The Art of Intrigue

by P A Latter

  ‘OK, I won’t say anything about that. It makes good sense to keep your options open, but don’t turn your back on Fathon House yet.’

  They went in and the temporary assistant, obviously briefed to expect them, showed them into Ken James’s office, the largest of the three partners’ domains. The others joined them, bringing in coffee for Julia and Hugh.

  The room felt claustrophobic with so many crammed into the small space and the door pulled closed. However, the meeting didn’t last long. After brief pleasantries, Hugh explained the reason for their visit.

  Ken James spoke for the partners. ‘You guys know that tight confidentiality is essential for clients to trust us.’

  ‘Sure. But you can tell us what you thought about this “art dealer”,’ Hugh said. ‘Do you think he’s bent?’

  ‘You didn’t hear it from us. We suspected that not all his business was wholly legit, but we didn’t think he was a crook.’

  Mike Latimer backed up his colleague. ‘Don’t look so judgemental, Julia. Not everyone’s as scrupulously honest as you. Few people’s tax returns are completely squeaky clean. We do things like ensuring tax minimisation strategies are legal and we’re bound by the money laundering regs, like all financial services. If Mr Ferrers is doing any illegal trading he hasn’t given us any evidence of it.’

  ‘Could you at least let us know where we can find him?’ Hugh said. Julia thought he was thoroughly enjoying himself, playing detective.

  Ken James jumped back in. ‘Absolutely not. We wouldn’t give client contact details to the police, even. I’m sorry, Julia. I’d never have sent him up to you at the museum if I thought this could happen. I’m sure he had nothing to do with it.’

  Julia had worked alongside Ken James long enough to know when he hoped, rather than believed, what he was saying was true. ‘Well, thanks for meeting us about this, anyway.’

  ‘I’m really sorry we can’t help. I know you feel bad about the theft happening on your watch, but you do have insurance, don’t you? No financial loss? Best to leave the police to do the investigating.’

  ‘You’re probably right, Jimmy. There’s nothing we can do, annoying as that might be. Come on Julia, I’ll buy you lunch.’

  Julia reluctantly allowed herself to be led out of the office. She was seething with frustration. She knew Hugh was going out of his way to try to make her feel better, but she didn’t think the other trustees would be so supportive. And she felt uncertain of his motives.

  She had believed herself completely over their break up. He had been nothing but supportive since she had taken on the curatorship and it was tempting to relax the distance that she had tried to hold between them. Her trust had taken further knocks in recent years, but she couldn’t afford to reject his friendship.

  Chapter 11

  When Julia and Hugh left the MJL office, the rain had eased off, but Hugh replaced his arm around her shoulder. She didn’t resist.

  ‘It was worth the try, to ask them,’ he said

  ‘If I tell the police about Ferrers, do you think they could get a warrant to make MJL provide his address?’

  ‘I very much doubt it. All you have is a suspicion that he’s crooked.’

  ‘I can’t just leave it. I have to do something.’

  ‘What you have to do, my girl, is eat.’

  ‘That’s your answer for all life’s problems, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Hugh patted a minimal paunch, kept at bay by a ferocious personal trainer. ‘If it doesn’t solve the problem, it provides pleasure and sustenance, which makes the problem so much easier to bear.’

  Julia decided to accept lunch and the solace of Hugh’s questionable charm - just for an hour or so.

  Whether it was due to his company or the indulgent pasta, the interlude was reviving and Julia returned to Fathon House feeling a little more at peace, despite the failure of their mission. It was short-lived.

  ‘Julia, Inspector Barrett has been waiting in your office for fifteen minutes. I told him we didn’t know what time you’d be back.’

  ‘Thanks Penny. I wanted to talk to the police again. Is he dealing with our theft?’

  ‘I presume so. I think the Met has a department handling art theft, but I doubt if the Kent police have the resources for specialists.’

  Julia walked into the office and the police inspector hastily vacated her chair, for the visitor one.

  ‘Ms Bailey. You seem to be at the centre of a serious crime wave.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Inspector.’

  ‘Not funny at all. Would you like to tell me why you reduced the security protection for your most valuable work two weeks before it was stolen?’

  Julia supposed she should have known he would be aware of that. She recited the justification she had given to Hugh. She had gone through it in her mind so often, she felt she was repeating it for the umpteenth time. The reason had started to sound like an excuse. Had her action really been a disproportionate response to a minor annoyance?

  ‘So it leads us back to your Assassin? Is the theft down to his curse, too?’

  ‘If I believed in curses, I might believe in a way to break them. I just feel racked with guilt that I may have inadvertently facilitated the theft.'

  ‘I don’t doubt it. If the disappearance of a painting could advance your position here, I might be suspicious, but it looks no more than a common theft for the financial value.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful for that. Do you have any leads? Likely suspects?’

  ‘The apparently opportunistic nature of the theft isn’t unique. But as just one high-value item was lifted, it looks like a commissioned crime.’

  Julia told Barrett of her suspicions regarding Barrington Ferrers, hedged with apologies that she had nothing to justify her claim and aware that she might be making wholly unjust accusations derived from personal prejudices about tacky jewellery and a misinterpreted or mis-remembered conversation.

