Death of an Old Master

18

Lord Francis Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were sitting in a corner of their hotel bar, Powerscourt facing the entrance, his right hand never straying far from his pocket. They were in clean clothes after an alarming encounter with the local plumbing. The bathroom was a few feet away down the corridor, an enormous bath in dark wood panelling, rusty pipes running up the wall. When the hot tap was turned on, there was at first a distant rumble, like thunder in the mountains. Then the rumble faded to be replaced by a ferocious rattling of machinery. The pipes began to tremble, then to dance to some strange Corsican rhythm, shuddering against the wall, beating against each other. The performance was accompanied by a barrage of steam so great that it was almost impossible to see across the room. But the water was hot, the metal symphony gradually subsided, their aching limbs were soothed by the heat.

‘I never knew you could shoot like that, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, sipping very slowly at a glass of local white wine.

‘My grandfather taught me,’ said Lady Lucy, remembering a day long ago in the hills behind her grandfather’s house. ‘It was in Scotland. Everybody else had gone on a fishing expedition. The two of us were alone in the house.

‘“I’ve taught all my male grandchildren to shoot,” my grandfather said suddenly after lunch. “Think I’d better teach you as well.” So he took me into the hills with some kind of ancient archery board and a couple of pistols. I had to keep on trying until I could hit the centre of the board. “If you end up in India,” my grandfather said, “married to an army colonel or the Viceroy or somebody like that, you never know when you mightn’t need to shoot straight.”’

‘Did you intend, at that point, to marry a future Viceroy, Lucy? Supper dances at Simla in the Viceregal lodge, that sort of thing?’ said Powerscourt in his most serious voice.

‘I don’t think a future Viceroy was much in my thoughts at that point, Francis. Rather a dashing young Captain in the Black Watch.’

‘And was your grandfather pleased with your efforts?’ asked Powerscourt, rubbing slowly at the bruise on his knee.

‘He was,’ said Lady Lucy happily. ‘He said he wouldn’t like to be a tiger or a rebellious native trying to take me by surprise.’

There was a sudden rush of footsteps to their table.

‘Lord Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt.’ Captain Imperiali cast his eyes up and down Lady Lucy. ‘I have just heard the terrible news about what happened this afternoon. It was all a terrible mistake. I have come to apologize for the behaviour of my fellow Corsicans.’

The Captain pulled a chair from the neighbouring table and deposited his ample frame upon it.

‘In what way was it a mistake?’ said Powerscourt. Some mistake indeed, shots pursuing them down the mountainside, rifles waiting for them in the open stretches of the road. He felt sure that Imperiali knew more than he would say. Perhaps he had instigated it himself.

‘It is a tradition,’ said Imperiali, smiling at Lady Lucy as he spoke, ‘a tradition in the village of San Antonino. Perhaps we have too many traditions here in Corsica. They call it the Traitor’s Run. Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Lady Powerscourt, there was war in the Balagne, the French against the Genovese. San Antonino and the other places up there were with the Genovese. Calvi was always loyal to Genoa. But up in San Antonino a young man betrayed the village to the French. For money, you understand. So the people of San Antonino take him and his fiancee out on to the road down to the coast. ‘Go and find your French friends down there,’ they say, kicking them both on the start of their journey. Then they followed them down the mountain. The young men of San Antonino let the traitors almost reach the bottom so they think they are safe. Then they kill them. Their bodies are cut up into pieces and left for the wolves.’

‘What a horrible story,’ said Lady Lucy, avoiding Captain Imperiali’s eye.

‘This is what is important, Lord Powerscourt.’ Imperiali was leaning forward, his hand fingering his unlit cheroot. ‘Every year since then, the young men of San Antonino replay this event. That is why it is called the Traitor’s Run. A young man is drawn by lot from the people of the village. He has to persuade a young woman to accompany him. The anniversary is today, my lord. Today is the day for the Traitor’s Run. You were not the only people running down the mountainside. Perluigi Cassani and Maria Cosenza from San Antonino were also running down. The young men think you are the traitors. So they shoot. But they never intend to kill. Always they shoot at the running persons on the day of Traitor’s Run. But in over a hundred years nobody has been hit or killed. It is like a game, even though it is more serious than a game. Nobody intended to kill you this afternoon. It was a case of the mistaken identity. You were quite safe.’

