Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  That was when Powerscourt noticed another procession. Not a procession of men and boys in cassocks and surplices, but men in a different uniform, the dark blue of the Constabulary of Lincolnshire. They were trying to walk softly to avoid interrupting Evensong but their boots sounded like a posse come to arrest a murderer in the night. Three of them remained by the door of the west wing. Powerscourt thought he recognized the balding head of Chief Inspector Wilson, a determined expression fixed on his face as if he were a gargoyle from the walls outside. The rest fanned out to guard the various exits. There must have been a dozen of them.

  Powerscourt wondered if he should tell Buckley, still listening raptly as the last notes of the anthem died away, his hands still now, eased perhaps by the beauty of the music to desist from the frantic scrabbling at the watch chain. He did not.

  ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The Dean was on the final prayers now, the choir still standing, Buckley on his knees, Powerscourt peering through the tracery at the positions of the policemen. The perils and dangers of this night have certainly arrived for Horace Aloysius Buckley, Powerscourt thought, and they may last for more than forty days and nights. They might last for ever. Or a noose and a drop might put an end to them for the rest of time.

  The blue cassocks and the white surplices made their way out of St Hugh’s Choir. The old and the mad of Lincoln shuffled out slowly, gossiping quietly with their neighbours. Powerscourt put a restraining hand on Buckley’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ he whispered quietly. ‘There are policemen everywhere. I fear they may have come for you.’

  The hands started their desperate motions with the watch chain.

  ‘I don’t think they will arrest you in the cathedral itself,’ said Powerscourt to his companion. ‘I think it counts as a place of sanctuary.’ But not for long, he said to himself, as Buckley’s eyes started round the building.

  ‘Is there anything more you want to tell me?’ said Powerscourt. How had they found Buckley, he wondered? Had the Lincoln Imp escaped from the walls and flown to Chief Inspector Wilson’s dreary office in the Oxford police headquarters? Had one of the angels floated through the flying buttresses with the same message of doom? ‘Why were you in Oxford the day Thomas Jenkins was killed?’

  ‘Powerscourt . . .’ Buckley had become quite calm. ‘Please believe me. I did not kill Christopher Montague. I did not kill the man Jenkins. I had gone to Oxford to attend Evensong at Christ Church. I took tea with my godson at Keble beforehand. It was a coincidence that I was there at the same time as the murder.’

  ‘Do you need a lawyer, if they do arrest you?’ said Powerscourt. He saw two of the policemen had arrived at the north end of the choir and were waiting for them to leave. A guard of honour to take Horace Aloysius Buckley from the house of God to the police cells of Lincoln.

  ‘I am a lawyer,’ Buckley replied with a bitter smile. ‘Let me ask you one question. Do you think I am guilty?’

  Powerscourt paused. The policemen were shuffling anxiously from foot to foot. The bell was tolling again.

  ‘No, Mr Buckley,’ he said at last, ‘I do not think you are guilty.’

  One of the policemen coughed, loudly, as if ordering them out of the sanctuary of the choir. Horace Aloysius Buckley rose from his seat. Powerscourt accompanied him to the door. Buckley went with courage, Powerscourt felt, his head held high for the ordeal that was to come.

  Chief Inspector Wilson waited until they were just outside the west front, pygmies once more in front of the great building.

  ‘Horace Aloysius Buckley,’ he said in his official voice, ‘I am arresting you in connection with the murders of Christopher Montague and Thomas Jenkins. I must warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.’

  They bundled Buckley into a waiting carriage and rattled off over the cobblestones. The choir were practising again, the sound louder outside the great walls. They must have gone straight from Evensong back to the rehearsal. This time the words were bitter to a listening Powerscourt.

  ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ the beautiful treble voice soared above the towers and the statues of Lincoln Minster, ‘and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.’

  16

  A familiar voice greeted Powerscourt on his return to Markham Square. The voice was accompanied by heavy footsteps across the first floor landing.

  ‘Is little Olivia hiding in this room?’ There was a sound of chairs being moved. ‘No, she’s not,’ said the voice. More footsteps. The voice was in the drawing room now, Powerscourt himself half-way up the stairs.

