As the Crow Flies

by Jeffrey Archer

  I met the bishop at the entrance to the gallery and introduced him to Charlie, who bowed before kissing the episcopal ring. I think the bishop was somewhat surprised to discover that Charlie was a Roman Catholic. I smiled nervously at our visitor, who appeared to have a perpetual beam on his face—a face that was red from wine, not sun, I suspected. He glided off down the passage in his long purple cassock as Cathy led him in the direction of my room, where the picture awaited him. Barker, the reporter from the Telegraph, introduced himself to Simon as if he were dealing with someone from the underworld. He made no attempt to be civil when Simon tried to strike up a conversation with him.

  The bishop came through to my little office and accepted a proffered cup of coffee. I had already placed the picture on an easel, having at Charlie’s insistence refitted the original old black frame on the painting. We all sat round the table in silence as the priest stared at the Virgin Mary.

  “Vous permettez?” he asked, holding out his arms.

  “Certainly,” I replied, and handed over the little oil.

  I watched his eyes carefully as he held the painting in front of him. He seemed to take just as much interest in Charlie, whom I had never seen so nervous, as he did in the picture itself. He also glanced at Barker, who in contrast had a look of hope in his eyes. After that the bishop returned his attention to the painting, smiled and seemed to become transfixed by the Virgin Mary.

  “Well?” inquired the reporter.

  “Beautiful. An inspiration for any nonbeliever.”

  Barker also smiled and wrote his words down.

  “You know,” the priest added, “this painting brings back many many memories”—he hesitated for a moment and I thought my heart was going to stop before he pronounced—“but, hélas, I must inform you, Mr. Barker, that she is not the original. A mere copy of the madonna I knew so well.”

  The reporter stopped writing. “Only a copy?”

  “Yes, je le regretted. An excellent copy, peut-être painted by a young pupil of the great man would be my guess, but nonetheless a copy.”

  Barker was unable to hide his disappointment as he placed his pad down on the table, looking as if he wished to make some protest.

  The bishop rose and bowed in my direction. “It is my regret that you have been troubled, Lady Trumper.”

  I too rose and accompanied him to the door, where he was faced once again with the assembled press. The journalists fell silent as they waited for the priest to utter some revelation and I felt for a moment that he might actually be enjoying the experience.

  “Is it the real thing, Bishop?” shouted a reporter in the crowd.

  He smiled benignly. “It is indeed a portrait of the Blessed Virgin, but this particular example is only a copy, and of no great significance.” He did not add a word to this statement before climbing back into his car to be whisked away.

  “What a relief,” I said once the car was out of sight. I turned round to look for Charlie, but he was nowhere to be seen. I rushed back to my office and found him holding the picture in his hands. I closed the door behind me so that we could be alone.

  “What a relief,” I repeated. “Now life can return to normal.”

  “You realize, of course, that this is the Bronzino,” Charlie said, looking straight at me.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “The bishop—”

  “But did you see the way he held her?” said Charlie. “You don’t cling to a counterfeit like that. And then I watched his eyes while he came to a decision.”

  “A decision?”

  “Yes, as to whether or not to ruin our lives, in exchange for his beloved Virgin.”

  “So we’ve been in possession of a masterpiece without even knowing it?”

  “It would seem so, but I’m still not sure who removed the painting from the chapel in the first place.”

  “Surely not Guy…”

  “Why not, he’s more likely to have appreciated its value than Tommy.”

  “But how did Guy discover where it ended up, let alone what it was really worth?”

  “Company records, perhaps, or a chance conversation with Daphne might have put him in the right direction.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain how he found out it was an original.”

  “I agree,” said Charlie. “I suspect he didn’t, and simply saw the picture as another way of discrediting me.”

  “Then how the blazes…?”

  “Whereas Mrs. Trentham has had several years to stumble across—”

  “Good God, but where does Kitty fit in?”

  “She was a distraction, nothing more, used by Mrs. Trentham simply to set us up.”

  “Will that woman go to any lengths to destroy us?”

  “I suspect so. And one thing’s for certain, she isn’t going to be pleased when she discovers her ‘best laid plans’ have once again been scuppered.”

  I collapsed on the chair beside my husband. “What shall we do now?”

  Charlie continued to cling to the little masterpiece as if he were afraid someone might try to seize it from him.

  “There’s only one thing we can do.”

  I drove us to the archbishop’s house that night and parked the car outside the tradesmen’s entrance. “How appropriate,” Charlie remarked, before knocking quietly on an old oak door. A priest answered our call and without a word ushered us in before leading us through to see the archbishop, whom we found sharing a glass of wine with the Bishop of Reims.

  “Sir Charles and Lady Trumper,” the priest intoned.

  “Welcome, my children,” said the archbishop as he came forward to greet us. “This is an unexpected pleasure,” he added, after Charlie kissed his ring. “But what brings you to my home?”

