Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  ‘Very good, sir. How wise of you to bring it to us.’ The young man pressed a small bell on his desk. ‘If you would like to come with me, sir, one of our experts will talk to you and examine the painting.’

  Fitzgerald was escorted up a half flight of stairs and shown into a small room looking out on to the back of Old Bond Street. There was an easel by the window and a couple of rather battered chairs. A bowl of fading flowers sat sadly on a side table.

  ‘Mr Prendergast will be with you in a moment, sir.’ The young man bowed slightly and made his way back down to reception, thinking about the tale he would tell his friends later that evening. ‘Just walked in off the street, calm as you please, a Leonardo under his arm.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald wondered how old you had to be before you became an art expert. The answer was not long in coming. Another young man announced himself as James Prendergast and shook Fitzgerald warmly by the hand. Fitzgerald thought he must have been in his late twenties. ‘Good morning, sir. Perhaps we could have a look at the painting?’

  Fitzgerald unwrapped his parcel and placed it on the easel. ‘Fitzgerald’s the name, Lord Fitzgerald of the Irish peerage, to be precise,’ he said. ‘Here you are, Leonardo’s Annunciation.’

  Most Italian Annunciations took place in broad daylight. The Leonardo happened at first light. A beam of strong sunlight came through a window and lit up the face of the Virgin. Her green robe fell in shadowy folds towards the floor. Just inside the window, leaning on a table, was the angel of the Lord, dressed in light blue. Careful examination showed the rest of the contents of the room, a humble single bed, a washing table with a bowl. The scene was mysterious, the expression on the Virgin’s face apprehensive, as if she could not quite believe what was happening to her.

  ‘The shadows, Lord Fitzgerald, the shadows,’ said Prendergast reverentially, ‘how beautifully he handles the shadows.’ He paused, trying to imagine the price if the thing was genuine. It certainly looked genuine. A faint note of greed came into his voice with his next question.

  ‘How long has it been in your possession, might I ask? How was it obtained?’

  ‘It’s not mine, actually,’ said Johnny. ‘It belongs to my aunt. Some distant relation of hers bought it in Milan on the Grand Tour years and years ago. She’s got lots of this kind of stuff lying about the place.’

  The young man’s face lit up at the prospect of further treasures. He was not an expert on Leonardo, in truth he might have had difficulty telling a Corregio from a Caravaggio, but he did know that Leonardo had lived in Milan. He was fairly certain about that. Or had that been Titian who lived in Milan?

  ‘It is a most excellent work, sir. Perhaps you could come with me to one of our senior partners on the first floor. I’m sure he would love to see it.’

  They get older as you go up the stairs, Johnny said to himself, as he followed young Prendergast to the next floor. It seemed to be the wrong way round. They should make the young ones walk up all the stairs. Maybe the views were better higher up.

  ‘Mr Robert Martyn, Lord Fitzgerald. Lord Fitzgerald’s Leonardo.’ Prendergast made the introductions. Johnny felt pleased that the Virgin had attained human status in Clarke’s Gallery. Robert Martyn was a small man in his forties, with a prosperous paunch and very powerful glasses.

  ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lord Fitzgerald,’ he said. ‘And so this is the Leonardo.’ The same reverential tone, Johnny noticed. It’s as if the entire staff of Clarke and Sons, art dealers, think they’re in church when they look at an Old Master. Martyn took out a magnifying glass and examined the painting carefully. ‘The handling of the paint is very similar to that in Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery,’ he said. ‘And the green is very similar. And look at the bottom left-hand corner. Everything is very vague down there, as if the painter hadn’t quite finished it.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Fitzgerald in a loud voice, determined not to ape the customs of the art dealers.

  ‘Why, my lord,’ said Martyn, ‘it makes it even more likely that it is a Leonardo. He was notorious for never finishing his paintings. He got bored, perhaps. Or another idea sprang into his mind. Very fertile brain, Leonardo, quite remarkable.’ Martyn made it sound as though he had dinner with Leonardo every other Tuesday at his Pall Mall club.

