Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  Dorothy, wife of the ferocious and well-feared Mr Justice Entwhistle, was a grey-haired, motherly, untidy woman with a high, authoritative and upper-class voice, much loved by her family and respected by the staff at Klinsky’s where she was head of Silver. She was examining the salt cellar produced from Owly’s shop as Ben looked on with interest.

  ‘Benvenuto Cellini arrived in France in 1540 with the salt cellar unfinished. It was completed in gold in ’42, was it?’ Ben felt he was being taught by a particularly nice headmistress, but he was glad to be able to say, ‘In 1543, actually.’

  ‘Thank you, Ben. He’d certainly made the design for the Cardinal of Ferrara and I suppose he might have cast another version in silver. He said he’d make one for “whoever was destined to possess it”.’

  ‘I bet he never thought it would fall into the sticky hands of Owly Johnson.’ Ben smiled.

  ‘And the provenance is?’

  ‘Murky. Owly says that to talk about it would be to give away the secrets of the confessional.’

  ‘He’s going to have to tell us some time. As I’m sure you know, the gold salt cellar is the supreme example of Renaissance work. Worth God knows how much. He’s going to have to answer some questions.’

  ‘I’ll ring him tomorrow.’

  ‘Please do.’ She lifted the salt cellar and looked under it. ‘If it was made in England it’d have the lion’s face and maker’s mark, date letter and all that sort of thing. Nothing like that in Italy. We just have to go by how it looks.’

  ‘Well, how does it look?’ Ben ventured to ask her.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it looks stunning.’

  ‘Yes, God damn it, Ben. I think it looks right!’

  Owly was sitting at the table in his inner office that night, eating fish and chips and reading an old copy of the Connoisseur. There was a sudden crash and the sound of glass broken. He stood up and opened the door into the shop. The cat jumped from the top of the safe, and stood, its back arched and its fur rising. Three substantial men wearing balaclavas were advancing through the bric-a-brac towards Owly Johnson.

  The next morning Ben kept his promise to Dorothy Entwhistle and telephoned Owly. The phone rang for a long time in the back of the shop. The safe door had swung open, drawers and cupboards had been ransacked and many objects broken. An unconscious Owly was lying on the floor, blood dried and caked on his mouth and forehead. The cat was curled up and asleep beside him.

  When he got no answer to his call, Ben, remembering all that Dorothy Entwhistle had said about the salt cellar, got on his bike. He found Lenny Lockyer in his doorway, where he had been watching the comings and goings of the police and the ambulance. Ben followed the restless and twitching man into his print shop. Lenny started to boil an electric kettle. ‘Poor old chap. He didn’t deserve that, Mr Glazier. I don’t mind what he’d done, he didn’t deserve that treatment. You’re welcome to step in here, sir. Not that there’s much more I can tell you. Late last night, it was. Of course the police don’t have a clue who did it. They got Owly in intensive care. Terrible times we live in, don’t we, Mr Glazier? Scares me to think about it. Luckily I don’t have valuable objects like what Owly got. I’ve only got my printing but, as I say, you never know these days, do you?’

  Ben didn’t answer this question. He was standing at the counter looking at various bits of print work. What interested him most was a small box of wine labels, obviously freshly printed, on which Chateau Petrus 1961 was clearly written.

  ‘I’m having a cup of instant to calm my nerves, like. Care to join me in a cup of instant, Mr Glazier?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.’ And then he asked; as he pocketed a few of the labels, ‘I suppose you haven’t got any very special claret at eight hundred and fifty quid a bottle?’

  Maggie was having a lonely lunch, tomato and Mozzarella salad, a glass of red, and a quick look at the Guardian, in the Italian cafe round the corner from Klinsky’s, when Camilla, carrying her coffee as though it were an unexploded hand grenade, joined her. When she had taken a tentative gulp, she said, ‘Sorry about last night.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Maggie was unused to the role of Camilla’s comforter.

  ‘You probably didn’t notice, I’d had rather a lot to drink.’

  ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘And I was a bit desperate. I mean, I’m sick of keeping it a secret, about me and Bernard. It’s time people knew.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort to you, I think most people at Klinsky’s have known for a considerable time.’

