Death of an Old Master (20 page)

The room was of a good size, windows opening out on to the Banbury Road, quite tidy. Powerscourt supposed that somebody must come to clear up.

‘This little room here,’ Wilson went on, ‘was a simple kitchen where the gentlemen could make tea and toast for themselves.’ Two cleaned cups were standing on the
draining board.

‘Does the college servant remember washing these cups up, Chief Inspector?’

Powerscourt was back in Christopher Montague’s flat in Brompton Square with the clean wine glasses.

‘The servant, my lord, is emphatic that he did not wash up those cups. And he says that Mr Jenkins never washed up anything at all in his life. He just placed his dirty things in the
kitchen.’

Powerscourt was wondering about a tidy murderer, a murderer who took the trouble to clean up wine glasses or teacups even after he had killed somebody. Did he have something to hide?

‘This room here,’ Wilson opened another door on to a large room with an ornate ceiling, looking out over the gardens at the back, ‘was his living room and his study
combined.’

There was a large desk by the window, a wall full of bookshelves, a leather sofa and a couple of brown armchairs. Powerscourt noticed that the bookshelves, unlike those of Christopher Montague,
were still full.

‘Thomas Jenkins was found by the desk here,’ the Chief Inspector went on, ‘sitting in his normal swivel chair. As I said, he’d been garrotted, my lord. There were great
purple and black marks around his neck. The doctors think he must have been killed between four and seven o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

‘Who found him? Was anything found in the room?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘A college servant found him, round about nine o’clock yesterday evening. He was worried that Mr Jenkins hadn’t been down to evening hall at the college. He thought he might
have been ill, so he looked in. And there he was, stone cold.’

Powerscourt walked over to the window and looked out into the garden. A couple of squirrels were climbing up a tree. A garden bench sat empty in a corner of the lawn. He pulled at the window
frame. It shot up easily as if it were opened often.

‘Any evidence of how the murderer got into the house, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Do either of the other two remember letting him in at all? Could he have climbed in
through this window?’

‘The other two gentlemen are not here at present, my lord,’ said Chief Inspector Wilson wearily. ‘They are out of Oxford altogether, one in London, one in Germany, looking at
medieval manuscripts, they say.’

‘God help him,’ said Powerscourt, peering down at the grass underneath the window. There was no sign of any footprints but the rain could have washed them away.

‘It’s the garrotting that troubles me,’ said Wilson. ‘Never come across it before. Not in these parts anyway.’ Powerscourt told Wilson about the article Christopher
Montague was writing on fake paintings, about the gaps in the bookshelves, about his friendship with Mrs Rosalind Buckley.

‘Did the servant say anything about the man’s papers, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. He opened the desk and pulled open all the drawers. As in Brompton Square, they were
completely empty.

‘Was Jenkins in the habit of moving his papers up and down between here and the college?’ Powerscourt asked.

‘I asked the man about that,’ said Wilson. ‘He said that Mr Jenkins never moved his papers away from that desk. Not for as long as he’d been here. He might take a few
bits and pieces up to the college but he always brought them back.’

‘There was a reason why someone might want to remove the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk. Lots of reasons, in fact. But why take Jenkins’ papers too? He was a
historian, wasn’t he, Chief Inspector?’

‘He was, my lord. An expert in the Tudors, so his man said. Couple of Henrys and an Elizabeth if my memory serves me.’

‘I can’t see,’ said Powerscourt, staring into the garden, ‘how detailed knowledge of the religious questions at the time of the Reformation could make you a target for a
murderer.’

‘Two murders, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe only one murderer. Do you think they are connected?’ Wilson went on, more confused than ever.

‘Yes, I do,’ replied Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they are connected, though for the moment I am damned if I know how. Could I make a suggestion, Chief Inspector?’

‘Of course you can, my lord, your suggestions are always helpful.’

‘It would be most interesting to discover if this person had been in Oxford recently. It’s a lawyer who has vanished from his offices in London, a Horace Aloysius Buckley, of the
firm Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, husband of Montague’s lover Mrs Rosalind Buckley. You might inquire about the wife as well, while you’re about it. I think she was a friend of
Jenkins.’