  “We have a small gift for the bishop,” I said as I handed over a little paper parcel to his grace. The bishop smiled the same smile as when he had declared the picture to be a copy. He opened the parcel slowly, like a child who knows he’s being given a present when it isn’t his birthday. He held the little masterpiece in his hands for some time before passing it to the archbishop for his consideration.

  “Truly magnificent,” said the archbishop, who studied it carefully before handing it back to the bishop. “But where will you display it?”

  “Above the cross in the chapel of St. Augustine I consider would be appropriate,” the bishop replied. “And possibly in time someone far more scholarly on such matters than myself will declare the picture to be an original.” He looked up and smiled, a wicked smile for a bishop.

  The archbishop turned towards me. “Would you and your husband care to join us for dinner?”

  I thanked him for the kind offer and muttered some excuse about a previous engagement before we both bade them good night and quietly slipped out the way we had come.

  As the door closed behind us I heard the archbishop say: “You win your bet, Pierre.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  “Twenty thousand pounds?” said Becky as she came to a halt outside Number 141. “You must be joking.”

  “That’s the price the agent is demanding,” said Tim Newman.

  “But the shop can’t be worth more than three thousand at most,” said Charlie, staring at the only building on the block he still didn’t own, other than the flats. “And in any case I signed an agreement with Mr. Sneddles that when—”

  “Not for the books, you didn’t,” said the banker.

  “But we don’t want the books,” said Becky, noticing for the first time that a heavy chain and bolt barred them from entering the premises.

  “Then you can’t take possession of the shop, because until the last book is sold your agreement with Mr. Sneddles cannot come into operation.”

  “What are the books really worth?” Becky asked.

  “In his typical fashion, Mr. Sneddles has penciled a price in every one of them,” said Tim Newman. “His colleague, Dr. Halcombe, tells me the total comes to around five thousand pounds with the exc
eption—”

  “So buy the lot,” said Charlie, “because knowing Sneddles he probably undervalued them in the first place. Then Becky can auction the entire collection some time later in the year. That way the shortfall shouldn’t be more than about a thousand.”

  “With the exception of a first edition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence,” added Newman. “Vellum bound, that is marked up in Sneddles’ inventory at fifteen thousand pounds.”

  “Fifteen thousand pounds at a time when I’m expected to watch every penny. Who imagines that…?”

  “Someone who realizes you can’t go ahead with the building of a department store until you are in possession of this particular shop?” suggested Newman.

  “But how could she—?”

  “Because the Blake in question was originally purchased from the Heywood Hill bookshop in Curzon Street for the princely sum of four pounds ten shillings and I suspect the inscription solves half the mystery.”

  “Mrs. Ethel Trentham, I’ll be bound,” said Charlie.

  “No, but not a bad guess. The exact words on the flyleaf, if I remember correctly, read: ‘From your loving grandson, Guy. 9 July 1917.’”

  Charlie and Becky stared at Tim Newman for some time until Charlie finally asked, “What do you mean—half the mystery?”

  “I also suspect she needs the money,” replied the banker.

  “What for?” asked Becky incredulously.

  “So she can purchase even more shares in Trumper’s of Chelsea.”

  On 19 July 1948, two weeks after the bishop had returned to Reims, the official tender document for Trumper’s was released to the press to coincide with full-page advertisements taken in The Times and the Financial Times. All Charlie and Becky could do now was sit and wait for the public’s response. Within three days of the announcement the share issue was oversubscribed and within a week the merchant bankers had received double the applications necessary. When all the requests had been counted, Charlie and Tim Newman were left with only one problem: how to allocate the shares. They agreed that institutions who had applied for a large holding should be taken up first, as that would give the board easy access to the majority of shares should any problem arise in the future.

  The only application that puzzled Tim Newman came from Hambros who offered no explanation as to why they should wish to purchase one hundred thousand shares, which would give them control of ten percent of the company. However, Tim recommended that the chairman should accept their application in full while at the same time offering them a place on the board. This Charlie agreed to do, but only after Hambros had confirmed that the bid had not come from Mrs. Trentham or one of her proxies. Two other institutions applied for five percent: Prudential Assurance, which had serviced the company from its outset, and a United States source which Becky discovered was simply a front for one of the Field family trusts. Charlie readily accepted both these applications and the rest of the shares were then divided between another one thousand, seven hundred ordinary investors, including one hundred shares, the minimum allowed, which were taken up by an old age pensioner living in Chelsea. Mrs. Symonds had dropped Charlie a line to remind him that she had been one of his original customers when he opened his first shop.

  Having distributed the shares, Tim Newman felt the next matter Charlie should consider was further appointments to the board. Hambros put up a Mr. Baverstock, a senior partner of the solicitors Baverstock, Dickens and Cobb, whom Charlie accepted without question. Becky suggested that Simon Matthews, who virtually ran the auction house whenever she was absent, should also be appointed. Again Charlie acquiesced, bringing the full complement on the board to nine.

  It was Daphne who had told Becky that 17 Eaton Square was coming on the market, and Charlie only needed to see the eight-bedroom house once before he decided that was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life. It didn’t seem to cross Charlie’s mind that someone would have to supervise the move at the same time as Trumper’s was being built. Becky might have complained if she too hadn’t fallen in love with the house.

