Death of an Old Master

by David Dickinson

  ‘Here we are, William,’ he said at last. ‘These two estimates might prove useful.’

  Piper saw that one was from a building firm in Stratford, the other from one based in Warwick itself, for repair and restoration work on the Hammond-Burke home.

  ‘How on earth did you get these, Edmund?’ asked Piper, his eyes racing down the columns until he reached the Total figure at the bottom of page three of the Stratford firm.

  ‘Well,’ said de Courcy, ‘it wasn’t difficult. I borrowed some of our lawyers’ notepaper and said I was representing a distant relative called Jason Hammond, currently residing in Worcester, Massachusetts. This Jason character was now an old man but he had made a great deal of money. The letter said that he wished to leave his cousin enough money to effect the restoration of the ancestral home, but needed to know how much would be required. I gave them the details of the interior work from memory, saying it came from another member of the Hammond-Burke clan who had recently been to visit. And I suggested the builders take a discreet look round the property themselves for the roofs and the upkeep of the stables and so on. For some reason, unknown to the lawyers, Mr Jason wanted to keep his intentions secret.’

  ‘One lot of builders say fifteen thousand pounds, another say twenty thousand pounds,’ said Piper. ‘Let’s just suppose, Edmund, that you had an old mansion in need of restoration.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that I do have such a mansion,’ replied de Courcy .

  ‘But would you believe these estimates?’ asked Piper quickly.

  ‘No, I would not,’ said de Courcy bitterly. ‘I checked recently with some families in East Anglia who had raised sufficient funds, as they thought, to restore their properties. On average the final bill was over fifty per cent larger than the original estimate. In one case it was almost twice the original figure.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Piper happily. ‘Now, let us suppose that you are this Mr Hammond-Burke we are due to meet,’ Piper checked his watch, ‘in less than one hour’s time. You want to repair your house. A nice dealer from London offers you, let us say, twenty-five thousand pounds for the Raphael. Would you accept?’

  ‘We don’t know if Hammond-Burke has asked other dealers what they would pay him for the painting.’ De Courcy looked down at the brown paper and string beside him.

  ‘Ah, but we do,’ said Piper. ‘I have paid out quite a lot of money in the last few days to the junior staff of our competitors. Nobody has been asking about the price of a Raphael. Unless he has gone to Paris, which I doubt. Perhaps I should have checked there too.’

  ‘To come back to your original question, William,’ said de Courcy, ‘I think we can assume that Hammond-Burke has a very good idea how much the restoration would cost.’

  ‘Ah, but he doesn’t know that we know, if you follow me.’

  ‘I don’t think that matters,’ said de Courcy. ‘If I were him, I would hesitate before taking twenty-five thousand pounds. He could have spent all that and still not have finished. He could end up with the roof off and no money left to replace it.’

  ‘So what would you offer?’

  De Courcy looked out of the window. Rows of terraced houses were replacing the green fields of Warwickshire. ‘I would offer him thirty or thirty-five thousand pounds, maybe even more to be certain. If only there was some way we could hold out the prospect of more money from selling more of his paintings, in case he runs short.’

  ‘Are his other paintings worth anything at all?’ said Piper.

  ‘No, they’re not. Not money on the scale we’re talking about.’

  Piper looked very thoughtful indeed. ‘But what happens, Edmund, if he were to find a painting hidden away somewhere? A painting that might be worth tens of thousands of pounds.’

  De Courcy laughed. He patted the genuine Raphael beside him. ‘You mean that Hammond-Burke could become, as it were, the fourth asterisk?’

  ‘Precisely so, Edmund. We can only form a judgement when we meet the fellow. We mustn’t rush things. But, look, here we are. For God’s sake handle that Raphael very carefully indeed. It wouldn’t do to drop it now. Not now when we may be in sight of the fourth asterisk!’

  Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were walking arm in arm up Pall Mall to a family lunch at his sister’s house in St James’s Square. Lady Lucy was very excited about a recent piece of Powerscourt family gossip.