  ‘But come, Lord Fitzgerald, I fear that we must trespass further on your patience. Our managing director would love to see it. It is not every day that we are privileged to see such a great work, is it, Prendergast?’ He nodded at his younger colleague. ‘Perhaps you could accompany us to the next floor where our managing director’s office is. Our Mr Clarke, Mr Jeremiah Clarke, is the fourth member of his family to hold the position. We are fortunate to have such continuity in a changing world.’

  Johnny guessed that Mr Jeremiah Clarke would be in his sixties if age followed the levels of the building. He was wrong. Jeremiah Clarke was in his mid-seventies, a sprightly old man with very red cheeks and a shock of white hair.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking closely at the painting, ‘it is most remarkable.’ He walked to the far side of his enormous office and looked at it from a distance. He advanced to a mid-point, half-way across the room. Finally he placed himself a foot or two away and looked closely at the angel for a couple of minutes. Martyn and Prendergast stood solemnly on either side, as if they were two sidesmen bringing the collection to the front of the church for the presentation.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Clarke. ‘Mr Martyn, what is your opinion?’

  Martyn spoke in hushed tones. ‘It seems to me, sir, that there is a very strong possibility that this is indeed a lost Leonardo. But I would have to consult the documents. I think we should call in the experts.’

  ‘We could make you an offer for the painting now, if you would be prepared to consider that option.’ Jeremiah Clarke had seen so many people who brought valuable works to his firm in need of ready cash. Johnny Fitzgerald was having none of that.

  ‘What would you be offering now?’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m sure it’s a lot less than it would fetch once the world knows it is genuine.’

  ‘I’m sure we could run to four or five thousand pounds. Cash,’ said Clarke. Johnny had been told that if the painting was genuine the initial bidding would probably start at one hundred thousand pounds, with American millionaires to the fore. There were so few Leonardos left anywhere in the world, the thing was virtually priceless.

  Clarke sensed that his visitor was not impressed. ‘However, Lord Fitzgerald,’ he purred on, ‘we would much prefer to wait. But it would help if you could leave the painting with us for a week, maybe longer, so that our experts can have a proper look at it.’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. The three men looked at each other in astonishment. This had never happened before in the one-hundred-and-seventy-year history of Clarke’s. A client refusing to leave his painting on the premises! It was impossible!

  ‘Why ever not?’ said Martyn sharply.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t mind the experts looking at it and doing whatever they do,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘But I’m going to take the painting away with me. When you have made the appointments for the experts, you let me know and I’ll bring it back. I’ll bring it back as many times as you like.’

  ‘But why? Don’t you trust us?’ said Jeremiah Clarke.

  ‘It’s my aunt,’ said Johnny, ‘the lady who owns the painting, you see. Five years ago she decided to sell a Van Dyck. She took it to one of your competitors around here – she was a lot more mobile in those days. The gallery said it was worthless and sent it back. Three years later her Van Dyck was sold for a very large sum of money. You see, the gallery hadn’t sent her back the original at all. They sent her back a copy. They kept the original and then sold it after a period of time. It’s as well my auntie reads all the papers and the magazines or she’d have never found out what happened.’

  Clarke and his colleagues made sad and comforting noises. ‘Wh
at a breach of trust!’ ‘Abuse of clients!’ ‘Disgraceful behaviour!’ But they looked ever so slightly guilty. Johnny took up his picture, wrapped it in its thick brown paper, and made his farewells.

  ‘Just let me know when your experts want to see it, then,’ he said cheerfully, as he headed for the door. ‘I’ll bring it back myself, I promise you. I look forward to hearing from you, gentlemen. A very good day to you all.’

  Out on the pavement Johnny Fitzgerald laughed loudly. The looks on their faces had been most enjoyable. He peered around the shopfronts of Old Bond Street. His eye fell on the offices of de Courcy and Piper, ‘art dealers of quality’, said the legend on the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ Fitzgerald said cheerfully to the young man behind the desk.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said the young man. ‘How can we help you?’

  ‘It’s this Leonardo here,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘It belongs to my aunt . . .’

  ‘What do you think she’ll wear, Lucy?’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt to his wife.

