Death of an Old Master (21 page)

‘What news from Old Bond Street, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, closing his atlas with a thud.

‘I’m glad I don’t really have to sell anything, Francis. That’s a very strange world. I’ve been back to all three of them, Clarke’s, Capaldi’s and de
Courcy and Piper, while their experts looked at the picture. Actually it was the same expert all three times. And the odd thing was, he never let on in the other two places that he’d seen the
Leonardo before.’

‘Do you think he was being paid three times for the same attribution, Johnny? Did he say it was a Leonardo?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m sure he was paid three times. Twice he said it wasn’t a real Leonardo. He always took a very long time peering at the picture. So after the first time I pretended to fall
asleep.’

‘And what did you discover during your slumbers, Johnny?’

‘Well,’ said Fitzgerald, moving by force of habit towards the sideboard, ‘thirsty work, Francis. I think I’ll try a little of this white Beaune, if I may.’

Powerscourt was always fascinated by the speed of his friend in the complicated business of finding corkscrew, opening bottle, pouring liquid into a glass. On this occasion it took less than ten
seconds.

‘I think,’ Fitzgerald settled back into his chair, Beaune in hand, ‘I think I discovered two things. The man’s name was Johnston, I’m pretty sure of that. Big
fellow, looked like a prize fighter. Didn’t catch the Christian name. On one occasion at Clarke’s I heard a bit of the conversation between the Clarke people after Johnston had left and
before I’d woken up. They said they wished Montague was still alive, as if they thought he was better than Johnston.’

‘And the other thing?’ said Powerscourt, wondering if Johnston was the expert who would have been supplanted by Montague, a man who might lose enough to turn him into a killer.

‘The other thing was at de Courcy and Piper’s. Johnston seemed to know them very well, as if this was regular work. Piper asked him if he would attribute it to the school of
Leonardo. That would make it worth quite a lot. Not as much as a real Leonardo, of course.’

Days awake and asleep in Old Bond Street had given Johnny Fitzgerald an easy familiarity with this strange new world. ‘They’d moved away to the other side of the room by this point,
Francis, as if they didn’t want anything overheard, so I didn’t catch it all. There was a lot about percentages, about normal terms. Piper was very excited about some American called
Black who’s arriving in London shortly. He seemed to think he could sell it to him for thousands and thousands of pounds.’

Johnny Fitzgerald stared into his glass. ‘Another thing, Francis, I don’t suppose it means much. The last time I was at de Courcy and Piper’s the porters were carrying in an
enormous package. It looked like it contained three or four large paintings. And it said on the front that it came from Calvi or Galvi, somewhere like that.’

There was a knock on the door and the footman handed Powerscourt a letter. It was from Chief Inspector Wilson. And it contained the remarkable news that not only had Mrs Rosalind Buckley been
seen in Oxford shortly before the murder of Thomas Jenkins, but that Horace Aloysius Buckley, her estranged husband, had been seen in that city on the very day of the murder.

‘What do you make of that, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, handing the letter to his friend.

‘Looks perfectly straightforward to me,’ said Johnny. ‘Of course it may not be. But if you were a betting man, Francis, you would surely say that our Horace Aloysius is now the
hot favourite in the Montague Jenkins Memorial Handicap. Almost impossible to get any decent odds on him at all at present. Christ, look at it. He finds out Montague has been carrying on with his
wife. End of Montague. Then, maybe he’s employing private detectives, he finds out that she’s also carrying on with this Jenkins person. End of Jenkins. I should say Horace Aloysius is
three to one on, myself. What say you, Francis?’

Powerscourt stared at the floor. ‘I’m not placing any bets, Johnny. It’s too plausible. It’s too obvious. For the moment, I think Horace Aloysius is probably in the
clear. Deranged, possibly. Overwrought, probably. Unstable, certainly. But a murderer? I’m not sure. I’m really not sure.’

Two foxes were standing very still on the upper terrace of Orlando Blane’s ruined garden. They were so still that Orlando wondered if they might be statues. Then, very
slowly and with a total disdain for their surroundings, they trotted down the terraces until they came to rest right underneath the windows of the Long Gallery. Perhaps the rats send them messages,
Orlando thought to himself, secret despatches in animal language under the ground to the foxes’ den. Come along! Nobody here! Rich pickings for all!

