Later Chuck got out of his car in an underground car park in the Thirties. He looked down a row of cars and saw the man he had come to meet walking towards him carrying a brief-case. He put his hand in his inside pocket and felt for a long envelope. As Walt Wenzel had said, it was going to cost him.
Ben was packing in his hotel bedroom. Maggie had joined him for a cup of tea and an account of her lunch with Gloria, which caused him great amusement and some delight. ‘Saint Chuck planning to auction his own picture? Oh, dear! He’s rather fallen off his pedestal. It only goes to show. Jogging doesn’t improve the morals.’ There was a knock at the door and Maggie went and took a small parcel from a bellboy.
‘There’s a packet for you.’ She looked at it with vague curiosity. ‘I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes. She said she’d send that over. I’ve got to deliver it to someone in London.’
‘Who’s she? The cat’s mother?’
‘Well, no. As a matter of fact, she’s Barbara Flecknow. We happened to meet at lunchtime,’ he told her modestly.
‘You mean you just bumped into each other on Fifty-second Street and she pulled you into the Four Seasons.’
‘She wanted to see me and she was very decent about my view of the Paris Bordone. We’re still good friends.’
‘How sweet! And she asked you to take this to London. Who to?’
‘Oh, a friend. In some hotel.’
‘A friend without a name. She’s set you a pretty tough assignment. There’s not a word written on this package.’
‘She must have forgotten. I’ll give her a ring later.’
‘Perhaps she won’t be in.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘She might want you to be travelling with a totally anonymous package.’
‘Why ever should she?’ Ben had no idea what Maggie was talking about.
She looked at him severely and said, ‘You really fancy her, don’t you?’
‘She’s a remarkably attractive woman.’
‘Quite young?’
‘She looks young.’
‘And apt to run her fingers over you in the course of a conversation, I noticed.’
‘Some people are extremely tactile.’ Was she jealous? Ben almost dared to hope so.
‘And some people might want to ruin your reputation. Perhaps make it seem you weren’t such an entirely trustworthy Scot! What did she say was in here?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘And you didn’t ask?’
‘Well, no.’
Maggie started to tear the brown paper open.
‘Maggie, hold on. You can’t do that! It’s a private parcel.’ And then he looked down and saw clear plastic packets of a whitish powder, one of which Maggie had torn open, saying, ‘Surprise, surprise!’ with some satisfaction.
‘Probably one of her organic beauty preparations.’ Ben was still prepared to think well of Barbara.
‘You really are an innocent, Ben.’ Maggie put a finger on the powder and tasted it. ‘If you’d been at art school parties in my day you’d’ve learned to steer clear of this particular beauty preparation.’
She went into the bathroom and Ben followed her as she poured Barbara Flecknow’s ‘gift for her friends’ down the loo.
Ben said, ‘You don’t honestly think?’
‘I think you’ll get yourself into serious trouble if you start fancying other women!’ Maggie said, as she pulled the chain.
The next day they were back in London. Ben was saying goodbye in an unfriendly manner to the telephone in his office as Maggie came in. He put it down and she asked him who it was.
‘The cat’s mother, Mrs John T. Flecknow III. She said she was so terribly sorry she never got around to sending me the parcel. They’d gone to visit friends in Palm Springs and she’d forgotten all about it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.’
‘That must’ve made your meaning entirely clear. Do you want to see the Lord Chairman?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Well, he wants to see us.’
‘Had a good trip?’ Lord Holloway looked up from the work on his desk as they came into his office. It seemed to Maggie his look was moderately baleful.
‘Hardly,’ Ben told him. ‘I was stopped at Kennedy Airport and submitted to a search. About the most intimate physical experience I’ve had for a considerable time.’
‘What did they find?’
‘Happily they drew a complete blank. I think they must have had an unreliable tip-off.’
‘Well, you certainly endeared yourselves to our most important clients, and an old friend of mine, as it so happens. John T. Flecknow III and his lovely wife.’
‘And his wife?’ Maggie raised her eyebrows.
