The Case of the Etruscan Treasure (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 5)

by Robert Newman

  Mowbray was in a small viewing room off the gallery with a client, a heavy, red-faced man smoking a large cigar. The two Etruscan heads, of the priest and of the woman, were on a stand just inside the door. Mowbray waved to Wyatt and gestured, indicating that he would be with them soon. Then, nodding to his young assistant, he said, “All right, Roger.”

  Roger picked up a canvas that was facing the wall, turned it and placed it carefully—even reverently—on an easel.

  Mark Russell, standing near to Andrew, drew in his breath sharply and became very still, and Andrew knew why. It was a painting of a young woman—probably Dutch judging by her starched white headdress—sitting at a desk and writing a letter. It was one of the most beautiful paintings he had ever seen.

  “This is the painting I told you about,” said Mowbray. “The one I said I wanted you to see.” He paused and stepped back, his eyes fixed on the painting. “Vermeer,” he said. “Jan Vermeer of Delft. Painted in 1670 when he was at the height of his powers. As he usually did, he has shown his subject, a young woman, doing something quite ordinary—in this case, writing a letter. I call your attention to the light, Vermeer’s chief characteristic. Many of the Dutch and Flemish painters were interested in light, but it was always golden sunlight. Vermeer was the only one who made use of this particular clear and silvery light—a light that gave his colors a completely different value from the colors of any other painter.”

  “Yes, I see,” said the man with the cigar. “To tell you the truth, I was thinking of a different kind of painting.”

  “Were you?” said Mowbray with ominous restraint. “What kind?”

  “Something a little more like.… Well, say the one in the Hoffman House bar.” Leering, he sketched some voluptuous female curves with his cigar. “Know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Mowbray in arctic tones. “I know exactly what you mean.” Though Andrew had never been to the Hoffman House bar, he knew what the man meant too. For when the painting—a large oil of a group of buxom, underclad nymphs playing with a satyr—was first hung it caused a sensation and had been reproduced many times since in newspapers and magazines. “Roger, will you show Mr. Stoessel out?”

  “Now wait a minute,” said the man with the cigar.

  “I’m asking you to leave, you overblown, underbred philistine! Now will you go or shall I ask Roger, not to show you, but to throw you out?”

  “You can’t talk to me that way! Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  “I know exactly who I am. I’m Alec Bowen Mowbray and it seems that even I can make a mistake. I should have suspected that anyone who made his fortune in beef might prefer those blowsy cows at Hoffman House to a Vermeer. But, having recognized a mistake, I try to correct it. So, for the last time, will you leave here, sir?”

  Glaring at Mowbray and muttering under his breath, the man with the cigar stumped out of the viewing room and down the stairs.

  “Well,” said Wyatt, “success has not changed you much. You’re as gracious, temperate and amiable as ever.”

  Mowbray smiled faintly. “It’s a luxury I permit myself. Can you imagine how I’d feel if I had actually sold this Vermeer to that porcine butcher?”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Russell, his eyes on the painting. “As beautiful as the one at the Metropolitan.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Mowbray.

  “You’ve seen each other before,” said Wyatt. “At the Met. But I didn’t have a chance to introduce you then. Mark Russell. And two young friends of mine, Sara Wiggins and Andrew Tillett.”

  “How do you do?” said Mowbray, bowing to Sara and Andrew. “I remember the two of you. I take it you like my Vermeer?”

  They nodded mutely.

  “Good. And you needn’t feel that you have to say anything about it. Most people’s comments about art are absolute nonsense. As for you,” he said, turning to Russell, “I remember you, too. It was you who noticed that the armature of that fake Etruscan statue was contemporary, made in Turin.”

  “Yes,” said Russell. “But in point of fact, we’ve met before. At Whistler’s studio in London.”

  “Ah, yes. You’re a friend of his?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say that, although I would like to. I admire his work tremendously.”

  “A very good painter,” said Mowbray nodding. “But a difficult man. Almost as difficult as I am. I understand that you’re a painter, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you bring any of your things for me to look at?”

