Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, watching Alice Bridge carefully out of the corner of his eye. She looked very uncomfortable, but whether that was caused by her mother’s manners or the delicacy of her own position he could not tell.

  ‘Tell me, Miss Bridge,’ Powerscourt moved to take the initiative, ‘how well did you know Mr Christopher Montague?’

  Alice Bridge blushed bright red. She glanced quickly at her mother before she replied.

  ‘I knew him quite well.’

  ‘Did you go with him to the opening of the Venetian exhibition at the de Courcy and Piper Gallery in Old Bond Street?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I did,’ said Alice Bridge, avoiding her mother’s gaze and looking down at the carpet.

  ‘I was not cognisant of the fact that you had accompanied him to that exhibition,’ said Mrs Bridge, looking at her daughter sternly. ‘And how did you come by this information, Lord Powerscourt? More snooping about, I presume, more impertinent questions?’

  Mrs Bridge was beginning to irritate Powerscourt considerably.

  ‘I would remind you, Mrs Bridge,’ he said firmly, ‘that Christopher Montague is dead. So is his greatest friend, a man called Thomas Jenkins of Emmanuel College, Oxford. They will, unfortunately, be in no position to attend any more exhibitions in future. Tell me, Miss Bridge,’ he turned to look at Alice, still staring sullenly at the carpet, ‘when was the last time you saw Mr Montague?’

  Alice Bridge took a deep breath. ‘Mama says I’m not to answer any more questions.’

  Her mother drew herself up to her full height. Some mighty broadside was about to be delivered into the centre of HMS Powerscourt. He just managed to get in first.

  ‘I put it to you, Miss Bridge, that you were perhaps very close to Christopher Montague in the last months of his life. I put it to you that you had kept your family in the dark about the affair. I put it to you also that refusing to answer any perfectly innocent questions may make people suspicious, more suspicious than they would have been if they knew the true story.’

  ‘Mama says that I’m not to answer any more questions.’ Powerscourt wondered if the answers would have been forthcoming if her mother wasn’t there. He felt sure that Christopher Montague would not have seemed a very desirable catch to the mistress of 16 Upper Grosvenor Street. Powerscourt heard a sort of blowing sound from Alice’s right. The broadside was coming.

  ‘Suspicions? Suspicions, Lord Powerscourt?’ Mrs Agatha Bridge was in full cry. ‘Are you saying that you suspect my daughter of being involved in some way in this murder? I tell you, Lord Powerscourt, I never met the young man. I would not have considered him a suitable escort for Alice, or indeed any other respectable young woman. People like Montague are a danger to the nation’s morals. Look at that terrible man Wilde. They should all be sent to prison.’

  ‘Nobody is suggesting that your daughter is involved with the murder,’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is why I find this refusal to answer any questions so very strange. Miss Bridge, I am asking you for the last time, how close were you to Christopher Montague?’

  Powerscourt thought later that she might have been on the edge of tears. Perhaps it was Montague’s name that did it. But the answer was the same.

  ‘Mama says I’m not to answer any more questions.’

  As he made his way back to Markham Square, Powerscourt wondered just how close Alice Bridge had been to the dead art critic. He thought again about the clues and the suspects in this case. He thought about de Courcy and Piper and the benefit their gallery had derived from the death of Christopher Montague. He thought about Roderick Johnston, a man who might have lost most of his considerable income if Montague had lived. He thought about the wine glasses and the tea the murderer must have washed up each time he struck. He thought about the tie in Thomas Jenkins’ rooms on the Banbury Road in Oxford. He resolved to summon reinforcements of a sort in the person of William McKenzie, a tracker who had worked with Powerscourt and Fitzgerald in India and on several other cases since.

  Afternoon rain had replaced morning rain in the bleak countryside of North Norfolk. Orlando was staring at his preliminary drawing for the Bellini on his easel. Imogen, still exultant from her morning discovery, was staring out at the woods behind the house.

  ‘I’ve been here for months,’ had been Orlando’s verdict on his past record, ‘and I never saw that milestone. You come here and find it on your first morning in the place. I’m ashamed of myself.’

