Pandora (75 page)

At nine-thirty a.m. on a sunny Easter Tuesday, Raphael’s
Pandora
was packed into an air-conditioned silk-lined box, loaded into a police van and with an escort of motorbikes and police cars driven ten miles from a warehouse in Searston through narrow lanes softened with cow parsley and the first green foliage of spring.

Her destiny was the already overflowing crown court in Larkminster. Arriving early, Sienna had hidden herself high up in the public gallery. She had been commissioned to produce daily sketches of the chief participants by the
Telegraph
, who she was sure had only chosen her because Jonathan and Alizarin weren’t available. Her hands were trembling so much at the prospect of seeing Zac, she could hardly draw.

The court lay below, an intensely theatrical cross between opera house, chapel and classroom. Dark polished rows descended like an amphitheatre, divided by crimson carpeted aisles. Directly opposite, the bench rose like a huge oak counter. Behind it reared up the judge’s imposing red-leather chair, and behind that a carved snarling lion and a sleekly snorting unicorn hoisted up the Royal Coat of Arms, their paws and hooves obscuring the motto: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ ‘Let shame come to him who thinks evil.’

In front of the bench sat a clerk and ushers in black gowns reading documents, checking the tape machine which would record every bitter word. In front of the barristers’ rows was a big table, strewn with more law books, brightly coloured ring binders, and briefs tied up in cyclamen-pink ribbon. Above, like huge ash buds, hung microphones. The press had squeezed themselves into rows to the left. Facing them to the right like a brass play pen – which would be needed to contain Zac, thought Sienna sourly – was the witness box.

Sienna’s brooding was interrupted by a great cheer from the huge crowd, who had assembled in the sunshine to welcome Raymond and sadly notice how pulled down the dear soul was looking. Anthea by contrast looked perky and pretty in a fuchsia pink suit and mauve striped beret from David Shilling.

Once inside, they sat down in the row behind their QC, Sampson Brunning, and his team. Sampson, who had sleek fair hair, a high colour and hard roving blue eyes, was wearing a square-collared black silk gown, and a wig tipped over the beetling blond brows of a man who means business.

In the barristers’ robing room, he had clocked Naomi Cohen’s full scarlet lips and glossy black hair flopping from a side parting over proud pale gold aquiline features. He had also noticed her slender ankles and swelling bosom beneath her white-frilled high-necked shirt and black gown.

She had been distinctively frosty, probably nerves at squaring up to such a QC as himself, thought Sampson smugly. Like himself, she and Zac were staying at the Black Swan in Searston. He would probably bed her on night three, reflected Sampson, when her crush on her moody tormented client had subsided.

Ah, here was Jupiter rushing in at the last moment, the only sensible Belvedon in Sampson’s book. Sienna was a mouthy urchin, Jonathan, who’d failed to produce any of the promised evidence, a useless cokehead.

Sliding into the row beside his stepmother, Jupiter, despite his air of cool, was worried stiff about losing the Raphael, which was now acting as collateral with the bank, who would probably foreclose if Zac won the case. Raymond still hadn’t paid back the £85,000 to the insurance company and God knew what the costs would be. Jupiter was late because he’d been viewing a sale in the nearby auction rooms, where, in a dark corner, he’d spied a possible ‘sleeper’, which in art world jargon meant an undetected masterpiece. He prayed David Pulborough would be too busy High Sheriffing to view as well. Surreptitiously he switched on his mobile to check on Hanna and little Viridian, who was now sleeping peacefully, after keeping them up all night.

Interest rumbled through the court as Zac and Naomi Cohen walked down the aisle and, totally ignoring the hissing Belvedons, turned into the pew on the left. With a shaking hand, Naomi undid the cyclamen-pink ribbon tying up her brief and, spurning the water jug provided by the court, produced a bottle of Evian.

Trust Zac to roll up with a designer lawyer, thought Sienna furiously. Trust ghastly, pompous, sleek, lascivious Sampson Brunning, who so disapproves of me, to gaze at Naomi with all the delight of an otter who’s just inherited a fish shop.

Savagely Sienna began to sketch them both, but her chalk seemed to take control of her hand and draw Zac instead. Not even cheap shiny suits or cadmium-yellow ties could dim his prowling beauty.

