I have, indeed, gotten it done. H/T to
for yet another excellent assortment of prompts!The painting showed a marshy landscape, filled with islands of reeds and brackish water. The greying sails of small boats were barely visible against the horizon, and low-hanging clouds rolled slowly inland.
Miss Grey turned the photograph over, noted the date, and turned her attention to the next photograph. This showed the painter’s signature in close-up, as well as a characteristically meticulous stunted tree from the left-hand corner of the painting. A small brown bird perched on one of the branches, its beak half-open.
“Remarkable,” she murmured.
The sound of clacking typewriters in the office dropped off, then ceased altogether. Miss Grey looked up to see a tall, sweating, bothered man in the doorway. He blinked at her, furiously, but she merely smiled back. She did not move from her seat.
After twenty seconds too long, the man glanced at the three other occupied chairs in the waiting area. Finding their inhabitants disinterested, he made a dart across the room to Miss Grey’s chair.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed. “I told you to wait outside. You can’t be in here, someone will see.”
“Oh, is that bad?” Miss Grey said ingenuously.
“My reputation,” he said, as if in pain. “For God’s sake. Get in there.”
She got up and followed him into the inner office, where he shut the door on them quickly.
“I’ve half a mind to dismiss you out of hand,” he said.
“Can your reputation not stand my presence?”
“Your profession, Miss – er. Miss –”
“My profession? You did hire me, my lord; I did not invite myself. If you want to steal –”
He winced. “Re-possess.”
“Repossess a painting, you must have a thief. If you don’t care for my profession, very well. If that’s how you really feel about it –”
“Oh, all right.” He sat down heavily behind his desk. “Just ensure it never happens again.”
Miss Grey pressed her lips together and said nothing.
“Have you studied the photographs?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He began to get up again.
“On one condition. I want half my fee as a down payment.”
“Half? Ridiculous. I’ll pay you in full, when it’s hanging on my wall.”
“My lord, with respect, it’s traditional to reward my kind in advance for the risk we undertake.”
He laughed. “Traditional? And how far does that go back? Twenty years? Or can’t you remember anything before that?”
Miss Grey, again, said nothing.
“Fine.” The man scrabbled in a drawer, took out a cheque book, and signed. He tossed the piece of paper across the table. “Is that good enough for you?”
Miss Grey scrutinised the cheque.
“It suffices.”
“Suffices, my foot. Impertinence.”
She put the cheque in her pocket with a faint smile. “Well, my lord, not everyone would be willing to help you steal from your own brother, so you must take what you can get.”
The man flushed a dark red.
“That’s quite enough,” he said. “Get out. Don’t let me see you again until you have it.”
Miss Grey left without closing the door behind her.
Some three weeks later, Miss Grey stood in her front room supervising the hanging of a peculiarly lovely painting of boats in a marshy inlet.
“A bit further to the left,” she said, and her cousin, sighing, shifted the painting. She considered its new position.
“Perfect.”
Once the painting was hung above the fireplace, she and her cousin stood side by side, admiring the view.
“Very nice,” he said, approvingly. “De Kirne, probably, even. Where did you get it?”
“Oh, some baron or other. His brother got it after their father died, but he wanted it for himself.”
“Won’t he come after you?”
“He couldn’t even remember my name. Not that I gave him my real one, of course, but all the same it’s the principle of the thing.”
“I’d have taken it myself, if I saw it. Look at that bird.”
“I might have gone through with it,” Miss Grey admitted. “I would have. He was horrid, but it was good money all the same.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
“He told me,” Miss Grey said, “to get out. I suppose he thought I wasn’t good enough to sit in his office.”
“And you!” He put a hand to his mouth “You, who’ve eaten with kings and queens!”
“Stolen from them.” Miss Grey sighed. “But, yes. Although I was invited to dinner with the Queen of Arba once, you know.”
“Did you steal anything?”
“No,” Miss Grey said regretfully. “I’ll tell you what, though, the Queen stole my jacket. She thought it was hers, and I never got it back.”
They both sighed, and looked at the painting. The afternoon light cast a faint glow over it, and the gold frame shone.
“I wish I’d thought to steal something else from that baron,” Miss Grey said. “Oh, well. Too late now.”
“It’s a very nice painting,” her cousin said, then, hopefully, “If you ever find a nicer one, can I have this one?”
“Certainly not,” replied Miss Grey.