Death of an Old Master (7 page)

Johnston thought he would still be able to afford a substantial property somewhere in the Tuscan hills. That would keep Mrs Johnston at bay.

Piper smiled to himself as he strode back to his railway station, hat still pulled well down over his forehead. Gladstone alias Johnston was senior curator in Italian and Renaissance art at
London’s National Gallery. And, Piper’s smile broadened into a chuckle, he had got his services pretty cheap. He would have gone to twenty-five per cent of the sale value if it had been
necessary. And now he had his authentication in his pocket, he could make a final offer to James Hammond-Burke to buy the Raphael. Thirty thousand? Thirty-five? Forty thousand? He settled himself
happily into the corner seat of his train and dreamt of lost Leonardos.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said in your letter, Lord Powerscourt.’ Thomas Jenkins of Emmanuel College, Oxford was drinking tea in the Powerscourt
drawing room in Markham Square. Powerscourt had offered to meet him in Oxford, but Jenkins had to come to London on business. He was consulting some ancient documents in the British Museum.
‘I have to confess that I have no idea exactly what Christopher was working on when he died. His book was finished. That much I do know. I talked to the publishers this morning. I last saw
Christopher three or four weeks ago. Look,’ he went on, delving into his bag, ‘I’ve brought a photograph of him. I thought investigators might like things like that.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Powerscourt. The photograph showed two young men standing in the quad of an Oxford college. The one on the left was Thomas Jenkins. The one on the right
was a younger, healthier Montague. He was of slight build and short height, with fair hair and a small neatly trimmed moustache. Looking at the Jenkins in front of him Powerscourt thought there was
hardly any difference, the same curly brown hair, the air of diffidence, shyness perhaps in front of the lens. Jenkins looked like what he was, an Oxford history tutor, as slight as his friend.
Montague looked as if he belonged in more worldly surroundings than the well-manicured lawn and ivy-covered walls of Emmanuel.

‘How long ago was this taken?’ asked Powerscourt, placing the photograph on a table beside him.

‘I think it was a couple of years ago,’ Jenkins replied. ‘Christopher had come back to Oxford for a party.’

‘Let me run through what I know of the bare facts of Christopher Montague’s life,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Then you can fill in the gaps, put flesh on the bones, if you could.
Born in London in 1870. Father, now dead, a successful lawyer, left him a modest private income. Educated at Westminster School and New College, Oxford, where he met you. Took a first class honours
degree in history. Taught for a couple of years in Florence where he learnt his fluent Italian. Wrote his first book on the origins of the Renaissance four years ago. Book sold well, now in its
second edition. Second book, on Northern Italian art, due to be published shortly. Didn’t gamble. Didn’t live above his means. Lived with his sister in Beaufort Street. Had a small flat
in Brompton Square where he worked. And where he was murdered. Not married. Sounds a pretty blameless life to me. Why should anyone want to kill him?’

Jenkins shook his head. ‘I’ve been asking myself that question every hour of every day since I heard the news, Lord Powerscourt. And I can’t answer it any more than you could.
I hadn’t seen Christopher for nearly three weeks when he was killed. He was going to come to Oxford for a week or so two days from now.’

‘What about his private life? Forgive me for asking these questions. It goes with my profession. It may help us find the murderer.’

Again Thomas Jenkins shook his head. ‘Christopher Montague was the most normal person I ever met,’ he said. ‘He had fallen in love a couple of times but he never got married.
When he was writing his books he said he had very little time for the affairs of the heart. But I know he did want to marry and have children. He was very fond of children. He liked playing with
them. Sometimes he’d spend hours charging around with his young nephews up in Scotland.’

Powerscourt tried to remember if those nephews might be relatives of his too, part of the national diaspora of Lucy’s vast family. He’d have to ask her. ‘You said that
he’d fallen in love a couple of times. Would either of those affairs have left any scars, any wounds that might have a bearing on his death?’

