Death of an Old Master (18 page)

‘The real problem, Powerscourt, is with what you might call the sleepers. Suppose you are the resident expert on Italian paintings at the Louvre. People come to you for attribution of the
painting they have bought. You are a recognized authority on the subject. So far, so good. But what happens if the expert is also on the payroll of the dealer who is selling the painting? Then you
are no longer impartial. You have a financial interest in the sale of the painting. You will receive a percentage of the final sale price. You are no longer impartial, you are a secret beneficiary
of the sale. And a secret it had to be since your attribution would be worthless if the purchaser knew you were on the payroll of the dealer. The highest percentage I have heard of – rumour,
alas, only rumour – was twenty-five per cent of the final sale of the painting. That may seem rather a lot, but, remember, the dealer still receives three-quarters of the money. I’m
sure it has led to a general rise in prices in the art market.’

Sir Frederick paused again. Powerscourt felt that the proud old man would not welcome sympathy. ‘There must be a number of people who would have lost money if Christopher Montague had
lived. He would have become the foremost authority on Italian paintings in Britain. Some people would have lost. A couple of the people at the National Gallery are said to go in for it. Or you can
go to Germany. For some reason, Lord Powerscourt, people feel that German authentications are the last word, that they are bound to be right. If only they knew.’

A pale ghost of a smile passed across the sunken features.

‘There’s an elderly professor in Berlin,’ he began. Powerscourt remembered from his first visit how much the old man enjoyed telling his stories. ‘Wife dead, that sort of
thing. Professor’s word is at least as good as the Pope’s in saying what’s true and what’s not true. A leading firm of art dealers in Berlin, no,
the
leading firm of
art dealers in Berlin, employ two very pretty girls for one purpose only. Girls can hardly spell, let alone write, let alone compile a catalogue. They are sent, one at a time, with the attribution
neatly written out, only waiting for a signature. God knows what they do with the old professor when they see him, but it always works. If the blonde doesn’t get it, the brunette will. Sort
of Scylla and Charybdis of the Prussian art world. The dealers, Powerscourt, whether in Germany or here, will do anything to get what they want.’

The old man smiled as he thought of the irresistible fräuleins on the Unter den Linden. Powerscourt wondered if the same tricks were current in London.

‘But in fact, Sir Frederick, as we both know, the article never appeared. The exhibition goes on. Those paintings may yet sell. Somebody has got what they wanted from the death of
Christopher Montague, is that not so?’

‘Of course you are right, Lord Powerscourt. I suspect that may be very important for you in your investigation.’

‘Just one last question. We have talked about these Americans, flocking here like the sheep in your painting on the wall, to be fleeced by the greedy and the unscrupulous. Should they be
warned? That they might be buying rubbish?’

Another coughing fit paralysed Sir Frederick Lambert. ‘Damned doctors,’ he muttered, ‘they said that new medicine would stop these fits. Doesn’t bloody well work. Forgive
me.’ Another handkerchief appeared. More blood than last time, Powerscourt noticed as it vanished from sight.

‘I have written to my counterpart in New York, Lord Powerscourt, warning him of the possible dangers to his compatriots. He has not seen fit to reply. I do not know whether it would be
wise to warn them from another quarter, business, perhaps, or politics. You may know those worlds better than I do.’

Sir Frederick looked very pale and frail all of a sudden. Powerscourt thought he should have been at home in bed. ‘Please believe me, Lord Powerscourt, when I say this. I know I am ill. I
apologize to you for my spasms. But I would not want you to stop coming here with your questions. I am as anxious as you are that the murderer of Christopher Montague should be brought to justice.
Even if we have to hold our last conversation on my death-bed, I still want you to come.’

Over a hundred miles away to the north-west the senior curator of Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery decided the hour had come. It was just after three
o’clock in the afternoon. Roderick Johnston had spent three days in the house and in the company of James Hammond-Burke at Truscott Park in Warwickshire. He had completed his catalogue of the
pictures in the main body of the house the day before. The previous day he had spent in the outhouses and the attics, climbing through dusty trapdoors into even dustier lofts in search of forgotten
paintings. He had assembled them all in rows in a top-floor room, looking out over the river and the deer park. He could hear the shouts of the workmen above him, repairing the roof of Truscott
Park.