‘Oh, yes. She told the Lemberg Museum a supposed Titian was only the work of a pupil, based on your opinion, it seems. They were so impressed by her expertise that they put her on the Board. Johnny Flecknow is extremely grateful. Congratulations, Ben.’
Ben absorbed the news in silence and Maggie asked, ‘Chuck Whiteside wasn’t disappointed at Ben’s turning down the Titian?’
‘I’m afraid Whiteside has something slightly more serious to think about.’ The Lord Chairman assumed a sorrowful expression, as though announcing a death in the department of Egyptology.
‘Losing weight? Hair implant? Going in for a face-lift?’ Ben was curious.
‘Hardly that. Gloria Shallum rang to tell me he’s been arrested.’
‘He’s been what?
‘Some drug-dealer got caught and started naming names. He identified Whiteside as a customer. Of course, it’s some ridiculous mistake.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘It’ll soon be sorted out.’
‘I hear these things take time,’ Ben said hopefully.
And then the Lord Chairman asked, in reverend tones, ‘And it seems you met the great Emmanuel Klinsky?’
‘Of course we did, didn’t we, Maggie? He had us up for a chat. Wonderful old boy, for his age.’
‘Did he seem to be fairly pleased, with the way things are going in London?’ Holloway dared to ask.
‘Oh, fairly pleased. There was one thing he was rather concerned about.’
‘Oh, was there? What was that?’
‘That I didn’t have adequate space to park my motor bike. I assured him that the problem would be addressed. Nice to talk to you, Holloway, but we must get on. Maggie and I have so much work to catch up with.’
‘Poor Chuck!’ Maggie said, as they left the office.
‘Oh, yes. My heart bleeds for him. Do you honestly think he wasn’t behind Barbara Flecknow’s little plot? The sinners have met their just desserts.’
‘Only one of them. The other’s got herself on the Board of the Lemberg. She’s had a triumph.’
‘There you are, then.’ And Ben told her, ‘That’s more like the art world as we know it.’
Maggie put her arm in his and they walked up the stairs to work.
The Spectre at the Feast
Accidents occur in the best-regulated families.
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
All these stories, Ben Glazier thought, about Chippendale tables hidden in the hen-house, the odd Canova used as a doorstep, the roll of tapestry plugging a draught in the scullery, the mysterious Correggio over which a dull portrait was painted, only waiting to be scrubbed off to leave the family truly famous, lead too many people to believe they’re surrounded with hidden treasures. You may not think I look much, the inhabitants of old houses seem to say, but if only you knew what I’ve got stopping the draughts, or if that painting of a horse could be attributed to Stubbs, I would be rich and famous. You don’t even need a house to think like that. I have a hidden talent, many people might say, if only I could remember where I’ve hidden it. Those with old family homes tend to breed the concealed masterpiece madness, and Ben never forgot the strange series of events, absur
d and then alarming, which marked his brief association with the Bovingtons of Bovington Moat House.
The house was not grand: it had once been a fortified farm, built on and extended over the ages. In the middle of the last century the Bovingtons had owned a good deal of land and a factory in the local town. Now the land had gone; the factory, sold long ago, had become a shopping centre; the moat, once full of water and stocked with trout, had run dry. Hester Bovington fought gamely to keep the garden respectable and lived, for most of the year, alone with one old family retainer, her formidable family nanny. The place was well supplied with attics, lofts, sheds, cupboards and stables, where masterpieces might have hibernated, unnoticed, over the centuries.
Hector Bovington, MP, Hester’s older son, was a youngish man who lived surrounded by a cloud of dissatisfaction, which moved with him wherever he went. He was dissatisfied with his job as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in some obscure department of a government with which most of the country was dissatisfied. He was dissatisfied with his wife, Mousekin, who, although overanxious to please him, had grown larger than he hoped she would. He was dissatisfied with his son’s progress at his prep school and terrified of having to pay his fees at Eton. He was not entirely dissatisfied with his own appearance, his fair hair and regular features, although his pale blue eyes had the glossy look of boiled sweets.
