Lord of the Wings (20 page)

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish pulled the left side of his raincoat open, revealing a well-worn Harris Tweed jacket beneath. He fished in the jacket pocket with two of those unusually long fingers—was it just my imagination, or did his fingers have more joints than usual? He pulled out a business card, then held it with both hands and presented it to me with a slight bow.

“Thank you.” I glanced down at the card, which read G.Q
.
C
AVENDISH.
F
INE
A
RT
C
ONSERVATION AND
R
ESTORATION
followed by the usual address, telephone, fax, and e-mail information. “Oh! I remember. Dr. Smoot and Mrs. Paltroon both mentioned that you were coming by today to take a look at the portrait.”

“Yes.” Dr. Cavendish sounded relieved that at least someone was aware of his mission. “May I see it?”

“Let me ask Chief Burke,” I said.

“What is he chief of?” Dr. Cavendish looked anxious.

“Chief of Police,” I said. “The painting's in the basement, which is technically still a crime scene.”

“Crime scene?” Now Dr. Cavendish looked positively alarmed. “Dr. Smoot didn't tell me that there was a crime involved.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's been a long night and I'm probably not explaining anything very well. There probably wasn't a crime when Dr. Smoot called you. I assume he called a day or two ago to examine the painting, right?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “He and Mrs. Paltroon both. They informed me that it is a late eighteenth-century family portrait done by an unknown itinerant painter, on loan to the museum. As soon as it arrived, Dr. Smoot noticed that it showed some signs of deterioration. He notified Mrs. Paltroon and they agreed to have me come as soon as possible to determine the cause of the problem and assess whether it was safe to exhibit it here in his museum.” He looked around at the waterlogged contents of the living room. “I gather this is not the museum's normal condition.”

“We had a fire last night, remember?” I said. “Actually just a few hours ago. Dr. Smoot was injured and another person, apparently an intruder and possibly the cause of the fire, was killed.”

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish shook his head in dismay. “They were after the portrait, weren't they? They didn't take it, did they? Or—was it damaged in the fire?”

He looked so pale that I hastened to reassure him.

“If they were after the portrait, they didn't get it,” I said. “And the portrait wasn't damaged. Not by the fire, anyway.”

He breathed a sigh of such relief that you'd have thought I'd just told him his beloved mother was unharmed.

“Of course,” I went on, “it did get a little wet.”

“Oh, my goodness.” He went pale again. “I must see it. Take me to it at once!”

“Just a second.” I walked over to the basement door and called downstairs.

“Chief? May I see you for a moment?”

“Coming.”

Chief Burke appeared at the top of the steps, looking distracted. I introduced the two and explained Dr. Cavendish's mission.

“I'd like to see the painting right away,” Dr. Cavendish said.

I could tell the chief didn't like being ordered about at his own crime scene.

“And his expert opinion might help you figure out if the painting is valuable enough to have been a motive for what happened last night,” I suggested.

The chief studied Dr. Cavendish for a few moments.

“I don't see why you can't take a look at the painting,” he said finally. “But don't touch anything else.”

He led the way down into the basement and then through the waterlogged room to the end where the painting hung. Dr. Cavendish kept looking around him with alarm, as if expecting something to pop out of the shadows, and his freakishly long fingers twitched convulsively.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Such a lot of damage. Those firemen with their jackboots! Couldn't they have been a bit more careful?”

“They put the fire out before it burned up the whole house and the painting with it,” I said. “And if they had to do some damage in the process, it's the arsonist's fault.” I decided not to mention that one of the jackbooted firefighters was my husband.

“Here's the picture,” the chief said, gesturing toward the wall on which it hung.

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish stood for a few moments and stared, his face disconsolate.

