Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  It had been early summer, Orlando recalled. There was a great marquee round two sides of the house, open to the water. Imogen and he had danced for most of the night. They dined on lobsters, washed down with pink champagne, and strawberries, sitting at the very edge of the marquee, their feet almost touching the green water of the moat. Orlando remembered that a drop or two of strawberry juice had fallen on to his sleeve. When it dried it looked like blood on his cuff.

  As the dawn came Orlando and Imogen were so passionately in love with each other that the other dancers moved away to make room for them. It was as if they were in the centre of an enchanted circle, a circle of love so bright that it dazzled their neighbours on the wooden floor. Orlando remembered it as a feeling of ekstasis, ecstasy, standing almost outside yourself to worship the grace and the beauty of the girl you held in your arms. He looked again at his quotation. Perhaps the flames of their love had been too bright. Perhaps the two of them had been consumed like the vanities in Savonarola’s bonfire.

  When the music stopped they had gone for a walk in the soft morning light. The birds had been up for hours to welcome another dawn. Dew glistened off the fields. He told Imogen he loved her under a great sycamore tree that had stood for hundreds of years. Maybe the tree had sheltered other lovers in the past.

  In the days that followed – why were his memories always of bright sunshine, Orlando wondered, had it never rained? – they would meet for walks across Hyde Park, past the gleaming horses on Rotten Row, past Prince Albert’s statue to look at a different circle, the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Once he had taken Imogen to Windsor and he had rowed her up the Thames in a boat. She had a broad-brimmed hat to keep the sun off and she leaned back on her cushions in the stern of the boat, her face in shadow, her hand trailing in the water, her eyes fixed on her boatman. As they went upriver the noise of the town died away. The mighty castle, grey and forbidding even in the sunlight, seemed to shrink in size. The only noise was the singing of the birds and the soft plops of Orlando’s oars.

  ‘“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”’ Orlando whispered.

  ‘“Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”’

  Imogen had laughed. ‘Two people can play Shakespeare sonnets, you know,’ she said, ‘the nuns were very keen on Shakespeare sonnets. Well, most of them.

  ‘“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

  Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”’

  They pulled the boat into the side of the river and tied it up under a pair of weeping willows, the water dark and cool in the shade. They set out for a short walk across the empty fields.

  Imogen had her arm wrapped round Orlando’s waist. She stopped suddenly and looked straight into his blue eyes. ‘We’re not doomed, are we, Orlando?’ she said. ‘We’re not going to the edge?’

  Imogen had met him off the train when he came back from Monte Carlo. She laughed that reckless laugh of hers when he told her about his failure, that there was no fortune to secure their future.

  ‘It’s fate,’ she said. Orlando often wondered if the fate of doomed love had some secret appeal for Imogen. ‘Fate is now calling me to a different future,’ she said, nestling closely to him as the crowds streamed down the platform. She took him for tea in the great hotel at the side of the station. There, amidst the potted palms and the trays of sandwiches and the distant music of the orchestra, she told him the terrible tidings.

  ‘In three weeks’ time, at St James’s Piccadilly, I am to be married. I do not love him. I will never love him. I will not bear his children. But my father insists.’ She paused while the waiter brought the tea. He smiled at them. The circle of love was still wrapped around the pair in spite of the terrible news.

  ‘I shall not give you up, Orlando,’ she said defiantly. ‘I shall never give you up. Whatever happens.’

  That was when he had started drinking again, Orlando remembered. When he was with Imogen he didn’t need to drink at all. It was intoxicating enough just to be with her. His new captors from the tables of Monte Carlo had installed him in a sad little flat near Victoria station until they worked out where to send him. Orlando didn’t remember much about that time. He remembered starting one marathon drinking session three days before the wedding was due to take place. He started with wine, then brandy, then armagnac. Armagnac could make you forget, he decided. He did remember falling asleep on the steps outside St James’s, Piccadilly the night before Imogen’s wedding, an armagnac bottle half full inside his coat. A policeman had escorted him away. Orlando thought he had been sick through the railings of Green Park as he staggered back to his sordid quarters. Two days later, his captors had come for him – he was still drunk – and taken him away.

  Ever since the start of his incarceration he had pleaded with his captors to let him write to Imogen. He could send a letter to her father’s house for forwarding to the new address. For weeks they had refused. And then, three days before, his chief captor, known to Orlando as the Sergeant Major, a great pirate of a man with an enormous brown beard, had brought him the news.

  ‘My masters,’ he always referred to them as ‘my masters’, ‘have agreed that you may write to the lady. They are pleased with you. And you may have drink this week-end. Only on Friday or Saturday, mind you. No more after that.’

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was in a train, returning to Oxford. The note that summoned him had been cryptic. It asked him to meet Chief Inspector Wilson at an address on the Banbury Road in that city at twelve noon. Nothing more. Powerscourt wondered if this was the same Wilson he had met in an earlier investigation, a death by fire at Blackwater House. He smiled as he remembered the young fire investigator Joseph Hardy who had played such a prominent role in rescuing Lady Lucy from a Brighton hotel near the end of the inquiry.

