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“My goodness!” she said in surprise. “Looks as if this is where at least some of the money went. Unless Mrs. Taft was an heiress?” She looked at Monk questioningly.
He was standing still on the polished parquet floor looking at the red-carpeted steps and then up to the various paintings on the wall, hung at different levels to complement both the upward climb and the different levels of the paneling.
She watched him with growing interest as he regarded the pictures more and more closely. They were all landscapes. One was of sloping parkland billowing with trees, another of a churchyard with soaring skies behind it, a third of a headland with a pale beach and open sea.
She waited for him to speak.
“If they are originals, not copies, then there’s a very great deal of money here,” he said at last. “Not to mention some excellent taste in art. If he sold this lot, he’d have enough to buy a new house. I wonder if there are more in the other rooms.”
“Are you sure?” she asked with surprise and a new eagerness. She moved forward to take a better look herself.
“If they’re not copies, yes,” he answered, standing in front of one of them. He stared at it for so long she grew impatient.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is it real or not?”
“I don’t know,” he answered thoughtfully. “It took me a moment or two to realize what’s wrong with it. It’s the proportion. The bottom three quarters of an inch or so has been cut off by the frame.
“So?” she said, puzzled as to why he was bothering with so minute an issue. “Maybe they are only copies, and not as good as you thought. I never understood why, if a thing is beautiful-and I think that is-it should matter so much who painted it.”
Monk shook his head. “I don’t understand why, if he is clever enough to paint something so lovely, he would cut it short like this. But more to the point, why he didn’t sign it.”
Then she understood. “You mean he did, and the framer has deliberately excluded it?”
He turned to her and smiled. “Exactly. Maybe Taft wanted the pleasure of looking at it, even showing it off a bit, without letting anyone know exactly how valuable it is. He probably told people it was a good copy, to explain his having it. No signature, so it’s not pretending to be real.”
“Couldn’t that be the actual explanation, though?”
“Of course it could. But I’ll wager it isn’t!” He stepped back. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
They separated, to save time. It was a large house and to search thoroughly enough to see anything the police had missed they would have to look very closely. Monk went upstairs, leaving the downstairs for Hester.
She started in the kitchen, not expecting it to be different from the one in the house where she had grown up. She found it was well appointed. The pots and pans were copper and had been carefully polished.
She searched the kitchen, scullery, pantry, and the larder cupboards and found nothing. All the food had been removed; only the various pieces of equipment remained. It was interesting only in that everything was of such high quality. The laundry was the same.
Next she moved to the dining room and again found excellent silverware and porcelain, crystal glasses, fine linen, most of it embroidered. She wondered what would happen to it, with no one left in the family. Had there been siblings who would inherit? It seemed no one was in a hurry to move all these beautiful things. Had grief frozen everyone? Or were there inheritances to debate and perhaps argue over?
The withdrawing room also was filled with beautiful carpets and furniture as well as ornaments, which Hester was not experienced enough to place a value on, though she suspected that some, at least, were collectors’ items and could be sold for very good sums.
She studied the pictures at greater length. One in particular was quite breathtaking: a wild seascape, with the waves so well depicted she felt as if she could have put out her finger to touch it, and it would come away wet. She imagined doing it and could almost taste the salt. She hoped that when it came to be sold-or inherited, if there were anyone to claim it-that it would end up in the hands of someone who loved it.
Had it been loved here? Or was it simply an investment? She had met Mrs. Taft, and yet she struggled to recall anything of her beyond the smooth face and fashionable clothes. What kind of a woman had she been? Had she loved her husband, or was it a marriage of suitability? They had daughters of sixteen or seventeen, so presumably they had been married close to twenty years. How much had they changed in that time? Had their feelings deepened, or faded?
She thought about herself and Monk. When they had first met they had irritated each other enormously. She had thought him cold and arrogant. He had thought her abrasive, unfeminine, and far too opinionated. They had both been right, to a degree. They had certainly brought out the least attractive qualities in each other. With a smile she remembered how angry he had made her back then. Was that because she had realized, deep down, he was a match for her, and the thought had frightened her?
Why was she questioning that now? Of course she had been afraid; she had known that he could hurt her, that it was all too likely she would care for him far more than he could possibly care for her.
Was that why he had been so sharp with her in return? Fear as well? She smiled even more. She knew the answer to that also. He was so very much more vulnerable than he was willing to admit. She could not have loved him were he not.
Did she love him more now than then? Yes, of course. Shared time and experiences, and the way he responded to them, had deepened everything: not only love but understanding, her own patience, the things they found beautiful or funny or sad. She was a far wiser, gentler woman because of him. He had gone from bringing out the worst in her to magnifying the best-and she would like to think she had done the same for him. Is that not what love is-an enlargement of the best and a healing over of the worst?
Had Felicia Taft loved her husband? If so, was she then completely unaware of his abuse of the parishioners who trusted him? Surely the realization of that would have wounded her almost beyond bearing.
She was still in the withdrawing room looking at the bookcase when she heard Monk’s footsteps in the hall and his voice, sharp and excited, calling out to her.
She closed the glass-paned door of the bookcase and went out immediately.
“I’ve found something!” he said urgently. “One of the bedrooms upstairs has been turned into a study, and I’ve found a safe behind a large painting. Come and see.” Without waiting for her acknowledgment he turned and led the way, going up the wide, curved stairs two at a time.
