The Gold Masters (6 page)

‘After you’ve solved this case, you must come to tea, Mr Box,’ said Louise. ‘Tea for two, with a special chocolate cake from Fortnum and Mason. Ethel can act as duenna.’

‘I’ll look forward to that, Miss Whittaker,’ said Box. ‘Had you been alone this morning, I’d have told you much more about this seance business that’s worrying me. Something’s going to happen, but I don’t know what it is.’

Louise laid a hand on his arm.

‘Arnold,’ she said, and it was one of the very rare instances of her using his Christian name, ‘I don’t like this spiritualism
business
. You’ve heard of the darkness of ignorance? Well, these seances encourage the ignorance of darkness. Their ghosts and wraiths can’t abide the light! Devotees may be content to whisper to shadows of the dead in a darkened room, but I’d rather
remember them with gratitude here, beneath the honest brightness of the summer sky.’

In the grand reception room of Medici House in Blomfield Place, Sir Hamo Strange awaited his visitors. ‘Guests’ would have been too intimate a term to use for his fellow banker and deadly enemy, Lord Jocelyn Peto, and the two scholarly experts whom he had retained to help him gloat over Peto’s failure to secure the great prize.

Strange turned from the window, from which he had been contemplating his favourite view of the Bank of England’s Lothbury elevation, and crossed the sumptuous room to a long table placed below a great mirror, which had come from the palace of a seventeenth century Duke of Florence.

He caught sight of his face, with its sallow skin stretched like parchment across his prominent cheekbones, and smiled. It was the smile of a spectre in a haunted ruin, but it pleased him, for all that. He was certainly not as handsome as Lord Jocelyn Peto, but he was assuredly more powerful, and, to all appearances, infinitely richer. For a moment his mind reverted to his interview with Sir Charles Napier and Colonel Temperley. How intoxicating it had been to talk familiarly and as an accepted equal with such
high-placed
gentlemen!

He dropped his gaze to the table where, upon a long green baize cloth, the six quarto volumes of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible had been carefully laid out for inspection. He had appreciated their fine bindings, and the quite beautiful array of typefaces in which they had been printed, but what he appreciated most of all was that they were
his
.

Two young maidservants entered the room, curtsied, and
positioned
themselves behind a small buffet in a corner near the window. A tempting selection of sandwiches lay on porcelain plates under glass domes, together with an array of decanters and sparkling wine glasses. Sir Hamo Strange opened his watch. Half
past two. There was nearly an hour before the visitors would arrive.

‘Scholes,’ he said to one of the two maids, ‘I may as well sustain myself before the visitors arrive. It was a mistake to have skipped luncheon. Bring me a plate of cinnamon toast and a pot of Earl Grey tea. Lemon, and no sugar. Temple, go with her.’

The two maids curtsied again, and hurried from the salon.

‘Curteis!’ Sir Hamo called out for his secretary, and the man appeared instantly from the adjacent study.

Sir Hamo chuckled, and rubbed his hands together in a kind of controlled glee.

‘What do you think Peto’s up to, Curteis? He accepted my
invitation
to view the Bible with suspiciously commendable speed. In fact, he sent up his reply from the Strand by messenger.’

‘He may be trying to save face, sir. Pretend that he doesn’t care, you know, just to vex you. But I wonder at times if he’s as big a fool as we think he is. We’ll find out soon enough, I expect.’

‘Good, well perceived, Curteis. I wonder about him, too. He was all smiles the other day when I called on him at his club, and told him that I’d snatched the prize from under his nose. All smiles…. You’d better find Mahoney. He’s dropped from sight since he and I returned from Austria. He’s a brutal villain, by all accounts, but he makes an excellent bodyguard when I decide to visit the more lawless parts of Europe. Drag him out of the
ale-house
, bail him from prison: do what’s necessary to get him ready for service – just in case. I expect you know what I mean.’

‘My dear Strange,’ said Lord Jocelyn Peto, ‘once more, I
congratulate
you. A priceless acquisition. And now, duly fortified with those tasty sandwiches and excellent claret, your renowned experts can reveal the secrets of these unique volumes!’

Damn it, there was something wrong! The fellow had been laughing and smiling since he’d arrived, pretending that his vitals hadn’t withered up with envy of what he had failed to acquire. The
servants had deferred to him as though he were the master of Medici House, and he had shaken his abundant curls in their
direction
as a sign of his loathsome aristocratic condescension. Confound him! Why was he so confoundedly cheerful?