He was dissatisfied with the length of the holiday he was spending at his mother’s home and one afternoon he decided, after having read about forgotten treasures in an old copy of Country Life, to search the attics. Hours later, camouflaged with dirt so he looked like some long-abandoned object himself, he found among a pile of old canvasses behind a rusty iron bed what he had decided he was looking for.
Hester Bovington, wearing gum boots and an old mac, was burning the autumn prunings in the garden. In the library Hector was about to make a phone call when the real ruler of Bovington Moat House, a masterful woman, wearing a well-washed blue nurse’s dress and a cardigan, put her head round the door and said in strict North
Country tones which could send the most wayward charge straight up to bed, ‘Master Hector! Wherever have you been and got into that state?’
‘Up in the attic, Nanny. I’m just making a call.’
‘Well, keep it quick then. Think about your mother’s phone bill. Now, wherever has your poor mother got to? Never out in the garden. Nanny Tucker went to the window and called out to ask if Mrs Bovington were determined to catch her death of cold, and Hector made his quick phone call to an old school friend at Klinsky’s.
It was Maggie’s birthday. She opened her cards in the Old Masters office and thanked Ben for the tapes Ella Sings the Golden Years of Gershwin, which, she assured him, she’d always wanted. Nick Roper came up from the wine department because he’d got a great surprise for her, which was going to be the best present ever. ‘What would you say to a Rubens?’
‘A what?’
‘The chap who paints all these tits and bums of course. You know that.’
‘Very funny, Nick.’
‘I think I’ve found you one. In the Cotswolds, actually.’
‘Where did you pick it up? A car boot sale?’
‘No, darling, that’s what I came to tell you. I keep getting phone calls from dear old Marilyn Bovington.’
‘Some woman you’re interested in?’ Ben sounded hopeful.
‘No, Bovington’s not a woman. Not at all. He’s MP for somewhere or other. Parliamentary Private Secretary to something else. He got the name Marilyn because he was rather a pretty boy in the Lower School. He’s gone off a lot now, of course.’
‘I don’t have much to be grateful for,’ Ben told him. ‘I’m knocking on in years, I can’t find a cleaning lady and my love life is somewhat frustrated. But how I thank my lucky stars I never went to your old school.’
‘Don’t worry, Ben,’ Maggie comforted him. ‘No one would ever have called you Marilyn.’
‘Anyway, his real name’s Hector,’ Nick explained. ‘And his ma owns the Moat House, which has been in the Bovington family since fourteen hundred and something. Now the point is ...’
‘Oh, there’s a point, is there?’ Ben was surprised.
‘Yes. The point is, old Hector rings me to say he’s unearthed this Rubens in his ma’s attic.’
‘Who says it’s a Rubens?’ Maggie asked.
‘Well, he does.’
‘Does a certain physical allure when an inky schoolboy make him an expert on Old Master paintings?’ Ben wondered.
Maggie said, ‘Well, he’d better bring it in and have a word with us.’
‘Not a chance. He’s keeping the whole thing dark from his family. For the moment. He doesn’t know how his ma would take the idea of untold wealth in the attic.’
‘So what does he suggest?’
‘Well, that I just drop in as an old school chum and take a look at the hidden treasure. Portrait of a woman and kids apparently. Fully dressed.’
‘That makes a whole lot of sense.’ Ben was unconvinced. ‘As an expert on highly priced booze, you’re naturally qualified to judge a Rubens.’
‘Oh, Maggie and I’ll go together, of course. An away day in the leafy Cotswolds. I mean, this just could be a find.’
‘So it would seem sensible if Ben came too?’ Maggie suggested.
‘Well, all right then.’ Nick looked at Ben. ‘I’m not jealous.’
Nick made further calls to the one-time Marilyn and Hector told him he’d shown the thing to a local antiques man, sworn to complete secrecy, who’d been extremely encouraging. Almost before he’d had time to consider the improbability of the journey, Ben found himself in an icy dining-room in the Moat House, among a family Tolstoy wouldn’t have found like any other because it didn’t seem to be a happy one at all.