  ‘Maybe she’s in this room instead,’ said the voice. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find her, I shall have to look for her until midnight at least.’

  There was a very faint squeak as if Olivia Eleanor Hamilton Powerscourt, now five years old, might indeed be in that room. Hide and seek, Powerscourt thought, Olivia’s favourite game. He had once lost her for an entire afternoon playing hide and seek at his country house in Northamptonshire when Olivia had hidden so successfully in the branches of a tree that she was virtually invisible from ground level. Hide and seek, it must be hereditary, he had been playing hide and seek with murderers for years.

  ‘Is she behind this chair? That would be a very good place to hide. No, she’s not.’ Johnny Fitzgerald grinned at Powerscourt and put his index finger to his lips, requesting silence.

  ‘There’s a great big sort of trunk thing over here. I wonder if she’s inside there. Let me see if I can get the lid off. My word, it’s very heavy.’ Johnny Fitzgerald made heaving and groaning noises as if he was pulling a carriage and four up the King’s Road single-handed.

  ‘No, she’s not. She’s lost. I shall never find her at all.’ Johnny’s voice sounded sad now.

  ‘Ah ha,’ he said more cheerfully, ‘I know where she must be. She’s underneath this little table with the big cloth over it that reaches right down to the floor. I’ll just bend down now, I’m going to lift this cloth up and then Olivia will be found. Here we go. Up it comes. This is where she must be . . . But she’s not there!’

  A note of astonishment brought out another faint squeak from over by the windows. Powerscourt made a sign to his friend. He pointed first to the double doors that divided the drawing room in two. They were not wide open, but not completely closed. There was just enough room behind the door for a little person to hide. Then he pointed to the window.

  ‘How silly of me,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, who never tired of playing games with the Powerscourt children, ‘of course I know where she is. I should have thought of it before. She’s hiding behind those doors over there.’ He made especially noisy footsteps as he crossed the room. ‘It’s no good, Olivia,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Time’s up. Going to get you now. This is where you are.’

  Johnny opened the doors with a great flourish. ‘Goodness me,’ he said, ‘she’s not here either. I shall have to give up.’ Powerscourt by now had tiptoed over to the curtains. He made another sign to Johnny, pointing first to himself, then to a space behind the rocking chair in the corner.

  Fitzgerald winked at his friend. ‘How could I be so stupid?’ he said loudly. ‘I know where she is. I know exactly where she is. She’s over here, hiding behind the curtains. I’m just going to run my hands down them and see what I can find. Here I come.’

  With that Fitzgerald himself hid behind the rocking chair. Powerscourt’s hands began to run down the curtains. He felt the top of a head. He knew exactly where she was ticklish. He wondered if it would work through the heavy material of Lucy’s new curtains. There was a stream of giggles. A small girl, with the same blonde hair as her mother, sprang from behind the curtains. ‘Papa!’ she said. ‘Papa!’ and she jumped into his arms. ‘I thought you were Johnny Fitzgerald. He was here a minute ago. Have you magicked him away?’

  ‘Boo!’ said Fitzgerald leap
ing up from behind his hiding place. ‘Boo!’

  All three dissolved into laughter, Olivia eventually trotting off downstairs for a cold drink. She said she got very hot and a bit frightened behind the curtains.

  ‘I often wish,’ said her father, sinking into a chair by the fireplace, ‘that finding murderers was as easy as finding Olivia playing hide and seek.’

  He told Johnny about his trip to Lincoln, about the arrest of Horace Aloysius Buckley. He told him about Lucy’s discovery that de Courcy’s mother and sisters were in Corsica.

  ‘Are you going to go, Francis? To Corsica, I mean.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Powerscourt, ‘Lucy’s very excited about it. She’s got hold of some book which is full of spine-chilling stories about blood feuds that can go on for generations, families murdering each other over trivial things like who owns an olive tree, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘De Courcy and Piper have a porter who comes from Corsica,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Little swarthy fellow but strong as a goat. All roads lead to Corsica all of a sudden. I think I should come with you, Francis. I think it might be very dangerous. But let me tell you what I have discovered about our mutual friend Johnston, the man who works at the National Gallery.’

