Page 16 of Marble Hall Murders

Margaret’s children had never forgiven them for daring to get married. Elmer was an American. He was an outsider. He might be working in the rarefied world of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, but he was still a merchant – after all, a gallery was only another name for a shop. What right did he have to ingratiate himself into the sphere of an English family with five hundred acres in Norfolk and a history that went back to the time of Queen Elizabeth I? And then there was the memory of Henry Chalfont, a war hero who had helped bring Jewish refugees into Britain, killed by a bomb ashe walked through Whitechapel. Nobody had ever believed that Margaret would marry again, and the fact that she had kept her old name suggested she wasn’t entirely serious about the new relationship, that she was still living in the past.

‘How are you feeling today?’ Elmer asked the same question every morning, although he tried to find different ways to formulate the words.

‘I’m very well.’ Margaret had never answered otherwise, even after a bad night. ‘It’s lovely of you to look in and see me. What are you doing today?’

‘I’m still working on the catalogue.’

‘I thought I might take tea in the gazebo. Will you join me?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t. I have lunch with Robert in Nice and then I must work.’

‘Well, I’ll ask Judith and Harry.’

Elmer scowled. ‘They’re still asking me for money for that damn hotel.’

Margaret reached out and rested a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Maybe you should help them a little, Elmer. Just a little. Harry means well and he’s not as clever as you.’

‘I warned him against it, Margaret. He didn’t listen to me. If I help him now, it’ll just be throwing good money after bad. And what about the rest of them? Lola’s investing in a musical – as if that isn’t the fastest way to lose money on the planet. Judith wants to spend thousands preserving a desert in Peru. And Jeffrey’s worse than any of them, throwing cash away at the casino.’

‘I do worry about them, I admit it. You will look out for them, won’t you, after I’m …’ She didn’t finish the sentence, but she loosened her grip and her hand fell away.

‘My dearest, that’s all I’ve ever tried to do – from the minute I walked into your life.’ Elmer took hold of her, his face close to hers. ‘To look after them if they’ll listen to me, which sadly they never do. But I’ll never stop trying and I promise you, you don’t need to worry about any of them.’ He tried to smile. ‘Anyway, I don’t like this talk about you leaving me or going anywhere. Right now you look as beautiful as the day we met. The sunshine down here does wonders for you, and who knows, maybe you’ll prove the doctors wrong and live to be a hundred. The important thing is to enjoy every minute we have together, and that’s what we’re going to do.’

‘You still haven’t got time to have tea with me.’

‘You know how much work I have.’ He sighed. ‘Why don’t we have an early supper together, just the two of us? I can ask Béatrice to lay a table out here on the balcony and we can watch the sun set.’

‘I’d like that.’ Margaret tried to smile, but Elmer could see she was uneasy. There was something holding her back.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

She turned away. ‘I had a bad dream last night,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, Elmer, but sometimes I’m afraid. It’s so beautiful here, but I feel the shadows closing in. I’m not talking about my illness. It’s something else. Don’t you feel it too?’

She shivered. Elmer gazed at her, his eyes full of concern. ‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should come inside.’

‘No. Please. Let me sit here.’

‘I’ll fetch you a blanket.’

Elmer got up and went into the bedroom. As soon as hehad gone, Margaret Chalfont allowed one hand to drop to her dressing-gown pocket and felt for the single sheet of paper that she had placed there and which she knew would bring her comfort. It was the telegram from Atticus Pünd. He had said he was arriving on 3 June. That was today. So where was he? When was he going to come?

FOUR

The Place Masséna was one of the busiest squares in Nice, mainly thanks to the art deco bus station that had been built to one side, its neon sign –GARE MUNICIPALE D’AUTOBUS– blazing out the fact that it had been given pride of place. Without all the attendant traffic, buses, coaches, taxis and cars, the square might have been beautiful. There was a thick border of trees on one side and a row of classical colonnades on the other, with several old-fashioned shops and boutiques tucked away behind. This was where the Galerie Werner-Waysmith was located. It was at the very heart of the old town, surrounded by cafés, easy to find for dedicated art buyers and perfectly placed for passing trade – not that casual tourists often looked in. The gallery was too austere, lacking anything of the colour and life that tourists would find just a few minutes away on the Promenade des Anglais.

It was also far too expensive for anyone except a dedicated collector. Very little that was sold there cost less than five thousand francs and there were pieces priced at twenty times that amount. A single work would be displayed in each of the two windows on either side of a forbidding, iron-rimmed door and the absence of any price tag was more than enough to suggest that what was on sale here would probably be out of most people’s reach.

Those who passed through the door would find themselves in a dark, expensively carpeted room with an antique table and two chairs surrounded by a small selection of paintings and sculptures exquisitely displayed. Very little daylight entered the gallery. The artworks were picked out by carefully placed spotlights that lifted them out of the shadows.

Visitors would find themselves confronted by the gallery’sdirectrice, a woman in her late sixties, usually dressed in dark colours. Madame Dubois had no first name that anyone knew and had worked there both before and after the war. She had never explained what she had done during the hiatus, but had turned up for work on 28 August 1944 (a Monday), three days after the liberation of Paris.

Tourists or passers-by were dealt with swiftly but politely. Madame Dubois had a way of dismissing them that somehow never gave offence. If the caller seemed serious or came with the right credentials, she would look after them with perfect efficiency. Finally, if they had purchased an artwork from the gallery in the past – and Madame Dubois never forgot a name or a face – then she would offer coffee or acoupe de champagnewhile she went to the back office to summon the younger Monsieur Waysmith or his father.

Robert Waysmith was sitting in the back office now. He had entered through a door that opened into a narrow street behind the gallery and taken his place at one of the two desks that faced each other across the room. Given that both father and son were in the business of selling art, the office was surprisingly bare. There were many canvases, framed and unframed, leaning against the walls but none on the wallsthemselves. A single window would have given a view of the square but even this had been blanked out by frosted glass. A long shelf ran from one end of the room to the other. It contained a series of box files, colour-coded and dated. An old-fashioned safe stood in a corner. It didn’t look as if it had been opened for years.

Robert was holding a framed oil painting that showed a stream on a summer’s day. A woman, holding a parasol, was walking along one of the banks. This was the work that his client, Lucas Dorfman, had purchased and which he was about to deliver. He examined the image one last time, marvelling at the play of light and colour, the perfectly captured landscape, the delicate brushstrokes. Not for nothing had Alfred Sisley been called the purest of the Impressionists.

And now it was going. Robert wrapped it carefully in thick brown paper, which he secured with string. He had already prepared a copy of the invoice and had written a detailed description of the work that included its subject matter, the medium (oil on canvas), the size and the provenance. It had been purchased from the Fischer Gallery, a highly respected arthouse in Lucerne. Before that, it had been in a private collection. Finally, Robert had provided reports by two art experts attesting to the painting’s authenticity, condition and artistic significance.

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