Naughty In Nice (A Royal Spyness Mystery)

Especially since I’ve now inherited the whole bally lot.” He picked up a bag he’d left in the foyer. “I don’t know why you suspect me of anything,” he said, looking back over his shoulder as he made his way down the hall. “I’m a perfectly nice chap, actually.”

 
    Chapter 31
     
    January 28, 1933
     
    We made our way back up the drive again, leaving Lafite with the Gropers.
    “So that painting really was a forgery?” Vera asked. “You didn’t just say that?”
    “No. I’ve actually had quite a lot of experience with art forgery,” Germain said, “and one can still smell the odor of fresh paint on that one. Maybe I am wrong. Only a true expert could tell if the brushwork was not that of Van Gogh, but I am not usually wrong.”
    “Then we must find the girl who posed as me,” I said.
    “I agree,” Germain said. “But do we have any other suspects in this case?”
    “Georgie suggests his mistress, who left in a bit of a two and eight,” Granddad said.
    “A what?” the others said in unison.
    “Sorry.” Granddad chuckled. “A two and eight—that’s rhyming slang for ‘a state.’ She left in a bit of a state.”
    “And this mistress might be found where?”
    “I’ve no idea,” I said. “Her name is Olga and she was a dancer.”
    “Easy enough to locate, then. And who else?”
    “His wife and son both had reasons for wanting him out of the way,” I said, “and his son just lied about arriving on this morning’s train. He’s been here a few days.”
    “Interesting.” Germain nodded. “So we have enough to keep us busy.”
    “Apart from his family, who do not seem to be mourning his death,” I said, “everything one heard about Sir Toby suggested that he was a man who was ruthless, who didn’t play by the rules and who made enemies.”
    Granddad nodded. “I remember his name now. I was wondering where I’d come across it before and it’s just come to me. It was that big trial.”
    “He was involved in criminal activity?” Germain asked.
    Granddad shook his head. “No. It was a civil suit. Made all the headlines.”
    “What was it about?”
    “If I remember right it was a motorcar engine,” Granddad said. “Some bloke took Sir Toby to court, claiming that they had designed a motorcar engine together and then Sir Toby had claimed the whole thing as his own and cut the other bloke out. Sir Toby hired a top-notch barrister who proved that the other bloke had been driven off his rocker by being in the trenches and had delusions. Might have been true, of course. The war did strange things to a lot of blokes. Anyway, this bloke lost the case and hanged himself.”
    “Do you remember what his name was?” I asked.
    Granddad sucked through his teeth as he did when he was thinking. “Some German type of name. That’s why there was little sympathy for him, even though he’d been in the trenches like all the other poor blokes. Sherman? That’s what it was. Johann Sherman. He was a Jew, I believe, who’d left Germany as a young man.”
    “Then that’s it. The man who was threatening Sir Toby. I think his name was Schumann,” I said. “That’s close enough, isn’t it?”
    “Which man was this?” Germain asked sharply.
    I told them about what I had overheard and how Johnson had said it was some kind of business deal gone wrong.
    “Again he should be easy enough to locate—businessman or crook, perhaps. I will have a private word with the commissioner down here and maybe put some of my men from the Sûreté on to tracking this Schumann.”
    “Hang on a minute,” Granddad said, making us all pause in our tracks. “When that necklace was stolen—you said the flashbulbs went off, right?”
    I nodded.
    “Before or after you fell?”
    “Both, I think.”
    “If someone took a picture of you being helped up, then it’s possible that one of the cameras caught the robbery.”
    “Excellent,” Germain said. “Why don’t you and Lady Georgiana make a tour of the newspapers and press services here, while I confer with my colleagues and decide how best to intervene here without it looking like intervention.”
    “I’m anxious to find the girl who impersonated me,” I said. “Don’t you think that should come first?”
    “I will take your charming grandfather,” Coco said. “It will help to have a person like me who is used to dealing with these photographers. I know many of them and I am known to them all.”
    “Bob’s yer uncle,” Granddad