David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

Burke cheered up and lit a large cigar to erase the memory of his son’s arithmetical failings. ‘Fire ahead, Francis,’ he said happily. This was safer ground.

‘I’m investigating the death of an art critic called Christopher Montague,’ Powerscourt began, knowing that his brother-in-law was as discreet as he was rich. ‘He was writing an article about that exhibition of Venetian paintings that has opened recently in London. He was going to say that most of them were fakes or recent forgeries. Ninety per cent or so.’ Powerscourt thought the percentage figure would appeal to Burke’s brain.

‘My goodness me,’ said Burke. ‘Is that the thing at the de Courcy and Piper place in Old Bond Street? Mary dragged me round it the other day. Can’t say I enjoyed it very much. All look the same to me, cheerful Virgins for the Annunciation, holy-looking Madonnas with their infants, sad Christs on the Cross. Always some bloody Italian landscape in the background, full of horseflies and mosquitoes, no doubt. What have the Americans got to do with it?’

‘The Americans, as you well know, William,’ said Powerscourt, ‘are just beginning to buy this sort of stuff. Montague’s article was never published. Nobody knows most of the things are fakes or forgeries. Should somebody warn them?’

Burke found a final piece of paper by the side of his chair. Seven times four, said the childish hand, forty-seven. Seven times seven, seventy-seven. He took another draw on his cigar.

‘Very public-spirited of you, Francis, I should say. I think, however, that unless Anglo-American relations are at a very low ebb, possibly on the verge of armed conflict, that the answer is no.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Powerscourt.

‘If everybody in London and New York spent their time warning the other side of the Atlantic about fakes and doubtful products, Francis, the telegraph lines would be permanently jammed.’

Powerscourt looked confused.

‘Sorry, let me explain.’ William Burke leant forward in his chair and stared into his fire. The last relics of the mental arithmetic were curling into ashes.

‘Think of the two great stock markets in London and New York,’ he went on. ‘Each one is permanently trying to interest the other in its latest products. It’s like a game of tennis, except the balls are liable to explode when they hit the ground. We try to interest them in some doubtful loan to Latin America, unlikely to be repaid. They send back share offerings in Rhode Island Steel, unlikely to pay any dividends. We hit back with an unrepeatable offer in a mining company in some remote part of Borneo most of the promoters couldn’t even find on the map. They reply with watered stock in American railroads. None of those would be a safe home for anybody’s savings, but they’re traded just the same.’

‘Watered stock?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How on earth do you dilute a share?’

‘I had a beautiful example only yesterday. This is how it works. As an example of becoming even richer than you already are, it’s almost perfect. Say you buy the New York central railroad for ten million dollars. You stop all the stealing that went on under the previous man. You improve it, newer, faster engines, that sort of thing. Then you buy the Hudson railroad for another ten million dollars, which complements the New York Central in its freight transport and its passenger lines. Now, wait for it, Francis, here comes the masterstroke. You form a new company to amalgamate the two lines. You call it the New York, Hudson and Central Railroad. You float it on the New York Stock Exchange. You say this new line is worth fifty million dollars. You’ve spent twenty million on the original two. Now you award yourself thirty million dollars of new stock. You make sure the thing pays a high dividend, think how many shares you have in it, after all. Sit back and count the money. That’s watered stock, Francis. These millionaires have been at it for years, coal, steel, railroads, banks. And they have the nerve to offer the stock over here as well as in New York.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘What you’re saying, William, is that there isn’t much difference between dubious stocks and fake paintings?’

‘Exactly,’ said William Burke. ‘In the City the doubtful stock is all dressed up in fancy language, open markets, free flow of goods and capital across international boundaries, the right of individuals and companies to make free choices. I’m sure it’s the same in the art world. There was a right load of rubbish in the catalogue of those Venetian paintings, delicate brushwork, sfumato, whatever the hell that is, sounds like something you might keep your cigars in, tonal balance. What, in God’s name, is tonal balance? Looked like a lot of hot air to me.’

‘Thank you very much, William. I shall take your advice. I shall not tell the Americans about the forgeries. And now, if you will forgive me, I must go home and make plans about Thomas’s mental arithmetic.’

Orlando Blane was looking very closely at the reproduction of Mr and Mrs Lewis B. Black in an American magazine. Orlando had no idea who Mr Black was or why he had been sent this page from the publication. All he knew was that he had to produce a painting of the Blacks, singular or plural, in the manner of a great English portrait painter. Orlando wished he knew what colour Mrs Black’s dress was – it swept round her slim figure in a beguiling fashion. On her head was a small hat composed almost entirely of feathers. Orlando liked the hat. Especially he liked the feathers. Plenty of people had appeared with vaguely similar hats in the past.

He was walking slowly up his Long Gallery. The rain was beating on the windows. Orlando noticed that the plaster was beginning to rot away underneath the pane. He kicked it gently with his right boot. There was a small white cloud and tiny fragments of plaster, dirty white and grey, settled slowly on the floor. Maybe the rats would like to have them for their afternoon tea.

Gainsborough? he said to himself. No, he’d just delivered one of those. Sir Thomas Lawrence? Orlando always felt close to Lawrence – the man had earned many fortunes and never managed to hold on to any of them. Hoppner, bit further away in time? The splendidly named Zoffany who Orlando felt should have been a Greek philosopher, forever arguing with Socrates in the public squares of Athens? None of those, he decided. Sir Joshua Reynolds was the man, grander than Gainsborough, the man who brought Italian techniques back into English painting. Mr and Mrs Black? Double or single? He wondered briefly if the price would be less today for a single portrait as it was when Reynolds was in his pomp. Probably not.

Orlando turned and looked at one of the messages on his wall. He had dozens of these, pinned all around the Long Gallery, extracts from works of art history or quotations about Old Masters. This was one of his favourites:

On the lowest tier were arranged false beards, masks and carnival disguises; above came volumes of the Latin and Italian poets, among others Boccaccio, the Morgante of Pulci, and Petrarch, partly in the form of valuable printed parchments and illuminated manuscripts; then women’s ornaments and toilet articles, scents, mirrors, veils and false hair; higher up, lutes, harps, chessboards, playing cards; and finally, on the two uppermost tiers, paintings only, especially of female beauties . . .

The words came from Jacob Burckhardt’s book on The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy , published some forty years before, sitting happily in a first edition on Orlando’s bookshelves. It described the precise order in which objects were placed on the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence in 1497, the Dominican friar Savonarola no doubt supervising the arrangements in person. Orlando always felt proud of his profession. Above, and therefore more important than the books, above the masks, above the devices to enhance women’s beauty, above the musical instruments, came the paintings, especially of female beauties. Orlando would make Mrs Lewis B. Black a beauty, fit for any bonfire.