When Elsie returned to the Hall, she placed the newly acquired board in the empty display cabinet and was delighted to discover that it was a perfect fit. She thought nothing more of the coincidence, until her uncle Bertie advised her to have it valued – for insurance purposes, he explained.
Unconvinced, but unwilling to slight her uncle, Elsie took the board up to London on one of her monthly trips to visit her aunt Gertrude. Lady Kennington – she was always Lady Kennington in London – dropped into Sotheby’s on her way to Fortnum & Mason. A young assistant in the Chinese department asked if her ladyship would be kind enough to come back later that afternoon, by which time their expert would have placed a value on the board.
Elsie returned to Sotheby’s after a leisurely lunch with Aunt Gertrude. She was greeted by a Mr Sencill, the head of the Chinese department, who offered the opinion that the piece was unquestionably Ming Dynasty.
‘And are you able to place a value on it –’ she paused – ‘for insurance purposes?’
‘Two thousand, two thousand five hundred, m’lady,’ said Mr Sencill. ‘Ming chessboards are fairly common,’ he explained. It is the individual pieces that are rare, and a complete set . . .’ He raised the palms of his hands and placed them together, as if praying to the unseen God of auctioneers. ‘Are you perhaps considering selling the board?’ he enquired.
‘No,’ replied Elsie firmly. ‘On the contrary, I’m thinking of adding to it.’
The expert smiled. After all, Sotheby’s is nothing more than a glorified pawn shop, with each generation of the aristocracy either buying or selling.
On arriving back at Kennington Hall, Elsie returned the board to its position of honour in the drawing room.
Aunt Gertrude set the ball rolling. On Christmas Day she presented her niece with a white pawn. Elsie placed the single piece on the empty board. It looked lonely.
‘And now, my dear, you must see if you can complete the set in your lifetime,’ the old lady challenged, unaware of the chain of events she was about to set in motion. What had begun as a whim, while attending a car-boot sale in Pudsey, turned into an obsession, as Elsie began to search the globe for the missing pieces. The first Lord Kennington would have been proud of her.
When Lady Kennington gave birth to their first son, Edward, a grateful husband presented his wife with a white queen. A magnificently sculptured ivory lady adorned in a long, intricately carved royal gown. Her Majesty stared down with disdain on the single pawn.
The next acquisition was another white pawn, acquired by Uncle Bertie from a dealer in New York. This allowed the white queen to reign over two of her subjects.
The birth of a second son, James, was rewarded with a red bishop, resplendent in a flowing surplice and carrying a shepherd’s crook. The queen and her two subjects were now able to celebrate Holy Communion, even if they had to travel to the other side of the board to do so. Soon the whole family began to join in the search for the missing pieces. A red pawn was the next acquisition, when it came under the auctioneer’s hammer at Bonham’s. He took up his place on the far side of the board, waiting to be taken. By now, everyone in the trade was only too aware of Lady Kennington’s lifetime mission.
Next to find its place on the board was a white castle, which Aunt Gertrude left Elsie in her will.
In 1991 the twelfth Lord Kennington passed away, by which time the white set was lacking only two pawns and a knight, while the red set was short of four pawns, one rook and a king.
On 11 May 1992, a dealer in possession of three red pawns and a white knight knocked on the door of Kennington Hall. He had recently returned from a journey through the outer regions of China. A long and arduous trek, he told her ladyship. But, he assured her, he had not returned empty-handed.
Although her ladyship was in her declining years, she still held out for several days, before the dealer finally settled his bill at the Kennington Arms and left clutching a cheque for £26,000.
Despite following up rumours from Hong Kong, flying to Boston, contacting dealers as far afield as Moscow and Mexico, rumour rarely became reality in Lady Kennington’s unremitting search for the last of the missing pieces.
During the next few years, Edward, the thirteenth Lord Kennington, came across the last red pawn and a red rook in the home of a penniless peer, who had been on the same staircase as Eddie at Eton. His brother James, not to be outdone, acquired two white pawns from a dealer in Bangkok.
This left only the red king to be unearthed.
The family had for some time been paying well over the odds for any missing pieces, since every dealer across the globe was well aware that if Lady Kennington was able to complete the set it would be worth a fortune.
When Elsie entered her ninth decade, she informed her sons that on her demise she planned to divide the estate equally between the two of them, with one proviso. She intended to bequeath the chess set to whichever one of them found the missing red king.
Elsie died at the age of eighty-three, without her king.
Edward had already acquired the title – something you can’t dispose of in a will – and now, after death duties, also inherited the Hall and a further £857,000. James moved into the Cadogan Square apartment, and also received the sum of £857,000. The Kennington Set remained in its display case for all to admire, one square still unoccupied, ownership unresolved. Enter Max Glover.
Max had one undisputed gift, his ability to wield a willow. Educated at one of England’s minor public schools, his talent as a stylish left-handed batsman allowed him to mix with the very people that he would later rob. After all, a chap who can score an effortless half century is obviously somebody one can trust.
