Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  Determined to make no concessions, Ben turned his attention to the Georgian loving cup which had been presented to the Club by a winner of the Derby, who had subsequently shot himself. ‘That’s a beautiful object,’ he said. ‘But not quite as beautiful as the object we’ve got from that Owly Johnson I was telling you about.’ At which, a voice came floating across the table, ‘Awful responsibility, silver. Got to have a chap in the pantry going over it again and again with a toothbrush.’ The elderly member who spoke looked irredeemably boyish, with untidy grey hair and small, darting eyes. Nick said, ‘Hallo, Bertie. My guest, Ben Glazier. This is Bertie Wedensbury,’ introducing the long-suffering peer whose wine had been consigned to the deep.

  ‘Glazier. Not Shropshire, at all?’ Bertie peered at Ben suspiciously.

  ‘The Glasgow Glaziers,’ Ben told him.

  ‘Your family keep a lot of ornaments, do they?’

  ‘Ornaments? As a matter of fact, my family rather went in for china ducks flying across the wall.’

  ‘China ducks, eh? Damned original. We had a lot of silver once. Lost it unfortunately during the war.’

  ‘You were bombed out?’

  ‘Bombed? Good God, no! They didn’t have bombs in the war when we lost our family silver. Pikes and halberds and, well, a few muskets, I suppose.’

  ‘I think Bertie’s talking about the Civil War. You know, Cavaliers against Roundheads,’ Mallows explained.

  ‘That’s it! Charles I versus Oliver Cromwell. Roundheads? I don’t know about Roundheads. Bloody Puritans, that’s what I call them! Killjoys. Party-poopers. You don’t like Puritans, do you, Glazier?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I can’t stand them,’ Ben told him.

  ‘Good. Good man! I say, Roper, your friend here tells me he doesn’t care for Puritans. Let me tell you, it’s the whole history of my family, the curse of the Wedensburys: Cavalier husbands married to killjoy, Puritan wives. And that doesn’t lead to a happy home life.’

  ‘You were telling us about your silver?’ Ben tried to keep a grasp on the subject.

  ‘Oh, yes. Before the bloody Puritans got at it! My ancestor, Henry Wedensbury, was a pretty close friend of Charles I, who was a great collector, as you know. They got on like a house on fire but, of course, Henry’s wife didn’t like it. She was of the Praise God and Shut Up on Sunday school of thought. Women like that can’t stand anything beautiful.’

  Lunch was over without any sign of peace having broken out between Ben Glazier and his rival, Nick. They were together by the porter’s box in the black-and-white tiled entrance hall, and Nick was leaving his guest and returning upstairs to a meeting of the wine committee. Ben thanked him for an interesting lunch in a place, it seemed, where time stood still.

  ‘Does that mean you’ll stop filling Maggie’s head with unnecessary suspicions?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Of course. I’ll stick to the necessary ones.’ As Ben’s host left, Bertie Wedensbury, on his way out, approached Ben as though he were an old friend and said confidentially, ‘Can’t stay here and drink. Not all the afternoon. Someone’s bound to notice and report back to the leader of the opposition. Look here, why not come and spend a happy hour in my other club?’

  ‘Your other?’

  ‘Monica’s Bar, Frith Street.’ Bertie came close to Ben and whispered, ‘Very discreet. Flarder to get in there than it is to Brummel’s. Good atmosphere. Not Puritan. And not a word to Pamela.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d drink Petrus ’61 at Monica’s?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Petrus at Monica’s? Not bloody likely.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to get back and work,’ Ben apologized.

  ‘Puritan!’ Bertie was searching for his wallet. ‘Never mind. Another time, perhaps. Monica’s Bar. I’m there most afternoons when I’m up in town. Just mention my name.’

  He gave Ben a card from his wallet.

  Maggie was alone in Old Masters when Ben got back and she received his news with amazement. She said, ‘Nick actually bought you lunch? I mean he paid? He must be extremely fond of you.’

  ‘Nonsense! It was a first sign of weakness. He knows I’m on to him and he’s trying to buy me off.’

  ‘I told you’ – Maggie was sure of it – ‘Nick’s going straight.’

  ‘Prove it!’ Ben challenged her.

  She looked at him in doubt for a moment and then said, ‘All right. We’ll prove it.’

  ‘You and Nick Roper,’ Ben smiled. ‘That wouldn’t be very satisfactory.

