The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (30 page)

Isabel looked around the restaurant, at the couples at neighbouring tables. Just like
us, but were there secrets at every table? There were, she decided. Yes, there were.

“We should talk about something else,” said Jamie, picking up the menu that the waitress
had placed before him. “Food, maybe.” He ran his eye down the list of offerings. “One
final thing, though: What do you expect to happen next?”

“I’ve already told you,” she said. “Two of them will be very keen to find out. Two
will phone me. One won’t. Or …” She hesitated. “All of them will get in touch.”

Jamie laughed. “Oh well,” he said. “Robert Burns.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“
The best laid schemes of mice and men
,” said Jamie. “Remember?”

“How could one forget?” said Isabel.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 

T
HERE WAS NO PHONE CALL
the next day, although the letters would have been delivered that morning—if the
postal system worked as it was meant to do, which it usually did. Isabel spent the
first part of the morning at her desk and the rest of the day at the delicatessen,
standing in for Cat, who had a trade fair to attend in Glasgow. “All the food people
will be there,” she had said. “Miles of Italian sausage—miles. Tankers of olive oil.
Everything.”

“Then you must go,” Isabel had replied. “I’ll help Eddie. You go to Glasgow.”

“Angel,” said Cat, blowing Isabel a kiss.

“Well, I’m not sure …”

“But you are. You’re a rock.”

Isabel had wondered whether one could be both an angel and a rock. Angels were somewhat
flighty; rocks were more … well, more
rocky
. What Cat might have said was that she was a brick; that was a compliment that people
paid to those on whom they could rely, but the expression was dying out. Her father
had talked about people being bricks—their mechanic, for example, had been a brick
because he had been prepared to
come and collect the car for its service when her father was too busy at the office
to take it to the garage. That was the action of a brick.

She went to the delicatessen shortly after eleven, ready to help Eddie during the
busiest period of the day, which was between twelve and two. There was time for a
cup of coffee before she got down to work preparing bread rolls for lunchtime, and
it was over a cup of coffee that Eddie mentioned Diane.

“Ah, Diane,” said Isabel. “How is she?”

“She’s going to London.”

“Oh. And are you going with her? Have you been to London, Eddie?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never been there. I’ve been to America, but I’ve never been
to London.”

“Well, maybe you should go with her. How long is she going for, the weekend?”

Eddie reached for a jar of pickles. “No, she’s going down there to finish her course.
She’s transferring to another college.”

Isabel frowned. “But what about you, Eddie? Are you going too?”

He shook his head. “Not me,” he said carelessly. “You wouldn’t catch me living in
London. Too big.”

Isabel digested this. “So?”

“It’s not a big problem,” said Eddie. “We’ve finished. It’s over.”

Isabel put down her coffee cup. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry to hear that,
Eddie.”

He shrugged, and then extracted a pickle from the jar with his fingers.

Isabel shook a finger. “You’re not meant to do that, Eddie! Use a fork. You don’t
put your fingers in jars.”

“Sorry.” He put the pickle in his mouth. “It’s only for me.”

“But your fingers have been in the vinegar. You put germs from your hands into the
vinegar. Now all those other pickles could be full of your germs.”

“OK,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”

She returned to the subject of Diane. “What happened?”

“I thought we should cool it,” said Eddie. “So I did. She’s cool with that.”

Isabel was somewhat surprised by this abrupt change of heart and was about to say
something but stopped herself. She had not interfered before in the issue of the two
of them living together and would not do so now. He was just too young.

“You’ll miss her,” said Isabel, largely out of a want of anything else to say.

“Maybe,” said Eddie. “Maybe a bit.”

Men don’t miss women, thought Isabel. More women miss men than men miss women. That
was probably right. It was depressingly right.

Work resumed, and it was not until three o’clock that things slackened off sufficiently
for Isabel to telephone the house and ask if there had been any calls for her. Grace
answered, and said that the glazier had called about a window that needed repairing
but there had been nothing else.

She went home at five, leaving Eddie to do the last hour or so by himself. Again there
had been no message, and there was no call either that evening. The next morning,
though, shortly after eight, the telephone rang. It was Duncan.

“Astonishing news,” he blurted out even before giving his name. “The Poussin’s back.”

Isabel started to say something, but was interrupted.

“This morning,” said Duncan. “I went down this morning
and it was back in its place. Somebody had put it there last night. Astonishing. But
it’s safe—that’s the important thing.”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “That’s the important thing.”

“I’ve told the insurance people,” Duncan continued. “I woke that chap up, I’m afraid.
I called him at six.”

“I doubt if he minded,” said Isabel. “It’s rather good news for them.”

“Yes,” said Duncan. “He sounded pretty chipper. So that’s it. Case closed. There’s
no claim from me, and that makes them extremely happy. Nothing more to be done.”

Isabel had her doubts. “Do you think so? Surely the police will want to pursue the
matter.”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“Have they said anything?” pressed Isabel.

“I haven’t informed them yet,” said Duncan. He sounded guarded.

“But you’ll have to,” said Isabel. She was thinking quickly; he seemed reluctant to
inform the police and there had to be a reason for that.
He
was the one; that was the reason. Why else would he not wish to speak to the police?
They would have to know eventually, but presumably he felt uneasy about talking to
them himself. “After all,” she went on, “this is a crime. A very valuable item was
stolen. The police aren’t going to want to let that go.”

