Death of an Old Master (2 page)

‘Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive.’

Another memorial on the floor echoed the words of St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians. Thomas de Courcy was portrayed on his brass in full armour, holding a very long sword, as if about
to go into battle. Edmund remembered the full description of the armour with its archaic vocabulary of gorgets and vambraces, tassets and epaulieres, jambarts and rerebraces, genouillaires and
sabbatons.

The vicar was praying now, the prayers interrupted by his hacking cough, praying that the dead man’s sins might be forgiven so he could be received into God’s gracious mercy and
protection.

Three of his father’s transgressions were sitting but three feet away from him, Edmund thought to himself, casting a quick glance at the alternative family in its pew. The mother was
impassive, the boy and girl taking their cue from their mother and staring resolutely straight ahead. Julia and Sarah had managed to stand right at the front of their box pew so they could look
sideways without being noticed. Alice, their mother, was still huddled against the wall.

The prayers were punctuated by the regular drip on to the floor, sounding another note of desolation and decay, as if not only the body of the dead man but the very fabric of the buildings on
his estate was beginning to rot away.

There was no sermon from the vicar. He found it impossible to know what to say in such circumstances.

At last, at twenty minutes past eleven, it was all over.

‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’

Scarcely had the word ‘Amen’ died away when the smartly dressed young man sitting beside lawyer Smithson unlatched his door, opened the door of the pew in front of him and escorted
the French party out of the church as fast as decency allowed. Just once Edmund met the eyes of his father’s mistress. Julia and Sarah had one quick glimpse of the half-brother and sister
they had never seen before. Almost before the congregation realized what was happening the French party had fled the field.

The bell began to toll again. Smithson had a brief word with Edmund and his mother as they stood at the gate of the church, staring out at what had been their fields, but might be their fields
no longer.

‘They’re not going to come to the house,’ he said, trying to reassure the widow, ‘they’re going back to their hotel.’

Smithson paused. He suspected that the ordeal of having to listen to the dead man’s will being read out, surrounded by his mistress and the bastard offspring, might prove too much for
Alice de Courcy.

‘The young man who took them away is called McKenna, Richard McKenna. He works for Finch’s Bank. McKenna’s going to tell them the details of the will there before they go back
to France.’

How long did it take, Edmund wondered, to travel from the south of France to a remote house in Norfolk for a service that had lasted less than half an hour? Perhaps it was the will, an unknown
financial future, not family piety that had brought them on their long journey into the rain and the wind that surrounded St Peter’s Church. Just visible on the long drive that led to the
main road, the French carriage was making good speed as if they wanted to escape as fast as they could.

‘I thought,’ Smithson went on apologetically, ‘that a rest would be a good idea before the reading of the last will and testament. Mr McKenna and I propose to call on you at
three o’clock this afternoon. Would the library be suitable, do you think?’

‘Of course,’ said Edmund and steered his mother back across the fields to de Courcy Hall. The congregation drifted off. The vicar wondered yet again if he could afford another pair
of boots. The great bell rang out across the countryside and almost reached the sea. This afternoon, it would be decided. This afternoon, they would know their fate and their future.

‘“I, Charles Edward Windham Fitzmaurice de Courcy, formerly of de Courcy Hall in the county of Norfolk, currently resident at the Chateau de Fontcaude, Grasse,
Alpes Maritimes, France, do hereby cancel, revoke and annul all previous wills and testaments.”’

Mr Smithson, the lawyer from Fakenham, had put on his glasses. The library was on the first floor of de Courcy Hall, great oak bookcases rising almost to the ceiling. Many of the books had been
purchased in Rome or Geneva, Naples or Venice, by earlier de Courcys on the Grand Tour, shorter visits to Europe than the dead man who had stayed there fifteen years. There was a large mahogany
table in the middle of the room. Mr Smithson and his banker companion sat at the head, with the family below them. Outside the rain was still falling. The wind was battering against the windows.
Even with a fire the room was cold.

Julia started at the mention of the word ‘Chateau’. She had visions of some enormous palace filled with tapestries and exciting histories of romance and elopement. Edmund was
wondering how much a chateau would cost to run, even a little one.

