Away With The Fairies (29 page)

She pulled the bell rope and presently Dot’s voice said, ‘Miss?’

‘Good morning, Dot, dear. Who was at the door?’

‘Detective Inspector Robinson. Off to look at Mr Bell’s warehouse, wants to know if you want to come along.’

‘Has he got an appraiser with him?’

‘No, Miss, just a couple of cops in dustcoats.’

‘Ask him about the Gallery’s man, Dot, and bring some coffee. I need another week’s sleep, but it doesn’t look as if I am going to get it. Lin, I have to get up. Damn it. Promise me you’ll be here when I get back,’ said Phryne with sudden vehemence, embracing him fiercely. ‘I’m not going to lose you again.’

‘I promise,’ said Lin.

He was already drowsing back into sleep when she completed a hasty wash and brush-up and donned warehouse-going clothes. She was damned if she was going to risk a good pair of stockings on Mr Bell’s warehouse.

Dot and the coffee arrived at the dining room table as Phryne came down. She gulped the inky Hellenic beverage, a lethal dose of caffeine in every cup, munched a piece of toast and put on her hat. Robinson was impressed. Only a quick change artist, a co-respondent or a midwife could dress as fast as Miss Fisher.

‘Off we go,’ said Phryne. ‘Have we got the appraiser?’

‘Meeting us there,’ said Jack. ‘I had a bit of trouble getting this warrant, Miss Fisher. I hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘Me too,’ said Phryne.

‘You’ll be interested to know,’ said the policeman, ‘that we can’t find a service record for Mr Bell at all, at least not under that name. In fact, there’s no record of a John Bell born in Australia who answers to his description.’

‘Really?’ asked Phryne, getting into the police car. ‘How singular.’

‘Why do I get the impression that you know this already?’ asked the Detective Inspector. Acid etched the edge of the sentence.

‘Mmm? Sorry, Jack, I’m still a little hungover. Mr Bell is not who he seems, Jack, dear. Well, none of us are, perhaps. But we shall know in a moment. Where is this warehouse?’

‘Richmond. Not far. I also know the answer to your other question. Miss Lavender’s bird was blue. That’s why she called it Bluebird.’ Robinson informed Phryne with heavy irony. ‘Why did you want to know? When we buried the poor little thing, it was pink.

‘Like the Worth,’ said Phryne incomprehensibly. ‘Something changed its colour.’

‘And you’ll explain this in your own time?’

‘I’ll have to show you, Jack, or you’ll never believe me. We’ll need to go to Tintern Avenue after this. Then I can demonstrate. Really, I’m not doing an Agatha Christie on you. I won’t know who did this until I can set up a trap.’

‘Oh, very well.’ Detective Inspector Robinson obliged Miss Fisher with a light to her cigarette, lit his own pipe, and subsided. Like the Lord, Phryne moved in mysterious ways. The road rushed past.

Phryne sank into reminiscences of Lin Chung, and was quite surprised when the car stopped in front of a flat, red-brick warehouse in a street of red-brick warehouses. This one had a painted sign indicating its owner. Marshall and Co.

A man in a dustcoat—were they everywhere, and she just hadn’t noticed them until now?—sidled up to the Detective Inspector and said, ‘No one inside, sir. Door’s been opened. Caretaker had a key.’

‘Good. Is Mr Jones here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

A man in a business suit, complete with bowler hat and rolled umbrella, gave the Detective Inspector a small bow, and then a deeper one, removing his hat, as Phryne clambered out of the car. Her stockingless legs seemed to affect him profoundly.

‘Shall we?’ asked Robinson, and pushed open the door.

The space was crammed with crates. A light coating of dust showed that they had not been disturbed recently. A policeman with a jemmy began on the first crate, extracting two canvases, made fast to stretchers, padded and wrapped very carefully. Mr Jones carried them to the light and sneered.

‘A copy of a Raphael madonna. A copy of another Raphael madonna. Not very good copies, either,’ said the man from the Gallery.

‘Keep unpacking,’ said Phryne. ‘Mr Jones, can you have a look at the canvas? Is it new?’

‘No,’ said Mr Jones, his interest piqued. ‘No, it’s old. In fact it appears to be very old. And this is a wooden plaque … olive wood, and antique. What’s your suggestion, Miss?’

‘Can you remove a little paint from a corner?’ asked Phryne. ‘We can always pay for the damage. What’s the value of the copy?’

‘About two and six,’ said the Gallery man. He laid the painting of the smirking woman and overweight child down, opened his square leather case, removed some swabs and cleaning fluid, and began to rub carefully at one corner of the painting.