  ‘No! Is that honestly true?’ Camilla seemed amazed. ‘Well, almost everyone,’ Maggie was careful not to exaggerate. ‘I mean, there might be someone in Antiquities who hasn’t heard. No, I think I heard them discussing it over the necklace of Queen Hatshepsut.’

  ‘I’m jolly glad!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m glad everyone knows. Then Muriel might get to hear of it and he’d be forced to do something. Till it all comes out in the open, Bernard just creeps around being scared she’ll find out.’

  ‘He did look rather nervous,’ Maggie noticed.

  ‘Yes. Sweet, isn’t it?’ Camilla smiled lovingly. ‘He’s dead scared of Muriel and he’s dead scared of me. Poor darling. He’s like a rabbit caught between the gun and the ferret. All big eyes and shaking with fear. I suppose that’s what makes me want to stroke him, to try and calm the poor trembling little creature.’

  ‘We are still talking about Bernard Holloway?’ Maggie was puzzled.

  ‘Of course, we are. I don’t suppose if he wasn’t such a pathetic, frightened little animal I should love him half so much. Oh, God, Maggie. Isn’t life hell?’

  In spite of this gloomy pronouncement, Camilla had become quite calm by the time she walked into Lord Holloway’s office. He, on the other hand, was in a state of near panic, and had been since that unfortunate dinner at Les Deux Amants. He was doubtful if they should ever be seen together, certainly not alone in his office, and he announced in a voice of doom that Muriel was on her way back from her holiday. Camilla did her best to soothe his nerves. ‘Poor sweetheart,’ she said. ‘How very scary for you.’

  ‘She’ll want to come to one of our lunches. And if Maggie Perowne, or Nick Roper, has told anyone about, well, about that unfortunate encounter ... Then I’m very much afraid ...’

  ‘Of course, darling. You usually are very much afraid. But you’re not to worry.’

  ‘Aren’t I?’ The Lord Chairman was doubtful.

  ‘I had breakfast with Maggie. I made quite sure she and Nick won’t say anything.’

  ‘Oh, you did? You’re so wonderful!’ Holloway’s relief was so great that he embraced the head of Modern British Paintings with some enthusiasm. But then panic fear returned when there was a knock at the door which he had carefully locked so that he might not be disturbed during this important conference.

  ‘Lord Chairman?’ The noise off was Shrimsley’s.

  ‘Yes, what is it? Hold on a minute.’ And the Chairman whispered to Camilla, whom he was still holding tightly, ‘It’s Shrimsley! He mustn’t see you in the room.’

  ‘I’ve adjusted the personnel timesheet figures to the artwork output ratios, Lord Chairman. I thought you’d like to see them before the meeting,’ Shrimsley called out.

  ‘I’ll go, then,’ Camilla offered.

  ‘Not out of the door. He’ll see you.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘In ...’ And then Holloway had one of those brilliant inspirations which had made him such a successful businessman, ‘In the toilet.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ Camilla wasn’t best pleased.

  ‘I’m very much afraid so.’

  ‘Do give up being afraid, darling. It may be the death of you!’ So Camilla went to keep company with the ‘Satyr Frolicking’ and, when she was safely stored away, Bernard unlocked the door and said, ‘Come in, Shrimsley! I can’t think what you’re doing lurking about in the
passage.’

  Ben Glazier had called on Nick in the Wine department and asked if he could take a look at a bottle of the legendary Petrus ’61. When he was given it, he studied the label with particular care.

  ‘I told you the price, Ben. Do you want some for your cellar? So you can invite Maggie and me for a really special little dinner?’ Nick was being quite gently mocking.

  ‘The label looks fairly convincing.’ Ben chose to ignore the idle chatter and get down to what he now suspected was the dirty business in hand. ‘Nicely stained, of course. But suppose it was printed last week, dirtied down a little, and stuck on a bottle of plonk?’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t it? You don’t happen to know a little firm called Print-U-Like, do you? Or a couple of characters called Lenny Lockyer and Owly Johnson?’

  ‘Of course, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Standing with his hands in his pockets, resplendent in scarlet braces and a striped shirt with a white collar, Nick, Ben thought, looked the very picture of public school unreliability. He carried on with his inquiries, ‘By the way, Owly’s met with a nasty little accident. Have you heard about that?’

