The Art of Intrigue

by P A Latter

  ‘I have to work out how to tell her about the diary. I promised Sam I’d say I found it. Cassie might not like the idea that I have been rummaging in the archive, unauthorised.’

  ‘Tell her you were looking at it when you were Acting Curator. She can’t complain about that.’

  ‘That would work - yes - and I realised that John’s estimate date must be wrong, when I found Edmond’s letter and made the connection.’

  ~

  Julia requested a meeting with Cassie to explain why she believed the undated diary, long buried in the archive, linked to the newly discovered letter. Cassie was interested to see Julia’s transcription of the journal and suggested they might put a - perhaps censored - version onto the website.

  The site was now being brought up to date and populated by Will Francis, the friend of Sam, who hoped to be appointed to the Haussman grant funded post.

  However, Cassie disputed the connection to the letter. The diary could easily have been written by a Seckfield of an earlier generation.

  The intermittent dating of the entries didn’t include the day of the week, which might have helped them to work out the year.

  An expert in the writing of Georgian times might be able to estimate more closely the date it had been penned, but there were few clues in the text for the non-specialist.

  The suggestion of enmity between the King and Prince of Wales was not even an indicator of which George was on the throne.

  Julia hesitantly raised the idea that the Assassin might have been the picture that “Henry” had entrusted with Edmond to bring home to his cousin and could even be Henry himself.

  Cassie was dismissive. She said - and Julia had to admit it was true - that there was absolutely no reason to suppose it might be. Even if Henry’s gift never reached his cousin, when it came to England, the Fathon House collection had other works which were equally likely candidates to be Grand Tour souvenirs from that time.

  ‘Julia, I don’t mean to be relentlessly negative,’ Cassie was fidgeting with her scarf again, ‘You’ve put in a lot of work and I don’t want to discourage you. It is an attractive interpretation, but you have to admit there’s no concrete evidence.’

  Since Julia had returned from her holiday, Cassie appeared keen to put their initial difficulties behind them and treat Julia as a trusted colleague. It was hard for Julia to forget the unpleasantness, but she was equally keen to establish a sensible working relationship.

  Julia didn’t tell Cassie that she needed to identify the Assassin to overcome his hold on her. Confessing to a mad obsession was a sure way to lose her status as a fellow professional.

  The discovery of the diary had strengthened her conviction that the portrait was linked to Edmond Seckfield. She toyed with the idea of finding an expert to try to put a date to the diary, but confirmation of its 1785 provenance would not tell her anything further about the Assassin.

  ~

  Julia still had cataloguing work to do on the contents of the remaining auction-lot boxes, but she did have to man the galleries and provide tours from time to time.

  Since the display had been changed in the Specials gallery, there had been so many distractions, she hadn’t found the time to read up on the paintings, in order to address questions from visitors.

  She went to the gallery to make some preparatory notes. She felt increasingly able to stand in the room without being drawn to stare mindlessly into the Assassin’s eyes.

  However, the painting still pulled her to examine its details. On this occasion, she noticed a label on one of the vials on the shelf. She could make out some letters - although they meant nothing to her.

  The bottle was turned so the start of the word was out of sight. She could see “eriaca”. She made a note to check if Google would be able to complete it and find a meaning for her.

  When she turned her attention to the other paintings, she was again struck by the thought that it looked like a commercial gallery of works for sale.

  It led her mind back to Hugh and her questions over his true intentions regarding the choice of pictures displayed for the political soirée.

  It must have been coincidence that Hugh should walk into the room at that moment.

  ‘Oh, Hi Julia. Haven’t seen you for ages. You’re looking …’ He paused to appraise her looks. ‘Very well indeed.’

  It was more than she could say about him. Julia saw lines which she hadn’t previously noticed, which coarsened his features. ‘I’ve been on holiday.’

  ‘I must try that sometime. If I could only find the time. Look, I can’t stop, unfortunately. Have you seen Cassie? I thought she might be in here.’

  ‘Sorry no. She was in her office when I last saw her.’

  ‘No worries. I’ll catch up with you later.’

  ~

  Julia had assumed his parting words were merely conventional, but he phoned that evening.

  ‘Julia, Hi. It was good to see you. I’ve been missing our little get-togethers.’

  A menu of possible responses presented itself. Not “Me too” - she hadn’t given a thought to their meetings since Cassie took over. Not “How are your meetings with Cassie?” - that was strictly none of her business. Not “What do you want, Hugh?” It was what she really wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to disturb the equilibrium after his friendliness earlier in the day.

  She became conscious of the silence stretching and searched for a neutral phrase. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine. It was just that we didn’t have a chance to chat earlier.’

  ‘Was there something you wanted to chat about?’

  ‘Well. No. Not really. I wanted to check that things were OK now. Between you and Cassie, I mean.’

  ‘We’re not exactly best friends, but I think we can have a professional relationship.’ Julia could tell there was something else.

  ‘That’s good to hear. You take care of yourself, now.’

  ‘You too.’

  Hugh broke the connection, leaving Julia puzzled. She was certain he had been going to say something important. Perhaps her tone had discouraged him.

