Marianne

There was a silence so complete that Fortunee stirred in her chair.

'The portrait?' said Fontaine. 'Which portrait—'

'But, the portrait of—' Marianne stopped short. She had been on the point of saying: 'The portrait of my father', but the singer Maria Stella could have no connection with the family of d'Asselnat. She drew a deep breath and then continued hurriedly: 'A magnificent portrait of a man which I and my friends saw this morning hanging over the fireplace in the salon. A man dressed in the uniform of an officer of the old king's—'

'Mademoiselle,' the two architects answered in unison, 'I can assure you that we saw no portrait—'

'But, I am not going out of my mind!' Marianne cried losing patience. She could not understand why these two men refused to discuss the portrait. She turned in desperation to Madame Hamelin.

'Oh really, my dear, you saw it too—?'

'Yes,' Fortunee said uneasily, 'I saw it. And do you really say, gentlemen, that there was no portrait in the salon? I can see it now: a very handsome man of noble bearing, wearing a colonel's uniform.'

'We give you our word, madame,' Percier assured her, 'that we saw no portrait. Had it been otherwise we should certainly have mentioned it at once. A single portrait left in a devastated house would have been remarkable enough!'

'And yet it was there,' Marianne persisted stubbornly.

'It was there, certainly.' Jolival's voice spoke from behind her. 'But just as certainly, it is not there now.'

Arcadius had been missing all afternoon but now, as he walked farther into the room, Percier and Fontaine, who had been beginning to wonder if they had fallen among lunatics, breathed again and turned gratefully to this unlooked for rescuer. But Arcadius, as amiable and unconcerned as ever, was kissing the fingers of the mistress of the house and Marianne.

'We can only imagine someone has taken it,' he remarked lightly. 'Well, gentlemen, have you reached an agreement with the – signorina Maria Stella—'

'Er – that is – not yet. This business of the portrait—'

'Forget it,' Marianne said tersely. She had realized that Jolival did not wish to speak of it before strangers. Now, much as she had liked these two in the beginning, she had only one wish, to see the back of them and be left alone with her friends. With this view, she forced herself to smile and say lightly but firmly:

'Remember only one thing. That my desire to see the house look as it used to do remains unaltered.'

'In the style of the last century?' Fontaine murmured with comical dismay. 'Are you quite determined on that?'

'Quite determined. I want nothing else. Do your best to make the Hotel d'Asselnat look as it used to do, gentlemen, and I shall be eternally grateful to you.'

There was nothing more to add. The two men withdrew, assuring her they would do their best. Barely hail they gone downstairs before Marianne fell on Arcadius.

'My father's portrait, what do you know about it?'

'That it is no longer where we saw it, my poor child. I went back to the rue de Lille without saying anything to you, after the architects had gone in fact, I watched them leave, I wanted to go over the house from top to bottom because there were a number of things which struck me as odd, those well oiled locks among other things. It was then I noticed that the portrait had disappeared.'

'But, then what can have happened to it? This is ridiculous! It's unbelievable!'

Marianne was bitterly disappointed. It seemed to her that now she had really lost the father she had never known and had discovered that morning with such joy. This sudden disappearance was very cruel.

'I should not have left it. I was so incredibly lucky to find it, I should have taken it with me, at once. But how could I have guessed that someone would come and move it. For that must be what happened, surely? It has been stolen!'

She was walking up and down the room unhappily as she spoke, wringing her hands together. Arcadius, though outwardly calm, never took his eyes off her.

'Stolen? Perhaps—'

'What do you mean, perhaps?'

'Don't be cross. I am merely thinking that whoever put it in the salon has simply taken it away again. You see, instead of trying to find out who took the portrait, I think we should do better to try and find out who put it there in the midst of all that wreckage. Because it is my belief that when we know that, we shall also know who has the portrait now.'

Marianne said nothing. What Jolival said was true. Instead of grieving, she began to think. She remembered the brightness of the canvas and the frame, how meticulously clean they were in contrast to the squalor around them. There was some mystery there.

'Would you like me to inform the Minister of Police?' Fortunee suggested. 'He will make inquiries, discreet ones if you like, but I'll be prepared to swear that he will find your portrait before very long.'

'No – thank you, I would rather not.'

What, above all, she would rather not see was the astute Fouche dabbling in something which concerned her so closely. She felt that by putting Fouche's men with their dirty fingers on the trail of her father's disappearing image, she would be in some way soiling the beauty of that image which she had so briefly recovered.

'No—' she said again, 'truly I would rather not.' She added: 'I prefer to try and find out myself.'

In that moment her mind was made up.

'Jolival, my dear,' she said calmly, 'tonight, we will go back to the rue de Lille, as unobtrusively as possible.'

'Go back to the rue de Lille tonight,' Fortunee protested. 'You cannot mean it? What for?'

'It would seem that there is a ghost in the old house. Don't ghosts prefer the night time?'

'You think someone comes there?'

'Or hides there.'

An idea was growing in her mind as she spoke. Or rather, a memory which was becoming clearer with every moment. Of a few remarks she had heard as a child. More than once, Aunt Ellis had told her of her adventures as a tiny baby, how the abbe de Chazay had found her, left all alone in the house after her parents had been taken away. At that time, the abbe himself had been living in the rue de Lille, in one of those secret hiding places which had been constructed in a great many aristocratic houses in town and country to hide refractory priests. 'That must be it!' she said, finishing her thoughts aloud, 'someone must be hiding in the house.'

'It is impossible,' Jolival answered. 'I have been everywhere, I tell you, from top to bottom.'

But he listened very attentively when she told him the story of the abbe de Chazay. Unfortunately, she did not know where this hiding place lay. It might be in the cellars, the attic or behind the panelling in one of the rooms. The abbe himself, whether intentionally or from sheer absentmindedness, had never told her precisely.

'In that case, we may search for a very long time. Some of these hiding places were completely impossible to discover, except by a stroke of luck. We shall have to sound out the walls and ceilings.'

'At all events, no one could live long in one of those hiding places without outside help,' Marianne said. 'They would need food and fresh air and all the other necessities of life.'

Fortunee, who was lying on a blue watered-silk chaise longue, sighed and stretched, then began rearranging the folds of her red cashmere gown, yawning widely as she did so.

'You don't think perhaps you two are romancing a little?' she said. 'I think the house has been empty for so long that some poor homeless wretch must have been living in it, and our going in like that, followed by the architects, must have disturbed him, that is all.'

'And the portrait?' Marianne said seriously.

'He must have found it in the house, perhaps in the attics or hidden away in some odd corner, which would explain why it escaped when everything else was wrecked. Because it was the only pretty thing left, he used it to adorn his desert and when we invaded his domain today he simply went away and took with him what he had come to regard as his own property. I sincerely believe, Marianne, that if you want to get your picture back the only sensible thing to do is to tell Fouche. It can't be easy to wander about Paris with a canvas that size under one's arm. Would you like me to send for him? We are reasonably good friends.'

It began to look as though the charming Fortunee had good friends everywhere, but once again, Marianne