Thursday, 14:00
Jo held her breath. A wooden box lay upon the art nouveau table next to the champagne they’d abandoned that morning. The lid was carved in roses and darkened with the patina of age. It had come from Spain, purchased on an art-buying trip and had spent the last five-plus years in a safe-deposit box.
Arthur—who knew more about banks than Jo could ever hope to—explained that only four of them still offered safe-deposit boxes, and one of them was in fact his bank. He’d protested that he, at least, did not have a safe-deposit box. But it seems he did, in fact. By what means Aiden had worked this minor miracle was a matter of speculation (and possibly the forging of Arthur’s signature), but he returned with the prize now before them. Midafternoon sunshine slipped through the windows and left squares on the carpets; they’d spent the day searching, but finding always felt a little anticlimactic, in the end.
“Do you know, I’m afraid to open it,” Arthur said.
“I think it’s time, though,” Chen suggested. She’d been sitting on the sofa with Pepper, resting “old bones,” which had nonetheless almost outwalked the rest of them. Now she stood and took her position next to Arthur. “Let’s finish that journey.”
“I’m glad you were here for it,” Arthur said, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I never meant to drift away.”
“Oh, you meant to. But now you’re sorry, and that’s enough.” She guided his hand to the box latch. “Don’t keep us in suspense, darling.”
Arthur lifted the lid.
“Oh,” he said, a tiny sound. He lifted out a small velvet pillow and its precious cargo: a ring, and a note: “Will you marry me?” A shudder passed through Arthur, then he collapsed into a dining chair and sobbed. Chen cradled the man, whose hoarse voice escaped in a broken question:
“Why—why didn’t he ask me? Before the end?”
Why set up an elaborate game only to hide it? It was raw and painful and hard to answer. But Jo thought she knew. Miss Havisham.
“Arthur?” she asked quietly. “You remember the letter? Aiden couldn’t wait to meet me. Then nothing happened.” She’d pictured him then, waiting for a young Jo who never arrived. Now she imagined Aiden buying rings and wine bottles. “He was supposed to get better. When he didn’t—” Jo struggled to find the right words “—he thought you would be happier if you never knew the loss of joy.”
Arthur lifted his head to look at her, his firm jaw trembling.
“He was wrong,” he said, swallowing hard. “He was so wrong.”
“I know,” Jo told him, sinking to her knees by his chair. “But he’s told you now.”
Arthur reached tentatively forward to pick up the ring: white gold set with twin stones, yellow and deep red.
“Topaz and jacinth,” Arthur said softly. “The stones of Excalibur.” He put it upon his left ring finger, a perfect fit.
“It’s everything,” he whispered.
Chen picked up a champagne glass and set it next to him.
“Congratulations, love.” She tipped her glass against his, a tiny chimera of tinkling crystal. Jo wasn’t sure she could do champagne on her emotion-knotted stomach, but reached for a glass to toast. That’s when she noticed the spine.
“There’s a book in there,” she said. Beneath the paper and to one side, a corner peeked. Leather, hard-bound, overstuffed and wrapped with string. She lifted it up and out. “A journal, I think?”
“Open it,” Arthur encouraged. Jo handed it over and his fingers worked at the knots, but once released from tension the pages surged. A folded sheet fell to the floor.
“I’ve got it,” Gwilym said, bending down.
Arthur let him, and instead opened the inside cover with Jo looking on. “Family history,” it said, and beneath, in Aiden’s careful print: “William, Gwen, Evelyn . . . and Violet.”
Jo lingered over the last word, her own sticking in her throat. Oh God.
“Jo?” Gwilym asked, lifting of a sheet of weathered paper. “It’s Ardemore’s insignia.”
Arthur took the letter and tucked it back inside the journal. Then he closed the cover, wrapped it once, and held it out to Jo.
The bound book hovered above the Persian rug, a bright apple on the stalk of Arthur’s outstretched arm.
“I think this belongs to you,” he said.
* * *
Gerald Standish held court at a corner table beneath an enormous painting of a fox hunt on the moors; it didn’t go with the modern decor, but it was vaguely familiar. Standish sat near enough to the bar to be carrying on a conversation with two men seated there, but far enough to shout it. Shirtsleeves and a tweed vest, with exactly the sort of trousers golfers wore circa 1960, he had a flushed face, red nose, gray-white tufts of unruly hair and appeared to be in his late sixties. He didn’t look like a respected physician. To MacAdams he was the perfect representation of a harmless old fool.
