by Peter Watson
‘Weren’t you a bit young?’
‘It was more an academic interest than a practical one. I became interested in gamblers and unusual wagers, as I told you.’ Michael tugged the hairs on his eyebrow. ‘There was a man called George Osbaldeston in the eighteenth century who was known as “The Squire”. He found it was boring to be an MP and much preferred his “matches”, as he called his wagers. There were women like Lady Archer and Lady Buckinghamshire, who played cards better than almost anyone, but still ruined themselves.
‘I began collecting prints of all these people and their doings—artists like Gillray, Hogarth, and so on. I began visiting antique shops and local auctions. I found loaded dice made in the seventeenth century and an eighteenth-century roulette table with a special mechanism underneath, so that the croupier could control the turning of the wheel. When I had saved up a bit more, I started collecting proper portraits—oil paintings—of the people, and etchings of the great gambling clubs that no longer exist—the Cocoa Tree, Almack’s, Goostree’s and Arthur’s. Without realising, I had quite a collection.
‘Then, when I was twenty-one, I went skiing. Nowadays my sister is a great skier—goes all over the world—but then it was my first time and I suppose I was clumsy. I fell. Worse, I fell in front of someone else whose ski sliced into my wrist—
Isobel winced.
‘The bones were all broken but on top of that the tendons were very badly cut. It took months to heal and by that time the place I had won at the Royal College of Music had, quite rightly, been given to someone else. I never played the cello again.
‘The only other thing I knew was the world of seventeenth—and eighteenth-century British sporting pictures. Through Elgar, I had become interested in Englishness.
‘So, with my left arm still not functioning properly, I applied to Sotheby’s. In those days you used to start on the front counter, receiving pictures brought in to be valued. In my very first week someone arrived with a large picture—I’ll never forget it—showing a man on horseback. They thought it might be worth a few hundred pounds, possibly five thousand if they were very lucky. Imagine how flabbergasted they were to find that it was a long-lost Guido Reni; and how astounded when it sold at auction, three months later, for one point eight million pounds. I was just as astounded, and, of course, that packed a million volts into my system. I’ve been wired ever since. My sister calls it Anopheles arte, the Bond Street Bug.’
‘Have you worked anywhere else than London?’
‘Oh yes. My break came when I was posted to Glasgow. It was in Glasgow that I acquired my taste for Scotch. Littlemill is nearby, so is Interleven and Auchentoshen.’
‘What bugs did you catch in Scotland?’
Michael grinned. ‘To cut the story short, in my first nine months in Glasgow I managed to discover not one but two lost masterpieces, a Canaletto and a Reynolds. That got me promoted to New York. I had three wonderful years in Manhattan but there simply aren’t any paintings in America waiting to be discovered. On one of my trips back to London for a board meeting I sat next to Greg Wood on the plane. He was a banker who had acted for Sotheby’s once or twice and had also got the bug. We got to know each other and, later on, when I said I was thinking of moving back to London, he asked whether, if he could raise the money, I would contemplate setting up shop with him. And that’s what happened. In the trade I’m told we are known as “Fish and Chip”—Whiting and Wood—but they can call us what they like. He’s brilliant with money and I’ve been lucky with pictures.’
‘Ed Ryan says you’ve made some major discoveries. Tell me.’
Michael shrugged and chewed some fish. ‘I suppose my biggest coup was a picture I spotted at a house sale in Hampshire. The family were originally French and had escaped here during the French Revolution. The picture was an equestrian portrait and was estimated at between fifteen hundred and two and a half thousand pounds. The bidding went up to six thousand five hundred—someone else probably had an idea it was more than it seemed. Anyway, I got it. Later, I was able to prove it was a Van Dyck painted here in Britain but taken to France in the eighteenth century. The end of the story is that I sold the picture to the Gilston Museum in Texas.’
‘For how much?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you.’
‘Ed Ryan says two million.’
‘Halve it and you’d be closer. Greg’s job’s been easier since then.’
The food, and the wine, were finished.
‘Coffee?’ Michael asked.
She shook her head. ‘As I said, I shouldn’t be too late tonight. And you’re about to set fire to that horrible object. I’ve kept my part of the wager—so let’s go.’
While they waited for the bill to be brought Michael, undaunted, fished his Havana from his top pocket and lit up. Isobel covered her nose with a napkin. ‘You don’t know what you are missing,’ said Michael, grinning.
When the bill came, Michael handed his credit card to the waiter and they got up and went out, waiting by the front desk for the credit card to be cleared.
‘What’s that?’ asked Isobel as they waited.
He followed her gaze. ‘It’s a portrait of the owner—didn’t you recognise him? It’s not the best painting in the room, I agree—’
‘I didn’t ask who it was,’ she cut in tartly. ‘I asked what. That thing around his neck—what is it?’
‘I think it’s called a tastevin. It’s a silver dish or cup which the wine masters in France use. They hang them round their necks on ribbons, or chains, when they are elected to the wine masters’ society. It’s a sort of honour. Have you lost something?’
Isobel was bent almost double, dipping into her bag. She took out the photograph of the picture. ‘Look.’ She pointed to the figure. ‘He’s got something hanging round his neck too.’
