Next of Kin Read online

  ‘A job well done,’ said Montignac with a smile as the Cézannes were freshly wrapped and left in the downstairs storeroom overnight, which he locked and then pocketed the key. ‘Now, young man,’ he added with a smile, ‘I suggest you go home and get some sleep. I’ll take care of all this tomorrow and then you will be one thousand pounds better off.’

  Gareth rubbed his hands together in glee. ‘Can’t wait,’ he said in delight. ‘When do we get the money?’

  ‘A couple of days, I imagine,’ said Montignac with a shrug. ‘I’ll speak to the middle man tomorrow’—he had not revealed Keaton’s name to his accomplice—‘and let him know that the job is done. In the meantime don’t contact me, all right? I’ll be in touch with you.’

  Gareth nodded and walked towards the door, eager to get home and to bed, where he could think about how to spend his money.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said as he left.

  ‘Yes, but don’t contact me,’ repeated Montignac. ‘Wait until you hear from me. I don’t want anyone knowing that you were here.’

  Gareth nodded, shook his hand, and drifted off into the night while Montignac locked the door and returned to the gallery. He let out a deep yawn and longed for bed himself. He couldn’t help but smile at how well this part of the plan had all gone. He only hoped that the next would be as successful.

  8

  JANE BENTLEY WAS STILL growing accustomed to seeing her son up and dressed this early. At first she hadn’t dared to believe that he would continue to take his new responsibilities seriously, but it appeared that he had, for every morning for some weeks now he had risen at the same time as the rest of the working world.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I’m pleased to see that you’re sticking with it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘This new-found sense of responsibility. Being up and about with the lark.’

  ‘I told you, I’ve turned over a new leaf,’ said Gareth, smiling at her as he placed a couple of slices of bread under the grill. ‘You don’t have to keep expecting the worst from me, you know.’

  ‘I don’t, I just—’

  ‘Of course you do, Mother,’ said Gareth with a good-natured shrug. ‘But perhaps I’ve given you cause.’

  ‘Well, whether you have or haven’t, there’s no question that this new job of yours is doing you the world of good. Your Mr Montignac is a good influence on you. You should invite him to dinner some evening. I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘Really, Mother,’ said Gareth, a little embarrassed. ‘We’re not engaged to be married, you know. I don’t have to invite him over to meet the parents.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she replied. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She sighed; her son could be so prickly sometimes. He always had to be handled with kid gloves. ‘I just meant that you seem a lot happier in yourself since you started working with him.’

  ‘I am,’ said Gareth. ‘Everything seems … different suddenly. I’m starting to think the future might be brighter than expected.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ said Roderick Bentley, strolling into the kitchen with the Saturday newspapers under his arm. ‘What are we talking about?’

  ‘Gareth was just telling me about his new job,’ said Jane.

  ‘About time he had one too.’

  ‘Oh really, Roderick—’

  ‘It’s all right, Mother,’ said Gareth, sitting down with his toast and pouring some tea from the pot. ‘He’s quite right. Well I think from now on I’m going to be a lot less bother to you.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Roderick, scanning the headlines on the front page of The Times.

  ‘In fact, I’m thinking of getting a place of my own.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jane, spinning around. ‘A place of your own?’

  ‘Yes, I thought about taking a flat somewhere. Not too far away, of course. Perhaps around Bedford Place.’

  ‘What on earth do you want to move there for?’ asked Roderick. ‘When you have a perfectly good home here?’

  ‘Well I’m twenty-four years old now,’ said Gareth. ‘I think it’s about time I had a little independence, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh don’t be so ridiculous, Gareth,’ said Jane, who couldn’t bear the idea of being without him. ‘You have all the independence you want here. We don’t give you any bother, do we?’

  ‘Well no,’ he admitted. ‘Short of getting a pitchfork to get me out of bed every morning—’

  ‘You come and go as you please and no one says anything to stop you. And now that you’ve got a job you have even more independence.’

