Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  Piper made soothing noises as if he were talking to a child. ‘It’s waiting for you, Mr McCracken,’ he said, ‘right here.’ Piper did not disclose that he had travelled down to Truscott Park the day before and handed over a cheque to James Hammond-Burke for eight thousand pounds for his Gainsborough. ‘There may be more masterpieces here, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ Piper had said in his most expansive mood. ‘We must wait till our man has completed his work on the catalogue.’

  Once again the viewing room had been specially prepared. The windows were open this time. The painting sat on an easel, shrouded by a pair of curtains. Piper pressed a switch to bring on the illuminations. Then he pulled slowly on the cord. The curtains fell away.

  There, seated on a bench in the middle of an enormous park, sat Mr and Mrs Burke, of Truscott Park in the county of Warwickshire. Standing behind them were their two children, a dog lying at their feet. It was the beginning of autumn, the leaves on the trees beginning to change colour.

  ‘God bless my soul!’ said William P. McCracken, staring very hard at the children. ‘It’s a miracle, it really is.’

  William Alaric Piper said nothing. It was, he reflected to himself, indeed a miracle that two children should have arrived in London on the pages of an American magazine, and been turned into a new Old Master by Orlando Blane in his Long Gallery.

  ‘Mr Piper, sir,’ said McCracken, taking off his hat, ‘let me tell you something. I really can’t believe this. Those two girls look almost the same as my own two dear children back home. My Daisy has brown eyes, and this little girl has blue, and Dorothy’s hair is a little darker than this one here, but otherwise, it’s uncanny.’

  McCracken walked to the back of the room and looked at the painting again. ‘I must have it, Mr Piper,’ he said fervently, ‘I must have it. Think of what Maisie, that’s Mrs McCracken, will say when she sees it! Think what the girls will say! I can see it now, Mr Piper, on the wall in the living room back home in Concord, Massachusetts. There’s some vulgar religious picture my wife picked up hanging above the fireplace at present, Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Well, Moses can just lead them all someplace else now. This Gainsborough will sit there perfectly. Imagine what the neighbours and the elders of the Third Presbyterian will say when they come to see it! My entire trip to Europe will have been worthwhile if I can carry it back across the Atlantic.’

  William Alaric Piper coughed slightly. ‘Mr McCracken,’ he said in mournful tones. ‘We have a problem.’

  ‘Problem, what problem?’ said McCracken, standing defiantly by the picture as if he would fight anybody who tried to take it away from him, ‘I thought you said this thing was for sale?’

  Piper nodded. ‘It was for sale, Mr McCracken. When I spoke to you of the Gainsborough, it was for sale. Not any more. The owner has changed his mind.’

  McCracken put his arm around the frame. ‘You can’t do this to me, Mr Piper. Not now when I’ve had the chance to see it. Please, not now.’

  ‘I’m afraid it happens more often than you would think, Mr McCracken,’ said Piper mournfully. ‘The owner decides to sell. He is quite determined. The painting comes down to be sent away. There is a gap on the wall. I’m sure a man like yourself with such sensitivity to the beauty of paintings, can understand what it feels like. After a day or two the owner feels sad. Then it gets worse, Mr McCracken. After a week or two it becomes like a bereavement, a death in the family, gone from the walls of the family drawing room. Eventually it becomes unbearable. The owner has to have the painting back.’ William Alaric Piper fiddled briefly with the rose in his buttonhole as if he were going to cast it over a coffin making its last journey down into the grave. ‘Can you see that, Mr McCracken?’

  ‘Sure I can see that, Mr Piper. It’s how I felt some years back when I thought I’d lost the deal to buy one of my Boston railroads. But I came through it. Yes, sir. We Americans like to get what we want, Mr Piper. What do I have to do to buy the painting?’

  Piper shrugged his shoulders. Impossible, said the gesture.

  ‘Let’s try talking dollars here, Mr Piper. What sort of price did the owner think he would get for this Gainsborough?’

  ‘I fear it is not a question of money,’ said Piper, ‘it is a question of loss. Beautiful things bring their own special powers. The owners get addicted to them, as if they were some terrible drug.’

