Death on the Holy Mountain (4 page)

‘If this was Sussex, or Norfolk,’ said Powerscourt, ‘nobody would be very concerned. But it’s not, it’s Ireland. I think there were letters that accompanied the
thefts. Not simultaneous necessarily, maybe a couple of days later. What those letters said I have no idea. I suspect they were blackmail of one sort of another. Violence lies so often just beneath
the surface of events in Ireland. It’s like those noises bats make that humans cannot hear. These thefts are a minor form of violence. Worse may follow. The wives in these houses are
terrified. That suggests to me that there was a threatening letter and that it was the letter, not the vanishing paintings, that made them lose their courage.’

Michael Hudson had pulled a catalogue from his desk. ‘Let me show you this, Lord Powerscourt. This comes from an exhibition held recently in New York which transferred to Boston and, I
believe, Chicago. These people, McGaherns, are very respectable. They operate a long way down the scale from ourselves. The works they sell are cheap and tawdry, they might cost five or ten or
twenty pounds rather than the same number with thousands added. They operate,’ and here Hudson looked up from the paintings, ‘in areas with very heavy concentrations of Irish settled in
them. I worked in our office in New York for two years and I must have walked all over the city by the end. The pictures they sell in such quantities are never originals, but the subject matter
doesn’t change very much, attractive colleens, horses of every shape and size with or without their riders, those wonderful lakes and mountains Ireland is festooned with, small cottages with
smoke coming out of them in the wild wastes of Mayo and Connemara. The ancestral home or the fantasy of the ancestral home, no doubt. The real home might have been a Dublin slum. Many, if not most,
of these people have never been to Ireland in their lives, but they live very Irish lives in America, Mass, Christian Brothers, walls draped with pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, family piety,
all that sort of thing. Oddly enough, their Ireland is often a generation or a generation and a half even behind the real one. The parents pass on what they remember of the world they left twenty
or thirty years ago. Forgive me, I’m wandering off the point.’

Michael Hudson closed his catalogue and put it on his desk. ‘I have no idea if the McGahern works are turned out in Dublin or New York, but one thing is clear, Lord Powerscourt. There is
an artistic connection between the two countries. It is possible there is an innocent – well, not innocent, but certainly non-violent explanation for what has been happening to these
portraits.’

‘You mean, they may end up in the McGahern catalogue? And get sold off like that for twenty pounds each?’

‘Not quite, Lord Powerscourt. The Irish who buy the McGaherns are not poor, but they’re not well off either. Sixty years on, some of these Irish families have become quite rich, a
number of them very rich. Suppose you’re an ambitious Irish family living in New York. Suppose somebody comes along and offers you a bundle of your ancestors. They’re probably not your
ancestors at all, but the neighbours aren’t going to know. Think of eight of these hanging in your parlour or dining room. The prestige would be terrific. In a society composed entirely of
immigrants of one sort or another, how great would it be to show off a family history that went back a couple of centuries?’

‘You wouldn’t even have to be related to the people in the pictures,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could say they were O’Shaughnessys or Carrolls from years gone by and
nobody would be the wiser.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Hudson, ‘and I suspect you could charge a great deal of money for a complete eight-place-setting set of ancestors, as it were.’

‘I think there’s a snag in this theory,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not sure that the Irish immigrants, who are Catholic, would want to have portraits of Protestant
landlords on their walls, however rich they had become. Those people in the Big Houses would be, if not actual enemies, then the oppressors of the poor tenant farmers who had fled to America to
find a better life. Somebody in America might like ancestor portraits, mind you. The old might have an appeal for some in the land of the new. How on earth would we find out what the situation
is?’

‘At this moment,’ said Michael Hudson, smiling at his visitor, ‘I have no idea. We could,’ a smile spread slowly across his handsome face, ‘try placing a few
advertisements in the kind of papers the wealthier Americans might read. Set of eight Irish family portraits, eighteenth to nineteenth century, available, that sort of thing. I think we’d
need to put a fairly hefty price on them to deter the McGahern clientele, say fifteen hundred pounds. What do you think of that, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I think it’s rather clever,’ said Powerscourt, smiling back to the young man, ‘but tell me – what happens if you are inundated with potential customers? Suppose
thirty or forty come knocking at your doors? What do we do then?’