  ‘No, you and I. We’ve proved things together in the past. We’ll find out about these damned labels and clean up the salt cellar business. Then we’ll discover that Nick has absolutely nothing to do with either of them.’

  ‘You want to bet?’ Ben didn’t believe it.

  Maggie took what she was afraid might be a risk because she wanted to end the warfare between the two men who were most important to her. She believed Ben was wrong – all right, she told herself, she hoped he was wrong – and, when he found that out, she could settle down again, more or less easily with the friend she couldn’t help loving and the man whose friendship she most enjoyed. So she perched herself on the back of Ben’s Harley-Davidson as he made his return journey to Print-U-Like, and was with him when he confronted Lenny with one of the Petrus labels. ‘Your work?’ Ben asked, without preliminary introductions.

  ‘I’m not too sure ...’ Lenny looked at it as though he’d never seen it before.

  ‘I am,’ Ben told him. ‘I got it from a box on your counter. The 1961 wine. Printed now. Bit of an odd thing to do, wasn’t it? Didn’t it strike you as a little strange?’

  ‘That’s the job the client wanted. So that’s the job I carried out.’

  ‘So it is your work?’ Maggie wanted to get this clear.

  ‘Well, I did the printing. Yes,’ Lenny admitted.

  ‘Who was your client?’ Ben asked. ‘And, for God’s sake, don’t give us the spiel about “secrets of the confessional”.’

  ‘Was it anyone from Klinsky’s?’ Maggie asked and was half afraid of the answer she might get.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ Ben warned the printer. ‘When we first met, Owly told you I was from Klinsky’s and you started to say you’d done some work for us. Owly shut you up pretty damn quick, as I remember.’

  Lenny, twitching energetically, looked at Maggie for help, and she was brave enough to ask, ‘Does the name Nick Roper mean anything to you?’

  ‘Roper?’ Lenny frowned.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. No, it doesn’t ring a bell at all.’

  ‘There! You see?’ Maggie looked at Ben, triumphant.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t tell you his name?’ Ben tried again. ‘But he was from Klinsky’s?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean as we was printing for Klinsky’s,’ Lenny spoke carefully. ‘I mean, the client reckoned he needed labels like that because of something he was going to auction. Anyway, that’s what Owly told me.’

  ‘Someone appears to have been contemplating a fraud, and getting Klinsky’s to sell wine with forged labels,’ Maggie summed up. ‘You said it wasn’t Nick Roper, didn’t you?’

  ‘He hasn’t said that,’ Ben told her.

  ‘You said it was someone outside Klinsky’s.’

  ‘That is true, Miss. That is too very true.’

  ‘If we find out who this trickster is, we can go to the police and tell them. At the moment, the only name we can give them, Mr Lockyer’ – Maggie smiled in a way Lenny didn’t find encouraging – ‘is yours.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Get the big fish and a little tiddler like you could swim away and hide under the rocks.’ Ben also wanted a name.

  ‘I never dealt with the man. Not personally.’

  ‘The man?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Owly dealt with him. It was always Owly.’

  ‘Owly’s in intensive care. He can’t talk.’

  ‘Owly always called him the Captain.’

  ‘
That’s not a great deal of help.’ All the same, Maggie was relieved. The Captain didn’t sound much like Nick.

  ‘But I know where Owly went to meet the Captain.’ Lenny was anxious, now, to sound helpful. ‘He used to ring him and tell him to get his skates on and come down.’

  ‘Down where?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Some sort of afternoon drinking club, I think. Down Soho. Owly said the Captain’s there most afternoons. Holding court. Frith Street, was it?’

  It was an outside chance, but Ben tried it. He opened his wallet, took out a card and asked, ‘Does Monica’s Bar mean anything to you?’

  Half-way up Frith Street in Soho, between an adult video store and a betting shop, a discreet doorway had a similar card pinned above the bell. Ben rang and told the answerphone they were friends of the Captain’s, and asked if he was in by any chance. ‘Captain said he’d be in after lunch. Want to come up and wait for him? First floor,’ said the disembodied voice. The street door clicked open and they climbed up a dark staircase to where an ageing Peter Pan, a timeless, boyish figure wearing jeans, a black T-shirt with ‘Monica’s’ written on it and an insecure toupée, was holding a door open. ‘You’re not members?’ he asked them.

  ‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Maggie had to admit.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll just charge you exorbitant prices for the drinks. My name’s Martin, by the way.’

