She rose to her feet and placed her handbag over her shoulder. “Come on. We can’t just stay here.”
Nat didn’t move a muscle. He remembered from his experience in the salvage operation of the two priceless Turners that tracking down stolen art required a cool head.
“It’s at times like this you need to take a deep breath. Think. Stop. Slow down.” He poured himself a fresh cup of tea. “Edmund is on his way to Long Marston. If he’s not too late, he’ll find him. If he is, us leaving here will make no difference either way. One way or another, Cooper has a minimum of a six-hour head start.”
Gillian sat down, glaring back from across the table. “I’m not just going to sit here.”
Nat delayed his response. He understood how she felt. Despite his retirement, he felt the same way.
“A man steals a painting for one of five reasons,” he reminded her. “Firstly, for sale. The criminal underworld. Now you may disagree, but I think that’s highly unlikely in this case.”
“We bought the Van Dyck for over £10m. It’s as valuable as most.”
“A large part of the theft clearly involved the Hesilrige. If they weren’t interested in the jewels, they would have taken something else. The painting of Hesilrige is much less likely to be considered worth stealing in its own right.”
“Assuming the hidden graffito doesn’t make it priceless.”
A wry smile. “Second to consider is theft for order. In the case of the Van Dyck that surely can’t be ruled out. Might I suggest, by the way, we attempt identification of the car we caught on CCTV.”
“I’ve spoken to Edmund; he said he’d take care of it,” she said. “What are the others?”
“Theft for ransom or extortion, theft for personal possession, and last but no means least, theft for opportunity. Again, in the case of the Hesilrige, personal possession seems fairly likely. If the Van Dyck had been taken alone, I’m sure we’d have expected a ransom demand.”
An awkward thought had entered Gillian’s mind. “Maybe the Van Dyck was opportunist and the Hesilrige to find the jewels.”
Nat shrugged. “Not impossible.”
“Or, maybe the only intention was the jewels. However, you said yourself, attempts to find the jewels have been ongoing for years. Maybe the theft was for the Hesilrige portrait because they knew about the message, whereas the Van Dyck was collateral in case they suspected someone who had researched the Hesilrige had already used it to find the jewels.”
Nat folded his arms. “You’re forgetting one thing. Andrew knew everything there was to know about the Hesilrige and the Van Dyck. Furthermore, he knows bloody full well we tried and failed to find the jewels. It doesn’t add up.”
Gillian smiled half-heartedly.
“Andrew is no art thief,” Nat said, replacing his cup on the saucer. “However, he is one of the finest experts I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He’d understand the luxury of owning a rare Van Dyck. I’m quite sure he wouldn’t be damn stupid enough to try to sell it.”
Gillian didn’t know how to feel. Her instinct told her Nat was right. If the theft was purely for wealth, he had chosen both the right and the wrong portraits.
“Okay,” she said, trying her best to remain focused. “You’re the expert here. You’re a respected art curator moonlighting as an art thief in a gallery you know well. You choose to steal a not-so-valuable piece, presumably without the intention of being caught, and you discover, clearly not to your complete surprise, there is a message concealed within the painting. You follow the leads, the police are looking for you…”
“But the police aren’t looking for him.”
“Ah, but how does he know that?”
“Okay, let’s assume he doesn’t know.”
“Let’s say he finds the jewels. Even has a chance to examine them. He is an expert, after all. What next?”
Nat moved his side plate away from the edge of the table and wiped his hands with a serviette. “Firstly, I think Andrew has no idea he’s been sprung. Like myself, he has a history of retrieving lost works. Presumably he thinks there’s still something to be learned from the message. If he planned to steal a priceless Van Dyck, we must assume he expected both that he might get caught, and that he intended to pocket the profits. After all, you can’t very well return to work and explain away a sudden multimillion-pound inheritance.”
“Perhaps we’re forgetting something. Cooper had an accomplice. If he wanted to steal the paintings on his own, he would have had every opportunity to do so before now.”
“Admittedly, the same thought had occurred to me. In one of my weaker moments I almost considered the possibility that poor Andrew was merely an unfortunate victim – a pawn in a greater plot. Once the jewels are found, if they are found, the Hesilrige portrait becomes both irrelevant and priceless. A buyer on the black market might find something about it they enjoy, but it’s unlikely to appeal to the criminal underworld at large. It certainly wouldn’t be considered usual collateral for a loan or a drug shipment. That gives Cooper two choices: keep it and hide it from the eyes of visitors, or return it to the gallery.”
