Death of a Delft Blue

‘I shall go at once to Norfolk, child. This is a cry from the heart and cannot be disregarded. Put off everybody who can be put off, and refer the rest to Doctor Anderson.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Concern about the Dispossessed

‘It occurs to me that you may care to investigate the matter with me. If so, send me a wire when to expect you.’

E. and H. Heron

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You think there’s some connection between Florian’s disappearance and this gathering of the clans, don’t you?’ said Laura, as they drove northwards on the following morning. ‘I mean, it isn’t only the old chap’s illness.’

‘I think that Professor Derde is an extremely worried man,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I esteem him very highly and I should like to help him. In what way I can do so is in doubt until I meet him again, but the least I can do is to go and see him. After all, he is an authority on the Aztecs of Mexico, is he not?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ asked Laura. Dame Beatrice waved a yellow explanatory hand.

‘Human sacrifices, dear child, appear to have been a feature of their religion.’

‘You mean that Florian’s dead?’

‘After death there is no other accident,’ pronounced Dame Beatrice. ‘That is what the Greeks thought, and I doubt whether there are many theologians today who would refuse to bear them out. I am always suspicious when persons who have what are sometimes called “expectations” vanish without trace. Why the Austrian and Italian papers, I wonder?’

‘I thought Florian’s expectations had gone overboard,’ said Laura. After lunching in Great Yarmouth, they arrived at Bernard van Zestien’s house at four o’clock, having stayed for a while on the front at Sheringham.

Derde met them at the door.

‘I’ve been looking down the drive for the past hour,’ he said. ‘I am so very glad to see you. It is good of you to come. An English tea is laid in the library. When you are refreshed, I will tell you all I know or can guess.’

The library was a spacious, handsome room with a carved overmantel attributed to Grinling Gibbons, (but more likely to have been the work of one of his pupils), a remarkable painted ceiling and windows which overlooked two sides of the park. The books were neither numerous nor noteworthy. In fact, two shelves were given over to modern novels, detective stories and tales of adventure, these to suit the taste, Dame Beatrice concluded, of Florian and Binnie.

A maid, with the flat features and small, intelligent eyes of so many of the East Anglian peasantry, served tea, at which the visitors were joined by Derde and Sweyn. The latter, it was soon clear, did not share his elder brother’s fears and anxieties.

‘Ten to one,’ he said, when tea had been cleared away and the party were seated round the fire, ‘Florian, having slipped across to Holland so that his portrait bust can be finished, merely is staying there because he intends to have the work photographed and to send copies of the photograph to the prospective publishers of his book.’

‘He is an author, then?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What is his line? Has he a special interest?’

‘He is preparing a work which describes the limestone caves and grottoes of the South Limburg province. I think that he also has chapters on the Cheddar Gorge in England, and those grottoes in Priddy and the Mendip Hills. So I think, but I doubt whether it is a very good book. In any case, although he calls himself an author, none of his work has, as yet, been published.’

‘But you do not know for certain whether or not he has left Holland?’

‘We do not know. We have no idea, and neither has our aunt Binnen. Cousin Opal looks wise but says little, except that he may be in the Dolomites.’

‘Why are you so worried about him, Professor?’ demanded Dame Beatrice, addressing Derde.

‘I hardly know. He is a foolish boy, very sure that he knows everything. All the same, if he had seen our notices in the newspapers, I am sure that he would have come to his granduncle’s bedside.’

‘What do you want me to do? He seems to have been thoughtless, but young people are like that. Is there nothing else you would like to tell me?’

Sweyn scowled at the toes of his shoes. Derde glanced at his brother and then said:

‘None of us likes his attitude towards his sister’s engagement.’

‘But I understood that the engagement had been broken off.’

‘I think Time will heal that little breach,’ said Sweyn, raising his head and fixing his light-coloured eyes on those of Dame Beatrice. Hers were as black as coals and her whole expression was non-committal.

‘It would do a great deal to relieve all our minds,’ said Derde, ‘if you would undertake to find Florian and persuade him to return to his duty. We would pursue the quest ourselves, but the University term begins very shortly and we must be in our places at least a week beforehand, for there is much to do at the beginning of a new College year.’

‘Yes, I see. May I have Miss Binnie Colwyn-Welch’s address? I believe she is in Scotland with her parents. I take it that the family reunion does not include them.’

Derde wrote down the address and then said:

‘I wonder how you guessed that we had not sent for Binnie and her parents?’