A Rather Lovely Inheritance (32 page)

He turned to me with the first real sign of earthly curiosity when he said a bit too casually,“May I ask how you came into possession of this painting?”

Jeremy was ready for that. “She inherited it,” he said. “Her family has documentation of its sale from the original Italian family who possessed it for generations.”

Dr. Mateo bowed his head politely to me. “Well, your family evidently understands its value so well that they were wise enough to keep—how is it you say, ‘a low profile,’ ” he said. “I have always thought that in Fabrizi’s work—at least, in the Three Virgins—I could see not merely the student of Leonardo, but the hand of the master himself.”

Jeremy and I were stunned into momentary silence.“Do you mean to say,” Jeremy said finally, as if he had to say it aloud, bluntly, to believe it,“that you think this painting is an original Leonardo da Vinci? That Fabrizi didn’t draw it at all?” Dr. Mateo held out his hands with the palms up toward Jeremy, as if to slow him down, steady him.

“No, no. I think, as is often the case with student and teacher, you have a bit of both. Here is where I see the hand of the master,” he said, pointing to the outstretched fingers of the Madonna, reaching to the baby who was holding out his chubby hand to her. “In the fingers, the folds of the clothes. I am not so certain of the surrounding work—the window, the background . . .”

“But the baby,” I said. “Babies usually have the faces of little old men, or wise old cupids, with too many thoughts in their heads. But this one looks like a real infant.”

Dr. Mateo gave me a smile that was like a reward.“That is perhaps because,” he said, “Fabrizi was a woman. Annamaria Fabrizi. She was quite a remarkable woman. She died at the age of twenty-eight.”

I gulped. I hate it when people die younger than I am. And a woman, no less. It makes me hear that clock ticking again in my own life. It makes me think about how foolish it is to imagine you’ve got all the time in the world to do what you want. I’d imagined him—her—older, because of her obvious skill.What else might Fabrizi have painted if she’d managed to live long enough?

Jeremy, however, was having no such struggles with the meaning of the brevity of existence. He was in that knight-errant mode, and he wasn’t going home until he’d gotten the information he came for.

“Do you think other people will be inclined to agree with you?” he asked.

Dr. Mateo shrugged patiently. “It’s possible, it’s possible. I expect that many others will want to test my theory, see the painting and decide.” He sighed, as if anticipating the sharp wrangling, the posturing, the egos that would be involved.“You must be prepared for a reaction. People always want to fight about these things, because there are often opposing interests involved.”

“Can you tell me,” Jeremy asked delicately,“even in a general way, of course—if people agree with you and say that the painting very likely had some work done by Leonardo—what might the painting then be worth?”

It’s never easy to raise the issue of money with guys like Mateo, even though money is what’s been lurking under the discussion the whole time. I half expected Mateo to hedge, hem and haw, and indicate that it was crass to even bring it up.

But Dr. Mateo looked Jeremy straight in the eye. “Here are the possibilities. If it is thought to have nothing to do with the school of Leonardo, then its value at auction would not be, in my estimation, worth the sale of it. If it is a copy of a lost original by Leonardo—a copy that was, say, painted by one of his assistants—even then it could be valued at say, four million pounds,” he said calmly.

And before Jeremy could say a word, Dr. Mateo added solemnly, “And if it were thought that Leonardo had painted some of it but not all of it, that would still increase the price to perhaps ten or fifteen million. But of course if it is determined that it is the great man’s original, then it could go to forty million pounds, or, if the auction was handled by those who know how to do this sort of thing, and the buyers wanted it badly enough, they say such a work might even fetch one hundred and forty million pounds.”

At that point, I did feel dizzy. I had to sit down, and I plonked myself right onto his high wooden stool, which was the only seat available. Jeremy looked a little pale, but steady on his feet. He was accustomed to dealing with rich clients, and when he heard that such astronomical sums were at stake, some electric current of energy seemed to perk him up like a racehorse snorting for the gate to spring open.When Dr. Mateo’s secretary buzzed him to say that his wife was on the telephone, and he excused himself, Jeremy took me aside.

“Okay,” he said briskly. “This little package has to go under lock and key right now. My firm has offices in Rome.They can hold it in a vault for you.”

