by Peter Murphy
‘Yes, exactly. I began to buy and sell art on my own account.’
‘Still working from your studio in London Bridge Road?’
‘Yes.’
Julian nods. ‘Now, with the usher’s assistance, may the witness please be shown Exhibit one?’
At first, the CPS factotum seems reluctant to lend his services to the defendant, as if he doesn’t want to be seen to be playing for the other team, and Dawn seems to be faced with carrying it over to the witness box herself. But Dawn is not one to be abandoned in her time of need without a fight. She gives him such a shaming look that the poor man quickly thinks better of it, and lends her a hand.
‘Do you recognise this painting, Mr van Planck?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Is this the painting you sold to Mr Pratfall?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Before we come to that, do you remember when and how you acquired this piece?’
‘Yes, I remember very well. When you are in my position, and you do not have very much money to buy art, you must look for opportunities to buy pieces without paying too much. I found that, in England, you can often find acceptable pieces at estate sales, garage sales, and so on, and you can acquire them quite cheaply.’
‘And then sell them on at a profit?’
‘Hopefully, yes. Of course, you often have to do some restoration to the work, or repair a broken frame, but still you may be able to ask a reasonable price.’
‘And what was the provenance of this piece?’
‘This, I found at an estate sale somewhere near Bristol two or three years ago.’
‘What was its condition when you found it?’
‘Not too bad, but it did need some cleaning, and the frame needed some patching. Whoever had it had not looked after it very well.’
‘How much did you pay for it?’
Jan shrugs. ‘I don’t recall exactly. I did have a receipt at the time, but I can’t find it. As far as I recall, I paid about two hundred and fifty pounds, not more than two-fifty.’
‘Did you think that was a fair price?’
He smiles. ‘It was a bargain. I didn’t know how much of a good bargain it was when I bought it. I only found that out later. But even then, it was a bargain.’
‘Do I take it, then,’ Julian asks, ‘that the estate didn’t realise what they had, and, therefore, under-priced it?’
‘Yes. I knew the first moment I saw it that it was Dutch, probably from the mid- to late seventeenth century. Even with all the cleaning it needed, there was no doubt about that.’
‘And how did you know that?’
‘I gave lectures and tours at the Rijksmuseum for two years,’ Jan replies, ‘in addition to my studies at the University. Believe me, I know such a piece when I see it. I didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with at the time, but I knew I had found something special.’
‘When you got the painting back to your studio, did you set about restoring it?’
‘Yes. I began the process of cleaning it. It took me about a month to get it to the point where I finally knew what I was dealing with.’
‘And what was that?’
‘It was undoubtedly a school piece from the Golden Age. I could not find an attribution, but the subject of the piece made that obvious. I was familiar with ter Borch’s work, of course, the “Woman drinking Wine”, and this was unmistakable. It had to be an original version of that work produced by his school.’
‘What did you do when you reached that conclusion?’
‘I looked at every catalogue of ter Borch I could find, to see if it might be listed already.’
‘Why was that important?’
‘Well, you must check the provenance of a piece as far as possible, otherwise obviously, you are at risk of handling stolen goods.’
I find myself thinking about Hubert, and about Harvey Steel, who couldn’t have got Fagin convicted of handling stolen goods, and I find myself working hard not to laugh.
‘You must at least ask yourself why an original school work from the Golden Age is being offered for sale for two hundred and fifty pounds at an estate sale near Bristol.’
‘And did you find an answer to that question?’
He shakes his head vigorously.
‘No. I looked everywhere, but there was no reference to this piece at all.’
‘What conclusion did you draw from that?’
‘I concluded that I had discovered a work which had been in private hands for a very long time, and perhaps not recognised for what it was.’
‘Did that surprise you?’
‘Not particularly. It was a piece of good fortune, of course, but such things happen from time to time. A huge quantity of art was produced during the Golden Age, and as Dr Smalling said, much of it has not survived. But sometimes a piece will survive. In the case of ter Borch, this would be less of a surprise than in other cases.’
‘Why is that?’
‘First, not many of his works survive, officially. Only about eighty are catalogued and all these are accounted for. But we know that he was far more prolific, and it is not unreasonable to believe there may be more of his work out there. I just happened to have found one.’
‘But Dr Smalling insists that you are wrong.’
‘I think Dr Smalling is too attached to the brushwork. He doesn’t see beyond that. I agree with him that this is not ter Borch’s brushwork. But it could certainly be a school piece. The subject-matter is unmistakable. This kind of domestic scene, with a woman engaged in an everyday act such as drinking wine – this is ter Borch’s signature. He produced many such works, and they were very popular. Anyone seeing this piece would associate it with him. In fact, it would have been a very audacious act to produce this piece if you were not associated with ter Borch in some way. Also, we know that a very talented German painter called Gaspar Netscher was working with ter Borch in Deventer in about 1658 and 1659, and it may be that his influence is there, with other students.’
‘So, what did you decide to do, once you knew what you were dealing with?’
