Lady Helen’s legs in his effort to get it out. “I shoot, Auntie Leen.”
“Those aren’t the wisest words to say to a policeman, Chris.” Lady Helen knelt in front of him, and saying, “Don’t be such a wiggle-worm,” she fastened the holster round his waist.
He giggled and shouted, “Ker-blang you, mister!” and ran to the sofa where he beat the pistol against the pillows.
“If nothing else, he has a fine future in crime,” Lynley noted.
Penelope raised both hands in futility. “It’s nearly his naptime. He gets a bit wild when he’s tired.”
“I’d hate to think what he’s like when he’s fully awake.”
“Ker-plough!” Christian yelled. He rolled onto the floor and began crawling in the direction of the hall, making shooting noises and taking aim at imaginary foes.
Penelope watched him and shook her head. “I’ve considered sedating him until his eighteenth birthday, but what would I do for laughs?” As Christian began an assault on the stairway, she said with a nod towards the canvas, “What have you brought?”
Lynley unrolled it along the back of the sofa, gave her a moment to observe it from across the room, and said, “What can you do with it?”
“Do?”
“Not a restoration, Tommy,” Lady Helen said doubtfully.
Penelope looked up from the canvas. She said, “Heavens. You must be joking.”
“Why?”
“Tommy, it’s a ruin.”
“I don’t need it repaired. I just need to establish what’s underneath the top layer of paint.”
“But how do you even know there’s something underneath it?”
“Look closer. There has to be. You can see it. And besides, it’s the only explanation.”
Penelope asked for no further details. She merely walked to the sofa for a closer look and touched her fingers to the surface of the canvas. “It would take weeks to clean this off,” she said. “You’ve no idea what it would entail. This sort of thing is done inches at a time across a canvas, a single layer at a time. One doesn’t just dump a bottle of solvent on it and wipe it off like a window being cleaned.”
“Blast,” Lynley muttered.
“Ker-blooey!” Christian yelled from his position of potential ambush on the stairs.
“Still…” Penelope tapped her index fi nger against her lip. “Let me take it into the kitchen and have a look under stronger light.”
Her husband was standing at the stove, fl ipping through the day’s post. His daughter leaned against him, one arm encircling his leg, one apple cheek pressed against his thigh. Sleepily, she said, “Mummy,” and Rodger raised his head from the letter he was perusing. His eyes took in the canvas that Penelope carried. His face was unreadable.
Penelope said, “If you’ll just clear off the work top,” and waited with the canvas in her hands while Lynley and Lady Helen moved aside the mixing bowls, lunch dishes, story books, and silverware. Then she fl opped the canvas down and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Pen,” her husband said.
“In a moment,” she replied. She went to a drawer and took out a magnifying glass, fondly running her fingers through her daughter’s hair as she passed.
“Where’s the baby?” Rodger asked.
Penelope bent over the work top and scrutinised first the individual blotches of paint and then the rips in the canvas itself. “Ultraviolet,” she said. “Perhaps infrared.” She looked up at Lynley. “Do you need the painting itself? Or would a photograph do?”
“Photograph?”
“Pen, I asked-”
“We have three options. An X-ray would show us the entire skeleton of the painting- everything that’s been painted on the canvas no matter how many layers have been used. An ultraviolet light would give us whatever work’s been done on top of the varnish-if there’s been repainting, for instance. An infrared photo would give us whatever comprised the initial sketch for the painting. And any doctoring that’s been done to the signature. If there is a signature, of course. Would any of that be helpful?”
Lynley looked at the lacerated canvas and considered the options. “I should guess an X-ray,” he said reflectively. “But if that doesn’t do it, can we try something else?”
“Certainly. I’ll just-”
“Penelope.” Harry Rodger’s face had mottled, although his voice was determinedly pleasant. “Isn’t it time that the twins had a lie down? Christian’s been acting like a madman for the past twenty minutes, and Perdita’s falling asleep on her feet.”
Penelope glanced at the wall clock that hung above the stove. She chewed on her lip and looked at her sister. Lady Helen smiled faintly, perhaps in acknowledgement, perhaps in encouragement. “You’re right, of course,” Penelope said with a sigh. “They do need to nap.”
“Good. Then-”
“So if you’ll see to them yourself, darling, the rest of us can pop this canvas round to the Fitzwilliam to see what can be done with it. The baby’s been fed. She’s already asleep. And the twins won’t give you much trouble so long as you read them something from Cautionary Verses. Christian’s quite partial to that poem about Mathilda. Helen must have read it to him half a dozen times before he dropped off yesterday.” She began rolling up the canvas. “I’ll just need a moment to dress,” she told Lynley.
When she’d left the room, Rodger lifted up his daughter. He looked at the doorway as if in the expectation of Penelope’s return. When that did not occur, when instead they heard her saying, “Daddy will help you have a lie down, Christian darling,” he gave his attention to Lynley for a moment as Christian pounded down the stairs and across the sitting room towards the kitchen.
“She isn’t well,” Rodger said. “You know as well as I that she shouldn’t be leaving this house. I hold you responsible-both of you, Helen-if anything happens.”
“We’re merely going to the Fitzwilliam Museum,” Lady Helen replied, sounding for all the world like a model of reason. “What on earth could possibly happen to her there?”
“Daddy!” Christian flung himself into the room and crashed euphorically against his father’s legs. “Read ’Tilda to me! Now!”
“I’m warning you, Helen,” Rodger said, and stabbing a finger in Lynley’s direction, “I’m warning the both of you.”