The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross (21 page)

PHYLLIDA GREETED ME
with a modest hug that to anyone observing us would have seemed cool; we had never gone in for those dramatic embraces with which in the States even men greet each other these days. But the love I felt for her, and she for me, was–although Phyllida would never have dreamed of saying any such thing–stronger than family bonds. Not only sisters-in-law, Phyllida and I had each long been the chief member of the other’s family.

When we were seated on the terrace, when, on the way there, I had admired the continuous red carpet (green for Commons, Phyllida told me), when the server had taken our order, when we had expressed our shared admiration for the Thames and answered each other’s perfunctory questions about our children–perfunctory not because we did not care, but because we recognized that the children were not, this evening, our subject–only then, when we had raised our glasses, did Phyllida come to the point. That she came to it so directly–for Phyllida was a mistress of the indirect approach–bespoke her sense of urgency.

“The most awful thing has happened,” she said.

“So I have somehow gathered. Whatever it is, Phyllida, knowing will be better than this suspense.”

“You know the small Constable drawing that was stolen with the Vermeer a short time ago in New York, from that elegant small museum?”

I nodded, mystified. The theft had indeed been widely publicized, mainly because the main haul had been a Vermeer–there are only thirty-five or forty of them in the world–and no trace of it had been found. The robbers had taken, in addition, one other item, valuable, but not altogether beyond price as the Vermeer was. I had remembered about the drawing because it was by Constable, a favorite of mine, and with all the strange delicacy that an initial drawing may have that the finished painting, however magnificent, always lacks.

“Well”–Phyllida took a large sip of her drink and could be clearly seen to be gathering all her forces for the next announcement–“I have it,” she said.

I admit that for one frightful moment I was simply worried about Phyllida, not because she had, it seemed, stolen a valuable drawing if not a Vermeer, but because she had gone mad–quietly mad, but mad nonetheless.

“Oh don’t look at me as though you thought I’d grown a brain tumor,” Phyllida said, annoyed.

“So you stole the Constable because we had always admired him even as girls,” I snapped, cross at having my mind read. We used to joke, in school, that Turner, who painted fog, had produced endless pictures, but Constable, who painted English sunshine, had, inevitably, painted few.

“Of course not. As you know, I was exceedingly busy when I was last there–no time for even a small museum.”

“I’m well aware of how busy you were,” I said with some asperity. “Phyllida, for God’s sake, what happened in New York? Someone gave you the drawing as a gift and you thought it was a reproduction?”

“Well, at last you’re thinking about the problem,” she said. “That’s not true, but at least not insulting.”

I determined to wait for further information before uttering another syllable.

“What I
think
happened is that the rolled-up paper was slipped into my bag, the one I carried on the plane with me, and of course no one examines luggage these days, at least they never examine mine. Yours?”

“No,” I said. “But that’s probably because–”

“Exactly. Old ladies with gray hair are hardly likely smugglers of stolen goods, or contraband, or drugs, or whatever does get smuggled these dreary days.” Neither Phyllida nor I thought of ourselves as old, but we had faced the fact that so we appeared to the unperceptive multitudes.

“But if the thieves know that, why don’t the customs people know it?”

“Because the thieves don’t know. I think the whole horrible thing was a mistake–the wrong carry-on bag. Mine is rather ordinary and so, I can only suppose, resembled the one designed to receive the stolen drawing.”

“How long have you had it?” I asked. I knew I had to get the facts, but my mind was mainly engaged with thinking of how the drawing might be returned with no one the wiser as to how or by whom. In this, as it soon transpired, I was, as is so often the case with us two, anticipating Phyllida. But she answered my question.

“Since I returned from New York, of course.”

“Really, Phyllida.”

“I know; spare me representations of my stupidity, I know them all. But the whole thing has been a shock. Later, I just about decided to call the authorities and simply tell them what happened, how it had been a mistake, how I didn’t realize it was the actual drawing, how I was terribly sorry but had been frightfully busy, how I hoped that, since I am in the House of Lords, I would simply be believed when I turned it in. Then suddenly I realized with horror that because I
was
in the House of Lords, the whole scandalous matter would make a tasty
headline in all the tabloids:
BARONESS CLINGS TO STOLEN CONSTABLE FOR WEEKS
. I got cold feet.”

“Well, it was a good idea to turn it in,” I said, “but I do see what you mean about the tabloids. There’s something about women doing hanky-panky, especially baronesses and royalty, that seems to be irresistible to the gutter press. It’s the same in the States.”