“All right,” I said, feeling dazed.

“And while we’re there,” he said, “there’s a little lady I think we’d better pay a call on.”

“M
UM’S GOT PLENTY OF ROOM IN THE VILLA SHE’S RENTING, SO WE won’t have to stay in a hotel,” Jeremy insisted as we drove south to Rome to deposit the painting in the vaults of his firm’s Italian offices.“And she’s got plenty of explaining to do,” he added darkly. He telephoned to alert her that we were on our way. I made him promise that no matter what happened, he wouldn’t get sarcastic or holler at his mother.

But by the time we’d dropped off the painting and reached her villa late that night, she’d already gone to bed.The servants had left us a cold supper, and we ate like sleepwalkers, then drifted upstairs into our bedrooms and tumbled gratefully into bed. I just lay there with my muscles twitching and my nerves vibrating, and then I fell into a deep sleep, disturbed only briefly the next morning by a shy maid who delivered a tray of coffee and boiled eggs, and a note from Aunt Sheila saying she had a morning engagement but would meet us for lunch. I ate, bathed, sat on the bed trying to work up the energy to dress, and fell asleep all over again.Then I woke in time for lunch.

The house had been spooky-dark when we arrived at night, but now in the daylight I saw that it was a fine old villa on a hilltop of Rome, with tall doors and high vaulted ceilings, and when you flung the shutters open you could see beyond the bustling streets and buildings to the surrounding hills with their tall, imposing poplars standing like cool green sentinels.

Jeremy had slept late, too. I met him on the wide, curving staircase. “Don’t act like a lawyer,” I warned him. He shot me a weary look as we went inside the cool terracotta-colored sitting room with a marble floor that made the sunlight undulate as if it were reflected on water.

Aunt Sheila looked wary as we entered. She was seated on a dark blue sofa, and she wore a trim, green and white A-line sleeveless dress that ended above the knee, with white stockings and white flat shoes with a bow on them. And with those frosty blonde bangs and dark eyeliner, she seemed like an elegantly coiffed model from the early 1960s.

“Jeremy darling,” she murmured, offering him her cheek to kiss as he dutifully bent toward her. She appeared to wish that she could get this over with as fast as possible. But she gave me an especially bright smile.

“Hallo, Penny,” she said. “Would you two care for a drink?”

“What are you having?” Jeremy asked.

“Gin and T, dear,” she said.

“Same,” he said. “Penny?”

“Sure,” I said, on the verge of adding
what the hell
. I had no idea what, exactly, was going on here, but they both seemed suspiciously chummy and civilized all of a sudden, which made me dread that a whacking big storm was brewing underneath.

“Harold’s been keeping me up on what you two have been doing,” she said quickly. “He seems to think it’s all going to turn out okay for you both?” Her sentence turned into a question at the very end.

“Hope so,” Jeremy said.

“Fingers crossed, then,” she said.

Key-hrist
, I thought to myself. Right now there was immense screaming and yelling and threatening going on back in France, because Jeremy had phoned Harold, who got Severine to alert the police, and the police had traced the license number and caught one of Rollo’s thugs—the one who’d gone to Monte Carlo with him, who was wanted for other crimes and therefore was spilling the beans on what Rollo had hired him to do—namely, steal the painting and hire a guy to make a fake replica of it that would turn up on the estate again so we’d all assume that Aunt Penelope had owned only the copy in the first place. My parents had been alerted, and were going to let me know when they could get a flight to London.Yet here we were, Jeremy and I, having drinks with Aunt Sheila, because Jeremy refused to leave Rome until he got some answers to some rather more personal questions.

Jeremy cleared his throat, and his mother flinched slightly in apprehension. He saw this, and his gaze softened.

“Mum,” he said with amazing gentleness, “Penny came across a fellow who used to perform with Aunt Pen, and he told us a few things about her that we want to check with you.”

“Oh?” Aunt Sheila said with a falsely casual lilt to her voice as she reached toward the tray a maid had brought in and set on a low table. The maid vanished quietly, and Aunt Sheila handed each of us our drinks. She took a few sips of her own as she sat back on the sofa.