There was a lot more legal preamble. Smithson read this as fast as he could. Then he paused. Richard McKenna was looking at what appeared to be a first edition of Dr Johnson’s dictionary,
the dust sitting thickly on the top as if nobody had checked the meaning of a word for over a hundred and forty years.

‘“I come now to my testimonary dispositions.”’ Smithson glanced at the dead man’s family, Alice looking pale, the girls interested, Edmund apprehensive. ‘“De Courcy Hall, its contents, furniture, pictures, ornaments and everything else pertaining unto it, I leave to my son Edmund George Windham de Courcy.”’

The girls looked relieved. They had never lived anywhere else. They would be safe. Smithson coughed. He looked slightly embarrassed as he read on.

‘“My estates, farms, woods, horses, cattle and sheep and all other farm animals”’ – there followed a precise geographical description of all these properties
– ‘“I leave absolutely to Madame Yvette de Castelnau of Grasse for her sole use and that of her children, François and Marie-Claire.”’

Charles de Courcy had done the unthinkable. He had failed to keep one of the oldest rules of the English gentry in disposing of their property. He had broken it up. In his wish to accommodate
his two families he had separated the house from the lands which supported it. None of the women seemed to understand what had happened. Perhaps they had been hypnotized by the legal prose, the
dead language of lawyers come to impose its will on the living.

Edmund did. He did not know just how terrible the news was, but he knew it meant catastrophe for himself, his mother and his sisters.

‘“Signed in the presence of witnesses, Albert Clement, notaire of Grasse and Jean Jacques Rives, banker of Nice, on the twentieth day of October 1895.”’

Smithson wiped his brow. He coughed apologetically. The women looked dumb. Edmund was staring at the leather volumes opposite him, wondering how much they were worth.

‘I am afraid there is more that you must know,’ Smithson said, glancing briefly at his companion. ‘Mr McKenna here comes from Finch’s Bank which handles the family
financial affairs. I fear you should hear from him.’

Great God, thought Alice de Courcy, is there worse to come on this terrible day? That woman and her children coming to the funeral was bad. Breaking up the house and the estate, she suspected,
was worse.

Richard McKenna drew some papers from his bag and placed them on the table. He spoke very gently. ‘The financial position is not good,’ he began. ‘Let me deal with the house
first. There are two mortgages outstanding on the property in which we sit this afternoon. They are for a total of forty thousand pounds, secured on de Courcy Hall itself. The current interest on
those mortgages comes to approximately fifteen hundred pounds a year.’ The figures dropped into the room like the drops of rain from the leak in the church at the service that morning, cold,
regular, unstoppable.

‘The estates are also mortgaged,’ McKenna went on. Edmund thought he sounded like a doctor telling his patient that they had an incurable disease. Perhaps they had. Financial cancer
had spread to Norfolk, a plague of debt and impossible obligations.

‘They are mortgaged to the value of sixty thousand pounds. The interest on those loans from Finch’s Bank comes to the total of two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds a
year.’

McKenna paused. Now came the hammer blow. ‘The rent rolls from the estates have been falling lately. The properties are not perhaps in such good repair as they once were.’ His eyes
glanced up at the cracks in the ceiling, the broken window panes, the worn patches in the carpet. ‘At present the income amounts to just four thousand pounds a year, barely enough to cover
the interest payments.’

He looked around at the remaining members of the de Courcy family. Alice had turned even paler and was staring at the floor. Julia and Sarah were gazing in horror at this messenger of despair.
Edmund had his head in his hands. ‘I fully appreciate,’ McKenna purred on, as if he was performing this melancholy rite for the ninth or the tenth time – which he was –
‘that this must have come as rather a shock. A terrible shock. At the bank we have considerable experience of dealing with these problems. We shall continue to extend our credit for the
foreseeable future, but a rescue plan must be devised which can extricate you all from this temporary financial impasse.’

Edmund escorted his mother and sisters to the door. He took McKenna to walk up and down the Long Gallery on the other side of the house from the library. Their footsteps echoed up and down the
hundred and forty feet of the great room. Long thin windows looked out over a bedraggled garden, weeds and brambles laying siege to the lawns, the unpruned roses running wild across the flower
beds.