Everyone in the Belvedon row giggled and edged up as Aunt Lily clattered down the aisle. Ignoring the ‘No refreshments in court’ sign, she’d brought a flask of brandy and a two-pound jar of glacier mints. They must keep a seat for Rosemary who was bringing a picnic later.

Restlessly, Zac undid the button of his awful shirt and loosened his even more awful tie.

‘Do it up,’ hissed Naomi.

‘Museums quail at that girl’s approach,’ murmured Somerford Keynes, who was taking up at least two seats in the press box, and who’d been kept very busy, as he was telling David Lee, the editor of
Art Review
, authenticating the Raphael with colleagues from the Frick and the National Gallery.

‘Ah, here it is.’

As Pandora was unpacked from her box, releasing God knew what new evils, Raymond quickly suppressed a sob. Aunt Lily put a gnarled hand on his knee. Sienna swore as tears fell on her sketchpad. Even Jupiter had a lump in his throat.

Everyone in court craned their necks to catch a glimpse as two policemen propped the picture on a red leather bench at the back of the court, with more policemen guarding it on every door. Even at a distance the clear glowing colours had a radiance. Like King Cophetua’s beggar maid, thought Jupiter, you could suddenly see what the fuss was about.

The big hand of the clock edged towards ten o’clock.

‘All rise,’ cried a pretty blonde usher. Like books crammed too tightly into their shelves, the court found it hard to struggle to their feet as Mr Justice Caradoc Willoughby Evans, a long name for a small, rotund but impressive man in red robes, came through crimson velvet curtains and was helped into his splendid red chair. Having breakfasted on bacon and eggs, black pudding, mushrooms, toast and Oxford marmalade served by a butler in the judges’ lodgings overlooking the park, Willoughby Evans was delighted by the turnout. A fine profile could always do with raising.

His wig looks as though a lot of grass has frozen on his head, thought Sienna drawing frantically. And with his plump square face and twinkling eyes, he looked like Ratty in
Wind in the Willows
after thirty years of picnics with Mole. Then she couldn’t suppress a scream of laughter as through the crimson velvet curtains, with his sword clanking, resplendent in white ruffled shirt, dark blue tail coat, knee breeches, black hose and with an expression of great self-importance on his face, came David Pulborough. It was the High Sheriff’s duty to look after visiting High Court judges and sit in on cases, particularly when they were as fascinating as this one.

Down below, Lily gave a snort of laughter.

Raymond’s shoulders heaved.

‘Shut up, both of you,’ hissed a grinning Jupiter as David, smoothing his hair, settled himself into the chair next to Willoughby Evans, solicitously lowering the judge’s microphone and pouring him a glass of water.

‘I’m sure he’ll put in a good word for us,’ whispered Raymond, wiping his eyes.

‘Like hell he will.’ Jupiter tapped Sampson on the shoulder. ‘Can’t we object? David’s bound to drip poison into the judicial ear, and he’ll try and flog him pictures. Willoughby Evans bought a van de Velde at Christie’s six months ago.’

Oblivious of the mirth and bitching around her, Anthea’s heart swelled. Never had David looked so manly. Imagine him whipping out his sword and challenging Zac to a duel in her defence.

Willoughby Evans immediately asked for the Raphael to be brought over, then shook his head. No wonder men were prepared to fight over such beauty. He’d never seen ‘so exquisitely fair a face’ as Hope’s.

‘That must be Sloth and that one Avarice.’

‘I’ve lived next to that picture for thirty years and never known of its existence,’ lied David, leaning forward to have a look. ‘Like the princess in the tower.’

The proceedings kicked off with Naomi opening her case by giving a short history of the Raphael’s journey from Vienna to New York. The first witness was Detective Inspector Gablecross, who described briefly how he’d been called to Foxes Court in July, when the Raphael had been reported stolen, how it had been recovered at the Commotion Exhibition and was now in possession of Searston police who under the Police Property Act would like guidance on where to dispose of it.

Gablecross was followed by Somerford Keynes. Oozing self-importance, only just fitting into the witness box, lecherous little eyes roving in Zac’s direction, the great critic dated the picture at around 1512.

