Death of an Elgin Marble

by David Dickinson

  ‘I’ve got some interesting news, my lord.’ John Hudson, the young man who worked for the New York Times, was taking off his gloves in the Powerscourt drawing room. ‘It comes from my colleague and friend Franklin in New York.’

  ‘It must concern the millionaire with the eye for a fake, Lincoln Mitchell, was that his name?’

  ‘Correct, my lord, well remembered. Now then, Franklin thought of writing to the man and asking for an interview. That is the normal practice on the Times. It usually works. But something told him that he might be fobbed off. So he decided to call at Mitchell’s house on the pretext that he was on his way back to the city after visiting a friend who was studying at West Point. It would be on the off chance that the great collector would be at home, nothing important.’

  Hudson paused and checked a letter in his hand.

  ‘So what happened? Was the Caryatid hiding in the attics?’

  ‘We don’t know. She could have been standing to attention in the hall or taking tea with the millionaire in the drawing room or posing in the gallery attached to the house. Franklin never got past the front door. A rather flustered butler – Franklin’s own words – greeted him and reported that Mr Mitchell was suffering from an infectious disease which made it impossible for him to receive visitors. Mr Mitchell was very sorry. He would be more than happy to welcome Franklin another day.’

  ‘And did your friend Franklin believe the story?’

  ‘No, my lord. The story was plausible, the butler’s delivery was not. He sounded, my friend reported, like a man who has been told that telling lies is a sin from a very early age and is, therefore, hopeless at telling them. There is more, however.’

  John Hudson turned to another page of his letter. ‘We reporters are curious people by nature, my lord. That’s probably one reason why we become reporters in the first place. Anyway, Franklin spent some time ferreting about in the village near the millionaire’s mansion. The New York Times, he reported, was happy to dispense generous hospitality to the clients of the Red Fox Inn. Thirsty folk, these country people apparently, but two pieces of gossip emerged which Franklin thought worth passing on across the Atlantic. The first was that an extension had recently been built to the great gallery attached to the house where Mr Mitchell deploys his finest works. And the second concerned a van driver from New York City who had asked in the Red Fox for directions to the Mitchell establishment. The porter who helped him on his way was of the opinion that this must be a fairly bulky delivery because the van was large and, unusually, had no names written on the side. It was, apparently, Franklin said, an anonymous van. Most of them have displays of the owners’ names and businesses in huge letters on the sides and at the back. Not this one.’

  ‘Did the porter have a theory? Does Franklin have a theory?’

  ‘Neither of them does, my lord. Franklin merely thought it might be significant. Then again, it could mean nothing at all.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Powerscourt, ‘very interesting. I wonder if I could enlist your help on another related matter.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Powerscourt told the young man about the three people with links to the art world who had been sent to prison: Easton, the man who forged the old ladies’ wills, Blakeway the fraudster now believed to be running an antique shop in Burford, and Michael Moloney Kennedy, the man with his hand in the till at one of the great auctioneers.

  ‘You’d like me to see if I can get on their scent, run them to earth maybe, is that it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Powerscourt replied.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, my lord. Delighted to be able to help. There is one other thing that might interest you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  The young man pulled a newspaper article from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘This is the piece I wrote for the New York Times about the Caryatid Appeal. My masters really liked it. They want a follow-up story.’

  ‘Good. I look forward to reading it.’

  ‘There’s more, my lord. The readers were so enthused they began sending in their own contributions. You know how devoted rich Americans are to charity. I’ve always thought the millionaires are convinced that the charitable donations will atone for their sins. The Times has arranged for the money to be sent to a Wall Street bank with close links to Finch’s here in London. The total has already passed one thousand dollars.’

  ‘God bless my soul,’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt.

  19

  Lady Lucy could see a great obelisk way over to her left. In front of her was a Palladian bridge across the lower part of a lake. Everywhere you looked, often appearing without warning round a bend in the road, hiding behind a clump of trees, were temples of Venus, temples of Artemis, classical pavilions and Chinese pagodas. There was a rotunda with a perfect reflection in the water and a tiny pantheon by the side of a river.

  ‘Bloody temples, bloody statues, bloody useless, all of them.’ The cabbie driving her to the Hellenic College looked as though he might have been about the same age as the buildings he criticized.

  ‘Why couldn’t they build something useful, like homes for people to live in?’ the driver demanded, negotiating a great pothole in the road and opening up a view of another patch of higher ground with a scale copy of the Parthenon sitting happily on top of its Home Counties Acropolis.

  ‘Perhaps they built some of those too,’ said Lady Lucy, reluctant to enter into argument with the cabbie.

