“Oh, come,” Bobby repeated, unable to think of anything more original or more consoling to say.
Sir Walter leaned forward. He pointed one finger accusingly at Bobby much as if he were saying: ‘Thou art the man.’ Instead he said:
“You were right. The Rembrandt ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ is a copy—a bad copy. It should not have escaped detection for ten minutes. You know. Any competent expert. So is ‘The Milkmaids’ a copy. The ‘Girl’ and now the ‘Milkmaids’—a lovely jolly thing, the best thing the artist ever did.”
“Teniers, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked.
“The younger Teniers,” Sir Walter replied. “A copy. More accomplished than the Rembrandt. But no one with any knowledge could look at it for ten minutes without seeing something was wrong.” He leaned back in his chair. He seemed a little more composed now, he had indeed adopted very much the attitude he assumed when delivering judgment on work presented for his appraisal. Bobby, slightly bewildered by this sudden change from despair to authority, listened attentively, wondering what was to come. Sir Walter was continuing now. He was saying: “Clearly Atts had discovered this. That is what he intended to say in his lecture, the sensational announcement he told everyone was to be expected. Why didn’t he say it?” He paused, now shaking a monitory finger at Bobby. “Because he wasn’t there,” he proclaimed, providing the answer Bobby had not ventured to offer. “And why wasn’t he there?” Sir Walter demanded next. “We will come to that,” he assured Bobby. “I have thought it all out. You know. I see it now. Why weren’t the ‘Girl’ and ‘The Milkmaids’ recognized as copies? Why did I not see what must have been plain to the veriest tyro at a glance. The explanation is simple,” and here he paused again, evidently expecting Bobby to provide it immediately.
“I must say I hadn’t the least idea—” Bobby was intending to continue that he had never suspected that the Teniers, too, was a copy and that that introduced a complication he had not been prepared for, but now Sir Walter waved him into silence as he might have motioned down a too-importunate student, and himself continued:
“The simple truth is that they weren’t copies. They couldn’t have been. Impossible. You know. The impossible doesn’t happen. By definition. Does it, Mr. Owen?”
“No,” agreed Bobby. “You mean—?”
“Exactly,” Sir Walter broke in. “The ‘Girl’, when I found it just in time to rescue it from destruction, was the veritable picture as it left the young Rembrandt’s easel and it was not painted on a mahogany panel since mahogany was not in use at the time. Such an anachronism would have been noticed very soon. The Teniers was bought direct by the first Duke of Blegborough from the painter himself. It remained at Blegborough House in the Strand till that was burned down when, with two or three other paintings, it was purchased by Our Founder. The proof,” he concluded triumphantly, “is complete. These were originals, not copies.”
“You mean,” Bobby said, “that the originals have been stolen and copies substituted.”
“Exactly,” said Sir Walter. He sat back in his chair, still looking triumphant, and then almost immediately was plunged again into the depths of despair. “I shall be blamed all the same. How could such a thing remain undetected, I shall be asked. I shall be told I have failed in my duty. You know. Atts always swore he would ruin me. I paid it no attention. I took no notice. I preferred to ignore an ill-will that, however little justified, I could understand. Well, he’s done it, absolutely, completely. My career is over, my reputation gone. The trustees will be asked to remove me. They will. Who could have dreamed? You must have suspected it when you asked about our safety precautions and where the keys were kept?”
“It was in my mind,” Bobby agreed, “but only as a vague possibility. But I did not want to say too much too soon, nor did I see how it linked up with the disappearance of Mr. Atts. It was that I had to deal with first of all.”
“I think I can tell you,” Sir Walter said, “exactly when the theft of the originals and the substitution of the copies took place.”
“Yes?” Bobby said quickly, for this might be important. “When?”
