by Peter Watson
She drank some coffee which by now must have been completely cold. Swallowing, she closed her eyes and bunched her eyebrows together. ‘Too strong,’ she gasped. ‘Tell your boy not to brew it for so long.’ Nonetheless, she drank again. The talk and the cigar smoke had no doubt made her throat dry. She waved the cigar smoke away again. Swallowing a second time, she went on. ‘The more I thought about it, the more Molyneux’s visit seemed odd. I even checked with all the estate agents in Cirencester—there aren’t that many.’ She placed her cup and saucer back on the tray. ‘There hasn’t been a house sale there for months.’
Michael went to interrupt but she waved him down.
‘I think this man Molyneux came down to my house for a snoop. He was prepared to lie about the house sale, he was prepared to offer a thousand pounds for this picture, though you say it’s probably not worth it, and now someone has been prepared to break into my house to steal the very same thing. I’ll tell you something else. Molyneux is very tall, six feet four maybe. So was the burglar.’ She looked intently at Michael. ‘There’s something about this picture, some mystery, that makes it worth stealing. It may have something to do with the documents I failed to buy and it may not. Anyway, Edward Ryan, who was a friend of my father when he collected Far Eastern art, said it was a mystery just up your street. I don’t know where it will lead or if there’s any money in it—but I’m willing to go halves with you on whatever you turn up. Edward said that would appeal to your gambling instincts.’ She rubbed an eyebrow with her knuckle again. ‘Does it?’
Michael rolled the Havana between his fingers again. He blew out some smoke, but directed it away from Isobel Sadler. He tried the coffee—yes, it was cold. He turned over in his mind what she had told him. For openers it was a crazy story. More, he rather thought that Ryan and Isobel Sadler were overrating his ability to search out a particular mystery—he had never encountered anything like this before.
She held her hand to her throat. The smooth skin of her neck contrasted strongly with the roughness of her hands—yes, she needed money all right. The farm must be a fight but … the picture just wasn’t good enough to pursue.
At length he said, ‘I admit it was a coincidence about this man Molyneux’s visit and the burglary, but coincidences happen all the time. That’s often all they are: coincidences.’
‘Why should he lie about the house sale in Cirencester?’
‘People lie all the time, often for no very good reason.’
‘All right, then, I’ll give you another reason to help me. I’ve lived alone for a year and a half now, since my father died. I’m hanging on to the farm, but only just. I’ve got a manager but that’s all. I can’t afford to hire any more labour, so I have to work the land myself. I’ve been scared since the break-in, though I never was before. I simply can’t afford an expensive alarm system. So I’d like to get the damn picture away from the house, even if it isn’t worth anything. On the other hand, if it is, even a few thousands, it would come in very handy.’
‘But it isn’t worth anything,’ Michael said. ‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Bah! Don’t you dealers ever make mistakes?’ She coughed and batted a cloud of cigar smoke away from her. ‘I seem to read about them from time to time in the newspapers. Isn’t there any research you can do? Maybe Holbein painted a bit of it, or perhaps it once belonged to somebody famous. That would add to its value, wouldn’t it? Please don’t say no.’ She suddenly looked much less composed than before. Her hair had fallen forward again and this time she let it just hang there. ‘I don’t want to give up the picture, but I don’t want it at home just now, either. Please!’
Was she acting? She didn’t look the type to scare easily but being alone in a big farmhouse was, Michael supposed, very different from living in his own small house in the middle of Chelsea. He saw that her cheeks had flushed. They had a pink bloom like the woman’s face in the painting which old Julius was restoring. That helped to make up his mind. The woman in Dover Street might well be an unsought-for bonus. If so, he could probably afford to spend some time on this other woman in front of him, even though Greg wouldn’t thank him for taking on the extra burden.
