Death of an Old Master

26

‘Forgeries in Mayfair!’ ‘Fake paintings sold to US Millionaires!’ ‘Master Faker hidden in Norfolk Mansion!’ ‘London Art Dealers Employ Their Very Own Forger!’ The London newspapers on Saturday morning were full of the reports of the trial. Enterprising editors sent fresh teams of reporters to de Courcy Hall itself to bring more news on the secret location of Orlando Blane. They searched in vain for Blane himself. A Mr Thomas Blane, a retired clergyman resident in Wimbledon, was disturbed several times that morning by gentlemen of the press who had discovered his name on the electoral roll. An elderly widow, Mrs Muriel Blane of Fulham, South-West London was also troubled by fruitless journalistic inquiries.

The man at the centre of the whole affair, Horace Aloysius Buckley, did not see the reports. Newspapers are not normally delivered to the cells of Her Majesty’s prisons. Lord Francis Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, breakfasting with Johnny Fitzgerald in Markham Square, bought all the day’s papers to read the coverage.

Charles Augustus Pugh was doing the same. He took out a small red pen and ringed the word Pugh every time he saw it. By the end of his marathon perusal – total reading time over two and a half hours – he had counted fifty-four mentions of his name against a mere sixteen for Sir Rufus Fitch.

The nurse in her crisp white uniform read the main points to Sir Frederick Lambert, President of the Royal Academy, resting in a large chair in his drawing room, a rug thrown over his knees. A faint smile crossed his lips when he heard of the diverse activities of Orlando Blane.

But one group of readers were more vigorous in their response than anybody else. Mr William P. McCracken was taking ham and eggs in the dining room of Edinburgh’s finest hotel, looking out over the Royal Mile. Mr McCracken had paid fifteen thousand pounds for his Gainsborough and eighty-five thousand pounds for his Raphael. One hundred thousand pounds in total. Now he saw he could have been sold a couple of forgeries. Worthless forgeries. Mr McCracken, as he had reminded William Alaric Piper in his gallery in Old Bond Street, was a senior elder in the Third Presbyterian Church of Lincoln Street, Concord, Massachusetts. His minister and his fellow elders would not have been pleased to see him take the name of the Lord in vain that morning. ‘God dammit! God dammit to hell!’ he said in such a loud voice that the waitress just behind his table dropped a dish of fresh kippers on the floor. ‘The bastard!’ he went on, totally oblivious to his surroundings. ‘The bastard! God damn him to hell!’ In fifteen years of commerce nobody had outwitted William P. McCracken. ‘God dammit,’ he went on, ‘I’ll sue that man! I’ll break him, if it’s the last thing I do!’ And with that he ordered his bill and a carriage to take him to the railway station to catch the next express to London.

Cornelius P. Stockman was not in London either. He was in Salisbury, taking a short tour of some of England’s finest cathedrals, though he was not attending Evensong. His hotel room looked out over the tranquillity of the Cathedral Close. Cornelius did not swear. He did not shout. He shook with fury. He had not yet paid over any money for the Sleeping Venus by Giorgione and eleven other nudes from the de Courcy and Piper Gallery. But it was the fact that he, Cornelius P. Stockman, had been cheated by these treacherous Englishmen that annoyed him so much. In spite of his rage a small smile crossed his features as he thought of the Sleeping Venus’s naked beauty. But he had ordered another eleven of them from those crooks in Old Bond Street! Twelve damned fakes to carry back across the Atlantic! The good Lord, he reflected, a thought possibly inspired by the sight of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral soaring upwards into a clear sky, the good Lord had twelve and only one a wrong un. I’m going to get twelve wrong uns in one enormous parcel. Oh no, I’m not, he said to himself. He wished he had brought his legal counsel Charleston F. Guthrie on this trip to the devious Europeans. Many times back in the States Charleston had ridden into battle in the courtrooms of New York and laid waste to Stockman’s enemies. Bloody English, he said to himself, they probably have a completely different set of rules. But Stockman was not a man to take things lying down. He too set off for the railway station to return to London. He was going to find the best lawyer in the capital, whatever it cost.