“May I join you?” MacAdams asked.
“Eh? Certainly! New member?” he asked. MacAdams unfolded his police identification, but this didn’t put a damper on his welcome. “A detective. Well, we’ve had a fair few of those, too, in our years—haven’t we, boys? Pint?”
The boys were all at least ten years older than MacAdams, who declined the drink.
“I actually want to ask you about art,” he said. “I understand you collect.”
“I do. This one, see?” He thumbed to the oil painting behind him, which like the posters in the concourse bore a little gold plaque. The artist’s name wasn’t present, but Gerald’s own. “I lent it, you know. Like it? It’s of the countryside just north of Abington.”
MacAdams took a seat. “You’ve been there?”
“Good course over that way. Do you golf, Detective?”
“I solve crime.”
“Ah, of course. I bet you’ve come to ask about ancient artifacts.” The surprise must have registered on MacAdams’s stiff features. Standish made a great show of cleaning his glasses. “I do have a doctorate in the subject,” he added.
That was unexpected.
“I thought you were an oil and gas magnate.”
“Oh-ho? Surprised an industry man managed a degree? I’ve a PhD from Cambridge, archaeology, I’ll have you know.”
Laughter like gunshots erupted from the bar.
“Watch out, Officer, he’ll have you to his museum!”
“Jealous, every one of you,” Standish said with a grin. Then turned a surprisingly keen eye upon MacAdams. “You’ll need expertise. You might have called me, you know. I’ve never been part of an investigation. What a treat!” He replaced his well-rubbed lenses. It did give him a vaguely professorial air. “The papers didn’t say region or era.”
MacAdams presumed there would be no harm in providing detail. Possibly Standish could be of use. If he was presently a suspect. He decided to set the bait.
“Syria. Eleventh or twelfth century. Gold. Pottery. Mosaics,” he said, watching Standish narrowly. Tell me something I can use. Standish merely wiped his mouth on a napkin and told Simon (again the barman) to put it on his tab.
“Tell you what, Officer. Let me take you round my place; it’s not far and we can have a proper chat.”
* * *
Standish lived less than a mile from Lime Tree Greens. It wasn’t an estate like Burnhope’s, but an old, well-pedigreed town house of brick and stone. They entered through enormous double doors into a foyer of chessboard tile and mahogany walls. Flanking the stairs were two ebony statues, doglike with highly pointed ears. Anubis, he supposed. Jo would know.
“Don’t be fooled,” Standish said, closing the doors. “Those are replicas created in the early 1800s. Not from the ancient world. I don’t collect Egyptian art; it’s a bit overdone.”
He led MacAdams through to a large reception room. Some sort of wooden mask hung over the fireplace.
“That comes from the Krahn people, Liberia.” Standish hitched his trousers higher. “Nineteenth century again, if you’re wondering.”
“I thought you collected antiquities.”
“Oh I do, son. But I’m not leaving them out in the front room, am I?” He chortled to himself and beckoned him on. “We’ll take a turn in the study, shall we? Have a nice port in there.”
MacAdams found himself trying to make sense of the man’s easy manners.
“You know I am investigating a crime,” he said. “Not just the trafficking of stolen artifacts but also the murder of Ronan Foley.”
“Ah, sad business, that. Played golf with him once or twice.”
“So you knew him,” MacAdams clarified, his hand itching to pull out the battered notebook.
“Only knew he was terrible at golf,” Standish said, then led the way into his study.
This was a room of private opulence. Two chairs in bomber leather and brass studs flanked the far corner. He’d flicked a switch that illuminated several brass lamps; the room had a single window, but it had been well shaded. It smelled of woodgrain, leather, pipe smoke and alcohol and offered up the antithesis of Burnhope’s residence. No glass except the decanter of port, but every surface held a precious object of stone, pottery or precious metal. MacAdams pointed to a small star-shaped amulet with floral designs.
“Arabesque open work,” he said.
Standish clapped his hands. “Oh very good!”
MacAdams felt a sudden heat in his gut.
“So it’s from ancient Syria, like the stolen ones,” he said sharply.
