The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (26 page)

Isabel agreed. She had often observed as much.

“She’s the one who’s interested in money,” Patrick said. “Her fiancé—I don’t know
whether you’ve met him, but he’s had two marriages already and three children. He
was cleaned
out financially—completely cleaned out, and the kids are at fee-paying schools, so
that’s thirty thousand all told a year, out of taxed income. He must be pretty hard
up, and Alex earns nothing, or more or less nothing. I suspect she secretly can’t
wait for my father to go. She’ll want to get her hands on anything that’s not actually
nailed down.”

Isabel listened carefully. If she had been looking for a motive for Alex to be behind
the theft, then she could not have hoped for a clearer statement of it.

The bill had been brought to the table, and Patrick was extracting his wallet.

“Please let me pay,” said Isabel.

He put his wallet back. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “Thank you.”

She had one last question, and she put it playfully, as if she were not quite serious
about it. “She wouldn’t be behind it, would she?”

He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you’ve just described to me how she needs money. She might also be unwilling
for the Poussin to go to the National Gallery. After all, that’s a loss to your father’s
estate of several million pounds.” She watched for the effect of her words.

He shook his head vehemently. “Definitely not. No. She wouldn’t. I know her, and she
wouldn’t.”

“Or her fiancé?”

He was equally adamant. “No. Not him. Definitely.”

He stood up. “Thank you for what you’ve been doing for my father,” he said. “He and
I may not be close, but I love him, you know.”

She shook hands, keeping his hand for slightly longer than one would normally do with
a handshake.

“I suspect he loves you too.”

He looked at her wryly; disbelievingly.

“And there’s another thing,” she said, lowering her voice. “You told me about your
feelings for the person you loved. You told me about your efforts to forget. I had
exactly the same problem, you know. I was married to somebody who didn’t love me or,
if he did, had an odd way of showing it. I got over him eventually, but it took a
long, long time. I didn’t forget him, though. That’s not the way to do it—”

She had not finished, but Patrick was already beginning to move away. He does not
want my advice, thought Isabel, because he’s not ready to stop loving. Love was a
bit like alcohol in that way: the alcoholic would not listen to advice until he was
ready to stop drinking. Love was a little bit like that; not always, but it could
be.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 

T
HEY LAY IN BED
late the next morning, Charlie sleeping between them. He had awakened early and Jamie
had played with him for half an hour or so before bringing him into bed with them.
The early start had caught up with the child, and now he had dropped off again, clutching
a teddy bear and the already threadbare blanket he liked to drag around with him.

“Look at his eyelids,” said Isabel, her voice lowered. “He’s dreaming.”

Jamie propped himself up on an elbow and gazed at Charlie. “How strange that we made
him,” he said. “This infinitely complex collection of cells is our son. We made him.”

Isabel smiled. “Or facilitated him. The spark comes from somewhere else.”

Jamie looked into her eyes. “And becomes Mozart.”

“In Mozart’s case, it did,” said Isabel. She frowned. “We haven’t sorted out the mathematics
problem.”

Jamie shook his head. “I went to see her again, but let’s not talk about it just now.
She’s hard to read. Tell me about yesterday.”

He had been back late from a concert in Glasgow, and Isabel had already been asleep
when he had come into the bedroom shortly before midnight. They had seen one another
briefly in the afternoon, when Charlie had been handed over.

She sighed. “I had lunch with Patrick.”

Jamie looked blank. “Patrick?”

“Duncan Munrowe’s son.”

“Oh yes.” He remembered now. He stroked Charlie’s hand gently. The small fingers moved,
gripped the teddy.

Isabel told him about the meeting. “He’s certainly not behind it,” she concluded.
“I don’t think he has any reason to be.”

“Whereas his sister has?” said Jamie.

Isabel nodded. “Yes, every financial reason. Her fiancé has two expensive divorces
behind him. She doesn’t work.”

“Being hard up doesn’t make you a criminal,” Jamie pointed out.

“Of course not.”

“And you said that Patrick was adamant that it couldn’t be her. He must know his own
sister.”

Isabel thought about this. “Unless he was protecting her.” It was an idea to be dismissed
as soon as it was raised. “Which I think is unlikely.”

She waited for him to say something, but he was silent. Charlie shifted his limbs
slightly, but was still fast asleep. Jamie looked at the boy, then at Isabel, and
smiled.

“However,” Isabel said. “However …”

Jamie looked at her expectantly.

“However, he said something else which struck me as being very significant.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“He said that Martha suggested me in passing but that it was Alex who really pushed
for me to be involved. She was the one.”

Jamie shrugged. “I don’t see what difference it makes,” he said. “You. Martha. Duncan.
What’s the difference?”

Isabel lay back on her pillow and stared at the ceiling. “I think it all adds up.
Alex wanted to have suspicion focused on her brother in order to deflect any suspicion
that might otherwise be attached to her. So what does she do? She gets somebody else
involved—somebody into whose ear she can pour poison.”

Charlie stirred now, his eyes opening. He half turned towards Isabel, before turning
to Jamie and reaching for his hand. Jamie said: “Look, he’s taken my hand.” But Isabel’s
mind was elsewhere. It could be that Patrick had asked Martha to invite her to intervene.
Then, to throw suspicion on his sister, he would say that she had recommended Isabel’s
involvement. And as for his firm rejection of the possibility that Alex was behind
the theft, that again could be a deliberate deception. He might think that Isabel
thought that he was deliberately covering for his sister, thus increasing the level
of suspicion under which Alex laboured.

