A good place to hide a painting was behind another painting. I took down the picture of the house, found a paperknife in the drawer, and cut the painting out of the frame.

I found nothing behind it but wood to hold the canvas in place. I searched every inch of wood, frame, and canvas, but concluded there was nothing else there. I laid the picture aside and started on the next one.

The room had five paintings, but each frame held only the picture that had originally graced it. The tops of all the frames were thick with dust, which told me they hadn't been disturbed in a long while and that Easton's maids were less than diligent. I doubted that a mote of dust would be allowed to linger in one of Lady Breckenridge's houses.

I set the paintings aside and started looking behind furniture. The furniture was better dusted, but even so, I found nothing.

After a thorough search of every visible place, I resorted to what Denis's men were doing. I started pulling up the carpets. Easton's study had three carpets-a large woolen one with an oriental design on it, on which the desk sat, and two smaller, much finer ones on either end of the long room. The smaller ones had come from the Near East, woven in a tent among hot desert sands.

None of the rugs concealed paintings or loose floorboards under which paintings could be hidden.

I finished in the study and returned to the hall. I took down a painting there, laid it facedown on a table, and carefully cut it out of the frame. One of the men tearing up the paneling dropped his tools and yanked down another painting-a shaky watercolor of the sea at Blakeney Point. Denis's man plunged a knife straight through the painting and ripped it from its frame.