  ‘Is it true, Francis, that William and Mary Burke have just bought a villa near Antibes? An enormous villa?’ Mary Burke was the second of Powerscourt’s three sisters, married to a very successful financier called William Burke.

  ‘I believe it is true, Lucy, though I do not have any accurate information as to the size of the establishment.’

  ‘Oh, Francis, you’re not investigating your own family. Will we be able to go and stay, do you think?’

  ‘I’m sure we will be able to. I’m not sure that society down there will be much to my taste. I’ve got nothing against millionaire grocers and successful stock market speculators, I just don’t think it would suit me.’

  Lady Lucy laughed as they turned the corner into St James’s Square. ‘You’ll be a frightful snob when you’re old, Francis. I shall have to push you along the Promenade des Anglais in your wheelchair, checking to make sure your rug is comfortable, while you complain about the Riviera parvenus and the nouveaux riches of Cannes.’

  Powerscourt laughed and squeezed his wife’s arm. ‘I look forward to that, Lucy, I really do.’

  Lady Rosalind Pembridge’s house was on the right of St James’s Square. They were just a couple of paces away when Powerscourt stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘Lucy, do you mind going in ahead of me? There’s just something I’ve got to do.’

  Lady Lucy gazed at her husband with a mixture of exasperation and affection. ‘You’re not going to be long, are you?’ she said anxiously. She remembered the stories of Francis disappearing through the kitchens at a very grand Foreign Office dinner some years before. She distinctly recalled him vanishing again at a reception given by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace, leaving her alone making small talk with the Archbishop’s wife until he reappeared some hours later when the reception had long ended. Business, he had said cryptically. She looked desperately around St James’s Square. Had Francis spotted some old army acquaintance? Was his closest friend Johnny Fitzgerald, recently gone to Spain on holiday, returned to lurk beneath the trees in the central garden?

  As her husband strode off to the opposite side of the square, she knew. The answer was over there in the corner. Did Francis have any books to return? He hadn’t brought them with him. Then she remembered him telling her of his conversation with Thomas Jenkins, closest friend of the late Christopher Montague. He, Montague, had sometimes said that his favourite place in London was the reading room of the London Library in St James’s Square.

  Lady Lucy was shown into the grand drawing room on the first floor. Rosalind, Lady Pembridge greeted her effusively. ‘Lucy, my dear, how very nice to see you! How are the children?’ Lady Lucy had barely started to reply when the other two sisters chimed in, almost in unison.

  ‘Where is Francis?’ said Mary Burke and Eleanor, Powerscourt’s youngest sister, married to a sea captain in the West Country.

  ‘Francis? He said he’d be here in a moment,’ said Lady Lucy, knowing all too well there was nothing Powerscourt’s sisters enjoyed more than complaining about him.

  ‘He’s disappeared again. Honestly!’ said Rosalind.

  ‘I thought he’d grown out of all that by now,’ said Mary, looking at Lady Lucy as if she should have taught him better manners after seven years of marriage.

  ‘How very inconsiderate. Typical Francis, spoiling a nice luncheon party,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘He must have a new case,’ said William Burke who knew rather better than the three sisters how difficult Powerscourt’s job could be. ‘Is that so, Lucy?’

  ‘It is,’ said Lady Lucy, smiling gratefully at he
r brother-in-law. ‘He does have a new case. And at the moment, he’s completely in the dark.’

  ‘Luncheon won’t wait,’ said Rosalind imperiously. ‘The soup might keep but the lamb will not. Will Francis be here for the soup, do you think, Lucy?’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ said Lucy bravely. Privately she rather doubted it.

  Her husband had reached the inquiry desk that ran round half the entrance hall of the London Library. Portraits of Carlyle and Dickens, founder members, lined the walls. In the centre of the room a flotilla of index cards, housed in great wooden containers, filed away the secrets of the library’s contents. Was the librarian available to speak to him, he inquired? He assured the young man that he, Lord Francis Powerscourt, had been a member for many years. He wished to consult the librarian on a matter of the utmost delicacy. Michael Stock, the librarian, he was told, could speak to him in a few minutes. Powerscourt glanced anxiously at his watch. The first course was only minutes away.