The Inspector was writing the name in a small brown notebook. Powerscourt had pulled the desk out from the wall and looked down the back. There was nothing there, only the dust of Oxford.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ Wilson was putting his notebook back in the breast pocket of his uniform. ‘I almost forgot. You asked if the college servant found anything in the room. He
found this under the chair.’

He picked up a tie that had been carefully placed on the bottom tier of Thomas Jenkins’ bookshelf. ‘According to the servant, this is not one of Thomas Jenkins’ ties,’
said the Chief Inspector. ‘It looks as if the murderer may have left it here by mistake.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly why a man would want to take off his tie before committing murder. Or after he’d done it. It didn’t make sense.

‘I know where that tie comes from,’ he said. ‘It’s not an Oxford tie at all. It comes from Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge, to be precise.’

And where, he wondered, as the two squirrels performed some daring acrobatics in their North Oxford garden, had Horace Aloysius Buckley gone to university?

‘Now then, Edmund,’ said William Alaric Piper, ‘it’s time to begin planning the next exhibition. Our Venetians are going to New York in six
months’ time, as you know. What next?’

Piper checked the red rose in his buttonhole. He was in his light brown suit today with a cream silk shirt and pale brown brogues. Edmund de Courcy was in conservative tweeds, peering down at
the notebooks in front of him, the records of his travels round the country in search of art that might sell.

‘What about portraits, English portraits?’ he said at last. ‘Lots and lots of those about.’

‘Excellent,’ said Piper, rubbing his hands together, ‘but not English Portraits. The English Portrait.’ Suddenly Piper could see the publicity material, the appeal to the
Americans as tens or even hundreds of English aristocrats and gentry lined the walls of his gallery upstairs, resplendent Reynoldses, glorious Gainsboroughs, Romneys and Lawrences by the dozen.

‘How many do you think you could get, Edmund?’ he said.

De Courcy flicked through the pages of his notebooks, scribbling hard as he went.

‘Nearly a hundred, I should think,’ he replied finally. ‘Maybe more.’

‘And how many do you think would be genuine?’ said Piper.

‘Maybe a quarter?’ replied de Courcy.

‘Never mind,’ said Piper with a grin, ‘that’s better than these damned Venetians upstairs. Go to it, Edmund. Call the masterpieces home to the de Courcy and Piper
Gallery. We shall give them a good show. And,’ he laughed, ‘good prices too, real or fake.’

There was a knock at the door. ‘Mr Piper,’ said the footman, ‘Mr McCracken to see you.’

Two weeks had passed since Mr William P. McCracken, railroad millionaire from Massachusetts, had taken possession of his Raphael. Had William Alaric Piper been able to see what had happened to
The Holy Family
since it passed into American ownership, his heart would have been filled with joy. Most sensible people would have locked it away in the hotel safe. After all, it had cost
eighty-five thousand pounds. Not William P. McCracken. He had bought an easel of the right size and placed it in the centre of his suite in Room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel. When he retired for the
night he took the painting with him, not literally, but he placed the easel at the end of the bed so he could see it first thing in the morning. On one occasion he even arranged his Raphael just
outside the door of the bathroom so he could view it from his bathtub.

As Piper led him upstairs to the special viewing chamber above the main gallery, William P. McCracken was excited about this new offering from de Courcy and Piper.

‘You said I could see it at the end of last week, Mr Piper. Why, I guess we Americans just aren’t very good at waiting. I’ve gotten to be very eager to see this picture.
Gainsborough you said.’

Piper made soothing noises as if he were talking to a child. ‘It’s waiting for you, Mr McCracken,’ he said, ‘right here.’ Piper did not disclose that he had
travelled down to Truscott Park the day before and handed over a cheque to James Hammond-Burke for eight thousand pounds for his Gainsborough. ‘There may be more masterpieces here, Mr
Hammond-Burke,’ Piper had said in his most expansive mood. ‘We must wait till our man has completed his work on the catalogue.’

Once again the viewing room had been specially prepared. The windows were open this time. The painting sat on an easel, shrouded by a pair of curtains. Piper pressed a switch to bring on the
illuminations. Then he pulled slowly on the cord. The curtains fell away.

There, seated on a bench in the middle of an enormous park, sat Mr and Mrs Burke, of Truscott Park in the county of Warwickshire. Standing behind them were their two children, a dog lying at
their feet. It was the beginning of autumn, the leaves on the trees beginning to change colour.

