The Fraud (51 page)

Now the room was completely silent: no coughing, no hoiking, just the breathing of the watchful gentlemen.

And then - and then the beginning of the scratch of the palette knife appeared imperceptibly and I think no-one but my own heart heard my infinitesimal sigh. ‘Rub carefully and gently,’ I said so quietly, ‘towards the left.’ He understood at once now: he had to remove part of the rich red of the skirt. The reading girl looked away, amused; his breathing became faster as he worked and what I wanted him to see appeared. More colour was gone: there was enough information now for him to stop but I said, ‘Further.’

The Expert turned to the mesmerised gentlemen in the room. ‘She says she has written her Real Name,’ he said.

And finally there it was. From underneath the luxurious, beautiful red-warm gown of the girl, emerged the name I had scrawled with the palette knife so wildly when I had laughed because the face in the painting had still eluded me.

GRACE.

There was a wild, wild cry from my brother. He stared at me in both disbelief and a terrible kind of anguished recognition and then he seized the thing nearest to him: the bottle of ink on the table, and he hurled it frenziedly at the painting so that black liquid fell down the painting and covered the laughing eyes of the reading girl.

It was dark when Euphemia the maid opened the door of the house in Pall Mall that evening. Mr James Burke stood there. He looked extremely strange - and rather beautiful (she thought to herself): his hair was wild, and his eyes. He carried a large, and obviously very heavy, parcel.

‘Where is Signorina Francesca?’

Euphemia’s voice was, unusually, subdued. Euphemia could seldom be described as subdued. ‘The Signorina Francesca is not here, Mr Burke.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

He stood with his parcel, people were passing; carriages rattled past along Pall Mall, their lights flashed and a dog rushed by, barking at the horses.

The maid’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. ‘If you will step inside a moment, Mr Burke?’ He did as requested, the big door into Pall Mall echoed as it closed. James Burke put his large parcel on to a table, there in the hall, next to a candle-lamp. The painting of Angelica still hung there: ageless, beautiful, at the turn of the staircase.

From somewhere above another door opened. Signore di Vecellio’s voice from the drawing room: ‘
Is that her
?’

‘No,
Signore
.’ The drawing-room door banged shut.

Silence in the house. Then James Burke thought he heard the voice of Lady Dorothea Bray, but could not be sure. And then Roberto the parrot gave a loud shriek from somewhere, and then was quiet again.

The big clock in the hall ticked and tocked.

‘We are all at sea here, Sir,’ said Euphemia.

He looked down at her, spoke very quietly also. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No, Mr Burke.’ And then in a rush of words. ‘Oh Sir, we all knew she painted of course.’ She looked apologetic. ‘I knew
you
knew, Sir.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That she painted, Sir.’ Euphemia decided this was no time for niceties. ‘I seen you, years ago. You knew she was good didn’t you, Sir?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘I did too, Sir.’

He was taken aback. ‘You saw her work properly?’

‘Years ago I thought to dust her room, Sir, she was always so busy, I meant to help,’ and then the words came tumbling out, ‘then I seen the Paintings. After that I used to go and look at them sometimes while she was buying the food, I liked them so much. She so often destroyed them after. I thought it was a shame, Sir.’ And then she stopped and looked up to the first floor before she went on. ‘She did not come back today, for the first time ever in my life. And she has not returned now. I made so bold as to go into her room. It is empty of some of her clothes, Mr Burke, and all the Painting things are gone.’

He tried to hide his shock, then endeavoured to make light of the matter. ‘She could not, surely Euphemia, have left here for ever with all her Worldly Goods without being noticed!’

‘I seen her go out with her basket as usual yesterday to buy the food and I would swear she had two Paintings under her arm and when she came back she did not have them. And last week there was a fire, Sir.’

‘A
fire
?’

‘Nothing unusual in that of course, for we often burn things at the back. But there was a big fire one evening, I thought it must have been started by the Master for I noticed there was Frames and Paints, but perhaps it was her own things burned. You know as well as me how often she has destroyed her work and now I think she might have burned some of her clothes as well for she took nothing but her basket when she left this morning as usual.’ She took a deep breath and spoke almost now in a whisper, ‘And a tramp died on the doorstep and she cried and cried.’