‘All right, all right. You walk in here out of the blue, you insult me, you criticise the coffee and make rude gestures about my cigars. Irresistible. Enbloodychanting.’ But then he smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll take it off your hands—but at a price, and only for a week or so. If I can’t find out anything in that time I’ll have to hand it back. Is that a deal?’
‘What do you mean, “at a price”?’
‘Edward Ryan was not quite right. I’m not so much a gambling man as one who likes a wager. The difference matters, at least to me and my friends. I don’t bet on the horses or play cards and I can’t stand roulette, not for long anyway. That phone call you overheard just now was me practising my vice. Apart from this cigar, of course. And my whisky drinking and my chocolate habit.’ He smiled. ‘You won’t have heard yet since we’ve been cooped up in here but it has just been announced that the film actress Margaret Masson has been divorced for the fifth time. Now, I belong to a small wagering club. Very small, only six members. Every January the first we each put up two thousand pounds, the money going to the one who, by the following Christmas, thinks up the most amusing wager. We don’t do it regularly, only when something in the news crops up that takes our fancy. The stakes for the wagers are limited to a hundred pounds each, but at the end of the year we vote on who has had the best idea in the previous twelve months. The lucky man pockets ten thousand pounds—a nice Christmas present. That was a friend on the phone, a member of the club. His idea—and it’s a good one—is that we wager on how long it is before Miss Masson announces her next engagement. You heard me opt for three weeks.’
‘What you do in your spare time is your own business—but why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I’m going to propose a wager to you.’
‘I don’t gamble.’
‘Don’t be such a prig. And I haven’t told you the wager yet.’
Isobel Sadler said nothing.
‘Don’t worry, I have only mild vices.’ He noticed that his cigar was going out and put a match to it. He rolled the leaves in the flame and flooded the room with billows of smoke. ‘Dinner.’
She looked at him.
‘If I find out anything about your picture that you didn’t know and which increases its value, you agree to have dinner with me one of the times you are in London.’
‘Do you often have dinner with strange women?’
‘You’re not that strange. Rita Hayworth wouldn’t have worn that kilt, and you seem to like cold coffee, but no other oddities, as far as I can see.’
She smiled. ‘I don’t know whether I want to win or lose this bet—I mean wager.’
‘Then you accept?’
‘On condition that you don’t smoke one of those filthy objects until the very end.’
‘Done.’
‘Thank you,’ she breathed, quickly getting to her feet. ‘I was beginning to think the picture was bringing me bad luck.’ She began fiddling with her belt. ‘I come up to London one evening a week—I have to get away from the farm one night or I’d go crazy. Shall I look in next week?’
‘No.’ He put the coffee-cups back on the tray. ‘Give me a fortnight. There are other things I have to do, you know,’ he said, smiling. ‘I have a gallery to run, cigars to buy, wagers to win.’ They shook hands.
‘Very well. Two weeks it is. Expect me at the same time as today.’
He opened the door and showed her through to the main gallery. Michael pointed to a watercolour of some stone houses. ‘That was painted not far from you, in Broadway, Worcestershire. It’s a Sargent. He lived there for a while. Henry James used to visit him.’
They both looked at the picture, then Michael opened the gallery door. Isobel Sadler hesitated at the main entrance into Mason’s Yard and said, ‘It’s a beautiful gallery, Mr Whiting.’
>
‘Thank you.’
‘Yes. How would I describe it?’ She paused, an eyebrow raised in the sharpest angle he’d yet seen. ‘“Well worth a detour”?’
2
In the next few days Michael and Gregory Wood were very stretched. There was a house sale in Yorkshire which had to be visited, an offer of some eighteenth-century portraits from Ireland, which took another forty-eight hours out of the schedule, and Michael had to dance attendance on an Australian collector who suddenly appeared in London and expressed a serious interest in the Gainsborough. That meant three breakfasts in a row at the Westbury Hotel.