Had Mr James Hammond-Burke been a more agreeable man Johnston might have stayed for a day or two longer. But he was not a good companion. His conversation was limited to complaints about the
costs of the restoration work and the possible value of any paintings Johnston might discover in the bowels of his mansion.

Roderick Johnston placed one picture against a Regency chair where it would catch the afternoon light. The subject matter of the painting was slightly obscured by a thin film of dust it had
accumulated over the recent days, resting paint side upwards in the dustiest attic Johnston could discover. It showed a man and a woman with their two daughters seated on a bench in the English
countryside, a dog at their feet. Ordered fields stretched all around them. To their left a long avenue, flanked by trees, disappeared towards the horizon, and, presumably, towards the large house
that lay at the end of the drive, property of the family in the foreground. Johnston knew the picture well. He had brought it with him in one of his long tubes.

The curator set off at a rapid pace down the stairs, through the drawing room with its fake Van Dycks, through the dining room with the Knellers. He was almost out of breath when he found James
Hammond-Burke staring ruefully at one of the new windows in the morning room.

‘Bloody thing’s not straight,’ he said bitterly, his dark eyes flashing. ‘You’d think those bloody builders could manage to put a bloody window in straight,
wouldn’t you?’ He stared accusingly at Johnston as if he were the foreman responsible. ‘Whole damned thing will have to come out again. Damned if I’m going to pay for
that.’ He paused as if he had just realized who Johnston was.

‘What do you want?’ he said roughly. ‘Have you finished your damned catalogue or whatever it is?’

Johnston remembered the advice of William Alaric Piper. Don’t tell him all at once. Draw it out as long as you can. Make him wait before you tell him it might be a Gainsborough. Only
might. Suspense makes them keener.

‘I think you should come with me, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ said Johnston firmly. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’

‘What?’ said Hammond-Burke. ‘What the devil is it? Is it worth anything?’

‘I think you should see for yourself, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ said Johnston, leading the muttering owner back through the house and up to the room on the top floor.

‘There!’ said Johnston at the doorway, pointing dramatically towards the painting by the chair.

James Hammond-Burke walked across the room and peered at the painting.

‘What do you think it is? Where did you find it?’

Roderick Johnston took a feather duster from a table and began to brush very lightly at the surface of the picture. He thought the dust should come off quite easily. It had only been in the
attic for a few days.

‘I found it in an attic,’ he said. ‘Looks as if it has been there for some time. It might, it just might, be a Gainsborough.’ The duster had reached half-way down the
painting by now. The four figures were clearly visible, and the avenue behind them. ‘I shall have to take it away, of course. And I shall have to look at this bundle of documents I found
beside it.’ Johnston pointed to a pile of papers on the chair, mostly written with eighteenth-century ink on eighteenth-century paper. ‘These may give us some more information. It is
too soon to say for now.’

‘A Gainsborough,’ said Hammond-Burke, rubbing his hand through his black hair.

‘A Gainsborough, by God. How much is that worth?’

Powerscourt found his brother-in-law William Burke sitting in his study with the floor covered in sheet after sheet of paper, a snowstorm of paper. A curly-haired nephew
greeted his uncle with delight.

‘Good evening, Uncle Francis, have you come to see Papa?’ asked nine-year-old Edward Burke with an air of innocence. Powerscourt looked quickly at the childish scribblings on the
carpet. All of them seemed to contain versions and variants of the seven times table. Not all of them were as Powerscourt remembered. Surely seven times eight wasn’t sixty-three? Was seven
times nine really one hundred and seventy-four?

He smiled happily at his nephew. ‘Good evening to you, Edward,’ he said. ‘You’ve been helping your father with his arithmetic, I see. Very kind of you.’ There was a
loud grunt from Edward’s father in his chair by the fire.

Edward Burke picked up his best pencil from the floor. ‘I expect you’ll want to talk business,’ he said with a worldly air that belied his years but promised well for his
future. ‘May I go now, Papa?’

Powerscourt realized that his arrival had been a gift from the gods for Master Edward, now released from the torture of tables and arithmetical calculations.

‘Yes, Edward, you may go,’ said his father wearily, going down on his knees to collect the pieces of paper and throw them vigorously on to the fire.

