Death on the Holy Mountain

by David Dickinson

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Tim.

  ‘Should I give the beast a good kicking?’ asked Charlie O’Malley.

  ‘No,’ said Austin quickly, ‘if you kick this brute as hard as you kicked that last beast, it may die on us here and we’ll have to carry all that stuff up ourselves.’ He delved deep into an inside pocket and produced a half-bottle of whiskey, created in a Dublin distillery and rejoicing in the name of John Jameson.

  ‘Have a sip of the hard stuff here. Maybe we’ll get some ideas.’

  As an experiment, Charlie waved the open bottle of John Jameson’s finest under the donkey’s nose. The animal looked about him as if searching for the source of the smell. Charlie set off up the mountain, holding the whiskey in front of the animal. The donkey followed happily. By eleven the three men and the alcoholic donkey had reached the summit. The low cloud began to clear and the sun came out as they worked. Way beneath them Clew Bay was laid out like a magic carpet, the blue waters like glass in the sunlight, the islands winking to each other in the bright morning air.

  An outsider, looking at the window and reception area of Hudson’s, the art dealers of Old Bond Street, would not have thought they had anything to do with paintings at all. There was just one picture in the street window, a rather smudgy Impressionist. There was one other in the foyer, a rather dreamy Madonna that Powerscourt thought might have been a Murillo.

  Michael Hudson had just celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday but he looked ten years younger. He had light brown hair, regular features and bright blue eyes. He looked as though he could model for a page or a young courtier in a Renaissance painting.

  ‘What a pleasure to meet you, Lord Powerscourt. Are you returning to detection in the world of art? Many may close down if they hear news of your arrival.’

  Powerscourt smiled. Some years before he had been involved in a case involving fakes and forgeries along this very street, culminating in the unmasking of a forger in the Central Criminal Court. He explained his problem to the young man and handed him lists of the paintings which had been taken. ‘These are very rough lists so far,’ he said, ‘but I thought it only sensible to bring you on board at the very beginning. Once I obtain more information about the pictures – size, name of artist, if known, and the subject matter of the Old Masters – I shall, of course, let you know. I have a colleague gone to make discreet inquiries in Dublin.’

  ‘I only know a little about the Irish art market, Lord Powerscourt. In my youth I was employed for a couple of weeks to make a catalogue of paintings at some castle in Waterford. The owner forgot that he had promised to pay me. Let me tell you first of all of the obvious ways in which we should be able to assist. We shall put the word out in London and the principal centres in Europe about these missing paintings. We shall tell our offices in New York and Boston. I shall write this afternoon to Farrell’s in Dublin. Michael Farrell has a small gallery in Kildare Street. He does a lot of business with the Protestant gentry over there. But tell me, Lord Powerscourt, a man of your reputation is not normally employed to look for a few missing family portraits. Is there something you haven’t told me about yet?’

  ‘If this was Sussex, or Norfolk,’ said Powerscourt, ‘nobody would be very concerned. But it’s not, it’s Ireland. I think there were letters that accompanied the thefts. Not simultaneous necessarily, maybe a couple of days later. What those letters said I have no idea. I suspect they were blackmail of one sort of another. Violence lies so often just beneath the surface of events in Ireland. It’s like those noises bats make that humans cannot hear. These thefts are a minor form of violence. Worse may follow. The wives in these houses are terrified. That suggests to me that there was a threatening letter and that it was the letter, not the vanishing paintings, that made them lose their courage.’

  Michael Hudson had pulled a catalogue from his desk. ‘Let me show you this, Lord Powerscourt. This comes from an exhibition held recently in New York which transferred to Boston and, I believe, Chicago. These people, McGaherns, are very respectable. They operate a long way down the scale from ourselves. The works they sell are cheap and tawdry, they might cost five or ten or twenty pounds rather than the same number with thousands added. They operate,’ and here Hudson looked up from the paintings, ‘in areas with very heavy concentrations of Irish settled in them. I worked in our office in New York for two years and I must have walked all over the city by the end. The pictures they sell in such quantities are never originals, but the subject matter doesn’t change very much, attractive colleens, horses of every shape and size with or without their riders, those wonderful lakes and mountains Ireland is festooned with, small cottages with smoke coming out of them in the wild wastes of Mayo and Connemara. The ancestral home or the fantasy of the ancestral home, no doubt. The real home might have been a Dublin slum. Many, if not most, of these people have never been to Ireland in their lives, but they live very Irish lives in America, Mass, Christian Brothers, walls draped with pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, family piety, all that sort of thing. Oddly enough, their Ireland is often a generation or a generation and a half even behind the real one. The parents pass on what they remember of the world they left twenty or thirty years ago. Forgive me, I’m wandering off the point.’

