David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

Powerscourt remembered the Italian books Christopher Montague had taken out of the London Library or ordered from elsewhere. ‘What did the article say about the false Titians, Mr Lockhart? That they were bought on the Grand Tour, and the buyers were deceived by unscrupulous dealers?’

Lockhart looked at a painting of the lower Himalayas on Powerscourt’s wall, purchased since his return from India. Powerscourt wondered if he was going to pronounce it a forgery.

‘Christopher thought that was where most of them had come from,’ he said. ‘But there was something else. Christopher intended to say that at least three, if not four, of the paintings on display were very recent forgeries. That would have caused a sensation.’

‘And what of these Americans, the very rich ones who have been buying works of art at a fairly rapid rate lately? Have they all been taken in? Have they spent their thousands of dollars on junk?’

‘God knows, Lord Powerscourt, God only knows.’

One thing struck Powerscourt with absolute certainty as he showed Jason Lockhart out of his house. The real beneficiary, the absolute winner out of the whole affair would have been Christopher Montague himself. His second book was about to come out. His article destroyed the provenance of most of the Venetian masterpieces in England. Who could a poor purchaser turn to in order to be sure that his Veronese was genuine? That his Tintoretto wasn’t a forgery? That his Giorgione wasn’t a fake? Why, the expert was at hand. Christopher Montague is your man. Powerscourt wondered how much he would charge for verifying the attribution of the masterpieces. Ten per cent? Fifteen? Twenty-five? He might have inherited a large sum in the past six months, but he was about to become richer yet. Much richer. Was there somebody else in the London art world who enjoyed this position of Attributer in Chief at present? Would such a somebody want Montague dead?

The rats. They would have to do something about the rats. They had become quite shameless, no longer bothering to scuttle away into the wainscoting or disappear through the holes in the floorboards. Soon they would be sitting up in rows and demanding food, or eating away at the paintings. Orlando Blane walked up the length of the Long Gallery, hoping against hope that the sound of his footsteps would drive them away.

As he reached the end of the room he stared sadly out of one of the five great windows. Outside it was a blustery autumn day. Chaos was continuing its relentless advance across the gardens. The roses had run wild, threatening to strangle the other flowers that had once lain beside them in neat ordered beds. The fountain in the centre of the garden had long ceased to flow. The cheeky statue of Eros on the top was turning a dark metallic green. Way over to his left he could still see the edge of the lake, the water dark and forbidding. In the summer evenings Orlando had been allowed to wander round its rim, the watchful guard the regulation twenty steps behind.

Orlando Blane was a prisoner. He was still not absolutely sure where he was. Occasionally he thought he could smell the sea. The vast house, unoccupied now except for himself and his jailers, sat alone in its thousands of acres, the long drive to the nearest road blocked by a rough barricade of trees. There were four of them, watching round the clock to make sure he did not escape. He was forbidden alcohol, even weak or watered beer, for alcohol had played its part in his downfall. His function was to paint to order, for Orlando Blane was a very talented artist. In better times, with a less chequered past, he might have had a prosperous career in London or Paris.

He stared down the Long Gallery at his work for the day. On his stretcher a painting was beginning to take shape, a painting that bore a remarkable similarity to a Gainsborough.

Orlando looked out at the dark clouds swirling across a stormy sky. He thought about Imogen, the great love of his life, now hundreds of miles away. No, he would not think about Imogen. His mind went off, entirely of its own accord, to the French Riviera five months before. He saw again the mesmerizing turn of the roulette wheel, he heard the tiny click as the ball dropped into its slot. He heard again the measured voice of the croupier, rien ne va plus , no more bets, the gamblers waiting, watching for the little ball to fall into its slot once more. He remembered five days of triumph at the tables. Even now, he still shook slightly as he thought of the sixth day when everything went wrong and his world changed for ever.

The colours. Maybe it was his training that made him remember things so vividly, the dark grey, almost black, of the sea as he walked the mile and a half from the casino in Monte Carlo back to his cheap lodgings along the coast at three or four o’clock in the morning. The first faint lines of yellow on the horizon as the sun came up to bring in a new dawn, the pale blue water that had deepened to azure by the time he woke up, the delicate pinks of the setting sun as he set out once more for the gambling tables. The green of the roulette table. The bright red on which he staked so much. The shiny polished black that eventually claimed his fortune.

Orlando remembered the private language of the roulette wheel, spoken in the soft but authoritative voice of the croupier. Pair meant betting on an even number, impair on an odd one. Passe for a winning number between nineteen and thirty-six, impasse for one between nought and eighteen. Rouge for red, noir for black, le rouge et le noir that had dominated all his thoughts during his sojourn at the wheel. Nought for the casino, the one factor that gave the proprietors a slight mathematical edge over the gamblers who had come to break the bank.

He had been playing on a system all his own. On his very first visit to the casino, Orlando had merely watched. A very fat Frenchman had won a great deal of money. A slim blond Englishman had lost a great deal. A beautifully dressed Italian had made a small amount. For three nights Orlando watched one table. He placed the odd bet to pay his rent at the casino. He noted the fall of every ball in a red notebook. He saw one of the supervisors whispering something to one of his companions – here was a man developing a system all his own. The casinos loved people with systems. They welcomed them with open arms and vintage champagne once they were established players. Generous credit was offered to those with the right connections. For the casinos knew that all systems were doomed to fail. Even with the one European zero as against the American two or even three, Orlando had heard, in the wilder gambling saloons of the Midwest, the odds were always stacked in favour of the bank.

Orlando Blane had gone to Monte Carlo to seek financial salvation, to make a fortune. He had no money of his own, only debts. He was wildly, hopelessly in love with Imogen Jeffries, only daughter of a rich London lawyer. Orlando would see her in his daytime dreams in his little cot in the back room of his auberge , looking out over the train tracks and the wild countryside behind the sea. She was tall and dark, with teasing grey-blue eyes. She moved with a sinuous grace that took his breath away and she held him very close in her arms when she kissed him goodbye at the railway station on his journey to the south of France. Imogen’s father, a man obsessed with his property, its size, its prospects, its ability to support generations of unborn Jeffries far into the future, absolutely refused to agree to his daughter marrying a penniless man. Most girls, Orlando thought, would have tried to deter their beloved from staking their joint futures on the spin of a small wheel in Monte Carlo. Imogen had been entranced. Danger called her like a drug.