  ~

  When she returned to the Specials gallery a week later, to check that her background reading tallied with the works on display, the Assassin had resumed a look of dispassionate menace.

  Are you Henry? - she challenged the portrait silently. The clothes were Venetian fashion, but they didn’t define his nationality. And the eyes were grey - as had been pointed out by the gallery attendant in Venice. A north European.

  How many local people had she seen in Venice, even today, whose eyes were not brown? And was he a nobleman at all?

  All the surrounding elements of the painting - the richness of the furnishings; the books; scientific instruments; and vials of chemicals; proclaimed the sitter’s wealth and intellectual pursuits, but the knife in his hands said he was a man of violence.

  Was any or all of it a fantasy - a lie? Why did Henry want his gift delivered “privily and personally”? Why could it not be sent openly? Did the painting contain a secret meaning? Was a message concealed with the picture? What could he have wanted to convey?

  If this was Henry, he was a British nobleman of notoriety at home, forced into indolent exile and chafing to return home to the political scene.

  It was most likely that he had killed someone in a duel. Would that have been reported in the newspapers of the time or covered up in euphemisms? There couldn’t be so many Henrys amongst the nobility who had done so.

  It might take a lot of searching, as Julia didn’t know when he had left England. And then she realised that if the story she had assembled was true, she had a definitive date for an event that would be reported, without question.

  There would be obituaries in the English newspapers for the death of a British nobleman overseas in 1785. If Henry was his real name, she had a tangible new lead to follow.

  Chapter 31

  Julia was in the storeroom with her nose in a box
of papers when Sam came in from the conservation workshop across the hallway and perched herself on the desk.

  ‘Julia?’

  Hmn. Hold on a sec.’ Julia pulled a sheaf of documents from the box. ‘Sorry. I’m trying to keep everything in order.’ She placed the bundle next to her laptop. ‘OK. I’m paying attention now.’

  ‘Do you wonder about Edmond? When he returned from Italy. What he did with his life?’

  ‘I’m rather more curious about Henry. I’m planning to take a trip up to the London Library and go through obituaries in the papers from 1785.’

  ‘I know. I just feel Edmond deserves something - his place in history, maybe.’

  ‘’You would like everyone’s story to be remembered, wouldn’t you?’ Julia was occasionally struck by Sam’s sensitivity.

  ‘I suppose a conservator wants to retain as much of the past as possible. And if the diary goes on the website, people will want to know what happened next.’

  ‘Would your friend Will have any time to pursue that, do you think?’

  ‘I’ll ask him. The grant funding doesn’t start for a week or two, so until he’s on the payroll, he’s a bit more free to choose what he works on.’

  Julia gave some thought to tracing Edmond’s career. ‘Edmond was all set to go to Cambridge. I don’t know if they would have accessible student records from that time.’

  ‘Possibly. The diary said he intended to study law when he graduated, but I don’t think he said what he was intending to read at Cambridge.’

  ‘If he qualified as a solicitor or barrister, he would probably be traceable in legal records, but that could be a mammoth project.’ Julia didn’t know much about biographical research and her mind was still on death notices. ‘If he stayed in the area, he’d be buried locally. That would give a date for a possible obituary. There’s a Seckfield family plot somewhere near here. I think it’s at St John the Baptist’s.’

  Sam grimaced. ‘That will make a jolly outing. A picnic among the tombstones, maybe.’

  Julia rubbed her temples. ‘My mind has been so slow recently. I should have thought about that weeks ago. The grave would tell us when he was born. I had the dates for George - the heir - but museum’s timeline file doesn’t give dates for all the siblings. I’d love to know how old he was when he went to Venice.’

  ‘Right, field trip to the cemetery it is, then.’

  ~

  Julia still had access to the London Library as a visiting museum scholar, using her curator credentials. So on Saturday morning, she set off for St James’s Square to leaf through the obituaries in the Daily Universal Register.

  The quality newspaper was first published at the start of 1785 and three years later it became the Times. The Library held every copy and the death of a peer of the realm would, no doubt, be reported.

  Julia had a moment’s hesitation, when she had to check when Britain had aligned its calendar with the Gregorian date-keeping used across the continent. It was 33 years previously, so she didn’t need to account for anomalies in dates for events overseas. She began her search from two weeks after the date of Edmond’s letter to his brother.

  The diary entries had not all been dated and she had to estimate the period of time during which the youthful Seckfield’s acquaintance with Henry matured into close friendship. It seemed - like modern holiday romances - to have developed very quickly.

  Julia briefly considered if the relationship could have been sexual. Edmond would have been unlikely to confess to illegal and stigmatised acts, even in a private diary. But his writings suggested only hero-worship of a charismatic older man.

  The first dead Henry that she found was obviously not a candidate - a respectable aged Baron, who died at home on his estates in Northumbria.

  She then found a record of a 35 year old Viscount, who died “abroad, in a shooting accident”. Reading between the lines, it looked like the death was suspected - or known - to be the suicide of a man who had gambled himself to complete ruin.