Captain Imperiali paused to light his cheroot. ‘On behalf of the people of Calvi, on behalf of the people of Corsica, may I apologize most seriously,’ he said.

‘We are most grateful for your apology,’ said Powerscourt. He wondered if Lady Lucy’s book on Corsica made any mention of a Traitor’s Run. It was certainly a good story. He wasn’t yet sure if he believed it.

‘May I have the pleasure of taking you both to dinner in Calvi’s finest restaurant?’ the Captain went on. ‘The lobster there is superb. And they specialize in wild boar, a great delicacy in these parts.’

Powerscourt thanked him for his offer, but said they were both tired and would prefer to remain in their hotel. Maybe another day.

‘Do you know when you are going to leave the island, Lord Powerscourt?’

Powerscourt said they had no plans to leave for the present. Captain Imperiali bowed to them both and departed, the smell of his cheroot still lingering in the air.

‘Well, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘did you believe a word of it?’

‘What a revolting man he is,’ said Lady Lucy firmly, ‘the way he looks at you is quite appalling. Did I believe it? I think I probably did – I’m sure anybody we ask here in the next few days will all swear it’s true. It’s not the sort of thing that would be in the guidebooks. It might put people off.’

‘There is a boat to Marseilles first thing in the morning,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’ve booked two passages in the name of Fitzgerald. Do you like the thought of becoming Lady Fitzgerald, Lucy?’

‘Very much,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘But I must ask you one question. When you aimed at those people on the hill this afternoon, were you intending to hit them?’

‘Of course I was,’ said Powerscourt, ‘weren’t you?’

‘I most certainly was not,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I was aiming about ten feet away from them and praying that I wouldn’t hit anyone at all.’

‘Why ever not?’ said Powerscourt, draining his glass of Corsican white wine.

‘Oh Francis, can’t you see? Suppose we had killed one of them. That would have been the start of a vendetta. Our lives, the children’s lives, would all be at risk to the Corsicans’ terrible passion for revenge. I don’t think I could have slept safely ever again. They’d have followed us all the way to London.’

Powerscourt was lost in thought. Corsicans in London. Corsican killers in London. Corsicans who garrotted their enemies.

William Alaric Piper was pacing nervously up and down the street outside his gallery. He was waiting for Lewis B. Black, the taciturn American millionaire whose silences unnerved him to the point of illness. Piper resolved to say as little as possible, though he doubted if he could bear a prolonged period of silence.

‘Good morning to you, Mr Piper,’ said Lewis B. Black, shaking him by the hand, ‘fine weather we are having this morning.’

This was the longest single speech Piper had ever heard from the taciturn millionaire. Maybe London was beginning to have an effect on him.

‘If you would like to come with me, Mr Black,’ said Piper, leading the way up the stairs past his gallery to the holy of holies on the second floor, ‘I think I have a painting that might interest you.’

Piper opened the door and turned on the lights. There on the easel sat a Joshua Reynolds, Clarissa, Lady Lanchester, perched on a seat in an imaginary landscape with a glorious sunset behind her. She was wearing a cream dress. Her small hands were folded in her lap. And on her head was a hat of the most expensive and exquisite feathers the London milliners of the late eighteenth century could provide. But the face was not from the eighteenth century. Of course it had been painted to look like an eighteenth-century face. But the face that stared back at Lewis B. Black bore an uncanny resemblance to Mildred, also known as Mrs Lewis B. Black of New York City. It had been copied from the page of the magazine Edmund de Courcy had stolen from the Beaufort Club.

Lewis B. Black rubbed his eyes as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at. He took three paces to the left, then three paces to the right. He went so close that his nose was almost touching the canvas.

‘This for sale?’ he said finally.

‘Yes,’ said Piper. He didn’t think the delaying tactics he had used on McCracken would work with Black. The man might simply disappear.

‘Fifteen thousand,’ said Black, putting his hand in his pocket as if to check he had that much cash about his person.

‘Pounds or dollars?’ said Piper.

‘Dollars,’ said Lewis B. Black.

‘Pounds,’ said Piper. His mental arithmetic was not strong – de Courcy looked after the accounts – but he knew that a pound was worth a lot more than a dollar.

‘Dollars,’ said Black again.

‘Pounds,’ repeated Piper.

‘Dollars,’ repeated Black. Piper thought Black might go on like this all day.

