David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

‘Wait! Wait!’ Johnston was beaten now. His wife had not foreseen that he might lose not only his private retainer but his public position as well. He knew he could never face her with that news. ‘Come back, please!’

Reluctantly, Piper returned. He closed the door. He did not take his hat off. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘I’m sure we could come to some other arrangement about the Raphael,’ Johnston said defensively, hoping that the Piper goose might still have some golden eggs left in its nest.

Piper realized that he could name his price. He could humiliate Johnston in his own drawing room. However much he might relish the prospect, he knew it would be bad for business. Johnston had to be brought back into the fold as gently as possible. There might be further Raphaels. Piper’s private fantasy had always been for a lost Leonardo. Only Johnston could put the official seal of approval on such a wondrous event.

‘I fully agree with what you said earlier about your retainer only covering paintings worth less than ten thousand pounds,’ Piper said affably, his hat still on his head. He had checked his notes of the earlier conversation with Johnston when the deal was struck. Nothing formal had been put down on paper. There were no Heads of Agreement, no correspondence conducted between lawyers or bankers to make the contract legal. That would have been too dangerous.

‘Did you have any figure in mind?’ Piper went on, taking off his hat and placing it carefully on a table.

‘Perhaps,’ Johnston was almost stammering now, ‘it would be better if you were to suggest a figure and we could take it from there?’

Piper paused. He walked over to the window and opened the curtains a fraction. Outside there was a stiff breeze. A dark Thames was flowing peacefully towards the sea. Five per cent would be too small. Seven and a half per cent? Maybe that would be too much humiliation for Johnston and the absent Mrs Johnston to take. Ten? Quite a lot of money, possibly ten thousand pounds in Johnston’s pocket. Fifteen? He winced as he thought of that enormous sum departing from the accounts of de Courcy and Piper.

‘What do you say, Johnston . . .’ He paused, staring again at the Raphael. Johnston felt sick, wondering how much punishment he would have to take. ‘What do you say to twelve and a half per cent of the selling price? I think that’s a pretty fair offer.’

Johnston felt relieved. Only a few minutes earlier professional catastrophe had been staring him in the face. ‘That sounds excellent to me,’ he said. ‘And I shall certainly recommend that the gallery makes a substantial offer for the picture.’

William Alaric Piper clapped him on the back. The two men shook hands.

‘Splendid, quite splendid,’ said Piper. He knew that he could now conduct a dizzy round of bid and counter bid on the price of the Raphael. He could tell Johnston’s gallery that a rich American client was considering an offer of seventy-five thousand pounds or thereabouts. Then he could tell a rich American that the gallery were prepared to offer eighty thousand pounds. The game could go on as long as he dared play it.

Johnston thought he would still be able to afford a substantial property somewhere in the Tuscan hills. That would keep Mrs Johnston at bay.

Piper smiled to himself as he strode back to his railway station, hat still pulled well down over his forehead. Gladstone alias Johnston was senior curator in Italian and Renaissance art at London’s National Gallery. And, Piper’s smile broadened into a chuckle, he had got his services pretty cheap. He would have gone to twenty-five per cent of the sale value if it had been necessary. And now he had his authentication in his pocket, he could make a final offer to James Hammond-Burke to buy the Raphael. Thirty thousand? Thirty-five? Forty thousand? He settled himself happily into the corner seat of his train and dreamt of lost Leonardos.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said in your letter, Lord Powerscourt.’ Thomas Jenkins of Emmanuel College, Oxford was drinking tea in the Powerscourt drawing room in Markham Square. Powerscourt had offered to meet him in Oxford, but Jenkins had to come to London on business. He was consulting some ancient documents in the British Museum. ‘I have to confess that I have no idea exactly what Christopher was working on when he died. His book was finished. That much I do know. I talked to the publishers this morning. I last saw Christopher three or four weeks ago. Look,’ he went on, delving into his bag, ‘I’ve brought a photograph of him. I thought investigators might like things like that.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Powerscourt. The photograph showed two young men standing in the quad of an Oxford college. The one on the left was Thomas Jenkins. The one on the right was a younger, healthier Montague. He was of slight build and short height, with fair hair and a small neatly trimmed moustache. Looking at the Jenkins in front of him Powerscourt thought there was hardly any difference, the same curly brown hair, the air of diffidence, shyness perhaps in front of the lens. Jenkins looked like what he was, an Oxford history tutor, as slight as his friend. Montague looked as if he belonged in more worldly surroundings than the well-manicured lawn and ivy-covered walls of Emmanuel.

‘How long ago was this taken?’ asked Powerscourt, placing the photograph on a table beside him.

‘I think it was a couple of years ago,’ Jenkins replied. ‘Christopher had come back to Oxford for a party.’

‘Let me run through what I know of the bare facts of Christopher Montague’s life,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Then you can fill in the gaps, put flesh on the bones, if you could. Born in London in 1870. Father, now dead, a successful lawyer, left him a modest private income. Educated at Westminster School and New College, Oxford, where he met you. Took a first class honours degree in history. Taught for a couple of years in Florence where he learnt his fluent Italian. Wrote his first book on the origins of the Renaissance four years ago. Book sold well, now in its second edition. Second book, on Northern Italian art, due to be published shortly. Didn’t gamble. Didn’t live above his means. Lived with his sister in Beaufort Street. Had a small flat in Brompton Square where he worked. And where he was murdered. Not married. Sounds a pretty blameless life to me. Why should anyone want to kill him?’

Jenkins shook his head. ‘I’ve been asking myself that question every hour of every day since I heard the news, Lord Powerscourt. And I can’t answer it any more than you could. I hadn’t seen Christopher for nearly three weeks when he was killed. He was going to come to Oxford for a week or so two days from now.’

‘What about his private life? Forgive me for asking these questions. It goes with my profession. It may help us find the murderer.’

Again Thomas Jenkins shook his head. ‘Christopher Montague was the most normal person I ever met,’ he said. ‘He had fallen in love a couple of times but he never got married. When he was writing his books he said he had very little time for the affairs of the heart. But I know he did want to marry and have children. He was very fond of children. He liked playing with them. Sometimes he’d spend hours charging around with his young nephews up in Scotland.’

Powerscourt tried to remember if those nephews might be relatives of his too, part of the national diaspora of Lucy’s vast family. He’d have to ask her. ‘You said that he’d fallen in love a couple of times. Would either of those affairs have left any scars, any wounds that might have a bearing on his death?’

This time Thomas Jenkins smiled. ‘I think the scars would have been with Christopher, not the other way round. Once was with a young American girl he met in Florence. I think she and Christopher grew very fond of each other. Then her parents whisked her off. I think they were looking for a title or a great deal of money, not some relatively poor Englishman who wrote books about dead Italian artists. The second time was three or four years ago. Isobel, she was called. She was very beautiful. I think they met at a dance up in London. She was totally bewitching, mesmerizing, that Isobel. I always thought she cast spells on people, they became so infatuated with her. Then she abandoned Christopher and went off with a very wild young man. Christopher wasn’t exciting enough for her. Maybe not dangerous enough. Some girls like the whiff of danger about a man, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt?’