  The driver snorted. ‘They say,’ he observed, spitting vigorously into the side of the road, ‘that some of the people in this college you’re going to come out late in the evenings in the summer and dance round these bloody temple things. Do it in winter too, when the moon is full. All dressed in white, the girls, like bridesmaids at some bloody wedding. Bloody pagans if you ask me. Who would have thought Amersham could be a centre for devil worship?’

  They had now drawn up at the front of the College, another neo-classical building with fine columns at the front.

  ‘Thank you kindly, madam,’ said the cabbie. ‘I’ll come back for you in an hour.’

  The Headmaster was a tall man in his late forties with that air of authority men acquire through years of telling children what to do. Through the window behind his desk Lady Lucy could see the workmen finishing off the construction of their very own Erechtheion, a companion structure for the Parthenon round the corner. She could see the beginning of the porch, but there didn’t seem to be anybody at home.

  ‘Welcome to the College, Mrs Stamatis, welcome indeed. Some Greek coffee after your journey perhaps?’

  Richard Doganis rang a bell and placed his order. ‘You said in your letter that you were looking for places for your two boys, thirteen and fifteen, is that right?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘my boys Robert and Thomas are currently at the day school attached to the Cathedral in London, but my husband is going to have to move abroad quite soon.’

  The coffee arrived, sweet and sickly.

  ‘Forgive me, Mrs Stamatis, your husband is a Greek gentleman?’

  ‘My Panos?’ Mrs Stamatis smiled at the Headmaster. ‘He most certainly is. We have an agreement, you see, Headmaster. I got to give my boys English Christian names, but he has the dominant say in their education. He’s very proud of being Greek, my husband, and he wants his boys to be brought up in the Greek tradition. The only concession he is prepared to make to English ways is that he wants them to play cricket. He’s quite determined about that.’

  Lady Lucy Stamatis thought Francis would have approved of the comments about cricket.

  ‘And is the good Mr Stamatis in business, might I ask?’

  ‘How silly of me, Mr Doganis, I should have said. My husband is one of the leading Greek import–export merchants in Europe. His firm want him to travel all over the Continent in the next couple of years, searching out new business opportunities. He wants me to go with him.’

  ‘I’m sure he will be as successful in futu
re as he has been in the past. Now then, Mrs Stamatis, I believe in letting our potential parents see round the school before I give my little talk about our traditions and our policies. So, the Bursar will take you round the living quarters and the dormitories where your boys would sleep. She’ll show you the kitchens where—’ the Headmaster checked his watch carefully ‘—lunch should be in preparation and then she’ll show you one or two classrooms. I look forward to welcoming you back on your return.’

  The Headmaster rose from his desk and bowed to his visitor. The Bursar, a formidable woman in her early forties who looked, Lady Lucy thought, like the matron of a hospital or maybe a Mother Superior, took her round the practical side of the school, the dormitories, the washrooms, the common rooms. Then they peeped into a mathematics class where younger children seemed to be reciting their mathematical tables in Greek to a sing-song beat conducted vigorously by the young teacher. The room next door was filled with older pupils. They were reading from their English books. The first reader was a boy of about sixteen with bright red hair.

  ‘“But most the modern Pict’s ignoble boast, To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared: Cold as the crags upon his native coast, His mind as barren and his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains: Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains, And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s chains.”’

  ‘We’re reading Byron’s Childe Harold,’ the teacher informed his visitors. ‘The modern Pict is a reference to Lord Elgin, the man who brought the Parthenon Marbles to London. It would be fair to say that Byron was not a devotee of the former Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, also known as the Ottoman Empire.’

  He nodded to a blond lad at the back who carried on.

  ‘“Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee, Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved; Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne’er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorr’d!”’

  ‘Very good, Konstantin,’ said the teacher, a middle-aged man beginning to go bald. The Bursar took her visitor back to the Headmaster. He told her about the academic curriculum, the religious devotions supervised by the Greek Orthodox Church, the various festivals and ceremonies conducted throughout the year. He pressed more information onto Mrs Stamatis, about fees, about sport, which included cricket, Mrs Stamatis was pleased to hear, and the history of the school and its links with other academies in Greece itself and on the Continent.

  ‘This is all very impressive, Mr Doganis. I must speak to my husband. Could I just ask you one question? Panos and I went to hear a lecture in London recently given by the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, Dr Tristram Stanhope. I believe he has some links with the College here?’

  The Headmaster nodded vigorously. ‘Indeed he does,’ he said. ‘He is one of our most valuable consultants. You heard the pupils reading from Byron this morning, I believe? The teacher, Mr Blakeway, is a protégé of Dr Stanhope’s. It was the good doctor who brought him to us.’

  PART FOUR

  THE PARTHENON PROCESSION

  Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

  Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

  And all her silken flanks with garlands

  drest?

  What little town by river or sea-shore,

  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

  Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

  And, little town, thy streets for evermore

  Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

  Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

  O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede

  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

  With forest branches and the trodden

  weed;

  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of

  thought

  As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!