  “Well, yes. But …”

  “Let’s see them.”

  Removing the Vermeer and leaning it against the wall, he gestured toward the easel. Russell untied the cord that held his paintings together and, somewhat hesitantly, picked one up and put it on the easel. It was the Thames scene that Andrew, Sara and Wyatt had seen at Russell’s studio. Mowbray stepped back, studied it carefully for a moment, then nodded.

  “Let me see another,” he said.

  Russell put a second painting on the easel, then a third.

  “How many more do you have at your studio?” asked Mowbray.

  “That I really like? I’d say five.”

  “That’s eight. When you’ve done another seven or eight, let me know and I’ll come and look at them. If I like them as much as I like these, I’ll give you a one-man show.”

  “Do you mean it?” said Russell.

  “Of course, I mean it,” said Mowbray testily. “I never say anything I don’t mean. Your painting is strong and individual. You’ve studied the Impressionists, learned from them, but developed your own style. Like Eakins and Ryder, it’s very American. And I like it.” He turned to Wyatt. “I was quite sure if you said he was talented, I would agree. My compliments.”

  “Thank you,” said Wyatt. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet how much I admired your performance at the Metropolitan the other day.”

  “Oh, that,” said Mowbray, glancing at the two heads on the stand. “A little melodramatic, I’m afraid.”

  “Perhaps. But effective.”

  “So it seems. I probably wouldn’t have been able to convince Holland of the truth if I hadn’t been a bit melodramatic. But I’m sure you’ve done the same thing in your cases when you wanted to make a point—done something rather extreme, I mean.”

  “Yes, I suppose I have. Never quite with your flair and panache. But after the example you gave me …”

  Turning, he pushed first one and then the other of the Etruscan heads off the stand. They fell to the floor and, like the giant warrior, smashed to bits. Sara, Andrew and Russell stared at Wyatt, each of them, they admitted later, secretly fearing that he had taken leave of his senses. Then they looked down and stared again. For lying among the broken shards of terra cotta were three large and gleaming diamonds hanging as pendants from a silver chain.

  Moving as quickly as Wyatt had, Mowbray stepped to the door of the viewing room, closed and locked it, then leaned against it.

  “How did you know?” he asked quietly.

  “I can’t say I knew,” said Wyatt. “I suspected—my suspicions beginning with something my friend Russell here told me.”

  “Just a second,” said Russell. “What is all this? What are these?”

  “I know,” said Sara. “They’re the African Stars.”

  “The diamonds that the Times wrote about the other day? The ones that were stolen from Lady Bachofer?”

  “Yes,” said Wyatt, picking them up and putting them in his pocket.

  “And you said you guessed they were here because of something I said?”

  “I said my suspicions were first aroused by something you said. You told me you’d run into a chap you’d known in Paris named Lamarre who told you that he was making a good living now faking old masters. That the last thing he’d done was a Rubens.”

  “Not true,” said Mowbray. “I assume you talked to him, learned that he was working with Otto Getz and discovered a connection between Otto and me.”


  “Yes.”

  “No one asked Lamarre to fake a Rubens. He was asked if he could paint in the style of Rubens. When he said yes, I gave him the subject, went over his palette with him and gave him a lecture on Rubens brushwork.”

  “What happened to the picture?”

  “It was sold as school of Rubens. When it was brought to me, I said that—while I found it very interesting—I could not possibly authenticate it, pointing out the ways in which it differed from known works of Rubens.”

  “But also pointing out ways in which it was similar.”

  “Yes. But go on. What made you think I had anything to do with the diamonds?”

  “I was asked to look into the case by the Yard after they disappeared, did some investigating and discovered that you knew Sir Harry, had visited the Bachofer house several times.”

  “He wanted to buy some paintings,” said Mowbray, nodding. “But his taste was execrable, as bad as that meat packer’s, so I refused to sell him any.”