  ‘Never mind, darling,’ Imogen had whispered back, fearful of being overheard by their captors. ‘At least we know where we are.’

  Later that afternoon, when Orlando had finished his work, they were to go on a reconnaissance mission up into the woods at the back.

  Inching his way forward through the same woods, Johnny Fitzgerald was beginning to wish that Norfolk could be moved somewhere else, somewhere drier, the south of Spain perhaps, maybe even the Sahara, where the damp wouldn’t work its way through the toughest clothes he possessed. He could see the back of the house now. If he moved another thirty feet to his left he would be able to see if any of that part of the house was inhabited. He dare not go any closer in case one of the guards came out on afternoon patrol.

  Now he could see clearly through his glasses the Long Gallery on the first floor, the five great windows, some with their shutters half open, looking out on the sad remains of the garden and the lake to his right. He worked his way slowly across the windows. There, at the end furthest away from him, was the girl he had seen that morning. Next window, nothing, only a dark interior. Third window, he thought he made out a small sofa, by an enormous fireplace. Fourth window, he could see a door in the far corner. Fifth window . . . Johnny took his glasses off and wiped the lens with the only dry cloth he still possessed, tucked in under his shirt. The cloth felt warm against the surrounding damp. He put the binoculars back to his eyes and squinted through.

  There was a man and an easel. Johnny was sure it was an easel. Making a minute adjustment to the aperture he thought he saw a line of paintings stacked up against the wall next to the door. The man was now working at his easel with a pencil or a brush, Johnny couldn’t tell. But he felt strangely exultant up there in the squelchy mud of the de Courcy woods, rain dripping down his forehead, finding its own way into his boots. Had Powerscourt known all along? Had he divined somehow that here, in this remote spot, guarded by an unbroken length of redbrick wall and a couple of unfriendly lodges, was the man who might hold the key to the whole investigation? Johnny Fitzgerald put the glasses back in their case and began to crawl up the hill towards safer ground. Johnny didn’t think any strangers found in the de Courcy woods would be invited in for a comforting glass of sherry.

  Ten minutes later he was lying in a clump of trees at the top of the hill. The house was only just visible through the trees. It was the voices he heard first, the girl’s voice asking the man if he had walked up this way before. Then he heard the man reply, saying something about not having gone very far up this path as it was so damp. The wind was carrying their voices up the hill. Johnny peeped out. On his left he saw the long red-brick walls of the home garden, unpruned fruit trees and untended vegetable patches no doubt concealed within. Christ, they were coming straight for him. If they kept walking for another ten minutes they would virtually fall over his feet.

  Run or stay? Johnny wormed his way deeper and deeper into the sodden earth. He heard the girl wondering what they would see when they reached the top. Five minutes now. Johnny wondered if he should write a quick message and hand it over to them as they passed, his hand rising out of the undergrowth like the hand that came to take King Arthur’s sword in the lake at Avalon. He wondered what it should say. Hello Forger perhaps. Hello Mrs Forger. Do you want to get out of here?

  Three minutes. Johnny Fitzgerald was wriggling deeper into the earth. Then he heard the voice of salvation.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s as far as we can go today.’ The redhead was twenty paces behind them.
The walking party turned round, reluctantly Johnny thought, and headed back towards the house.

  Johnny waited another fifteen minutes before he extricated himself from his earth. He noticed he had been sweating profusely in spite of the rain and the sodden ground. He patrolled the grounds at very long range for the rest of the afternoon. No one, prisoner or captor, ventured out of the house.

  Back in the hotel of the bored, looking out at the grey waves rolling up the beach, the seagulls squawking in unison fifty feet above the water, he composed his message to Powerscourt.

  De Courcy Hall seems empty. But not. Party of four guards, possibly ex-army Two prisoners. Forger, young man mid to late twenties. Mrs Forger, beautiful girl, possibly younger. Easel and numerous paintings spotted in forger’s quarters. Suggest you abandon fleshpots of London. Incomparable welcome here in this hotel. Norfolk weather magnificent. Fitzgerald.