Phyllida rose to her feet and waited until I had risen to mine. “Shall we go in to dinner? I’ll tell you my plan.” We were about to leave the terrace but stopped a moment for a last glimpse of the Thames in the setting sun. Suddenly, an extremely noisy motorboat shattered the air with its cacophony. “I don’t steal art,” Phyllida said between her teeth, “but I would very much like to throw a bomb at that boat. A quick explosion and the noise of the motor would cease; it might even frighten off others. Come on, then.” I was suddenly back in our girlhood, when Phyllida would snap, “Come on, then” after keeping
me
waiting. I said nothing, but myself composed another tabloid headline:
BARONESS BOMBS BOAT FROM HOUSE OF LORDS TERRACE
.

Feeling rather anxious, as though I had learned that Phyllida had been diagnosed with something fatal and hideous, I followed her along the red carpet, watching her nod amiably to a few acquaintances, until we entered a smallish dining room (“Much better food than in the larger one,” she muttered as we were led to a table) and the waitress greeted her with dignity and called her “my lady.” The waitress smiled at me too, and I realized that I, who thought of myself as spectacularly out of place, probably resembled with alarming closeness most of the peers’ wives who were taken from time to time to dine in this hallowed place; indeed, a few of them, I noticed, glancing around the room, were even now there.

•
•
•

“
PHYLLIDA
,”
I SAID
when we had got to the Dover sole (“Of course not filleted,” Phyllida told the waitress, “it tastes altogether different off the bones”) and I was concentrating on lifting the meat neatly from the skeleton–one does not seem to eat Dover sole frequently in New York–“where exactly is the drawing now?”

“Here,” she said.

“In this dining room?”

“The Lady Members’ Cloakroom.”

“Are you completely mad?”

“It seemed the best place. I simply asked the attendant if I might leave a carrier bag there for a time, with things that I would need someday soon. Of course she said I might. It seemed the safest place, just in case the drawing had been ‘planted’ on me instead of getting into my bag by mistake. I do, of course, have to consider that possibility.” Phyllida uttered this Americanism without a shudder; she was concentrating on her sole. “No doubt anyone from the police to the Mafia could search my home, but it’s a bit more difficult to penetrate the Lady Members’ Cloakroom.”

I suddenly thought of something. “Phyllida, listen: in the States, the statute of limitations on theft runs out after five years. I suppose you can be prosecuted for possession of a stolen article, but not for theft. Do you think it’s worth looking into? Simply leave it in the cloakroom for five years.”

Phyllida, with a touch of hauteur, ignored this.

“All right,” I said, by now past amazement. “What do you want me to do? I can’t penetrate the Lady Members’ Cloakroom, or so I assume. Naturally, there are special facilities for guests like myself.”

“Naturally, I’ll get the drawing and pass it on to you. You will then return it to the museum that owns it.”

“And why, when I wander in and say, pleasantly, ‘You’ll never guess what I found in
my
luggage,’ won’t they regard
me with the same suspicion they would direct at you? And if your answer is that I’m not a baroness, forget it, Phyllida, it won’t do.”

“Do stop babbling, Anne.” Phyllida was six months older than I and had always considered that additional experience of the world endlessly significant. “Here’s the drill, as my father used to say. I retrieve the drawing from the cloakroom, which will almost certainly be deserted this time of night, and hand it to you in a large brown envelope I’ve also got in my carrier bag. You accept it happily, right in front of the man at the entrance–”

“The one with the white tie and medallion?”

“That one. I say something like ‘Let me give you this now, in case I forget once we’re in the taxi,’ you take it, we leave the building, a nice policeman will find us a taxi, and I’ll drop you at your hotel.” (I always stay at a hotel in London, not being fond of joining other people’s households, even Phyllida’s.)

“Why are you going to pass it to me so publicly?” I asked. I know I’m supposed to be a detective and am actually rather good at it, but the thought of being handed stolen goods by Phyllida–never mind that she hadn’t been thief–was leaving me in a state typical of those who are only slowly emerging from shock.

“I’m confident you’ll manage to return it to the museum, Anne; I have no doubt. I’ve seen you at your most inventive, as well as on the trail, and I know you’ll pull this off [Phyllida liked Americanisms delivered with her best upper-class English accent] with your usual acuity. But, just in case you don’t, just in case something goes, despite your most punctilious efforts, awry, we will have a witness to the fact that I handed the drawing to you and am, therefore, ultimately responsible.”