Away fixtures suited Max best, as they allowed him the opportunity to meet eleven potential new victims. Kennington Village XI was no exception. By the time his lordship had joined the two teams for tea in the pavilion, Max had wormed out of the local umpire the history of the Kennington Set, including the provision in the will that whichever son came up with the missing red king would automatically inherit the complete set.
Max boldly asked his lordship, while devouring a portion of Victoria sponge, if he might be allowed to view the Kennington Set, as he was fascinated by the game of chess. Lord Kennington was only too happy to invite a man with such an effortless cover drive into his drawing room. The moment Max spotted the empty square, a plan began to form in his mind. A few well-planted questions were indiscreetly answered by his host. Max avoided making any reference to his lordship’s brother, or the clause in the will. He then spent the rest of the afternoon at square leg, refining his plan. He dropped two catches.
When the match was over, Max declined an invitation to join the rest of the team at the village pub, explaining that he had urgent business in London.
Moments after arriving back at his flat in Hammersmith, Max phoned an old lag he’d shared a pad with when he’d been locked up in a previous establishment. The former inmate assured Max that he could deliver, but it would take him about a month and ‘would cost ’im’.
Max chose a Sunday afternoon to return to Kennington Hall and continue his research. He left his ancient MG – soon to become a collector’s item, he tried to convince himself – in the visitors’ carpark. He followed signs to the front door, where he handed over five pounds in exchange for an entrance ticket. Maintenance and running costs had once again made it necessary for the Hall to be opened to the public at weekends.
Max walked purposefully down a long corridor adorned with ancestral portraits painted by such luminaries as Romney, Gainsborough, Lely and Stubbs. Each would have fetched a fortune on the open market, but Max’s eyes were set on a far smaller object, currently residing in the Long Gallery.
When Max entered the room that displayed the Kennington Set, he found the masterpiece surrounded by an attentive group of visitors who were being addressed by a tour guide. Max stood at the back of the crowd and listened to a tale he knew only too well. He waited patiently for th
e group to move on to the dining room and admire the family silver.
‘Several pieces were captured at the time of the Armada,’ the tour guide intoned as the group followed him into an adjoining room.
Max looked back down the corridor to check that the next group was not about to descend upon him. He placed a hand in his pocket and withdrew the red king. Other than the colour, the intricately carved piece was identical in every detail to the white king standing on the opposite side of the board. Max knew the counterfeit would not pass a carbon-dating test, but he was satisfied that he was in possession of a perfect copy. He left Kennington Hall a few minutes later, and drove back to London.
Max’s next problem was to decide which city would have the most relaxed security to carry out his coup: London, Washington or Peking. The People’s Palace in Peking won by a short head. However, when it came to considering the cost of the whole exercise, the British Museum was the only horse left in the race. But what finally tipped the balance for Max was the thought of spending the next five years locked up in a Chinese jail, an American penitentiary, or residing at an open prison in the east of England. England won in a canter.
The following morning Max visited the British Museum for the first time in his life. The lady seated behind the information desk directed him to the back of the ground floor, where the Chinese collection is housed.
Max discovered that hundreds of Chinese artefacts occupied the fifteen rooms, and it took him the best part of an hour to locate the chess set. He had considered seeking guidance from one of the uniformed guards, but as he had no desire to draw attention to himself, and also doubted that they would be able to answer his question, he thought better of it.
Max had to hang around for some time before he was left alone in the room. He could not afford a member of the public or, worse, a guard, to witness his little subterfuge. Max noted that the security guard covered four rooms every thirty minutes. He would therefore have to wait until the guard had departed for the Islam room, while at the same time being sure that no other visitors were in sight, before he could make his move.
It was another hour before Max felt confident enough to take the bastard out of his pocket and compare the piece with the legitimate king, standing proudly on its red square in the display cabinet. The two kings stared at each other, identical twins, except that one was an impostor. Max glanced around – the room was still empty. After all, it was eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning, half term, and the sun was shining.
Max waited until the guard had moved on to Islamic artefacts before he carried out his well-rehearsed move. With the help of a Swiss Army knife, he carefully prised open the lid of the display cabinet that covered the Chinese masterpiece. A raucous alarm immediately sounded, but long before the first guard appeared, Max had switched the two kings, replaced the cover of the case, opened a window and strolled casually into the next room. He was studying the costume of a samurai when two guards rushed into the adjoining room. One cursed when he spotted the open window, while the other checked to see if anything was missing.
‘Now, you’ll want to know,’ suggested Max, clearly enjoying himself, ‘how I trapped both brothers into a fool’s mate.’ I nodded, but he didn’t speak again until he’d rolled another cigarette. ‘To start with,’ continued Max, ‘never rush a transaction when you’re in possession of something two buyers want, and in this case, desperately want. My next visit –’ he paused to light his cigarette – ‘was to a shop in the Charing Cross Road. This had not required a great deal of research, because they advertised themselves in the Yellow Pages under Chess, as Marlowe’s, the people who serve the masters and advise the beginners.’
Max stepped into the musty old shop, to be greeted by an elderly gentleman who resembled one of life’s pawns: someone who took the occasional move forward, but still looked as if he must eventually be taken – certainly not the type who reached the other side of the board to become a king. Max asked the old man about a chess set that he had spotted in the window. There then followed a series of well-rehearsed questions, which casually led to the value of a red king in the Kennington Set.