  Monica’s club had none of the facilities of Brummel’s, or even of the Sheridan. It was a small airless room, and the pink lampshades and the string of fairy lights over the bottles failed to give it a festive appearance. It hadn’t changed much since it was fashionable in the Fifties, and photographs of the youthful Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and George Melly, all signed ‘To Monica’, hung, as they had for years, on the blotched wallpaper. At three o’clock in the afternoon, there was only one other customer, a dangerously thin woman in her sixties perhaps, sitting on a bar stool with her legs crossed, a cigarette dangling from her pillar-box red lips and a beret on the side of her head, looking, for all the world, as though she were hanging out in the Deux Magots waiting to get a distant glimpse of Juliette Greco. Martin had hardly got himself behind the bar when she called out, in a threatening baritone, ‘Bloody tide’s gone down in my G and T!’ When she had been attended to, Ben got a beer and Maggie thought she’d have a white wine. ‘Whaite whaine!’ the woman in the beret put on her poshest voice. ‘How terribly, terribly. Who are these people, Martin?’

  ‘Friends of the Captain, Betsy. So you’d better watch it, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, are they? Splice the mainbrace. How do you know the Captain? In the war? You a frog?’

  ‘Actually, I’m Scottish,’ Ben told her.

  ‘How killingly funny. I meant, were you a frogman ever? A diver?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, don’t go on about it. Nothing’s more boring than what some ancient fart did in the war. Packet of Silk Cut then, Martin.’

  ‘There’s another friend of ours who’s a member of this place.’

  ‘This exclusive members club, do you mind?’

  ‘Lord Wedensbury.’

  ‘You’re Bertie’s friends? He hasn’t got many.’ This got a throaty laugh from the woman on the bar stool. ‘Pamela sees to that.’

  ‘You expecting him in this afternoon?’ Ben asked Martin.

  ‘He rang for the Captain, seems his wife’s poorly.’

  ‘Of course she’s poorly,’ the woman said. ‘They’re both poorly. That bloody stately home of theirs is mortgaged up to the chimney-pots. Wedensbury Park! Why did he ring for the Captain?’

  ‘Some deal they got on, I suppose.’ Martin slapped her packet of cigarettes on the counter.

  ‘What deal?’

  ‘How should I know? I mind my own business,’ Martin shrugged.

  ‘No, you don’t! You haven’t got any business of your own. You mind other people’s business. That’s about all you’re capable of.’ The other customer lit a cigarette and introduced herself. ‘Sorry, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Betsy Pitt-Plummer.’

  ‘Pitt-Plummer? Doesn’t your family own a Rubens?’ Maggie seemed to remember.

  “‘The Wise Virgin”. Not a portrait of either of us, I’m afraid! Oh, yes, I’m terribly top drawer!’ Betsy laughed and then looked seriously at Ben. ‘When you were young, I was extremely beautiful. Can you believe it?’

  ‘I think I can.’

  ‘Oh, listen to you! Mister Smoothy-Talker. Are you rogering that young girl?’

  The answerphone behind the bar spoke, Martin replied to it respectfully and pushed the button to open the door. Ben answered Betsy Pitt-Plummer’s question with a regretful no.

  ‘I bet you wish you were!’ Betsy coughed in her cigarette, and the door swung open to admit a short, close-cropped, grey-haired man with the shoulders of a PE instructor, dressed in a blazer bearing some sort of crest, grey flannel trousers and a turtle-neck sweater. Following him was a younger, taller and broader man with hair over his ears and a gaucho moustache who gave off a deafening smell of after-shave. ‘Captain’ – Martin was already pouring out a large Bells whisky – ‘there’s friends of yours here.’

  ‘Friends of mine?’ The man who’d been called the Captain sat next to Ben. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Perhaps not yet,’ Ben told him. ‘We’re also friends of Lord Wedensbury.’

  ‘Bertie? You know dear old Bertie, do you? Did he send you?’

  ‘He said this was an excellent place for getting drunk in the afternoon.’

  ‘Why only the afternoons?’ Betsy asked loudly.

  ‘His Lordship’s not coming,’ Martin told the Captain, ignoring her. ‘Her Ladyship’s ill. That was the message.’

  ‘Oh, well. Bertie’s not going to break his heart about that, is he? Not seeing as how she treated him. Know her too, I expect?’ He turned to Ben, smiling.

