Blood on the Wood (11 page)

‘Can't you cut it out of its frame and roll it up?'

I knew that was what proper picture thieves were supposed to do, but the thought of putting a knife even to the edge of it terrified me. I could practically hear the squeals of the beautiful young man at Christie's.

‘No, I'll take it in its frame. But it will have to be properly wrapped up and I can't risk doing that in your uncle's study.'

‘So what will you do?'

‘It's a question of what
you
do. There's a summerhouse at the back of your garden. It doesn't look as if it's used much.'

‘It isn't.'

‘Could you leave me a sheet or a thin blanket there, and some string? A paraffin lamp and matches too, if you can.'

‘Yes.'

‘Another thing – if the fake picture arrives this evening, I'm going to have to find somewhere to put it until after eleven when your uncle's asleep. I thought the summerhouse for that too.'

‘How will you get it there?'

‘Up the fields and in at the back gate.'

It would be a useful rehearsal for the more intimidating task of taking the real picture back down by the same route.

By now everybody else, including Daisy, had disappeared inside the tent. Hawthorne called, ‘Come on, Daniel. We're waiting.'

I left him at the entrance, walked away with the chorus of
John Barleycorn
fading in the distance and spent the next hour or so making myself familiar with fields and footpaths around the village, plotting as inconspicuous a route as possible from the railway halt to the Venns' back gate. It consisted of a few hundred yards of road, a cart track, four fields, three gates and a stile. The thought of all that twice over, once with the false Odalisque and again with the true one, was so discouraging that I'd have called off the whole thing if I hadn't already sent the letter summoning her. Cravenly, I even hoped the blackberry hat girl had forgotten to post it. The next part of the preparations involved a trip to the village shop. It had occurred to me that oil lamps and valuable paintings might not be a good combination and a battery-powered flashlight would be a great help in an art robber's life. The woman behind the counter was friendly enough but mildly shocked at the idea that her crowded shelves would have anything so newfangled.

‘Chipping Norton would be your nearest, or if you could wait till tomorrow you could have a word with Mr Bestley.'

‘He sells flashlights?'

‘No, he runs the carrier's cart. Tuesdays and Fridays, he'll fetch nearly anything as long as you pay him in advance.'

So, with plenty of time to spare, I took the train a few stops along the line to Chipping Norton and managed to buy a battery-powered bicycle lamp, rather bulky but giving a fair beam of light. Then I had lunch and, still with time to spare, caught a train back along the line to the junction with the express route from London.

*   *   *

I'd proposed the junction rather than the local halt in my letter to the office on the grounds that the messenger with the picture would attract less attention at a busier place. She could deliver it and take the next train back to town without being involved in any illegality or embarrassment if the thing went wrong.

Trains came and went without any sign of a discreet person with an indiscreet picture and I began to think it wouldn't arrive till the next day, which was a relief in a way but meant another earnest evening and uncomfortable night with the Scipians. Towards the end of the afternoon a London express drew in – also without result – until the moment after it began to pull out. It picked up speed from walking to running pace then stopped with a hiss of steam and banging and clattering of couplings with the last carriage just alongside the platform. Before it came to a halt a door opened, nearly knocking me off my feet, and a huge paper parcel came flying out, with an angry female voice shouting from somewhere behind it.

‘Well, it's not my fault. I told you to tell me when we got there.'

Above the hiss and clatter, an equally angry male voice from the train was saying something about fines and emergencies. A pair of fashionably shod feet hit the platform below the parcel and a face emerged round the side of it, bright-eyed and wild-haired, with a smudged nose.

‘Good afternoon. It's Miss Bray, isn't it? Would you hold this?'

The new arrival propped the parcel up against me before I could say anything and went on arguing with the man in railway uniform hanging out of the guard's van.

‘It was an emergency. This is a valuable picture and it's needed urgently.'

I thought if this was their idea of discretion at Clement's Inn, I was lucky they hadn't sent banners and a brass band as well.

‘It's not me delaying the confounded train anyway, it's you. Oh go on, for heaven's sake.'

She flapped her hand at the train driver, who was craning out of his cab to see what was going on behind him. Amazingly, he made a gesture that might have been an ironic salute and did drive on, with the guard shaking his fist at us from the open door of his van as he was carried away. She stood on the platform, cheeks flushed, grinning in triumph.

‘At least I got it here.'

I'd never seen her before. She couldn't have been much older than twenty; not tall, she was as slim as a cigarette. Her face was like a pretty street urchin's, surrounded by the kind of dark wiry curls that are designed by nature to ping hairpins out of place like water drops from a dog shaking itself, and sure enough her hair was coming down. If she'd started the day with a hat it must have got left on the train. In spite of my annoyance, it was hard not to look at her and laugh, partly because of the contrast between her appearance and her voice. It was unmistakably upper class and had the tone of a family who'd been telling other people what to do since the Conqueror landed. I put out my right hand, keeping the parcel upright with my left. Her ungloved grip was muscular. She probably played a lot of lawn tennis.

‘You're…?'

‘Roberta Fieldfare, but for goodness sake call me Bobbie.'

‘Have you been with us long?'

‘Three days. My mother took me along on Saturday to help with addressing envelopes. Then this morning they asked her to bring this down to you in no end of a hurry, only she couldn't because she'd got an appointment in town, so I said I would. I was sick of envelopes by then, anyway. Actions not words, that's what I say.'

It was beginning to fall into place. Lady Fieldfare was one of our solidly useful workers, younger sister of a notorious firebrand called Maud, in her late sixties but always causing rows in committees because things weren't moving fast enough for her liking. Bobbie apparently took after her aunt.

‘So what are we going to do with Bessie Broadbeam now I've got her here?'

‘Um?'