  ‘It’s not just about that, Mother,’ he said. ‘A fellow of my age should have his own flat, I think.’

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ said Jane. ‘Which of your friends do?’

  ‘Alexander Keys, for one,’ said Gareth, thinking about it. ‘Owen Montignac for another.’

  ‘But you just said you’re turning over a new leaf. It’s pointless you getting a place of your own when we have so much space here.’

  ‘Perhaps he has a romance on the go,’ suggested Roderick with a gentle smile. ‘Do you, Gareth?’ he asked mischievously. ‘Have you fallen in love and don’t want to tell us about it yet?’

  ‘That’s not it, is it?’ asked Jane, glaring at him, unsure how she should feel about such a development. ‘Have you met someone special?’

  ‘It’s just something I’m thinking about,’ said Gareth, his face flushing bright red and stepping away to the grill so as to be able to turn his back on them. ‘I haven’t decided on anything for sure.’

  ‘Flats are a lot more expensive these days than they used to be,’ said Roderick, considering the matter. ‘There’s a young chap just come to work for us in the clerks’ office and he’s paying two pounds a week for a bedsit in Clapham. Two pounds a week! Can you imagine what you could have got for that in our day?’

  ‘Your day maybe, darling,’ said Jane with a smile. ‘Your day was ten years before my day.’

  ‘Anyway I don’t want to live in Clapham,’ said Gareth.

  ‘Bedford Place is only around the corner,’ said Roderick. ‘Seems a bit pointless to move out of here and into there. And I imagine it would be a damn sight more expensive than Clapham when it comes to that.’

  ‘Well it was just a thought,’ said Gareth quietly. ‘Owen Montignac lives there and he seems very comfortable.’

  ‘Ah, I might have known,’ said Roderick. ‘Been putting ideas into your head then, has he?’

  ‘Now, Roderick, don’t say anything negative,’ said Jane quickly. ‘I was just telling Gareth what a good influence I felt Mr Montignac had been on him.’

  ‘What is it exactly you do for him anyway?’ asked Roderick, putting the papers down and staring at his son. ‘You know you’ve never actually told us.’

  ‘Well it’s all sorts really,’ said Gareth in a hesitant voice. ‘He has an awful lot of interests and I help him with … the books and so on. Plus I help out around the gallery. It’s terribly interesting, you know. I’m learning an awful lot. About art and whatnot.’

  ‘I’ve been to that gallery myself,’ said Jane. ‘Some very exciting pieces there. We should go together someday, Roderick. Pick out something for that space on the third-floor landing. All the artwork is very contemporary there, isn’t it, Gareth?’

  ‘That’s one way to put it,’ he said.

  ‘One gets so tired of landscapes and seascapes and portraits of dead aristocrats,’ said Jane.

  Roderick grunted and looked back at the papers. He was checking to make sure there was no further gossip about the king in there and for the time being there didn’t seem to be anything; he lived in dread of a leak and his getting the blame for it, particularly since he had confided rather more than he intended in his loose-tongued wife. The prime minister had put the papers under a blanket embargo on discussing the matter of Edward and Mrs Simpson but the American newspapers and their continental counterparts talked of nothing else and
it had become the common currency of discussion among the people on the streets. It was only a matter of time, he felt, before one of the newspapers broke the prohibition and challenged the government to act.

  ‘Nothing in there?’ asked Jane, following his line of thought.

  ‘Not a word,’ said Roderick. ‘They’re all covering this paintings business, though.’

  Gareth looked up from his toast, his blush of a few moments before saving him from a second embarrassment. ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ said Roderick, pointing at an article that filled a third of the page on the front of The Times, beneath the fold. ‘It’s awfully funny in a way, although one shouldn’t laugh at such things of course. It seems that there’s an exhibition touring the country of paintings by some dead French artist and a part of the collection was in London for some restoration work and reframing. Once they were finished the paintings were transported up to Edinburgh to join the rest of the collection but when they got there the canvases were entirely blank.’