I could see why. Most of the Paltroons looked much the same, misshapen and awkward, with insipid smiles on their heavy-jowled faces. It was probably just my imagination that their painted smiles looked more forced this morning, as if they were resenting the indignities inflicted on them during the night but bravely putting on a good show. And I was definitely only imagining that the painted Mrs. Paltroon had made progress in her attempt to slip off the right side of the painting and escape from her overlarge brood.

But something had changed. All those areas where the paint had been merely a little puckered yesterday were now looking seriously the worse for wear. The wall behind the family was being transformed as little bits of the bland tan color flaked off, revealing that something else had originally been painted underneath. And Mr. Paltroon's fawn-colored coat was almost completely gone, revealing that he'd originally worn a green jacket.

“Fascinating,” Dr. Cavendish breathed. “Pentimenti!”

“I beg your pardon?” the chief said.

“A pentimento is a place in a painting where the artist changed his mind,” Dr. Cavendish said. “Or repented. Pentimento comes from the Italian for ‘repentance.' The artist originally painted something in the background—a landscape would be most common, or possibly a fireplace or fountain. But then for some reason he painted it over with that rather atypical and compositionally unfortunate blank wall. And then changed the green coat to tan.”

“Maybe the family didn't like whatever he'd done in the background,” I suggested.

“Very possibly.” Dr Cavendish was rummaging in his pockets. He fished out a small flashlight and a pair of tweezers. He turned the flashlight on and ran its beam slowly over the damaged areas of the painting.

“Of course,” he added, “we usually discover a pentimento in less dramatic ways. Some paints become more transparent over time, so that what was completely obscured begins to be revealed. Other pentimenti are revealed by X-rays or infrared photography. Letting the top layer bubble up from damp conditions and then blowing it off with a fire hose is not a recommended method for investigating pentimenti. But now that it's happened …

Here he fell silent, stepped closer to the painting, and studied it with the light of his little flashlight for several minutes.

“I take it back,” he said. “Not pentimenti after all. I think it's highly unlikely that the original artist made these changes. I can't be sure until I've done a full analysis, but I would not be surprised at all to find that these alterations were made years, if not decades, after the painting was completed, and by a different hand.”

“But why?” The chief sounded puzzled. And I could tell by his expression that he wasn't at all sure any of this would be of the slightest use to him in solving his two murder cases.

“Well, it's possible…” Dr. Cavendish's voice trailed off as he reached up with his tweezers to Mr. Paltroon's shoulder and gently took hold of a large paint flake that was clearly on the verge of falling. Removing the flake revealed something else. Mr. Paltroon's coat wasn't just a coat. It had epaulets and gold frogging.

“That's a uniform, isn't it?” I asked.

“Why yes, it is.” Dr. Cavendish seemed to find my question hilarious. Or maybe it was something about the uniform that had set him off. He went from a giggle to a guffaw and ended up leaning against the opposite wall with tears streaming down his eyes.

“What's so funny about the uniform?” the chief asked.

This seemed to set Dr. Cavendish off again. The chief and I waited with growing impatience until Dr. Cavendish recovered his composure. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I forget sometimes that not everyone lives in the eighteenth century as much as I do. I should explain.”

“Please do.” The chief was clearly getting impatient.

“It's just that the uniform is so obviously the reason they defaced the portrait,” he said.

“I don't understand,” the chief said. “The Paltroons are quite proud of their ancestor's service in the Continental Army. Why should the uniform upset them?”

“Mrs. Paltroon is pretty much president-for-life of the local DAR,” I added.

“Then the restored painting is going to come as rather a shock to her,” Dr. Cavendish said. “Because that's the uniform of the British Legion. And an officer's uniform to boot—looks like a captain.”

“The British Legion was not on our side, I presume,” the chief said.

“No, indeedy,” Dr. Cavendish said. “The British Legion was a loyalist regiment. They fought in the South Carolina campaign, under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Known to the Americans as ‘the Butcher,' because of his involvement in the so-called Waxhaw Massacre. He's supposed to have had his men slaughter several hundred American soldiers after they'd surrendered. The British side of it is quite different, of course, and we'll never know for sure what happened. But suffice it to say that if Mrs. Paltroon joined the DAR on the strength of this gentleman's service in the Continental Army, she was flying under very false colors.”