  The inspector seemed to listen patiently and took notes from her detailed description of Ferrers. However, she was, of course, unable to answer the critical question.

  ‘How do we find this individual?’

  ‘To be honest, I really hoped he’d already be known to you as a villain. I don’t have any way to get in touch with him.’

  ‘Disappointing, but not surprising. I will, of course, cross-check our records system against the description. You will let us know if he makes contact again?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. He’s a client at Morrison, James and Latimer. It’s the wealth management business I used to work for - still do, officially. But client confidentiality is sacrosanct to them. They have contact details, but they won’t hand them over.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it has become harder for the police to obtain personal information. Criminal receivers sometimes operate from several addresses, so it can be particularly tricky to track them down.’ He rose to leave. ‘Thank you for your time, again, Ms Bailey.’

  After Barrett had gone, Julia sat for some time, going over the conversation again and thought about MJL’s intransigence.

  Would she breach confidentiality, in the partners’ place? Then she realised it wasn’t a hypothetical question. She still had the MJL keys and could walk in, any time the office was empty and find Ferrers’s address.

  At MJL that morning, Mike Latimer had described her as scrupulously honest, but what was the morally right thing?

  If Ferrers had no part in the theft, there was no harm in the police knowing where to get hold of him. It would actually help eliminate him from the enquiry.

  But Julia knew that was just a sop to her conscience. She told herself she’d sleep on it, but knew she’d already made a decision.

  ~

  When Julia got up an hour earlier than usual, it wasn’t because she’d had trouble sleeping. She had a surprisingly restful night, but set the alarm to ensure she could reach the MJL office, well before the partners or their temporary assistant would be in.
>
  But, even before she had reached the office on the High Street, she was shaking. She fumbled to unlock and remove the key from the MJL door and then turned to the keypad of the alarm. It allowed 30 seconds to enter the combination before sounding and she felt a sudden sweat break over her, fearing she had forgotten the code or that it might have been changed sometime in the last few weeks.

  It was too late to turn back. She tried to tell herself it didn’t even matter if the alarm rang, or if she was caught in the office. She could easily claim she had dropped in to pick up something left in her desk. But what would she actually say, if confronted? It would be more honourable to confess, even if it cost her her job. She was certain there was no future post for her at Fathon House. Throwing away this job would be no small matter.

  She tapped in the numbers, trying to rely on the autonomic memory of her fingers rather than that of her treacherous conscious mind. The red light continued to blink. She held her breath, her heart beating a counterpoint to the flashing light. But her dilemma was not put to the test: the light switched to green.

  It took no time to locate Ferrers’s paper file - faster to unlock the cabinet from the key in the drawer, than to fire up the computer and find the password had been changed. She copied down his address and took photos of the page on her phone, just to be doubly sure. She couldn’t cope with the stress of a repeat break-in, if she made an error copying the information.

  She replaced the file carefully, relocking the cabinet and resisting the urge to straighten the jumble of papers that had been left on the desk in the outer office.

  After re-setting the alarm and re-locking the outer door, she looked around guiltily. There were people in the street and cars crawling by, but no-one paid her any attention.

  As soon as she reached Fathon House, she rummaged for the card that the police inspector had given her on the first occasion he visited the museum and picked up the desk phone. She got through to a terse voicemail message and carefully articulated the address she had cribbed from the file and requested Barrett call to confirm receipt of the information.

  She heard nothing that day nor the following and eventually decided her request had been unreasonable for a busy police officer. It didn’t take many more days before she was convinced that all her agonising over the acquisition of the address had been for nothing - that the police wouldn’t or couldn’t act on her nebulous suspicions.

  She briefly wondered whether she could do anything herself to investigate Ferrers, but couldn’t face any further clandestine activities. She knew she didn’t have the temperament for crime or for sleuthing.

  She still didn’t doubt that giving the police Ferrers’s address had been the right thing to do, but over the next few days her disloyalty to her employers nagged like a toothache. Mike Latimer’s comment on her “scrupulous honesty” echoed in her head. If she didn’t confess to the MJL partners that she had broken their trust as well as breaching the confidentiality of a client, she would feel she had lost her integrity. Even if it meant she would lose her job.

  She decided she should face the three of them together and own up, but knew they were unlikely to all be in the office at the same time until their regular group meeting. If they hadn’t changed their schedule since the temp had started, that meant Julia would need to wait yet another week.

  She told herself the delay didn’t make any difference - living with her guilty conscience for a bit longer was an appropriate part of her punishment. Or did she just hope that something would happen in that time to justify her action - that the police would arrest Ferrers and recover the painting?

  ~

  When the day arrived, she told Penny she had an errand in the High Street and walked down to the MJL office, timing her arrival for fifteen minutes into the partners’ session. The temp recognised her from the previous visit and looked startled when Julia announced she was going to interrupt the meeting.

  Julia tapped tentatively, then more decisively, on the door to Ken James’s office. He saw who was there through the glass panel and waved her in.

  ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry, but I had to do it. You’ve all been so good to me and I’ve abused your trust in the worst way possible. I’ll resign with immediate effect, of course, unless you want to formally dismiss me, but I know the paperwork is simpler if I resign. Sorry. I’m gibbering.’

  ‘Stop being such a bloody martyr, Julia.’ Mike Latimer interrupted her. ‘It would be complete gibberish if we hadn’t had a call from the Met. police’s Art and Antiquities Unit.’

  Julia forgot her guilt momentarily. ‘You mean they are investigating? Have they found the Emma Seckfield?’

  ‘Who? Is someone missing, as well?’

  ‘No, you philistine. It’s the museum’s stolen painting,’ Ken James said.

  ‘Oh, right. No, we don’t know about that. The Met had a warrant to make us hand over Ferrers’s file.’

  Ken James cut in again. ‘We guessed you must have put them on to him and to us.’

  ‘I just gave the address in the file to Inspector Barrett and told him he was an MJL client. He’s Kent police. He must have passed it on.’

  ‘Now, Julia.’ Ken James looked around at the partners and they nodded back. Something had obviously been settled before she had arrived. ‘No more talk about resigning. Obviously we are obliged to take disciplinary action regarding your foolish and accidental disclosure of client information. Hence, this is a verbal warning.’

  There was a lot of eyebrow waggling going on as Julia looked from one partner to the next in confusion.

  Mike Latimer took pity on her and clarified. ‘It doesn’t do us any good to be associated with possible felons, so the least anyone says, the better. This matter is now closed.’

  ‘But if your overdeveloped sense of civic duty pushes you to shop another of our clients, can you at least discuss it with us first?’

  They all discreetly ignored the fact that they had actually had such a discussion and given Julia an uncompromising refusal.

  The usually taciturn third partner, Stephen Morrison, was moved to make a pronouncement as he gathered up coffee cups and opened the door to usher Julia out. ‘Enough. If any of you suggests a group hug, you can stuff that. Back to work, guys.’

  ~

  After that tantalising clue that Ferrers was being investigated, Julia was desperate for news: had the police arrested him? Had they found the painting?

  She didn’t feel she could pester Barrett, if it might now be out of the hands of the Kent police. So she was, for the first time, delighted to find him on the doorstep of Fathon House when she arrived one morning. He was wearing his most inscrutable expression.

  ‘Inspector. Have you found our painting?

  ‘Could we go through to your office, please?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Would you like some coffee, or tea?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Please, sit down Ms Bailey.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m afraid this will sound like an old joke about good news and bad news.’

  ‘Please don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Barry Ferrers - the “Barrington” is a recent affectation - has been arrested. We have recovered the Romney portrait. It will be held as evidence, I’m afraid, but I dare say it will be returned to the museum soon enough.’

  ‘That’s not so bad.’

  ‘No. The bad news is that he says you put him up to the theft.’

  Montagu Family Archive:

  Unattributed Document

  My Dearest Cousin,

  Foreign travel has its charms, but they pale beside contemplation of your matchless Beauty. I am certain you look ravishing in the most modish of mourning weeds, that money may procure.

  Pray overcome your sulks, and write to me of the affairs of the House and at Court. I begin to fear that the political situation may force me to remain here, far longer than I hoped or desired.

  I am starved of news and, in my f
rustration, become prey to sensations of persecution. My friends tell me these are groundless Imaginings, but one’s enemies do have a habit of springing up like nettles when they are not cut regularly.

  The analogy is poor, as I can scarce be stung in my absence. Perhaps they are more like ivy choking the trees of my Reputation, whilst I am the forester, detained abroad.

  I grow fanciful - surely a consequence of my enforced indolence. As befits Rustication, I shall write you a Villanelle, to beguile the languid hours.

  Extend your hand to me, and, as a prayerful supplicant, I shall kiss your sacred ring -

  With all the affection of your fondest cousin,

  Henry

  Chapter 12

  When Inspector Barrett informed Julia that Barry Ferrers named her as an accomplice, she burst into tears.

  ‘When I told you that you might be a murder suspect, you practically laughed in my face. I say you may be an accessory to art theft and you cry. Should I infer guilt from one or the other?’

  ‘I’m sorry. This is so unprofessional of me. They are equally absurd. I’m afraid I’m just about at the end of my rope.’

  ‘I do appreciate you are having a very trying time. Almost as if you, or the museum, at least, was under a curse.’

  The mention of the curse triggered exasperation rather than further tears. ‘Why can no-one accept unfortunate coincidences without invoking the paranormal?’ Julia blew her nose and started again. ‘I met Ferrers once only - when he visited the museum. Why would I have …’

  ‘Before you say anything else, I should say there are two reasons why I told you about his claim of your involvement. Firstly, because I am bound to investigate such a claim, but more pertinently, because he may make this assertion in court and you will be obliged to answer it.’

  ‘But I have - had - whichever - far more to lose than gain from the theft. And you know that I called…’

  ‘Ms Bailey, I received an anonymous tip off from a withheld number that provided a private address for Ferrers. It might or might not be in your interest to try to identify the caller.’