David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

William Alaric Piper drew the curtains back over the painting. ‘Leave it with me, Mr McCracken. I will see what I can do. But I am not hopeful of success.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was looking at a map of South Africa and shaking his head sadly. Powerscourt had marked on his map the three railway towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley now under siege in the war with the Boers half a world away. The greatest Empire the world had ever seen was being humiliated by a couple of tiny Republics in the vast expanse of Southern Africa. His thoughts on military strategy were rudely interrupted as Johnny Fitzgerald burst into the room.

‘What news from Old Bond Street, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, closing his atlas with a thud.

‘I’m glad I don’t really have to sell anything, Francis. That’s a very strange world. I’ve been back to all three of them, Clarke’s, Capaldi’s and de Courcy and Piper, while their experts looked at the picture. Actually it was the same expert all three times. And the odd thing was, he never let on in the other two places that he’d seen the Leonardo before.’

‘Do you think he was being paid three times for the same attribution, Johnny? Did he say it was a Leonardo?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m sure he was paid three times. Twice he said it wasn’t a real Leonardo. He always took a very long time peering at the picture. So after the first time I pretended to fall asleep.’

‘And what did you discover during your slumbers, Johnny?’

‘Well,’ said Fitzgerald, moving by force of habit towards the sideboard, ‘thirsty work, Francis. I think I’ll try a little of this white Beaune, if I may.’

Powerscourt was always fascinated by the speed of his friend in the complicated business of finding corkscrew, opening bottle, pouring liquid into a glass. On this occasion it took less than ten seconds.

‘I think,’ Fitzgerald settled back into his chair, Beaune in hand, ‘I think I discovered two things. The man’s name was Johnston, I’m pretty sure of that. Big fellow, looked like a prize fighter. Didn’t catch the Christian name. On one occasion at Clarke’s I heard a bit of the conversation between the Clarke people after Johnston had left and before I’d woken up. They said they wished Montague was still alive, as if they thought he was better than Johnston.’

‘And the other thing?’ said Powerscourt, wondering if Johnston was the expert who would have been supplanted by Montague, a man who might lose enough to turn him into a killer.

‘The other thing was at de Courcy and Piper’s. Johnston seemed to know them very well, as if this was regular work. Piper asked him if he would attribute it to the school of Leonardo. That would make it worth quite a lot. Not as much as a real Leonardo, of course.’

Days awake and asleep in Old Bond Street had given Johnny Fitzgerald an easy familiarity with this strange new world. ‘They’d moved away to the other side of the room by this point, Francis, as if they didn’t want anything overheard, so I didn’t catch it all. There was a lot about percentages, about normal terms. Piper was very excited about some American called Black who’s arriving in London shortly. He seemed to think he could sell it to him for thousands and thousands of pounds.’

Johnny Fitzgerald stared into his glass. ‘Another thing, Francis, I don’t suppose it means much. The last time I was at de Courcy and Piper’s the porters were carrying in an enormous package. It looked like it contained three or four large paintings. And it said on the front that it came from Calvi or Galvi, somewhere like that.’

There was a knock on the door and the footman handed Powerscourt a letter. It was from Chief Inspector Wilson. And it contained the remarkable news that not only had Mrs Rosalind Buckley been seen in Oxford shortly before the murder of Thomas Jenkins, but that Horace Aloysius Buckley, her estranged husband, had been seen in that city on the very day of the murder.

‘What do you make of that, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, handing the letter to his friend.

‘Looks perfectly straightforward to me,’ said Johnny. ‘Of course it may not be. But if you were a betting man, Francis, you would surely say that our Horace Aloysius is now the hot favourite in the Montague Jenkins Memorial Handicap. Almost impossible to get any decent odds on him at all at present. Christ, look at it. He finds out Montague has been carrying on with his wife. End of Montague. Then, maybe he’s employing private detectives, he finds out that she’s also carrying on with this Jenkins person. End of Jenkins. I should say Horace Aloysius is three to one on, myself. What say you, Francis?’

Powerscourt stared at the floor. ‘I’m not placing any bets, Johnny. It’s too plausible. It’s too obvious. For the moment, I think Horace Aloysius is probably in the clear. Deranged, possibly. Overwrought, probably. Unstable, certainly. But a murderer? I’m not sure. I’m really not sure.’

Two foxes were standing very still on the upper terrace of Orlando Blane’s ruined garden. They were so still that Orlando wondered if they might be statues. Then, very slowly and with a total disdain for their surroundings, they trotted down the terraces until they came to rest right underneath the windows of the Long Gallery. Perhaps the rats send them messages, Orlando thought to himself, secret despatches in animal language under the ground to the foxes’ den. Come along! Nobody here! Rich pickings for all!

Orlando looked at his easel. It had a large blank canvas waiting for him. The ground had been carefully filled in on the Friday before. His head was still hurting from a weekend of drinking that ended with him being carried to bed at three o’clock on Sunday morning. He had lost all his money, had been his first thought on waking. He groaned slightly as he remembered that he had only lost the contents of three matchboxes, playing cards with his jailers.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was waiting for him. So was the wife of Lewis B. Black, American millionaire, with the feathers in her hat. Orlando tried a preliminary drawing of the hat on his sketchpad. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. Damn, he said to himself. If that doesn’t improve I won’t achieve much at all today. He looked up at the quotation, pinned on his wall behind the empty canvas. It was the great Italian historian Vasari, on his friend Michelangelo:

He also copied drawings of the old masters so perfectly that his copies could not be distinguished from the originals, since he smoked and tinted the paper to give it an appearance of age. He was often able to keep the originals and return his copies in their stead.

Orlando smiled. He walked very fast up and down the Long Gallery three times. He checked his hand. It was better now. Very slowly an elaborate hat, composed almost entirely of feathers, began to appear on his pad.

The offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell were on the basement and the ground floor of an old house just off the Strand. Legal country, Powerscourt noted, as clerks old and young, bearded and clean-shaven, erect and stooping, hurried to their destinations, bundles of files and legal documents clutched tightly in their hands. People’s lives are crossing the road here every day, he thought, wills, marriage settlements, fathers trying to disinherit unruly sons, new companies being born, old ones laid to rest, all wrapped round with lawyers’ string.

He asked to see the senior partner. A nervous young man, fresh from university perhaps, showed him into the office of Mr George Brigstock. Mr Brigstock looked exactly what a family solicitor ought to look like, Powerscourt felt. He was about fifty, in a rather old-fashioned suit, his grey hair receding up his temples.

‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. How can we be of assistance?’ said Brigstock.