Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

‘Of course, sir. We sell pianos and harpsichords, a few violins, recorders, flutes, the odd viola. We also supply all the relevant accessories.’

  ‘Do you sell piano wire, Mr Morton?’

  ‘We do, sir. Mostly to the piano tuners, sometimes to ordinary members of the public.’

  ‘Mr Morton, do you recognize anybody in this court to whom you have sold piano wire in the last few months? Take your time, Mr Morton.’

  Powerscourt had been watching Mrs Buckley very carefully. Morton took less than a minute to reply. ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Pugh, ‘you could point the person out to us.’

  Morton pointed his finger straight at Rosalind Buckley. ‘That lady there,’ he said, ‘the one in the black hat, sir.’

  ‘And did she come just once? Or were there several visits?’

  Samuel Morton took out a notebook from his pocket. ‘I always make a note of the date of the purchases, sir. It takes a long time to order piano wire from our suppliers. We have to place the order well in advance if we aren’t going to run out.’

  He turned over a few pages. ‘Her first visit was on 4th October, sir. Then she came back on 6th November, sir. Said she needed some more.’

  ‘Let me remind the gentlemen of the jury, my lord,’ said Pugh, speaking in his most measured tones, ‘that 4th October was a day or so before the murder of Christopher Montague.’ He paused briefly. ‘And that 6th November was three days before the murder of Thomas Jenkins.’ Pugh paused and took a sip from his glass.

  ‘One final question, Mr Morton. Remember you are under oath here, if you will. Are you absolutely certain that the lady you have identified in this courtroom is the same lady who came to your shop in Richmond and bought two separate lengths of piano wire on the dates you have given us?’

  Samuel Morton did not hesitate. ‘I am certain,’ he said.

  ‘No further questions.’ Charles Augustus Pugh sat down.

  ‘Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus was on his feet once more. ‘Would you say you were a successful merchant in the provision of musical services?’

  ‘I think we do all right, sir.’ Morton sounded like a very decent man. ‘My family have never lacked for anything, if you understand me.’

  ‘Quite so, Mr Morton, quite so.’ Sir Rufus managed to force out one of his rare smiles. ‘So how many people would you serve in your shop each day, Mr Morton? A successful man like yourself.’

  ‘Well, it varies, sir. We always do very well in late August and September when the parents are putting their children in for music lessons. And at Christmas when people sometimes buy pianos as a family present. On average I should say I serve between thirty and forty people a day, sir.’

  Pugh was scribbling a note as fast as he could. He passed it back to Powerscourt, sitting one row behind him.

  ‘So in a week, Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus went on, ‘in an average sort of week, you would serve about two hundred and fifty people or so?’

  ‘Somewhere between two hundred and two hundred and fifty, I should say, sir.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sir Rufus. ‘So in the ten weeks between the first alleged visit of Mrs Buckley to your store and today, you would have served between two thousand and two thousand five hundred people, Mr Morton. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Morton replied.

  ‘I put it to you, Mr Morton, that it is absolutely impossible for anybody, however well they know their business, to remember the faces and the appearance of all their clients over such a period. Particularly two thousand five hundred clients. Is that not so?’

  Powerscourt passed the note to Johnny Fitzgerald, sitting by his side.

  ‘It’s not quite like that, sir, if you’ll forgive me.’

  Sir Rufus’s eyebrows described a quizzical upward movement.

  ‘You see, sir,’ Morton went on, ‘almost all my customers are known to me by sight. Some of them have been coming to the shop for years and years. We always try to make them feel welcome, you see, sir. Nine out of ten are known to me personally, maybe more. Some of the ones I don’t know I may have seen about the town, or at church, or at the children’s school.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald handed the note back to Powerscourt. He passed it on to Lady Lucy, sitting on his other side.

  ‘Nevertheless, I put it to you, Mr Morton, how could you possibly remember this lady in court here today, from the vast numbers you serve, and at such a length of time?’