‘You think Mercury was a master of wine, do you?’ Even as he said this Michael wanted to bite back the words.
‘No, don’t be stupid! He was a member of some order or something. There’s a coin or a medallion on the end of the chain—can you make out what’s on it?’
It was fashionably dark in the restaurant, so Michael took back his card, signed the form, and they moved out to the lobby where there was more light.
‘It’s not very clear, is it?’ said Isobel. ‘I suppose a four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old picture picks up its share of grime. It looks like a man with a spear or a long rod …’
‘The other thing, on the left, looks to me more like an animal. Cleaning the picture might help. Hold on! I’ve got it … it’s a dragon. Look, little puffs of steam or smoke coming from its nostrils–’
‘St George and the dragon!’ said Isobel.
‘He was a member of the Garter,’ breathed Michael. ‘Fanbloodytastic. Phebloodynomenal. At last, at last, at last! Dazzling, Inspector Sadler, and thank God for Keating’s.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Just after ten. If I drop you off now, what do you say if I pick you up in my car around ten in the morning?’
‘To do what?’
‘To get down to Windsor by the time the St George’s Chapel opens, that’s what. That’s where all the Garter ceremonies are held and that’s where the complete list of Garter members will be.’
‘But how will we know who our man is?’
‘We won’t, not exactly. But don’t forget, there are only ever twenty-four members of the Garter at any one time. To judge from the painting, our Mercury was about fifty in 1537. That should narrow the field down considerably.’
‘But that’s not enough. We need to narrow it down to just one.’
Michael steered Isobel out into the street. ‘You made the breakthrough tonight, Isobel. It took a gold-card brain to notice the pendant. But I have my uses too.’ He tapped his temple. ‘It’s not just cigar smoke up here, you know. You’re forgetting that there is in Britain such a thing as the National Portrait Gallery—with eight thousand pictures of famous Britons. Even if we get six possible names from Windsor, we
can then go on to the NPG and see, from the portraits they have there, who our man is.’
They walked north and found a taxi waiting outside the Ritz. As Michael held the door for her, she grinned and pointed. “Thank you for not smoking,” she read out loud. Furious, Michael knocked the end off his Havana and followed her into the cab.
Isobel was staying in a small house in Montpelier Mews, near Brompton Oratory. Michael waited for her to be let in before he told the taxi to move off. He couldn’t quite see who her host was, if it was male or female. As the taxi twisted back to the Brompton Road, then down Sloane Avenue towards Justice Walk, where he lived, he noticed against his will the smell of Isobel’s shampoo, which lingered on in the back of the taxi. He was consumed with a sudden, and utterly useless, lust.
4
There was one thing to be said for bad summer weather. It kept the number of tourists down. By the time Isobel and Michael had fought their way down the M4, through sluicing rain, to be at St George’s Chapel by 10.45, when it opened, there were already a few of the more dedicated tourist nations in evidence—Germans, Japanese, Dutch. But it could have been much worse.
Neither Isobel nor Michael had been to the chapel before. They stood for a moment looking up at the stained-glass windows, four rows of saints in scarlet and deep blue. On either side, the chicory-coloured wood of the gothic choir stalls stretched down to the altar, each one surmounted by the banner of its present Garter occupant—purple slashes, yellow squares, black eagles. The pageantry was perfect.
As she looked above her, Isobel said, ‘Why do you think the painter gave Mercury a chain with St George on the medallion? Wouldn’t a garter have made more sense? It is the Order of the Garter, after all.’
‘That had occurred to me. I suppose a garter would have been too obvious, or didn’t suit the composition. Look, there’s a vicar or curate or something. Let’s ask him where we can find a list of members.’
He crossed the nave and approached the man who had just slipped out from a corner door and appeared to be making for the organ. Isobel couldn’t hear the conversation but she saw the man turn and point back to the door he had entered by. Michael waved her over, and they both converged on it. Through the door they found themselves in a small courtyard with a glassed-in cloister running around all four sides. The stone, thought Michael, smiling to himself, was whisky-coloured. They walked along one side, then turned left. Through an arch they came to a cream-painted building on their right. Over a doorway in black letters were the words ‘St George’s House’. They rang the bell and a woman came out to meet them.
‘May I help you?’
‘Hello,’ said Michael, handing her his card. ‘I am an art dealer and we are researching a painting. We need to identify a member of the Garter from the sixteenth century. I wonder if you could let us see the Garter records for the years 1500 to 1550, please.’ In the car on the way down to Windsor, Isobel and he had worked out that if Mercury, as they referred to him for the time being, was about fifty in 1537 he could not have received the Garter before he was, say, fifteen, even in those days. That meant the earliest date they needed to look at was 1502 but Michael rounded down the date to be on the safe side.
‘What do you know about this person?’ asked the woman, showing them into an office.
‘Just his appearance,’ said Michael. ‘Which gives us an approximate age, that’s all.’