  ‘Blank?’ asked Jane in surprise.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How could they be blank?’ she asked. ‘Do you mean the restorers wiped them clean?’

  ‘Well no,’ he said, stifling a laugh. ‘No, I don’t think that’s what anybody thinks. They were packed away in cases and were apparently fine when they were going up there but then they reached their destination and the real paintings were gone. They must have been switched en route, I expect. They went on a train, of course, and you know the type that travels on them. The whole thing’s a terrible mystery. All the employees of the railway line are being questioned and the stations searched. It’s going to cost the insurers a pretty packet. And of course the gallery that were doing the work are in terrible trouble too. There’s talk of a lawsuit against the owner for not providing adequate security. This chap here,’ he muttered, running his finger along the article for the name. ‘Arthur Hamilton. Poor fellow’s getting all the blame.’

  ‘Well I don’t see how it’s his fault once they’ve left the gallery,’ said Jane.

  Roderick continued to read further through the article, the mischief of which had rather intrigued him. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s on Cork Street. That’s where your Mr Montignac has his gallery, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes that’s right,’ said Gareth casually. ‘What gallery was it?’

  ‘A place called the Clarion. Do you know it?’

  Gareth narrowed his eyes and hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said finally. ‘I think it’s a few doors down from Montignac’s. Same side of the street.’

  ‘Well there’ll be hell to pay, that’s for sure,’ said Roderick. ‘These insurance companies don’t like paying out a penny. Of course they’re worse scoundrels than the thieves, if you ask me. And the police are baffled, it says here.’

  ‘The police are always baffled, aren’t they?’ asked Jane, pouring some more tea. (This, she had a sudden realization, was exactly as she had always wanted her life to be; interesting conversation over the breakfast table about the news of the day. The odd bon mot to show they were lively people. A sensation of pure happiness descended on her.) ‘Whenever anything mysterious happens, they end up baffled. If you ask me the London constabulary are in a permanent state of bewilderment. God forbid we should ever be in need of their help.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roderick, turning the pages to find the crossword which could occupy him for the next half-hour or so.

  ‘But there’s nothing in there about … the other business?’ asked Jane after a moment.

  ‘Nothing. They’re toeing the line for once, it seems.’

  ‘Well I daresay it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Is this the king you’re talking about?’ asked Gareth, looking up.

  ‘You know about that?’ asked Roderick, looking across at his wife irritably who made a sign to indicate that it had nothing to do with her and she hadn’t let anything slip.

  ‘Everyone knows about it,’ said Gareth, laughing at his father’s naivety. ‘It’s all anyone talks about any more. All this Queen Wallis business.’

  ‘That’s never going to happen,’ said Jane irritably.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Roderick.

  ‘But it’s utterly pointless the papers not being allowed to discuss it,’ said Gareth. ‘When all the foreign ones can. It only takes a few days or a week at most for the latest rumours to hit people.’

  ‘Have you heard from Hailsham again?’ asked Jane quietly, sitting down beside her husband. He shook his head.

  ‘Not in the last week or so. But Lord Keaton came round the other day and said that we should expect another meeting any time soon. It seems that she really is going to go through with divorcing the fellow.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Gareth. ‘He’s the most famous cuckold in England right now. He should have had some pride and divorced her long ago. I know I would have.’

  ‘Let’s not get into it,’ said Roderick. ‘I have a horrible feeling that it will be a matter to prey on my mind for long enough over the next few months without discussing it now. Is there any more tea in that pot?’

  Gareth slipped out of the kitchen a few minutes later and made his way up to his bedroom. He’d risen early for the last few days expecting to hear from Owen Montignac arranging when he should call around to collect his thousand pounds but there had been no word as yet. Still, it had only been a few days and Montignac had specifically told him not to contact him but to wait until he heard from him.

  But it had been three days already and he was starting to grow nervous. He decided that if he hadn’t heard from him by Monday evening, he would pay a visit to the Threadbare at closing time and remind him of his existence and the money that was owed to him.