  ‘Why, sir,’ said Morton, as if this was perfectly obvious. Powerscourt looked quickly at the jury. Samuel Morton came from their world. He was one of them. Perhaps they too were shopkeepers keeping a careful eye on their regular customers. ‘Strangers from outside are quite rare in Richmond. It’s not like the West End shops, sir, where every customer every day is a stranger. We don’t get customers like the lady here more than once or twice a year. She was a society lady, sir. I’m not saying there’s anything cheap or wrong about the good people of Richmond, sir, but she was different. She was class, if you follow me.’

  Powerscourt read the note once more. ‘The tide is running very strongly in our favour. If I put Mrs Buckley back in the witness box now, we might finish the case before lunch. If we wait, she may compose herself or even come back with her own bloody lawyer. Yes or No? CAP.’

  Powerscourt saw that Johnny and Lady Lucy had both put Yes at the bottom. He added a third one and passed it back to Pugh.

  ‘Indeed, Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus carried on. ‘But I must ask you the question once again. Are you one hundred per cent certain – and remember that a man is on trial for his life here – are you absolutely convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the lady here was the one who came into your shop ten long weeks ago?’

  Morton stood his ground. Sir Rufus had failed to shift him. ‘I am certain, sir,’ he said, looking at the jury. ‘If I hadn’t been certain, I wouldn’t have identified her in the first place, would I?’

  The jury smiled. William McKenzie beamed with delight. Horace Buckley was looking very worried indeed. Chief Inspector Wilson was checking his notes. The bookmaker among the ranks of the press gallery was changing his odds. After the prosecution case he had offered two to one on for a conviction. He thought he might lose quite a lot of money with that one. Now he offered his colleagues even money on an acquittal. He found no takers. The gentlemen of the press did not like the odds.

  Charles Augustus Pugh rose to his feet and requested the recall of Mrs Buckley. He took another long draught from his glass. Johnny Fitzgerald had been looking at the vessel with some scepticism. He sent a quick note to Powerscourt. ‘Fellow’s not drinking water at all. Look at the colour of the stuff. He’s got bloody gin or something in there. Lucky blighter.’

  ‘Mrs Buckley,’ Pugh began with his most unusual question yet, his witness shaking slightly in the box, ‘I believe that you are an expert archer and travel extensively in the pursuit of your sport. Would you say this leaves you with very strong wrists and arms, stronger wrists and arms, let us say, than those of a sedentary man like Christopher Montague?’

  Mr Justice Browne looked astonished. Sir Rufus stared open-mouthed at Pugh. Pugh’s junior, a bright young man called James Simpson, had wanted to bring a bow into court. ‘It would be like the end of the Odyssey in reverse, sir,’ he had said to Pugh. ‘You remember the bit where none of Penelope’s suitors can draw the bow. Only Odysseus disguised as a beggar can do that. Here none of the jury can pull the bow. Neither can you. But Mrs Buckley can. It would be fantastic.’ Pugh doubted if he could have imported a bow into the Central Criminal Court. He saw that the scheme could backfire if Mrs Buckley either couldn’t, or pretended to be unable to pull the bow either. But he wanted to convince the male jury and the male judge that a woman might be more powerful than a man.

  ‘Archery does give you strong wrists and arms, sir,’ she said demurely. ‘But I fail to see what that has to do with this trial.’

  Charles Augustus Pugh looked carefully at the jury He felt he had m
ade his point. ‘I want to put a hypothesis to you, if I may, Mrs Buckley.’ Pugh paused. The fingers of his right hand were back at the imaginary piano on his gown, working their way through Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. He was speaking more in sorrow than in anger, as if he sympathized with Rosalind Buckley’s plight.

  ‘I put it to you that you were furious, more than furious, with Christopher Montague for jilting you in favour of a younger woman, a woman he might have been able to marry before God, blessed in church by the Holy Sacrament, a woman with whom, forgive me, he could father legitimate children rather than bastards. I put it to you that you remembered the details of the case in Rome, not so many years before, when revenge was extracted with a piece of piano wire. I put it to you that you did indeed go to Richmond and complete your first purchase of this deadly material. On the night of the murder I suggest that you went to Christopher Montague’s flat, as you had done so often in the past. I put it to you that the knowledge of what was going to happen in there only served to fuel your anger even further. For your husband was going to ask Montague for his decision about whether to give you up or not. Montague would have told him that the affair had ended some months ago. You would have been humiliated in front of your husband from whom you were already estranged. Think how he might have mocked you.