“Yes . . .” Jeremy began, then hesitated. “A man, name of Simon Thorne.” Nobody could miss the flicker of recognition in her eyes, but she was silent. “Mum, was it true that Aunt Pen asked you to marry Da—I mean—” He suddenly looked agonized.

“Uncle Peter,” I supplied quickly.

Aunt Sheila set her drink carefully on a cocktail napkin. “Well,” she said slowly and controlledly,“I suppose it’s true, though at the time I didn’t quite understand it that way.”

She paused, as if hoping this would be enough and she would not be forced to elaborate. Jeremy was motionless, however, with his eyes trained on her like a hunting dog who’s spotted a duck and won’t move until you deal with it. She gulped.

“You see, I met Penelope when I was working in a little theatrical agency as a secretary,” she went on.“It was a nice mix of the old troupers like Simon, and the up-and-coming kids. I got to see all the new acts, and a lot of them were musical groups. Anyway, Penelope used to have parties and invite all the people from the agency that she knew from her cabaret days, and that’s how I got to know her.And she seemed to take quite an interest in me, I thought because she sympathized with women who were defying convention, not marrying.”

“Did Aunt Pen introduce you to Peter Laidley?” Jeremy pushed. She looked from him to me, as if imploring me, as a woman, to understand.

“Yes. She was sort of matchmaking, I thought,” Aunt Sheila said, “at a time when I was feeling all alone in the world. Tony had died, and I was miserable, and I was still on the outs with my family—”

“Why?” Jeremy interrupted ruthlessly. Aunt Sheila leaned forward.

“Well, darling, because of you,” she said, with a glint in her eye.

“Because your mother wouldn’t get rid of you, you dope,” I said. I turned to her.“Right?” I added. She nodded.“Did Uncle Peter know that Aunt Penelope was trying to throw you two together?” I asked.

“Not at first,” she said, keeping her eyes on me but obviously very conscious of Jeremy’s attentiveness.“Penelope encouraged him to notice me, and she said nice things about me; so did your grandmother Beryl. Peter saw that his auntie and his mum approved of me. I don’t think he knew that I had a baby. So when I saw that he was serious, I told him. And introduced him to you, Jeremy. Peter liked you straight away. Said you were bright as a button.”

Jeremy’s face had that look I’d come to know well enough by now, indicating that he was trying not to be emotional, or susceptible to his mother’s charm. But it was still briefly, touchingly obvious that it meant a great deal to him to hear that Uncle Peter had wanted him. I pictured Jeremy as a baby, after his real father had died, being presented to Mom’s brother. In those days an unwed mother with a child was a much bigger deal, and the fact that Uncle Peter accepted Jeremy made Mom’s brother seem like a more open-minded, bighearted guy.

“Peter proposed to me that next Christmas,” Aunt Sheila said, looking at me for understanding again. “I told him I didn’t know if I could do it. Be a wife, I mean, in the conventional sense. I wanted to, because he was so good and kind and we were cozy together. But there were moments of panic when I thought of Tony and I—I—didn’t want this to be the beginning of forgetting about him.” She looked at Jeremy now. “When people die,” she said softly, “it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to give them up.”

“Then—what made you decide to marry Peter?” Jeremy asked.

“Penelope invited me to tea and she talked very woman-to-woman and made me cry and confess why I wasn’t sure about marrying,” Aunt Sheila said. “She said she understood, about mourning for a soldier, because she’d been in love with a man who was killed in World War II. She said I mustn’t let my grief for Tony overshadow the care of his son. She told me how hard it was for a mother and child alone, especially in show business, and that I’d need to give my son some stability in a world that was so uncertain.”

She turned to me and explained, “I rather thought that in her own way, Penelope was offering me a chance to do good. Nobody ever quite put it to me that way before. It is really quite irresistible to young people.That’s why they go marching off to war. I wanted to do something right and good with my life, something that Tony would want me to do, so that I would survive, and his son would survive.”

“So you married Peter for me—is that what you’re saying?” Jeremy said sternly, in that reproving way that men revert to so easily. She looked back at him, steadily and evenly.

“Not entirely,” she said. “I did tell you that I was fond of Peter, happy with him, not as I was with Tony—your father—but in a way no less valuable. I wasn’t so afraid of the world when Peter was by my side.” She returned to her drink.