  William P. McCracken thought of the Raphael in Room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel and his worship of it. ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to give up. What price did the owner want?’

  Piper decided it was time to give in. ‘Twelve thousand pounds was his asking price,’ he said, ‘maybe a bit high for a Gainsborough, but the thing will always keep its value.’

  ‘Double it,’ said McCracken decisively. Piper could suddenly see what had made him such a power in the railroads of America. ‘Just double it. But please, Mr Piper, can you get me an answer in the next twenty-four hours? Throw some more money at it if you have to. I had to wait a long time for the Raphael. I couldn’t bear to have to wait as long again.’

  William Alaric Piper drew the curtains back over the painting. ‘Leave it with me, Mr McCracken. I will see what I can do. But I am not hopeful of success.’

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was looking at a map of South Africa and shaking his head sadly. Powerscourt had marked on his map the three railway towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley now under siege in the war with the Boers half a world away. The greatest Empire the world had ever seen was being humiliated by a couple of tiny Republics in the vast expanse of Southern Africa. His thoughts on military strategy were rudely interrupted as Johnny Fitzgerald burst into the room.

  ‘What news from Old Bond Street, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, closing his atlas with a thud.

  ‘I’m glad I don’t really have to sell anything, Francis. That’s a very strange world. I’ve been back to all three of them, Clarke’s, Capaldi’s and de Courcy and Piper, while their experts looked at the picture. Actually it was the same expert all three times. And the odd thing was, he never let on in the other two places that he’d seen the Leonardo before.’

  ‘Do you think he was being paid three times for the same attribution, Johnny? Did he say it was a Leonardo?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I’m sure he was paid three times. Twice he said it wasn’t a real Leonardo. He always took a very long time peering at the picture. So after the first time I pretended to fall asleep.’

  ‘And what did you discover during your slumbers, Johnny?’

  ‘Well,’ said Fitzgerald, moving by force of habit towards the sideboard, ‘thirsty work, Francis. I think I’ll try a little of this white Beaune, if I may.’

  Powerscourt was always fascinated by the speed of his friend in the complicated business of finding corkscrew, opening bottle, pouring liquid into a glass. On this occasion it took less than ten seconds.

  ‘I think,’ Fitzgerald settled back into his chair, Beaune in hand, ‘I think I discovered two things. The man’s name was Johnston, I’m pretty sure of that. Big fellow, looked like a prize fighter. Didn’t catch the Christian name. On one occasion at Clarke’s I heard a bit of the conversation between the Clarke people after Johnston had left and before I’d woken up. They said they wished Montague was still alive, as if they thought he was better than Johnston.’

  ‘And the other thing?’ said Powerscourt, wondering if Johnston was the expert who would have been supplanted by Montague, a man who might lose enough to turn him into a killer.

  ‘The other thing was at de Courcy and Piper’s. Johnston seemed to know them very well, as if this was regular work. Piper asked him if he would attribute it to the school of Leonardo. That would make it worth quite a lot. Not as much as a real Leonardo, of course.’

  Days awake and asleep in Old Bond Street had given Johnny Fitzgerald an easy familiarity with this strange new world. ‘They’d moved away to the other side of the room by this point, Francis, as if they didn’
t want anything overheard, so I didn’t catch it all. There was a lot about percentages, about normal terms. Piper was very excited about some American called Black who’s arriving in London shortly. He seemed to think he could sell it to him for thousands and thousands of pounds.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald stared into his glass. ‘Another thing, Francis, I don’t suppose it means much. The last time I was at de Courcy and Piper’s the porters were carrying in an enormous package. It looked like it contained three or four large paintings. And it said on the front that it came from Calvi or Galvi, somewhere like that.’

  There was a knock on the door and the footman handed Powerscourt a letter. It was from Chief Inspector Wilson. And it contained the remarkable news that not only had Mrs Rosalind Buckley been seen in Oxford shortly before the murder of Thomas Jenkins, but that Horace Aloysius Buckley, her estranged husband, had been seen in that city on the very day of the murder.

  ‘What do you make of that, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, handing the letter to his friend.