  Michael Hudson closed his catalogue and put it on his desk. ‘I have no idea if the McGahern works are turned out in Dublin or New York, but one thing is clear, Lord Powerscourt. There is an artistic connection between the two countries. It is possible there is an innocent – well, not innocent, but certainly non-violent explanation for what has been happening to these portraits.’

  ‘You mean, they may end up in the McGahern catalogue? And get sold off like that for twenty pounds each?’

  ‘Not quite, Lord Powerscourt. The Irish who buy the McGaherns are not poor, but they’re not well off either. Sixty years on, some of these Irish families have become quite rich, a number of them very rich. Suppose you’re an ambitious Irish family living in New York. Suppose somebody comes along and offers you a bundle of your ancestors. They’re probably not your ancestors at all, but the neighbours aren’t going to know. Think of eight of these hanging in your parlour or dining room. The prestige would be terrific. In a society composed entirely of immigrants of one sort or another, how great would it be to show off a family history that went back a couple of centuries?’

  ‘You wouldn’t even have to be related to the people in the pictures,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could say they were O’Shaughnessys or Carrolls from years gone by and nobody would be the wiser.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Hudson, ‘and I suspect you could charge a great deal of money for a complete eight-place-setting set of ancestors, as it were.’

  ‘I think there’s a snag in this theory,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not sure that the Irish immigrants, who are Catholic, would want to have portraits of Protestant landlords on their walls, however rich they had become. Those people in the Big Houses would be, if not actual enemies, then the oppressors of the poor tenant farmers who had fled to America to find a better life. Somebody in America might like ancestor portraits, mind you. The old might have an appeal for some in the land of the new. How on earth would we find out what the situation is?’

  ‘At this moment,’ said Michael Hudson, smiling at his visitor, ‘I have no idea. We could,’ a smile spread slowly across his handsome face, ‘try placing a few advertisements in the kind of papers the wealthier Americans might read. Set of eight Irish family portraits, eighteenth to nineteenth century, available, that sort of thing. I think we’d need to put a fairly hefty price on them to deter the McGahern clientele, say fifteen hundred pounds. What do you think of that, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘I think it’s rather clever,’ said Powerscourt, smiling back to the young man, ‘but tell me – what happens if you are inundated with potential customers? Suppose thirty or forty come knocking at your doors? What do we do then?’

  ‘Find a forger perhaps? That would be a good trade, you know
. Forge them all over here, send them to America, I don’t think you could be prosecuted there for something done over here. Your forging friend could do very well. Seriously though, I think we wait and see.’

  ‘I am most grateful for your time and your help, Mr Hudson,’ said Powerscourt, rising to take his leave. ‘Perhaps you could be so kind as to send any news to my London house with a copy to me at the Butler house whose address is here.’ He handed over a small sheet of paper then paused as he was about to open the door and turned back to the art dealer. ‘One last thing, Mr Hudson. Every time I have anything to do with paintings in a professional capacity, the same questions arise. Is this a real Romney? Did Gainsborough actually paint this portrait? That red mess over there, is that really a Tintoretto? You know the question of attribution far better than I. If it comes up, would you be willing to come to Ireland and help me out?’

  ‘I would be delighted, Lord Powerscourt. After all, they say Ireland is very beautiful at this time of year.’

  2

  The gate lodge of Kincarrig House, ancestral home of the Connolly family, recently deprived of the painted records of six of their own ancestors, was set back slightly from the road. On either side the stone walls that marked the outer edge of the demesne seemed to stretch away into infinity. Powerscourt was beginning his investigation here as Kincarrig House was closest to Dublin and the Holyhead boat. He had made his appointment before leaving Markham Square. Then he planned to move further west to Butler’s Court. Powerscourt’s cabby was a cheerful soul, pointing out the places of interest as they went along.