‘Were such a piece ever to come onto the market,’ the elderly assistant mused, ‘the price could be in excess of fifty thousand pounds, as everyone knows there are two certain bidders.’
It was this piece of information that caused Max to make a few adjustments to his plan. His next problem was that he knew his bank account wouldn’t stretch to a visit to New York. He ended up having to ‘acquire’ several small objects from large houses, which could be disposed of quickly, so he could visit the States with enough capital to put his plan into effect. Luckily it was in the middle of the cricket season.
When Max landed at JFK, he didn’t bother to visit Sotheby’s or Christie’s, but instead instructed the yellow cab to drive him to Phillips Auctioneers on East 79th Street. He was relieved to find that, when he produced the delicate carving stolen from the British Museum, the young assistant didn’t show a great deal of interest in the piece.
‘Are you aware of its provenance?’ asked the assistant.
‘No,’ replied Max, ‘it’s been in my family for years.’
Six weeks later a sales catalogue was published. Max was delighted to find that Lot 23 was listed as being of no known provenance, with a high value of $300. As it was not one of the items graced with a photograph, Max felt confident that few, if any, would take much interest in the red king, and it would therefore be unlikely to come to the attention of either Edward or James Kennington. That is, until he made them aware of it.
A week before the sale was due to take place, Max rang Phillips in New York. He had only one question for the young assistant, who replied that although the catalogue had been available for over a month, no one had shown any particular interest in his red king. Max feigned disappointment.
The next call Max made was to Kennington Hall. He tempted his lordship with several ifs, buts and even a maybe, which elicited an invitation to join Lord Kennington for lunch at White’s.
Lord Kennington explained to his guest over a bowl of brown Windsor soup that Max could not produce any papers over lunch as it was against the club rules. Max nodded, placed the Phillips catalogue under his chair, and began an elaborate tale of how by sheer accident, while viewing the figure of a mandarin on behalf of a client, he had come across the red king.
‘I would have missed it myself,’ said Max, ‘if you hadn’t acquainted me with its history.’
Lord Kennington did not bother with pudding (bread and butter), cheese (Cheddar) or biscuits (water), but suggested they took coffee in the library, where you are allowed to discuss business.
Max opened the Phillips catalogue to reveal Lot 23, along with several loose photographs he had not shown the auctioneer. When Lord Kennington saw the estimate of three hundred dollars, his next question was, ‘Do you think Phillips might have told my brother about the sale?’
‘There is no reason to believe so,’ replied Max. ‘I’ve been assured by one of the assistants working on the sale that the public have shown little interest in lot twenty-three.’
‘But how can you be so sure of its provenance?’
‘That’s what I do for a living,’ said Max with confidence. ‘But you can always have the piece carbon-dated, and if I’m proved wrong, you won’t have to pay for it.’
‘Can’t ask for more than that,’ said Lord Kennington, ‘so I suppose I’ll have to fly to America and bid for the piece myself,’ he added, thumping the arm of the leather chair. A cloud of elderly dust rose into the air.
‘I wonder if that would be wise, my lord,’ said Max, ‘after all—’
‘And why not?’ demanded Kennington.
‘It’s just that, if you were to fly to the States without explanation, it might arouse unnecessary curiosity among certain members of your family,’ Max paused, ‘and if you were then spotted in an auction house . . .’
‘I take your point,’ said Kenningt
on, and looking across at Max added, ‘so what do you advise, old boy?’
‘I would be only too happy to represent your lordship’s interests,’ said Max.
‘And what would you charge for such a service?’ Lord Kennington enquired.
‘One thousand pounds plus expenses,’ said Max, ‘against two and a half per cent of the hammer price, which I can assure you is standard practice.’
Lord Kennington removed his chequebook from an inside pocket and wrote out the figure £1,000. ‘How much do you estimate the piece might fetch?’ he asked casually.
Max was pleased that Lord Kennington had raised the subject of price, as it would have been his next question. ‘That will depend on whether anyone else is privy to our little secret,’ said Max. ‘However, I would suggest that you place an upper limit of fifty thousand dollars on the piece.’
‘Fifty thousand?’ spluttered Kennington in disbelief.
‘Hardly excessive,’ suggested Max, ‘remembering that a complete set could fetch more than a million –’ he paused – ‘or nothing, were your brother to acquire the red king.’
‘I take your point,’ repeated Kennington. ‘But you still might be able to pick it up for a few hundred dollars.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Max.
Max Glover left White’s Club a few minutes after three, explaining to his host that he had another appointment that afternoon, which indeed he did.
Max checked his watch and decided he still had enough time to stroll through Green Park and not be late for his next meeting.
Max arrived in Sloane Square a few minutes before four, and took a seat on a bench opposite the statue of Sir Francis Drake. He began to rehearse his new script. When he heard the clock on a nearby tower chime four times, he leapt up and walked briskly across to Cadogan Square. He stopped at No 16, climbed the steps, and rang the doorbell.
The New Collected Short Stories Page 33