  ‘Looks perfectly straightforward to me,’ said Johnny. ‘Of course it may not be. But if you were a betting man, Francis, you would surely say that our Horace Aloysius is now the hot favourite in the Montague Jenkins Memorial Handicap. Almost impossible to get any decent odds on him at all at present. Christ, look at it. He finds out Montague has been carrying on with his wife. End of Montague. Then, maybe he’s employing private detectives, he finds out that she’s also carrying on with this Jenkins person. End of Jenkins. I should say Horace Aloysius is three to one on, myself. What say you, Francis?’

  Powerscourt stared at the floor. ‘I’m not placing any bets, Johnny. It’s too plausible. It’s too obvious. For the moment, I think Horace Aloysius is probably in the clear. Deranged, possibly. Overwrought, probably. Unstable, certainly. But a murderer? I’m not sure. I’m really not sure.’

  Two foxes were standing very still on the upper terrace of Orlando Blane’s ruined garden. They were so still that Orlando wondered if they might be statues. Then, very slowly and with a total disdain for their surroundings, they trotted down the terraces until they came to rest right underneath the windows of the Long Gallery. Perhaps the rats send them messages, Orlando thought to himself, secret despatches in animal language under the ground to the foxes’ den. Come along! Nobody here! Rich pickings for all!

  Orlando looked at his easel. It had a large blank canvas waiting for him. The ground had been carefully filled in on the Friday before. His head was still hurting from a weekend of drinking that ended with him being carried to bed at three o’clock on Sunday morning. He had lost all his money, had been his first thought on waking. He groaned slightly as he remembered that he had only lost the contents of three matchboxes, playing cards with his jailers.

  Sir Joshua Reynolds was waiting for him. So was the wife of Lewis B. Black, American millionaire, with the feathers in her hat. Orlando tried a preliminary drawing of the hat on his sketchpad. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. Damn, he said to himself. If that doesn’t improve I won’t achieve much at all today. He looked up at the quotation, pinned on his wall behind the empty canvas. It was the great Italian historian Vasari, on his friend Michelangelo:

  He also copied drawings of the old masters so perfectly that his copies could not be distinguished from the originals, since he smoked and tinted the paper to give it an appearance of age. He was often able to keep the originals and return his copies in their stead.

  Orlando smiled. He walked very fast up and down the Long Gallery three times. He checked his hand. It was better now. Very slowly an elaborate hat, composed almost entirely of feathers, began to appear on his pad.

  The offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell were on the basement and the ground floor of an old house just off the Strand. Legal country, Powerscourt noted, as clerks old and young, bearded and clean-shaven, erect and stooping, hurried to their destinations, bundles of files and legal documents clutched tightly in their hands. People’s lives are crossing the road here every day, he thought, wills, marriage settlements, fathers trying to disinherit unruly sons, new companies being born, old ones laid to rest, all wrapped round with lawyers’ string.

  He asked to see the senior partner. A nervous young man, fresh from university perhaps, showed him into the office of Mr George Brigstock. Mr Brigstock looked exactly what a family solicitor ought to look like, Powerscourt felt. He was about fifty, in a rather old-fashioned suit, his grey hair receding up his temples.

  ‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. How can we be of assistance?’ said Brigstock.

  He thinks I’ve come to make my will, Powerscourt thought. Complicated estate perhaps, complicated dispositions, enough to keep the solicitors busy for at least a year and a half.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘I haven’t come here on legal business. I’ve come to talk to you about your senior partner, Mr Horace Aloysius Buckley. I am an investigator, Mr Brigstock, and . . .’ Powerscourt paused slightly to let the effect of what he was about to say sink in, ‘I am currently investigating two cases of murder. I have reasons to believe that he may be able to help me in my inquiries.’

  Mr George Brigstock did not flinch at all at the mention of murder. ‘Mr Buckley is out of town at present,’ he said. ‘I am sure he will return shortly.’

  ‘But that’s just the point, Mr Buckley.’ Powerscourt was leaning forward now. ‘You say you are sure he will return shortly. But you don’t know when, do you? He could walk in right now, or he could not walk in for the next three months. Is that not so?’

  Brigstock did not reply.

  ‘Mr Brigstock, I am most anxious to speak to Mr Buckley. I have reason to believe that the police may issue a warrant for his arrest very soon.’