  ‘So, I put it to you, Mrs Buckley, you entered the flat that evening with your own keys. I suggest that you took precautions to give yourself a better chance of success. The police found two wine glasses that had been washed up in Mr Montague’s kitchen. His cleaning lady had not cleaned them. Mr Montague was not in the habit of washing up his glasses. I suggest you put laudanum or some similar drug into the wine to make him sleepy and less able to resist. Then you murdered Christopher Montague. You removed all the papers on his desk to confuse any investigation that might follow. You removed some of his books that might have given clues about the article he was writing on forgeries in the Venetian exhibition. The police might assume that the murder was intimately connected with what Montague was working on at the time of his death.’

  Pugh paused. The jury were staring transfixed at Rosalind Buckley. So was the judge. So were the gentlemen of the press, preparing vivid descriptions in their minds of the demeanour of the witness. Only Powerscourt was not looking at Mrs Buckley. He was looking at the prisoner in the dock, Horace Aloysius Buckley opening and closing his mouth very rapidly as if he wished to speak.

  ‘I further put it to you, Mrs Buckley,’ Pugh’s eloquence rolled on, ‘that you also found it necessary to commit a second murder. Maybe Thomas Jenkins was in London that night and met you after the murder in Montague’s flat. Maybe you thought he knew that you were the killer and could not be sure that he would keep his mouth shut. Maybe you thought he would betray you to the police. I put it to you that you took a further trip to Richmond to purchase more piano wire.’

  Pugh picked up the piano wire labelled Exhibit A from its table and began twisting it slowly in front of Mrs Buckley. Powerscourt could have sworn that Pugh was bending it into the shape of a noose.

  ‘And furthermore, Mrs Buckley, I put it to you that you brought with you to Oxford not just the wire, but also one of your husband’s ties. You left it there at the scene of Thomas Jenkins’ murder to incriminate your own husband. Again we find the washed-up cups at the scene of the crime, suggesting that you put laudanum or some similar substance in Mr Jenkins’ tea. You removed the papers from the desk as you had removed the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk in order to confuse any investigation. I put it to you, Mrs Buckley, that you committed both these murders. Is that true?’

  The only sound in court was the sobbing in the witness box. Pugh pulled out a large white handkerchief and offered it to his witness. ‘Compose yourself, Mrs Buckley,’ he said. ‘You only have to answer one question. I put it to you once more that you committed both these murders. Is that true?’

  Still Rosalind Buckley gave no reply.

  ‘I ask you once more, Mrs Buckley.’ Pugh was now talking to her as he might comfort a crying child. ‘Is it true?’

  Rosalind Buckley looked up at the judge. ‘Do I have to answer that question, my lord?’

  Mr Justice Browne knew his duty. ‘You need not incriminate yourself, Mrs Buckley,’ he said firmly, ‘you have a right to remain silent if you choose.’

  Rosalind Buckley looked down at the floor. She wiped her eyes once more. Powerscourt noticed that everybody around him seemed to be holding their breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered finally, ‘most of it is true.’

  There was a sudden shout from the prisoner in the dock. Horace Buckley might not have wanted to die, but he felt nothing but overwhelming pity for his wife at this moment.

  ‘No! No!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not true! It’s not true! I killed them! I killed them both! Please believe me!’

  ‘Silence in court! Take the prisoner away! Take him below!’ Sir Rufus was to say afterwards that he had never seen Mr Justice Browne so angry. Horace Aloysius Buckley was weeping as they led him away. Mrs Buckley was prostrate in the witness box. The judge took up his gavel once again and banged it furiously on the desk.

  ‘This court is adjourned until three o’clock this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Sir Rufus, Mr Pugh, Inspector Maxwell, Chief Inspector Wilson, I wish to see you all in my chambers at half-past one.’

  28

  William Alaric Piper’s first American visitor arrived shortly before ten o’clock that morning. Cornelius P. Stockman stared incredulously at the new sign outside the gallery. He stared even more incredulously as Piper came out to greet him in person in the street.