Orlando looked at his easel. It had a large blank canvas waiting for him. The ground had been carefully filled in on the Friday before. His head was still hurting from a weekend of drinking that
ended with him being carried to bed at three o’clock on Sunday morning. He had lost all his money, had been his first thought on waking. He groaned slightly as he remembered that he had only
lost the contents of three matchboxes, playing cards with his jailers.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was waiting for him. So was the wife of Lewis B. Black, American millionaire, with the feathers in her hat. Orlando tried a preliminary drawing of the hat on his sketchpad.
He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. Damn, he said to himself. If that doesn’t improve I won’t achieve much at all today. He looked up at the quotation, pinned on his wall
behind the empty canvas. It was the great Italian historian Vasari, on his friend Michelangelo:

Orlando smiled. He walked very fast up and down the Long Gallery three times. He checked his hand. It was better now. Very slowly an elaborate hat, composed almost entirely of
feathers, began to appear on his pad.

The offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell were on the basement and the ground floor of an old house just off the Strand. Legal country, Powerscourt noted, as clerks old
and young, bearded and clean-shaven, erect and stooping, hurried to their destinations, bundles of files and legal documents clutched tightly in their hands. People’s lives are crossing the
road here every day, he thought, wills, marriage settlements, fathers trying to disinherit unruly sons, new companies being born, old ones laid to rest, all wrapped round with lawyers’
string.

He asked to see the senior partner. A nervous young man, fresh from university perhaps, showed him into the office of Mr George Brigstock. Mr Brigstock looked exactly what a family solicitor
ought to look like, Powerscourt felt. He was about fifty, in a rather old-fashioned suit, his grey hair receding up his temples.

‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. How can we be of assistance?’ said Brigstock.

He thinks I’ve come to make my will, Powerscourt thought. Complicated estate perhaps, complicated dispositions, enough to keep the solicitors busy for at least a year and a half.

‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘I haven’t come here on legal business. I’ve come to talk to you about your senior partner, Mr Horace Aloysius Buckley.
I am an investigator, Mr Brigstock, and . . .’ Powerscourt paused slightly to let the effect of what he was about to say sink in, ‘I am currently investigating two cases of murder. I
have reasons to believe that he may be able to help me in my inquiries.’

Mr George Brigstock did not flinch at all at the mention of murder. ‘Mr Buckley is out of town at present,’ he said. ‘I am sure he will return shortly.’

‘But that’s just the point, Mr Buckley.’ Powerscourt was leaning forward now. ‘You say you are sure he will return shortly. But you don’t know when, do you? He
could walk in right now, or he could not walk in for the next three months. Is that not so?’

Brigstock did not reply.

‘Mr Brigstock, I am most anxious to speak to Mr Buckley. I have reason to believe that the police may issue a warrant for his arrest very soon.’

‘On what charge?’ said the solicitor.

‘Murder,’ said Powerscourt. ‘In the course of my work I do a lot of business with the police. I am shortly on my way to Oxford to see the Chief Inspector in charge of the
inquiry into the second murder, a young man called Thomas Jenkins. The circumstantial evidence against your colleague is strong. As yet there is no direct proof. But the longer Mr Buckley remains
away, the more suspicious the police will become. If the man has nothing to hide, they will say to themselves, why does he not come forward? So, Mr Brigstock, have you any idea where he might be?
Mr Buckley has not been home for a considerable period, owing to difficult domestic circumstances. He was in Oxford the day of the murder. He could have been there at the time the deed was
committed. Where is he now?’

‘I do not know,’ said Brigstock sadly. ‘Let me ask you a question, Lord Powerscourt. Do you believe he is responsible for these terrible murders?’

Powerscourt wondered if the lawyer saw a tide of scandal sweeping over Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell as the senior partner was arrested for murder. A soldier or a seaman committing murder in
drink or passion only rated a few lines in the newspapers. Doctors or solicitors or, even better, bishops charged with murder had the newspapermen in a frenzy of speculation and the reading public
thirsty for more. Maybe the clients would disappear, maybe the whole firm would go under, a lifetime’s careful work lost in a day of headlines.