‘Fourteen,’ said Piper.

‘Fourteen what?’

‘Sorry, fourteen thousand pounds. That’s a whole thousand off for you, Mr Black.’

‘Ten,’ said Black.

‘Ten what?’

‘Ten thousand pounds, sorry,’ said Lewis B. Black.

Piper rejoiced that they had finally settled into pounds. He felt the Bank of England would have been proud of him.

‘Fourteen thousand pounds.’ He stuck to his guns.

‘Eleven,’ said Black.

‘Thirteen,’ said Piper.

‘Twelve,’ said Black.

‘Split the difference,’ said Piper, who would have settled for ten if he had to. Almost all of that was clear profit after all. ‘Twelve and a half thousand pounds.’

‘Done,’ said Lewis B. Black. But what he said next was music to Piper’s ears.

‘This Lady Lanchester woman in the picture,’ he said, nodding at his wife on the easel, ‘did this Reynolds guy do any more paintings of her? Or did anybody else at the time?’

Piper felt like an early prospector who has just discovered a rich seam of gold. This was the California gold rush come to Old Bond Street.

‘I will have to check in our library,’ he assured Lewis B. Black, ‘but I think from memory that there are two other portraits of Lady Lanchester in existence, another one by Reynolds, the other, I think, by Gainsborough. Would you like me to see if I can find them for you?’

The interview room was very small. There were no windows. A bare light bulb cast a miserable light over the occupants. Horace Aloysius Buckley had lost weight in prison. His face was drawn. The drab grey of the prison uniform did not suit him. The clothes were several sizes too big for him, hanging loosely off his shoulders, the trousers sagging at the waist.

‘Horace,’ said his partner, George Brigstock, ‘your case may come up for trial sooner than we thought. Two cases scheduled for the Central Criminal Court have had to be postponed. We must instruct a barrister at once.’

Buckley shuddered slightly at the news that his trial might be sooner than expected. Sometimes at night, tossing on the worn-out mattress in his cell, he dreamed of judges with black caps chasing him down the nave of a cathedral, shouting at him to keep still so they could pass sentence.

‘Do you have any suggestions, George?’ said Buckley. The firm of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, solicitors, did not deal in criminal cases, but the world of the law in London is a very small one.

‘Sir Rufus Fitch will be taking the prosecution case. Do you know Sir Rufus, Horace?’

Outside the footsteps of the warder sounded loud on the stone floor as he paced up and down in the corridor outside.

‘I have met Sir Rufus, George, I thought he was rather pompous.’

‘What do you say,’ said Brigstock, consulting a sheet of paper in front of him, ‘to Sir Idwal Grimble? They say he’s very good in cases of this kind.’

Horace Buckley looked unblinking at the face of the warder, peering in through the glass slit. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe all this was happening to him.

‘Sir Idwal?’ he said. ‘He’s another pompous fellow. He and Fitch would be like a pair of battleships that take a couple of hours to change course. Too heavy. Can’t manoeuvre.’

‘A number of people spoke very highly of Pemberton, Miles Pemberton.’ Brigstock tried another name. ‘Nobody thought he could get that fellow who was accused of murdering his mother-in-law off last year, but he did.’

‘I think he was lucky,’ said Horace Aloysius Buckley. ‘The prosecution’s man hadn’t done his homework properly. And he’s pretty pompous too.’

‘My own personal choice,’ said Brigstock, beginning to despair of ever coming up with a barrister acceptable to his partner, ‘is for a younger man, a coming man.’

‘Do you have somebody in mind?’ asked Buckley, suddenly aware that his time in the interview room was nearly over.

‘Pugh,’ said Buckley, ‘Charles Augustus Pugh. He’s young, he’s quick, his brain probably works faster than Sir Rufus Fitch’s. They say he’s very good with juries too.’

‘I have heard of this Pugh,’ said Buckley as the warder began the slow process of opening the door. ‘Instruct him, if you please. And tell him,’ the warder was repeating Time’s Up as if it were some kind of mantra as he ushered George Brigstock towards the daylight, ‘tell him, for God’s sake, to get in touch with Lord Francis Powerscourt.’