‘There’s something underneath,’ he said without much excitement. ‘That’s not uncommon in Italy. They’re always painting over old paintings. Cheaper than buying new canvas.’

Phryne, losing patience, took the swab and swept it over the surface, making a broad swathe through the new paint. Underneath, a saint’s face sprang out of the garish new colour. Aged, haggard, compelling, even under the crackle of dark varnish.

‘Dear God,’ said the Gallery’s man prayerfully. ‘Give me that.’ He grabbed the swab and refreshed it with cleaning fluid. ‘I think …’ he dropped swabs as he cleaned. Phryne watched. Mr Jones might be a pompous ass, but he loved paintings and he was treating this one with such a loving touch that if it had been a cat it would have purred.

Policemen wrenched opened more crates and piled more terrible copies of Raphael madonnas into heaps as the appraiser laved the surface of the painting with linseed oil, applied with his own perfectly clean, perfectly folded linen handkerchief to stop the solvent from eating into the original paint.

‘There’s the signature,’ he said, wiping his brow with Phryne’s handkerchief. ‘Giotto. My God. Stolen from Florence three years ago. I beg your pardon, Miss. I thought this was just some sort of joke. I mean, why would someone take the risk of sending stolen art work to Australia? There isn’t the market. The dealers for this sort of thing are in Paris or London or New York.’

‘Import/export,’ said Phryne. ‘A consignment from Italy to London might attract notice. A consignment of Raphael copies from Melbourne wouldn’t rate a glance. I don’t expect that these are all disguised Old Masters,’ she added. ‘Can you find the mark for me which would allow the receiver to identify this one?’

‘I’ll need to go through them all,’ he said, ‘but this appears to be just a new painting. And this,’ he took a tiny portion of paint off the corner of another couple of Raphaels. ‘Yes, see? There’s a stamp on the back. A flower.’

‘A primrose,’ said Phryne.

‘What about the boxes?’ asked a policeman. ‘Do we open them as well?’

‘Of course,’ said Phryne.

There was a shrieking of nails as they reluctantly left their homes. Phryne peered into a box and gently lifted out a vase from its bed of wood shavings.

‘Terracotta,’ grunted Jack. ‘With a rude scene on it. Cheap tourist souvenir.’

‘Cheap Ancient Roman tourist souvenir,’ said Phryne. ‘That’s why the consignment came from Napoli,’ she said, putting the vase back with some regret. Was that satyr ever going to catch that nymph? She didn’t seem to be running very fast, looking back over her shoulder like that and clutching at draperies which were definitely coming adrift.

‘Pompeii,’ commented the man from the Gallery, sweeping the cleaning fluid across another painting. ‘Lots of stuff going astray from there at the moment. They say that a few thousand lire in bribe money and you can walk into the excavation with a large sack.’

‘Well,’ said Phryne. ‘That’s rather conclusive, isn’t it?’

‘We’ve certainly got Mr Bell on large-scale art theft,’ said Robinson. ‘But what about Miss Lavender?’

‘In due course, Jack, dear. Don’t press your luck. What do you have there, Mr Jones?’

‘A real Raphael,’ said Mr Jones in an awed whisper.

Among the flock of puddingy females, the real Raphael madonna shone with a dewy innocence which radiated from the canvas. The copied child, obese and soap-skinned, was entirely eclipsed by the original, a soft, plump, rosy cherub clearly too good for the world, raising gentle hands to bless the viewer.

‘Jesus,’ said Detective Inspector Robinson. Phryne chose to believe that this was an ejaculatory prayer. She herself, unbreak-fasted and cross in a dusty warehouse with a beautiful man left alone in her bed, was feeling elevated, which was both the intention and the genius of the artist.

‘I can’t do any more under these circumstances,’ said Mr Jones. ‘We need to get them back to our laboratory and clean them properly. I’m not going to run the risk of injuring any of them. What a find! Detective Inspector, I congratulate you! This will be the crown of your career, the crown! These paintings have been stolen from churches all over Italy. Even if there are only these two, it is a great coup. You will have them brought to the Art Gallery? This afternoon? I will go and prepare.’

Mr Jones was babbling with excitement. Robinson detained him with a hand on his black serge arm.

‘They’ll be brought by unmarked van,’ he said. ‘And they’ll be guarded the whole time by two of my men. There’s a chain of evidence to maintain, you understand. And not a word, Mr Jones, to anyone outside your organisation. Not one word. I don’t want to miss the thief because you’ve been unable to contain your excitement.’

‘No. Of course not,’ said Mr Jones, reassuming his city personality with his bowler hat and his umbrella. ‘Not a word. Will you inform my employer?’

