Page 63 of Next in Line

‘Probably Christina wanting her pictures back. Tell her to bugger off.’

‘That’s not the name on the application form,’ said the warder. ‘It’s someone called Miss Mai Ling Lee.’

‘I don’t know anyone by that name, so she can bugger off as well.’

‘It would get you out of your cell for an hour,’ Tulip said, ‘plus tea and biscuits …’

‘I’m hardly ever in my cell, in case you haven’t noticed, Tulip. And you’re eating my biscuits.’

‘She might be good-looking.’

‘She could also be old and ugly.’

‘She’s twenty-six,’ said the warder. ‘And as regulations demand, she’s supplied a photograph.’

After one look Tulip said, ‘I could take your place, boss.’

But Miles was already signing the form, though not for the reason Tulip had in mind.

•••

Christina asked Beth to join her in the Palm Court tea room at the Ritz, which was just about enough to tempt Beth to see her again.

‘It’s kind of you to come,’ said Christina after they’d ordered.

‘I was fascinated to find out what excuse you’d come up with this time,’ said Beth, not attempting to hide her anger.

‘I don’t have any excuse,’ replied Christina. ‘I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear you’d been sacked.’

‘I resigned,’ said Beth firmly as a pot of tea and a three-tier silver stand loaded with cakes, scones and wafer-thin sandwiches was placed in front of them.

‘That’s not what the director told me when I visited the museum last week.’

‘Why would you want to see Sloane?’

‘To tell him why I will be cancelling my annual donation of ten thousand pounds. He grovelled of course, but I also insisted my name be removed from the patrons’ list. I didn’t leave him in any doubt that you were the only reason I supported the Fitzmolean in the first place.’

Beth found herself beginning to thaw, but couldn’t help wondering if Christina had even seen the director.

‘I also told him,’ she continued while pouring Beth a cup of tea, ‘that I would double my annual donation if he offered you your job back.’

‘I don’t want my job back. Well, not as long as Sloane’s the director.’

‘But you have to earn a living, Beth. And I know you’re not the begging type.’

‘I’ve had a bit of a triumph on that front,’ said Beth, desperate to tell someone. ‘I picked up a sketch at a sale in Pittsburgh for four hundred and twenty dollars. Christie’s Old Masters expert has authenticated it as a Rembrandt, and valued it at twenty to thirty thousand pounds. So I could make more in one day as a dealer than I did in a year as Keeper of Pictures at the Fitzmolean. And that’s only for starters,’ she added, after selecting a smoked salmon sandwich from a lower tier.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Christina.

‘Although that kind of opportunity doesn’t arise too often, with so many small auction houses all over the world, important works are occasionally overlooked. For example, a painting by an artist who’s well-known in one country may sell well below its market value in another. Have you ever heard of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon?’

‘Can’t say I have.’

‘He was a nineteenth-century English watercolourist, and one of his landscapes is coming up for sale in Frankfurt next week with an estimate of twenty-five thousand marks. I know several galleries in London that would pay double that, without a second thought.’

‘So you’d double your money?’

‘No, it’s never that straightforward. After deducting the auction house’s commission of around twenty per cent, and the gallery’s profit margin, I’d be lucky to end up with twenty-five or thirty per cent, and that’s assuming no one else has spotted the picture, which would probably put it out of my price range.’ Beth’s gaze settled on a tiny chocolate éclair, but she resisted the temptation.