‘You are very kind, Lord Jocelyn,’ said Strange. ‘As you see, I arranged a small reception, but limited the guests to yourself, and these two gentlemen. You will, of course, have heard of Mr M.R. James, who has agreed to authenticate the volumes. Neither of us will have met Dr Alois Krenz, specialist epigraphist from University College, London. Gentlemen, would you please now examine the volumes of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible?’

M.R. James began to conduct a careful examination of the precious volumes, while Dr Krenz, a taciturn, lightly bearded man in his thirties, sat down on a chair near the long table, and watched James at work. The two bankers kept their eyes fixed on M.R. James as he peered through a series of hand lenses at the bindings, and then at a selection of pages, evidently chosen to a pre-arranged scheme, turning the heavy, hand-made folios with a pair of ivory tweezers. Each volume received the same attention, and the process occupied nearly half an hour.

‘Gentlemen,’ said James, when he finally straightened up to face his audience of two, ‘these volumes are all undoubtedly authentic, and part of a single impression. The bindings are contemporary with the paper, dating from about 1520, and ornamented in the restrained Castilian blind-stamped fashion of that time and locale. Without any doubt, this is one of the original editions of the Complutensian Bible.’

Sir Hamo Strange sat back in his chair with a little sigh of
satisfaction
. It was as well that all doubt on the matter of authenticity should be removed. He glanced at Lord Jocelyn Peto, sitting beside him. The man seemed subdued enough, but was that a gleam of suppressed merriment in his eye? Nonsense. The fellow was
devastated
.

‘The title page,’ James continued, ‘is dated at the foot in the
Arabic numerals 1519, confirming that this is indeed the unique copy of the Bible, pulled from the press a whole year before its official issue in 1520. And here, in the special pocket let into the front board of the first volume, is the fabled document, written in the Chaldaean script, which is said to reveal the secret passages in the lives of Charles the Fifth and Isabella. Dr Krenz will now give the document his attention.’

Nobody spoke while the taciturn Krenz used James’s ivory tweezers to remove the fragile sheets of paper inserted into their special pocket centuries earlier. He carefully smoothed out the pages on the green baize, and then selected a hand lens from James’s little collection. They could see the curious ancient
characters
inscribed in bold black and red on the old document.

After a few moments, Dr Krenz put down the lens, and turned to M.R. James.

‘Mr James,’ he said in a low voice, ‘would you care to examine the paper upon which these characters are written?’

James sat down near him at the table, and peered closely at the first sheet of paper. Then he carefully felt it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Ignoring his audience, James strode towards the window, and held the sheet up against one of the panes.

‘A watermark!’ he exclaimed. ‘It shows a bear holding a staff, with a star above its head. This paper is from the mill of Jacob Müller of Nuremburg. It’s seventeenth century. There’s something seriously amiss here, gentlemen.’

Dr Krenz stood up. He had thrown the remaining sheets down on the table in contempt.

‘That confirms what I know to be the truth,’ he said. ‘These characters are Chaldaean, sure enough, but what they spell out is gibberish. It’s a forgery, and not a very clever one. The ink – I’m sure the ink’s modern—’

‘But the volumes themselves are genuine,’ said James, returning to the table. ‘As for the date on the title page – ah, yes! I can see
the true date now, 1520, partly scratched out with an etching knife, and the numerals 1519 substituted.’

‘A forgery?’ cried Sir Hamo Strange. He rose from his chair, and began quite literally to tear his hair in rage. One of the two maids began to cry. ‘A forgery? They shall pay for this. They will be hunted down without remorse— A forgery? Scholes, Temple – take those rubbishy volumes away. Take them down to the
basement
, and throw them in the furnace!’

Both maids stood petrified with fear behind the buffet. Neither of them moved.

‘Do you think it was Sudermann?’ asked Peto. His voice held grave concern, but Strange could see that he was writhing with concealed glee.

‘Sudermann? No, it’s not Sudermann. He’s honest enough. It’s Fuentes who has engineered this. Count Fuentes de la Frontera. He contrived to sell Sudermann a fake, while the real Bible – well, he will have sold that, too. Oh, yes. He will have sold that, too….’

With some effort, Sir Hamo Strange recovered his equanimity.

‘Mr James,’ he said, ‘and you, Dr Krenz, I thank you for coming here today, and revealing this squalid sham. Lord Jocelyn, thank you for your commiseration and support. I am naturally a little upset, so I will bid you all good day.’

As soon as the last guest had departed, the imperturbable Curteis appeared from the study.

