Staging Death (13 page)

‘Going up into the loft. If she’s an expert, she might want to see some of the others. I’ll pass them down to you, if you like,’ he told me.

I followed. It was clear from the bottom of the loft ladder that there was an immense amount of stuff up there. I could hear him swearing as he rooted around, but within a few minutes I was holding half a dozen filthy frames. And what did they hold? The first was a badly foxed Victorian print of
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
That would do nicely as a replacement. As for the others, they were all apparently old oil paintings, each as filthy as the next. Mr Thorpe came gingerly down the ladder, and then started to bustle about in the master bedroom, emerging with what looked like a pair of underpants.

He grabbed one of the paintings.

‘Look what you’re doing, man!’ Mrs Thorpe expostulated – rightly, in my book.

‘She can have a go.’ He offered both painting and underpants to me.

I took the former, waving the latter away. ‘We mustn’t do anything to harm the surface. My friend will know how to deal with them.’ I started down the stairs, wondering what all this was doing to the Nicole Farhi.

‘There are some more behind the cold-water tank,’ he called.

‘Why not leave them there? They won’t come to any harm, will they? But you must absolutely promise me not to tell anyone they’re there. In the meantime, let’s hang this one where the young man came from, and no one’ll know, will they?’

He followed me, staring critically at the replacement, which contrived not to look too naff. ‘Maybe not. Now what are you writing?’

‘A receipt, Mr Thorpe. I wouldn’t take away anything like this without you having proof who’s got it, would I?’

They shook their heads in synch.

So Greg’s leather pad and Waterman fountain pen came in useful after all.

As for the pictures, I had to get them to Ambrose Beech’s shop in Kenilworth. I phoned ahead to make sure he was in.

‘Vena, my love, I’m always closed on Mondays! It’s the weekend rush. It’s so draining.’

I didn’t do feigned exhaustion. ‘I’ve got half a dozen very old paintings I need you to look at. Pronto.’

‘How old is very old?’ His voice shed twenty years.

‘Possibly Elizabethan. From a cottage within spitting distance of Mary Arden’s house.’

‘In that case I’ll put the kettle on,’ he declared.

‘But Vee, you could have parked in the little yard behind the shop,’ Ambrose expostulated, as I presented myself at the front door of his cottage, just across the road from his antique shop. He was immaculate in the sort of linen jacket that looks good even if it’s creased to death, and beautifully cut jeans. I was hot and visibly sweating under my burden, which was swathed in one of the Thorpes’ bin liners and a newly acquired Sainsbury’s bag-for-life carrier.

I shrugged. Should I confess to him my increasing fear of being tailed? I’d parked the Ka in the pay and display at the side of Sainsbury’s, and dived into the store one way, and out the other. Even though I was sure no one had followed me to the Thorpes’ cottage or from it, even though a variety of cars had filled my rear-view mirror, and even though I’d taken the
most devious route possible to Kenilworth, I still would not risk drawing the attention of any of those sinister couples to an innocent old friend. Innocent in one sense, anyway.

‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘But I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

Ambrose led the way through the cottage – more a nineteenth-century artisan’s house, really – into the sensitively extended kitchen. He took the bundle of pictures from me, laying it gently on the scrubbed pine table.

‘Your whim is my command,’ he declared, holding my filthy hands away from him, but kissing me very convincingly nonetheless. Like me he’d started out on the stage, but had realised very soon there was more money to be made elsewhere. ‘I have a single-estate sword pekoe just dying to be tasted.’

‘Have you indeed?’ I asked with barely concealed irony. It might have been Ambrose who put me on to green tea, but I couldn’t quite share his passion. Not for tea, anyway. All the same, he was a kind man and I didn’t wish to mock him, so I added, with fairly genuine interest, ‘And where does it come from?’

‘You might be able to tell me,’ he said kindly, filling his kettle and switching it on. Then he reached for his favourite china, setting it on a tray already covered with a linen napkin.

The kettle came to the boil, but he didn’t pour the water on to the tea. ‘We have to wait for it to cook slightly,’ he said. ‘Down to 80C for preference. So we can unwrap the pictures first, can’t we?’

‘They’re filthy,’ I warned him.

‘Plenty of water in the tap and soap in the dish,’ he said with a smile to die for. Camp though he might be, he was not, on the evidence I had seen, gay. ‘Though that gorgeous suit might never be the same again. I hope you’ve got a good dry-cleaner. Gently does it.’ He unwrapped layers of the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Oh, the poor things.’ He blew on the one in his hands, raising a distinct cloud of dust. ‘Is this the one that caught your eye?’

‘Yes. I’ve not had a proper look at the others. They may all turn out to be geese, of course.’

‘But this is almost certainly a swan.’

‘As one of the punters whom he’d shown round the house realised. He offered my client two hundred pounds.’