  Then he started thinking seriously about forgers. He hadn’t given the forger much consideration before. As his train pulled out of Didcot station, Powerscourt was joined by a very old lady, who refused all offers of assistance and eventually settled herself down in a corner of his compartment. The old lady took out a copy of An Outcast of the Islands and began to read, muttering to herself sometimes as if she was reading aloud. Conrad’s characters are a long way from Didcot, even from cosmopolitan Oxford, Powerscourt thought, returning to his forger. He realized suddenly, as he stared blankly at the passing countryside, that it would be easier, much easier, to find the needle in the proverbial haystack. Where was the forger? Was he in London? Was he somewhere in Europe, only coming to England to deposit his counterfeit goods? Was he attached to some great house with a history of paintings, increasing their holdings of Old Masters with forged art and forged terms of reference? Was he in the employ of one of the dealers, forging, as it were, to order? Was he forging purely for money, to become as rich as some of his subjects? Was he a frustrated contemporary artist, who turned to fakery as revenge on a hostile art market? Whoever he was, wherever he was, he realized as the train pulled into Oxford station, the man must have been trained somewhere. And that probably meant, if he were a home-grown forger, the Royal Academy. He would write to Sir Frederick immediately he returned to London.

  There were a couple of policemen on guard outside the house in the Banbury Road when he arrived. The building was of recent construction, a solid red-brick edifice with a decent garden at the back.

  ‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. Very kind of you to come. You haven’t changed a bit, my lord.’

  Chief Inspector Wilson was plumper now, the waist slightly larger, the hair considerably less. But his honest, worried face was still the same.

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how very good to see you again. You are well, I trust?’

  Wilson led Powerscou
rt into the ground floor of the building. ‘I am well, my lord, but all is not well here at 55 Banbury Road. A young man has been murdered. Name of Jenkins, Thomas Jenkins, former fellow of Emmanuel College. He was garrotted, my lord. The same method of killing as in the murder of that man Montague in London. I read about that in the papers. I got in touch with Inspector Maxwell down there and he told me you were investigating the Montague murder, my lord.’

  Powerscourt turned pale. Jenkins, who had been the closest friend of the late Christopher Montague, Jenkins who had walked him across Port Meadow for lunch at the Trout Inn, refusing to answer his questions.

  ‘Was he killed here, in this house?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘He was. Let me explain the layout here first of all, my lord.’ Chief Inspector Wilson advanced along the hallway. ‘This house belongs to the college. Three of its younger fellows live here. They take all their meals except breakfast at Emmanuel and do their teaching in rooms up there. This room here,’ Wilson opened a door to the left, ‘was Jenkins’ bedroom.’

  The room was of a good size, windows opening out on to the Banbury Road, quite tidy. Powerscourt supposed that somebody must come to clear up.

  ‘This little room here,’ Wilson went on, ‘was a simple kitchen where the gentlemen could make tea and toast for themselves.’ Two cleaned cups were standing on the draining board.

  ‘Does the college servant remember washing these cups up, Chief Inspector?’

  Powerscourt was back in Christopher Montague’s flat in Brompton Square with the clean wine glasses.

  ‘The servant, my lord, is emphatic that he did not wash up those cups. And he says that Mr Jenkins never washed up anything at all in his life. He just placed his dirty things in the kitchen.’

  Powerscourt was wondering about a tidy murderer, a murderer who took the trouble to clean up wine glasses or teacups even after he had killed somebody. Did he have something to hide?

  ‘This room here,’ Wilson opened another door on to a large room with an ornate ceiling, looking out over the gardens at the back, ‘was his living room and his study combined.’

  There was a large desk by the window, a wall full of bookshelves, a leather sofa and a couple of brown armchairs. Powerscourt noticed that the bookshelves, unlike those of Christopher Montague, were still full.

  ‘Thomas Jenkins was found by the desk here,’ the Chief Inspector went on, ‘sitting in his normal swivel chair. As I said, he’d been garrotted, my lord. There were great purple and black marks around his neck. The doctors think he must have been killed between four and seven o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Who found him? Was anything found in the room?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘A college servant found him, round about nine o’clock yesterday evening. He was worried that Mr Jenkins hadn’t been down to evening hall at the college. He thought he might have been ill, so he looked in. And there he was, stone cold.’

  Powerscourt walked over to the window and looked out into the garden. A couple of squirrels were climbing up a tree. A garden bench sat empty in a corner of the lawn. He pulled at the window frame. It shot up easily as if it were opened often.

  ‘Any evidence of how the murderer got into the house, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Do either of the other two remember letting him in at all? Could he have climbed in through this window?’

  ‘The other two gentlemen are not here at present, my lord,’ said Chief Inspector Wilson wearily. ‘They are out of Oxford altogether, one in London, one in Germany, looking at medieval manuscripts, they say.’

  ‘God help him,’ said Powerscourt, peering down at the grass underneath the window. There was no sign of any footprints but the rain could have washed them away.

