did not fit. Elizabeth was bitter, and she was proud, and she could be heartlessly ruthless, as the two caravans in a nettle patch proved, yet I could not see her as a murderess. “She’s no killer,” I protested to Harry.
“Women may not be collectors,” Lady Buzzacott observed mildly, “but they are not innocent of greed, and many have conceived of murder.”
“She’s an opportunist.” Harry took up the condemnation of my twin sister. “I don’t think she’s had this planned for ever. It was your mother’s death that sparked her. That and your return to England.” He paused to tap ash into his saucer. “And remember she has a partner, and he is a killer.”
“Garrard,” I said more to myself than to anyone else. I could understand Garrard being a killer, but that did not explain why he had beaten Jennifer Pallavicini on board
“That was fear!” Harry explained when I raised the objection. “I’ve no doubt Garrard went to Salcombe to kill you, but he discovered the Contessa instead. What was he to think?”
“That I was making a deal with her?” I ventured.
“Which implied,” Harry went on, “that your sister had made a deal with you. Garrard was scared that he was being double-crossed by a brother–sister agreement! He was frightened that Elizabeth would give you the painting to sell on condition that you shared the price with her. It wasn’t true, but I’ll bet my last brass farthing that’s what Garrard believed when he found the Contessa on your boat. Sometime in the next few days your sister must have reassured him, so he went to George’s yard to finish the job properly. Would your sister have guessed you might be at Cullen’s place?”
I nodded. Elizabeth would indeed have remembered my old association with Cullen’s yard. The pieces were falling into place, but I did not like the picture they made. It’s hard to see one’s twin as a killer.
“And when your friend Charlie Barratt stopped that second murder attempt,” Harry went on, “what happened?”
“I sailed away.”
“Which meant she and Garrard had failed,” Harry was pleased with his exposition. “You were still alive, you’d disappeared, so now Elizabeth has a problem. The painting is still not legally hers, but she’s desperate for the money. So she has to run the risk of a ransom. But she was a little too greedy. She tried to put the screws on to your little sister’s money as well, and that brought you home. Maybe she even wanted you to come home, because my belief is that she’d still rather have you dead.” He looked at Sir Leon. “The painting must be worth a great deal more than the amount demanded in the ransom note?”
Sir Leon hesitated, then nodded. “The value is around twenty million.”
“So there you are,” Harry looked back at me. “Your death is worth sixteen million quid to your sister. Not a bad profit.”
I stood and walked to the window. “But if she’s already got the painting” – I was seeking a loophole in Harry’s thesis – “why doesn’t she just fight me in the courts for possession? She’s got my mother’s will as ammunition?”
“Because she’ll lose,” Sir Leon said harshly.
“But she wasn’t even at Stowey when the painting was stolen.” I raised another objection.
“Garrard nicked it,” Harry said easily. “She must have given him keys and told him how to work the alarm system.”
“But Elizabeth wouldn’t know where to find men like Garrard and Peel,” I protested.
Harry dismissed that objection. “Horses. Garrard used to be a good amateur steeplechaser before he turned bad. And the racecourses are full of villains.” He looked happily at the Buzzacott family. “If you ever need a crook, that’s where to go: the racecourse.”
Lady Buzzacott smiled her thanks for the advice, while Sir Leon looked pained and Jennifer just frowned.
It all worked. I could see that. Harry had presented a wonderful concoction of greed, violence and inheritance, a very upper-class concoction indeed, but I still did not want to believe that my twin sister was a killer. That was not because I loved her, but rather because, just as Elizabeth feared the genetic taint of Georgina’s madness, so I feared the taint of Elizabeth’s murderous nature. I shook my head. “I don’t know, Harry, I just don’t know.”
“So let’s find out!” Harry said cheerfully. “You’re back now, so let’s see if she tries to knock you off again. After all, she’d much rather sell the painting legally than go through the risks of collecting a ransom. And if she and Garrard do try murder again, we’ll catch them red-handed.”
There was silence. So this was why they had wanted my return: to be a target? None of them looked at me, perhaps embarrassed by what they expected of me.
Sir Leon cleared his throat. “I fail to see why collecting a ransom should be riskier than committing murder?”
“Murder comes out of the dark, when you least expect it,” Harry said, “but if you want a ransom you have to specify a time and a place, which gives your enemies a chance to ambush you.”
Sir Leon shook his head impatiently. “For my part I find it hard to believe that the recovery of the painting is intrinsically bound up in an attempt at murder.” He shrugged, as though suggesting that his qualifications for making that judgment were not as good as Harry’s. “I do believe, however, in their willingness to exchange the painting for a ransom.” He turned his myopic gaze to me. “They have requested that we insert a coded message in the personal column of
“No!” Harry, with a surprising asperity, slapped the suggestion down. “Once you’ve agreed to pay the ransom, you’ve no assurance they’ll give up the painting. They’ll just soak you for another four million.” He looked back to me. “I’d rather trick the bastards into showing themselves. If you’ll help.”
“Oh, I’ll help you,” I said easily, “but there is a condition for my help.”
“I do assure you” – Sir Leon, perhaps piqued by Harry’s strong opposition, spoke very irritably – “that I will pay you the highest imaginable price for the painting. Indeed, I’m quite certain your eventual price will be far too high. I have, after all, conducted negotiations with your family before.”
Those final words whipped at my pride like the recoiling slash of a broken wire-rope. Sir Leon’s voice had been smug and scornful, implying that my family, though broken and poor, had shown nothing but greed. The words told me that Sir Leon despised me, and he was showing that derision by letting me know that my greed could never match his fortune. He had the power of new money over old families, but I would be damned before I would let him patronise me. “Bugger your price,” I said. That shook all of them. “I don’t give a toss about your price. And don’t equate me with the rest of the family. If you negotiate with me, then you satisfy my terms, and those terms are very simple, Sir Leon. You take care of Georgina’s future, all of it.”
Sir Leon blinked at me. He had clearly been astonished by my vehemence, but not so astonished as to forget that he was at a negotiating table. “Your price, as I understand it, is your younger sister’s security?”
“And happiness.”
He gazed at me. He had very pale eyes, and I suddenly saw that he was not a timid little man at all, but a very hard one. “And your monetary price besides?” he asked in his most mocking voice.
He must have known he would get under my skin. “You can have the bloody painting!” I matched his scorn with my own. “Why the hell do you think I’m here? Because I care about being rich? For God’s sake, I inherited Stowey and the painting four years ago, and I didn’t want them then and I don’t want them now. I came here, Sir Leon, not to save a painting, but to save my sister from a squalid caravan in a dripping wood.”
Jennifer was staring at me. I knew I’d overreacted to her stepfather’s patronising tone. I’d lost my temper, said far more than I had wanted to say, and now found myself on the brink of giving up a fortune just to prove to this small bastard that not everyone would lick his arse to become rich. But at least I had succeeded in astonishing Jennifer, who was now staring at me as though she had never quite seen me before.
Sir Leon smiled. “I accept your terms, my lord. One painting in return for your sister’s lifelong security.” He held out his hand.
“Think carefully, John,” Lady Buzzacott warned me in a soft voice.
Jennifer shook her head slightly, as though disbelieving that I would take the offered hand. Sir Leon smiled at