‘Honestly, Francis.’ William Burke was married to Powerscourt’s second sister, Mary, and was becoming a mighty force in the City of London. Multiplication and division on an
enormous scale were his daily bread and butter. ‘It’s hopeless. Completely hopeless. Edward has no more idea of the seven times table than I have of Sanskrit,’ he said.
‘What’s going to become of him? When I was that age I knew all those damned tables, right up to twelve times twelve. They’re not very difficult, are they?’

‘I’m sure it will come good in time,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically.

‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ said the anxious father. ‘Even when you explain to him that you can keep adding sevens, it’s no good. Three times seven is just seven
plus seven plus seven. And so on. Total waste of time.’

Powerscourt felt that he too might become confused if confronted by seven plus seven plus seven. Better change the subject.

‘William,’ he said, ‘I need your advice. It’s about American millionaires.’

Burke cheered up and lit a large cigar to erase the memory of his son’s arithmetical failings. ‘Fire ahead, Francis,’ he said happily. This was safer ground.

‘I’m investigating the death of an art critic called Christopher Montague,’ Powerscourt began, knowing that his brother-in-law was as discreet as he was rich. ‘He was
writing an article about that exhibition of Venetian paintings that has opened recently in London. He was going to say that most of them were fakes or recent forgeries. Ninety per cent or
so.’ Powerscourt thought the percentage figure would appeal to Burke’s brain.

‘My goodness me,’ said Burke. ‘Is that the thing at the de Courcy and Piper place in Old Bond Street? Mary dragged me round it the other day. Can’t say I enjoyed it very
much. All look the same to me, cheerful Virgins for the Annunciation, holy-looking Madonnas with their infants, sad Christs on the Cross. Always some bloody Italian landscape in the background,
full of horseflies and mosquitoes, no doubt. What have the Americans got to do with it?’

‘The Americans, as you well know, William,’ said Powerscourt, ‘are just beginning to buy this sort of stuff. Montague’s article was never published. Nobody knows most of
the things are fakes or forgeries. Should somebody warn them?’

Burke found a final piece of paper by the side of his chair. Seven times four, said the childish hand, forty-seven. Seven times seven, seventy-seven. He took another draw on his cigar.

‘Very public-spirited of you, Francis, I should say. I think, however, that unless Anglo-American relations are at a very low ebb, possibly on the verge of armed conflict, that the answer
is no.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Powerscourt.

‘If everybody in London and New York spent their time warning the other side of the Atlantic about fakes and doubtful products, Francis, the telegraph lines would be permanently
jammed.’

Powerscourt looked confused.

‘Sorry, let me explain.’ William Burke leant forward in his chair and stared into his fire. The last relics of the mental arithmetic were curling into ashes.

‘Think of the two great stock markets in London and New York,’ he went on. ‘Each one is permanently trying to interest the other in its latest products. It’s like a game
of tennis, except the balls are liable to explode when they hit the ground. We try to interest them in some doubtful loan to Latin America, unlikely to be repaid. They send back share offerings in
Rhode Island Steel, unlikely to pay any dividends. We hit back with an unrepeatable offer in a mining company in some remote part of Borneo most of the promoters couldn’t even find on the
map. They reply with watered stock in American railroads. None of those would be a safe home for anybody’s savings, but they’re traded just the same.’

‘Watered stock?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How on earth do you dilute a share?’

‘I had a beautiful example only yesterday. This is how it works. As an example of becoming even richer than you already are, it’s almost perfect. Say you buy the New York central
railroad for ten million dollars. You stop all the stealing that went on under the previous man. You improve it, newer, faster engines, that sort of thing. Then you buy the Hudson railroad for
another ten million dollars, which complements the New York Central in its freight transport and its passenger lines. Now, wait for it, Francis, here comes the masterstroke. You form a new company
to amalgamate the two lines. You call it the New York, Hudson and Central Railroad. You float it on the New York Stock Exchange. You say this new line is worth fifty million dollars. You’ve
spent twenty million on the original two. Now you award yourself thirty million dollars of new stock. You make sure the thing pays a high dividend, think how many shares you have in it, after all.
Sit back and count the money. That’s watered stock, Francis. These millionaires have been at it for years, coal, steel, railroads, banks. And they have the nerve to offer the stock over here
as well as in New York.’