Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

'I don't see why not,' Malory said. 'He fleeced thousands, and most of them were a good deal brighter than Nicholas Romanov.'

'And Dikeston - where's Dikeston come in? You worked that out yet?'

'Two things worry me,' said Malory gently. 'The first is the piece of paper. Sir Basil's paper. Did the Tsar sign it, and if so what was it?'

'And the second?'

'Is the really serious one. Laurence - you talked about all the people Dikeston had met, but you quite failed to mention one.'

'Who was that?'

Malory gave a small smile. 'We're all human, you know, Dikeston included. He's told us he met the highest and the lowest. Let me ask you, Laurence, which individual do you think made the greatest impression on him?'

Pilgrim thought for a moment. 'You mean the girl - the Grand Duchess?'

'Marie. He fell for her.' Malory said. 'Fell like a ton of bricks. They talked for an hour and he never forgot a moment of it. And then what happened?'

'I don't follow you.'

'Don't you? She was butchered,' Malory said harshly. 'We really must find the painting Dikeston talks about. Don't you agree?'

Dikeston's letter of instructions was, in this instance, handwritten. You should keep a weather-eye open for a name. It

will appear quite soon in the catalogue of one of the

art auction houses - Christie's, Sotheby's or perhaps

Phillips'.

The name is Mallard. I am afraid it will be necessary

for you to purchase the painting. The manuscript is in

the frame.

'I suppose we have to be grateful it's not a Rembrandt,' Pilgrim said bitterly. 'Name mean anything to you, Horace?'

'Offhand, no. Except that it's a kind of duck. And if I remember, the name was once given to a railway engine.'

'We'll finish by running behind that engine, you want to bet?'

'I think not.' Malory took himself off to his room and there examined the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which confirmed that the Mallard was indeed a duck, or at any rate a drake. It was also a festival celebrated on January 14th at All Souls College, Oxford. Of art or artists there was no mention. He sent for Fergus Huntly. 'There seems to have been an artist, Huntly. His name was Mallard. I want you to find out about him. Oh yes, and get on to the art auctioneers, Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips. I want their catalogues.'

Huntly nodded. 'You know nothing about this artist?'

'Not a thing,' Malory said briskly. 'Come to think, it may not be an artist at all. Could be a picture, couldn't it?'

'Of a duck?'

'Well, why not! What about Scott? Peter Scott - that's the chap. Painted lots of ducks.'

'Right, Sir Horace.'

Huntly took himself to the London Library in St James's Square, but though he consulted a wide selection of art books, he found no artist named Mallard. Nor, it seemed, from enquiries at the art auction houses, was any painting of wild duck - or not a painting of any consequence -coming up for sale.

He reported sadly back to Sir Horace Malory. 'There's no trace at all.'

'Isn't there?' Malory sat ruminatively over the remains of a tumbler of malt whisky. 'Who do I know in art?'

'Well - I don't know. I mean, you know a lot of people, you must know a lot of -' Huntly got hold of himself, wondering what it was in Malory that gave him verbal dysentery.

'Historian, he is, yes, this fella. You know the one. None too savoury, matter of fact. Traitor and a pansy, nasty combination!'

'Oh, him!' said Huntly.

Malory found him at a club. Both men were members of several, but had only this one in common. The art historian, who had achieved eminence as a scholar and infamy as a betrayer of his country and had somehow contrived not to be prosecuted, should, Malory thought, have been sitting in a cell. He crossed the large, decaying room, with its vaulted ceiling, its worn leather chairs and its moth-eaten Afghan rugs, reflecting mischievously that the art historian was not the only one in his wide acquaintanceship who might properly be in gaol. Half the City for a start. Why, he himself, observed in a certain light . . . Malory smiled to himself and tottered towards the man's seat. He wore his doddering old buffer act as comfortably as though it were an old jacket.

'. . . my dear fella, indeed, must be years. Good heavens, yes. All getting old, though, aren't we, eh?'

The art historian, almost eighty and bent with rheumatism, sat crouched in his chair watching warily.

'You'll have a whisky, won't you? Yes, good. No, you'd prefer cognac, would you?' He felt the eyes coldly upon him from their depths in the network of wrinkled skin. 'Yes, yes, I could cope with a little Bisquit myself, first today, ha, ha.' He wondered which of them had been a member longer, and by that time the cognac had been brought by the steward and the treacherous art expert had decided in his own favour and relaxed a little. Malory asked his question. 'M'wife really. Asked me to find out about a painter. Tell you the truth, I think she must be doing a crossword puzzle. Moment I saw you, I thought: he'll know in a jiffy. Name Mallard mean anything to you?'

Wrinkles slid about on the ancient and reptilian countenance opposite. There was a small smile. 'I have never heard of a painter so called.'

'Or a subject?'

'Plenty of people paint wildfowl. There's no single celebrated picture, I think. Mallard, you say?'

'Yes, Mallard. Well,' Malory poured the brandy down his throat, 'thanks, old lad. I'll tell my lady.' He had already doddered three or four steps away, when:

'Oh, Malory.'

He turned. 'Yes.'

'You're sure it's Mallard?'

'Well that's what it says. Why?'

'Not Mallord - with an "o"?'

He thought about it for a moment. Dikeston's directions had been handwritten. An 'a' for an 'o'? It was hardly impossible.

'Could be, I suppose. There's a Mallord, is there?'

'Well, yes. Not his surname, you know. I mean, you wouldn't find him so listed. It's one of his three Christian names.'

'Whose?'

Again the smile on the wrinkled features. 'Joseph Mallord William, those were his first names.'

'And his surname?'

'Turner. You've heard, have you?'

Malory turned a pale face to him. 'Heard what?'

'One's been found.'

'Oh, really. Where?'

'Happens all the time, you know. There are lots and lots of Turner drawings.'

'Any great value?' Malory asked, knowing already.

'Turner drawings? They vary. Depends how good and how big and what period. Even now you might get one for, oh, as little as eight or ten thousand.'

Malory relaxed.

'But this isn't one of those. Not from what I hear.'

'Oh,' said Malory politely. 'What is it you hear?'

The tortoise mouth widened in a grin, though whether of pleasure or malice it was hard to tell. 'I hear it's a big one, same size and period as The Fighting T éméraire.If it is, God alone knows what it will fetch!'

Vivian Sudbury, for all the expensive simplicity of his Huntsman suit, his Lobb shoes and his Turnbull & Asser haberdashery (Malory guessed there was a thousand pounds on Sudbury's back), still bore with him that peculiar oiliness unmistakable in dealers in fine things. His eye had about it that lambent humility which is ready at once to turn either to obsequiousness or contempt, according to the state of negotiation. He said, 'Turner,' in a voice like velvet.

'That's the feller,' Sir Horace told him. 'Tell me about him.'

Sudbury glanced round the room, pricing everything in a single swift survey. He lit a cigarette which, Malory's nostrils told him, was Egyptian. 'There are,' said the velvet voice, 'Turners and Turners.'

Malory nodded encouragingly. 'So I'm told.'

'The highest price ever paid at auction,' Sudbury continued, 'was for a Turner: six million four hundred thousand dollars, at Sotheby Parke Bernet.'