  Nathaniel Roderick Johnston, senior curator in Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery, known to work in secret for the art dealers of Old Bond Street as an authenticator of Old Masters, a man who could well have lost those valuable commissions if Christopher Montague had lived. A suspect for the murders, believed to be the last man to see Montague alive.

  ‘I followed him home one day, Francis, just to see the kind of house he lived in. And the funny thing was this. I waited for a long time for him to come out of the National Gallery one evening. And who do you think I saw him come out with, virtually arm in arm, practically embracing each other at the top of those steps?’

  Powerscourt looked at his friend. ‘Piper?’ he said with a smile. ‘William Alaric Piper?’

  ‘Well done, Francis, absolutely correct. Rather impressive, I may say. Anyway, I followed our Roderick back to his house in Barnes, or maybe Mortlake. I’m not sure where one stops and the other begins. Now then, what sort of house do you think our friend lives in? A little cottage by the river perhaps?’

  Powerscourt remembered visiting the French Ambassador at his home in Barnes some years before. The place was full of great big modern houses with rather superior lions guarding the front gates.

  ‘Not a little cottage, I think, Johnny,’ he said. ‘Big modern place perhaps? Lions on guard outside?’

  ‘Big, yes. Modern, no. Lions, no,’ said Fitzgerald, searching eagerly in the Powerscourt drinks cabinet. ‘What have we here, Francis? St Aubin? Excellent. May I?’

  A glass of white burgundy accompanied Fitzgerald back to his chair.

  ‘Right on the river it is, that house,’ he said. ‘Middle of the eighteenth century, I should think. Front door’s by the water for the days when the Thames was the main road. Place must be worth a fortune. You couldn’t possibly afford it on his salary. There’s another thing, Francis. Mr and Mrs Johnston only moved there from some little house in North London a couple of years ago. And there’s more.’

  ‘How did you come by this information, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.

  Johnny Fitzgerald looked appreciatively at his glass. ‘Drink, Francis. Beer rather than wine. The local pubs to be precise. There’s a whole lot of them down there by the river. Boating people, some City men, a few lawyers, the local shopkeepers. Mrs Roderick told the fishmonger the other day that they’ve just come into some more money, left them by a relative. This, Francis,’ Fitzgerald refilled his glass happily, ‘is what she said: “We’ll always be grateful to Mr Raphael for leaving us the money. We might buy a house in the Cotswolds, maybe in Italy.”’

  ‘Mr Raphael,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. ‘I like that. Oh yes, I like that very much. Has Mr Raphael been in London lately, Johnny?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he has,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘I’ve been doing a lot of drinking in this investigation. I got friendly with some of the porters at the art dealers when I was carting my auntie’s Leonardo around. I go and see them on Fridays sometimes, they always drink a lot at the end of the week. The Holy Family, by our friend Mr Raphael, was recently sold to an American millionaire for eighty-five thousand pounds. The porters didn’t know what the commission would have been for authenticating it, but they reckoned it would have been between twelve and a half and fifteen per cent. Sometimes more.’

  Powerscourt looked thoughtful, his mind busy with mental arithmetic. He hoped he could manage it more successfully than William Burke’s son.

  ‘Would you kill somebody to keep those commissions, Johnny? Ten and a half thousand pounds or so at the bottom end of that scale, maybe thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty at the top?’

  Johnny Fitzgerald peered into his glass. ‘Think of it like a vineyard, Francis,’ he said at last. ‘You might not kill for one year’s supply of superb white burgundy. But if you thought the murder might guarantee you a lifetime’s supply of the stuff, or the commissions if you like, year after year after year . . .’ Fitzgerald polished off his glass once more and helped himself to a refill. ‘. . . then you might just do it. Particularly if you had an ambitious wife, who likes dropping names in the fishmonger’s.’