“About a month ago, when Early Hyams was off duty ill—influenza, I think. Had he been on duty he would have noticed the change at once. Unfortunately he was away just when a re-arrangement I had had in view for some time was being carried out. Hyams has not of course the trained eye of the critic—how could he?—but he knows every painting in the S.B.G. by heart so to speak. A tiny difference in the quality of the brush-work he would fail to appreciate. He might not notice that that strange effect of hidden light in darkest shadow—the precursor I like to think of Rembrandt’s later treatment of chiaroscuro and in a way never again equalled—how all that had entirely gone. But any difference in the frame, which must have been carefully copied, too, or even in the angle at which it hung, he would have seen at once. Unfortunately, when he returned, before he had fully recovered, it was hanging in entirely new surroundings, and such trivia would escape his eye. You know. Most unfortunate. How Atts found out I can’t guess, but somehow he did and then he saw a chance to make a public announcement calculated to ruin me and make his critical authority supreme.”
“Mr Atts apparently made a habit of arranging to meet a friend before this particular picture,” remarked Bobby, who had listened to all this with the closest attention. “It may have been while he was waiting for her that he saw the change.”
“Very likely,” agreed Sir Walter. “Very likely indeed. A single glance would be enough to put him on the trail; and trust him to follow it up in secrecy. He loved to work underground, mysteriously, and then to produce his results—out of the hat so to speak. Like him to combine the two—a discreditable intrigue with a woman and a secret artistic investigation. One the cover for the other. He was probably afraid that if I heard he was taking unusual interest in one of our pictures I might wonder why and come to look at it myself. That of course would have put an end to his plot to ruin me by launching a bombshell at the Royal Arts lecture. He would have been forestalled.”
“Yes, one can see that,” Bobby agreed. “You had not seen the picture recently, then?”
“Unhappily,” came the reply, “most unhappily, no. I have been extraordinarily busy with the arrangements for our Annual Spring Exhibition—American Art. Our Spring Exhibitions are famous and I had great hopes for the success of this one—artistic success, financial, even political. You know. It will be for other hands to complete the task I have begun.”
“Have you any idea who can have made these copies?” Bobby asked.
“Probably young Jasmine; a promising young student. I gave him permission to work here—a privilege I allow only to young men who show signs of real talent.”
“Do you know if he was in any way connected with Mr. Atts?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps that explains it all,” Sir Walter answered, with less animation now, as if he were tired of the whole subject. “Possibly Atts found out what Jasmine had done and so Jasmine murdered Atts to keep him quiet. A man who could substitute his own work for a Rembrandt would be capable of it. Or it may have been the other way and Atts may have killed Jasmine and that’s why Atts has disappeared. What does it matter against the plain fact that the ‘Girl’ and now the ‘Milkmaids’ have both gone?”
CHAPTER XXII
CONFERENCE
THESE WERE INDEED ideas, possibilities rather, that for some time had been floating in and out of Bobby’s mind, shadows as it were in the hinterland of his thought, but all the same he was greatly startled to hear them now so plainly expressed.
“We must have more facts,” he said, “before we try to draw conclusions, especially conclusions of that nature. At present all we know is that Mr. Atts is missing and that two of the paintings on exhibition here are only copies. In one case there is the decisive proof provided by the use of a mahogany panel. Are you equally sure about the Teniers?” Sir Walter nodded a gloomy assent. “That’s all we know,” Bobby concluded, “and we mustn�
��t go too far beyond that.”
“All we know,” Sir Walter repeated with extreme bitterness. “Isn’t that enough? You don’t seem to realize—” but there he paused, without attempting to specify what it was Bobby did not realize. Then he said: “If there had been an ordinary burglary and the pictures stolen that would be bad enough. But these have been accepted, shown on our walls, had behind them all the world-wide prestige of the S.B.G.” He collapsed into his chair, he seemed to shrink into himself, and then suddenly sat upright again. “Anything, anything,” he almost shouted, “than that this should have happened.”
“It would be better, I think,” Bobby continued, ignoring this outburst, “for nothing to be said in public for the present. There is just the chance that both pictures might be recovered before anything is known. It rather complicates things that the S.B.G. is entirely independent under the sole control of trustees answerable to no one but themselves. I suppose they could even close the gallery at any time if they wished to?”