She gave the parcel a little slap. ‘I had a look at her on the journey. Reminded me of one of my aunt's brood mares.'

‘You unwrapped it in a railway carriage?'

‘I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I suppose we take it up to the old man and go back with the real one. Is there a cab?'

Worse and worse. If this did go wrong, she'd now provided us with a carriageful of witnesses, plus train driver and guard.

‘Don't worry about a cab,' I said. ‘Thank you for bringing the picture. If you go over to the other platform you've got plenty of time to catch the next train back.'

She didn't move. ‘She's quite heavy. I'll help you with her wherever you're going.'

I told her I could manage, but seeing the picture again I was disconcerted by the size of it. Already we were attracting the hopeful attention of porters. I compromised.

‘If the local train gets in before the London express, you can help me get it into the carriage, that's all.'

The local train arrived about half an hour later. Fortunately there were only two people waiting for it besides ourselves and they looked like farmers' wives too deep in gossip to take much notice. I got in and Bobbie helped manoeuvre the picture after me. We settled it against the seat. I thanked her, wished her a good journey back and slammed the door. More doors slammed. As the train slowly drew away from the platform I thought I was in for it now: no taking the thing tamely back to London and admitting failure. That must have distracted me because I wasn't aware of a person moving through the compartment until somebody was standing beside me. Guilty conscience made me jump then:

‘You!' I said.

Bobbie Fieldfare was swaying as the train got up speed, looking a bit abashed.

‘I've been thinking…'

‘You're not supposed to be thinking, you're supposed to be going back to London. What are you doing here?'

‘I got on at the other end. I thought I could see you to where you're going at any rate.'

She sat down on the seat opposite. I felt like pitching her out of the train but that might have attracted attention so I ignored her until we stopped at the local halt. When the train went on its way there were just three of us on the wooden planks of the platform, Bobbie, Bessie Broadbeam and me. By then I'd managed to get over some of my annoyance and admit that Bobbie might have her uses in a limited way. It was around half-past six, less than two hours of daylight left. With her help I could use the time to get the picture stowed in the Venns' summerhouse and still, with luck, send her back to London on a late train.

Bobbie stared round at the fields and copses and remarked that it looked like quite good hunting country. I pointed out the Venn house, half hidden by trees.

‘That's where we're going, over the fields.'

The cheerful way she accepted this put her up a point in my estimation. We each grasped one side of the picture, getting a good grip on the knobbly frame through the wrappings, and carried it along the road, up the cart track and into a stubble field. The farmworkers had gone to their tea, so there was nobody to see us except a couple of pheasants getting plump on harvest gleanings. A copper glow was on the birds and the stubble and the horizontal light threw our grotesque shadow across the field, like a rectangular beast with two sets of unmatched legs. We went slowly across two more fields, stopping now and then to change our grip on the frame or massage aching wrists and fingers. Although I wouldn't admit it to Bobbie and discouraged her attempts to chat and ask questions, I wasn't altogether sorry to have help and worried even more about how I'd manage getting the real Bessie back over the same ground in the dark on my own. She'd be every bit as awkward and heavy and so much more valuable that an accident with a toe or tree branch would be a disaster.

At one point on our uphill journey we stopped for a rest only a field's width away from the road and heard hooves and wheels coming down it from the direction of the Venns'. I took Bobbie by the shoulder and pressed us and the picture into the hedge. On the road, the Venns' gig came past at a brisk walk, the oil lamps on the front already lit and glowing like pale lemon sweets in the evening light. A man sat in the driving seat on his own, staring straight ahead. Although I couldn't be sure from across the field in the dim light I was pretty sure it was Adam Venn; the figure looked too respectable for Daniel and too active for Oliver.

‘Is that one of them?' Bobbie said when he'd gone past.

‘Yes.'

My heart was beating faster than I liked. Daniel's view of the operation seemed over-optimistic to me now that action was getting closer. At any rate, I didn't want to be the one to lead this infant any further astray.

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘I can manage now. If you cut across to the road then down to the railway you should be able to get the late train back to the junction.'

‘I'm not going back.'

‘Oh yes you are. You've delivered Bessie, and I'm very grateful. That's your job done. Back to the envelopes.'

‘I'm sure I'd be a lot better at burglary.'

‘Who said anything about burglary?'

I certainly hadn't in my letter. As far as anyone at Clement's Inn knew, this was simple exchange, all above board.

‘We're going in the back way and you're as twitchy as a filly her first time out. So we're leaving this picture and snitching the real one. Good idea.'

‘I am not twitchy.' I was so annoyed I practically shouted it. Here was this fledgling, probably around ten years younger than I was, questioning my nerve. ‘Now will you go, please.'

‘You'll need somebody to keep a lookout. And how are you going to break in? There's a trick with treacle and brown paper for taking out window panes quietly. My brother taught me.'

‘So does everybody's brother. Firstly we haven't got any treacle and secondly it doesn't work anyway.'

I'd no intention of telling her that two of the Venns were part of the plot.

‘At least let me help you get it up to the house.'

Her tone was so submissive that I was idiot enough to give in.

‘All right, but no further.'

As we walked on I wondered where Adam was heading and guessed it would have something to do with the Daniel and Daisy problem. We came to a farm gate with a rickety barn on the far side of it, old dry hay sticking out from gaps in the timbers. At that point only one small field separated us from the back of the Venns' house. We went slowly over tussocky pasture, keeping in the shadow of a tall hedge to our left then round the corner towards the small garden gate, the wall protecting us against being seen from the house. When we reached the gate I propped the picture up and told Bobbie to wait. With Adam away, and Felicia probably too miserable to care, the only person I had to worry about was Oliver Venn, and some caution was needed from now on in case he happened to be out for an evening stroll in the garden. I had my hand on the latch of the gate when it happened.