Charlotte Wynthorpe and the Case of the Disappearing Diamonds

5. Revisiting the Scene of the Crime

Two days later, Charlotte stepped out of a hackney cab and up the four steps to the black lacquered door of Anne and Rutland Frampton-Sacking's terraced house in Knightsbridge. 

It was a little past ten in the morning -- ungodly early to be making calls -- but she's just come from the hairdressers in Mayfair where she'd had her fashionable bob freshly shingled and her nails varnished a lovely crimson. She felt invincible, and on the spur of the moment she had shouted to the cabbie to drive her to Knightsbridge instead of home to Belgravia. 

No time like the present to get her investigation underway. Especially when she was feeling -- and looking -- like the bee's knees.   

Charlotte rang the bell and gave her card to the stoney-faced butler, who left her to wait in the guest parlour. The wreckage from the party had been cleared away by an expert hand, she noticed. Not a one champagne stain or smear of cigar ash had been overlooked. 

Where had she been sitting? Here on the couch? No, in that chair by the hearth for a while. And Carlton?  Or had this not been one of the rooms the party had been in?  Her lips curled forward in a thoughtful pout, and she rhythmically tapped one of her cheeks as she shook her memory, but it steadfastly refused to jiggle loose any apples it hadn't already let go of. 

Just as Charlotte was twigging on to the notion that the guest parlour had, indeed, been a part of the bash, a plump maid in a black and white uniform with a white bonnet appeared at the doorway. 

"Mrs Frampton-Sacking will see you now, ma'am. She's in her studio. Please follow me." 

Charlotte took in the walls and ceiling of the central corridor as they made their way to the back of the house. She was positive she had chased someone down this very stretch, but who had that been? She had the vague notion that they'd darted right, howling like pissed monkeys, and into one of the rooms whose doors were now closed and serious-looking in the light of day. 

The door to Anne's studio was only slightly ajar and as Charlotte opened it, the reek of oil paint, turpentine and spilt gin thumped her one as if she'd been struck across the face with a stinking, sopping wet rag. 

She reeled and blinked a few times before grabbing the door frame for support. The maid suppressed a malicious grin, and disappeared.

Anne's studio was a singular chaos of canvases, paint, brushes, clothes, books, glasses, booze and various props lying about in a frightful hash. Finished paintings crowded the walls. Empty bottles stood guard along the side of a broken-backed, stained green couch. The chipped torso of a Greek statue stared at the far wall with blank eyes. The sunlight pouring in through the spotty glass of the three large windows did its utmost to point at every fleck of muck and dirt it could find. 

The sight reminded Charlotte of an attic that hadn't been cleaned out in years.     

Anne herself was tigering around, glass of some clear liquid in hand, eyes fixed on a blank canvas propped up on an easel in the middle of the disarray.  Her trademark turban sat somewhat wonkily on her head and there were deep, grey bags under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept in decades.

But that could also have been the fault of the unforgiving sunlight. 

Charlotte followed Anne's eyes to the canvas, wondering what there was to see. The answer came almost immediately.

"I can't paint. The inspiration simply won't come," Anne said, her voice slurred just enough to add a note of whine to the tone. "I've been sitting here all bloody morning and haven't been able to place a single stroke."

"How dreadful. I am sorry to hear that," Charlotte said, looking about for a place to sit.

"You don't know the half of it. For an artist, when we can't work, it's simply excruciating. Excruciating! All this fire locked up inside and unable to come out." Anne took a pull from her glass. "Thank you for visiting, by the way. Why are you visiting? Did I invite you for lunch? Is it lunch time already and nobody told me?"