She stopped.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Well, dear, I suppose you’ve guessed from what I said just now.’
‘You brought it into this country without declaring it?’
She sighed. ‘Yes, dear, I did. Of course it was silly of me but I never gave customs duty a thought when I bought the painting, not until just before I came home, a week later, that was, and Archie’s sister asked if I was going to declare it, and well, dear, I really resent having to pay duty on things, don’t you? So anyway I thought I’d better find out just how much the duty would be, and I found it wasn’t duty at all in the ordinary way, dear, there isn’t duty on second-hand pictures being brought in from Australia, but would you believe it they said I would have to pay Value Added Tax, sort of tax on buying things, you know, dear, and I would have to pay eight per cent on whatever I had bought the picture for. Well, I ask you! I was that mad, dear, I can tell you. So Archie’s sister said why didn’t I leave the painting with her, because then if I went back to Australia I would have paid the tax for nothing, but I wasn’t sure I’d go back and anyway I did want to see Sir Alfred Munnings on the wall where Archie would have loved it, so, well, dear, it was all done up nicely in boards and brown paper so I just camouflaged it a bit with my best nightie and popped it in my suitcase, and pushed it through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ lane at Heathrow when I got back, and nobody stopped me.’
‘How much would you have had to pay?’ I said.
‘Well, dear, to be precise, just over seven hundred pounds. And I know that’s not a fortune, dear, but it made me so mad to have to pay tax here because I’d bought something nice in Australia.’
I did some mental arithmetic. ‘So the painting cost about nine thousand?’
‘That’s right, dear. Nine thousand.’ She looked anxious. ‘I wasn’t done, was I? I’ve asked one or two people since I got back and they say lots of Munningses cost fifteen or more.’
‘So they do,’ I said absently. And some could be got for fifteen hundred, and others, I dared say, for less.
‘Well, anyway, dear, it was only when I began to think about insurance that I wondered if I would be found out, if say, the insurance people wanted a receipt or anything, which they probably would, of course, so I didn’t do anything about it, because of course if I did go back to Australia I could just take the picture with me and no harm done.’
‘Awkward,’ I agreed.
‘So now it’s burnt, and I dare say you’ll think it serves me right, because the nine thousand’s gone up in smoke and I won’t see a penny of it back.’
She finished the gin and I bought her another.
‘I know it’s not my business, Maisie, but how did you happen to have nine thousand handy in Australia? Aren’t there rules about exporting that much cash?’
She giggled. ‘You don’t know much about the world, do you, dear? But anyway, this time it was all hunky dory. I just toddled along with Archie’s sister to a jewellers and sold him a brooch I had, a nasty sort of toad, dear, with a socking big diamond in the middle of its forehead, something to do with Shakespeare, I think, though I never got it clear, anyway I never wore it, it was so ugly, but of course I’d taken it with me because of it being worth so much, and I sold it for nine thousand five, though in Australian dollars of course, so there was no problem, was there?’
Maisie took it for granted I would be eating with her, so we drifted in to dinner. Her appetite seemed healthy, but her spirits were damp.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you, dear, about the picture?’
‘Of course not, Maisie.’
‘I could get into such trouble, dear.’
‘I know.’
‘A fine, of course,’ she said. ‘And I suppose that might be the least of it. People can be so beastly about a perfectly innocent little bit of smuggling.’
‘No one will find out, if you keep quiet.’ A thought struck me. ‘Unless, that is, you’ve told anyone already that you’d bought it?’
‘No, dear, I didn’t, because of thinking I’d better pretend I’d had it for years, and of course I hadn’t even hung it on the wall yet because one of the rings was loose in the frame and I thought it might fall down and be damaged, and I couldn’t decide who to ask to fix it.’ She paused for a mouthful of prawn cocktail. ‘I expect you’ll think me silly, dear, but I suppose I was feeling a bit scared of being found out, not guilty exactly because I really don’t see why we should pay that irritating tax but anyway I didn’t not only not hang it up, I hid it.
‘You hid it? Still wrapped up?’
‘Well, yes, dear, more or less wrapped up. Of course I’d opened it when I got home, and that’s when I found the ring coming loose with the cord through it, so I wrapped it up again until I’d decided what to do.’
I was fascinated. ‘Where did you hide it?’
She laughed. ‘Nowhere very much, dear. I mean, I was only keeping it out of sight to stop people asking about it, of course, so I slipped it behind one of the radiators in the lounge, and don’t look so horrified dear, the central heating was turned off.’
I painted at the house all the next day, but neither D.J. nor anyone else turned up.
In between stints at the easel I poked around a good deal on my own account, searching for Maisie’s treasures. I found a good many recognisable remains, durables like bed-frames, kitchen machines and radiators, all of them twisted and buckled not merely by heat but by the weight of the whole edifice from roof downwards having collapsed inwards. Occasional remains of heavy rafters lay blackly in the thick ash, but apart from these, everything combustible had totally, as one might say, combusted.
Of all the things Maisie had described, and of all the dozens she hadn’t, I found only the wrought iron gate from Lady Tythe’s old home, which had divided the hall from the sittingroom. Lady Tythe would never have recognised it.
No copper warming pans, which after all had been designed to withstand red-hot coals. No metal fire screen. No marble table. No antique spears.
Naturally, no Munnings.
When I took my paint-stained fingers back to the Beach at five o’clock I found Maisie waiting for me in the hall. Not the kindly, basically cheerful Maisie I had come to know, but a belligerent woman in a full-blown state of rage.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said, fixing me with a furious eye.
I couldn’t think how I could have offended her.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘The bar’s shut,’ she said. ‘So come upstairs to my room. Bring all your stuff with you.’ She gestured to the suitcase. ‘I’m so mad I think I’ll absolutely burst.’
She did indeed, in the lift, look in danger of it. Her cheeks were bright red with hard outlines of colour against the pale surrounding skin. Her blonde-rinsed hair, normally lacquered into sophistication, stuck out in wispy spikes, and for the first time since I’d met her her mouth was not glistening with lipstick.
She threw open the door of her room and stalked in. I followed, closing it after me.
‘You’ll never believe it,’ she said forcefully, turning to face me and letting go with all guns blazing. ‘I’ve had the police here half the day, and those insurance men here the other half, and do you know what they’re saying?’
‘Oh Maisie.’ I sighed inwardly. It had been inevitable.
‘What do you think I am, I asked them,’ she said. ‘I was so mad. There they were, having the nerve to suggest I’d sold all my treasures and over-insured my house, and was trying to take the insurance people for a ride. I told them, I told them over and over, that everything was in its place when I went to Betty’s and if it was over-insured it was to allow for inflation and anyway the brokers had advised me to put up the amount pretty high, and I’m glad I took their advice, but that Mr Lagland says they won’t be paying out until they have investigated further and he was proper sniffy about it, and no sympathy at all for me having lost everything. They were absolutely beastly, and I hate them all.’