“Tut, now you’re guessing. It’s not. Iran, in fact. Ilkhanid period, 1256–1353. And you’ll find I bought it at auction.” He swept his hand about the room. “That’s where most of this comes from, you know. Auctions, private collectors, museums in trouble—” he winked “—and eBay.”
“You just make your bids, I take it.”
“Oh yes.” Standish poured himself a glass of port. “You won’t join me? No, of course. Let’s say I want something specific. And I do, at that. I can search, or I can hire people who search.”
“What people.”
“Online people.” Standish settled himself into one of the leather chairs. MacAdams was meant for the other. He declined that offer, too. “Some men my age don’t like new technology. I find it all fascinating. I could pull up three websites dedicated to sourcing rare objects.”
“Such as?” MacAdams asked.
“You’d hardly be impressed if I told you. The best things are often seemingly the least significant.”
MacAdams was far from impressed by this banter. “I want a list of every place you’ve purchased from.”
Standish let his eyes drift from one antique to the next.
“Heavens, Detective, I don’t keep records of every purchase.”
“Provenance, then.”
“I haven’t got it. Not for every piece.”
MacAdams said the next bit through gritted teeth. “Can you prove that you obtained these legally?”
Standish smiled. Benign. Grandfatherly.
“I think the question is, can you prove otherwise? Don’t be angry, old boy. The British Museum itself can’t tell where it got half its treasures. The important thing is that they’re safe.”
“How do you figure that?” MacAdams demanded.
Standish set down his port and leaned forward as if trying to explain a lesson.
“Because they won’t be bombed or looted or destroyed. Saved for the next generation, and so forth. Collectors do the world a service. It’s practically charity.”
MacAdams flexed his fingers, anger rising. He’d been here before. It was even what Foley had told Dmytro. Blind men gloating over their triumphs and their sticky morals. Focus.
“Charity like Fresh Start?” he asked, keeping his voice even. “Burnhope says you’re a model donor. Doing your bit.”
“Exactly, that! Lifting up the downtrodden, investing in the future.” Standish bobbed his head, pleased with himself.
MacAdams swallowed before continuing. “Bringing in kids from war-torn countries,” he said slowly. “Where the sale of artifacts buys bombs and guns. This isn’t a victimless crime.”
“It’s just art!” Standish blustered. “What harm can art do?”
“Ronan Foley was murdered. And right now, I have a kid named Dmytro in lockup because he was helping him smuggle illegal spoils. Now he might lose his status in the country. How’s that for harm?”
MacAdams hadn’t expected this to make an impression. He turned to go, trying to get outside before he said something very off the books. But Standish had followed him.
“Dmytro?” he asked, the levity gone. “They won’t deport him, though? Surely?”
“Not for me to say.”
“Well, but . . . we agreed—”
MacAdams turned on his heel. Standish looked as though he wanted to reswallow every word.
“We who, agreed what?”
“I—It’s nothing, really,” Standish said, backing away.
MacAdams followed him step for step.
“Nothing would please me more than dragging you to the station for this,” he said. “I am running out of patience.”
Standish heaved a sigh and patted his sides. “We all like that boy, you know. Good lad. Burnhope thought we could keep it tight—why should he take the fall for a man like Foley?”
“Burnhope,” MacAdams repeated. “Not Sophie.”
“Oh, Sophie always gets the job done, certainly. But it was all Stanley’s idea.”
MacAdams had Green on the phone before he got back to his car. “Bring in Burnhope,” he demanded. “And I want the receipts on Burnhope’s career. Rumors. Anything. Clear? He’s up to his neck in this. Somehow.”
He hung up, still fuming—and hadn’t noticed that Standish followed him out.
“Detective? A word—”
“No more words. You’re lucky I’m not taking you in with me.”
“I want you to.”
MacAdams flexed his fingers in exasperation. “Why?”
“To be there for Dmytro, of course.” He meant it, apparently.
MacAdams could not stomach him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Standish,” he said, opening his car door. He flopped into his seat and was about to shut the door.
“Nose rings,” Standish said. Which made no bloody sense at all.
“What?”
“My holy grail, the thing I’d been searching for. Just a small, perfectly common nose ring. But so very ancient. That’s the stuff of human civilization itself.” He was turning back toward his front stairs. “Hardly a crime, now, is it?”