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“We had a spider
,” says Jane, sniffling, “one winter, living in our kitchen window. My aunt wouldn’t let me kill it. We named it Charlotte, of course.”
“And this one?” he says, lifting one up that seems red, until the light hits it and it turns various shades of purple.
Jane is rubbing her ears. “It’s made of two translucent fabrics,” she says, “red on the outside and blue inside, so it seems like it’s glowing different purples, depending on the light. I tried a yellow and blue one too, to make green, but the green gave people a sickly pallor.”
“Uncle Buckley would appreciate that you consider those factors,” says Colin. “Do they work? I mean, are they waterproof?”
“A few of them have little leaks at the seams,” Jane says. “Some of them open more smoothly than others. Some of them are a little too heavy, as you probably noticed.”
“Yeah, some of them are heavy.”
“But I use them when it rains,” says Jane. “They work well enough.”
“You’ll get better at the engineering,” says Colin. “It’s clear you have the talent, and the drive.”
Jane can’t respond to this without more tears, so she keeps her mouth shut.
“Will you let me take one to Uncle Buckley?” Colin says. “I think he might like to deal them.”
“After what I said about them leaking?”
“Well, not the leaking ones, obviously.”
“But, don’t you see how crooked they are? Can’t you see the uneven seams?”
“They’re handmade,” he says. “That makes them charming. There are people who would pay hundreds of dollars for these umbrellas.”
“Oh, get out,” Jane says.
“Rich people love to spend money,” Colin says. “If you let me show one to Uncle Buckley, we may be able to help you take advantage of it. It’ll make his day, which will make my day. I haven’t found anything interesting for him in a while.”
“Well,” Jane says, flabbergasted. “Sure, I guess.”
“I should really take a few,” he says. “Three or four, to show your brand.”
My brand? Jane can’t begin to think what her brand is. But as Colin makes his selections, she can see that he’s choosing some of her favorites. The copper-rose and brown satin that she held on the boat because it seemed appropriate for a heroic journey. The oblong, deep-canopied bird’s egg umbrella that’s pale blue with brown speckles. The dome umbrella, designed, both inside and out, to look like the dome of the Pantheon in Rome.
“I’ve never been there,” Jane says, “but Aunt Magnolia would talk about it as if it was a magical place. She said it rains right through the hole at the top of the dome, straight down into the building, but I didn’t think that would make for a practical umbrella design, so from the outside I show the view inside, and from the inside I show a view of the night sky. It’s painted silk, with glitter glued on for stars.”
“What are you working on now?” he asks.
“I’m—not sure,” Jane says. “I had an idea this morning, but now I’m getting a different idea.”
“Excellent. You artists must follow the muse,” he says, his arms full of Jane’s umbrellas. She follows him into the bedroom, wanting to touch them again, to say good-bye. Her babies.
“When will I hear back about them?” she asks anxiously.
“I’ll send them today on the mail run,” Colin says. “Uncle Buckley’s in the city. He’ll probably get in touch in the next couple days.”
* * *
After Colin leaves, Jasper goes into the bedroom and burrows under the bed.
“Fat lot of help you are,” Jane calls after him.
At her worktable, she absently strokes a dusty blue fabric at the top of her pile, noting an unevenness in the dye, like a watermark, all across it. It reminds her of something. What? It’s a flaw in the fabric, but there’s something familiar about it.
Using her waterproof fabric glue, Jane begins to glue points of glitter in various blues, sparingly, with no particular pattern, across the fabric, to accentuate the unevenness. She still wants to make the brown-and-gold self-defense umbrella, but right now, this uneven blue seems the right backdrop to her thoughts. Jane does some of her best thinking while she’s making umbrellas, if she’s working on the right umbrella.
As she slices the uneven blue fabric into gores, Jane comes up with one possible story that makes sense of everything. Sort of. What if the Panzavecchias, in addition to being microbiologists, are art thieves, in cahoots with the servants at Tu Reviens, and together they staged a disappearance, so that no one would suspect them when they subsequently stole the Vermeer? And their little daughter Grace wants to be an art thief like her parents, so she stole the Brancusi? But since she’s eight, she did it badly? Like, maybe she broke the fish part off by accident, then, in regret, returned the pedestal?
Or—maybe she doesn’t want to be an art thief, maybe she hates that her parents are art thieves, and maybe her parents stole the Brancusi. Then, in rebellion, she returned whatever part of it she could get her hands on?