‘I had two options,’ Jan replies. ‘I could take it to a reputable art house, in which case they would pay me as little as they thought they could get away with. Or I could sell it myself and remain in control of the price. I decided to sell it myself.’
‘Turning now to Elmer G Pratfall,’ Julian asks, ‘do you remember Mr Pratfall coming to your studio?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he show an interest in Exhibit one?’
‘Immediately. He was captivated by it the moment he saw it.’
‘I want to see if you can remember the conversation as precisely as possible,’ Julian says. ‘Did he ask you what it was?’
‘Eventually,’ Jan replies. ‘After he had told me many times how pretty it was – this was his word, pretty.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him the truth: that I believed this piece to be an important piece, that it was an original school piece of the school of Gerrit ter Borch, based on his painting “Woman drinking Wine with a Drunken Soldier,” circa 1658–1659.’
‘Mr Pratfall claims that you told him it was in fact “Woman drinking Wine with a Drunken Soldier”. What do you say about that?’
‘That is ridiculous. For one thing, I could never get away with such an absurd pretence. The piece is well known. The moment Pratfall had it valued for insurance purposes, I would be exposed.’
‘Mr Pratfall also said that the painting was “genuine”. What do you say about that?’
‘That is not a word we use. I said “original”.’
‘Why not “genuine”?’
‘“Genuine” relates to the question of whether the work is a forgery. There is no question of forgery here. Even Dr Smalling agrees with that. He says i
t is a copy. I say it is an original school piece. But the word “genuine” is meaningless here, and I would not have said that.’
‘Did you say anything to Mr Pratfall that you knew or believed to be false?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Did you intend to act in any way dishonestly?’
‘No.’
‘How do you account for what Mr Pratfall says?’
Jan shrugs and looks appealingly at the jury.
‘You all saw Pratfall,’ he almost shouts to the court in general. ‘He cares about nothing in art except that it must be old, pretty, and expensive. You can sell him the dogs wearing bow ties playing poker if it will match the curtains in his house. What can be said about such a man?’
‘What do you say about the price you charged him, the fifty thousand pounds?’
‘It was on the high side for a school piece,’ Jan concedes at once. ‘But it was not outrageous, and I can take you to some dealers in London where you would pay more. You know, paintings associated with ter Borch don’t come on the market every day. If such a piece were to be sold at auction, it might fetch even more. That depends on so many factors. But in a private sale, what I asked was not unreasonable.’
He pauses.
‘Besides, he made no complaint. The amount was never discussed. It was irrelevant for Pratfall. To Pratfall, it was enough that it was old and pretty.’
‘Which was why you thought you could get away with it, wasn’t it?’ Susan asks, leaping to her feet as soon as Julian has sat down. Dr Smalling has been sitting behind her throughout Jan’s evidence, and handing her notes excitedly. ‘You saw a man with money to spend who didn’t know much about art, and you saw the chance to make some easy money. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ Jan insists, pulling himself up to his full Dutch height, which as I may have mentioned, is not inconsiderable.
‘No? You say that Mr Pratfall might have had to pay even more than fifty thousand at some art houses?’
‘Yes, that is true.’
‘But there is a difference between buying a piece at an art house, and buying a piece from you in London Bridge Road, isn’t there, Mr van Planck? Because if a dealer believed this to be an original school piece, he would have it authenticated before placing it on sale, wouldn’t he? He would only charge a price like fifty thousand pounds if an expert attributed it to the school of Gerrit ter Borch.’
‘Of course.’
‘You agree?’
‘Of course.’
‘But you didn’t have it authenticated by an expert, did you? And that’s because you knew, and have always known, that it was a copy, worth at most a few hundred pounds.’
‘You are wrong on all counts.’
‘Really? Please explain.’
Jan folds his arms defiantly across his chest.
‘Firstly, I am myself a dealer. Secondly, the piece has been authenticated. Thirdly, the price was not unreasonable, and was lower than other dealers might have charged. Fourthly, I told no lies about this piece to Pratfall at any time. This is all I can say.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Susan says after a short pause. ‘Did you just tell the jury that the piece was authenticated?’
‘Yes.’
‘By an expert?’
‘Yes.’
‘By whom?’
‘By myself,’ Jan replies with enormous dignity. ‘I authenticated this piece. I, Jan van Planck, have authenticated it.’
Susan goes on for some time, but fails utterly to breach the dyke, as it were. She eventually abandons the effort. That is all the evidence the jury will hear. We give them a short break while I discuss my summing-up with Counsel. Everyone agrees about the law, and we are ready for closing speeches.
Susan keeps it short and sweet.
‘You may think, members of the jury, that Jan van Planck knows a sucker when he sees one, and in Elmer G Pratfall he saw the perfect victim.’
Pratfall, still haunting the public gallery, does not seem altogether pleased by this image of himself, but Susan is long past caring about that.
‘If Jan van Planck were an honest dealer, he would have had the painting independently authenticated, wouldn’t he? But the problem with that is that he would have been told in no uncertain terms by someone like Dr Smalling that it was a cheap copy worth no more than a few hundred pounds. So that, you may think, is the last thing he was going to do. It was much easier to wait for someone like Mr Pratfall to come along, and charge whatever price he could get away with, on the pretence that this was a famous work of art. Instead of doing the right thing, the honest thing, Jan van Planck put a grossly inflated price on it and took advantage of Pratfall in a shameless and reprehensible manner.