‘Find a forger perhaps? That would be a good trade, you know. Forge them all over here, send them to America, I don’t think you could be prosecuted there for something done over
here. Your forging friend could do very well. Seriously though, I think we wait and see.’

‘I am most grateful for your time and your help, Mr Hudson,’ said Powerscourt, rising to take his leave. ‘Perhaps you could be so kind as to send any news to my London house
with a copy to me at the Butler house whose address is here.’ He handed over a small sheet of paper then paused as he was about to open the door and turned back to the art dealer. ‘One
last thing, Mr Hudson. Every time I have anything to do with paintings in a professional capacity, the same questions arise. Is this a real Romney? Did Gainsborough actually paint this portrait?
That red mess over there, is that really a Tintoretto? You know the question of attribution far better than I. If it comes up, would you be willing to come to Ireland and help me out?’

‘I would be delighted, Lord Powerscourt. After all, they say Ireland is very beautiful at this time of year.’

The gate lodge of Kincarrig House, ancestral home of the Connolly family, recently deprived of the painted records of six of their own ancestors, was set back slightly from the
road. On either side the stone walls that marked the outer edge of the demesne seemed to stretch away into infinity. Powerscourt was beginning his investigation here as Kincarrig House was closest
to Dublin and the Holyhead boat. He had made his appointment before leaving Markham Square. Then he planned to move further west to Butler’s Court. Powerscourt’s cabby was a cheerful
soul, pointing out the places of interest as they went along.

‘This gate lodge now,’ he said, ‘and the arch and the drive here, sure they’re among the finest in Ireland.’

Powerscourt made appreciative noises. He gazed upwards at the Triple Gothic Arch that towered above the road. It was completely useless. All over Ireland, he thought, at the entrance to the Big
Houses with their long drives of beech and yew curling away to hide the property from the prying eyes of the public and people of the wrong religion, the owners had built monumental gates of one
sort or another. Anglo-Irish mansions were guarded by a strange stone menagerie of lions and unicorns, of falcons and eagles, of hawks and harriers, tigers and kestrels and merlins. Powerscourt had
heard stories of a house with a stone dinosaur on guard. The animals were often surrounded by great stone balls, as if, in times of emergency, they might return to life and begin hurling this
weighty ammunition at their enemies. Powerscourt remembered his father telling him of one estate belonging to a Lord Mulkerry in County Cork where the demesne walls and the monumental gates became
one side of the town square. And on the side of the town square was a large plaque on which was written: ‘Town of Ardhoe, property of Lord Mulkerry’. Badges of ownership, marks of
superiority, symbols of arrogance, Powerscourt disliked them intensely. And as his cab rattled along this very long drive he remembered too the prestige that attached to the length of the
approaches to the Big House. Less than half a mile and you were virtually going to a peasant’s cabin. Half a mile to a mile, pretty poor, little better than a cottage you’ll find at the
end, a mile to a mile and a half, there might be a pillar or two to greet you at the end but nothing much, anything over two miles and respectability is attained at last. Over to his left he could
see the sun glittering on a fast-flowing river which must, he suspected, pass the Connolly house to enhance the Connolly view.

The house was Regency with a front of seven bays and a Doric entrance porch with eight pillars. Well-tended grass ran down the slope towards the river. Inside was a magnificent entrance hall
with a marble floor that ran the whole length of the front of the house with a dramatic enfilade of six yellow scagliola pillars and dozens and dozens of drawings and etchings and paintings of
horses. A huge elk head guarded the doorway. A very small butler greeted Powerscourt, asking him to wait while he found his master.

The architecture of this house and the houses like it whispered a strange language of their own, a language that came back to Powerscourt from years before.