  A couple of months later Becky held a housewarming party at Eaton Square. Over a hundred guests were invited to join the Trumpers for a dinner that had to be served in five different rooms.

  Daphne arrived late and complained about being held up in a traffic jam on her way back from Sloane Square, while the colonel traveled down from Skye without a murmur. Daniel came over from Cambridge accompanied by Marjorie Carpenter and to Becky’s surprise Simon Matthews arrived with Cathy Ross on his arm.

  After dinner, Daphne made a short speech and presented Charlie with a scale model of Trumper’s crafted in the form of a silver cigar case.

  Becky judged the gift to be a success because after the last guest had left, her husband carried the case upstairs and placed it on his bedside table.

  Charlie climbed into bed and took one last look at his new toy as Becky came out of the bathroom.

  “Have you considered inviting Percy to be a director?” she said as she climbed into bed.

  Charlie looked at her skeptically.

  “The shareholders might appreciate having a marquess on the company letterhead. It would give them a feeling of confidence.”

  “You’re such a snob, Rebecca Salmon. Always were and always will be.”

  “You didn’t say that when I suggested the colonel should be our first chairman twenty-five years ago.”

  “True enough,” said Charlie, “but I didn’t think he’d say yes. In any case if I wanted another outsider I’d rather have Daphne on the board. That way we get the name as well as her particular brand of common sense.”

  “I should have thought of that.”

  When Becky approached Daphne with an invitation to join the board of Trumper’s as a non-executive director the duchess was overwhelmed and accepted without a second thought. To everyone’s surprise Daphne approached her new responsibilities with immense energy and enthusiasm. She never missed a board meeting, always read the papers thoroughly and whenever she considered Charlie hadn’t fully covered an item under discussion or, worse, was trying to get away with something, she nagged at him until she got a full explanation as to what he was up to.

  “Are you still hoping to build Trumper’s at the price you recommended in your original offer document, Mr. Chairman?” she asked time and time again during the next two years.

  “I’m not so sure it was a good idea of yours to invite Daphne to become a director,” Charlie grumbled to Becky following one particularly raucous meeting in which the marchioness had got the better of him.

  “Don’t blame me,” Becky replied. “I would have happily settled for Percy, but then I’m a snob.”

  It took nearly two years for the architects to complete the twin towers of Trumper’s, their adjoining walkway and the five floors of offices above Mrs. Trentham’s empty space. The task was not made any easier by Charlie’s expecting business in the remaining shops to proceed as if nothing was going on around them. It was a source of wonder to all concerned that during the changeover period Trumper’s lost only nineteen percent of its annual revenue.

  Charlie set about supervising everything, from the exact siting of the one hundred and eighteen departments to the color of the twenty-seven acres of carpet, from the speed of the twelve lifts to the wattage of the one hundred thousand light bulbs, from the displays in the ninety-six windows to the uniforms of over seven hundred employees, each of whom displayed a little silver barrow on his lapel.

  Once Charlie realized how much storage space he would need, not to mention facilities for an underground car park now so many customers had their own vehicles, the costs went considerably over budget. However, the contractors somehow managed to complete the building by 1 September 1949, mainly because Charlie appeared on the site at four-thirty every morning and often didn’t go back home much before midnight.

  On 18 October 1949 the Marchioness of Wiltshire, escorted by her husband, performed the official opening ceremony.<
br />
  A thousand people raised their glasses once Daphne had declared the building open. The assembled guests then did their best to eat and drink their way through the company’s first year’s profits. But Charlie didn’t seem to notice; he moved happily from floor to floor checking that everything was exactly as he expected it to be and made sure that the major suppliers were being properly looked after.

  Friends, relations, shareholders, buyers, sellers, journalists, hangers-on, gatecrashers and even customers were celebrating on every floor. By one o’clock Becky was so tired that she decided to start looking for her husband in the hope that he might agree to go home. She found her son in the kitchen department examining a refrigerator that would have been too large for his room in Trinity. Daniel assured his mother that he had seen Charlie leaving the building about half an hour before.

  “Leaving the building?” Becky said, in disbelief. “Surely your father wouldn’t have gone home without me?” She took the lift to the ground floor and walked quickly towards the main entrance. The doorman saluted her as he held open one of the massive double doors that led out onto Chelsea Terrace.

  “Have you seen Sir Charles, by any chance?” Becky asked him.

  “Yes, m’lady.” He nodded in the direction of the far side of the road.

  Becky looked across to see Charlie seated on his bench, an old man perched by his side. They were chatting animatedly as they stared across at Trumper’s. The old man pointed at something that had attracted his attention and Charlie smiled. Becky quickly crossed the road but the colonel had sprung to attention long before she had reached his side.

  “How lovely to see you, my dear,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss Becky on the cheek. “I only wish Elizabeth had lived to see it.”

  “As I understand it, we’re being held to ransom,” said Charlie. “So perhaps it’s time we took a vote on the issue.”