The Moon Tunnel(35)

Dryden looked at Russell, whose gaze fell to the sugar bowl.

‘Russell said that sometimes the police don’t give out all the details. That they may have found something else in the tunnel.’ It was a question, but she tried not to sound as if she wanted an answer.

Dryden shook his head. ‘I was there – there was nothing else.’

Her head lolled over the cup.

‘I’m sorry. It’s the Dadd, isn’t it? The Richard Dadd – the moonlight picture. You hoped…’

‘Yes. It was always my favourite. Well, ours. Georgie and I would imagine what the story was… fantasize about that scene, so mysterious, under the clouds. It’s the only thing left, you see – of the estate. Everything else went in death duties. But the Dadd was lost.’

‘So if they found the Dadd, you’d be rich?’

‘Again,’ she said, smiling. ‘Me. I’ve spent most of my life vilifying the rich – which got progressively easier as we lost our own money. Bit tricky if I got it back, eh? I’d have to give it all to Russ.’

Russell beamed, his freckles disappearing in a genuine blush.

‘But the pearls?’

‘As I say, worthless. I’d like to have them, though. My mother left them out that night – they were a copy of a real set my grandfather had given my grandmother. They’re fake. I used to wear them in the nursery. An odd thing to die for.’

‘Wouldn’t the Dadd, if it was found, simply be included in the estate to meet the debts?’ he asked, and Russell shot a glance at his elderly friend.

‘No. No, all the debts were paid. There was a tiny surplus, so we paid off the staff at the hall and provided a small pension for them. That was my mother’s decision, although she wasn’t happy. I told her we had no choice – the poor people. It was their home too.’

‘Home,’ said Dryden, regretting it instantly.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking round. ‘I’ve lived here for twenty-one years.’

Dryden looked out the front window, the smog was pressing up against the glass, cutting off the rest of the world. ‘Are they really going to evict you?’

‘Not today, it seems,’ she said. ‘They always come early – to catch you unawares, Russ says. But soon. They’ve made so many promises – but I bet that’s the one they’ll keep.’

Dryden stood. ‘I wonder where it is – the painting?’ he said, returning his tea cup to the tray.

There was an awkward silence as Vee shuffled the election leaflets. Dryden sensed that she was trying not to cry. Russell stood and put an arm round her shoulders.

‘I don’t think about that,’ she said eventually. ‘To think that someone else’s eyes may be falling on it right now. Do you think they’re innocent eyes, Mr Dryden?’ she asked, smiling.

‘I doubt that very much,’ said Dryden.





14


A rusted iron bridge joined Ma Trunch’s bungalow to the rest of the world, over a drain clogged with Day-Glo green water weeds just visible through the thick white gauze of the fog. The horizon of the Black Fen was a distant memory, the grey outline of the town dump just discernible half a mile to the east, climbing up towards the billowing polluted cloud which drifted from its summit. For a second Dryden saw the top, a silent tractor moving suddenly against the sky. Then the mist folded over itself and all was gone. The acid in the air made Dryden’s throat ache and his eyes water, blurring a landscape already swimming in moisture.

He paused on the bridge, the ironwork creaking ominously. He checked his watch: 10.30am. He wanted to get an update on the pollution story for the next day’s paper and he had time to kill before joining the Italian ex-PoWs for lunch at Il Giardino. Vee Hilgay had confirmed the link between Serafino Amatista and the robbery at Osmington. Who had killed Amatista? Why had he died crawling back into the PoW camp with the loot from Osmington? And, most importantly for the living, where was Richard Dadd’s A Moonlight Vision? Dryden clearly needed to know more about California’s energetic gardeners, and there was only one place to find that out: Pepe Roma’s restaurant.

Dryden walked on in the smog until Little Castles, Ma Trunch’s bastion, came into view ten yards beyond the bridge. The house was stuccoed in grey, and a large plastic butterfly by the front door emphasized the lack of colour elsewhere. The door and window frames had once been a dark blue, but had peeled in the relentless Fen sun to reveal a mottled grey pine, dripping now in the mist. The house’s most eccentric touch were the fake battlements, two bricks high, which framed the flat roof, and a quartet of miniature corner turrets with fairy-tale lancet windows.