Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)

greatest gaps in British art. Holbein was active at the time of the marriage between Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. We know that he designed a table fountain as a New Year’s Day gift for the King in 1534, and even, probably, a cradle for the infant Elizabeth I. The theory is that if there was such a portrait it was destroyed or hidden after her execution and Boleyn’s name became Bullen or even Butler . . .’
    ‘And why would they do that?’ asked Cicely.
    ‘Fear. Anne Boleyn was once the most powerful woman in England. She gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth, but she could not give the king a son. What I think is interesting is how little she realised the danger she was in. After she gave birth to a girl she thought that she would become pregnant again; and in January 1536 she was. Then, on the twentieth of January she miscarried. In the next few months her enemies rallied, and despite the fact that she had just lost a child, she was accused of multiple infidelity with half a dozen men including her own brother.’
    ‘Seems a bit rum,’ Lord Teversham interrupted.
    ‘Half a dozen men, and she had just lost a baby. She was put on trial and condemned to death but as she took the last sacrament she swore upon her soul that had never been unfaithful to her husband. On the nineteenth of May she was beheaded. In less than four months her reputation was ruined. In January she had been the Queen of England. In May she was dead. It is one of the fastest downfalls in English history. Eleven days after her death the king married Jane Seymour. Anne Boleyn’s memory was forgotten. Paintings were taken down as quickly as possible, dispersed, disguised and misattributed.’
    ‘Like mine . . .’ Lord Teversham cut in.
    ‘We must get it back,’ Cicely Teversham exclaimed. ‘For the sake of the estate and in the interests of the collection.’
    ‘No,’ Amanda cut in. ‘We must get it back for the nation.’
     
    After lunch, Amanda returned to London and took the painting back to the National Gallery. There it was examined, photographed and subjected to a series of chemical tests. While she was waiting for the results, Amanda studied the inventory of Mr John Lampton, ‘Stewarde of Howseholde to John Lord Lumley’, that had been made in 1590. Above an entry for one of the National Gallery’s own paintings, ‘The Statuary of the Duches of Myllayne, afterwards Duches of Lorreyn, daughter to Christierne King of Denmark, doone by Haunce Holbyn’, she had found the following: ‘The Statuary of Quene Anne Bulleyne’.
    It was a full-length contemporary portrait. There had been no record of where it had gone after the sale of 1785. Amanda’s suspicions had been justified.
    Lord Teversham had rooted out the address of the picture restorer and, at the beginning of August, shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday, Amanda let Sidney accompany her on a visit to seek him out in the small country town of Saffron Walden.
    She drove the cream MG TD which her parents had bought her as a birthday gift, and she wore a scarf and dark glasses against the low autumn sunlight that Sidney thought made her look like Gene Tierney in Leave her to Heaven . As they travelled through the lanes of Cambridgeshire, Sidney told her how much he had enjoyed introducing her to Lord Teversham and how proud he was to know her. ‘I cannot understand how you recognised that painting so quickly,’ he marvelled.
    ‘I do like to think that I am good at my job, Sidney.’
    ‘I have never doubted it.’
    ‘Some do. They think I am merely posh.’
    ‘You are far more than that, Amanda. But do you think we can get the painting back?’
    ‘If the restorer knew what he was doing then he will probably have sold it on. But this is our only lead. I have asked Lord Teversham to check the provenance. It would help if we knew how the family acquired the painting in the first place.’
    Sidney tried to catch Amanda’s eye but she was concentrating on the road ahead. ‘You should have asked Ben,’ he said.
    Amanda smiled and gave him a glance back. ‘I’m not sure about him at all. He’s very protective of his position in the house, whatever that might be.’
    ‘First impressions can be misleading,’ Sidney replied, ‘but perhaps not in this case. He does seem rather effete. Would you like me to look at the map?’
    ‘We’re just turning into Chaters Hill. Number one hundred and sixty nine appears to be some kind of souvenir