‘I will. If you wouldn’t mind staying and making an inventory, we can sign them all out to the Gallery. Call the station and get four more men,’ said Robinson to an underling. ‘Get a van. They don’t move until they’re all listed and a copy is on my desk, understood? And no one is to leave anything unguarded. And in case anyone is thinking that one little vase won’t be missed, which I’m sure no man of mine would ever dream of thinking, I’m leaving Mr Jones here. Anyone turns up and asks what’s going on, arrest him as a material witness. Clear?’

‘Clear, sir,’ said the underling. ‘Should be able to get ’em all crated and on their way by noon.’

‘Carry on,’ said Robinson. Phryne, who had thought that perhaps one little satyr vase wouldn’t be missed, sighed in the face of this massed honesty and followed him out to the car.

‘Well, Miss Fisher, you’ve done me a bit of good,’ said Robinson. ‘How can I thank you?’

‘Breakfast at the Windsor would be a good start,’ said Phryne. ‘Pity you wouldn’t let me take that cross little harpy pot, or the satyr lecythus, I really fancied them and no one is going to miss them … oh, all right, don’t look at me like that. Then we’ll go to Tintern Avenue and see who passes my little test.’

‘You know, sometimes you almost frighten me,’ said Robinson. ‘The Windsor, driver.’

Breakfasted, Phryne was more centred and less cross. She had returned home and dressed for the day while Robinson made phone calls to his chief, his subordinates and the Art Gallery, all of whom showered compliments upon him.

Tintern Avenue was quiet. This being a Saturday, the inhabitants were all home, occupying their leisure as suited themselves. Phryne gathered them as she walked, Mr and Mrs Opie, Mrs Gould, a hungover Mr Carroll, Professor Keith and his niece, Mrs Needham, Mercy Porter, Miss Gallagher and Miss Grigg, both Hewlands and Mr Bell, who had been planting bulbs in the herbacious border.

‘What is all this about?’ he demanded as the whole party wedged themselves into the main room of Wee Nooke.

‘A little experiment,’ said Phryne grimly.

‘Are you going to let this person experiment on us?’ asked Mr Bell. ‘She hasn’t any official standing, has she?’

‘Quite enough official standing for me,’ said Robinson. Phryne began.

‘When I was brought here for the first time I was told that Miss Lavender’s bird had died,’ said Phryne. ‘It was blue, but when it was buried, it was pink. I wondered about that. Then I kept trying to recall why something in this room struck me as wrong.’

They all looked around. The stultifying pinkness of the room was still overwhelming. Only one thing was the wrong colour. Phryne wound up the clockwork of the music box with a bright red fairy on top which had been on Miss Lavender’s desk when she was found dead.

Again, someone in the room was holding their breath. Phryne could taste the tension. She looked around, holding the key of the music box. The Hewlands kept their dead-fish impassivity. Miss Gallagher looked puzzled, Miss Grigg worried. Mrs Opie hung onto Wendy, Mr Opie looked irritated, Mr Carroll sleepy, Professor Keith interested, Mercy Porter and Margery Keith agog, Mrs Needham concerned.

‘Miss Lavender knew a lot about you all,’ said Phryne. ‘But it was mostly unimportant. She knew about Margery’s outings, Mr Carroll’s drinking and the Hewland’s daughter. She knew about—’

‘Yes,’ screamed Mrs Opie, clutching a surprised Wendy to her bosom. ‘She knew about my fiancé. She had one of my letters to him when he was away. I never stopped loving him. She knew I never did.’

‘And what did she want from you?’ asked Phryne.

‘She wanted me to be her friend,’ sobbed Mrs Opie into Wendy’s hair. ‘She wanted me to speak well of her. So I did. So now you know,’ she said to her husband. ‘I told you when I married you that I loved another man. It was true.’

‘Helen …’ Mr Opie was astounded.

‘All that time you groused and complained about me and Wendy and lack of sleep you thought I was a devoted wife. Well, I wasn’t. I made a bargain and I kept it. It was hard to keep,’ she added, ‘after he came here, but I kept it.’

‘He’s here?’ asked Mr Opie. ‘Your wog lover? Giovanni Campana?’

‘John Bell,’ said Phryne. ‘A straight translation. He told me he was a flyer, but it wasn’t in our air force, was it? It was in Mussolini’s.’

‘Mussolini’s?’ exclaimed Miss Grigg. ‘You dog, you criminal.’ She shook her fist at Mr Bell. ‘And I liked you! I even made things for you! There’s one of my creations on the table. I made a damn good fairy music box for Miss Lavender because you wanted to suck up to her. Damned if I know why it’s red, though,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘I made her a blue fairy, like the Blue Fairy Book she was so fond of.’