Powerscourt was quick to reply. ‘No, I do not believe he is guilty,’ he said. ‘I am not sure why I think that, but I do. Tell me, Mr Brigstock, when people are in great strain
they sometimes have a place of refuge they go to, maybe somewhere they knew as a child, a place where they can sort out their lives, or let time show them what to do. Did Mr Buckley have such a
place?’

George Brigstock shook his head. ‘Not that I know of,’ he said.

Powerscourt pressed on. ‘He didn’t have a family place in the country, did he? A place of his own? Or brothers or sisters he could have gone to stay with?’

‘There was only one brother, and he is in Australia. Melbourne, I believe.’

‘Mr Buckley was under considerable strain, I am sure,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if his mission was a waste of time. ‘Did he have any hobby or pastime he always wanted to
indulge? I have heard of people who want to ride to hounds with every hunt in England, or visit every railway station in Britain. Did he have something like that?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Brigstock. He looked closely at the files on his desk. ‘There is just one thing, now I come to think about it. He mentioned it to me once, maybe
twice in the last fifteen years. But I do not see how it could possibly help you, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘What is it, man?’ asked Powerscourt, growing impatient.

‘Well, I’m sure it can’t be what you want. But he did say that one day, when he had the time, he was going to attend Evensong in every cathedral in England.’

‘What? All of them?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘All of them,’ said Brigstock, ‘from Canterbury to Ripon, from Exeter to Durham.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I suppose there are worse things a man could do. One thing before I go, Mr Brigstock. Do you by any chance have a photograph of Mr
Buckley anywhere in your offices?’

The young man was despatched on a mission to the basement and returned with a small dusty photograph. It showed Horace Aloysius Buckley in cricket flannels and a white sweater, bat in his hand.
He was scowling at the camera.

‘It was taken at a lawyers’ cricket match a couple of summers ago,’ said George Brigstock. ‘He’d just been given out to a dodgy bit of umpiring. I’m afraid
Buckley doesn’t look like that most of the time. He had a splendid collection of very conservative suits.’

However eccentric you were, Powerscourt reflected, as he stared at the man in the photograph, the grey hair, the small moustache, the angry eyes, you wouldn’t be attending Evensong in your
cricket flannels. Some people went on pub crawls, Powerscourt thought. Maybe Horace Aloysius Buckley is now on a cathedral crawl, his anxious spirit eased every afternoon by the singing of the
choir, the slow processions up the nave, the regular beat of the collects and the hymns. It would explain why he was in Oxford. Christ Church had a cathedral, he remembered. But where on earth had
he gone now on his pilgrimage? Gloucester? Hereford? Lichfield? It was almost as difficult as finding the bloody forger, he said to himself as he left the offices of Buckley, Brigstock and
Brightwell, the nervous young man escorting him right on to the street outside. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

Sir Frederick Lambert of the Royal Academy had gone very pale, almost grey. The coughing fits still racked his body from time to time, the bloodstained handkerchiefs departing
from his lips to a place of concealment in the enormous desk. Ariadne was still abandoned on her island, the black sails carrying Theseus away. Powerscourt felt slightly disappointed that the
painting had not been changed. He was growing rather fond of the mythological scenes. He wondered if they had Evensong on Naxos, Ariadne’s island, peasants in smocks, Dionysus himself in the
front pew, a patriarch with a vast beard leading the islanders in prayer.

‘Johnston,’ Powerscourt began, ‘big man. Attributes paintings. Where does he come from, Sir Frederick?’

‘If he’s the Johnston I think he is,’ said Sir Frederick, ‘he’s the senior curator of Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery. They say he’s got a very
ambitious wife.’

‘Would that pay well? The National Gallery, I mean, rather than the wife?’ asked Powerscourt.

Sir Frederick laughed. ‘Nowhere in the art world pays well, Lord Powerscourt. It’s as if they expect people to have a private income or make money from their own work.’