‘And now that the chickens have come to roost, he has told you a fantastic story about having discovered an important work of Dutch art going for two hundred and fifty pounds at an estate sale near Bristol, for which he conveniently happens to have lost the receipt. That’s just nonsense, members of the jury, isn’t it? Mr van Planck thought he had got away with selling a cheap copy to a naïve American for a grossly inflated price, and lying through his teeth to do it. The only right verdict is one of guilty.’
Julian is just as short.
‘Members of the jury, Elmer G Pratfall may not know much about art, but he certainly understands the concept of fraud, doesn’t he? You know that, because you heard him parrot the legal definition of fraud when he told you about his conversation with Mr van Planck. I’m sure you remember. “Mr van Planck is an art dealer. He’s the expert. I’m not. He had been recommended to me. I trusted him, and I relied to my detriment on the false representation he made to me.” That’s what he said, wasn’t it? And you remember, I called him on it, and we established that what he was giving you was the textbook definition of fraud – literally, the textbook definition. Elmer G Pratfall a sucker? No, members of the jury, Mr Pratfall is not a sucker. He is not some deluded American tourist wandering helplessly around London being fleeced by unscrupulous art dealers. He didn’t get to be the senior partner of a big law firm by buying every story someone like Jan van Planck tells him, did he? He may have bad taste in art – in fact, he may have no taste at all – but a sucker he is not.
‘As Jan van Planck told you himself, the suggestion that a fraud could have happened in the way Mr Pratfall described to you is laughable. He could never have got away with trying to sell Exhibit one as a famous ter Borch painting which any dealer would recognise immediately. The moment Mr Pratfall had it valued for insurance purposes the game would be up, wouldn’t it? “Ah,” the prosecution say, “but what of van Planck’s claim to have authenticated the painting himself instead of taking it to an art house?” Well, why shouldn’t he, members of the jury? He may not have the same paper qualifications as Dr Smalling, but he is just as much an expert when it comes to this painting. A university graduate, a post-graduate job in art at the Rijksmuseum, years of experience in creating and dealing in works of art. Why shouldn’t he authenticate a piece from the Dutch Golden Age?
‘But, members of the jury, even if Jan van Planck is wrong about this picture, even if he has got the attribution wrong and it is in fact only a copy, that is surely a mistake anyone could make. Dr Smalling agreed that any expert can sometimes be mistaken in an attribution. Making a mistake is not the same thing as fraud. You can only convict Jan van Planck of fraud if you are sure he was dishonest, if you are sure that he knew that what he said about it was false, or that he did not believe it to be true. Jan van Planck is a man of previous good character, members of the jury, and there is no reason why you cannot accept his word under oath. The prosecution has not come close to making a case of fraud. Your verdict must be one of not guilty.’
Now, all that remains is for me to sum up, which I will do this afternoon.
And so, to lunch, an oasis of calm i
n a desert of chaos? Perhaps, but not until I have heard about this morning’s developments in the investigation.
‘Nothing, Judge,’ Bob says desolately.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Jim denies it completely, Judge. He says he left the building not long after court ended on Friday afternoon. He cleared a few things away, glasses, carafes and the like, didn’t take him long, and that was it. His son and daughter-in-law picked him up outside the building, because he was going to spend the weekend with them, and they will confirm that.’
‘At least we didn’t upset him by asking,’ Stella adds. ‘He thinks the whole thing is rather funny, and whoever did it should get a medal.’
‘Does he indeed?’ I say, rather indignantly.
We are all silent for some time.
‘So, where does that leave us?’ I ask eventually.
‘Back on square one,’ Stella replies.
‘The only other thing I can think of,’ Bob says, ‘is a thorough search of the building, inch by inch, to see if whoever did it left any clue behind. I could do that with a security officer this evening.’
‘I’d prefer to keep security out of it, if we can,’ I say. Security is just another possible leak of information.
‘I suppose I could,’ Bob concedes, ‘but they will be aware that I’m up to something, just from our CCTV.’
‘All right, but don’t tell them what you’re after,’ I reply. ‘I don’t mind them thinking you’re up to something. I just don’t want them to know what it is.’
‘Right you are, Judge,’ Bob says.
I don’t feel like going into lunch now. I sit at my desk with Jeanie’s ham and cheese sandwich and work on my summing-up.
* * *
Wednesday afternoon
The summing-up takes just over an hour. I send the jury out to begin work. They will not have long this afternoon, but it is enough time to allow them to organise themselves. At four-thirty I send them home for the day. I am free to go home now – but I don’t. My mind is not at rest. I sit brooding over the apparent failure of the investigation, and the search of the building which is about to begin. I remember something the Reverend Mrs Walden said yesterday evening over our dinner of tagliatelle primavera and a bottle of Sainsbury’s Special Reserve Valpolicella.