  ‘What the hell are you suggesting?’

  ‘Just a fairly simple fraud. That’s all.’

  ‘Fraud? No way! We know exactly where this wine came from.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Where exactly?’

  ‘The cellar of a gentleman.’ Nick wouldn’t incriminate himself, Ben thought.

  ‘Has this gentleman got a name?’

  ‘He has. But he doesn’t want me to divulge it.’

  ‘All the same, divulge!’

  ‘I couldn’t. You know that, Ben. It would be like giving away the secrets of the confessional.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Owly was terribly keen on the secrets of the confessional too. It was so convenient’ – he looked hard at Nick – ‘for crooks.’

  At the reception desk Lucy was intoning, most dramatically, the words from the book she was holding flat against her chest and only consulting in case of dire need: ‘I believe it. I believe it ... Poor Uncle Vanya, you’re crying. You’ve had no joy in your life, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait ...’

  Maggie, who had gone to buy a long-desired jacket after her talk to Camilla on the hellish nature of existence, was stopped in her tracks by Lucy’s news. ‘Maggie! I’ve got Sonia in Uncle Vanya at the Lame Duck in Hounslow. You will be at our first night, won’t you?’ She was saved from a commitment by Ben coming down the stairs and telling her he’d made an extraordinary discovery.

  ‘The salt cellar? Dorothy Entwhistle told me. Could it possibly be right?’ Maggie was interested.

  ‘No. No, not the salt cellar. This is something far more important than the salt cellar. It’s about your little friend.’

  ‘Which little friend?’

  ‘Nifty Nick Roper. The elegant no-good and fake artist.’

  ‘Shut up, Ben!’ Maggie was serious. ‘Do you want everyone in Klinsky’s to hear you?’ Maggie started up the stairs and he followed her saying, ‘You don’t want to know what he’s done?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do.’

  ‘Come into my office. I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I said, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You want me to shout it into Straddling-Smith’s ear-hole? Or on the stairs?’ So she went into his small untidy office and Ben shut the door. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I know about Nick.’

  ‘I know about him too,’ Maggie told him. ‘Do you think I’ve got illusions about Nick? I’ve got no illusions. He takes life as it comes. He thinks it’s all a bit of a joke. He’s slightly mad and quite dangerous to know. He may have sailed rather close to the wind during the Bronzino business, but he is not a faker!’ It was then that Ben told her about Owly, Lenny at Print-U-Like and the Petrus labels. To his intense disappointment she seemed unmoved.

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben. All right. Some crook’s been printing Petrus labels. How many wine dealers are there in the world?’

  ‘Some crook who’s got a connection with Klinsky’s? His partner came here with the salt cellar.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove a thing.’

  ‘And when I asked your little friend ...’

  ‘He’s quite big, actually.’

  ‘When I asked your big friend where his supply of Petrus ’61 came from, he didn’t dare tell me.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘Comes to the same thing.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t! You’re trying to rubbish him.’

  ‘Don’t blame me! I didn’t make him ... Blame his parents. Blame God. I’m only pointing out his glaringly obvious defects.’ And then, when he had run out of breath, Maggie looked at him and said, ‘You know why you’re trying to rubbish Nick, don’t you? It’s because you’re jealous.’

  ‘I’m what?’

  ‘Well, perhaps, a little jealous.’ She didn’t, after all, mean to hurt him.

  But Ben was outraged. ‘You mean, I’d like to be a Hooray Henry? An old-public-school yobbo. An overprivileged prat with less idea of morality than a pimp doing the three-card trick on Brighton racecourse? Jealous of Nick? Why should I be jealous of him?’

  ‘Because we’re having an affair.’ And Maggie did her best to explain, ‘I wish you could understand, Ben. I do love you, in some sort of way. I don’t know, it’s probably a much better sort of love than what I feel about Nick. I don’t know how to say this. You haven’t got a cigarette, have you? No? Well, that’s all right then. It’s just that there’s something about Nick I can’t actually give up. He may have behaved badly once. But now I can tell you he’s going straight.’

  ‘Are you really sure of that?’ Ben spoke with measureless contempt and Maggie seemed, as she said, ‘Yes,’ only a little uncertain.