  ‘This gate lodge now,’ he said, ‘and the arch and the drive here, sure they’re among the finest in Ireland.’

  Powerscourt made appreciative noises. He gazed upwards at the Triple Gothic Arch that towered above the road. It was completely useless. All over Ireland, he thought, at the entrance to the Big Houses with their long drives of beech and yew curling away to hide the property from the prying eyes of the public and people of the wrong religion, the owners had built monumental gates of one sort or another. Anglo-Irish mansions were guarded by a strange stone menagerie of lions and unicorns, of falcons and eagles, of hawks and harriers, tigers and kestrels and merlins. Powerscourt had heard stories of a house with a stone dinosaur on guard. The animals were often surrounded by great stone balls, as if, in times of emergency, they might return to life and begin hurling this weighty ammunition at their enemies. Powerscourt remembered his father telling him of one estate belonging to a Lord Mulkerry in County Cork where the demesne walls and the monumental gates became one side of the town square. And on the side of the town square was a large plaque on which was written: ‘Town of Ardhoe, property of Lord Mulkerry’. Badges of ownership, marks of superiority, symbols of arrogance, Powerscourt disliked them intensely. And as his cab rattled along this very long drive he remembered too the prestige that attached to the length of the approaches to the Big House. Less than half a mile and you were virtually going to a peasant’s cabin. Half a mile to a mile, pretty poor, little better than a cottage you’ll find at the end, a mile to a mile and a half, there might be a pillar or two to greet you at the end but nothing much, anything over two miles and respectability is attained at last. Over to his left he could see the sun glittering on a fast-flowing river which must, he suspected, pass the Connolly house to enhance the Connolly view.

  The house was Regency with a front of seven bays and a Doric entrance porch with eight pillars. Well-tended grass ran down the slope towards the river. Inside was a magnificent entrance hall with a marble floor that ran the whole length of the front of the house with a dramatic enfilade of six yellow scagliola pillars and dozens and dozens of drawings and etchings and paintings of horses. A huge elk head guarded the doorway. A very small butler greeted Powerscourt, asking him to wait while he found his master.

  The architecture of this house and the houses like it whispered a strange language of their own, a language that came back to Powerscourt from years before.

  It spoke of parapets, and turreted gateways, of rectangular windows with mullions and astragals under hood-mouldings, of quatrefoil decoration on the parapets, of vaulted undercrofts and great halls, of carved oak chimney pieces and overmantels, of segmental pointed doorways, battlemented and machiolated square towers, of portes cochères and oriels, of ceilings in ornate Louis Quatorze style with much gilding and well-fed putti in high relief supporting cartouches and trailing swags of flowers and fruit, of entablature enriched with medallions and swags and urns, of halls with screens of Corinthian columns and friezes, of tripods and winged sphinxes, of quoins and keystones, of Imperial staircases and rectangular coffering, of rusticated niches and doorways, of scaglioli columns, of friezes and volutes and many more, stretching out across centuries through hall and drawing room and dining room the length and breadth of the country.

  Out in the parks and walkways, many of them by lakes or rivers, were great fountains, houses with obelisks in their grounds, gardens guarded by forts with cannon to fire salutes on family birthdays, conventional orangeries and unconventional casinos, ornate gardens, Japanese gardens, Chinese gardens, Palladian follies, in one case a herd of white deer to mark the exclusivity of the Big House and the Big Garden.

  This, Powerscourt thought, was architecture as political statement, an arrogant damn your eyes architectural declaration of superiority. We are the masters here. Don’t even think, any Irish Catholic peering through the trees at the house over the top of the wall, that one day this might be yours. It won’t. And yet, Powerscourt thought, and yet . . . The temples and the churches and all the great palaces of Rome were still standing the day before the barbarians came to town. He wondered if those stone sphinxes that adorned the Ascendancy Big Houses might not have one or two riddles left for their masters, riddles that might rather speak of Descendancy.