  It was difficult not to be sidetracked into the stories of the characters she encountered. As Sam advocated: everyone’s place in history should be remembered. Julia felt her concentration was beginning to flag, when a name jumped off the page: the Earl of Somerset, commonly styled Henry, Lord Morton.

  She nearly broke the hush and decorum of the library. She wanted to punch the air; to hug someone; to squeal with glee. Most unprofessional. After a silent “YES”, she returned to the page and reread the details.

  The obituary spoke of a tragically young death - Henry was 32 - from an unknown illness. “Without the comfort of family or friends, alone in a foreign city.” It commented on his interests in Natural Philosophy and the new Chemical Science, with contributions to Royal Society discussions. But it also hinted that Henry had been a radical politician and ruthless in both his professional and personal life.

  It didn’t say outright that he had left the country after killing his opponent in a duel, but the “meeting” mentioned must have been notorious. The veiled references would be enough to remind readers of the reason for Henry’s exile.

  Julia was convinced that this was the man described in the diary. If she could commit the time, she might be able to sieve through the journals and scandal sheets held there and at the British Library, to find the opponent in the duel.

  Debrett’s Peerage, which was first published in 1769, might help her also, to identify Henry’s cousin - but the aristocracy were so inter-related, to pin down the individual was an optimistic hope.

  The name was the key to unlocking the life of the man. But was he the Assassin? Julia was carefully copying out the text of the obituary when she remembered why the name seemed familiar and where she had seen it before. And she nearly squealed again.

  The record of the Accademia di Belle Arti: Bernadino Castelli had requested a loan to repay his debt to “the English Count, Morton”. The thread which connected Morton to the Assassin was still tenuous, but it had to be right. She immediately texted to share her discoveries with Sam and Penny.

  She would buy herself a bottle of Prosecco on her way home and toast her success. It was one of those times when it would have been nice to have someone special with whom to share both the wine and the small triumph.

  But she did have friends who would understand and appreciate the find. She should let Sophie and Alessandro know that her time in the archive at the Doge’s Palace had borne fruit and that pieces of the puzzle might be beginning to come together.

  The London Library was closed on Sunday, but the British Library opened at 11AM. Julia abandoned her other plans for the weekend, caught an early train and was waiting when the library doors opened. She headed for the microfiched copies of the Gentleman’s Magazine and the weekly periodical The World, which focussed on Society gossip.

  Despite her week in the Venice archive, this form of research was still very new for Julia. When she had been in Italy, she feared her ignorance of the language would be a barrier. She now realised it had been an advantage: it had enabled her to focus on her keywords without distractions.

  Looking at printed English text instead of foreign handwriting, she was constantly drawn to the fascinating snippets of news and tattle-mongering. It was almost painful to stop reading each irrelevant but vibrant story and return to her search.

  She had no idea in what year the duel had been fought and Henry exiled. It began to take on the dimensions of a needle in a county of haystacks. As Alessandro would say: it was a hunt for a wild goose. Unsurprisingly, she had nothing at the end of the day but a headache.

  However, Julia returned to her working week satisfied with her weekend’s efforts. The exhilaration of identifying Henry more than compensated for the frustrations of finding nothing further to add to his biography. She would resume the quest if she had time, the next weekend.

  On her way up to the storeroom, the following Friday morning, Julia was waylaid by Cassie.

  ‘Julia? I’m in a bit of hole. Coul
d I ask a tremendous favour?’

  Julia thought what it might have cost Cassie to make the supplication. And it wouldn’t do any harm to have Cassie in her debt. ‘Certainly, if I can help.’

  ‘It’s this weekend. Penny and Sam are off. Normally it’s no problem for me, but something’s come up. Would you be able to come in as Duty Manager?’ I know it’s asking a lot.’

  Julia had no commitments but her new research. ‘Yes. I suppose I could.’

  ‘A million thanks. It really helps me out.’ Cassie hesitated before adding. ‘I can authorise an honorarium for your time.’

  ‘That’s not necessary, of course.’ It was the response Cassie wanted and Julia couldn’t really be cross about it - she knew the museum’s precarious financial position only too well. And Henry Morton would have to wait. After all, he’d been dead for a long time already.

  Her weekend at the museum was uneventful. As she no longer had any administrative responsibilities, she could assist in the galleries and upstairs rooms, so the other volunteers had more time for tea breaks.

  When she was in the Specials gallery, briefly alone after a morning of pleasingly high visitor numbers, she stared at the Assassin to see if the newly revealed identity fitted him.

  She felt at last she could meet the mocking gaze with a taunt of her own. Like the superstition of stealing a soul with a photograph, and the older beliefs of control through the knowledge of a secret name, it was an illusion of power. Although the eyes met her gaze, they were lifeless rather than quelled.

  She planned to use her next day off to return to the British Library, as the volunteer rota was full enough that her services as a gallery steward were not required. She wished she had time for both - she had been rediscovering the simple pleasure of chatting to visitors who had an uncomplicated enjoyment of the museum.

  Consequently, she was on the first off-peak train into London on Friday morning when she had a text from Sam, who had been anticipating she would be at Fathon House that day.