Only one of the millionaires read the headlines in London. Lewis B. Black was still a resident of the Piccadilly Hotel. He had paid over ten thousand pounds for his Sir Joshua Reynolds. Black read the accounts of Orlando Blane’s evidence with particular care. He checked one account with another. There was only one conclusion. The man said he had been sent the pages of an American magazine with an illustration of the Black family. His family. His wife, staring out of the portrait, so pretty in that hat with the feathers. His very own forgery. How they would laugh, back on Fifth Avenue, about how he had been deceived.

Black abandoned his breakfast and walked as fast as he could to the de Courcy and Piper offices in Old Bond Street. All the other art dealers were open, gossip swirling round about what might come next when the trial resumed on Monday. But on the offices of de Courcy and Piper there was a large sign. ‘Temporarily closed due to Refurbishment’ it said. Black hammered on the door in fury. Maybe the bastards were hiding inside, destroying the evidence of their crimes, burning their records. There was no reply. De Courcy and Piper had gone to ground. Black hammered even harder on the door. A couple of newspapermen came up to him.

‘It’s no good, mate,’ they said cheerfully. ‘Bugger’s not there. We’ve been here since first thing this morning. He’s gone.’

Late on Saturday afternoon an exhausted but triumphant William McKenzie found Powerscourt lying on the sofa in the drawing room of Markham Square, a mass of newspapers strewn across the floor.

‘William!’ Powerscourt rose and shook McKenzie by the hand. Something in the man’s face suggested that he was the bearer of good tidings. ‘Any news? Have you found it?’

‘I believe I have, my lord, I have come to make my report.’

Powerscourt suddenly remembered that McKenzie’s reports were always couched in rather lifeless prose. Names were rarely mentioned in case the report fell into the wrong hands. As a result the McKenzie accounts always required a certain amount of decoding by the recipient, unlike Johnny Fitzgerald’s. These were always scrupulously accurate but read like the popular fiction of the time.

‘I guessed that the party would not have made the relevant purchase in the immediate vicinity of their house,’ William McKenzie began. ‘They might have been seen or recognized entering or leaving the premises. I then had to take a gamble, my lord. They could have travelled further afield by cab. But that would have been risky. The cabby might have remembered the identity of his passenger. They have, I believe, a remarkable ability to remember people’s faces.’

McKenzie paused. Powerscourt said nothing.

‘Or,’ McKenzie went on, his features a model of concentration, ‘they could have taken the underground railway, so much more anonymous. The party’s nearest station is on the District Line. So I have been travelling further and further from the party’s address. I drew a blank in the area around Gloucester Road. I failed in Hammersmith. I failed in Chiswick. I failed in Kew. This morning, at the very eleventh hour as you might say, my lord, I found what we sought in Richmond, the final stop on the District Line if you are travelling in a westerly direction.’

McKenzie paused again. Powerscourt was thinking of another life about to be ruined.

‘The party made two trips to this particular emporium, not far from Richmond station. The first visit was two days before the murder of Christopher Montague. The second was just before the murder of Thomas Jenkins.’

‘And will the owner of the emporium come to court?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Will they give evidence?’

‘They will, my lord. They have given me their word.’

‘Did you offer any money, William?’ said Powerscourt, a sudden vision of Sir Rufus Fitch moving in to discredit the witness.

‘I did not, my lord. I thought the legal gentlemen might have had a field day if I did.’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly how McKenzie had known that. Perhaps the man was a secret devotee of murder trials, a regular visitor to the courts of London and his native Scotland.

‘Forgive me, William.’ Powerscourt knew he should have felt triumphant, but he didn’t. ‘Are you certain this witness will turn up?’

‘Rest assured, my lord, the witness will turn up. Why, I am going to Richmond myself on Monday morning to escort the party to the court. They start very early, those trains on the District Line.’

Early on Sunday evening Powerscourt and Pugh held a final conference in Pugh’s house in Chelsea. At the same time Schomberg McDonnell was sitting in a quiet corner of the library of his club in Pall Mall. He began composing a letter to his master, the Prime Minister.

‘Dear Prime Minister,’ he began. ‘You asked me to find the best intelligence officer in Britain.’ McDonnell paused, his eye wandering over a couple of shelves filled with the complete works of Cicero. Should he tell the Prime Minister the names of the people he had consulted, the generals, the brigadiers, the majors, the staff officers? Probably not, he decided. The old man wouldn’t want to waste his time with the detail. He just wanted a name.

‘I believe,’ he continued, ‘that I have found the man you are looking for.’