Then there was Robyn’s wedding. Michael’s younger sister had so far led an itinerant life. A zoologist by training, she had spent her early twenties in some of the remotest spots on earth, studying the local animals. Now she was one of the staff at a safari park near Bath. Her husband-to-be was a young Oxford don and, since Michael and Robyn’s father was dead, it fell to the brother to give Robyn away. The wedding was held in the local church in Somerset and Robyn, for once, was too nervous to tease Michael. He made her laugh when he told her that her old-fashioned lace dress made her look ‘Ottobloodycento’, and she was delighted with his present, a small oil by Rolandt Savery showing the animals entering the ark. His mother looked more relaxed than he had seen her since his father had died and he travelled back to London feeling very content and ready to make a few inquiries on Isobel Sadler’s behalf.
When she arrived back at the gallery two weeks after her first visit, Michael saw her not in the inner sanctum but in his office on the first floor, above the main showroom. She was led upstairs by Elizabeth Allsopp, his secretary. This time Isobel Sadler had left her raincoat downstairs to dry, and Michael thought the green dress she was wearing underneath did not entirely suit her colouring. He noticed that the plaster had been removed from her cheek. But her hair still flopped down one side of her face and she looked more Hayworth than ever.
‘No more burglaries, I hope?’ he said after she sat down.
‘No, thank God. And just as well. With all the rain we’ve had since I last saw you, we’re dropping behind with the silage.’ She brushed her hair off her face in a gesture Michael was already fond of. ‘Any news?’
Michael pointed up behind her head. She turned. His small office, which had two high windows looking out into Mason’s Yard, was lined from floor to ceiling with art books and auction catalogues, save for one spot, opposite his desk, which he kept free to hang his favourite picture of the moment, or something he was researching. Isobel Sadler’s picture hung there now.
‘When we have dinner—’ He smiled and held his hand up to steady her as she turned back to him eagerly. ‘There’s good news—and there’s bad news. On the one hand, yes, I think I have solved your mystery … on the other hand, it’s a good bet that I’ve uncovered a more tantalising one.’
She put an elbow on the edge of his desk and rested her chin in her hand. ‘Ryan was right; you are a good detective.’
Michael shook his head. ‘Hold on. So far it hasn’t been difficult. If I’m right, the real problems are just beginning.’
He took a cigar from the ashtray and wedged it into his mouth. He had taken off his jacket, revealing a pair of bright scarlet braces. He hooked a thumb inside one and rocked back in his chair.
‘Let’s get the Holbein thing out of the way first. I showed your picture to Frank Cobbold at the National Gallery—he’s the top-ranking Holbein scholar in Britain at the moment—and he confirmed there is not even the smell of the master in your painting. So you can forget that.’
She moved slightly and bit her lip. She blew the cigar smoke back towards him. ‘What else?’
‘I can’t rush this. I’ve got to give it to you in the right order or it’s confusing.’ He looked out into the yard. The weather had indeed changed: sluicing rain, bang on schedule to drench the rented morning-suits and fancy hats at Ascot races. He pulled on his cigar. ‘Cobbold also pointed out what I should have remembered. There were almost no English landscape painters of the sixteenth century. Your picture may have been painted in England but the artist himself was possibly Flemish. I haven’t actually been able to find out who painted the picture but, as I shall show you in a moment, that may not matter. In fact, let’s forget the picture completely to begin with and concentrate on the documents you didn’t buy. I know you didn’t ask me to, but the first thing I did, after that quick check with Cobbold, was with Sotheby’s. I thought I’d take a closer look at the documents in question. You may not have noticed but, according to Sotheby’s catalogue, the documents you tried to acquire were the property of one Matthew Hope—does that name mean anything to you?’
Isobel Sadler shook her head.