  ‘It’s the garrotting that troubles me,’ said Wilson. ‘Never come across it before. Not in these parts anyway.’ Powerscourt told Wilson about the article Christopher Montague was writing on fake paintings, about the gaps in the bookshelves, about his friendship with Mrs Rosalind Buckley.

  ‘Did the servant say anything about the man’s papers, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. He opened the desk and pulled open all the drawers. As in Brompton Square, they were completely empty.

  ‘Was Jenkins in the habit of moving his papers up and down between here and the college?’ Powerscourt asked.

  ‘I asked the man about that,’ said Wilson. ‘He said that Mr Jenkins never moved his papers away from that desk. Not for as long as he’d been here. He might take a few bits and pieces up to the college but he always brought them back.’

  ‘There was a reason why someone might want to remove the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk. Lots of reasons, in fact. But why take Jenkins’ papers too? He was a historian, wasn’t he, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘He was, my lord. An expert in the Tudors, so his man said. Couple of Henrys and an Elizabeth if my memory serves me.’

  ‘I can’t see,’ said Powerscourt, staring into the garden, ‘how detailed knowledge of the religious questions at the time of the Reformation could make you a target for a murderer.’

  ‘Two murders, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe only one murderer. Do you think they are connected?’ Wilson went on, more confused than ever.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ replied Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they are connected, though for the moment I am damned if I know how. Could I make a suggestion, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Of course you can, my lord, your suggestions are always helpful.’

  ‘It would be most interesting to discover if this person had been in Oxford recently. It’s a lawyer who has vanished from his offices in London, a Horace Aloysius Buckley, of the firm Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, husband of Montague’s lover Mrs Rosalind Buckley. You might inquire about the wife as well, while you’re about it. I think she was a friend of Jenkins.’

  The Inspector was writing the name in a small brown notebook. Powerscourt had pulled the desk out from the wall and looked down the back. There was nothing there, only the dust of Oxford.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ Wilson was putting his notebook back in the breast pocket of his uniform. ‘I almost forgot. You asked if the college servant found anything in the room. He found this under the chair.’

  He picked up a tie that had been carefully placed on the bottom tier of Thomas Jenkins’ bookshelf. ‘According to the servant, this is not one of Thomas Jenkins’ ties,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘It looks as if the murderer may have left it here by mistake.’

  Powerscourt wondered briefly why a man would want to take off his tie before committing murder. Or after he’d done it. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘I know where that tie comes from,’ he said. ‘It’s not an Oxford tie at all. It comes from Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge, to be precise.’

  And where, he wondered, as the two squirrels performed some daring acrobatics in their North Oxford garden, had Horace Aloysius Buckley gone to university?

  13

  ‘Now then, Edmund,’ said William Alaric Piper, ‘it’s time to begin planning the next exhibition. Our Venetians are going to New York in six months’ time, as you know. What next?’

  Piper checked the red rose in his buttonhole. He was in his light brown suit today with a cream silk shirt and pale brown brogues. Edmund de Courcy was in conservative tweeds, peering down at the notebooks in front of him, the records of his travels round the country in search of art that might sell.

  ‘What about portraits, English portraits?’ he said at last. ‘Lots and lots of those about.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Piper, rubbing his hands together, ‘but not English Portraits. The English Portrait.’ Suddenly Piper could see the publicity material, the appeal to the Americans as tens or even hundreds of English aristocrats and gentry lined the walls of his gallery upstairs, resplendent Reynoldses, glorious Gainsboroughs, Romneys and Lawrences by the dozen.

  ‘How many do you think you could get, Edmund?’ he said.

  De Courcy flicked through the pages of h
is notebooks, scribbling hard as he went.

  ‘Nearly a hundred, I should think,’ he replied finally. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘And how many do you think would be genuine?’ said Piper.

  ‘Maybe a quarter?’ replied de Courcy.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Piper with a grin, ‘that’s better than these damned Venetians upstairs. Go to it, Edmund. Call the masterpieces home to the de Courcy and Piper Gallery. We shall give them a good show. And,’ he laughed, ‘good prices too, real or fake.’

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Mr Piper,’ said the footman, ‘Mr McCracken to see you.’

  Two weeks had passed since Mr William P. McCracken, railroad millionaire from Massachusetts, had taken possession of his Raphael. Had William Alaric Piper been able to see what had happened to The Holy Family since it passed into American ownership, his heart would have been filled with joy. Most sensible people would have locked it away in the hotel safe. After all, it had cost eighty-five thousand pounds. Not William P. McCracken. He had bought an easel of the right size and placed it in the centre of his suite in Room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel. When he retired for the night he took the painting with him, not literally, but he placed the easel at the end of the bed so he could see it first thing in the morning. On one occasion he even arranged his Raphael just outside the door of the bathroom so he could view it from his bathtub.

  As Piper led him upstairs to the special viewing chamber above the main gallery, William P. McCracken was excited about this new offering from de Courcy and Piper.

  ‘You said I could see it at the end of last week, Mr Piper. Why, I guess we Americans just aren’t very good at waiting. I’ve gotten to be very eager to see this picture. Gainsborough you said.’