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it?’
    â€˜Of course he will. I know Oliver Venn and he’s not entirely unreasonable. You might put it to him that if he wants to keep the original so much he can get Christie’s down to value it and we’ll take the money instead.’
    I suggested that since she knew him, he might listen to her rather than me. A waste of breath, like my alternative proposal that we should ask our solicitor to get in touch with the executor.
    â€˜These things are better done the direct way. It might be best if you go down there tomorrow and take that with you.’
    A jerk of the chin towards the false Odalisque, back from Christie’s decently covered again in linen and brown paper and propped against the wall. I drew the line at that. The next day was Saturday. If I had to cancel my other plans for the weekend and travel back to the Cotswolds on a crowded train, I didn’t intend to do it with her sitting on my lap.
    *   *   *
    I was right about the crowds. Usually the trains in that direction shed most of their passengers at Oxford, with only farmers and weekend hikers going on to the Cotswolds, but this one went on its way more than half full and the talk that came to me in snatches, over the noise of the train toiling up the gradient, wasn’t about sheep or footpaths.
    â€˜The problem with you syndicalists is you assume that revolution is going to come automatically…’
    â€˜The eight-hour day isn’t the be-all and end-all, it’s only the start of it.’
    â€˜The future of the International Labour Party…’
    There was some singing too, drifting from the third-class carriages on the warm air in a blue haze of cheap cigarette smoke. The passengers were mostly working-class young men in cheap best suits, jackets unbuttoned over dark waistcoats, shirts open at the neck or flaunting bright red ties. There were a few young women too, quieter than the men and with the determined look of people who’ve been taking on the world at unreasonable odds from the time they first stood upright. The luggage nets bulged with faded haversacks, rolled tarpaulins and battered suitcases made of brown-painted cardboard. In spite of the political talk, there was a holiday atmosphere with people shouting out joking insults or pointing out of the windows at the view as if they’d never been in the countryside before, which some of them probably hadn’t. I’d obviously found the Scipians and they seemed to me cheerful company – more cheerful at any rate than the few hours ahead of me once we got to the halt for the Venns’ house.
    *   *   *
    We changed trains together at the junction and when we spilled out at the local halt the porter took one look at the Scipians and vanished, judging rightly that there were no shillings to spare among this lot. With a lot of laughter and loud enquiries to each other about the route, they got haversacks on to their backs, and with cases in hand and tarpaulins over their shoulders they moved in an irregular crocodile up the road between the harvest fields. There was a particularly jolly group of girls with London accents who were singing more tunefully than the rest. When one of them accidentally dropped her haversack a muffled chime came from it, delicate as a breeze in a chandelier.
    â€˜Three bobs’ worth of bells in there and she’s just chucking them around,’ one of the others said.
    They formed into an impromptu morris line and danced away up the road, packs bobbing on their backs, feet kicking up the dust. I picked up my bag, more glad than ever that I hadn’t brought the Odalisque back with me, and followed. Ahead of me, a man was bending to adjust his boot. I said good morning as I passed and he straightened up.
    â€˜Miss Bray, I didn’t know you’d joined the Scipians.’
    Tall thin frame, black hair and neat beard, profile like a benevolent hawk.
    â€˜Max Blume.