“Oh yes. In theory. There would always be public opinion or even an Act of Parliament to reckon with. But what good would closing the Gallery do?”
“None,” Bobby agreed. “I only mean that in one sense the loss of the pictures is entirely a private affair and in another a matter of national concern. It would seem the police have no authority to intervene unless you call us in. I have had the idea for some time that the original ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ might have been stolen and a copy substituted but I couldn’t see any motive. Such a well-known picture could not be sold—or shown. Would you have considered offering a reward for its return? There seem to have been some rumours of that sort in circulation.”
“I daresay the Trustees would pay any sum in reason to get it back,” Sir Walter agreed, but not as if he saw much hope there. “Atts is at the bottom of this. It’s not a reward he is after—my ruin and he himself in my chair. That’s his plan. I expect him to claim that what I found was only a copy—he may pretend I planted it myself in that farmhouse—and that he has now discovered the original in some old shop somewhere in France or on a stall at one of those fairs they have over there.”
Bobby said nothing. He could see at once that such a story was quite plausible, so plausible it might even be true. Not too difficult to fabricate a copy from the descriptions extant in the Six dowry list and in the Chateau d’If papers. It might even be suggested that the American connoisseur to whom Sir Walter had sold the picture had found reason to doubt its authenticity and that explained his unexpectedly generous gesture in bequeathing it to the S.B.G. A subtle revenge. No end, Bobby saw, to the stories, controversies, discussions, that would rage, and not only in art circles. But probably all of them uniting in blaming Sir Walter, who, like all successful men, had many enemies and rivals and many friends who were friends only of his success.
And behind it all the stark mystery of the vanished Atts, of whose failure to deliver his lecture and subsequent disappearance there still seemed no plausible explanation—save indeed one that was beginning to creep into the papers, where more than once the expression ‘foul play’ had recently appeared.
“First of all,” Bobby said slowly, rousing himself from these thoughts, “it will be necessary to clear up about Atts—”
“No, no, no,” Sir Walter interrupted angrily. “You must concentrate on these two pictures—that before anything. Can’t you get it into your head that this is of the utmost, the most pressing importance? It will rock the world from end to end if it gets known. The prestige of England is at stake.”
“Questions of human life must always come first,” Bobby told him; and Sir Walter snarled a comment not very complimentary to humanity as compared with art, one so transitory, the other of the order of eternity. Bobby caught the meaning, not the actual muttered words, and could not help commenting: “Anyhow, by this time the world ought to be pretty well used to getting rocked from end to end.”
He left then, sufficiently impressed however by what was now beginning to look like the most sensational case he had ever handled, to get in touch with the Commissioner himself, though that gentleman had by this time departed home to busy himself with the perennial problem of how to improve his swing at golf. In his turn however he was sufficiently impressed by Bobby’s report to ring up the Home Secretary, who listened with increasing anguish for there was a political crisis brewing and he foresaw a hail of questions, all aimed to show that it was his own crass personal negligence and hopeless incompetence that was primarily responsible.
Why, he reflected gloomily, there might even be a vote of censure and if so the Prime Minister would probably think it was his fault.
“For Heaven’s sake,” he wailed over the wire, “get the thing settled right away. This is one of those apparently trivial affairs that can send the public into hysterics, upset Governments, and alter the whole course of history,” and the Commissioner, much impressed, undertook, using the Home Secretary’s own customary language, that no avenue would be left unexplored, no stone unturned. Then reverting to his own more familiar wording, he promised, too, to make sure that all his lads were on their toes from now on.
Meanwhile, while these high dignitaries conferred, Bobby, back in his own room at Scotland Yard, was holding a kind of informal conference with those of his colleagues he could get together at such short notice.
He had, however, already arranged for a close watch to be kept for Jasmine’s return since, clearly, the first thing to do was to hear what he had to say and presumably, now that it was growing towards evening, he would soon be back.