‘Since he wasn’t bothered about anonymity, Sotheby’s were happy to give me his address. Hope is a retired vicar living in Lincolnshire. Here I had a stroke of luck, since I had to go to Yorkshire for another reason. So instead of going by train I took my car and called in on the old boy. He was a talkative old chap and didn’t mind in the least that Sotheby’s had given me his address. At seventy-eight he still has all his marbles and was glad of the company. Like you he’s interested in the sixteenth century but in his case, being a vicar, his main concern is in how English Protestantism grew out of English Catholicism. He was naturally very interested in the dissolution of the monasteries and used to have quite a collection of documents relating to the whole business. I say “used to” because he’s been selling them off, bit by bit, to supplement his pension.’
Isobel Sadler nodded reflectively. Michael could see she identified with the poor man.
‘The ones you were interested in were just the latest batch to come under the hammer. But—and this is the good news—he has kept photocopies of everything he ever had. I told him, quite openly, that I had come on a simple errand, on my way north to a house sale in Yorkshire. I said that a friend of mine whose ancestors were mentioned in the latest batch of papers which he had sold had wanted to buy them but had been pipped at the post, so to speak. Yes, he said, they had fetched more than he expected. So I asked if he would be willing to let me take away a photocopy of his photocopy of the documents. He didn’t mind at all and, after a couple of sherries and I had given him an opinion on a painting he had, off we went into Market Rasen together to the photocopying shop.’
Michael leaned forward, placed his cigar back in the ashtray and reached into a drawer in his desk. He took from it a folder with some sheets of paper inside. ‘Here they are. They could be clearer but I think they are good enough for what we want.’
Isobel Sadler lifted her chin off her hand and took the folder. She opened it and scanned the papers. After a brief moment, she looked up. ‘These aren’t letters. And they’re in Latin.’
‘You don’t read it?’
The eyebrows lifted. ‘I’m a farmer.’
Michael nodded. ‘I know you were mainly concerned with the letters. They are in a separate file in the drawer here. But the Latin documents are much more interesting.’
‘Oh yes? Why?’
‘The important one consists of an inventory, a list of things that were in a monastery in Somerset, near the village of Monksilver. Now, I’ve checked in the history books and that was indeed one of the monasteries that Bad Bill was involved with. Sir William visited Monksilver in November 1537 to assess its assets and supervise its break-up. That time, however, it seems that he was too late. Most of the more valuable assets had gone by the time he arrived. Two of the letters you were interested in relate to his arrival at Monksilver, to find only the lead roof intact and some of the stained glass. On the other hand, most of the other treasures—and there was quite a lot—had vanished. Salted away into the Somerset air.’
Michael took back the photocopied documents from Isobel Sadler and arranged them in front of him. ‘Monksilver, I have found out, was a rich monastery. The monks were medical men, would you believe? And they had a number of wealthy patrons
—patients, in effect, whom they had cured.’ He noticed a puzzled look on Isobel Sadler’s face and explained what he had himself learned only days before. ‘This was before the age of medicine proper, don’t forget. The monks were educated men and a lot of them were travellers: they picked up cures and treatments on their travels and learned how to use herbs as drugs. There was another similar monastery at Evesham and that also became rich through medicine—it was by no means unheard of.’
‘Rich monks?’
‘The monks took a vow of poverty of course but the money they made went back to the monastery and not just into the fabric of the building—they bought books and manuscripts, commissioned candlesticks, reliquaries, jewelled crosses. It became famous for its treasures—most of which were silver. That’s why the village is now called Monksilver.
‘None of it was ever found, either then by Sir William or later. According to legend—I’ve checked this in the books too—the monks took the silver north, intending to hide it in one of the many caves in the Mendip Hills. Unfortunately, they were in so much of a hurry that they took a short cut across the estuary of the River Parrett north of Bridgwater. So weighed down were the carts they were using, allegedly, that they could only travel at two miles an hour. Hence the need for a short cut. Unfortunately, they made the crossing of the Parrett in October when the tides in the Severn Channel are especially strong.’ Michael picked up a pair of scissors and dropped them on to the desk in front of him. ‘They got caught halfway across the estuary and the whole lot sank in quicksand and disappeared.’