  21

  Charles Augustus Pugh’s office was a temple to the existence of files. Files single, files in bundles, files with red ribbon, files with black marched in perfect order along a series of shelves that stretched up to the ceiling along three sides of the room. Two large windows looked out on to the perfectly manicured lawn of Gray’s Inn. At a large desk in the centre, also festooned with files, Pugh sat with his feet up on the desk, puffing happily at a small cheroot. His exquisite dark blue jacket was hanging languidly from the back of the chair. Across an equally exquisite waistcoat was a watch chain in very thin gold which he would finger from time to time. Pugh was about six feet tall with a Roman profile and a Roman nose that gave him a powerful air in court.

  ‘What have we got then,’ he asked cheerfully, ‘to smite the Philistines with? They didn’t say very much at the committal hearing, lot of stuff about motive, couple of witnesses who had seen him on the way to Montague’s flat and up the Banbury Road in Oxford. Can’t decide whether to call Buckley as a witness or not.’

  ‘There are any number of people who could have killed Montague,’ said Powerscourt. ‘My problem is that at the moment I don’t know which one of them did it. How long have we got before the trial?’

  ‘Bloody postponements,’ said Pugh. ‘You’d think when people get sent up to the Central Criminal Court, the prosecution would have sorted things out properly. But no. Two postponements in the past few days. Could be up there by the end of next week.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Right, Mr Pugh, here goes.’

  ‘List of suspects, then. Nothing like throwing mud in their eyes. Confuse the jury. Leave them thinking any conviction would be unsound.’

  ‘Number one,’ said Powerscourt, staring in amazement at the sheer number of the files. He wondered briefly if somewhere in a hot corner of the Egyptian temples some scribes had lived, surrounded with roll upon roll of papyrus, details of the construction of pyramids perhaps, carefully drawn up lists of what the current ruler wanted to take with them before they were incarcerated in their mausoleums in the sand.

  ‘Edmund de Courcy,’ he came back to the present, ‘possibly with the support of his partner William Alaric Piper, art dealers. Montague’s article was going to say that most of the works in their exhibition of Venetian Paintings were fakes, and some were recent forgeries. That would have been very bad for business. De Courcy may have also tried to kill me.’

  He told Pugh the details of the flight down the hill from Aregno, the story of the Traitor’s Run. Pugh was writing with deceptive speed in a notebook in front of him.

  ‘Must be an interesting life, being an investigator, Powerscourt. Bloody sight more interesting than a monk’s life here with all these damned files, punctuated by occasional outings in front of the judge.’

  ‘Number two,’ Powerscourt went on.

  ‘Pardon me a moment, pray,’ said Pugh. ‘You don’t know if there is any evidence that de Courcy or Piper was seen in Brompton Square?’

  ‘No,’ said Powerscourt sadly, ‘but de Courcy did employ a Corsican at his gallery. You’ll be amazed to hear that the man has recently gone home. Family bereavement, I think. Corsicans go in for garrotting, as you know.’

  Powerscourt noticed that Charles Augustus Pugh had just drawn the outline of the mountainous island on the page in front of him.

  ‘Pity he’s gone home,’ he said. ‘Don’t suppose the Corsican authorities would be very keen on sending him back to us. Tighter than those criminal families in the East End, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Number two,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘Roderick Johnston, senior curator of Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery. There is a growing demand for people to authenticate paintings, Americans wanting to be certain they’re taking a genuine Corregio back to Cincinnati, that sort of thing. Montague’s article would have confirmed that he, Montague, was now the leading authority in Britain, if not in Europe, on the attribution of Italian paintings. End of the line for Johnston. The man’s been living above his means for years. Harridan of a wife, keen to acquire pretty houses in the Cotswolds or grand villas in the hills above Florence. Johnston had a very strong motive for wanting Montague out of the way.’

  ‘What sorts of sums are we talking about?’ asked Pugh. ‘Quick fifty pounds in notes? Envelopes stuffed with five hundred in cash?’