‘God bless my soul!’ said William P. McCracken, staring very hard at the children. ‘It’s a miracle, it really is.’

William Alaric Piper said nothing. It was, he reflected to himself, indeed a miracle that two children should have arrived in London on the pages of an American magazine, and been turned into a
new Old Master by Orlando Blane in his Long Gallery.

‘Mr Piper, sir,’ said McCracken, taking off his hat, ‘let me tell you something. I really can’t believe this. Those two girls look almost the same as my own two dear
children back home. My Daisy has brown eyes, and this little girl has blue, and Dorothy’s hair is a little darker than this one here, but otherwise, it’s uncanny.’

McCracken walked to the back of the room and looked at the painting again. ‘I must have it, Mr Piper,’ he said fervently, ‘I must have it. Think of what Maisie, that’s
Mrs McCracken, will say when she sees it! Think what the girls will say! I can see it now, Mr Piper, on the wall in the living room back home in Concord, Massachusetts. There’s some vulgar
religious picture my wife picked up hanging above the fireplace at present, Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Well, Moses can just lead them all someplace else now. This
Gainsborough will sit there perfectly. Imagine what the neighbours and the elders of the Third Presbyterian will say when they come to see it! My entire trip to Europe will have been worthwhile if
I can carry it back across the Atlantic.’

William Alaric Piper coughed slightly. ‘Mr McCracken,’ he said in mournful tones. ‘We have a problem.’

‘Problem, what problem?’ said McCracken, standing defiantly by the picture as if he would fight anybody who tried to take it away from him, ‘I thought you said this thing was
for sale?’

Piper nodded. ‘It was for sale, Mr McCracken. When I spoke to you of the Gainsborough, it was for sale. Not any more. The owner has changed his mind.’

McCracken put his arm around the frame. ‘You can’t do this to me, Mr Piper. Not now when I’ve had the chance to see it. Please, not now.’

‘I’m afraid it happens more often than you would think, Mr McCracken,’ said Piper mournfully. ‘The owner decides to sell. He is quite determined. The painting comes down
to be sent away. There is a gap on the wall. I’m sure a man like yourself with such sensitivity to the beauty of paintings, can understand what it feels like. After a day or two the owner
feels sad. Then it gets worse, Mr McCracken. After a week or two it becomes like a bereavement, a death in the family, gone from the walls of the family drawing room. Eventually it becomes
unbearable. The owner has to have the painting back.’ William Alaric Piper fiddled briefly with the rose in his buttonhole as if he were going to cast it over a coffin making its last journey
down into the grave. ‘Can you see that, Mr McCracken?’

‘Sure I can see that, Mr Piper. It’s how I felt some years back when I thought I’d lost the deal to buy one of my Boston railroads. But I came through it. Yes, sir. We
Americans like to get what we want, Mr Piper. What do I have to do to buy the painting?’

Piper shrugged his shoulders. Impossible, said the gesture.

‘Let’s try talking dollars here, Mr Piper. What sort of price did the owner think he would get for this Gainsborough?’

‘I fear it is not a question of money,’ said Piper, ‘it is a question of loss. Beautiful things bring their own special powers. The owners get addicted to them, as if they were
some terrible drug.’

William P. McCracken thought of the Raphael in Room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel and his worship of it. ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to give up. What
price did the owner want?’

Piper decided it was time to give in. ‘Twelve thousand pounds was his asking price,’ he said, ‘maybe a bit high for a Gainsborough, but the thing will always keep its
value.’

‘Double it,’ said McCracken decisively. Piper could suddenly see what had made him such a power in the railroads of America. ‘Just double it. But please, Mr Piper, can you get
me an answer in the next twenty-four hours? Throw some more money at it if you have to. I had to wait a long time for the Raphael. I couldn’t bear to have to wait as long again.’

William Alaric Piper drew the curtains back over the painting. ‘Leave it with me, Mr McCracken. I will see what I can do. But I am not hopeful of success.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was looking at a map of South Africa and shaking his head sadly. Powerscourt had marked on his map the three railway towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking and
Kimberley now under siege in the war with the Boers half a world away. The greatest Empire the world had ever seen was being humiliated by a couple of tiny Republics in the vast expanse of Southern
Africa. His thoughts on military strategy were rudely interrupted as Johnny Fitzgerald burst into the room.