Mrs Imogen Foxe had taken her correspondence down to the lake again. Well, not the entire correspondence, just one letter, another missive from the mysterious Mr Peters in London. It began with instructions for a meeting in five days’ time at the Bristol Hotel near Waterloo station in London. She was to present herself at the reception desk between one and two o’clock and ask for Mr Peters. She had to understand that from that moment on, a number of unpleasant things were going to happen to her. Her eyes and the upper part of her face would be wrapped in bandages. She would be given a stick to help her walk. She would have to rely on Mr Peters or one of his assistants to guide her on her journey. If she disclosed any of these details to a single living soul, she would not meet Mr Orlando Blane on this occasion. She would never see him again. Her family – Imogen winced at this point – and her husband would also be informed about what she proposed to do.

Imogen read the letter three times and resolved to burn it when she returned to the house. She walked slowly round the lake, a light breeze rippling across the surface. She thought she saw a kingfisher shooting across the opposite side of the water. She couldn’t be sure. She hugged herself as she thought of Orlando. Another sonnet of Shakespeare’s came back to her, learnt by heart under the unforgiving eyes of the nuns and the battered reproduction of the Assumption of the Virgin on the convent wall,

O! Never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love; if I have ranged,

Like him that travels, I return again.

Thoughts of travel sent her into Blandford, the nearest town. She presented herself at the counter of Barnard and Baines, the best, the most expensive outfitters in the place. She ordered six of their finest shirts.

‘Will those be for Mr Granville, madam?’ said the old assistant. Barnard and Baines had been clothing the Foxe family for generations. They had records of the neck sizes of all of them for the past hundred and twenty years.

‘No, it’s for my brother,’ Imogen blushed slightly, ‘a size smaller than Mr Granville, I should say.’

She also purchased two pairs of dark gentleman’s trousers and a jacket. Then she went to the local bank where she withdrew two hundred pounds in cash. The cashier looked round as if to ask for his superior, but Imogen’s most charming smile brought forth the money.

I can hide all these things in my luggage, she said to herself. Orlando may not have any decent clothes at all. And with two hundred pounds, we could go anywhere in the kingdom.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was dreading this interview. He knew he had put it off for far too long. He paused at the edge of Rotten Row in Hyde Park, the horses and their perfectly groomed riders trotting sedately along. He could still go home. He could be back in Markham Square in ten minutes or so. Then he remembered his last conversation with Lady Lucy the night before.

‘You must see him, Francis, you know that as well as I do,’ Lady Lucy had said.

‘What can I say to him?’ her husband pleaded. ‘Did you kill Christopher Montague? Did you also kill Thomas Jenkins? What did you do with the books?’

‘You’re being silly, Francis. And, what’s even more uncharacteristic, you’re trying to run away from something. Think of poor Mr Buckley, in his cell or wherever he is these days. Surely you owe it to him.’

Powerscourt sighed and proceeded on his way to Old Bond Street where he had an appointment with the firm of de Courcy and Piper, art dealers. To be precise, with Edmund de Courcy, son and brother of the de Courcys of Aregno, Corsica. And the second last person to see Christopher Montague alive.

De Courcy was surrounded by pieces of paper when Powerscourt was shown in.

‘Sorry for all this mess,’ he waved at his desk, ‘it’s our next big exhibition, The English Portrait. I’ve been making lists of all the places where the paintings might come from.’

Powerscourt removed a couple of books from a chair and sat down. ‘I met your family recently,’ he said, ‘over there in Corsica. Your mother was well. Your sisters . . .’ He paused briefly. ‘How could I put it, I think they are a little starved of company.’

Edmund de Courcy laughed. ‘Starved of the company of young men,’ he said, with an elder brother’s cruel accuracy, ‘but I understand that you had a rather unpleasant experience during your stay. I was in Aregno myself two years ago on the day of the Traitor’s Run. Guns going off all afternoon, people shouting at each other. We wondered at first if a revolution had broken out.’

That was very neat, Powerscourt thought. Edmund de Courcy himself a witness at the Traitor’s Run. Yet again he wondered if the annual ritual was real or lies, genuine or fake. Rather like the paintings in de Courcy’s gallery, he said to himself. It all came down to a matter of attribution in the end.

‘Well, it was certainly an exciting afternoon,’ Powerscourt said with a smile. Then he moved on to more dangerous ground.

‘Tell me, Mr de Courcy,’ he asked, ‘how well did you know Christopher Montague?’