I opened my mouth to protest–we were at the dessert
stage–but Phyllida held up an admonishing hand. “I’ve got it all worked out,” she said. “Just listen. You put the envelope in the bottom of your suitcase and forget about it until you get home. Should you be, by the merest fluke, questioned by a customs person, you say you don’t know what’s in it, you were asked by me to deliver it to someone in New York. I’ve put the name of my American agent inside the envelope, just in case the worst occurs. But you will simply get home with the drawing.”

She seemed to wait for me to “babble,” as she unkindly put it, but I said nothing. “Coffee, my lady?” the waitress asked.

“In a few minutes, thank you,” the Baroness responded, waiting until the waitress had retreated to continue outlining her preposterous plan. “After that you do this. You go to the Metropolitan Museum, look around a bit, then drift into the gift shop and buy a number of small posters–that sort of thing. Pay for them in cash. Ask for a shopping bag, though they’ll probably give you one without being asked. Take it to somewhere–the cloakroom, a telephone booth, a deserted gallery–and drop the rolled-up Constable drawing into the bag. Then go to one of the places where you check your coat and packages, and check it. Walk about the museum a bit more, and then leave. End of assignment. What will happen is that eventually the unclaimed bag will be examined, the drawing found and returned to its proper owner. No doubt there will be sufficient brouhaha and much speculation, but none of it need worry you. Except–and I do emphasize, this, Anne–if anyone should recognize or greet you while you are in the Metropolitan, instantly abandon the plan.”

“Suppose someone recognizes me while I’m checking the bag?”

“Then don’t check it of course; wave to your acquaintance, leave the museum, bag in hand, go home, and try again, perhaps at the Museum of Modern Art.”

I had to smile. Phyllida had planned it all so nicely, and I was the one taking all the risks. Except that, were I to be caught, she would step nobly in and take the blame. It had been that way at school. The plans were hers, the execution mine. We only were caught once, Phyllida immediately took the blame, and I was allowed innocently to withdraw. I trusted Phyllida. All the same I wondered, not for the first time, why I had become a paralegal and a detective while she had remained a so much more obviously conventional person.

It all worked out as Phyllida had planned it: I did my little number at the Metropolitan late one afternoon, when I thought it unlikely anyone I knew would be there. Nothing went wrong. I had brought the rolled-up Constable drawing fastened with masking tape to my blouse under my jacket. (I had suggested folding the drawing to make it small, but Phyllida had told me not to be a barbarian; Phyllida does tend to get above herself if not restrained.) After I made my purchases I dropped the drawing into the bag, wholly unobserved, in the basement, in front of some antique male statues lacking noses and penises, and indifferent to me. Then I checked the bag–excuse ready, but they asked for none–did a turn around at the Temple of Dendur, and departed.

The news of the drawing’s recovery broke several weeks later. Apparently it took the Metropolitan some time to figure out what they had on their hands, and even longer to establish that what they had found was, indeed, the real thing. Endless speculation about why, who, above all where was the Vermeer. By this time I had recovered my
wits and figured out, as subsequently did the newspapers, that the Vermeer had been stolen on consignment, the drawing picked up as an afterthought, unauthorized and no doubt resented. It had been cleverly dumped, as it turned out, on Phyllida.

AND THAT SHOULD
have been the end of the story. The Constable drawing went back into its place at the small, elegant museum where each day it attracted a small group of viewers, and the Vermeer was, for the second time, broadly bemoaned by the media and the art world. But, as it happened, I became once again involved in this strange affair, this time closer to home and, thank God, in a more indirect way. A young art historian who had gone to work for the small, elegant museum that owned the Constable drawing and had owned the Vermeer called me up at the insistence of her lawyer husband, who knew the lawyers I worked for and had heard of my detective skills. These had become, within a small legal circle, rather celebrated. The young woman, named Lucinda, informed me that there was an intriguing and disturbing problem at the museum; she thought I might be able to advise her. When people think that problems they come across are intriguing, they are usually wrong. But I could hardly refuse to meet with her at least once, and the chance to stand right in front of the Constable drawing and admire it–which I had felt diffident about doing before–tempted me to agree to lunch and a consultation. Phyllida would, I had no doubt, have suggested a courteous refusal, but I did not consult Phyllida. We had, in fact, never again mentioned the matter of the stolen drawing, not in letters, faxes, or the transatlantic telephone conversations in which, both of us now being more than comfortably off, we frequently indulged.