‘This way, then.’ She led them through the outer office into another corridor with windows down one side, looking out on to the Curfew Tower of the castle and the Thames beyond. They were quite high up. They were shown into a small room with a large window. The woman sat them at a large table and then took from a glass-fronted cupboard a large book, bound in blue leather. ‘This is the blue book,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid there are no statutes of the Garter before Henry VIII’s reign, 1509, so this is the best we can do. Also, in the first instance, I will have to ask you to use these. They are facsimiles of the original Garter ledgers. The originals are now quite fragile, as I’m sure you appreciate. Even so, I’ll have to lock you in, I’m afraid—but when you wish to leave just press that buzzer near the door and one of us will come and release you.’ She smiled. ‘Not everyone gets locked in at Windsor Castle. How long do you think you might be?’
‘An hour, two at the most,’ said Michael. ‘I’m hoping our task will be fairly simple.’
After the woman had gone, locking the door behind her, they sat side by side and opened the ledger.
‘Oh Lord! This is treason,’ said Michael, after a few moments. ‘It’s alphabloodybetical, not chronological.’ That meant they had to work their way through the entire volume, which applied to Garter activities from 1509, the date of Henry VIII’s accession to the English throne. Against each entry was a name, sometimes quite a long name, the date of the candidate’s elevation to the Garter and a brief description of why the award had been bestowed.
The writing was not easy to follow. It was in English but not modern English. ‘Much’ was written as ‘myche’, ‘duty’ as ‘duetie’, ‘audience’ as ‘awdiens’. Worse, the handwriting varied and the ink had faded patchily. Still, they made progress, and in about an hour and a half they had five names which, to judge from the dates of their elevation, might be Mercury. Two of them—Sir Ranulph Kenny and Sir Edward Whitlock—even came from the West Country. ‘I’d lay odds on it being either of them,’ Michael breathed, looking at Isobel.
But she shook her head and grinned. ‘I still owe you for the V and A catalogue. I’m not getting in any deeper just yet.’
As instructed, Michael pressed the buzzer and they were released. They thanked the woman and were led back the way they had come, into St George’s Chapel. An organ practice was now in full swing and many of the tourists, mindful of the heavy summer rain outside, were sitting in the chapel pews, enjoying the free show.
‘Lunch?’ said Michael, as they came out into the fresh air. ‘There’s a nice pub on the river here.’
‘Let’s get on,’ said Isobel tartly. ‘I’m surprised you want to stop now.’
Michael lit his cigar. ‘Ah … well. I happen to think a mild celebration is called for.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Although Molyneux started with such a time advantage, I think we have already overtaken him.’
‘Surely not. What on earth makes you think so?’
‘That woman back there in the Garter office. If Molyneux was ahead of us, he would already have been here, on the same errand. Two people making the same unusual request within a few days of each other would be bound to arouse curiosity and that woman would almost certainly have mentioned it. The fact that she didn’t must mean that Molyneux hasn’t worked out what we have worked out.’
They reached the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square, at a few minutes after two. The head librarian was still at lunch, they were told, and only she could grant access to the study collection in the basement. This was the vast bank of 8000 portraits which the gallery held but which were not judged to be of sufficient interest or artistic quality to be put on permanent display.
Michael gave Isobel a wink, to rub in the fact that they could have had a quick lunch in Windsor after all, and the two of them strolled around the gallery, killing time. Michael took Isobel to see the portraits of Elgar, Delius and Thomas Tallis.
Just on half past two they presented themselves back at the library and were shown in. They gave their list to the head librarian, a glamorous Indian in a peach-coloured sari, who cast her eye over the names and dates and scribbled a note in pencil. She looked up over her spectacles and said, ‘If you would care to wait at desks fourteen and fifteen, whatever holdings we have will be brought to you in a few minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ said Michael. ‘Does it help if I tell you all those names were members of the Garter?’
‘It might. If the names are not held separately, we may have some group portraits in which some figures are not identified.
But let’s see what we have filed by name first.’
They found their desks and sat down. ‘You see,’ Michael whispered. ‘She didn’t respond at all when I mentioned the Garter. Molyneux hasn’t been on this part of the trail, either.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, looking around the library and at the other people using it. There was a dealer Michael knew vaguely, several students and a few better-dressed people who looked like foreign academics.
Then a young woman in a dark blue tracksuit moved towards them. Michael didn’t realise at first that she was the assistant librarian—it was fairly casual dress, after all. But she was carrying two large green folders, boxes really, and slid them on to the desk. ‘The others will be here in a moment,’ she said.
On the cover of one folder the words ‘Sir Ninian Greene’ were typed on a white label. Gingerly, Isobel turned back the cover. Sir Ninian wasn’t Mercury. He was fat, almost bald, and had onion-like eyes.
The second folder had ‘Sir Edward Whitlock’ typed on it. ‘Aha!’ said Michael, reaching for it and turning back the cover. Sir Edward had long flowing hair, a moustache and, to judge from his lace cuffs, was a bit of a dandy. He wasn’t Mercury either.
The librarian in the tracksuit had reappeared and this time she brought ‘Sir Wyndham Tyler’. Isobel pulled back the cover to reveal a blond, round-faced man with no chin at all, let alone one with a cleft in it.
‘Two left,’ said Michael. ‘I’m getting nervous. It must be Ranulph Kenny.’