De Courcy shook his head sadly. ‘Of course I knew him,’ he said, ‘what a terrible business. I saw him in the street on the afternoon he died. And that other poor man in Oxford too. Quite terrible.’

‘Did he come to the opening of your current exhibition here, Venetian Paintings?’

De Courcy blinked several times. ‘I’m trying to remember if he did,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sure he must have been here. Yes, I do remember him on that occasion. He came with a very pretty young woman.’

Powerscourt summoned up his mental image of Mrs Rosalind Buckley, estranged wife of a man incarcerated for murder in Newgate Prison.

‘Quite tall?’ he said. ’Curly brown hair, big brown eyes?’

De Courcy looked confused. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘she was quite small. She didn’t have brown hair, it was almost black. And the eyes were blue, I think, rather striking.’

‘Did you catch her name, by any chance?’ said Powerscourt.

‘No, I don’t think I did.’

Outside they could hear the voice of William Alaric Piper telling the porters to be careful with a picture, apparently being moved down to the basement.

‘Tell me about forgers, Mr de Courcy.’ Powerscourt seemed to have lost interest in Christopher Montague’s companion. ‘I understand Mr Montague was going to say that most of these Venetian paintings were not original, that some were old fakes and some very recent fakes. Did you know about the article?’

De Courcy blinked again. It seemed to be a mannerism of his, Powerscourt thought. ‘Oh, yes, everybody knew about that article before it was due to appear,’ de Courcy said. ‘Indeed, it was being produced with the help of one of our competitors along the street here.’ He nodded out of the window towards Old Bond Street.

‘But forgery is nothing new in the art business, Lord Powerscourt. The Greeks did a very profitable trade selling fake antique statues to the Romans, for heaven’s sake. Most of the rich English who went on the Grand Tour brought back forgeries with them, thinking they were genuine, hanging them happily on the walls of their homes. Believe me, Lord Powerscourt, I visit a lot of the great houses full of paintings. I’ve lost count of the fake Titians. There must be more Giorgiones in the Home Counties than the man ever painted in his lifetime. Velasquez is rife in Hampshire, there’s a house I know of in Dorset which claims to have six Rembrandts in their drawing room. I doubt if a single one of them was painted in Holland. Florence today could field a couple of rugby teams of forgers, Forgers United and Forgers Athletic perhaps. You can’t stop it.’

Powerscourt smiled. Somebody on the floor above was hammering something into the wall, nails or picture hooks perhaps, to bear the weight of yet another painting, real or fake.

‘Would it have made any difference to the success of your exhibition,’ he said, ‘if the article had appeared just after it opened?’

De Courcy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said firmly, ‘I think the exhibition was always going to be a success. We’re taking it to New York, you know.’

Rich pickings over there, Powerscourt thought. Some of the European buyers might be able to tell a forgery from the real thing. But he was doubtful about the buyers of Fifth Avenue.

‘Your house in Norfolk,’ he said, changing the direction of his attack. De Courcy sounded pretty impregnable on the subject of forgery. ‘Do you think you will be able to open it up again? I understand it is abandoned at present.’

‘Oh yes, it is,’ said de Courcy, ‘abandoned, I mean. There’s nobody there at all. The place is completely empty. There’s nobody there. I do hope to be able to bring my family back from Corsica, though. If things continue to go well with the business I might be able to do it quite soon.’

‘I’m sure your mother would like that,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically. ‘Do you have any Corsican links here, any Corsicans working as porters in the gallery or anything like that?’

‘We did have one Corsican here,’ said de Courcy, ‘but he had to go home only the other day. His mother died.’

‘Poor man,’ said Powerscourt, getting up from his chair. ‘Just one last thing, Mr de Courcy. The young woman who came to the opening night of the exhibition with Christopher Montague. Did you have a Visitors Book on that occasion? Might she have left a name in there?’

De Courcy said he would fetch the Visitors Book from the other office. Powerscourt stared idly at some of the pieces of paper on de Courcy’s desk. There seemed to be some form of private code on them. Some had no stars, some had one, some had three.

‘Here it is,’ said de Courcy. ‘We’ll have to go right back to the beginning.’ He turned back the pages of the thick leather-bound book.

‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘half way down the page. That’s Christopher Montague’s signature. And underneath it, written with the same pen I should say, Alice Bridge. No address, I’m afraid.’