‘It might be worth no more than that, of course. However…’ He blew again, and then laid it down almost tenderly. He slipped out of the kitchen, returning with what looked like a make-up brush, a bright light and a magnifying glass. More dust swirled into the air, golden and dancing. ‘Well, he’s not Shakespeare, is he?’

‘I suppose that would have been too much of a miracle.’

‘Can you imagine Shakespeare scholars over the years knocking on the doors of all the cottages in the village in search of memorabilia and not being offered this if it were him?’

‘Do you know who it might be?’

‘Are you hoping for Wriothesley? He’d got the same high forehead.’

‘What about Robert Dudley? Wilmcote’s not so very far from Kenilworth, after all.’ Despite Amy Robsart’s fall, I’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Elizabeth’s favourite.

‘Robert Devereux had one, too. Perhaps they were all just suffering from receding hairlines.’ He touched his own widow’s peak, more exaggerated than it was last year. ‘Or maybe they were fashion items, like the pendulous noses and double chins in Lely court portraits.’

He put it down, and undid another. ‘Painted on wood, eh? But I’m not so sure… What we ought to do, Vee, is get these properly cleaned. Then we can tell how much of a nest egg your clients are sitting on.’

My heart sank. ‘I had hoped that you’d be able to give the Thorpes an estimate yourself based on what you see now. Cleaning will cost money. What if the egg turns out to be addled?’

‘If you don’t speculate you can’t
accumulate, as my grandfather used to say.’

‘That’s fine if you’ve got the money to speculate with in the first place.’ I spoke with the passion of experience. I added quickly, ‘They’ve put their cottage on the market for way above value and have turned down offers because they’ve worked out to the last penny how much they need for the move they want to make. And that was before I reminded them of agents’ fees and stamp duty. I think I might be able to get better offers, but not that much better. And I couldn’t look them in the eye if I actually lost money for them.’ I patted the pictures.

‘Let’s have our cup of tea and then consider what’s best.’

I held up my hands, smelling of damp and dust. ‘I’m a bit smelly – won’t that ruin the bouquet of the tea?’ This time I wasn’t mocking.

‘You remember where the bathroom is, don’t you?’ He smiled wickedly – a long time ago we’d had an intimate moment in the room next to it. A very kind intimate moment, as if he wanted to help me get over Dale.

‘I do indeed.’ My smile was meant to be repressive, but probably failed.

As I scrubbed my nails I stared at my reflection in the mirror. An afternoon in bed with Ambrose would be great fun. It wasn’t as if I were some Corn Belt American virgin saving myself for my
wedding night. It wasn’t as though I was in a relationship with anyone else. It wasn’t even as if I had anything to do for the rest of the afternoon. But something, not just the fact I hadn’t bought enough parking time, was holding me back – and I had a nasty suspicion it was my feelings for Toby Frensham.

‘So where does the tea come from?’ I asked a few minutes later. ‘Somewhere in China, obviously.’ I’d get one out of ten, at least.

‘Obviously. Can you get any closer?’

‘I only do accent geography, Am, not international geography. Despite my wonderful teacher’s best efforts.’

‘I only know tea-producing geography,’ he conceded. ‘This is from some mountains.’

‘Do the Chinese have mountains? I only know about that earthquake disaster and the Beijing Olympics.’

I learnt an awful lot more before I was allowed to taste the tea. Then I did as I was told, rolling the sip round my mouth and over my tongue as if it were fine wine. Yes, it was nice tea. Better than supermarket tea bags. I nodded appreciatively.

‘Poor Vee! You try so hard but you can’t fool me. Now, do you fancy some lunch? I could knock up a salad, with some of yesterday’s roast chicken.’

‘Do you still do Sunday roasts?’ There was something so very secure about a traditional cooked lunch.

‘You make them sound like a particularly arcane form of morris dancing,’ he laughed. ‘I do as a matter of fact. Organic chicken, in this instance, with stuffing, bacon rolls, roast potatoes and loads of fresh vegetables. What could be better?’

‘Nothing,’ I declared sincerely, knowing from experience that you didn’t cook all that lot simply for yourself. Did this mean that Ambrose was no longer fancy-free? Was that jealousy sneaking into my breast? And if so was I jealous of the new woman in his life? Or of the fact he had such a woman? In other words, was I simply envious of his settled emotional state? ‘Nothing at all, assuming it came with good company and a fine wine,’ I added boldly. ‘In whichever order.’

He didn’t bite. ‘It’s probably warm enough to eat in the garden. Will you lay the table while I get everything out of the fridge? Then we can decide what to do about the pictures.’

Since he obviously didn’t want to be cross-questioned about his Sunday activities, I resolved to keep the conversation light. We gossiped about a lot of friends, not always maliciously. I limited myself to a single glass of champagne, and made sure I also sank enough water to clean out a fish
tank. At last, over more tea, lapsang souchong this time, which even I thought exceptional, he broached the subject of the pictures. He would get a friend who worked at the Barber Institute, part of Birmingham University, to have a look at them, and make an educated guess at how much cleaning and restoration would cost. She (I thought I noticed a tiny stress on the pronoun) would also be able to speculate on how much they might fetch at auction.