‘What do you mean? What tramp? Why was she crying?’

But Euphemia was suddenly aware that she may have said too much, even to Mr Burke. Euphemia had seen the face of the tramp. ‘Mr Burke, the
signore
has been shouting about the Picture since he returned, I am afraid Lady Dorothea cannot calm him, and the Signorina Francesca has returned not at all, and Master Claudio is running about the house so wild I fear he may do himself damage and the Signorina Isabella is weeping and sulking in her room and I cannot think what to do with her. Shall I tell the
signore
you are here, Sir?’

Extraordinarily Mr Burke laughed. ‘I think I might be the final straw, Euphemia!’ But his face darkened almost immediately. ‘Please give that Parcel to Signore di Vecellio, give it to him at once.’ And in a very low voice, ‘I will try to find her.’

Euphemia stared at him. She knew what she knew. ‘God Bless you, Sir,’ she said awkwardly. And, unspoken conspirators, the door was opened quietly by the maid, all the candles flickered for a moment in the draught of the night air, and James Burke was gone.

He walked quickly back down Pall Mall towards the Strand.

The maid picked up the very heavy parcel. She walked slowly, breathing very heavily, up the stairs to the drawing-room. The Master had said she must never speak of the tramp but Euphemia had seen what she had seen: she had seen the face of the tramp. She puffed and climbed: the parcel was so heavy. Euphemia did not know that she was carrying seven hundred guineas as she climbed upwards; she would no doubt have fainted if this piece of information had been brought to her attention. She tapped nervously and clumsily upon the door for the parcel restricted her movement, and entered without waiting.

Signore Filipo di Vecellio was a handsome confident man, always aware of his appearance. The maid saw a grey, huddled figure at the fireplace and Lady Dorothea sitting on a sofa, her face tight and angry; her dressed hair shook as she spoke and small birds thereon fluttered. Lady Dorothea flicked her eyes to the maid, flicked them away again and went on talking.

‘Why do I have to say it over and over, Filipo? I do not know why you give any Credence to her story at all! Rembrandt himself could have written
Grace
! Grace has many meanings! Grace is not her name! What does it mean to her -
Grace
?’

There was no reply.

Lady Dorothea unconsciously pulled at her corset in an angry manner, her breasts wobbled slightly, and the small birds.

‘That Painting could never have been painted by a Woman, and in particular it could never in one hundred years have been painted by your dreary sister. That is absolutely impossible and you know that perfectly well - you
live
with her, after all - do you imagine she forged a Rembrandt painting in the attic after Dinner?’

He did not answer. He half-turned to the servant who still stood in the doorway with the heavy parcel. ‘What is it?’

‘Please Sir, Mr James Burke left this for you. He said you were to have it immediately,
Signore
.’

‘That Blackguard! That Cheat! That false Friend! He became rich because of me!’ His voice rose and rose. ‘And he had the Impertinence to accuse
me
of cheating!’ The parcel was so heavy that the maid, uninvited, moved and placed it on a table beside him. He looked at it, and then suddenly scrabbled to open it, motioned to the maid to help him. She gasped first. Lady Dorothea, watching, gave a tiny, noble scream.

The money lay there. Seven hundred guineas. Not even a draft from a bank, but actual money. Like a grey ghost the
signore
put his hand just once into the sea of coins, to ascertain if they were real perhaps. It would have to be counted but all was clearly here: seven hundred guinea pieces.

‘There, Filipo!’ Lady Dorothea’s face was at once suffused in smiles. ‘There! You are no worse off after all! Mr Burke must have been taken in also and is doing the honourable thing.’ Euphemia could not believe what she had, so briefly, held in her arms: stared at the money in disbelief and fascination.

But the grey face of Filipo di Vecellio did not suddenly brighten as Lady Dorothea might have expected. ‘Now it does not matter,’ she repeated and she laughed her tinkling laugh, ‘for you have lost nothing at all!’

For how could Lady Dorothea Bray know what Filipo di Vecellio had lost when he saw the name on his beautiful Rembrandt painting: GRACE. At every moment pictures flashed into his head over and over at terrible, terrifying speed: the spinning small girl the house in Bristol his mother with her petulance and her adoration of her older son the father’s debts he saw the younger boys fighting over a small cart he saw the drawings of their family that he had done with her chalks that sunny day. And of course: he saw the drawings of their family that
she
had done. And that he had torn to pieces in St Martin’s Lane over twenty-five years ago.

