“Not according to the police. The painting was in your charge, Mr Rossendale, your fingerprints were the only ones found on the door’s lockplate, and you told your mother that you had hidden the painting away and told no one its exact whereabouts.” Her voice was biting with disbelief and scorn. “Yet on the morning of the removal, it wasn’t there! It’s a perfect mystery, isn’t it? A locked room, undisturbed alarms, and a missing painting. I suppose you’ll tell me that dozens of people knew how to disable the alarm system?”
“One or two knew,” I said feebly.
“And where were you the next day? When everyone else was desperately trying to help the police? You were sailing across the Channel! No doubt carrying the painting with you, but of course no one suspected you that day, why should they? You were the Earl of Stowey, the apparent victim of the crime, but since then, my lord, your protestations of innocence have worn a little thin. Isn’t it a fact that every guilty man protests his innocence, and does so as vehemently as you are now?”
“But why on earth would I steal from myself?” I challenged her with the obvious defence.
“Clearly from your dislike of your mother. So long as she was alive she shared control of the Stowey Trust with you, and doubtless she would have spent the proceeds of the painting in ways you did not like.”
She was so damnably cool. Most of the evidence she had adduced was true, but it was still circumstantial or coincidental. I hadn’t stolen the Sunflowers. I closed my eyes, wondering how I could convince her. “Please listen,” I said. I opened my eyes to see her level, judgmental gaze on me. “Those two men came to kill me. I’m trying to find out why they did it because, truly, I don’t understand. They said they wanted to prevent me from getting hold of the painting, but I can’t do that because I don’t know where it is.”
She laughed scornfully at my protestation of ignorance. “I can quite imagine why they should want you dead.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
She hesitated, then evidently decided to speak her brutal version of the truth. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s four years since the painting was stolen, and in those four years we’ve heard nothing. There hasn’t been a whisper. We’ve been listening, Mr Rossendale, because there are art dealers who know about stolen paintings and we’ve been paying them to pass on any rumour they might hear, but in four years? Nothing. Now, suddenly, there’s a flurry of activity. A man questions me brutally, the same man allegedly tries to kill you. And what has changed? Two things, Mr Rossendale. First your mother has died, and secondly you have come home. Doesn’t that suggest something?”
“Not to me.”
“Oh, come!” she protested at what she perceived as my intransigence. “If the painting had been recovered while your mother was alive, she would have shared in the proceeds of its legitimate sale. Now, under the terms of the Stowey Trust, you are the sole beneficial owner. Clearly it is now in your strong interest to retrieve the painting and place it on the open market.”
“Jesus wept,” I said in frustrated anger at her glib assumption of my guilt.
“It isn’t my place to speculate,” Jennifer said, but proceeded to do so anyway, “but I would imagine that the two men are working for whoever you sold the painting to. That person clearly does not want you to betray his possession of stolen goods, so is taking care to silence you. Doubtless you sold it four years ago for a derisory sum, or else you would not need to reclaim it now. It’s a classic case of thieves falling out, and it’s all rather sordid, and I find it more than a little insulting that you should see fit to involve me in your attempts to avoid trouble.”
“I’m not a thief,” I said in hopeless protest.
“So you say. But you should know that Sir Leon considers your guilt or innocence entirely irrelevant. If you can give us any information that will lead to the Van Gogh’s recovery, then you’ll be well rewarded as well as handsomely paid for the painting itself.”
“I don’t give a monkey’s toss about Sir Leon’s reward,” I said brutally, “but I do give a damn about people who try to have me killed.”
“That’s just masculine pride,” she said scornfully. “No one ever accused you of humility.”
“You know nothing about me,” I said angrily.
She smiled. “I know a great deal about you, my lord.” She made the honorific sound like an insult. “We’ve spent four years searching for that painting, and our starting point, and our ending point, is always you. So, my lord, I am somewhat of an expert on your grubby life. You were expelled from three public schools, you’ve been arrested four times…”
“Just drunk and disorderlies,” I protested, “nothing else. Anyone can get pissed.”
“One charge of grievous bodily harm,” she insisted icily. “You served two months in a Tasmanian jail for that.”
She had done her homework. No one had ever known that it had been the twenty-eighth Earl of Stowey in that jail, but she had somehow discovered it. Mind you, the bastard I had knifed had been pleading for trouble, but I didn’t think Jennifer Pallavicini would be amenable to that excuse. “It was all a long time ago,” I said feebly.
“You’re a very destructive man.” She ignored my plea of mitigation. “In previous times, my lord, you’d have been sent to a forgotten corner of the empire as a remittance man. Doubtless your family was very relieved when you and your friend decided to sail away. Oh, I know about Mr Barratt, too. What was his attraction for you? Was it simply that your family hated his influence on you, so naturally you flaunted him in front of them?”
“No,” I said, “he’s a friend.”
“But he’s settled down, which must leave you friendless, and doubtless not a little short of cash as well. Is that why you’re here, my lord? Do you want some money to hire your own thugs who’ll protect you while you double-cross your former accomplices?”
Her tone was deliberately offensive, but I did not answer. I had been staring at the green pastures, at the slow tractor, and at the long hedgerows which were bright with stitchwort and campion. I was suddenly assailed by the strangest notion that I didn’t want to go away again. I wanted to stay. I’d had my adventures, and it was time to put down some roots. I’d seen the ending of the sea-gypsies, I’d seen them dying of fevers and the pox, I’d seen them selling their bodies in lousy little towns, I’d seen them crawling home in boats that were lashed together with fraying coir and untarred manila, and I suddenly felt lonely. I disliked the feeling. I forgot it as I made one last attempt to convince Jennifer Pallavicini of my innocence. “Do you really think,” I said, “that if I’d stolen the painting, I’d rock the boat now? If I’d sold it to someone, and was now trying to get it back, I’d probably end up in jail myself! Why should I risk that?”
“Because doubtless you don’t believe that you are in risk of a jail sentence.” She pushed herself away from the balustrade. “Do you know where the painting is?”
“Of course I don’t. I’ve already told you that.”
“Did you steal it?”
“No!”
“Can you tell me anything that might help us to recover it?”
“Beyond what I’ve told you, no.”
“Then I fail to see how you can help us. You’ll find the car park is through that gate. Good day to you, my lord.” She walked away.
“Where’s my sweater?” I called after her.
She did not turn round, but just waved in negligent reply. It was just possible, I thought, that she raised two fingers as she waved. She was very beautiful, and I was very wretched.
So go back to sea, I told myself, where nothing matters except the wind and the waters and the cold high stars. Because here, on land, I was everybody’s scapegoat, but there I was as good as the next man and better than most. And it was there, despite my sudden wish to stay ashore, that I belonged, so it was there that I would have to go.