Or neither of them was involved. Both could be completely innocent. Isabel remembered
her university logic classes all those years ago. She had been taught to deal with
possibilities in a rational, ordered way. Formal logic dictated that you moved from
what you knew to what implications may flow from your knowledge. It required one to
weigh evidence and reach conclusions on the basis of those implications. Applied here,
the principles of formal logic led to the conclusion that in the absence
of any further evidence, responsibility for the theft of the painting could be attributed
to neither Alex nor Patrick.

Isabel closed her eyes.

“I’m getting up,” said Jamie. “I’m going to give breakfast to this wee man.”

“Lots of breakfast,” said Charlie. “Lots of egg. Lots of egg. Egg and Marmite toast.”

“Egg and Marmite toast,” agreed Jamie. “A very good choice.” Marmite, that salty yeast
paste so adored by Britons and so vigorously disliked by Americans, was not the first
choice of the average child, but was craved by Charlie, just as he relished olives
and, more recently, garlic.

They left the room and Isabel lay alone in the bed. She stretched out her left leg,
lazily, and felt the warmth of the sheet where Jamie had been lying: his heat shadow,
as she thought of it; like the heat shadows of those unfortunate residents of Pompeii
who were consumed by the lava but who left the outline of their forms on the stone.
She had lived with him now for a sufficiently long time to forget, or at least find
it hard to remember, what it was like before him, before this young man had moved
into her life and into her home, possessing both; so that she dreamed of him and felt
his presence about her, a cloak of comfort. And when he was not there, when he was
in Glasgow rehearsing or, as occasionally happened, he went abroad for some concert—he
had been the previous month to Amsterdam, to play at a music festival—she felt his
absence keenly. She always knew where he was, she realised; which made her think of
how important it was for us to know what others are doing. When we met friends, for
instance, and asked them what they had been doing, we really did want to know. But
why? It was, she thought, because of our sense of
being
with others; our need
to anchor ourselves in a network of friends and acquaintances. This was our bulwark,
our dyke against the sea of loneliness that we were only too aware washed about us.

She got out of bed, showered and then dressed for the day. She was under the shower
for longer than she had intended—it was not good for the skin, she believed, but it
was certainly good for thinking, just as walking was. And under the shower that morning
it occurred to her that there was a further motive for the theft that she had yet
to consider. She had assumed all along that what the thieves really wanted was money—the
reward from the insurance company. But what if the real object were the Poussin? What
if the person who stole the painting had no intention of collecting the reward but
actually wanted the painting for itself? If that were true, then the negotiations
for the reward could be just a smokescreen—to make it look like a financially motivated
theft.

At first she dismissed the idea. People did not steal well-known paintings in order
to hang them on their walls—it was far too risky. Nor, she imagined, were many paintings
stolen by apocryphal South American collectors who could display them with impunity
in their remote Amazonian villas.

The idea seemed unlikely, and yet, as Isabel thought about it under the stinging water
of the shower, she remembered that Alex had said, “I loved that painting … I adored
it.” Was it not possible to love something so much that you would do anything to get
it—even if it meant that the pleasure derived from possessing it would be a solitary
one? If Alex adored the painting, and felt possessive of it, then she was likely to
be strongly opposed to its being given to the National Gallery after her father’s
death; in which case, the solution was obvious—the painting could simply be removed
from Munrowe House
and hidden in the flat in Edinburgh until Duncan’s death. Alex would hardly be able
to hang it on a wall where it might be seen by visitors, but she would at least have
it in her possession, which might well be enough for her. It would be important, though,
to mask the whole exercise as a theft. That would require elaborate subterfuge—and
accomplices too: the solicitor and the men in the van, who might also have been the
ones who removed the painting in the first instance. It was possible; yes, it was
possible. However, the problem was that for those who live in the normal world—a world
in which people did not steal beautiful objects from family members purely for the
aesthetic pleasure they might bestow, did not defraud them in that way—such actions
seemed vaguely improbable.

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. Jamie had come back
upstairs, and he now walked into the bedroom. He hesitated at the bathroom door; they
still respected each other’s privacy in spite of their common life.

“I’ve finished,” she said. “I stood in the shower for ages—thinking.”

He raised an eyebrow. “About?”

“About the Poussin.”

He nodded. “Well, here’s something else for you to think about.”

She slipped past him. The bedroom carpet was soft underfoot; her hair was wet upon
her shoulders. It was summer, but only a Scottish summer, and goosebumps could still
make themselves felt. She turned to face him. He was smiling.

“What am I to think about?”

He spread out the palms of his hands, as an illusionist might do. “Grace—she’s back.”
He seemed pleased with the look of surprise—and gratitude—on Isabel’s face.

“Oh.”

He came towards her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She shivered—from the cold,
from the contact.

“Apparently everything is normal. She said nothing about having resigned, and she’s
already cleared the dishwasher. She said something about ironing my shirts.”

Isabel smiled. “I’m glad.” She looked at Jamie enquiringly. “What shall I say to her?
Sorry?”

He shook his head. “You have nothing to apologise for. Just say nothing. It’s always
better, I think, to say nothing. If things sort themselves out—as they have done here—then
why say anything?”

She was not sure he was right that saying nothing was always preferable. Not always:
there were occasions when it was clearly unwise to remain silent—when there were misunderstandings,
for instance, or suspicions; where a few words could explain something or defuse ill-feeling.
There were occasions, too, when those few words might be words of apology—short, potent
words that could erase whole landscapes of resentment, undermine entire edifices of
anger or hatred. But perhaps he was right; although Isabel would have preferred to
resolve her disagreement with Grace by talking things through, Grace had her own way
of coping with disagreements, which involved pretending that they had never occurred.
And if that worked for her, then Isabel was prepared to let it be.