  9

  IT HAD BEEN ALMOST a month since Owen Montignac had been to the Unicorn Ballrooms and he arrived there on Sunday evening in mixed spirits.

  He had arranged to meet Lord Keaton at lunchtime at the office where they had spoken twice already and they drove together to a lock-up near King’s Cross where the dozen Cézannes had been hidden since the switch had been made a few nights earlier. Together they took the boxes off a selected few and Keaton examined them.

  ‘Very good, Mr Montignac,’ he said. ‘Do you know that when your name was mentioned to me in association with this job I wasn’t really very sure.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Montignac. ‘May I ask why not?’

  ‘Well I don’t mean any offence,’ said Keaton with a shrug. ‘But I knew your uncle quite well and he was something of a straight-shooter. He never would have involved himself in an operation like this.’

  ‘My uncle was not quite the saint that people like to portray him as,’ said Montignac.

  ‘Sons never like to hear people speak well of their fathers. I bet if I had criticized him you would have defended him soundly, though.’

  ‘He wasn’t my father,’ Montignac pointed out.

  ‘Well be that as it may, I wasn’t sure that I was doing the right thing approaching you. I see now that I was wrong. You’ve done a very efficient job.’

  Montignac nodded. ‘Well I’m glad that I managed to impress you,’ he said. ‘Can I ask you who recommended me in the first place?’

  ‘Of course you can ask,’ said Keaton, smiling. ‘But it would be entirely inappropriate for me to tell you. Let’s just say that it was someone who was familiar with your character and who believed you would be happy to provide me with this service.’

  ‘All right,’ said Montignac, who understood the rules regarding transactions like this. ‘And what about where they’re going then? Whose walls are these going to end up on?’

  ‘I’m afraid it would be improper for me to tell you that either,’ he replied with a laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Montignac, but there we are. It was nothing more than a discreet business arrangement. Perhaps we should leave it at that and not ask each other any more questions.’r />
  ‘That’s fine,’ said Montignac. ‘Although please do stress to your buyer that he won’t be able to put any of these pictures on general display. If anyone should see them—’

  ‘Let me assure you that they are for his private collection only, and once these have left here today any association they may have to you or your gallery will be completely forgotten. No one would be able to prove a connection anyway.’

  ‘Good,’ said Montignac. ‘Which leaves us with only one matter left to sort out.’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ said Keaton, reaching inside his jacket to remove the envelope. ‘Fifteen thousand pounds to do with what you will.’

  Montignac took the envelope and looked inside it.

  ‘You can count it if you want,’ said Keaton but Montignac shook his head.

  ‘I’ll trust you,’ he said, extending a hand and they shook on it. ‘If there’s any other business deals you can put my way you know where to contact me.’

  ‘Indeed I do, Mr Montignac, and now that you have proved your value and discretion, I may very well be in touch again. In fact, you can count on it. I think there’s another matter, a far more important and financially beneficial matter, that you could help me out with.’

  ‘Oh really?’ he asked. ‘Can I ask what it is?’

  ‘Your debt to Mr Delfy still stands at an extraordinary figure, does it not?’

  Montignac hesitated; he hated admitting to his failures like this. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Well there may be a way that I could help you clear the entire amount.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Not here,’ said Keaton, shaking his head. ‘I’ll contact you shortly about it. It’s a much riskier venture than this one, of course, but then the remuneration will be a lot higher. And it has far greater importance too.’

  ‘Sounds mysterious,’ said Montignac.

  ‘Let’s just say that it will take some ingenuity to pull it off.’

  Montignac nodded. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you then,’ he said.

  They shook hands again and Montignac left the lock-up; there weren’t many people who made him feel uncomfortable but Keaton was certainly one. Despite his corpulent build and aristocratic bearing, he had a chilly manner and fixed smile that made Montignac think that under the right circumstances he could be quite brutal.