Tasha Alexander - Dangerous to Know

“It’s beyond astonishing,” I said, relieved to have the subject addressed directly.

“And you’re the one who stumbled upon the body, aren’t you?” he asked. “Forgive me. Have I made you uncomfortable? I’ve a terrible habit of being too blunt.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Nothing you could say now would make the experience worse.” My stomach churned as I remembered the brutal scene.

“What are the bloody police doing?” he asked. “Will the inveterate Inspector Gaudet be joining us for dinner? Will he regale us with tales of his investigation?”

“George, are you tormenting this poor woman?” His wife, slender and rosy, appeared at his side and laid a graceful hand on his arm. He beamed down at her.

“You are unkind, my darling,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of tormenting anyone, let alone such a beauty. Lady Emily and I were merely discussing the way everyone is avoiding the topic much on all our minds.”

“I can’t imagine the tumult of emotions throttling you at the moment,” she said. Her English was flawless, but made exotic by her thick French accent. “But I must admit I’m desperate to ask you all sorts of completely inappropriate questions.”

“I shan’t allow that,” her husband said. “You, Madeline, don’t need any fuel for bad dreams.”

“He’s beyond protective.” She beamed up at him. “But so handsome I’m likely to forgive him anything.”

“She requires protection,” he said. “Anyone would, living where we do.”

“Are you afraid the murderer will strike in the neighborhood again?” I asked.

“No, one murder does not make me believe the area’s entirely dangerous—not, mind you, because I have any faith in Gaudet’s bound-to-be-infamous manhunt. Protection is necessary because the condition of the château in which we live would give Morpheus himself nightmares. Half the time I expect to wake up in the moat and find the entire building collapsed. The one remaining tower has grown so rickety I’m afraid we’ll have to tear it down—it’s unsafe.”

“My love, it’s not all that bad,” she said. “Structurally you have nothing to fear. Aside from the tower, that is. But that hardly matters. What concerns me is our recent visitor.”

“Visitor?” I asked.

“Intruder, more like. We’ve received a rather unusual gift,” he said. “A painting.”

“And how is that unusual, Mr. Markham? Are you known to despise art?”

“Quite the contrary,” he said. “And you must call me George. There’s no use in adopting airs of formality this far in the middle of the country. We’re all stuck together and may as well declare ourselves fast friends at once.”

“A lovely sentiment,” I said. “Do please call me Emily. But why do you disparage Normandy? I can’t remember when I’ve been to such a charming place.”

“It is too far from civilization,” he said.

“Which is why, perhaps, a kind friend thinks you need art brought to you,” I said. “After all, there are no galleries nearby.” This drew laughter from them both, and their happiness was unexpectedly contagious.

“What makes it strange, though, is that it was more like a theft than a gift,” Madeline said.

“A reverse theft,” her husband corrected.

“How so?” I asked, intrigued.

“The painting was delivered in the middle of the night and its bearer left evidence of neither his entry nor exit. He set it on an easel—which he’d also brought—in the middle of a sitting room.”

“With a note,” Madeline continued. “That read: ‘This should belong to someone who will adequately appreciate it.’”

“And this, you see, is why I have no confidence in Gaudet,” George said. “He’s been utterly useless in getting to the bottom of the matter.”

“What sort of painting is it?” I asked.

“A building, some cathedral. Signed by Monet.”

“And what has the industrious inspector done on your behalf?”

“He questioned my servants, none of whom could afford to buy a pencil sketch from a schoolgirl, after which he declared himself sympathetic to my lack of enthusiasm for the canvas.”

“You do not like Impressionism?”

“No, Gaudet is simply incapable of reading a chap correctly. I adore Impressionism,” he said. “We have seventeen works in that style. I bought two of Monet’s haystack series last year.”

“So the thief knows your taste?” I asked.

“Evidently.”

“We’ve no objection to the painting,” Madeline said. “But how am I to sleep when an intruder has made such easy entry into our home?”

“You’ve every right to be unsettled,” I said. “What is the inspector’s plan?”

“He’s concluded that there’s no harm done and no point in looking for the culprit.”

“Madame du Lac is great friends with Monet. She could perhaps find out from him who previously owned the work. You may find you’ve been the victim of nothing more than a practical joke at the hands of well-meaning friends.” We called her over at once and relayed the story to her.

“Mon dieu!” she said. “I know this painting well. It was stolen from Monet’s studio at Giverny not three days ago—he wired to tell me as soon as it happened. He’d only just finished with the canvas. The paint was barely dry and the police have no leads.”

I would not have believed, a quarter of an hour ago, that anything could have distracted me from the memory of the brutalized body beneath the tree, but suddenly my mind was racing. “Was there anything else in the note?” I asked.

“Some odd letters,” Madeline said. “They made no sense.”

“It was Greek, my darling. But I didn’t pay enough attention in school to be able to read it.”

My heartbeat quickened with a combination of anxiety and unworthy delight. It could only be Sebastian.

“Your imagination is running away with you entirely,” Colin said as he untied his cravat and pulled it from his starched collar. The Markhams hadn’t stayed late, and Colin and I had retired to our room soon after their departure, while his mother and Cécile opened another bottle of champagne. “Although that’s not a bad thing in the current circumstances.”

“How can you not see something so obvious?” I asked, brushing my hair, a nightly ritual in which I’d found much comfort from the time I was a little girl. “This screams Sebastian!”

The previous year, during the season, an infamous and clever burglar who called himself Sebastian Capet had plagued London and never been caught by the police. He moved in and out of house after house in search of a most specific bounty: objects previously owned by Marie Antoinette. When he broke into my former home in Berkeley Square, he liberated from Cécile’s jewelry case a pair of diamond earrings worn by the ill-fated queen when she was arrested during the revolution. But he left untouched Cécile’s hoard of even more valuable pieces. The following morning I had received a note, written in Greek, from the thief. Later, swathed in the robes of a Bedouin, the devious man imposed upon me at a fancy dress ball to confess he’d been taken with me from the moment he climbed in my window and saw me asleep with a copy of Homer’s Odyssey in my hand. Correctly determining that I was studying Greek (the volume I held was not an English translation), he had delivered to me, over the following weeks, a series of romantic notes written in the ancient language.

“Capet is not the only person in Europe capable of quoting Greek,” Colin said.

“Of course not,” I said. “But you must agree the manner of the theft sounds just like him. Stealing a painting to give it to someone who would appreciate it?” I slipped a lacy dressing gown over my shoulders and pulled it close.