  Visibility was down to about a hundred yards. A mist had fallen over the waters that separated the port of Calvi, on the north-western side of the island of Corsica, from mainland France. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were standing on the deck of the steamer peering into the void. Powerscourt was thinking about Corsica’s most famous son, native not of Calvi but of Ajaccio further to the south. Napoleon must have sailed down these passages on his way to Egypt, a disastrous expedition which ended with the future Emperor abandoning his armies in the shadows of the Pyramids and fleeing back to France in case he lost power. Napoleon must have seen his native island looming out of the sea on his left when he made his escape from Elba, the hundred days of glory that ended in the charnel fields of Waterloo, and another sea voyage to the yet more remote island of St Helena.

  Gradually the mist began to clear and a watery sun crept out of hiding to light their passage. Very faintly, to the starboard side, he could see the outline of a long strip of land, Cap Corse, the northernmost tip of the island. Then, as the sun broke through, he saw the island clear for the first time.

  ‘My God, Lucy, it’s very beautiful. Look at the coastline.’ A curling succession of beaches lay peacefully on the shore, small breakers climbing lazily up the sand. Between them were rocky bays where the sea crashed against the rocks, faint lines of spray easily seen from their boat.

  ‘Look at the mountains, Francis, just look at them.’ Lady Lucy was shivering softly as she spoke. ‘They’re much bigger than anything in Wales or Scotland.’

  Ahead of them at the end of a long semicircular bay fringed with pines lay the port of Calvi, its improbable citadel standing guard over the little town. Behind it, behind the beaches, behind the rocky promontories where the spray shot upwards in the late afternoon sun, behind everything were the mountains. Great jagged peaks lay in enfiladed rows behind the plain, bare rocky slopes rising towards the sky. They brooded over the island. We have been here long before the various humans came, they said, before the Greeks, before the Romans, before the Saracens, the Pisans, the Genoese, the French. We shall be here long after you have all gone. Dotted about on the slopes minute villages could be seen, lofty campaniles a place of lookout against invaders from the sea.

  They dined on kid and roast potatoes, washed down with the fierce local wine. Powerscourt thought Johnny Fitzgerald would have found it interesting, a word he frequently used when confronted with crude and uncivilized vintages. They walked around the streets of Calvi as the wind rose and brought great breakers hammering on to the sands of Calvi’s beach. Behind the sand the mountains, almost black now, brooded over the Gulf of Ca
lvi.

  ‘Do you have a plan for tomorrow, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, walking along the little quayside dotted with fishing boats and a few cafes where the native Calvais were settling down to an evening of cards and wine.

  ‘I am going to see the police chief in the morning, Lucy. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police gave me an introduction. He has the most magnificent name. He’s called Antonio Imperiali. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Do you think he’s descended from the Emperor himself?’ said Lady Lucy, drawing her shawl tight around her neck as the cold wind whipped in from the sea.

  ‘He may be,’ said Powerscourt, watching a fishing boat cast off its moorings and set out to sea, a villainous crew working busily on deck. ‘I think the Corsicans did pretty well out of Napoleon’s Empire. They fought all over the place, all the way from Austerlitz to Moscow, I think. Seventeen of them became generals in the Grande Armee. Wouldn’t be surprising if some of the natives ended up being called Imperiali.’

  The real Captain Imperiali was a swarthy pirate of a man, with a greasy moustache and a self-satisfied manner. He looked carefully at Powerscourt’s introduction.

  ‘How is it with my colleagues in London?’ he asked. ‘They do not yet catch the Ripper, I think.’ Powerscourt was amazed at how the fame of the Whitechapel murderer had reached the Corsicans and lived on for years after the event. Murders, he thought, had always been a staple of Corsican life if Lady Lucy’s book was to be believed. Maybe they thought there was a vendetta, a blood feud, running through the streets of the East End. Later, not very much later, he was to regret his frankness with Captain Imperiali.

  ‘I am looking for an English family who live in the area,’ he said. ‘I think they are called de Courcy, although they may be living under a false name. I have reason to believe that they are resident in the neighbourhood of Calvi. There is no suspicion of any crime having being committed by them. And I am looking for a forger, a man who may operate out of the same area, maybe even the same house, I do not know. If there is a forger here, there would be a lot of traffic in canvases and paintings being shipped back to England.’