Jane can see the glaring holes in these theories. They don’t explain the Mafia, the involvement of the Okadas, or why Mrs. Vanders would have drawn attention to the forgery in the first place, among other things.
Jane might think that there were two separate mysteries in the house, one about the servants, Okadas, and Panzavecchias, and one about art theft—if only she hadn’t seen that girl putting something on one of the tables in the receiving hall.
She fashions a rosette for the place at the top of the canopy where the gores meet. If I were a better detective, she thinks, I would’ve thought to check the receiving hall to make sure she didn’t actually put something else there, not the pedestal at all.
I suppose I should check it now.
Jane pushes her gores back, sets her glue down, and wipes her hands on her work apron, leaving a tiny constellation of stars. As she stands, she notices little carvings on her worktable: a blue whale and its calf, swimming along the corner of the table’s surface. Moving her supplies aside so she can search the rest of the table, she also finds a shark and its shark babies along the top edge.
Ivy made this worktable, then. Jane traces the carvings with her finger, wishing she didn’t like them so much.
“Jasper?” she calls out, pulling off the apron and grabbing her sketchbook. His nose emerges from under the bed as she passes through the bedroom. Together they leave the rooms.
“Aye, aye, Captain Polepants,” Jane says.
Flipping open her sketchbook as she walks, she glances through her list of names, again wondering whom to trust. It’s amazing, really, how easy it is to imagine a story around each and every person, turning that person into a con artist. Lucy, for example, is perfectly positioned to steal art. No one would suspect her, and she could frame someone else for the crime. Kiran has nothing but free time, goes wherever she wants, whenever she wants, and doesn’t exactly put out a vibe of beneficence. Mrs. Vanders and Ravi could be in on it together, staging tragic discoveries of missing art to deflect attention from their involvement. After all, isn’t Ravi apparently known for acquiring peculiar Monets from someone, probably his mother? Couldn’t the Monet be a forgery? And didn’t he bring it straight to Mrs. Vanders?
With a weary sigh, Jane flips her sketchbook closed.
On the second-story landing, before Jasper can begin his usual blockade, she takes the initiative and crosses the bridge to the opposite landing. With a protesting yip, Jasper hesitates, then sits his rump in place, apparently deciding to wait there.
Taking the west stairs down to the receiving hall, Jane wanders around the room, her big boots echoing on the checkered floor. The air reeks of lilacs. The various side tables are crowded with vases but also contain a few small, stark, modern-looking sculptures. A big family photo sits on one, Octavian with one arm around Ravi and his o
ther arm around a blond, white, youngish-looking woman. The blond woman has an arm around Kiran, who doesn’t look happy, exactly, but nor does she look like she wants to stab someone, which might be the most one can expect from a family photo of Kiran. Ravi is beaming out of the frame. Octavian too has an aspect of pleasure, maybe also of quiet pride. The blond woman, who must be Charlotte, is smiling, but with a touch of confusion, or distraction. Her eyes are focused on something far away.
Jane picks it up, looking closer. Golden-orange nasturtiums hang on pink walls in the background of the photo. Jane wonders, could this be what the little girl delivered to these tables? Why not? It makes no less sense than anything else.
She’s trying to rub away a strange, bloated sensation in her ears when she hears the closing of a camera shutter.
With a grim unwillingness, Jane looks up at the third-story bridge. Ivy stands there, her camera raised to her face. She’s aiming it at a woman on the west landing who’s dusting a suit of medieval armor with a big, pink feather duster.
If I asked, Jane thinks, she’d tell me she’s taking a picture of the suit of armor. But Jane doesn’t ask. She just watches Ivy, until Ivy lowers her camera and sees her.
At the sight of her, Ivy flushes. Then her eyes drop and her mouth hardens with something like resentment. She turns and strides away.
Jane feels as if someone has punched her lungs. Okay, she thinks. Ivy is mad at me for some reason. Whatever, she thinks, clapping the photo back onto the table and standing tall. I’m going to solve this mystery.
Marching up the east staircase, she prepares herself for an altercation with Jasper, but this time he’s just watching her with a sad, droopy face. When she passes into the second-story east wing, he quietly follows.
She stops at the end of the corridor, where a single empty bracket on the wall marks the Vermeer’s previous home.
“You again?” says a faraway voice.
Jane turns to find Lucy St. George walking down the corridor toward her.
“And you again,” Jane says.
“Yes,” Lucy says. “I wanted another look. Or maybe I’m just wandering. I do my best thinking when I’m moving around.”