Again he was silent. Then: “I don’t see what interest the police will have in dealing
with something that’s no longer a problem. They have better things to do with their
time, don’t you think?”

She did not get time to answer. Had she been able to say what was on her mind, she
might have said that the issue was not so much theft as it was insurance fraud.

“Look,” Duncan said. “Do you think you could come down here this morning? I know it’s
an imposition, but it would be much better to speak face-to-face. There’s rather a
lot to discuss.”

Yes, thought Isabel. There was a great deal to discuss, but she did not see how she
could discuss it with him. How could she? Would she accuse him of attempting to defraud
his insurers? And if that was what she thought, was she not morally bound to go to
the police with her suspicions?

She agreed to go. Jamie offered to accompany her, but she declined his offer. “It
will be better for me to go by myself,” she said. “I shall be perfectly safe.”

She drove up to Doune in the Swedish car, not noticing the skies this time, nor paying
much attention to the countryside unfolding on either side of the road. Her mind was
occupied with what she might say to Duncan—that is, if she were to say anything, which
was far from sure. Her earlier certainty that Duncan was responsible for the theft
had been replaced by a measure of doubt. Now she thought: I really don’t know. I know
very little here, and I should simply leave the whole issue where it is. It was no
business of hers to bring anybody to justice, nor to interfere in the affairs of a
family that she barely knew and that had difficulties enough without her adding fuel
to the flames of their dysfunctionality. By the time she arrived at Munrowe House,
she had decided that her visit would be a brief one. She would listen to whatever
it was that Duncan wished to say and then she would withdraw.

Duncan greeted her on the steps in front of the house. He was smiling broadly, and
ushered her in warmly.

“Let’s waste no time,” he said. “Come into the drawing room. The painting is back
where it belongs.”

She followed him into the room, which was cold, in spite
of the summer weather outside. Old Scottish houses were inevitably cold, she realised;
it was the thickness of the stone walls. He saw her shiver. “I make a fire, even in
summer,” he said.

Isabel did not say anything; her eyes had gone straight to the Poussin.

“Back home,” said Duncan.

Isabel walked forward and stood before the painting. She felt as she always did when
she stood in front of a great work of art: a sense of marvel that she was so close
to an artefact that was once worked upon by an artist of such stature as Poussin.
He did this, she mused: he
thought
this painting, he touched this canvas.

She went a step closer. Duncan was now standing beside her. She heard his breathing.
She felt his presence.

She turned her head, just slightly, so that she could see Duncan’s face. His eyes
were bright; there was joy in his expression. This man, it occurred to her, could
not have engineered the disappearance of this painting. He could not be dissembling;
he simply could not.

She looked at the sky in the painting. She saw the clouds, and behind them the blue
of the void. Beyond the range of hills that the artist had painted in the background
she could make out a glow in the sky that was the sun, and she remembered being in
the Metropolitan Museum in New York and seeing Poussin’s picture of Celadion standing
on the shoulders of the giant, Orion, and guiding him towards the sun, that his sight
might be restored. On the shoulders of great men we go towards the light …

“We should take a seat,” said Duncan, indicating the sofa. “We can gaze at this lovely
sight while we talk.”

She sat down at one end of a chintzy sofa, with Duncan at the other.

He did not hesitate. “So you found out,” he began. “Frankly, I wasn’t surprised.”

“No?”

“No, I’d dreaded it. I suppose I suspected it all along, but I didn’t really want
to face up to the fact that my own son could have done something like that.”

She was still. “Your son?”

“Yes, Patrick. As I assume you’ve discovered.”

“Why do you think it was him?” she asked gently.

He laughed. “Because it’s obvious. The house was locked last night. This morning the
painting was back in its original position, as if nothing had happened. There are
four or five copies of the keys—mine, my wife’s, my daughter’s, my son’s, and a spare
set we keep in a drawer.”

Isabel asked him where his wife was. He replied that she was in Paris and would be
away for the next two weeks. He had spoken to her on the telephone, though—to give
her the good news. “Needless to say, she’s delighted.”

“But I still don’t see—”

He interrupted. “I assumed that you spoke to him after you discovered the truth.”

Isabel shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Then he must have realised that you knew.”

She was not sure what to say. “Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

He looked up at the painting. “He’s gone on and on about redistribution—he’s harped
on about it for years. But I never thought he’d take his animosity to me and my concerns
to such
an extent.” He shook his head ruefully. “Never. I would never have dreamed it.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” said Isabel gently.

He looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean? Who else could it be?”

“You have two children,” said Isabel.

He laughed. “Alex? No, that’s out of the question.”

Isabel looked down at her hands. I could tell him, she thought. I could list the factors
that pointed to his daughter: her financial need, her attachment to the painting,
her deliberate involvement of Isabel through Martha.

Duncan now rose to his feet and took the few steps that brought him close to the painting.
He gazed at it, his back to Isabel.

“Do you know something?” he said, without turning round. “When I asked Martha to contact
you, I never imagined that you would be able to sort the whole thing out. I hardly
dared hope. I expected that you would be a comfort to me in the whole business—as
I told you—but I had no idea that you’d bring the matter to a successful conclusion.”

Isabel sat where she was. “When you asked Martha?”

He seemed surprised by her question. “Yes. I got in touch with her. I didn’t want
to speak to you out of the blue. I suppose I’m afraid of rejection.” He looked at
her and gave a curious, self-deprecatory shrug. “Who isn’t? We’re all a bit weak,
I fear.”