‘I fear I can be more frank with you here than with your mother and your sisters,’ said McKenna. ‘Nothing need happen for three months. After that I would suggest you send your
mother and your sisters abroad. Life is cheaper there. You would be surprised how many of our fellow countrymen live happy and inexpensive lives in southern France.’

‘I do not think,’ said Edmund, looking sadly at his companion, ‘that my mother will be happy going to the south of France.’

‘Forgive me,’ said the banker. ‘It need not be there. There are many other places round the Mediterranean where they could be happy.’

‘But how can they be brought back? How will I find the money?’

‘We can improve the management of the estates,’ said McKenna. Experience had taught him that hope was the most important commodity in these circumstances. ‘We can bring in a
new steward, that old one seems to have been incompetent. The rent rolls could be doubled in three or four years.’

‘I can’t leave them abroad for that long. It will break my mother’s heart.’ Edmund stopped at one of the windows. The last of the afternoon light was going now, a couple
of stray dogs patrolling the lawns that led towards the lake. ‘I must make some money. But I have no training. What can I do, Mr McKenna? Please help me.’

McKenna looked at the long line of de Courcys on one section of the walls, painted by Lawrence and Reynolds, Hoppner and Gainsborough. He looked further away where some early Italian paintings
were becoming invisible in the gathering gloom.

‘Paintings,’ he said suddenly. ‘I hadn’t thought of it before. You could sell some of these paintings. Or you could use them as a way into the art world. We have a valued
client in London who might be willing to train you up, and to draw on your knowledge of the works of art in the great houses of England.’

Edmund felt the first faint stirrings of hope. ‘But is there any money to be made in dealing in paintings and things?’ he asked. ‘Surely nobody is going to pay hundreds of
pounds for some old works of art?’

Richard McKenna laughed. ‘The art market is changing, it’s changing every day, every month, every year, young man. Rich Americans, rich beyond imagination, richer than the world has
ever seen before, are just beginning to buy European paintings. If the trends continue, just three or four paintings, maybe even some of the ones you have on the walls here, would fetch enough to
clear all the debts and all the mortgages of de Courcy Hall.’

Autumn 1899

William Alaric Piper walked happily through his art gallery in London’s Old Bond Street. Every morning he went on a tour of inspection of the pictures, checking they were
all straight, that no dust remained on the floor from the previous day’s visitors. Piper was a small, rather tubby man in his early thirties. He was immaculately turned out, as ever, with a
fresh flower in his buttonhole and perfectly polished boots. The de Courcy and Piper Gallery, for such was to be the name of the new venture, was the boldest move yet on to the London art market of
the firm of de Courcy and Piper, art dealers.

In the main gallery, lit in the most dramatic way that London designers could provide, were Titians and Tintorettos, on the opposite wall Bellinis and
Giorgiones. In the smaller room next door the lesser gods of the Venetian pantheon were on display, the Bassanos and Carpaccios, the Bordones and the Vivarinis. Venetian Paintings had been
acclaimed as the most dramatic exhibition that year in London. The paintings had come on loan from Paris and the great houses of England to dazzle and bewitch the citizens of London with their
colour and their enigmatic beauty. Today, Piper reminded himself, the exhibition had been open for exactly one month.

As he reached his office William Alaric Piper took out a large cigar and opened his correspondence. His office was filled with files, for William Alaric Piper believed that knowledge was the key
to success. Quite simply he was determined to discover the location of all the valuable paintings in Britain. Then he would move on to France and Italy. Neatly arranged in alphabetical order were
the counties of the kingdom, some thicker than others, detailing the collections of Petworth and Knebworth and Chatsworth, Knole and Kingston Lacy and Kedleston Hall. Sometimes individual entries
were marked with a strange system of asterisks. These told the initiated how severe were the financial problems of the owners of the paintings. One asterisk meant major trouble, might be persuaded
to sell. Two asterisks meant technically insolvent, desperate to raise money. And three asterisks meant that financial Armageddon was imminent and might only be averted by the judicious sale of
some of the family heirlooms. This intelligence system was run by Piper’s partner Edmund de Courcy Since his father’s death de Courcy had been employed first as an apprentice and then
as a junior partner in the business – his speciality to maintain an accurate index of the fluctuating fortunes of the English rich so the firm of de Courcy and Piper could make an offer at
precisely the right time.