  ‘How can we help you, Lord Powerscourt?’ Stock was a slim man of middle years with a worried expression and very strong glasses. He pulled from time to time at the corners of his large moustache.

  ‘I am an investigator, Mr Stock,’ he began. ‘At present I am looking into the death of a young man called Christopher Montague who was a member here. He was murdered. You may have read about it in the papers. I know he was a regular visitor here. One of his friends told me the reading room upstairs was his favourite place in London.’

  ‘I was truly sorry to hear of his death,’ said Stock. ‘The library sent a wreath, you know. He was very popular here with all the staff.’

  ‘The reason for my visit is this,’ Powerscourt went on, casting a surreptitious look at his watch. Damn! They must be on the first course by now. ‘I wonder if it would be a simple matter for you to discover which books he had recently borrowed from the library. Some of his books and all his papers were removed from his rooms when he was murdered. If I knew what he had been working on at the time of his death, then it might advance my cause. At present,’ he smiled a deprecating smile, ‘I am operating rather in the dark.’

  ‘I do hope’, said Stock, rather fiercely, ‘that none of our books were among those removed from his quarters. Members are only permitted to keep them for a month.’

  Powerscourt wondered if the London Library had a system of fining deceased members for the books they had not returned.

  ‘It is not the normal library practice to disclose what volumes have been borrowed by individual members.’ Powerscourt suddenly wondered if there were secret stacks of erotica hidden away in the bowels of the building. ‘However,’ Stock hurried on, suspecting that his earlier comments might not have been altogether appropriate, ‘I am sure we can make an exception in this case. If you can give us a few minutes, I am sure we can help you.’

  Stock hurried out into his entrance hall. Powerscourt could hear him giving instructions to his staff.

  Across the square the soup plates had been cleared away. ‘Lucy,’ asked Rosalind Pembridge, ‘one course down, only three to go. Any prospect of Francis putting in an appearance, do you suppose?’

  ‘Too bad, too bad,’ chorused the other two sisters.

  Lady Lucy was not going to join the accusations against her husband. She would stand by him, whatever barbs were thrown. ‘I think we should just carry on,’ she said. ‘As if he wasn’t here.’

  ‘That’s just the point.’ Eleanor was quick off the mark. ‘He isn’t here. Perhaps he’s been abducted by some villains.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ said William Burke. ‘This is St James’s Square, not Shoreditch.’

  Stock trotted back into his office, a pile of borrowing slips in his hand. ‘Now then, Lord Powerscourt. This is what we’re looking for. And I think Garson here may be able to help further.’ Garson was the young man Powerscourt had first talked to in the entrance hall.

  ‘Life of Giovanni Bellini. German author. Life of Giorgione. Another German author. Both translated. Life of Titian. Italian author. Vasari, On Technique. And there were two volumes he asked us to obtain from a good Italian source in London. He collected those shortly before his death.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking for yet more information when you have been so helpful already,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but do you have dates for these borrowings?’

  Powerscourt was taking notes now. He saw that all the volumes had been taken out the day after the preview of the de Courcy and Piper Gallery’s exhibition of Italian Old Masters. He inquired about the Italian books on order from another source. Had they been ordered on the same day?

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Garson the young assistant. ‘They were.’

  ‘And what,’ said Powerscourt eagerly, ‘were their titles?’

  ‘Roughly translated, they were called How to Make Your Own Old Masters,’ said Garson, ‘and The Art of Forging Paintings. Both published in Rome in the eighteenth century, believed to be contemporary manuals on how to forge Old Masters for English visitors on the Grand Tour, sir.’

  ‘Were they indeed?’ said Powerscourt, feeling pleased that a thin shaft of light had opened up on his investigation. ‘And what was the other intelligence you have, Mr Garson? Not that you haven’t been very helpful already.’ He took another surreptitious look at his watch. Christ! They must be on the pudding by now.

  ‘Only this, my lord,’ said Garson nervously. ‘Mr Montague talked to me quite a lot when he was here. I used to help him find books and that sort of thing. He told me the morning he took those books out,’ Garson shuddered slightly, ‘that he was going to be the co-founder of a new magazine. He wanted to know if the library would take out a subscription.’