It spoke of parapets, and turreted gateways, of rectangular windows with mullions and astragals under hood-mouldings, of quatrefoil decoration on the parapets, of vaulted undercrofts and great
halls, of carved oak chimney pieces and overmantels, of segmental pointed doorways, battlemented and machiolated square towers, of portes cochères and oriels, of ceilings in ornate Louis
Quatorze style with much gilding and well-fed putti in high relief supporting cartouches and trailing swags of flowers and fruit, of entablature enriched with medallions and swags and urns, of
halls with screens of Corinthian columns and friezes, of tripods and winged sphinxes, of quoins and keystones, of Imperial staircases and rectangular coffering, of rusticated niches and doorways,
of scaglioli columns, of friezes and volutes and many more, stretching out across centuries through hall and drawing room and dining room the length and breadth of the country.

Out in the parks and walkways, many of them by lakes or rivers, were great fountains, houses with obelisks in their grounds, gardens guarded by forts with cannon to fire salutes on family
birthdays, conventional orangeries and unconventional casinos, ornate gardens, Japanese gardens, Chinese gardens, Palladian follies, in one case a herd of white deer to mark the exclusivity of the
Big House and the Big Garden.

This, Powerscourt thought, was architecture as political statement, an arrogant damn your eyes architectural declaration of superiority. We are the masters here. Don’t even think, any
Irish Catholic peering through the trees at the house over the top of the wall, that one day this might be yours. It won’t. And yet, Powerscourt thought, and yet . . . The temples and the
churches and all the great palaces of Rome were still standing the day before the barbarians came to town. He wondered if those stone sphinxes that adorned the Ascendancy Big Houses might not have
one or two riddles left for their masters, riddles that might rather speak of Descendancy.

‘Mr Connolly is in the library, sir,’ the butler said, rousing Powerscourt from his reverie, as he ushered him into a handsome room with great gaps on its walls. The word library can
have many different meanings in Ireland, Powerscourt remembered. Put a great many books in them and nobody will ever use the room in case they’re meant to read a book. But hostesses like to
have libraries in their houses. It adds an air of learning to the predominant themes of hunting and shooting. Hence there are many libraries in these houses with very few books in them. And as
Peter Connolly rose to give him a very short and rather perfunctory handshake, Powerscourt realized he was in the latter category of library. He had seen bedrooms in England with more books in
them. A solitary bookshelf, no more than waist high, gave its name to the room.

‘Thank you for coming to see us, Lord Powerscourt. How can I be of assistance?’

Even before the man finished the first sentence, Powerscourt knew something was wrong. There was a coldness that was on the edge of rudeness. Never mind the traditional Irish hundred thousand
welcomes, he was hardly getting a single one in the Connolly household.

‘I would like to see where the pictures were, and any details you have of them, who the artists were, that sort of thing.’ He noticed suddenly that there were four picture cords
hanging from the rail above, but no paintings in them. Connolly noticed his glance.

‘The police asked us to leave everything as it was,’ he explained. ‘Not that they will be any use. The oldest Connolly was placed just above the fireplace, the others followed
him in line of inheritance. The last two of the sequence were in the dining room with the Titian and the Rembrandt in the gold drawing room.’

‘Do you have any details of the artists who did the portraits? Do you have any records of what the gentlemen were wearing?’

‘I fail to see how that is relevant,’ said Connolly coldly, looking pointedly at his watch.

Powerscourt felt he was on the verge of losing his temper.

‘Look here, Mr Connolly, I presume you want to get your pictures back. Suppose the thief sells them in Dublin or they are carried over to one of the big London firms. The proprietors know
that six male Connolly ancestors have gone missing and a couple of Old Masters. I have made it my business to see that they are so informed. If one of your ancestors were to appear, how in
God’s name are they going to know that he is a Connolly? He could be an Audley or a Fitzgibbon or a Talbot or anybody at all in Christendom. Without descriptions the whole attempt to recover
them is a waste of time.’

Connolly looked at him very coldly. ‘I do not believe the pictures will ever be recovered. The villains will destroy them. Soon they will come back here for more, whether for more pictures
or for the people who live here, I do not know. Our time has come, Lord Powerscourt, and all that is left to us is to face it with the courage of our race. I have asked for police protection and
the sergeant laughed in my face. All this talk of descriptions of pictures is futile, fiddling while Rome burns.’ Connolly was working up a fine head of steam. His wild talk sounded even
stranger in such elegant surroundings, the marble fireplace, the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling, the distant whisper of the river through the open windows.