We studied the portrait together for a few moments. I'm not sure what the chief and Dr. Cavendish were thinking. I was trying to figure out if there was a way I could manage to be present when Mrs. Paltroon learned the truth about her ancestor. And bring Mother along. She and the snooty Mrs. Paltroon had locked horns more than once.

“So I gather that the painting is fascinating to someone of your profession,” I said. “But at the risk of sounding crass, is it worth a lot of money?”

“Well, I've seen some similar paintings bring nice prices at auction,” Dr. Cavendish said. “But they would have been pictures by better artists. And in better condition,” he added, as another large flake of paint detached itself from the tan background and drifted to the floor. “No, not worth a lot of money. I can't imagine anyone killing anyone over it—unless, of course, Mrs. Paltroon has a violent nature and is pathologically attached to her position in the DAR.” He emitted a wheezy chuckle, so I deduced that he was joking. The chief and I, who both knew Mrs. Paltroon, exchanged a worried glance.

“Just how much is not a lot?” the chief asked.

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Cavendish waved his long fingers dismissively. “I couldn't possibly give you a good estimate. It would so depend on market conditions at the time of sale. And the alterations significantly reduce the value, and who knows if the human interest story of how they happened would gain any of that back, and it's in such terrible condition—”

“If you had to buy insurance for it, how much would you buy?” I asked.

“I'd go for two hundred thousand,” he said briskly. “You'd probably only get half that at auction, but you never know—you might get lucky.”

Maybe in Dr. Cavendish's world a hundred thousand dollars wasn't worth killing for, but I had a feeling the chief didn't share that view. And if I were the chief, I'd be checking on how much insurance Mrs. Paltroon had on the damaged painting, and whether she was having any money issues.

I knew better than to tell him, though. He was probably already planning to do so. That was probably why he was scribbling so busily in his notebook. Definitely not a good idea to ask him.

But I could ask Mother if Mrs. Paltroon was strapped for cash.

“May I take this upstairs, where I can continue my examination under better conditions?” Dr. Cavendish asked.

“That's fine,” the chief said.

He and I helped Dr. Cavendish take the painting down from the wall.

“I'm not sure we can get it up that circular staircase,” I said. “Let's take it up the outside stairs and around front.”

That worked fine, although I thought for a moment Dr. Cavendish was going to faint when we passed the place on the stairs where Horace's taped outline of the body was still in place. But then he appeared to remind himself that he was carrying an interesting if not particularly valuable painting and visibly pulled himself together.

We set him up in the dining room, which was on the other side of the house from the fire and thus not filled with puddles.

“Thank you,” he said, once we'd set the painting flat on the dining table. “You know, this is quite exciting. I think that back wall's going to turn out to be a painting of George III. Definitely a Tory family!”

With that he appeared to dismiss us from his mind and focus on the painting. The chief and I withdrew to the hallway, then looked back to study Dr. Cavendish for a few moments.

“Seems harmless,” I said in an undertone.

“Yes,” the chief said. “But we should have someone keep an eye on him. Just on general principles.”

“Roger,” I said.

“I suppose it's always possible that this is somehow related to the murders,” he said. “At least this latest one.”

“Mrs. Paltroon, aware of her family secret, and fearing that the deterioration of the painting was about to strip away her claim to being descended from a Revolutionary War hero, attempted to sneak into the museum after hours to steal it back?”

“I said possible,” the chief said. “I didn't say likely. And I don't really think even she'd kill someone over the painting, although I don't envy Dr. Cavendish the task of breaking his news to her.”

“Yes,” I said. “If she had any idea that the painting had the potential to reveal her family skeleton, she'd have locked it away in the attic rather than lend it to Dr. Smoot.”