“Old family friend helping out?”
Flavia frowned with disapproval at her lack of invention. “Who gives a second-rater like Forster a place in his very exclusive gallery? And who risks his career by going to Italy to pay money to thieves and implicates Forster in the theft of the Pollaiuolo? He wouldn’t touch something like that unless he had to. He’s not the sort to do people favours like that. Not good enough. Perhaps you should tell me why? Save time and effort on the guessing games.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Mary replied, sipping the drink, then putting it down again and composing herself for the trial of being perfectly frank. At least, Flavia thought, they weren’t going to have to batter their way through any more lies and evasions. One thing about Mary Verney, she was eminently sensible. She knew when she was beaten.
“He based his entire career on poor Veronica’s little weaknesses,” she said with a sigh. “He took a vast percentage, I gather. So much that the silly woman never really benefited much from her habit. Enough to keep things ticking over, not much more. Which was typical of her, really. I mean, if you’re going to be a crook, you might as well make money out of it, don’t you think?”
“Was it always part of the plan to kill Forster?”
“Certainly not,” she said robustly. “If I’d wanted that, then I could have killed him and had done with it. No. I simply wanted him off my back. His dying made life appallingly complicated.”
“How did he get on your back in the first place?”
“Forster knew Veronica in Italy, and when she lifted that Uccello, he offered to help her out by getting rid of it. It was just a way of worming himself into her affections, although I suspect he also made quite a lot of money out of it. Then communications ceased for years, until he was called in to organize the collection of someone in Belgium. He did it quite well, and noticed that a picture by Pollaiuolo wasn’t all that it seemed. He worked quite hard, and found out what it really was, and absconded with all the sale documents concerning it.”
“Which were?”
“Which were, firstly a deed of sale countersigned by Veronica and by Winterton as the dealer who organized the deal, and secondly an export permission saying it came from the collection at Weller House.”
“Isn’t that a risky way of selling hot pictures?”
“Evidently, as we are sitting here talking about it,” she said drily. “But who am I to judge? If you think about it, I suppose you could say that the painting’s original ownership was undocumented; it had been hidden away for some time, there was nothing to prove that it hadn’t come from Weller House and the inventories here were vague. Forster got suspicious only because he knew Veronica and at some stage after Uncle Godfrey’s death had gone through the Weller collection inventory, so knew what was in it—and what certainly wasn’t. Very bad luck on their part.
“Anyway, Forster figured out what might have happened, and decided to follow up. He wrote Veronica a letter, came to see her and put his cards on the table: ‘Hi. Remember me? I knew you in Florence. When you were stealing a Uccello. Nice to see you’re still at it. Pollaiuolo now, eh? And I have documents to prove it. What’s it worth?’
“At this stage, you see, he didn’t even know the start of it, but once he was in the house, it didn’t take him long to figure it out. He began dropping little hints; asking for favours, then money, then a house.”
“So what was the problem with your cousin? Couldn’t she be stopped?”
“Again, you’re asking the wrong person. I would have stopped her, but no one asked me. When she came back from Italy, she told my uncle everything and he panicked. He asked Winterton’s advice. Personally, I think the obvious thing would have been to go to the police and help them recover the picture. ‘Sorry, Veronica had one of her little turns; you know how it is.’ Then followed it by locking her up or getting her good psychiatric treatment.
“But, of course, my family didn’t think like that. The first thing that worried them was the shame of it all. All their instincts were to cover it up, and Winterton encouraged them to think that it would be easy to do this. I honestly don’t think that it ever occurred to them that a real crime had been committed. That’s what oiks like Gordon Brown do; Beaumonts are merely indiscreet. And, of course, they kept Veronica’s cut from the sale.
“Besides, initially no one thought it would become a habit. And then it was too late: by the time Veronica had hung half a dozen little acquisitions on the wall and Winterton had got rid of them, they’d compromised themselves rather badly. Manufacturing fake provenances? Handling stolen goods? Benefiting from the sales? How could they explain that away? The only problem was Forster, but Winterton did a fine job of persuading him that he was just as guilty and more likely to go to jail if anyone said anything. Fine for as long as Forster thought it was an isolated incident.
“As I say, Winterton built a lucrative clandestine career on it, and recycled the money into legitimate picture dealing. Did very nicely too, once he’d worked out who were the richest clients with the smallest scruples. He’s a prig and a snob, but he’s no fool either.
“Unlike Forster who, once he’d started, didn’t know when to stop. He pushed too far, asking for this house and everything. He knew she was ill, and he had a vision of himself as Lord of Weller or something. Always a climber. Now, Veronica was crazy, but not that mad: and he attacked her in the one area where she would fight back—her family pride. She was determined to preserve Weller in the Beaumont family, even if that was me.
“So she dug in her heels, and told him to do his worst. Forster says he will do just that. Veronica realizes he means it and she reaches for the pills as the only way of stopping him. That’s one interpretation.”
“What’s another?”
“That Veronica decides to give herself up, confess all and denounce Forster as a blackmailer. And that Forster murders her.”
“Is that likely?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit too much like a Victorian melodrama, really.”
“Why, then, did you revive it all? I assume it was you who prompted Fancelli to call in the Italian police?”
“Absolutely not. That wasn’t the idea at all.”
“So what did happen?”
She sighed wearily, then nodded sadly. “I was always on the outside of the family; I knew Veronica was a bit loopy, but never exactly how much. She died, I inherited this place, and realized the finances were catastrophic. So I decided to cut back, and the biggest—and pleasantest—saving was to get rid of Geoffrey Forster. And I got a little visit. It was the first I’d heard of any of it. At first I just laughed and said I didn’t believe him. He suggested I go and ask Winterton. I did, and Winterton told me the whole story.
“It was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. I inherit a stately home, and find that what I’ve really inherited is a rundown money sink kept afloat by thieving lunatics, up to its eyes in debt, pursued by the taxman and being blackmailed into the ground as well. I mean, Jesus. What a bloody mess.
“The trouble was knowing whether Forster really had enough proof. Winterton figured out who might have known something which would back him up, and the riskiest two characters—apart from himself—were Fancelli and Sandano. It wasn’t certain if they knew anything, but it was important to find out. So, he visited them and made sure that, if asked, they would deny anything about Veronica and say that they thought Forster was the thief; and I went through all the papers here and destroyed any embarrassing ones. And there were quite a lot, believe me.”