“There’s not much doubt about those fakes in the S.B.G. being his work,” Bobby told the conference and the others all nodded assent. “But the question is, did he know what use they were being put to, and, if he did, did he care? I remember one case in France of an elderly artist who had never had much luck with his own work doing copies of—Corot, I think it was, or was it Claude? I forget—anyhow, he did one a week or so for years, sold them for ten or twelve pounds each, and had no idea they were being got rid of in America as genuine for big money. Annoyed him very much when he knew. Again Jasmine may have thought it rather good fun to see his work being displayed in a Gallery where he was regarded as just a rather promising new boy, exposed to patronising pats on the head from a Director he didn’t think much of. Very trying to a young man who suspects he is a genius if only people knew.”
“It might be that way,” agreed the senior of those present. “Student.” He frowned disapproval of the whole race. “Always up to what they call larks.”
“Wouldn’t worry me much,” put in a brisk young man of a severely practical turn of mind. “if I found out my copies were being passed off as genuine originals. What’s the odds if no one knows? Let the buyer beware and all that. Not a police matter in my view. But when it comes to pinching pictures and all that from the S.B.G., that’s different. Cheek. Blow at the tourist traffic. Every Yank wants to go to the S.B.G., like Madame Tussaud’s and the Zoo. But where does Atts come in? He had something to do with pictures, hadn’t he? But only talked about them? Didn’t do them, did he?”
“Well, it’s like this,” Bobby answered; and went on to tell of the conspiracy theory Sir Walter had put forward. “What it comes to,” he explained, “is a suggestion that Atts managed to substitute at the S.B.G. a copy for the original hung there, intending then to claim he had just found the original—after a long search—and that the S.B.G. version was a mere copy Sir Walter had planted himself where he pretended to find it, and that that was the sensational announcement Atts was going to make at the Royal Arts Memorial Lecture.”
“Very pretty scheme,” observed another of those present. “But the lecture was never given, was it?”
“Sounds to me as if that were the way it might have been,” observed the senior man thoughtfully.
“Might lead to a criminal charge against either of ’em,” commented a man who had not spoken before. “Against Atts, if and when he’s fo
und, for pinching the thing from the S.B.G. Or against Sir Walter, for planting a copy and passing it off as genuine. He sold it for a pot of money in the U.S., didn’t he?”
“One or other,” put in the brisk young man. “As and according to which yarn comes out best in the wash.”
“What makes it all even worse,” Bobby said gloomily, “is that now it seems another S.B.G. painting is a copy, too.”
“Makes you wonder if perhaps the whole boiling isn’t!” said the brisk young man. “Why not?”
“Oh come,” protested Bobby, appalled at such a prospect, even as a mere suggestion.
“Won’t be too good for Sir Walter, will it?” someone asked. “I mean showing copies in the place and never noticing. Might be the sack. Eh?”
“What it all adds up to,” pronounced the senior man, “is that Sir Walter had a big motive for getting rid of Atts and perhaps he did?”
“No evidence that anything like that has happened,” Bobby pointed out. “Atts may turn up again any day and want to know what all the fuss has been about.”
“Isn’t the last heard of him being in Bardolph’s car?” inquired the senior man.
“That is so,” Bobby said. “Bardolph sticks to his story that he put Atts down at Clapham and we’ve not been able to get behind it.”
“Plenty of places along the Reading road,” remarked another of those present, “where you could dump a body where it would never be found till long past identification.”
“Had a motive, too, hadn’t he?” came another comment. “Atts trying to get off with Bardolph’s missus. There are still some who won’t stand for that.”
“That’s not been forgotten,” Bobby said, “but takes us right away from the S.B.G.”
He went on then to recount to them the saga of the packet of poison, the Sheraton cabinet, the secret drawer, the abduction by Mr. Tails, and the dashing rescue by Philip Shirley.
“Mrs. Atts had a motive, too, then,” observed the senior man when Bobby had finished his tale. “I’ve known women wanting to get rid of hubby number one so as to get on with hubby number two.”
Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 15