“If I had cash to spare I’d spend it on a Whistler,” he said blandly. “Tell me, now you’ve done your audit—how do you value the ancestors in the Great Hall? There are some impressive signatures on those canvasses.”
At last a feeling look and a half smile. “No idea. I’ve looked, of course. But I’m not very keen on selling off … people. One’s own people. I have no ancestors I can name, let alone look at. My father doesn’t even remember who his grandparents were. I feel the lack of background acutely. At home, I drink cocktails with men whose people crossed the ocean aboard the Mayflower; here, I take tea with the bony descendants of the Norman Conqueror. I expect you know—we are …” She reached for a word and came up with two—both of them French. “Parvenus … arrivistes … Why does it sound so much less insulting to confess it in French?”
He realised she was waiting for a response. An acknowledgement that she had just surrendered more than a confidence: an advantage. “I can’t for the moment come up with an English word for what you’re describing, Miss Despond. ‘Johnny-Come-Lately’ doesn’t quite do it—he’s a character from a nursery rhyme, surely? Perhaps that tells you something of our national character. We have always accepted that talent, wherever it has its roots, will transplant and flourish in our soil.” He added, teasingly, “Handel … Disraeli … our Royal family … and, yes, Canaletto, for starters.”
She listened patiently to his burbling, still getting his measure, he thought.
“But surely there were painters in your homeland? Hungary, it’s rumoured. Somewhere in eastern Europe?”
“Refugees travel light, Commissioner. If I had portraits of my ancestors I would never sell them. It smacks of the slave market. Oh, I know that they are no more than dabs of oil on canvas but I can’t bear to see faces and figures that must once have been dear to someone coming under the hammer. Being valued by the likes of Clarence Audley, ogled in the sale-room by any rag-tag-and-bobtail.” Her sneer made it clear that he answered this description.
“Were you aware that two miniatures of Truelove’s came up at Christie’s this week? Ancestors who disappeared from the house nearly thirty years ago?”
“Yes. It was I who drew Papa’s attention to them. I research the catalogues for him. He decided to buy them and present them to James as a token of our esteem this weekend.”
“A delicate gesture. A ‘sweetener,’ as it’s called in the trade.”
The half smile became a full one. “He was thwarted on the day by a low-down trick—a ‘spoiler,’ as it’s called in the trade. Performed by yourself, I believe?”
“I was, indeed, the bobtail in question.”
She appeared to relent slightly. “Anyway, no more of James’s pictures will suffer that ignominy. It was wrong of me to dangle the Canaletto in front of your nose. There are more ways than one, Commissioner, of righting a listing ship and getting it safely to harbour.”
The implication was unmistakable. Joe sighed. How could clever girls like Dorcas and Dorothy be so taken in? Why would they refuse to see the truth when it was spelled out to them?
“Shovel on fresh cargo? Or jettison the existing load? Both?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you, Commissioner?” She left him with a smile he could have sworn she’d learned from Leonardo.
He could almost bring himself to feel sorry for Truelove. This girl was no Lavinia. She had in seconds taken aboard news any other girl would have found devastating, evaluated it, made her calculations, and come to a decision. She intended to go ahead with her plans to marry a future prime minister, acquire a readymade set of ancestors and a country estate. Cecily might even be allowed to keep her Lancret. In spite of her undisguised contempt for him, Joe admitted to himself that he admired Dorothy Despond. Beauty, a quick wit and a buccaneering attitude were a combination which always seduced him. Altogether Truelove could congratulate himself on a match made in heaven. On the debit side, Joe could not count on an invitation to the wedding. And Dorcas? She could count on heartache at best.
The forces were gathering fast, the noose tightening, he realised, now that so much else was clear to him. Dorcas had been chosen as the victim, just as he had originally suspected. She had been lured into making a second appearance at the Hall and the way had been prepared for some sort of grisly unmasking. The deranged student in love with her mentor: it was a familiar story that would slip down with a knowing chuckle in the clubs of St. James’s. Wasn’t the girl in question a Joliffe, after all? That rackety family so discredited by the behaviour and dubious death of this girl’s aunt a year or two back? The Wren at the Ritz case? James should have known better than to encourage such a fragile personality. Still, that was the Trueloves for you—all heart and philanthropy. Too good for their own good—what!