Chapter 1
Gabriel
At eight eleven on a Tuesday morning, a woman who’d been dead for more thantwo hundred years returned to my family.
She chose the middle of a board meeting to do it.
I was listening to Charles Whitmore explain why dismissing two hundred andfourteen people wasn’t technically the same as making two hundred and fourteenpeople unemployed when my phone vibrated against the table.
Once.
Then again.
Emily knew better than to interrupt me during a board meeting unless thebuilding was on fire, someone had died or my mother had decided to telephonethe office.
The third possibility was generally the most urgent.
I ignored the phone.
Across the table, Charles continued.
“The redundancies would be regrettable, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
His fingers stilled on the edge of the report.
Twelve people sat around the table, but no one had spoken since I’d put downmy pen. Rain struck the windows behind me, turning the London skyline into ablur of steel and pale grey.
Charles adjusted the papers in front of him.
“The Hartwell division has underperformed for three consecutive quarters.Consolidating its operations would save the group nine million poundsannually.”
“And the people?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The two hundred and fourteen people.”
His expression tightened by a fraction.
“They’re accounted for in the restructuring proposal.”
“No. Their salaries are accounted for. I asked about the people.”
Someone farther down the table lowered their eyes.
Charles didn’t.
That was one of the reasons he remained useful.
“The consultation process would begin immediately,” he said. “There would beseverance packages, support with retraining and—”
“After we dismiss them.”
“After their positions are made redundant.”
Charles preferred language that removed the person from the consequence.
Positions disappeared. Costs were reduced. Operations were consolidated.
No one was ever sent home to tell a husband or wife that the mortgage hadbecome a problem.
“Nine million,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And the executive performance pool proposed for this year?”
The chief financial officer stopped turning a page.
Charles glanced towards him before answering.
“Just under six.”
“Remove it.”
The silence changed.
It was no longer passive.
“Gabriel,” one of the non-executive directors began, “the performance poolforms part of several contractual compensation packages.”
“Then Legal can determine which parts are contractual and which are merelycustomary.”
The general counsel gave me a slow nod.
“And the remaining three million?” Charles asked.
“Sell the Kensington property.”
Several people looked as though I’d suggested dismantling Buckingham Palacebrick by brick.
The property had stood empty for eighteen months. It had also been describedin three separate reports as strategically important, which was usuallycorporate language for expensive and unnecessary.
Charles closed the folder in front of him.
“That would resolve the immediate shortfall.”
“But?”
“It wouldn’t address Hartwell’s underlying performance.”
“No. It would give the people running Hartwell twelve months to address itwithout asking two hundred and fourteen employees to pay for our failurefirst.”
I picked up my pen.
“Bring me a recovery plan by Friday.”
Charles inclined his head.
“Understood.”
My phone vibrated again.
Four times was no longer an interruption.
It was an insurrection.
I glanced at the screen.
EMILY: I need to come in.
The door opened before I could respond.
Every face turned towards her.
Emily paused just inside the boardroom, a tablet held against her chest. Shewore navy, as she did whenever she expected trouble, and her dark hair waspinned into a knot that had begun the morning more precisely than it nowappeared.
“Apologies,” she said to the room.
Then she looked at me.
She didn’t look apologetic.
“We need five minutes.”
Charles checked his watch.
I ignored him.
“Is the building on fire?”
“No.”
“Has someone died?”
“Not recently.”
A flicker of amusement moved around the table.
“It’s the Victoria and Albert Museum,” she said.
That earned my attention.
“What about it?”
“They contacted your private office twenty minutes ago. They’ve sentphotographs.”
“Of what?”
She glanced at the other people in the room.
“I think you’ll want to see them before I answer that.”
Charles cleared his throat.
“We still have the acquisition vote scheduled.”
“It can wait.”
“It’s time-sensitive.”
“So, apparently, is this.”
I rose.
“Continue without me. Don’t vote until I return.”
I followed Emily through the glass doors and into the corridor. She waiteduntil they’d closed behind us.
“What happened?”
“A curator at the museum was examining an eighteenth-century portrait thatarrived yesterday from a private estate.”
“Whose estate?”
“They haven’t said.”
“And this concerns me because?”
Emily unlocked the tablet but didn’t hand it over.
“The painting may have belonged to your family.”
“The Ashcombes have owned hundreds of paintings.”
“Not this one.”
She turned the screen towards me.
For several seconds, I said nothing.
A woman stood beside a narrow writing table, dressed in deep green silk. Agehad darkened the colour, but the fabric still caught the painted light,luminous where it folded around her body.
One hand rested beside a sealed letter.
The other held a small spray of white flowers.
Her expression was composed, almost severe, yet something in her eyescontradicted the stillness of her face.
Recognition arrived before memory supplied the reason.
I’d seen her before.
Not the painting itself.
A photograph of it.
Black and white. Poorly exposed. Buried inside a leather-bound inventory myfather kept locked in the library at Ashcombe House.
I’d been thirteen when I found the key.
Sixteen when I understood why he’d never mentioned the missing collection.
“The Lady in Green,” I said.
Emily watched me carefully.
“So you recognise it.”
“It was destroyed during the war.”
“The museum disagrees.”
“It was stored with the rest of the Ashcombe Collection in 1941. Thewarehouse took a direct hit.”
“That’s what the insurance records say.”
I looked at her.
Emily swiped to the next photograph.
The reverse of the canvas filled the screen.
The wood was dark with age. Several labels had been removed, leaving pale,uneven scars. Near the lower edge of the stretcher, an inventory number hadbeen written in black ink.
AC-47.
Every surviving work in the Ashcombe Collection carried a variation of thatmark.
But it was the writing beneath it that held me still.
Three faded lines.
Not an official catalogue notation.
Not the hand of a registrar or conservator.
A private instruction.
Do not return her to Ashcombe House.
Below it was a date.
17 October 1946.
Five years after the painting had supposedly been destroyed.
“Who wrote that?” Emily asked.
I enlarged the image.
The final letter of House curved sharply beneath the word. The dateleaned slightly to the right. The writer had pressed too firmly on the firststroke of every capital.
I’d seen the same handwriting on old contracts, formal letters and birthdaycards preserved in the family archive.
“Edward Charles Ashcombe.”
“Your great-grandfather?”
“Yes.”
Emily looked back at the screen.
“Why would he hide one of his own paintings?”
“I don’t know.”
It was an unfamiliar answer.
I disliked it immediately.
Outside the windows, traffic moved along St James’s Street. Behind theboardroom doors, twelve people were deciding how long they could reasonablycontinue a meeting without me.
None of it seemed particularly important anymore.
Emily swiped back to the portrait.
“There’s something else.”
“Of course there is.”
“The curator who identified the inventory mark wants to speak with youbefore the museum informs its trustees.”
“Why?”
“She believes this may not be the only missing Ashcombe painting still inexistence.”
I looked again at the woman in green.
At the sealed letter beneath her hand.
At the white flowers held between her fingers.
“What’s the curator’s name?”
Emily checked the message.
“Philippa Mercer.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“What exactly did she find?”
Emily met my eyes.
“According to her email, Mr Ashcombe, that’s the question she’d like to ask you.”
