Martin Walker: The Caves of Perigord

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“I think you might want some legal advice. If you want to hang on to the painting, you’d find that fighting this kind of case could be expensive. But you may want a lawyer who can negotiate a settlement, or our auction house can act for you. If the French calculate the costs, they will find an uncertain legal action far more expensive than paying you a finder’s fee or an honorarium.”

“What sort of sum might that be?”

“Negotiable. But if the French are convinced that it is real and they want it, they may be persuaded to offer ten thousand pounds or so. Perhaps rather more.”

“If you were to act for me, your commission would be what?”

“The standard rate is twenty percent. But that would be the firm’s commission. It’s the firm’s expertise you would be hiring.”

“What if I were to hire someone privately to act for me?”

“Still twenty percent. I can give you the names of some good independent agents.”

“I’ve got one. The deal is done. You are appointed my agent. I’m quite happy for it to go back to the Frogs, but the more they can be induced to pay, the better. And now you really must let me buy you lunch.”

“Thank you, but probably not this week, which promises to be rather hectic. And I couldn’t just take off my company hat and act for you privately. It doesn’t work like that. Now, how do you feel about publicity? I think it might help. Sensational find, British war hero, that kind of thing. Since we both know that we want the painting to go back to France, what we want to do now is jack the price up, which is where publicity comes in.”

“Fine by me. It’s in your charming hands, Miss Dean. But take care of the dear old rock for me, and get the best price you can. And I’ll see you on Friday at twelve, and possibly your European experts too.”

She rang down for a janitor to take the rock to the strong room, filled in the deposit slip, and where it asked for an estimated value, she boldly scrawled “ten thousand pounds.” She saw it removed and signed for, and then feeling far more confident than she had for some weeks, walked into Justin’s office without knocking to inform him that she might just have the publicity coup he had been looking for. Finally, after a busy half hour with Justin, a lawyer, the publicity manager, and two interested directors, she left them telling the janitor that they wanted the rock brought back up so they could all look at it, while Lydia went off to ring the Arts correspondent of The Times .

Clothilde Daunier stood five feet tall, with an extra three inches for a splendid skein of auburn hair piled atop her head so carelessly that the cut must have been expensive, and she was dressed to match. She had a bustling manner, a wide grin, and despite some envy at her clothes, Lydia liked her at once.

“I expected you to bring the French ambassador, the Foreign Legion, and half the lawyers in Paris,” she began, pouring coffee. Lydia’s tone was friendly and confident after the compliments she had heard from her colleagues that morning. One of the directors had come up to Lydia’s attic to congratulate her on the excellent publicity, so she was feeling highly confident about her job.

“I am sure they will come if required,” laughed Clothilde, and rummaged into a deep Hermes bag to bring out a bottle and a small glass jar, sealed with rubber. “For you, some foie gras from Perigord, and a bottle of Monbazillac to drink with it. Forget your English rules about leaving sweet wines till the end of your meal and drink it slightly chilled with the foie gras.”

She sat down, brought a thin file of photos and photocopies from the bag, lit a Marlboro before Lydia could explain about the No Smoking rule, and said, “You know I worked with Monique Peytral, the artist who reconstructed all the paintings at Lascaux?” Lydia shook her head. She knew the precise and life-size copy of the original cave, built to protect the original from the damaging microbes and carbon dioxide brought in and breathed out by an endless trail of visitors.

“I was the technical adviser on the project, re-creating the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery. We did a good job, and half the tourists who come have no idea that they are seeing a very clever copy. But what this really means is that everything at Lascaux is engraved onto my brain. I know it very well, and your bull is a Lascaux bull. Your row of dots are Lascaux dots, from a common Lascaux design. This rock is probably from Lascaux artists. I would almost swear to it-except that the bull is so small. I have no idea where it is from. We surveyed that cave fully. There are no unexplored parts to it, and I know your rock does not come from the Lascaux cave. So it may be a copy, just like the ones Monique made, or Horst may be right and it comes from a cave we do not know about. That would be revolutionary. Or it comes from one of several caves nearby, which would be very interesting to a few scholars, but a lot less dramatic. Unless, of course, your rock was surrounded by similar paintings and we have a whole new cave gallery we never knew about. All these things are possible, but first I must see it.”

Lydia rang down to the janitors’ department, asked for the painting to be brought up, and in the meantime handed to Clothilde a copy of that day’s Times . There was a small paragraph on the front page, and then a much larger story on page 3, alongside one of Lydia’s photographs of the bull, and a headline that read MYSTERY OF FRENCH CAVE MASTERPIECE IN BRITAIN. Tucked into the middle of the story was an extremely flattering photo of Lydia, taken by the publicity department. Clothilde looked at the story, at the photographs, looked back more closely at Lydia and grinned, and then the janitor rang to say they didn’t have the rock. It had never been sent down again to the strong room after the directors called for it to be brought to them in the boardroom the previous evening.

“Who signed for it?” Lydia asked, irritated.

“Mr. Justin did, miss,” came the reply. “He just kept it up there, and it was never checked in here again last night. It must still be with him.”

She rang off and called Justin, whose line was busy. She went down the corridor to his office, suddenly aware that she was walking into some kind of crisis, and his usually impeccably dressed secretary was looking disheveled as she tried to speak on two phones at once. Lydia looked into the office. No Justin. She went back and stood squarely in front of the secretary, who mouthed at her “boardroom.”

She took the stairs and found two uniformed policemen standing in the corridor. The boardroom doors were wide open, and she heard the sound of raised and angry voices. It was crowded with several people she did not recognize, two of the auction house directors, and messy with a great deal of paper on the floor. There were champagne glasses on a Regency table, a couple of empty bottles on the priceless carpet, and the smell of a party nobody had bothered to clear up. So there had been a celebration here last night to which she had not been invited. Typical Justin, she thought grimly. Then she saw the firm’s security officer standing over Justin, who was sitting at a disarrayed Georgian desk with his head in his hands. He looked up as she stood hesitantly at the door.

“It’s your damned rock, Lydia,” he said over the hubbub. “It’s gone. Disappeared overnight. We’ve been burgled.”

“What do you mean, burgled?” she demanded in the sudden silence. “Why wasn’t the rock put back in the strong room?”

“The boardroom was locked, somebody forced the door. Your bloody rock is the only thing that has gone,” Justin said.

“That’s not the half of it. The police are here, with more coming,” said the publicity director. “And we have half of Fleet Street and the BBC on the phone, all wanting to do their own versions on this”-he looked down at a copy of The Times -“this place that you call the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art.”