  ‘Did he tell you who the other founder was, Garson?’ Powerscourt was feeling rather hungry now. He wondered if Rosalind would have saved him any lunch.

  ‘He did not, my lord. I’m afraid I have no idea.’

  Powerscourt thanked the librarians and hurried across St James’s Square. It was almost half-past two.

  ‘How very nice of you to put in an appearance, Francis,’ said Lady Rosalind, surveying him severely from the top of the table, ‘only two hours late.’

  ‘Such a pity we have to leave in a moment,’ said Mary.

  ‘And to think that you used to lecture us when we were small about being punctual and the importance of good manners,’ said Eleanor. ‘You were always going on about being on time and good manners.’

  Lady Lucy sensed a sudden wrath coming over her husband. Francis very seldom lost his temper, the last occasion about four years ago. She patted him affectionately on the knee. For a fraction of a second Powerscourt wanted to shout at his three sisters. He was trying to find a murderer who might strike again. They were merely concerned with punctuality. Beyond the safety of their front doors and the railings around the square there was a dangerous world where people put pieces of picture cord or piano wire round other people’s necks and pulled until their victim could breathe no longer. He didn’t think that was very good manners. Somebody had to do the dirty work to keep the world secure for society and its rituals.

  But he didn’t. He smiled apologetically at the assembled company. ‘My apologies for being late,’ he said. ‘I had very important work to do in the London Library across the Square. I must have the food of the penitent if you have such provision. Bread and cheese perhaps? Humble pie and pickles?’

  Edmund de Courcy believed he could compile a selling manual based entirely on the talents of William Alaric Piper. Piper was a maestro in his field. He had different voices, different styles depending on his victim. He could cajole. He could bribe. He could bully. He could inspire. He could flatter. He could rhapsodize about the beauty of paintings he was selling. He could be scornful about the ones he was buying. Often the painting would be the same.

  Now de Courcy and Piper were sitting with James Hammond-Burke in the morning room of Truscott Park. De Courcy and Piper were on the sofa to the left of the fireplace, Piper in a
dark blue suit and sparkling black boots. Hammond-Burke faced them in an armchair with horse hair falling out of the side. Paintings of previous Hammond-Burkes stood on either side of a vast mirror. There was a large crack running down the left-hand side of the glass. The Raphael, still in its wrapping paper, sat incongruously between de Courcy and Piper.

  ‘Mr Hammond-Burke,’ began Piper, purring in his most ingratiating tone, ‘let me tell you what a pleasure, nay, more than a pleasure, what an honour it has been to have enjoyed the company of your Raphael for the brief period it has been our privilege to care for it. The curves! The colours! The innocence! The beauty! Truly we are blessed that this masterpiece has survived the ravages of time.’

  Hammond-Burke made as if to speak. Piper pressed on. ‘We have, of course, brought this beautiful object back to you. Only you can be the final arbiter of its fate. We have consulted the finest experts in London about its provenance. Neither you nor I, of course, would doubt for a second that it is a genuine Raphael, but I do not need to tell you that we live in suspicious times. There is always some charlatan prepared to gainsay, to contradict the evidence of our own eyes and our own hearts, our very souls, in fact, that this Holy Family is really the work of Raphael. The experts have only confirmed what we knew – that it is genuine. And that means, demeaning though it is to mention money in the presence of such glory . . .’ William Alaric Piper paused to cast a reverential glance of worship at the brown paper and string beside him, ‘. . . that the painting will be valued at its true worth.’

  Piper paused again. Hammond-Burke seized his moment ‘How much?’ he said. It was, de Courcy remembered, exactly the same phrase Hammond-Burke had employed on his previous visit. This was a perfect moment for connoisseurs of the Piper style. De Courcy doubted if the high-flown rhetoric, the gushing Piper would serve now. Hammond-Burke was not a man to be moved by the rhetorical tricks of a Demosthenes or a Cicero or a William Alaric Piper. But he could scarcely change character in mid flow.