  One of the things that most depressed Ben Glazier was that Maggie had taken up jogging, not because she liked it much, but because Nick thought it was good for them both. After a damp and exhausting run round Hyde Park, they swam and had a shower at a Health Club, and then arrived at work with slightly-out-of-breath and glowing health. It was on one of these runs that Maggie asked Nick where the Chateau Petrus came from.

  ‘I made it absolutely clear to Ben I’m not telling.’

  ‘I’m not Ben.’

  ‘No. You’re his mouthpiece, aren’t you? His little ventriloquist’s dummy. “See if you can get it out of him.” Were those his instructions?’

  ‘All right, Ben has got some far-fetched idea in his head. He’s suspicious.’

  ‘He would be. The old chap fancies you.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ she panted. ‘I told him you weren’t up to anything iffy. All you have to do is tell him where it came from.’

  ‘I don’t think my client would like that at all. Just tell poor old Ben Glazier to mind his own bloody business. Speed up, Mags, or would you rather jog with the elderly?’

  However, in the gentlemen’s shower-room after the jog, dressed only in a bath towel and smiling broadly, Nick Roper could be heard talking to the telephone attached to a pine-covered wall. ‘Ben? Oh, this is Nick Roper speaking. Now, don’t ring off in a huff or anything. I just think we should have, well a bit of a heart-to-hearter. Why? Because you’re upsetting Maggie. I thought I’d take you to lunch and we could sort of ... get it out in the open. My club. Yes. Brummel’s. St James Street. Shall we say, one o’clock?’

  While the Sheridan Club caters for lawyers, judges, publishers and the occasional actor, Brummel’s serves nursery food and adult wines to the aristocracy, many of them Nick Roper’s cousins or mere distant relatives, Conservative politicians of the old-fashioned sort, retired generals and admirals, a smattering of journalists who write for the Daily Telegraph, and one or two quite dangerous financiers. The premises are a good deal more elegant than the dusty old Sheridan. Brummel’s boasts white walls, Regency furniture, chandeliers and some impressive portraits of long-dead military men an
d well-bred racehorses. Members and their guests sit side by side at a long table down the centre of the dining-room, and there Ben, only slightly embarrassed, found himself sharing a meal with his least favourite male person. When he asked Nick why he had invited him, he got a charming old Etonian smile and another question, ‘Why did you accept?’

  ‘Out of curiosity, perhaps. I’m on a mission to find out much more about rare and fine wines. I’m after some of your secrets.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Ben, why don’t you?’

  ‘Why should I? Give me one good reason.’

  ‘All this business about labels. You’ve got Maggie running after me asking questions. I asked you out to lunch, Ben, to tell you to stop interfering, because there’s no real point in it is there? You don’t really want Maggie all to yourself. You wouldn’t know what to do with her.’

  ‘I suppose I could protect her.’ Ben did his best to sound dignified.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Bad company.’

  ‘She is grown up, you know.’ Nick smiled tolerantly. ‘She is over twenty-one and she holds down a pretty important job at Klinsky’s. She’s perfectly entitled to fancy whoever she likes, and it’s one of the facts of life you’ll have to get used to that she fancies me. So why don’t you lay off and enjoy my bad company over a bottle of the club claret?’ Nick turned to a small, weatherbeaten club servant in a white jacket, a man who walked with a curious rolling gait, as though he were serving lunch on board a ship. ‘Liver and bacon, I think, Gilbert, and the bread and butter pudding to follow.’ At which point the man on Ben’s other side, uttered in a high bleat, ‘Has anyone in particular died at Klinsky’s recently?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ Ben muttered, and his neighbour, who had grey hair, a long upper lip and was decorated with a Brummel’s club bow-tie, introduced himself, ‘I’m Parsifal Mallows. I do the obituaries in the Informer. We specialize in reminding the world of the dear departed’s eccentricities and disgraceful scandals. Anyone with that sort of record in the art world been looking rather peaky lately? Tip me the wink, if you can think of anyone.’

  ‘The one I’m thinking of is looking rather well at the moment.’ Ben glanced at Nick as he ordered the Iamb cutlets, and his host, filling his glass with the club claret, said cheerfully, ‘So what’s it to be, Ben? Peace and goodwill all round?’