  When old age shall this generation waste,

  Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou

  say’st,

  ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to

  know.’

  John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

  20

  Lady Lucy’s wrinkled cabbie was driving her back to the station, muttering something inaudible as he drove them past the porticoes and the pillars that adorned the great estate. Lady Lucy was satisfied with her morning’s work. She had found the elusive Mr Blakeway. Francis would be pleased with her. And as they reached the station there was some other connection with Amersham she had heard of in this investigation. She chased it in her memory all the way back to London but she couldn’t find it. Maybe Francis would know.

  As Lady Lucy’s train was leaving, her husband was walking past the display windows of the great auctioneers Linfords. He was wondering yet again about the whereabouts of the missing Caryatid and hoping the lady was not being mistreated. He had gone right past the picture before he realized what it was. He turned back and stared through the glass. There, beautifully displayed and discreetly lit, was a painting. It showed the garden of a handsome house on the Thames. The river, bathed in sunlight, is curving away towards the west. Shafts of light from the last of the sun are falling in stripes between the lime trees. A large boat, the Lord Mayor’s barge, is making its way along the river. A small dog is barking at the vessel from the wall by the river. The artist was recorded as Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851. Powerscourt felt certain that this was Mortlake Terrace, Summer’s Evening, the painting that had been stolen from the drawing room of Mr and Mrs Wilson’s Norfolk House in Chiswick Mall over a year before. He remembered Mrs Wilson’s description of the picture and the engraving he had seen at one of the art dealers.

  He also felt certain that something was wrong, terribly wrong. According to their theory, this painting had been taken as a trial run for the theft of the Caryatid. A buyer had been found for the picture before it was stolen from the walls of the house by the Thames. After the burglary the painting would be delivered in secret to the purchaser and it would never be seen in public again. But the theft had taken place over a year ago. And the painting was not hiding away in a rich man’s mansion. She was on public display in the centre of the window of one of London’s great auction houses. This Turner was not hiding her light under a bushel. She was flaunting herself in the heart of the city. Was their theory wrong? Was their whole approach to the Caryatid a terrible mistake? Should they abandon their theories and go back to the beginning?

  Looking closely at the information in the window, Powerscourt saw that the painting was due to go under the hammer as part of a sale of Old Masters at eleven o’clock the following morning. Should he stop the sale? Should he call for Inspector Kingsley and have the painting taken into police custody? He thought there could be a terrible court battle about the provenance of the picture. Suddenly he saw Mrs Wilson, an old lady with white hair in the witness box being slowly tormented by a hostile barrister asking questions about when she began to lose her memory and was she absolutely sure of the date the painting was taken. Mrs Wilson should be saved from that. He resolved to watch the proceedings through to the end. There must be a seller. There had to be a buyer. And there had to be an owner to whom the balance of the price would be paid after the auction house’s commission.

  Powerscourt hurried inside and was shortly closeted with a Mr Rupert Fitzwilliam, a confident young man with a flamboyant waistcoat, a director of the firm and the man going to conduct the auction. And here he received his second major shock of the day.

&n
bsp; ‘You do mean the Turner in the window, Lord Powerscourt? It’s just that we’ve got another one, Dido preparing her pyre in Carthage, also for sale. The August Riverside is very beautiful, don’t you think?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Fitzwilliam. Did you say August Riverside? I mean, is the painting, the Turner, called August Riverside?’

  ‘Why, yes, that’s its name. It’s on all the paperwork we’ve received. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  Powerscourt had to decide on the spot whether to make a fuss, to claim that the title was wrong. He was sure that this was actually Mortlake Terrace, Summer’s Evening. The police record of the theft had included a rather laboured description of the picture. He resolved, as before, to play a waiting game and see what happened to the painting the next day.

  ‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘I was mistaken. I thought it was called something else. Forgive me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Lord Powerscourt. Are you going to bid for it tomorrow?’

  Fitzwilliam inspected his visitor carefully as if he could tell by the cut of the suit if the man had sufficient funds to meet the asking price.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Powerscourt laughed. ‘I shall certainly come, mind you.’

  ‘You are an investigator, are you not, Lord Powerscourt, currently looking into the disappearance of the British Museum Caryatid? Your name is well known in these parts. There isn’t anything wrong with the painting, is there?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s not, Mr Fitzwilliam. Could I ask who the vendor is, and what price the picture is expected to fetch?’

  ‘You may be surprised to learn that all I know of the vendor is that the work is described in our brochure as the property of a gentleman. Sometimes people don’t want the bidders to know exactly who the owner is. There might be thieves about who would learn where to break in and steal. You may also be interested to learn that the sale has been arranged in a great hurry. We were only instructed last week.’