As the Crow Flies

“Surely not Guy…”

“Why not, he’s more likely to have appreciated its value than Tommy.”

“But how did Guy discover where it ended up, let alone what it was really worth?”

“Company records, perhaps, or a chance conversation with Daphne might have put him in the right direction.”

“But that still doesn’t explain how he found out it was an original.”

“I agree,” said Charlie. “I suspect he didn’t, and simply saw the picture as another way of discrediting me.”

“Then how the blazes…?”

“Whereas Mrs. Trentham has had several years to stumble across—”

“Good God, but where does Kitty fit in?”

“She was a distraction, nothing more, used by Mrs. Trentham simply to set us up.”

“Will that woman go to any lengths to destroy us?”

“I suspect so. And one thing’s for certain, she isn’t going to be pleased when she discovers her ‘best laid plans’ have once again been scuppered.”

I collapsed on the chair beside my husband. “What shall we do now?”

Charlie continued to cling to the little masterpiece as if he were afraid someone might try to seize it from him.

“There’s only one thing we can do.”

I drove us to the archbishop’s house that night and parked the car outside the tradesmen’s entrance. “How appropriate,” Charlie remarked, before knocking quietly on an old oak door. A priest answered our call and without a word ushered us in before leading us through to see the archbishop, whom we found sharing a glass of wine with the Bishop of Reims.

“Sir Charles and Lady Trumper,” the priest intoned.

“Welcome, my children,” said the archbishop as he came forward to greet us. “This is an unexpected pleasure,” he added, after Charlie kissed his ring. “But what brings you to my home?”

“We have a small gift for the bishop,” I said as I handed over a little paper parcel to his grace. The bishop smiled the same smile as when he had declared the picture to be a copy. He opened the parcel slowly, like a child who knows he’s being given a present when it isn’t his birthday. He held the little masterpiece in his hands for some time before passing it to the archbishop for his consideration.

“Truly magnificent,” said the archbishop, who studied it carefully before handing it back to the bishop. “But where will you display it?”

“Above the cross in the chapel of St. Augustine I consider would be appropriate,” the bishop replied. “And possibly in time someone far more scholarly on such matters than myself will declare the picture to be an original.” He looked up and smiled, a wicked smile for a bishop.

The archbishop turned towards me. “Would you and your husband care to join us for dinner?”

I thanked him for the kind offer and muttered some excuse about a previous engagement before we both bade them good night and quietly slipped out the way we had come.

As the door closed behind us I heard the archbishop say: “You win your bet, Pierre.”

CHAPTER

36

“Twenty thousand pounds?” said Becky as she came to a halt outside Number 141. “You must be joking.”

“That’s the price the agent is demanding,” said Tim Newman.

“But the shop can’t be worth more than three thousand at most,” said Charlie, staring at the only building on the block he still didn’t own, other than the flats. “And in any case I signed an agreement with Mr. Sneddles that when—”

“Not for the books, you didn’t,” said the banker.