  ‘That’s a most unusual question for a man to ask,’ said Lady Lucy.

  ‘Well, she can hardly turn out in black, can she?’ said Powerscourt. ‘But then again, she wouldn’t feel happy in pink or something like that, would she?’

  Lady Lucy laughed. ‘I’m sure you’d get it right, if you had time to think about it, Francis. Even you. I bet you anything you like she’ll be in grey. Probably in dark grey. Sad, but not actually mourning. Maybe a black hat.’

  Mrs Rosalind Buckley had replied remarkably promptly to Powerscourt’s note inviting her to Markham Square. She was due in five minutes’ time. He had asked Lady Lucy if the conversation would be easier with another woman present. Lady Lucy had thought about it for some time.

  ‘I think she might say more about her private life to a woman on her own than she would to a man. In fact I’m sure of it. But talking to a man and a woman would be difficult for her. I think she would be more reluctant to speak in those circumstances. I think you need to speak to her on your own, Francis. Good luck!’

  Mrs Rosalind Buckley was indeed wearing grey, dark grey, when she was shown into the drawing room on the first floor. She was tall and slim, an inch or two taller than Christopher Montague, Powerscourt thought, with curly brown hair, full lips and very sad big brown eyes. She looked about thirty years old, but it was hard to tell. Powerscourt thought that men of all ages could easily have fallen in love with her.

  ‘Mrs Buckley,’ he said, rising from his chair, dropping The Times on to the floor, ‘how very kind of you to come. Please sit down.’ He ushered her into the armchair opposite his own. She began to take off her gloves. The gloves, he noticed, were black.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, trying vainly to manage a smile, ‘it was the least I could do after what happened to Mr Montague. Please feel free to ask whatever you wish. I shall try to bear it.’

  Christ, thought Powerscourt, she’s not going to start crying already, is she? Weeping women always upset him.

  ‘Perhaps I could begin with the simplest question of all, Mrs Buckley,’ he said. ‘How long have you been friendly with Mr Montague?’

  They both knew what friendly meant.

  ‘About a year and a half,’ she said.

  ‘Really? As long as that?’ said Powerscourt. ‘How did you meet him, may I ask?’

  ‘We met at the preview of an exhibition of Spanish paintings in Old Bond Street. I’d gone with one of my sisters. Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, was entrancing about the paintings.’

  ‘And did you know about the article he was working on at the time of his death?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I knew about it,’ said Mrs Buckley proudly. ‘I had a key to that flat in Brompton Square. I used to go and see Christopher when it was dark.’

  Powerscourt could see her now, hurrying along in the shadows, keeping out of the light, racing towards the sanctuary of her lover hidden away behind the Brompton Oratory.

  ‘Can you remember what it said?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Forgive me if these questions are painful.’

  Mrs Rosalind Buckley looked hard at Powerscourt. ‘I can’t remember the arguments,’ she began. ‘They were very learned with lots of references to Italian and German professors in Rome and Berlin. But basically he said that most of the paintings on show in the exhibition of Venetian Paintings at the de Courcy and Piper Gallery weren’t genuine. Some of them were copies and some were recent forgeries.’

  Powerscourt had been reading Christopher Montague’s first book about the birth of the Renaissance. An idea suddenly struck him. For the one thing that rang out from the Montague writings about Italian paintings was that he loved Italy, he loved the art, he loved the light, he loved the countryside, he loved the cities, he loved the food, he even loved the wine.

  ‘You know that Mr Montague inherited a very large sum of money abut six months before he died,’ he said quietly. ‘Do you know what he intended to do with it?’

  There was a long pause. Powerscourt noticed that Rosalind Buckley’s hands were gripping the sides of her chair very tightly. Lady Lucy’s granddaughter clock was ticking softly in the background. There was a sudden sound of crying as if Thomas or Olivia had fallen down the stairs.

  ‘I do,’ she said. She said no more. Powerscourt waited. The crying was dying down as the child was carried up to the nurseries on the top floor. Still Powerscourt waited. Then he could bear it no longer.

