David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

Another coughing fit paralysed Sir Frederick Lambert. ‘Damned doctors,’ he muttered, ‘they said that new medicine would stop these fits. Doesn’t bloody well work. Forgive me.’ Another handkerchief appeared. More blood than last time, Powerscourt noticed as it vanished from sight.

‘I have written to my counterpart in New York, Lord Powerscourt, warning him of the possible dangers to his compatriots. He has not seen fit to reply. I do not know whether it would be wise to warn them from another quarter, business, perhaps, or politics. You may know those worlds better than I do.’

Sir Frederick looked very pale and frail all of a sudden. Powerscourt thought he should have been at home in bed. ‘Please believe me, Lord Powerscourt, when I say this. I know I am ill. I apologize to you for my spasms. But I would not want you to stop coming here with your questions. I am as anxious as you are that the murderer of Christopher Montague should be brought to justice. Even if we have to hold our last conversation on my death-bed, I still want you to come.’

Over a hundred miles away to the north-west the senior curator of Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery decided the hour had come. It was just after three o’clock in the afternoon. Roderick Johnston had spent three days in the house and in the company of James Hammond-Burke at Truscott Park in Warwickshire. He had completed his catalogue of the pictures in the main body of the house the day before. The previous day he had spent in the outhouses and the attics, climbing through dusty trapdoors into even dustier lofts in search of forgotten paintings. He had assembled them all in rows in a top-floor room, looking out over the river and the deer park. He could hear the shouts of the workmen above him, repairing the roof of Truscott Park.

Had Mr James Hammond-Burke been a more agreeable man Johnston might have stayed for a day or two longer. But he was not a good companion. His conversation was limited to complaints about the costs of the restoration work and the possible value of any paintings Johnston might discover in the bowels of his mansion.

Roderick Johnston placed one picture against a Regency chair where it would catch the afternoon light. The subject matter of the painting was slightly obscured by a thin film of dust it had accumulated over the recent days, resting paint side upwards in the dustiest attic Johnston could discover. It showed a man and a woman with their two daughters seated on a bench in the English countryside, a dog at their feet. Ordered fields stretched all around them. To their left a long avenue, flanked by trees, disappeared towards the horizon, and, presumably, towards the large house that lay at the end of the drive, property of the family in the foreground. Johnston knew the picture well. He had brought it with him in one of his long tubes.

The curator set off at a rapid pace down the stairs, through the drawing room with its fake Van Dycks, through the dining room with the Knellers. He was almost out of breath when he found James Hammond-Burke staring ruefully at one of the new windows in the morning room.

‘Bloody thing’s not straight,’ he said bitterly, his dark eyes flashing. ‘You’d think those bloody builders could manage to put a bloody window in straight, wouldn’t you?’ He stared accusingly at Johnston as if he were the foreman responsible. ‘Whole damned thing will have to come out again. Damned if I’m going to pay for that.’ He paused as if he had just realized who Johnston was.

‘What do you want?’ he said roughly. ‘Have you finished your damned catalogue or whatever it is?’

Johnston remembered the advice of William Alaric Piper. Don’t tell him all at once. Draw it out as long as you can. Make him wait before you tell him it might be a Gainsborough. Only might. Suspense makes them keener.

‘I think you should come with me, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ said Johnston firmly. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’

‘What?’ said Hammond-Burke. ‘What the devil is it? Is it worth anything?’

‘I think you should see for yourself, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ said Johnston, leading the muttering owner back through the house and up to the room on the top floor.

‘There!’ said Johnston at the doorway, pointing dramatically towards the painting by the chair.

James Hammond-Burke walked across the room and peered at the painting.

‘What do you think it is? Where did you find it?’

Roderick Johnston took a feather duster from a table and began to brush very lightly at the surface of the picture. He thought the dust should come off quite easily. It had only been in the attic for a few days.

‘I found it in an attic,’ he said. ‘Looks as if it has been there for some time. It might, it just might, be a Gainsborough.’ The duster had reached half-way down the painting by now. The four figures were clearly visible, and the avenue behind them. ‘I shall have to take it away, of course. And I shall have to look at this bundle of documents I found beside it.’ Johnston pointed to a pile of papers on the chair, mostly written with eighteenth-century ink on eighteenth-century paper. ‘These may give us some more information. It is too soon to say for now.’

‘A Gainsborough,’ said Hammond-Burke, rubbing his hand through his black hair.

‘A Gainsborough, by God. How much is that worth?’

Powerscourt found his brother-in-law William Burke sitting in his study with the floor covered in sheet after sheet of paper, a snowstorm of paper. A curly-haired nephew greeted his uncle with delight.

‘Good evening, Uncle Francis, have you come to see Papa?’ asked nine-year-old Edward Burke with an air of innocence. Powerscourt looked quickly at the childish scribblings on the carpet. All of them seemed to contain versions and variants of the seven times table. Not all of them were as Powerscourt remembered. Surely seven times eight wasn’t sixty-three? Was seven times nine really one hundred and seventy-four?

He smiled happily at his nephew. ‘Good evening to you, Edward,’ he said. ‘You’ve been helping your father with his arithmetic, I see. Very kind of you.’ There was a loud grunt from Edward’s father in his chair by the fire.

Edward Burke picked up his best pencil from the floor. ‘I expect you’ll want to talk business,’ he said with a worldly air that belied his years but promised well for his future. ‘May I go now, Papa?’

Powerscourt realized that his arrival had been a gift from the gods for Master Edward, now released from the torture of tables and arithmetical calculations.

‘Yes, Edward, you may go,’ said his father wearily, going down on his knees to collect the pieces of paper and throw them vigorously on to the fire.

‘Honestly, Francis.’ William Burke was married to Powerscourt’s second sister, Mary, and was becoming a mighty force in the City of London. Multiplication and division on an enormous scale were his daily bread and butter. ‘It’s hopeless. Completely hopeless. Edward has no more idea of the seven times table than I have of Sanskrit,’ he said. ‘What’s going to become of him? When I was that age I knew all those damned tables, right up to twelve times twelve. They’re not very difficult, are they?’

‘I’m sure it will come good in time,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically.

‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ said the anxious father. ‘Even when you explain to him that you can keep adding sevens, it’s no good. Three times seven is just seven plus seven plus seven. And so on. Total waste of time.’

Powerscourt felt that he too might become confused if confronted by seven plus seven plus seven. Better change the subject.

‘William,’ he said, ‘I need your advice. It’s about American millionaires.’