  ‘How kind of you to come and see us, Mr Stockman, at a time like this. Look,’ he pointed dramatically at the words ‘The Salisbury Gallery’ above the door, ‘a new business is going to rise, like the fabulous phoenix, from the ashes of the old. But come in, Mr Stockman, I have much to tell you, and much to show you. I have not been idle since your last visit.’

  Piper sat the American down in his little office. He told him of de Courcy’s treachery, how a partnership founded in trust had been broken by betrayal. He told Stockman that all communications with the forger had been conducted from de Courcy’s private address; how the paintings were brought into the gallery, hidden away among the normal traffic, how de Courcy would tell him that he had discovered these paintings in country houses where the owners were so hard up for money they were willing to part with their inheritance.

  ‘I wonder, Mr Stockman,’ Piper went on, ‘if even in America, that great land of freedom and opportunity, a rotten apple sometimes finds its way into the barrel and corrupts all it encounters. I hope not, I do hope not. I pray that you may never encounter such depth of treachery in your own country, that it is confined to the more decadent purlieus of Europe.’

  Piper shook his head. Stockman wasn’t quite sure what purlieus meant. But he couldn’t give his fellow countrymen exemption from betrayal.

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr Piper,’ he said, ‘that even in America we are confronted almost daily with behaviour such as this. Riches in my country are meant to be the fruit, the reward of honest endeavour and hard work. Far too many seek to attain them by fraud and deception.’

  Piper looked sad at this transatlantic intelligence. ‘But business must go on, Mr Stockman. A man must work. He must follow his profession. He must pursue his calling. Come, I have something to show you upstairs.’

  Piper led the way to the small chamber on the top floor. He had placed six paintings on their easels, the light falling softly on the bodies of the naked women. ‘See, Mr Stockman,’ he said, ‘this is the original of your Sleeping Venus by Giorgione. Without my knowledge this wretch de Courcy sent off to the forging manufactory and had a copy produced, this one opposite.’

  Two naked Venuses confronted each other, both sleeping peacefully in the summer sun of an Italian afternoon. Stockman inspected them carefully.

  ‘I shall, of course, remove the fake, Mr Stockman
,’ said Piper, preparing to pull a cloth over the Orlando Blane, ‘and here we have the first four of the eleven other paintings you asked for.’ Another four nudes, some voluptuous, some plump, some slender, all beautiful, were lying on beds and couches to titillate Cornelius P. Stockman. He could see them now, in the little gallery he had built off the main body of his mansion. He saw himself relaxing after a long day at the office, peeping in to inspect his treasures.

  ‘Don’t throw away the fake, Mr Piper,’ he said, ‘the lady is so beautiful I wouldn’t mind having two of her.’ He contemplated his future hoard. ‘You carry on, Mr Piper,’ he said. ‘Let me know when you have reached a dozen.’

  The courtroom was packed by a quarter to three, fifteen minutes before the judge was due to reopen the case after the adjournment. Powerscourt was in his place behind Charles Augustus Pugh, flanked by Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy. Two rows behind, Orlando Blane and Imogen Foxe were there to witness the final scenes. The bookmaker among the journalists, still penned in very tight together, was calculating his losses. Horace Aloysius Buckley in the dock looked as if his composure had finally deserted him. He kept staring at his wife, now flanked by two stout policemen, sitting a mere fifteen feet away from him. Neither Pugh nor Sir Rufus Fitch were in court. Chief Inspector Wilson and Inspector Maxwell were not present either. The clerk of the court under the judge’s bench was looking suspiciously at the crowd, still gossiping at the back of his court as if they were in the Royal enclosure at Ascot.

  At five to three the jury filed in and took their places. This would be their last afternoon in the spotlight of publicity. Two minutes later the two lawyers took their places, both looking very solemn.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Mr Justice Browne began, looking at the twelve good men and true, ‘this has been a most unusual case. I thank you for your forbearance and your patience in listening to the evidence. And the unusual features have not stopped yet.’

  Mr Justice Browne paused and shuffled through the notes in front of him. ‘I was informed before luncheon today that the Crown have lost confidence in their case. There will be no final statement to you from Sir Rufus Fitch. In these circumstances it is only proper that Mr Pugh should also forgo his final statement.’