  Pugh’s voice was a rich deep bass. It sounded very quiet, here in his chambers. Powerscourt imagined it could be a potent weapon in the courtroom, rising to intimidate the opposition witnesses, rising and falling as he made his final appeal to the jury.

  ‘Think thousands, Mr Pugh, maybe tens of thousands.’

  Pugh whistled at the size of the sums.

  ‘Suppose you have an artist of the highest class,’ said Powerscourt, ‘a Derby winner of an artist. Let’s take Raphael. You are a dealer, Mr Pugh. This Raphael comes into your possession. You have a rich American client, keen on building up the best collection in the United States. He has a very suspicious mind – he didn’t get all his millions in steel or railroads by believing everything he’s told. You prove to me that it really is a Raphael, he says. If it’s real, remember, it might be worth seventy or eighty thousand pounds. If it’s not real, it’s virtually worthless. Enter Roderick Johnston. Or enter Christopher Montague. You, the dealer, are at their mercy, unless you already have them on the payroll. Even then, they can name their percentage of the final price. Could be ten or fifteen. I believe it has been known to go up to twenty-five for the authentication. But once you, the dealer, have it, you have the sale.’

  ‘And they say,’ said Pugh, ‘that lawyers are overpaid. Perish the thought. And, presumably, once you are accepted as the best authenticator around, dealers will be queuing up for your services? The money will just keep on rolling in?’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Powerscourt.

  Charles Augustus Pugh took his perfectly polished black boots off his desk.

  ‘Any more?’ he said. ‘I think we could make quite a lot of mud with those two. I just don’t know if it’s enough to get him off.’

  ‘There is,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There is one other candidate but I do not feel sufficiently confident to give you the details at this stage. It’s only a hunch.’

  ‘Would you be able to tell me in confidence? No notes in my book, no mention of it anywhere.’

  Powerscourt told him. Pugh leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘God in heaven, Powerscourt, ‘he said. ‘I can see perfectly clearly why you might think that. God knows how you prove it.’

  Orlando Blane and Imogen Foxe were eating their last supper. Orlando was so nervous that his hand shook as he tried to cut into the thick sausages their captors had provided. Imogen kicked him under the table. First of all they talked about horses, horses that had won the Oaks or the Derby in happier times gone by. Imogen found the potato frightfully hard to swallow – it was as if her body was refusing to do what she told it.

  Imogen told him about the terrible war in South Africa, the endless sieges, beleaguered little communities of soldiers and civ
ilians trying to eke out their rations before starvation finished them off, the British relief expeditions forever delayed by the skill of the elusive Boers who never lost a battle. They simply got back on their horses and rode away into the veldt.

  Tonight Orlando and Imogen were going to escape. For days now they had never altered their routine, Imogen walking in the morning while Orlando worked at his easel, the two of them walking in the late afternoon, supper watched by their captors, then early to bed. That was particularly important in their minds. For four successive nights they had retired just as the guard came on his final patrol shortly after nine o’clock.

  Their plan was to wait a couple of hours after that until the guards too had gone to sleep. Then they were going to swing themselves out of the window on a rope improvised from the stout sheets on the bed, and head for where they thought Cromer was. There must be trains, Imogen had said, early morning trains going south to Norwich. Once they reached Norwich they could head for London. Then they would be safe. So intent were they on the immediate details of their flight that they had given no thought at all to what they would do when they arrived in the capital.

  Back in the Long Gallery Orlando changed into the fresh clothes Imogen had brought him from Blandford. Imogen noted with pride that they fitted him like a glove. They packed one bag between them. They peered anxiously into the wild night outside. Imogen began to make the rope of sheets that would lead them to freedom.

  Johnny Fitzgerald had brought Powerscourt on a great loop of a ride that took them on to the long drive that led up to de Courcy Hall. ‘God help sailors on a night like this,’ Johnny muttered to himself as the wind rose and turned into a storm. It was whistling through the trees, their upper branches bent into fantastic arabesques by the speed of its passing. Ahead of them in the great woods at the back of the house they could hear cracks like pistol shots as branches were severed from the trunks that bore them.