  ‘Let me try to help you, Mrs Buckley, if I may.’ He was looking directly into the large brown eyes. ‘Please correct me if I’m wrong. I think Mr Montague was intending to buy a house or a villa in Italy. Maybe he had already bought it. Somewhere in Tuscany, I would imagine, would have been his favourite. He wrote beautifully about Tuscany, and about Florence in particular. Somewhere between Florence and Siena perhaps?’

  There was another of those pauses. Rosalind Buckley looked as if she might cry.

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said sadly. ‘Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, bought a villa near Fiesole up in the hills two months ago. He was going to write his books there.’

  Powerscourt felt the questions were getting more difficult.

  ‘And were you going to join him there, Mrs Buckley?’ he asked quietly. ‘Up there in the hills with those wonderful views across the mountains?’

  This time there was no pause.

  ‘I was,’ she said defiantly. ‘Of course I was going to join him.’

  Powerscourt thought they would have been very happy, Montague writing his articles under the shade of a tree perhaps, Mrs Buckley keeping house in the sunshine, tending the flowers in the garden. But the worst part had now arrived.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you about your husband now, Mrs Buckley. It won’t take long.’

  Rosalind Buckley bowed her head. Powerscourt couldn’t tell if it was shame or an invitation to proceed.

  ‘Did Mr Buckley know about your friendship with Mr Montague?’

  Mrs Buckley kept her head bowed, staring at the patterns in the Powerscourt carpet.

  ‘He did,’ she said.

  ‘How long ago did he find out?’

  ‘About four or five weeks ago.’

  That would be about a week before Montague’s death, Powerscourt reminded himself. Just a week. Long enough to make a plan.

  ‘Do you know how he found out?’ asked Powerscourt softly.

  ‘I think he found a letter from Christopher in my writing desk,’ she said sadly, her eyes now looking up at Powerscourt. ‘He had no business to do such a thing.’

  ‘Indeed not.’ Powerscourt was quick to sympathize. ‘May I ask what his reaction was?’ he said in his gentlest voice.

  Rosalind Buckley replied in even quieter tones. Powerscourt had to lean forward to catch the words. ‘He said he was going to horsewhip the two of us,’ she whispered. ‘My husband may be a lawyer but he can be very violent.’ Rosalind Buckley shuddered. ‘He said Christopher’s
behaviour was unworthy of a gentleman.’

  Powerscourt wondered whether he should ask the next question. He felt he had no choice. ‘Do you know where your husband was,’ he asked, ‘round about the time when Christopher was killed?’

  ‘I wish I could help you there, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, ‘but I can’t. You see, since the day when he found out about my friendship with Christopher, my husband hasn’t been in the house. I haven’t seen him at all since then.’

  After she had gone Powerscourt stretched out on the sofa. Damn, he said to himself, damn. I forgot to ask her about Christopher Montague’s will. Had she inherited all the money? The house in the Tuscan hills? And he wondered about her phrase towards the end when he asked about her husband’s whereabouts at the time of the murder. I wish I could help you there, she had said. Was that simply what it appeared? Or did she wish that she could implicate her husband in Montague’s death, and be rid of him once and for all?

  I wish I could help you there.

  11

  Orlando Blane pulled two paintings away from the wall and into the light by the window in his Long Gallery. On the left was the Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman by Zorzi da Castelfranco, better known as Giorgione. On the right was the Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman, by Orlando Blane in the manner of Zorzi da Castelfranco, better known as Giorgione. Through a window in the top left-hand corner was a hazy outline of Venice’s Doge’s Palace, with the prisons to the right. Inside the room a man in dark clothes stood with a counter in front of him. On the counter there rested a book, maybe an account book. The man’s right hand rested on the book, holding a blue package, possibly containing money. The man was looking sideways at the painter, as if Giorgione, or Orlando Blane, owed the Venetian gentleman a substantial sum, late in repayment.

  The two paintings were identical, except in one regard. Orlando pressed his thumb very gently into the paint on the left-hand portrait. It was hard, dried out over four hundred years. Then he repeated the process with the painting on his right. It was soft. The hardening process would have to be speeded up. Tomorrow he would put the fake Giorgione in a specially adapted oven in the stables.