‘Painted on panel, the fable of Pandora formed the lid of a box, on the bottom of which was painted a portrait of Caterina, a proud beauty whom Raphael was rumoured to have admired unrequitedly. Hence the lid’s caption: “Malum infra latet” or “Trouble lies below”.’ Somerford leered down at Zac.

‘In the seventeenth century,’ he went on, ‘this box consisting of both pictures belonged to the Roman Cardinal Aldobrandini, who, during a diplomatic mission to Vienna, presented it to an Austrian grandee, Count Heinrich von Berthold’ – Somerford’s slack lips watered at the thought of such august personages – ‘in whose inventory of 1695 both pictures are listed.’

‘Silly Old Master-bator,’ grumbled Sienna, who was furiously sketching Somerford in the witness box as a great pot-bound man-eating plant.

‘The lid,’ continued Somerford, ‘was probably separated from its companion picture in the late eighteenth century when both were transferred from panel to canvas to avoid cracks, woodworm and susceptibility to temperature changes. Caterina now hangs in the Abraham Lincoln Museum outside Washington, Pandora remained in the Berthold family’s castle in Hungary for some two hundred and forty years before being sold to Benjamin Abelman of Vienna for approximately ten thousand pounds.’

‘How much would you now estimate the value of the picture?’ asked Willoughby Evans.

‘At auction, it could possibly fetch between eight and ten million pounds.’

Everyone gasped and craned their necks. The police flanking Pandora edged closer. Naomi Cohen adjusted her wig and, having asked permission of Sampson Brunning, gave further background to events.

‘Austria,’ she explained, ‘was the recipient of Hitler’s worst hatred, because Linz Academy of Fine Arts had refused him admission as a student. In 1938, his secret police had therefore moved into Vienna, humiliating and arresting Jews and stealing their treasures. The collection of Benjamin Abelman was one of the first to go.’

Mr Justice Willoughby Evans, meanwhile, was making notes on his laptop, proving judges could be computer literate too. What a case! he thought happily. A beautiful picture and some beautiful women to admire if the proceedings got boring. Lady Belvedon was a cracker. Being small, Willoughby Evans liked little women, and he liked Naomi Cohen’s flashing dark eyes. Once she got into her stride, her voice had lost that harsh, high, nervous edge. He must ask her and Sampson Brunning to dine at the judges’ lodgings later in the week.

Peregrine, Sampson Brunning’s junior, also on his laptop and supposed to be keeping track of the evidence, was playing Solitaire.

Now it was Zac’s turn. Naomi smiled up at him reassuringly as he tugged at his hideous yellow tie before being sworn in on the Old Testament.

I hate her, thought Sienna, drawing Naomi as a crow in her black robes.

Zac was so pale that his white knuckles didn’t show up as he gripped the rails of the witness box, but he performed sensationally. Only rarely, like a bonfire under wet leaves flaring up and dying down, did he show his aggression and desire for vengeance. His love for the Raphael, and his desperate need to repossess it, were obvious to everyone.

With a set face, his deep husky voice quivering with emotion, he made the court weep as he described how Benjamin was cudgelled to death because he tried to hide the Raphael, how Benjamin’s seventy-five-year-old wife had been forced to clean pavements with a toothbrush before her frail body was chucked into a gas oven, and how heroic Uncle Jacob had sworn he would avenge them by recovering the Raphael but instead had been murdered by the Gestapo for smuggling out Jews before he could join his beloved Leah in the States.

I’ve heard all this before in the Four Seasons, thought Sienna, I’m not going to feel sorry for him. Zac, she decided, was not so much a tiger burning bright, as a narrow-eyed, flaring-nostrilled unicorn, quite capable of stabbing his horn into anyone’s front or back.

‘What d’you think happened to the Raphael after it left your great-grandfather?’ asked Naomi.

‘Hitler ordered everything confiscated in Austria to stay in the same country to stock his new FührerMuseum in Linz,’ answered Zac, ‘but I figure the Raphael ended up with Goering, an obsessively avaricious collector, who managed to siphon off many looted paintings for his own private collection. In the records that came back from Karinhall, Goering’s mansion, after the war, the Raphael was listed as having been taken there. After that, there is a question mark by its name.