This time Thomas Jenkins smiled. ‘I think the scars would have been with Christopher, not the other way round. Once was with a young American girl he met in Florence. I think she and
Christopher grew very fond of each other. Then her parents whisked her off. I think they were looking for a title or a great deal of money, not some relatively poor Englishman who wrote books about
dead Italian artists. The second time was three or four years ago. Isobel, she was called. She was very beautiful. I think they met at a dance up in London. She was totally bewitching, mesmerizing,
that Isobel. I always thought she cast spells on people, they became so infatuated with her. Then she abandoned Christopher and went off with a very wild young man. Christopher wasn’t
exciting enough for her. Maybe not dangerous enough. Some girls like the whiff of danger about a man, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Mr Jenkins,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically. ‘The more I know about him, the more innocent his life sounds,’ he went on sadly. He had
rarely started a murder investigation with so few leads. ‘I just wish I could discover what he was doing in the days before his death. His sister said he was working very hard, very fast. But
she had no idea what he was writing about. And then some of his books and all his papers were taken away. Did he make any professional enemies with those books? Any academic jealousy? Any
reputations ruined?’

‘Not at all,’ Jenkins replied. ‘He was always very careful not to offend people. He might imply that his theory was more plausible than theirs, but he never set out to destroy
anybody else’s work.’

‘Have you any idea what he was working on at the time of his death? A book or an article for the newspapers or magazines?’

Jenkins replied that he had no idea what his friend was working on at the time of his murder.

‘I mustn’t keep you any longer,’ said Powerscourt. ‘One last question. Did he belong to any clubs in London? Anywhere he might have gone to relax and chat to his
friends?’

‘Christopher wasn’t a very clubbable sort of man,’ Jenkins said. ‘I think he belonged to the Athenaeum, but he didn’t go there much. He sometimes said that his
favourite place in London was the reading room of the London Library in St James’s Square.’

As Jenkins left, a puzzled Powerscourt asked if he could consult him again. ‘Of course,’ had been his reply. ‘I could take you to Christopher’s favourite place in Oxford.
But it won’t give you any clues to his death.’

The Raphael
Holy Family
was going home. Not to Florence or to Rome, but to the English country house whose walls it had graced for the past two hundred years. Wrapped
innumerable times in soft cloth and rolls of thick brown paper, tightly secured with heavy string, it nestled between two men in a first class railway carriage en route from London to Warwick.

To its left, by the window, William Alaric Piper stared moodily at the passing countryside, wishing that the train could go faster. To its right sat Edmund de Courcy, searching for something in
a great pile of papers on his lap.

‘Here we are, William,’ he said at last. ‘These two estimates might prove useful.’

Piper saw that one was from a building firm in Stratford, the other from one based in Warwick itself, for repair and restoration work on the Hammond-Burke home.

‘How on earth did you get these, Edmund?’ asked Piper, his eyes racing down the columns until he reached the Total figure at the bottom of page three of the Stratford firm.

‘Well,’ said de Courcy, ‘it wasn’t difficult. I borrowed some of our lawyers’ notepaper and said I was representing a distant relative called Jason Hammond,
currently residing in Worcester, Massachusetts. This Jason character was now an old man but he had made a great deal of money. The letter said that he wished to leave his cousin enough money to
effect the restoration of the ancestral home, but needed to know how much would be required. I gave them the details of the interior work from memory, saying it came from another member of the
Hammond-Burke clan who had recently been to visit. And I suggested the builders take a discreet look round the property themselves for the roofs and the upkeep of the stables and so on. For some
reason, unknown to the lawyers, Mr Jason wanted to keep his intentions secret.’

‘One lot of builders say fifteen thousand pounds, another say twenty thousand pounds,’ said Piper. ‘Let’s just suppose, Edmund, that you had an old mansion in need of
restoration.’

‘You know perfectly well that I do have such a mansion,’ replied de Courcy .

‘But would you believe these estimates?’ asked Piper quickly.

‘No, I would not,’ said de Courcy bitterly. ‘I checked recently with some families in East Anglia who had raised sufficient funds, as they thought, to restore their properties.
On average the final bill was over fifty per cent larger than the original estimate. In one case it was almost twice the original figure.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Piper happily. ‘Now, let us suppose that you are this Mr Hammond-Burke we are due to meet,’ Piper checked his watch, ‘in less than one
hour’s time. You want to repair your house. A nice dealer from London offers you, let us say, twenty-five thousand pounds for the Raphael. Would you accept?’

