The Hawk Is Dead

46

Friday 24 November 2023

There was a game Lorraine McKnight played some nights, when she lay awake in the small hours, worried, her brain whirring, unable to get back to sleep. These sleepless episodes were happening more and more just recently, and they had started, she supposed, soon after the renovations to Buckingham Palace had commenced.

A trustee of the National Gallery and the former Head of Fine Art at Sotheby’s, she had been the Director of the Royal Collection for the past eight years. In this role she was responsible for all the paintings and miniatures, prints, drawings, sculptures, furniture, ceramics, glass, silver, gold, jewels, books, manuscripts, textiles, photographs and historic weapons and armour held by the Royal Family and curated by the Royal Collection Trust. There were well over one million items, spread over thirteen palaces and houses, and it was one of the most important art collections in the world.

Her game, rather than counting sheep, was to try to tot up the combined value of everything she was responsible for in her current role. And she was responsible for every single item. After just a few minutes it usually did work and she would be fast asleep. But not last night. She’d lain awake for a long time thinking back to some hours earlier when she’d discovered Sir Jason Finch down in the vaults where some of the Royal Collection’s most valuable works of art and pieces of jewellery were being stored for safety during the renovations.

He’d seemed embarrassed by her presence, almost like a schoolboy caught in the act of doing something furtive. And, she had reflected repeatedly during the long night, he seemed to have gone to unnecessary lengths to explain — almost as if he had a pre-prepared excuse for being down there. But as, effectively, the Chief Finance Officer, the completely trusted Keeper of the Privy Purse did not need an excuse — he was entitled to go anywhere in the damned Palace that he chose.

Now, at 8.55 a.m., after having walked their boys to school, the statuesque forty-seven-year-old was on her morning commute, pedalling the ancient sit-up-and-beg bike she loved, in breezy sunshine across Hyde Park.

It took her twenty minutes from their home in the less fashionable part of Notting Hill she shared with her husband, the boys and a dachshund called Tilly (who was recovering from slipped disc surgery), towards where she would take her life in her hands, and cycle around a section of Marble Arch rather than use the underpass. From there she would whizz down the Constitution Hill cycle path towards the entrance — and sanctuary — of Buckingham Palace, or a short distance on to her office in St James’s Palace.

It was funny, she was thinking today, how you could both love and hate your job at the same time. She loved that she got to work with so many stunning paintings, the Vermeer and the Canalettos being among her favourites, as well as so many truly extraordinary objets d’art, many gifted to the Royal Family over countless generations — wedding presents, state visit cultural gifts, and in the past, noblemen seeking favours.

But she hated that the renovations, which had started seven years ago and were part of a ten-year programme — albeit under the very able control of the highly respected, and fun, Master of the Royal Household — had made a nightmare of her inventory.

When she had first joined, she could have stated with confidence, if she’d been required to, exactly where every single one of those million-plus items were. Now it had become a logistical nightmare, with stuff being moved all over the place — sometimes by the craftsmen in the Palace — and frequently without her authorizing it. And, in addition to that, wherever renovations were taking place, the ever-present risk of fire increased, especially in such an old building as the Palace. And she was the one who had to make the decisions about which items should be saved first in — God forbid — the event of such a calamity. All of these had to be listed and labelled with a Salvage sticker. Memories of the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992, which destroyed one hundred rooms and countless treasured items, still haunted the Royal Collection team.

On Monday she’d at least been able to respond competently to Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey, when he had called her to say that The King was wondering where his beloved Landseer, which normally hung in the breakfast room at Clarence House, had gone. She was able to inform him that the painting had been taken down — as it was routinely — to be checked for condition, to ensure it wasn’t suffering any damage from light or humidity in its current location.

But she had been on a lot shakier ground when, on Wednesday, The Queen had called her to ask why the Vermeer that was normally in the Picture Gallery had been replaced with a Fragonard. Not only was she unable to tell Her Majesty why the painting had been taken down, but in her subsequent enquiries, Lorraine was unable to even locate it.

It would turn up, she knew, as would several other high-value items that had gone on the missing list recently — dismissing the fleeting thought that Jason Finch could possibly have had anything to do with that. She just hoped that Tommy didn’t suddenly go on the warpath, and come to her demanding to know where they were. Hopefully he had enough on his plate right now in the aftermath of Monday’s nightmare events.

But she would make it her very first task today to locate the missing Vermeer from the Picture Gallery and get that Landseer back on the wall in Clarence House as an absolute priority.