  “I also discovered that you had been in Rome at the same time as the Bachofers. That you had gone there about two weeks before and stayed a few days longer than they did. And while you were there you spent a good deal of time with Bernardi, who has often been suspected of dealing in questionable artifacts.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Russell. “Why were they hidden in one of the Etruscan heads?”

  “To get them out of Italy and to the United States,” said Wyatt. “There was too much excitement about the theft to try to smuggle them out by the usual methods or to try to dispose of them there. Though I’m sure Bernardi wasn’t aware of what you were up to.”

  “Certainly not or that would have been the end of them. I concealed them in the woman’s head myself, packed in with plaster of Paris. What I did—as a favor to him, he thought—was to drop a few hints about a marvelous Etruscan find that I knew would get to Holland at the Met.”

  “But how were the diamonds actually stolen?” asked Andrew.

  “It was the valet, wasn’t it?” asked Wyatt.

  “Yes,” said Mowbray. “I’d given him the paste copies, and he substituted them when he gave the case to the sergeant to take back to London.”

  “But why did he do it?” asked Sara. “Inspector Wyatt said that Sir Harry trusted him completely. That he’d been with the Duke of Denham for fourteen years.”

  “That’s right, my dear. And do you know what the duke left him when he died? Fifty pounds. Fifty pounds after fourteen years of service! And while Sir Harry thought it was quite a feather in his cap to have gotten him, the valet—Jeffries—couldn’t stand Bachofer and knew it would only be a question of time before good old Sir Harry sensed it and gave him the sack. So it was easy to get him to agree to do what I wanted for a competence that would let him quit immediately and live comfortably for the rest of his life.”

  “But unfortunately he died almost immediately,” said Wyatt.

  “Yes, he did, poor fellow,” said Mowbray. Then, looking sharply at Wyatt, “You don’t think I had anything to do with his death, do you?”

  “I wondered.”

  “Well, I didn’t—I give you my word, I didn’t. I think what happened was that he was so upset at everything that had been going on—what he’d done and being questioned by Scotland Yard—that he didn’t look where he was going and walked in front of the omnibus.”

  “But why did you do it?” asked Andrew. “Steal the diamonds, I mean. After all—” He hesitated.

  “After all, I seem to be a gentleman,” said Mowbray, smiling. “I don’t look or talk like a thief—whatever you think a thief looks or talks like. My answer couldn’t be simpler. I needed the money.”

  “You?”

  “That surprises you, does it? Well, it should. I’m the best known—and best—art dealer in the world. And probably the best art critic as well. But at that time I did need the money. I had a gallery in London, the one on Bond Street. But I wanted to open one in Paris and one here. Where was I going to get the money for that and for pictures to sell in all three galleries? Your friend, the Inspector here, told you about one thing I did—that so-called school of Rubens painting. But I didn’t like doing it—even though it brought some money to a quite good artist also. So I decided to do something else.”

  “Steal the African Stars,” said Sara.

  “Yes, Sir Harry had been to my gallery and I’d met him at the homes of friends and I didn’t like him. I thought it would be rather a lark to get the diamonds away from him. And I knew it wouldn’t hurt him much since they were insured. So I worked out the details of the dodge.”

  “But why did you leave them—the diamonds, I mean—here in the gallery?” asked Andrew.

  “Why not? Can you think of a safer place for them than inside a terra cotta head that I myself had called a fake? Besides, I rather liked the idea of keeping them here, keeping them handy. Because I was convinced that it was here, at the gallery, that I’d find the proper person to sell them to—someone with a great deal of money and few scruples who’d be willing to buy some extraordinary diamonds without inquiring too closely as to where they came from.”

  “But so far, I gather, no one with exactly those qualifications has turned up,” said Wyatt.

  “Yes, they have. I could have disposed of them at least twice. But would you like an example of pure and classic irony? Shortly after I arranged the theft of the diamonds—and some time before they arrived in this country—I no longer needed the money. I made some very large sales—a Titian and a Raphael—and two different clients offered to lend me as much money as I needed to open the galleries here and in Paris. That’s why I still have the diamonds.”