  ‘On what charge?’ said the solicitor.

  ‘Murder,’ said Powerscourt. ‘In the course of my work I do a lot of business with the police. I am shortly on my way to Oxford to see the Chief Inspector in charge of the inquiry into the second murder, a young man called Thomas Jenkins. The circumstantial evidence against your colleague is strong. As yet there is no direct proof. But the longer Mr Buckley remains away, the more suspicious the police will become. If the man has nothing to hide, they will say to themselves, why does he not come forward? So, Mr Brigstock, have you any idea where he might be? Mr Buckley has not been home for a considerable period, owing to difficult domestic circumstances. He was in Oxford the day of the murder. He could have been there at the time the deed was committed. Where is he now?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Brigstock sadly. ‘Let me ask you a question, Lord Powerscourt. Do you believe he is responsible for these terrible murders?’

  Powerscourt wondered if the lawyer saw a tide of scandal sweeping over Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell as the senior partner was arrested for murder. A soldier or a seaman committing murder in drink or passion only rated a few lines in the newspapers. Doctors or solicitors or, even better, bishops charged with murder had the newspapermen in a frenzy of speculation and the reading public thirsty for more. Maybe the clients would disappear, maybe the whole firm would go under, a lifetime’s careful work lost in a day of headlines.

  Powerscourt was quick to reply. ‘No, I do not believe he is guilty,’ he said. ‘I am not sure why I think that, but I do. Tell me, Mr Brigstock, when people are in great strain they sometimes have a place of refuge they go to, maybe somewhere they knew as a child, a place where they can sort out their lives, or let time show them what to do. Did Mr Buckley have such a place?’

  George Brigstock shook his head. ‘Not that I know of,’ he said.

  Powerscourt pressed on. ‘He didn’t have a family place in the country, did he? A place of his own? Or brothers or sisters he could have gone to stay with?’

  ‘There was only one brother, and he is in Australia. Melbourne, I believe.’

  ‘Mr Buckley was under considerable strain, I am sure,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if his mission was a waste of time.
‘Did he have any hobby or pastime he always wanted to indulge? I have heard of people who want to ride to hounds with every hunt in England, or visit every railway station in Britain. Did he have something like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Brigstock. He looked closely at the files on his desk. ‘There is just one thing, now I come to think about it. He mentioned it to me once, maybe twice in the last fifteen years. But I do not see how it could possibly help you, Lord Powerscourt.’

  ‘What is it, man?’ asked Powerscourt, growing impatient.

  ‘Well, I’m sure it can’t be what you want. But he did say that one day, when he had the time, he was going to attend Evensong in every cathedral in England.’

  ‘What? All of them?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘All of them,’ said Brigstock, ‘from Canterbury to Ripon, from Exeter to Durham.’

  ‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I suppose there are worse things a man could do. One thing before I go, Mr Brigstock. Do you by any chance have a photograph of Mr Buckley anywhere in your offices?’

  The young man was despatched on a mission to the basement and returned with a small dusty photograph. It showed Horace Aloysius Buckley in cricket flannels and a white sweater, bat in his hand. He was scowling at the camera.

  ‘It was taken at a lawyers’ cricket match a couple of summers ago,’ said George Brigstock. ‘He’d just been given out to a dodgy bit of umpiring. I’m afraid Buckley doesn’t look like that most of the time. He had a splendid collection of very conservative suits.’

  However eccentric you were, Powerscourt reflected, as he stared at the man in the photograph, the grey hair, the small moustache, the angry eyes, you wouldn’t be attending Evensong in your cricket flannels. Some people went on pub crawls, Powerscourt thought. Maybe Horace Aloysius Buckley is now on a cathedral crawl, his anxious spirit eased every afternoon by the singing of the choir, the slow processions up the nave, the regular beat of the collects and the hymns. It would explain why he was in Oxford. Christ Church had a cathedral, he remembered. But where on earth had he gone now on his pilgrimage? Gloucester? Hereford? Lichfield? It was almost as difficult as finding the bloody forger, he said to himself as he left the offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, the nervous young man escorting him right on to the street outside. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.