‘We don’t know if Hammond-Burke has asked other dealers what they would pay him for the painting.’ De Courcy looked down at the brown paper and string beside him.

‘Ah, but we do,’ said Piper. ‘I have paid out quite a lot of money in the last few days to the junior staff of our competitors. Nobody has been asking about the price of a
Raphael. Unless he has gone to Paris, which I doubt. Perhaps I should have checked there too.’

‘To come back to your original question, William,’ said de Courcy, ‘I think we can assume that Hammond-Burke has a very good idea how much the restoration would
cost.’

‘Ah, but he doesn’t know that we know, if you follow me.’

‘I don’t think that matters,’ said de Courcy. ‘If I were him, I would hesitate before taking twenty-five thousand pounds. He could have spent all that and still not have
finished. He could end up with the roof off and no money left to replace it.’

‘So what would you offer?’

De Courcy looked out of the window. Rows of terraced houses were replacing the green fields of Warwickshire. ‘I would offer him thirty or thirty-five thousand pounds, maybe even more to be
certain. If only there was some way we could hold out the prospect of more money from selling more of his paintings, in case he runs short.’

‘Are his other paintings worth anything at all?’ said Piper.

‘No, they’re not. Not money on the scale we’re talking about.’

Piper looked very thoughtful indeed. ‘But what happens, Edmund, if he were to find a painting hidden away somewhere? A painting that might be worth tens of thousands of pounds.’

De Courcy laughed. He patted the genuine Raphael beside him. ‘You mean that Hammond-Burke could become, as it were, the fourth asterisk?’

‘Precisely so, Edmund. We can only form a judgement when we meet the fellow. We mustn’t rush things. But, look, here we are. For God’s sake handle that Raphael very carefully
indeed. It wouldn’t do to drop it now. Not now when we may be in sight of the fourth asterisk!’

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were walking arm in arm up Pall Mall to a family lunch at his sister’s house in St James’s Square. Lady Lucy was very excited about a
recent piece of Powerscourt family gossip.

‘Is it true, Francis, that William and Mary Burke have just bought a villa near Antibes? An enormous villa?’ Mary Burke was the second of Powerscourt’s three sisters, married
to a very successful financier called William Burke.

‘I believe it is true, Lucy, though I do not have any accurate information as to the size of the establishment.’

‘Oh, Francis, you’re not investigating your own family. Will we be able to go and stay, do you think?’

‘I’m sure we will be able to. I’m not sure that society down there will be much to my taste. I’ve got nothing against millionaire grocers and successful stock market
speculators, I just don’t think it would suit me.’

Lady Lucy laughed as they turned the corner into St James’s Square. ‘You’ll be a frightful snob when you’re old, Francis. I shall have to push you along the Promenade des
Anglais in your wheelchair, checking to make sure your rug is comfortable, while you complain about the Riviera parvenus and the nouveaux riches of Cannes.’

Powerscourt laughed and squeezed his wife’s arm. ‘I look forward to that, Lucy, I really do.’

Lady Rosalind Pembridge’s house was on the right of St James’s Square. They were just a couple of paces away when Powerscourt stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Lucy, do you mind going in ahead of me? There’s just something I’ve got to do.’

Lady Lucy gazed at her husband with a mixture of exasperation and affection. ‘You’re not going to be long, are you?’ she said anxiously. She remembered the stories of Francis
disappearing through the kitchens at a very grand Foreign Office dinner some years before. She distinctly recalled him vanishing again at a reception given by the Archbishop of Canterbury in
Lambeth Palace, leaving her alone making small talk with the Archbishop’s wife until he reappeared some hours later when the reception had long ended. Business, he had said cryptically. She
looked desperately around St James’s Square. Had Francis spotted some old army acquaintance? Was his closest friend Johnny Fitzgerald, recently gone to Spain on holiday, returned to lurk
beneath the trees in the central garden?

As her husband strode off to the opposite side of the square, she knew. The answer was over there in the corner. Did Francis have any books to return? He hadn’t brought them with him. Then
she remembered him telling her of his conversation with Thomas Jenkins, closest friend of the late Christopher Montague. He, Montague, had sometimes said that his favourite place in London was the
reading room of the London Library in St James’s Square.