  ‘Mr Connolly is in the library, sir,’ the butler said, rousing Powerscourt from his reverie, as he ushered him into a handsome room with great gaps on its walls. The word library can have many different meanings in Ireland, Powerscourt remembered. Put a great many books in them and nobody will ever use the room in case they’re meant to read a book. But hostesses like to have libraries in their houses. It adds an air of learning to the predominant themes of hunting and shooting. Hence there are many libraries in these houses with very few books in them. And as Peter Connolly rose to give him a very short and rather perfunctory handshake, Powerscourt realized he was in the latter category of library. He had seen bedrooms in England with more books in them. A solitary bookshelf, no more than waist high, gave its name to the room.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see us, Lord Powerscourt. How can I be of assistance?’

  Even before the man finished the first sentence, Powerscourt knew something was wrong. There was a coldness that was on the edge of rudeness. Never mind the traditional Irish hundred thousand welcomes, he was hardly getting a single one in the Connolly household.

  ‘I would like to see where the pictures were, and any details you have of them, who the artists were, that sort of thing.’ He noticed suddenly that there were four picture cords hanging from the rail above, but no paintings in them. Connolly noticed his glance.

  ‘The police asked us to leave everything as it was,’ he explained. ‘Not that they will be any use. The oldest Connolly was placed just above the fireplace, the others followed him in line of inheritance. The last two of the sequence were in the dining room with the Titian and the Rembrandt in the gold drawing room.’

  ‘Do you have any details of the artists who did the portraits? Do you have any records of what the gentlemen were wearing?’

  ‘I fail to see how that is relevant,’ said Connolly coldly, looking pointedly at his watch.

  Powerscourt felt he was on the verge of losing his temper.

  ‘Look here, Mr Connolly, I presume you want to get your pictures back. Suppose the thief sells them in Dublin or they are carried over to one of the big London firms. T
he proprietors know that six male Connolly ancestors have gone missing and a couple of Old Masters. I have made it my business to see that they are so informed. If one of your ancestors were to appear, how in God’s name are they going to know that he is a Connolly? He could be an Audley or a Fitzgibbon or a Talbot or anybody at all in Christendom. Without descriptions the whole attempt to recover them is a waste of time.’

  Connolly looked at him very coldly. ‘I do not believe the pictures will ever be recovered. The villains will destroy them. Soon they will come back here for more, whether for more pictures or for the people who live here, I do not know. Our time has come, Lord Powerscourt, and all that is left to us is to face it with the courage of our race. I have asked for police protection and the sergeant laughed in my face. All this talk of descriptions of pictures is futile, fiddling while Rome burns.’ Connolly was working up a fine head of steam. His wild talk sounded even stranger in such elegant surroundings, the marble fireplace, the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling, the distant whisper of the river through the open windows.

  ‘Are you not jumping to conclusions, Mr Connolly? You had two other paintings stolen, I believe, one Titian and one Rembrandt. Taken all together, those pictures could fetch tens of thousands of pounds. It’s perfectly possible that this is the work of a gang of art thieves who are even now arranging the dispatch of the paintings to New York. It would help enormously if you and your family could manage to write out descriptions of all the paintings. It would help to recover them.’

  Connolly was shouting now. ‘You just don’t understand! You haven’t lived here for years! You’re not even Irish any more! We made it our business to find out about you, Powerscourt, betraying your past and your people to swan about in London playing at being a detective! You’ve no idea what it’s been like to live here these last thirty years, the Land War, the boycotting, the plan of campaign, the betrayal of a Protestant people by a Protestant government in London trying to force us to sell our land to appease the Catholics. Well, we have lived through all that here in this house. I do not believe that a gang of art thieves broke into my home to steal our pictures. I just don’t believe it. This is the final act, Lord Powerscourt. Who is there to defend us any more? Politicians? The Irish Members of Parliament want Home Rule for Ireland, that means Catholic rule with no room for Protestants. To a man, they’re all Papists, Rome rulers all, waiting and waiting for their day to dawn. There’s a hunger for land out there, Powerscourt, our land. Sometimes on market days in the town square, you can almost smell it.’