  “Don’t you mean had them?” asked Wyatt.

  “Well, yes. Which brings us to a most interesting question. What happens now?”

  “Why, I go to the police, make my complaint, and they arrest you for grand larceny.”

  Smiling, Mowbray shook his head. “What a silly move that would be.”

  “Silly?”

  “Yes. I would of course deny that I knew anything about the diamonds. I was as surprised as you were when you found them in the head. Obviously, my proclaiming the heads to be fakes and putting them in my gallery prevented the real thief from recovering his stolen goods.”

  “Even though I have witnesses to the fact that you admitted the theft?”

  “Witnesses? What witnesses? Our friend Mr. Russell here—to whom I have promised a one-man show—a promise it would be difficult for me to keep if I were in jail? I have a feeling he might be rather reluctant to testify against me.”

  “What about us?” asked Sara. “Andrew and me?”

  “I’m not sure how much weight the police would give to the testimony of two minors, especially friends of Inspector Wyatt’s,” said Mowbray. “Besides,” and again he smiled, “I have the impression—perhaps erroneous—that you are not quite as outraged at what I did as you should be. That you rather like and, in fact, admire me and thus—even though the Inspector is your friend—like Mr. Russell you would prefer not to testify against me.”

  Wyatt looked thoughtfully at Sara and Andrew as they exchanged glances.

  “May I ask you another question?” said Mowbray. “Why did you come to America?”

  “To see if I could find the African Stars and return them to their rightful owners.”

  “Well, you’ve done that—found them, I mean. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you need to go into every detail of how and where you found them?”

  Wyatt studied him for a moment, glanced at Russell, Sara and Andrew, then looked at Mowbray again.

  “Perhaps not,” he said.

  “Splendid,” said Mowbray, unlocking and opening the door. “I was quite sure that anyone as clever as you are would also be reasonable. Which brings me to a final point. You recall,” he said to Russell, “that I told you that I liked your work—thought you were very talented—before the Inspector played out his little m
elodrama. I meant it. And I meant it when I said I’d give you a one-man show.”

  “Yes, I know you did,” said Russell. “Thank you.”

  “No, no,” said Mowbray. “Thank you—all of you—for a most interesting and, in the end, most satisfying half hour.”

  9

  The Midnight Caller

  Mark Russell had dinner with Wyatt, Andrew and Sara that evening. And since both Russell and Wyatt had things to celebrate—Wyatt the recovery of the African Stars and Russell the promise of a show for his paintings—they went to Delmonico’s. Of course Sara and Andrew knew about Delmonico’s—it was New York’s most famous and reputedly its best restaurant—but they had never been there before. Wyatt had booked a table for them in the café, which looked out on Broadway and Twenty-Sixth Street and was a little less formal than the dining room, which faced Fifth Avenue. The café was large and high-ceilinged with a marble floor, and the furnishings and general decor were most elegant. Russell followed the example of Sara and Andrew in asking Wyatt to order for them, and, after consultation with the waiter, he asked for Clams Casino—clams baked with bits of bacon and herbs—mutton chops with baked potatoes, salad and strawberry ice cream for dessert.

  They spent the early part of the evening talking about Mowbray, whom, it turned out, Wyatt liked as much as Russell, Sara and Andrew did—though he hastened to point out that a great scoundrel is often much more interesting and amusing than someone of impeccable moral character. They knew that the African Stars were now in the hotel safe, and Wyatt intended to turn them over to Lloyd’s the next day for return to the Bachofers.

  After dinner they started down Broadway together. This section of it—from Thirty-Fourth Street down to Fourteenth—was known as the Ladies’ Mile, for it was lined with some of New York’s finest and most expensive shops: jewelers, furriers, florists, milliners and shops that sold only gloves. The street was full of coaches, victorias, landaus and barouches even at this hour, and the pavement was crowded with strollers for, besides the shops, there were many theatres along this stretch of Broadway.