‘Curteis,’ said Sir Hamo,
‘he’s
got
it
himself.
He beat me to the post, and has been laughing ever since. He came here today simply to gloat at my loss. But he’ll not get away with it. The money is nothing to me. What is five thousand pounds? It’s the shame, the sense of loss…. He’s got my book –
my
book – out there in that gimcrack house of his at Croydon. Get out now, and find Mahoney. Tell him to sober up, and come to see me, here.’

‘Do you think that’s wise, sir? You have great projects in train, and in any case it’s getting perilously near the twenty-eighth—’

‘Damn it all, man, do you expect me to take this personal affront lying down? Do as I tell you. Get out there now, and find Mahoney!’

In the crowded public bar of The Recorder, a popular hostelry for clerks in a narrow lane near Barbican, Mr Arthur Portman took a delicate sip from his glass of port, and addressed a few words to the man sitting beside him.

‘To be quite frank with you, Mr Beadle,’ he confided, ‘I’ve been considering a move for the last year. I’ve been very comfortable at Peto’s Bank, as you know, but — well, the time’s come for a change.’

Mr Beadle, a large man in a black three-piece suit, shifted his bowler hat further along the bar to make room for his elbow, and stared gloomily into his empty porter pot. Presently he turned his shrewd grey eyes on Portman, and regarded him with a look which held the fathomless wisdom of a man who had been secretary to a private banker in Gresham Street for over forty years.

‘A change, hey? What do you want a change for? You look as gorgeous as Peto himself in that fancy rig of yours. I’d say you’re not short of a few bob working for Lord Jocelyn Peto.’

Mr Beadle glanced round the crowded, stuffy bar, where the lunchtime noise level was rising to a crescendo. He liked his daily pie and porter in The Recorder, especially when there was any juicy item of City gossip to retail. When he spoke again, he lowered his
voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Or are you hinting at something, Portman? A change, hey? Why, do you think there’s something fishy in the wind? If that’s the case, then for God’s sake, man, guard your words. Any little hint that all’s not well with Peto’s and you’ll have the crowds battering at your doors.’

He expected Arthur Portman to begin an indignant denial, but the chief counter clerk at Peto’s Bank merely frowned, and said nothing. Presently, he bade his companion a rather stiff farewell, as though he regretted having said too much, and left the old secretary to finish his lunch at the crowded bar. A rather
rusty-looking
elderly man clutching a tankard of mild beer pulled him by the sleeve.

‘What was all that about, Beadle? What’s that insufferable hypocrite Portman been telling you? You look worried.’

‘I think he was dropping me a hint. You know that our people are involved in joint guarantees with Peto’s Bank? Portman was suggesting that all’s not as well as it should be at Peto’s. Rumour’s a deadly thing, but I wonder whether I shouldn’t drop a hint myself to my guvnor? If Peto’s goes to the wall—’

‘Hush, man: there’s a hundred pairs of ears in here, all listening for tips and rumours, and bits of gossip. Still, it’s odd … Peto’s are one of the parties to the Scandinavian loan. It’s hardly the moment, you’d think, for Portman to start hinting at closure, unless there were something in it. If I were you, I’d tell your guvnor what you think. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll drop a word in the right direction at
my
place….’

The handsome and urbane Mr Curteis, private secretary to Sir Hamo Strange, leaned against a wall near the narrow opening to an alley in a poor quarter of Stepney, and watched an
impoverished
ragged man perform a lively tap dance on the pavement. He was accompanied by another man who was beating a complex and regular time by using a pair of china dinner plates, which he rattled
together, then banged on his knees and elbows in a very effective and cleverly patterned percussion.

Really, thought Curteis, it was a very creditable performance, lively and entertaining. Both men were highly skilled in the
exercise
of their lowly arts. The tap dancer’s eyes showed only bleak despair, though his companion, a younger man, still retained some natural jauntiness. They were performing at the end of a
near-derelict
street, the open channel running its length choked with rubbish, and many of the mean houses shuttered and barred.

The dance came to an abrupt stop, and the small audience of working men and women managed a clap and a cheer. One or two of them threw a halfpenny in the dancer’s ragged cap. They had all moved aside when Curteis, in tailored overcoat and silk hat, had alighted from a cab, and joined them on the pavement. Now they drifted away, and Curteis felt in his pocket for a half crown, which he threw into the cap. The poor man looked at it in
disbelief
, and then bowed clumsily to Curteis, uttering some grotesque sounds. The secretary realized that the man was dumb.

