Peter Lovesey: A Case of Spirits

‘The Royal Academy? We can walk that in twenty minutes,’ Thackeray volunteered. ‘It’s under a mile. I ain’t that decrepit.’

Cribb shook his head. ‘Not this time, Thackeray. It’s not the class of place you approach on foot. When you go to the Royal Academy you drive through the arch and round the courtyard to the entrance. It’s a first principle of plain clothes work that you don’t draw attention to yourself by behaving erratic.’

Thackeray had guessed there would be some good reason for taking a cab. There inevitably was when Cribb was planning a journey.

By half past nine they were being escorted up the main staircase of Burlington House by the keeper. The galleries were not opened to the public before eleven, but he recognised and admitted the ‘detective gentlemen’ at once, for all Cribb’s care over the first principle of plain clothes work.

On the top floor they entered a long room hung with large canvases in ornate gilt frames.

‘The new Diploma Gallery,’ announced the keeper.

At the far end, a familiar figure in a silk hat was studying a picture.

‘Looks as if Inspector Jowett has become a patron of the arts,’ Cribb remarked to Thackeray. ‘Thank you, Keeper.

We’ll join the other gentleman now.’

They got within a few yards of the inspector before he sidestepped slickly away from the subject of his study, a larger-than-life rendering of the Judgment of Paris, and faced them from the less distracting backcloth of a still life with pheasants. ‘Ah, Sergeant Cribb,’ he said, putting away a pair of pince-nez neither detective had ever seen him use before. ‘Your first visit to the Academy, I dare say.’

‘Quite correct, sir. The only portraits I get to see are the ones in the Convict Office.’

‘So I expected. In this suite of galleries you will find the work of the Academicians themselves. Each one, when he is elected, has to deposit a painting or sculpture known as his Diploma work. To your left, Sergeant, is a Gainsborough.’

‘You don’t say so, sir!’ said Cribb, with some attempt at awe.

‘And within a few feet of us are a Reynolds and a Turner.’

‘And a Constable, sir,’ Thackeray innocently added.

The back of Inspector Jowett’s neck stiffened. The air was thick with possibilities of insubordination.

‘And there’s a Landseer,’ said Cribb quickly.

‘I think we had better address ourselves to the reason for our presence here,’ said Jowett, after an interval. ‘I want you most particularly to examine the Etty over here.’

He led them to a canvas largely occupied by the reclining form of a young woman, naked save for a wisp of fabric draped artfully over the hip. Her arms were curled above her head in the abandon of sleep. A creature half-human, half-goat, was in the act of lifting a sheet that had seemingly provided an adequate covering a moment before. A second creature of the same genus was trying to restrain his companion. It was entitled Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs.

‘Do you have any observations?’ Jowett asked, facing the painting.

Cribb, unschooled in criticism of the Fine Arts, said nothing.

Thackeray filled the breach. ‘The one with the sheet looks a bit like Percy Alleway of C Division.’

Out of sight of Jowett, Cribb jerked his hand in a desperate gesture of constraint. To his surprise the inspector turned on Thackeray with an expansive smile. ‘Splendid, Constable! It is manifestly clear from what you say that you are examining the painting as a good detective should, attempting to find some detail that will fix it indelibly in your memory. That is exactly what I have brought you here to do. Continue, if you please. You, too, Sergeant.’ He gripped Cribb’s arm and brought him closer to the nymph, as if introducing a bloodhound to the scent. ‘Neglect nothing. The disposition of the limbs. The highlighting of the flesh. There’s nothing in the Royal Academy unfit for Scotland Yard to set its eyes upon, you know.’ Then he stepped away along the gallery, leaving the two of them in uncomfortable surveillance of the picture. After a suitable interval he returned. ‘All committed to memory? I knew I could rely on you both. It is most important, you see, that you recognise this scene when you see it again, as I trust you will before long.’

Cribb frowned at the canvas, pondering over Jowett’s meaning. Was this visit to the Academy going to become a regular thing, then-some ill-conceived attempt by the Home Office to bring sweetness and light into the lives of the lower ranks? ‘You want us to recognise it again, sir?’

‘That was the burden of my remarks, Sergeant. I hope I made myself clear.’

‘You did, sir.’ Cribb paused, and asked, ‘You weren’t expecting someone to try and steal it?’

‘Oh no. The stealing has been done. I want you to recover it.’

Cribb shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me now, sir.’

‘Really? Perhaps one ought to explain that Etty painted two versions of his Sleeping Nymph, identical except in certain trivial details. The first was in effect a practice piece for this, his diploma work. It is the first version that has been stolen. It was the property until last week of an acquaintance of mine not entirely unknown in the world of science.’

‘Science?’ repeated Cribb, eyeing the canvas again.

‘A man of cultivated taste,’ Jowett went on. ‘A member of the Royal Society. I don’t suppose you will have heard of him. Dr Probert.’

‘Dr Probert’s Pick-me-up?’ interjected Thackeray. ‘I’m never without a bottle, sir.’

‘Not that Dr Probert,’ said Jowett icily. ‘Dr Probert of the University of London, the eminent physiologist. A man of the most refined taste. I was with him socially only yesterday evening. He is most exercised over the loss of his Etty. He has asked me personally to ensure its recovery.’

‘So you brought us here to see one?’ said Cribb.

‘Just so.’ Jowett appeared relieved that he was making himself clear again. ‘It is fortunate that we have this version for you to examine.’

‘But you mentioned some differences from the original.’

‘Yes. Quite unimportant. Dr Probert’s painting is without the piece of material here that is draped over the-er-hip. Doubtless Etty was mindful that his diploma work would go on public exhibition. Ladies, you know. The first version has always been privately owned. Few people know of its existence, which makes the theft all the more difficult to account for.’

‘Was anything else taken?’

‘Nothing at all. Strange, that. Dr Probert has a number of other paintings in his house at Richmond, all of classical subjects. Alma Tadema, Leighton, that sort of thing-’

‘Mostly young women like this one in a state of nature?’ Cribb suggested.

‘That’s neither here nor there, Sergeant. Dr Probert went to Charterhouse. He had a schooling in the classics.’

‘And the Etty was the only picture that went,’ said Cribb, returning crisply to the matter under investigation. ‘Do we have any other information to go on, sir?’

‘Only a rather strange coincidence. The picture was stolen last Friday evening, when Dr Probert was giving a lantern lecture at University College Hospital. His wife and daughter were in the audience and only one of his servants was at home, an old woman, prone to deafness. She noticed nothing irregular, but when the Proberts returned, the Etty was gone. The curious thing is that the previous Saturday the Proberts had given a dinner party for a number of their friends, and on the same night one of them, a Miss Crush, returned to find that her house had been burgled.’

‘Could be interesting,’ said Cribb. ‘What was stolen?’