Maestra by L. S. Hilton Read Free Book Online Page B

membership. I was curious to see which of his works we’d got.
    ‘You’ll want to read this thoroughly,’ put in Oliver. ‘I’ve been working on it for quite some time.’
    I flicked swiftly through the pages, but when I came to the main illustration I suddenly felt cold. I had seen this picture before, and there was no way it belonged in a catalogue.
    ‘Rupert, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t understand. This is the picture I saw in January, the one at the place near Warminster?’
    ‘Don’t worry, your assessment was fine. I went back to have a look at it myself. Couldn’t have expected the intern to pick up a Stubbs!’
    I hadn’t picked it up, because it wasn’t a Stubbs. And I wasn’t an intern anymore, as Rupert knew perfectly well. I’d worked hard to be able to make that kind of judgement. I tried again.
    ‘You didn’t say –’
    Rupert cut me off with an awkward laugh.
    ‘Wanted it to be a surprise. Now –’
    I interrupted. ‘But I was certain. I took photos.’
    ‘The picture was cleaned, Judith, after I brought it in. The details you correctly identified were later overpaintings. Is there a problem?’
    I knew better than to challenge him again. ‘No, of course not.’ I forced myself to look enthusiastic. ‘How thrilling!’
    A two-week view was planned for September, to precede the sale. Rupert thought the picture sufficiently important for a stand-alone auction. Oliver thought it should be integrated into an assembled sale. Laura talked about which collectors to alert. Frankie took notes. I was too shocked even to amuse myself with what thoughts might be tumbling through the vast and empty expanses of Angelica’s brain. I managed to ask a few diligent questions at the end as to arrangements for the private view, so I could memo the events girls, and then casually asked if they were hilling in the warehouse that afternoon.
    ‘I thought I could take Angelica down to have a look,’ I suggested in a friendly voice.
    Hilling, as I explained to Angelica as we made our way through the dusty confusion of passages that was the basement, was the house slang for unloading works, so called because they had to be wheeled up a slatted ramp into the warehouses. It was an opportunity for the juniors to see the pieces up close as they were unpacked in the viewing room before the experts came down. It was really extraordinary, I explained, to see masterpieces displayed on an everyday wooden bench instead of the sanctity of a gallery. Angelica was engrossed in her phone.
    ‘Yah,’ she managed, raking a hand through the blonde mass, ‘I saw loads in the Uffizi. Like, uh, Branzini?’
    ‘I think maybe you mean Bronzino?’
    ‘Yah. Him.’
    As I’d hoped, Dave was there. He and a colleague were hilling ten Pompeo Batonis for the upcoming ‘Grand Tour’ sale.
    ‘Looking good, Judith, looking good. You got a new fella?’
    ‘You know you’re my only boyfriend, Dave,’ I flirted back. I’d ordered a whole bagful of true crime from Amazon and bashed the paperbacks around a bit. As I introduced Angelica I handed them over and said I’d found them as a job lot in the Marylebone Oxfam.
    ‘What’s on today?’ I asked, for Angelica’s benefit, as what passed for her concentration was still focused on her phone.
    ‘Batoni in Rome.’
    ‘Italy!’ I squawked. ‘Perfect, Angelica! Why don’t you help with the measuring?’ I made a smoking motion to Dave and he limped out into the butt-filled basement area with me for a fag.
    Quickly, I filled Dave in on my trip to Warminster. Rupert said he’d had a call from a pal who had an antiques place in Salisbury, who had seen the picture at a dinner party and thought it might be the real thing. I’d only been sent originally because Rupert had been off shooting. The owner of the house, an ex-Guardsman who introduced himself without irony as Tiger, explained that his family had been there for about a century; he thought the picture had been