Philip Marshall had thought that he had obliterated the past.

But his own past had lived with him, in his house, for twenty-five years.

Suddenly poor, mangy Roberto with his battered white feathers appeared in the doorway, squawking and complaining, as he had done every day since Angelica had died.

The maid and the noble-woman stared in alarm as the grey-faced man suddenly rushed from the drawing-room; they heard footsteps running further upwards; they heard the door of his studio bang shut. Roberto perched, beady-eyed and biting at his feathers, near the mantelpiece.

The two women then stared at all the shining coins - and if the truth be known neither of them wished to leave such a valuable sum with the other. Filipo had a safe but it was in his study and only he knew how to open it, of course. The coins glittered in the candlelight from the chandeliers: two dragons, as it were, stood guard, not to mention a mad parrot.

At this moment Claudio burst into the room, then stopped, as if he had been punched, when he saw the money.

‘Claudio,’ said Euphemia the maid at once, ‘go and ask your Father what he needs doing with the Money from Mr Burke.’

‘Go away!’ shouted Claudio immediately. ‘Go away both of you! I will manage the Money!’ And he approached the huge pile of coins as if bewitched. ‘Go away,’ he said again.

At this point Euphemia, who had known Claudio since he was a baby, actually forgot herself so far as to laugh. ‘You’d only gamble it away on them birds, Master Claudio! Go and get your Father!’

Lady Dorothea looked shocked at such behaviour from a servant, nevertheless waved Claudio away to do as he was bid. The boy stared again at the money, the shining, golden money; he suddenly lunged forward, pushed at the maid who screeched in surprise. And then Claudio fell across the table, covering the coins with his body; the coins rattled and clanked as they were pressed between flesh and wood, some fell on to the polished floor just as the clock sonorously struck eight o’clock.

 

Mr Georgie Bounds, the frame-maker’s son, passed Mr James Burke in Pall Mall and bowed, but so intent was Mr Burke on his own thoughts that he did not see.

When Mr Bounds was shown into the noise-emanating drawing-room by one of the servants, he came upon a most extraordinary scene. Lady Dorothea Bray, the young Claudio di Vecellio and Euphemia the maid seemed to be partaking of some kind of mad dance, knee-deep in guinea pieces and speaking in very loud voices; Claudio kept shouting, ‘It is Mine! It is My Money!’ and flaying the air with his fists while the women screeched at him to stop and the battered parrot squawked.

Mr Bounds, his hair especially coiffeured for the occasion, had come to see Signore Filipo di Vecellio to ask, again, for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He was wearing his very best embroidered waistcoat. He found the scene almost shocking (the money, the women, the anger, the old parrot adding to the general air of pandemonium) but he was a sensible and masterful young man and he understood that Claudio di Vecellio had completely lost control of himself and was alarming both Lady Dorothea and the maid, and possibly the parrot. Claudio, as well as shouting, was shovelling coins into his clothes with both hands; Euphemia was trying to restrain him; and Lady Dorothea had now resorted simply to screaming.

Into this
mêlée
Mr Bounds stepped, despite his fine hair and his waistcoat. He restrained Claudio manfully, pulled him away from the coins and the ladies. Lady Dorothea did not pause to thank him but, wildly adjusting her hair and her gown, hurried to the door calling ‘Filipo! Filipo!’ They heard her footsteps clattering upwards.

Euphemia bobbed a curtsey. ‘Thank you, Mr Bounds,’ she said, trying to catch her breath. ‘I am not as young as once I was.’ Claudio struggled on wildly for some moments and then, defeated by the much stronger Mr Bounds, at last was still, breathing heavily.

In the next moment Signore di Vecellio (followed by a panting Lady Dorothea) arrived back in the drawing-room, almost apoplectic now with rage and Mr Bounds, feeling he may have exceeded the rules of propriety, released Claudio immediately. Claudio swung his fist at his captor, missed, and then just stood red-faced and panting: several coins dropped from his clothes. They heard each coin make a sound,
plink
, on hitting the wooden floor.