There was clearly a deadly rivalry between Hector, the Conservative politician, and Mike, his younger brother, who wore a sweatshirt and leather jacket, taught English Literature at a North Country polytechnic, now turned into a university, and who had acquired, during a year at Philadelphia State, an American wife called Lucky – although, burrowing into a cocoon of a sweater and shivering ostentatiously, she looked as though she felt her luck was out. Ben sat next to Hester, who appeared surprisingly calm, perhaps because her mind was out in the garden. Maggie had drawn Hector who as he looked at her frequently, seemed to have difficulty in not licking his lips. Nick was next to Hector’s wife, Mousekin, who was nervously loyal to her husband and had a body that was too large and voluptuous for her small-scale, diffidently pretty face.
‘Art to me means an interpretation of society. To you, I suppose, it means money?’ Mike, the academic, was haranguing Ben.
‘I suppose to me it means pleasure.’
‘Pleasure! You mean the whole world of art is just an enormous brothel?’ Mike seemed full of contempt.
‘Mike, try not to argue!’ Lucky rebuked him and explained to Nick, ‘My husband can’t stop arguing. I tell him he could be teaching literature in Philadelphia State if only he wouldn’t argue all the time. Or any place where they’ve invented central heating.’
‘I thought chaps from auction houses were all frightfully intellectual and terrifying.’ Hector felt he had to lean very close to Maggie to tell her this.
‘I’m not exactly a chap,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s wonderfully obvious, if you don’t mind me saying so. I mean, girls like you ...’ At which, his wife Anthea, known as Mousekin, displeased Hector by breaking into this intimate conversation, ‘I say, do you have to look round the room for bids? And bang with a hammer and all that? How enormously impressive!’
‘My wife’s so easily impressed.’ Hector made excuses for her. ‘Don’t be silly, Mousekin. Miss Perowne – Maggie, may I? Maggie doesn’t actually bang with a hammer.’
‘Oh, yes, I do. All the time.’
‘I’m awfully sorry.’ Hector looked hurt. ‘I didn’t realize you actually did it.’
‘
Oh, yes. All the time.’
Ben found conversation at his end of the table flowing like cement and, looking round for inspiration, was delighted to see one of his favourite authors on the wall. ‘Isn’t that a contemporary photograph of Charles Dickens?’ he asked Hester.
‘Oh, you recognized his face? How clever of you!’
‘He is quite well known. Who did that photograph belong to, I wonder?’
‘Probably one of the maids,’ Mike suggested. ‘Someone who liked bad jokes and sloppy sentimentality.’ Mike’s special subject was D. H. Lawrence.
But now Hester began to talk in a gentle, distant voice. ‘There used to be a story about Dickens coming to Bovington. My husband’s great-great, whatever it was, knew Dickens at the Garrick Club and invited him down.’
‘Thousands of people must have stayed here,’ Mike protested. ‘What on earth does Dickens matter?’
‘And he took quite a shine to my husband’s great-great-grandmother, Henrietta.’ Hester ignored her son’s interruption. ‘They did some sort of theatricals together, out in the hall.’
At this point, Nanny Tucker came wandering into the room and started collecting up the plates.
‘Ma, it’s the text that matters’ – Mike was giving a seminar – ‘not gossip about the writers. Examine Dickens’s texts’. Then wash your sticky fingers and read Sons and Lovers.’
‘I thought coffee in the library?’ Hester suggested. ‘Will that be all right, Nanny?’
‘They haven’t eaten up their puddings, some of your visitors.’ And Nanny Tucker picked up Ben’s plate and looked at it critically. ‘Is that meant to be finished?’
‘Thank you. It was delicious.’ Ben surrendered his plate with guilt.
‘If it was so delicious like you said, why didn’t you eat it up?’
Happily for Ben, Hector created a diversion by inviting Maggie to come out and look at the rose garden, and Nanny Tucker became involved in finding her a pair of wellies to borrow as she couldn’t possibly venture out in those ‘useless little pumps’.
Under the Hammer Page 20
