13 Little Blue Envelopes(67)

“I got an uncle out of it, at least.”

Richard stopped pushing his folder and looked up.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s nice to have a niece, too.”

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The Padded House

On Thursday morning, a black cab containing Ginny, Richard, and Keith wound its way down a quiet London street—the

kind of quiet that whispers wealth, tradition, and the presence of lots of high-tech security systems.

Aside from being a bit bigger than the buildings around it, the Jerrlyn and Wise building had nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a house. The only thing identifying it was a tiny brass plate by the front door, which was swung open immediately by a man with frighteningly perfect blond hair.

“Miss Blackstone,” he said. “You look so much like your aunt. Please, do come in. I’m Cecil Gage-Rathbone.”

Cecil Gage-Rathbone’s dove gray suit matched the business card that they had found stuck to the cabinet door. His cuff links shimmered discreetly from the ends of sleeves that had to be made of obscenely high-count cotton. He smelled tailored.

If Keith’s green Jittery Grande kilt, black shirt, and red tie 305

threw Cecil at all, he didn’t show it. He introduced himself and shook hands with genuine pleasure, as if he had waited all his life to meet Keith and was full of sweet relief now that the moment had finally come. He took Ginny gently by the shoulders and glided her along past the antiques and the

handful of gathered people as well tailored and coiffed as himself.

Cecil offered them food and drinks from an impressive display of silver pots and plates arranged on a long mahogany sideboard. Ginny couldn’t take anything, but Richard accepted a cup of coffee, and Keith took champagne, strawberries, tiny scones, and a huge dollop of cream. Cecil led them through a long hallway to the auction room. Everything was thick and plush—the heavy drapes on the windows, the soft, overstuffed leather chairs. It was so padded and low-key that it was hard to hear Keith’s murmured monologue on how much he’d always wanted to play James Bond and was very happy to be at the audition.

They stopped at the end of the hall, at a room where even more people in suits sat and chatted quietly into cell phones.

Blue chairs had been set up along the sides, along with tables that were wired up for laptops. The canvases had been put into simple glass frames and set up on easels at the front of the room.

Cecil ushered them into seats in the corner and then hovered over them, poking his head between them to speak in confidence.

“What I think,” he whispered, “is that we’re quite like ly to get a good offer for the col lec tion as a whole. People are calling them the Harrods paintings. Everyone loves a good story.”

It was only now that they were spread out and lined up that 306

Ginny could understand what the paintings were. She looked over to Richard, who was looking at them the same way, running his eyes down the line as if reading a sentence from a book.

The images started off bright and clear and powerful, like cartoon art. The next ones were similar but done in angry, quick slashes of paint that suggested haste. Then the colors began to fade and become muddled together, and the propor-tions became very strange. The last ones were in many ways the most beautiful and certainly the most striking. The bright colors and strong lines were back, but the images were fantasti-cally wrong. The Eiffel Tower split into two pieces. The London buses were fat and comical and purple, and flowers grew along the city streets.

“She was sick,” Ginny said, mostly to herself.

“This work is a record of her illness, which makes it very unique,” Cecil said carefully. “But you should know that your aunt’s work had started to attract attention before she fell ill.

She was being promoted as the next Mari Adams, who has

been quite a vocal supporter of your aunt. We had a few major buyers ready and waiting for these paintings months ago.”

Mari Adams . . . Lady MacStrange. From the way Cecil’s

voice went up just a little on saying her name, Ginny could tell that Mari really was a big deal, at least to him.

“So why didn’t she sell them?” Ginny asked.

Cecil folded himself in even lower.

“You must know that she was fully aware that the collection’s value would increase after her . . . passing on. That is the way of the art world. She deliberately delayed the sale.”

“Until . . . afterward.”

307

“Until I was contacted by you, but yes. That was the impression I was given.”

He bent his knees and came down even farther until his

head was completely level with theirs.

“I understand that this may be a bit odd for you, but everything is arranged. Your proceeds will be wired to your bank account as soon as the sale is finalized.”

His attention was drawn to the buzzing of his cell phone.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Cecil said, cupping his hand

over his phone. “It’s Japan.”

Cecil retreated to the side of the room, and Ginny fixed her eyes on the back of the head of the man sitting in front of her.

He had a large red blotch that the buttery comb-over of his four remaining gray hairs couldn’t hide.

“We don’t have to do this,” Ginny said. “Do we?”