He turned aside, and made his way down the narrow alley. It smelt of garbage and decay, and not for the first time Curteis wondered how people could be content to live in such squalid places.

Suddenly, a menacing figure lurched out of a side-entry, and blocked his way. It was another poor man, but a man whose face was bloated with drink, and brutalized by a life of unremitting toil allied to vice. He smiled contemptuously at the gentleman whom he had waylaid.

‘Free with your money, aren’t you?’ the man sneered. ‘Well, you can give
me
some of it, unless you want me to break your arm for you. Come on, blast you! Don’t keep me waiting or—’

Without the slightest warning, Curteis lunged forward, and his right arm shot out to seize the man’s throat. His fingers seemed to find their own way to the vital spot on the man’s neck that sent him crashing with a strangled shriek to the ground. He lay
writhing and gasping, his eyes wide with fear. His would-be victim calmly extracted a penny from his purse and flung it in the man’s contorted face.

At the same time, a heavy, brutal fellow appeared at the mouth of the alley. His massive face was pitted and disfigured by the legacy of smallpox, and he stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, fists clenched. There was more than a little of the simian about him, thought Curteis, but behind those fists was the power of an ox.

The brute glanced at Curteis, then turned his attention to the thug, who was still writhing on the ground. He delivered a savage kick to the man’s back, and his whines turned to a yelp of pain. Summoning up what strength remained to him, the would-be robber rose to his feet and staggered away along the alley.

‘It wasn’t his lucky day, was it, Mahoney?’ said Curteis with a smile.

‘There’ll be worse days for him, Mr Curteis, if he ever crosses my path again. You’d better come into the house. I suppose
he
’s sent you?’

‘He has. There’s a job he wants you to do for him before the twenty-eighth.’

Curteis followed the big brute along the side-alley, and the two men entered a wretched hovel of a house through its rear yard.

‘Now then, Mahoney,’ said Curteis, when they had sat down at a rickety table in the back kitchen of the house, ‘I want you to listen carefully to what I have to tell you. I’m just the mouthpiece, as you’ll appreciate: all these instructions come directly from
him
. He wanted me to take you back with me to Medici House, but I persuaded him that you’d be happier talking to me.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion, Mr Curteis. Me and old Strange get along fine, but you’re a dangerous kind of cove. Very fancy and gentlemanly you are, but I wouldn’t care to turn my back on you!’

‘You’re hardly a beauty yourself, Mahoney,’ Curteis replied with
a dangerous smile. ‘That ugly face of yours would crack a mirror, always supposing you were foolish enough to look into one, and no one would describe your character as pure and unblemished. I could mention the names of three men now lying in their graves—’

With an oath, the brute lunged at the smiling secretary, but in a moment he found himself crashing from the table and flat on his back, with the other man standing over him. Mahoney suddenly laughed, and Curteis hauled him to his feet.

‘You and your Japanese tricks,’ the big man grumbled. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you, Mr Curteis. Anyway, you’d better tell me what he wants.’

‘He wants you to go out to Duppas Park House, in Croydon, which is the residence of Lord Jocelyn Peto, and there indulge your genius for breaking and entering. Peto has a kind of sanctum on the third floor, where he displays some of the choicer items in his private collection. On the wall facing the window there hangs an old Tudor tapestry, representing Daphne and Apollo—’

‘Who?’

‘What a pity, Mahoney, that you’re so ignorant and unlettered! Let’s just say it’s a tapestry hanging on the wall. You know what a tapestry is, don’t you?’

‘Yes. And if there’s any more of your lip, Mr Curteis, I’ll flatten you against that wall behind you, Strange or no Strange. I suppose there’s a safe behind this tapestry?’

‘How clever of you! Yes, there’s a nice modern Milner safe, five bolts, two locks, and inside it there should be a parcel of six old books, wrapped in green baize and tied with string. You’re to take those books, and deliver them to Sir Hamo Strange via the usual channels. Here’s a little something to make the job easier for you.’

He passed Mahoney a small packet done up in brown paper, and secured with sealing-wax. The big brute smiled rather grimly, and slipped it into one of his pockets.

Curteis reached into an inner pocket of his overcoat, and
produced a sheaf of notes and diagrams, which he handed to Mahoney.

‘These notes will give you the lie of the land. Duppas Park House is a new building,’ he said, ‘and there’s an iron fire escape to one side of it, with access to all floors. Very convenient, in more ways than one. He wants the job done on this coming Monday, the twenty-fourth.’

