“Have a minute, Vanny?” Ravi asks cheerfully. “I’ve brought you something.”
Mrs. Vanders glances at the freaky Monet Ravi’s carrying and comes over with a look of pure disgust. “Oh, honestly, Ravi,” she says. “Please tell me you’re not going to ask me to help you find a buyer for that.”
“Please, Vanny?” Ravi says.
“You try my patience. You and your mother!”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Ravi. “But you know all the specialized collectors.”
“I’ll think about it,” says Mrs. Vanders, then adds significantly, “As we stand here in front of the Vermeer.”
“Yes,” Ravi says, resting his eyes placidly upon the Vermeer. Jane watches Mrs. Vanders watching Ravi.
“It’s always been my favorite,” says Ravi.
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders, “it’s incandescent, isn’t it?” then says no more.
Jane looks from Mrs. Vanders to Ravi, still waiting for Mrs. Vanders to ask Ravi if anything seems strange to him about the Vermeer.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Mind your own business, girl,” says Mrs. Vanders sharply. “I do things in my own time.”
Something inside Jane snaps. “So you don’t actually care if something’s wrong with the Vermeer?” she says. “Was it just a convenient topic of conversation to keep you from having to answer my questions about Aunt Magnolia?”
“Something wrong?” Ravi says. “What are you talking about?”
“She thinks the lady looks peaky,” Jane says, then adds belligerently, when Mrs. Vanders directs a look of fury upon her, “She used the word forged.”
Ravi freezes. He squeaks out, “Forged?”
“I didn’t want to trouble you, Ravi,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Particularly just before a gala. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Ravi reaches out and lifts the frame from the wall. “Screwdriver,” he says with what sounds like controlled panic.
“Ravi, I think it’s apparent I don’t carry a screwdriver on my person.”
“I do,” says Jane, reaching into her pocket for the small folding knife she keeps next to her phone. It has a tiny screwdriver extension that she snaps into place, then hands to Ravi.
A moment later, Ravi is crouching on the floor, ever-so-carefully taking the frame apart. With an intense focus, he separates the canvas from the frame, then holds it up against the light. Then he reaches his fingertip toward the face of the writing lady, almost, but not quite, touching her eye.
Mutely, he sets the canvas on the floor, then hides his face in his hands.
“So, I was right,” says Mrs. Vanders, sounding defeated.
“Where’s Lucy?” is Ravi’s muffled response.
“We’ll get her immediately,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Jane, do you think you could find her?”
“Happy to,” she says, but before she can move, Lucy herself appears in the corridor, walking toward them.
Lucy picks up her pace, looking puzzled, when she sees Ravi kneeling on the floor. “Ravi?” she says. “Why do you have that picture out of its frame?”
“It’s a fake,” says Ravi, gripping his white-streaked hair.
“What?” Lucy exclaims. “How can that be?”
A tear runs down Ravi’s face, then another. It’s so odd to Jane, that she should be standing here while someone as rich as Ravi kneels on the floor and cries about the theft of a painting of unimaginable value.
“It’s a perfect fake,” Ravi goes on. “Perfect except that it’s missing the pinprick in the lady’s eye. The pinprick is family knowledge. We’ve never told anyone.”
“What?” Lucy takes the canvas into her hands. “Give me this thing. What on earth are you talking about?”
“The lady’s eye is the vanishing point of the picture,” says Ravi. “Vermeer stuck a pin in the canvas. He attached a string to work out the perspective. That’s why the scene is so well-balanced. Mrs. Vanders discovered the hole, years ago.”
Lucy stares, incredulously, at Ravi. “You had knowledge of the way Jan Vermeer worked?” she says. “And you’ve never shared it with the art establishment? When we know so little about how Vermeer worked!”
“Someone has our Vermeer, Lucy!” cries Ravi in an explosion of passion. “I don’t care if he painted it with a brush stuck up his ass!”
“This is unbelievable,” Lucy says, holding the painting close. “It’s a remarkable forgery.”
“Even the cracks in the paint look right,” says Mrs. Vanders grimly. “At a quick glance, anyway.”
“And the edges,” Ravi says, reaching up for it, taking it back from Lucy. “The edges are a match. Someone took it out of its frame and photographed them.”
“It’s bad this has happened now, the day before a gala,” Lucy says. “The gala preparations only widen the spectrum of suspects.”
“Well, it’s not anyone in the Thrash family,” Ravi says. “Or the Yellan family, or the Vanders family. We all know about the pinprick.”
“Except that an argument could be made that you’d leave the pinprick out,” Lucy says. “If the forgery had the pinprick, but was discovered, in some other way, to be a forgery, we’d know the forger was a Thrash, Vanders, or Yellan.”
“Well, I know it wasn’t,” Ravi says stubbornly.
“Yes, all right, Ravi,” says Lucy, with a sudden flash of impatience. “I’ll be sure to include your sophisticated analysis in my investigation. Honestly, I still can’t believe it. You’re absolutely certain this is a forgery?”
Ravi answers her with a wet sniffle, then picks the folding knife up and returns it to Jane. “Where’s Kiran?” he says. “Have any of you seen her?”
“She’s in the winter garden,” Lucy says, “playing cards with Phoebe and Colin.”
Leaving the forgery and its frame strewn on the floor and his freaky Monet propped against the wall, Ravi stands. “I have to tell her,” he says, gliding toward the service staircase. The door swings shut behind him.
After a moment’s silence, Jane says, “Wow.”
Lucy’s eyes narrow on Mrs. Vanders, then on Jane, sharp and dark. In that moment, Jane can imagine Lucy sitting down with drug dealers and duping them into handing over a priceless masterpiece.
She knows it’s Lucy’s job, but really, it’s too absurd, that Lucy could imagine she has anything to do with it.
Still, Jane gets it, because her view on every other person in the house has also changed. Until she can work her mind through every possibility, she’s not going to trust anyone either.
Since that includes Mrs. Vanders and Lucy, Jane says, “Good-bye, then,” and goes to her rooms.
*
Jasper is waiting outside her door. When she lets him in, he burrows under the bed. Soon his soft snores emerge, which is cozy, and helpful somehow, like fuel.
Outside the morning room windows, she sees Mr. Vanders digging in the gardens in the same area the little girl was digging yesterday. He works with a trowel in a slow and graceful manner, as if the act of digging is the point, rather than achieving holes. He stops for a moment to sneeze. Jane wants to lean out and yell at him that nothing’s ever going to grow out there if everyone keeps hacking at it.
She turns back to the room of umbrellas, not really looking at them, her thoughts circling the forged Vermeer. On the one hand, it’s a relief that a house mystery is coming into the light, for everyone to know and to talk about. On the other hand, the more she learns, the less things make sense. And she really doesn’t want all of this to lead to the revelation that Ivy’s mixed up in art theft somehow.
Though if Ivy, or anyone, is mixed up in art theft, Jane supposes it’s better to know.
Dammit.
She snatches up a sketchbook, flips past umbrella sketches to a blank page, and begins a list, starting with the most blatantly suspicious.
Patrick Yellan
Philip Okada
Phoebe Okada
— Philip sneaking around with a gun. All three of them talking about the Panzavecchias? Philip seen in a back room in the attics, now gone someplace mysterious, lying about being a germophobe. Phoebe lying about Philip. Patrick “has something to confess” to Kiran but never actually confesses. Broods. Has easy access to boats. Was out late with Ravi.
Gritting her teeth, Jane adds the next name.