‘It’s sometimes a matter of fashion as much as the quality of the artist or the fame of the sitter. And if something appeals to a niche market. If you found that guy had helped found America – if he’d been the one who’d first planted Walter Raleigh’s new-found potatoes down the road in Little Virginia – then it would be worth a mint, whatever its intrinsic value. Or a second cousin of Shakespeare would appeal to another market.’

‘Or an actor?’ Now I came to think of it, that deeply hidden face could ring a distant bell.

‘Or a poet. Anything. The provenance will be important too. But at least that’s watertight. What’s up? What’s so funny?’

But I shook my head. Mr Thorpe had promised to tell no one of the other cache of paintings, so I wouldn’t either.

‘You weren’t thinking of that shower, by any chance? You know, in Scarborough?’

A particularly erotic shower. In that most chaste of towns. During a tour of
Death of a Salesman
, as I recall.

I giggled again, as if I had been thinking about just that. ‘What you can do when you’re young,’ I sighed. As if one couldn’t do exactly the same when one was more mature. I glanced at my watch. ‘Hell, is that the time? I must get back to the office!’

Perhaps I hoped he’d protest, and who knows what I’d have done if he had, parking fine apart. But he smiled the smile of a host reluctantly and tacitly admitting that he had other plans too. Together we cleared the table. As I stacked in the kitchen, I had one last look at the strong young face in the portrait.

‘I do know you from somewhere, don’t I?’ I said out loud.

The Thorpes, when I phoned from the office, were embarrassingly and protractedly grateful for my intervention, and thanked me repeatedly for bringing them up to speed so quickly. Then I recorded the more official dealings on their computer file, and contemplated phoning the punters who had already seen the cottage. However, that might mean inviting them to have another viewing, and until I’d worked out a strategy for getting the Thorpes out of the
house, I didn’t think there was any point.

If there was anyone in Greg’s organisation who was good with people it was the saintly Claire. I spun my chair in her direction, going rather faster than I intended and having to go sharply into reverse.

‘May I pick your brain?’ I asked when I was more or less stationary.

‘Such as it is,’ she conceded, warily.

‘You know far more about this business than I do, don’t you? Well, I’ve got a darling pair who scupper their chances of selling their property every time they open their mouths. How do I persuade them to go out the next time I take would-be purchasers for a viewing?’

‘You might want to get them to clean the place first. Look at your poor suit.’

‘I know. I’ll drop it in at the dry-cleaner’s on my way home. But that’s another story.’ The whole of which I wouldn’t tell her, of course.

She nodded. ‘OK. Age?’

‘Mid-seventies. Pretty spry.’

‘Really, Vena, seventy is the new fifty! You’re not allowed to use words like
spry
in case they’re construed as ageist. Think about the fuss over the road signs showing two bent old people.’

‘
A palpable hit
.’ I raised my finger in acknowledgement. Though it was she who’d first raised the question of age.

‘Shoppers?’

‘Watching every penny. They’re saving for their new place. Too old for a mortgage.’

‘As to that, you put them on to our financial adviser. You could make them an appointment here for when the next punters want to visit.’

It sounded good – two birds, and all that – so I gave an appreciative nod.

‘Any relatives you could suggest they visit? Or is that a bit obvious?’ she continued.

‘We’ve not talked family. There were no photos anywhere except of them, in various stages of his army career.’

‘Anything else?’

‘They read the
Telegraph
and they seem to know a lot about my career.’

She looked at me with the same expression of disbelief as my geography teacher had used when I’d once confused a spot height for a roundabout. Gladys Firth wasn’t a woman you offended twice. Hence when I took A-Level Geography I got an A. ‘There you are then. Get them some tickets for your next matinee. Except you can’t be in two places at once, can you? Sorry.’

Now was not the time to make a tart observation that if I had a role in a play I wouldn’t be slumming for my brother. ‘True. But I do know someone who might find me some matinee tickets for
Coriolanus
.’

‘Not Toby Frensham! Is it true that on stage he wears nothing under his toga? Oh, Vena, you couldn’t get some tickets for me, could you?’

I arrived at the cleaner’s too late for the next-day option. So I’d just have to hope the phone didn’t announce more punters eager to check out the Thorpes’ place till Wednesday.

As it happened, Wednesday was matinee day. A stroll past the Courtyard revealed that there were tickets available, but only the most expensive – way over my current budget. And was there, in any case, any point on buying on spec?

Before I knew it my feet had taken me to the stage door, and I found myself asking the security guy, not the old Royal Shakespeare Theatre
stage-door
keeper who’d collected bouquets from my admirers, if Toby was still in the theatre.

‘And what name is it?’ The words crawled grudgingly from the almost stationary Northern Ireland lips.

‘Vena Burford,’ I said. If I’d hoped for a reaction, I got none.