‘Monday? What’s the matter with the old fool? Monday’s too near the twenty-eighth for comfort. We’re going to need to concentrate on the twenty-eighth. Incidentally, why has he gone to all these lengths to lure that PC Lane away from Carmelite Pavement on the day? I could have arranged an accident for Lane. It’d have been cheaper than calling in Spooky Portman to arrange all that rigmarole about ghosts.’

‘Sir Hamo Strange has his reasons, Mahoney. PC Lane has done excellent work guarding his bank vaults for the last three years. He’s a good man, hence all the rigmarole, as you call it. Well, he’s already been told that another officer has volunteered to stand in for him next Friday, while he rushes off to the magical lady in Belsize Park. And as for Spooky Portman – well, he’s doing
valuable
work stirring up doubts in the City about Peto’s Bank. One way or the other, Sir Hamo means to cook Lord Jocelyn’s goose.’

Curteis rose from his chair, and glanced around the kitchen. A heavy serge police uniform hung on a peg behind the door.

‘I see you’ve got your togs for Friday,’ he said. ‘Really, Mahoney, I wonder that you don’t blush to wear that suit. You’re such an evil villain. So you’ll do the job?’

‘Well, of course I’ll do the job. Milner’s five-and-twos are child’s play to me, though I’m grateful for the little packet you gave me, all the same. Am I to be paid? Or does he want me to chalk it up on the slate?’

‘Here’s a hundred pounds in Bank of England notes. You’ll get twice that when you’ve delivered the goods. I’ve had enough of this vile den of yours, so I’ll bid you good day.’

As Curteis walked towards the back door that would take him out once again into the alley, Mahoney made a sudden lunge, and pinned him, breathless, to the wall. His brawny right forearm straddled the secretary’s throat, and his eyes, the eyes of an ungovernable savage, glared at the elegant secretary with a momentary hatred. Curteis only smiled.

‘Did you want to tell me something?’ he said. ‘I wish you weren’t so emphatic.’

He made a sudden hooking movement with his left foot, and the giant thug slid with a shout of anger to the dirty kitchen floor. He uttered a rueful laugh, and sat up, rubbing the back of his head with a ham-like hand. Curteis hauled him to his feet.

‘This is becoming a habit,’ Mahoney muttered. ‘But it makes me think. If ever things go wrong for you and me, Mr Curteis, we could team up, and go into business on our own account. You’d provide the fancy front and the nimble brain, and I’d be the enforcer. Protection, that’s what I have in mind.’

Curteis paused with his hand on the door latch, and looked appraisingly at the big, pockmarked brute still sitting on the floor.

‘I’ll think about it, Mahoney,’ he said. ‘It’s an idea. Yes,
decidedly
, it’s an idea’

At the ornate entrance to The Pen and Wig in Carter Lane, Mr Arthur Portman smiled to himself, then pushed open the swing doors, which afforded him entrance to yet another haunt of the hungry and thirsty denizens of the City at lunchtime.

‘Portman!’ cried a cheery voice from a crowded table in the corner. ‘Come and join us. Have the spirits been giving you any further investment tips? Not that you need them, working at Peto’s. You look very smart, today, if I may say so.’

‘I may look smart on the
out
side, Joe,’ said Portman, sitting down at the crowded table, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m feeling smart inside. Don’t judge a book by its cover! As a matter of fact,’ he confided, ‘I’m thinking of a change….’

‘You can take my word for it, Vickers,’ said Dr George Freeman to the rector of St Jerome’s, Duppas Park, in the leafy suburbs of Croydon, ‘that what you’re suffering from is dyspepsia, combined with the kind of sleeplessness that comes with advancing years. There’s nothing wrong with your heart, so you needn’t frighten yourself to death by imagining that every twinge is the onset of something fatal. Take those cachets I’ve given you as directed. I’ll call round tomorrow morning, after ten, to see how you are.’

Doctor Freeman put back his stethoscope into his black case. As he picked up his hat and stick from the table of the rector’s study, a clock somewhere in the room struck eleven.

‘You should have more trust in Providence, Vickers,’ said the doctor, an old friend who knew that his attempt at humour would not be taken amiss. ‘Why, even your name shows that you were destined to become a clergyman, so try to behave like one! A very apt name – Vickers.’

The Reverend Edwin Vickers smiled with amused resignation. He was nearer seventy than sixty, and had listened for fifty years to countless people who had felt impelled to say that Vickers was an apt name for a clergyman.