“My daughter told me she’d met you at the gallery,” Lady Buzzacott said very blandly, which suggested that her daughter had also told her that she had put the boot in as well. “I do wish she’d brought you to the house that day and introduced you.”
“That would have been very pleasant,” I said with insincere gallantry. I was being polite for Georgina’s sake, but I was feeling increasingly resentful. It was not that I felt out of place, for I didn’t, but I did feel patronised. Two days ago I had been racing a gale, and now I had to tiptoe through the conversational tulips.
“Jenny also told us about her visit to the Azores,” Lady Buzzacott went on. “She said you hit a veritable giant?”
“Only twice, Lady Buzzacott.”
“You must call me Helen, and I shall call you John. Leon, I think John could do with a drink. And I know Harry wants one. I suppose the loveliest thing about being a policeman is that you can drink and drive as much as you like?”
“Quite right, your ladyship.” Harry was being very obsequious, and I realised that he probably fancied Lady Buzzacott, which wasn’t surprising, for she was a beautiful woman. The beauty was genuine, not purchased in spas and health farms or on some surgeon’s operating table. Her hair, like her daughter’s, was dark, but just beginning to show grey, and clearly Lady Buzzacott had no intention of hiding the grey.
If she impressed me, her husband rather surprised me. Sir Leon was very small, very rotund, and seemingly rather timid. I had expected to meet a frightening tycoon, but instead he seemed very eager to please. He ordered drinks, then took Harry Abbott off to see some orchids.
“They’ll talk golf,” Lady Buzzacott said despairingly, and I began to like her.
“I’ve had little else but golf all the way from Devon.”
“You poor man. No wonder you need that drink.” I had just been served a very large whisky. “I must say I’m delighted to meet you,” she continued, “because I’ve heard a great deal about you. You’re probably a throwback, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. I’ve no doubt your ancestors went swanning off across the seas to find giant Swedes they could hit, but you’re not really supposed to do it nowadays. We’re all meant to be dull, like Hans.”
“Hans?”
“Jennifer’s intended. I’m afraid he’s having lunch with us. He does something in cheese, or I think he does, but he’s so crushingly tedious that I’ve never really listened.”
I was beginning to like Lady Buzzacott very much. “And you?” I asked. “How do you stave off dullness?”
“I watch Leon at work. It’s fascinating.”
“Is it?” I must have sounded dubious because I could not understand what the attractive Lady Buzzacott saw in the diminutive and myopic Sir Leon. Except that he was coining the loot like a bandit.
“A lot of people underestimate Leon,” she said with just a touch of warning in her voice. “He’s a pirate. I know he doesn’t look like one, but he is. He started in property, of course, most of the new money did. He still has some property interests, but mostly he deals in companies now. That’s how we met Hans. He owns some food conglomerate and Leon couldn’t take it over because the Swiss government is very protective of their firms, so now we’re all a big happy partnership. Hans plays golf, too.” She shuddered. “Is there anything more boring than golf? Now, come and sit down, and tell me why you’re so wretchedly unhelpful about recovering your own picture?”
I sat down. At the far end of the terrace Sir Leon was demonstrating a golf swing with a long-stemmed watering can.
“Well?” Lady Buzzacott prompted me.
“I’m still not at all sure it is my picture.”
“There’s no doubt about that!” Lady Buzzacott said dismissively, then, after a few seconds of reflection, she looked rather more sceptical. “Well, of course, there’s always doubt about things once the lawyers get involved, but Leon has taken counsel’s opinion, and it seems that the picture has to belong to your family’s Trust, and that means you. Your mother’s will shouldn’t be able to change that.”
I remembered how Sir Oliver had skated swiftly away from the subject of my mother’s will. “I haven’t seen the will,” I said, hoping for enlightenment.
I wasn’t disappointed. “There’s nothing in it for you,” Lady Buzzacott said, “apart from some bad-tempered advice which I’m sure you’d do best to ignore. Instead your mother left all her property to your sister Elizabeth, and specifically included the Van Gogh in that bequest, but it’s very doubtful whether she had the power to leave the painting to anyone. She’d already given it to the family Trust, you see, in an effort to avoid tax. Doubtless, when she made her will, she was hoping that the lawyers could somehow disentangle the mess. I don’t know why people believe that of lawyers. In my experience they almost always make things a great deal more complicated.”
“But Elizabeth probably believes the will has greater power than the original deed of gift to the Trust,” I said.
“I’m sure she does!” Lady Buzzacott said firmly; then, with a small prevaricating shrug, “or perhaps not. She and your mother did try to have the trust wound up two years ago.”
“They did?” That was news to me.
“But, of course, everyone needed your signature, and you were swanning off being unpleasant to Scandinavians, so the Trust still inconveniently exists. Though, of course, if you died without having any children, then Elizabeth becomes the Trust’s main beneficiary.”
“It’s very strange,” I said, “how this family knows so much more about my affairs than I do.”
“That’s because you don’t care. You have to be very dull to wade through all those tedious documents. Ah, and speaking of dullness, here’s Hans.” A young, tall and sleekly handsome man had come on to the terrace. He was one of those foreigners who dress in the English manner, which meant he was wearing the most expensive brogues and a tweed suit, but all the money had only succeeded in making him look like a tailor’s dummy. Hans had yet to learn that the shoes and suit should be worn by his gardener for a full year’s hard labour before they would look properly English. He seemed somewhat taken aback by my wardrobe, but looked reassured when I was introduced as an earl. Perhaps he thought I was one of the eccentric English aristocrats he had heard so much about. I asked him how the cheese was going.
“Cheese?” He sounded worried.
“Helen told me you were in cheese?”
“Ah! The processed cheese!” He brightened up. “Indeed. But it is only a very small part of our overall business, my lord. We would like to expand it, especially in the American market, but the American taste for cheese is not like our own. We have to develop brands with a flavour that can endure extreme refrigeration…”
“Oh, look at the time!” Lady Buzzacott smiled graciously at her prospective son-in-law. “Would you very much mind telephoning Jenny and telling her that if she’s lunching with us she should come soon?”
Hans, clearly confused by his reception, dutifully obeyed. Lady Buzzacott caught my eye, and I saw from her gaze that she was an altogether more formidable lady than I had at first supposed. “If you think I’m being especially nice to you, John, you are entirely right. I am trying to suborn you. I want Leon to have his Sunflowers, and I want you to have a good price for them.”
“I do hate the way this family patronises me,” I said, though without rancour.
She laughed delightedly, then glanced through the window. “Ah, I see that Jenny is already on her way from the gallery. We shall go through to luncheon and you can hear more about cheese. Then we shall have our council of war. But without Hans, because he isn’t family. Yet.” And, I suspected from her tone, she was not at all sure that she ever wanted Hans as family. I decided I liked this lady very much indeed, so I offered her my arm and took her through for luncheon.
Sir Leon and Lady Buzzacott, the Contessa Pallavicini, Inspector Harry Abbott and myself formed the council of war.
Harry did most of the talking and was actually rather impressive. Lady Buzzacott said very little, but listened acutely. Sir Leon spoke when necessary, and took notes. Jennifer Pallavicini was disdainfully cold. She had been cold throughout luncheon, almost ignoring me. I had noticed that, unlike our previous meetings, she was wearing an engagement ring; a great chunk of diamond which must have cost a lot of processed cheese.
Harry began by describing the world of stolen art. The lecture was clearly for my benefit, though it did not stop Sir Leon from making notes in a small leather-bound book. The stealing of art works, Harry said, was a most