  ‘No, I never met her.’ And then Ben said, ‘But I did meet Owly Johnson.’

  ‘You seem to have friends up and down the social ladder, you do.’ Betsy raised her eyebrows and Maggie told her, ‘We get to know all sorts of people in our business.’

  ‘What’s your business?’ the Captain happened to ask. ‘The pursuit of beautiful objects’ – Ben described it carefully – ‘a pretty tough trade.’

  ‘Does that mean Owly Johnson and Bertie?’ The Captain was looking worried. ‘They never got together, so far as you know?’

  ‘Not as far as we know.’ Maggie looked at him and said, ‘Owly’s in hospital, isn’t he? That’s what we heard.’

  ‘We were wondering why?’ It was the question Ben had been waiting to ask. ‘We also wondered why you ordered a lot of wine labels to be printed for Petrus ’61?’

  Maggie added, ‘And whether the name Nick Roper means anything to you?’

  ‘Wine labels.’ The Captain was no longer smiling. ‘Is that what you came here about?’

  ‘One of the things.’

  ‘You came here to ask questions. Not to see me or your old friend, Bertie. This is a good place, this is. A nice safe place. Except for people who come here asking questions. Martin!’ he called to the barman, without taking his eye of Ben.

  ‘Yes, Captain?’

  ‘Are these people members?’

  ‘No, Captain. I don’t know why they came in, really.’

  ‘Seems they came to ask questions.’ The Captain issued a brief order. ‘See to it, Robin. They’ve been taking liberties.’

  From that moment, Maggie noticed, things began to happen with great rapidity. The smell of after-shave became stronger as the tall man with the gauche moustache advanced on Ben, and he only hesitated for a moment when half of Ben’s beer arrived in his face. Then Ben had her by the wrist and was dragging her down the stairs. The dark hallway was filled by an extended Chinese family loaded with shopping. As Ben pulled her past them, they started to struggle up the stairs, holding up the Captain’s man. They were out of the door before Robin had extricated h
imself from the crowd, and Ben pulled her through the curtain of hanging plastic strips into the adult video store, and, to her immense relief, they saw their hunter run past it.

  Then they were out and retreated down Bateman Street and into Mead Street, where the Harley-Davidson stood waiting. As they roared away they just missed Robin who was pounding back up Wardour Street, running incautiously in the middle of the road.

  When he had washed his face, straightened his tie and recovered his breath, Ben took his mug of tea into Dorothy Entwhistle’s office and got a short lecture on King Charles I. ‘Rotten king and first-class patron of the arts. Bought as much as he could afford: Italian paintings and other Italian works of art, including silver. You look tired, Ben. You’ve been working too hard?’

  ‘Above the call of duty,’ he told her. ‘I mean, I didn’t spend all those years studying Piero della Francesca and the science of perspective to be chased through Soho by a frogman’s bouncer.’

  ‘What on earth were you up to?’

  ‘Investigating the provenance of the salt cellar. But go on. Did the King make presents of works of art?’

  ‘Sometimes to people he stayed with,’ she nodded. ‘Or loyal Cavaliers.’

  ‘Or at least to husbands who were Cavaliers. And when the Puritans took over, they got rid of the precious silver?’

  ‘Church candlesticks and chalices, of course. Anything that struck them as ornate, erotic or extravagant.’

  ‘You want to make sure that the Puritans don’t get at the Cellini lookalike, whoever it really belongs to.’ Ben finished his tea and stood up.

  ‘It’s locked up in the vaults,’ Dorothy told him. ‘You can feel perfectly safe about it.’

  ‘Safer than I can feel about myself. I’ve got to ask a few more questions.’

  ‘Not in Soho?’ She looked at him, worried.

  ‘Not there, thank God,’ he assured her. ‘In a frightfully posh gentleman’s club.’

  But when Ben presented himself in the marble hall of Brummel’s, the porter told him he doubted if Lord Wedensbury was in the Club, although he consented to send some underling off to make sure. Ben took a seat under a portrait of a whippet-thin Derby winner and, after some delay, that busy obituarist, Parsifal Mallows joined him with news: ‘If you’re looking for Bertie, he’s not coming up today. Pamela’s been taken worse and I bet he hopes it’s nothing trivial. As a matter of fact, and this might interest you, I’ve just been up in the library roughing out Pam’s obituary. Of course, you know the terrible thing she did to him?’