Gillian was confused. “Surely that would involve admitting guilt.”
“Not necessarily,” Nat said. “Andrew has experience in these sort of things. He even assisted me in the return of the missing Turners. Andrew has contacts. Knowledge. We don’t follow his every move. If in doubt, what’s to stop him ‘recovering’ the portrait himself and gifting it back to its rightful home.”
Gillian sipped her coffee, her eyes never leaving her former boss. The way he used the inverted comma gesture with his fingers when he said ‘recovering’ made her think Cooper had concocted a well-thought-out plan.
Her phone was ringing, its display flashing. It wasn’t Edmund, but she recognised the number. Someone from the house at Mentmore.
“Hello?”
“Gillian. Daniel.”
“Daniel, what are you doing at Mentmore?”
“Is Nat with you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you both alone?”
“Not yet.”
“Find some place where you are. It might be best to put this one on speakerphone.”
24
Cliff didn’t have time for tea.
“Lady Elveston,” he addressed the lady sitting in the chair, accompanied by a polite bow. As a middle-aged art curator he had learned to shake off the middle-class stigma of addressing a social better, yet over twenty years of working at the gallery had been more than enough to teach him the woman was single-handedly their most important beneficiary and ally. The £4m bequest her late husband had left in his will remained the second largest donation in the gallery’s history, whilst the house itself surpassed any alternative storage depot in size, cost and elegance. While some of the lesser stock was permanently kept in one of the outbuildings – an isolated structure called ‘the battery room’ that had once formed part of ‘the gas house’ area once used to supply gas and electricity to the estate – due to the immense size of the main house, no fewer than five hundred portraits were presently recorded as being hung on the walls.
Including, possibly, a new one.
“Lady Elveston,” he continued, “I do apologise for the intrusion, particularly on a Saturday. I understand you received a new portrait yesterday. Delivered by Mr Cooper, perhaps?”
The woman mulled the question over, her expression suggesting she was in a daze. “Oh, of course, you mean dear old Andrew.” She brought her hands together, one swift bang. “He came over yesterday afternoon, just in time for tea.”
The news was exactly what he needed to hear.
“You know, you really ought to smile more, darling. A man should always smile. It takes years off your life.”
Cliff didn’t know how to respond. He had never been much of a smiler. Being brought up in a house of rules and discipline, the gesture seemed somehow unnatural. He moved toward the sofa, doing his best to appear relaxed.
“Of course, certainly, darling. But first I must insist you have some tea.”
He managed to finish in ten minutes, which was ten minutes quicker than his host. There was a clock on the mantelpiece, brown-cased, Victorian, the type that still needed to be wound on a regular basis. The constant ticking felt more like a tapping on the side of his head, making it impossible to concentrate. He thought about Gillian and the lost paintings, wondering if Cooper had been found.
He hated being rude, but he knew the situation was becoming more urgent.
“Lady Elveston.” He rose to his feet. “As always, it’s been a joy to be honoured with your company. However, I’m afraid I really must return to London. Do you remember what Mr Cooper did with the painting?”
“Of course, darling. It’s on the second floor. Let me show you.”
Access to the second floor was via the grand stairway, once considered the crown jewel of the entire property. Paintings from each of the last seven centuries lined the immaculate cream-coloured walls, accompanied by busts and antiques that ranged from the small to the large, the bright to the dull, including those owned by both the family and the gallery. Cliff recognised all of the paintings: there were several from the gallery, many having hung in the same place for well over a decade. It was common, at least temporarily, for something to be transferred from the gallery and placed in a miscellaneous part of the house, particularly when someone other than himself had been involved in the delivery.
Why the hell had Cooper brought it here?
Lady Elveston led him up the red-carpeted steps of the grand stairway and along one of the corridors that dissected the second floor. Most of the doors that lined the corridor were open, revealing a plethora of bedrooms and sitting rooms, filled to the rafters with antique furniture. According to the records, six people officially lived in the house, with the staff living in the servants’ quarters in the adjacent wing. It didn’t feel like a home in the usual sense. The unused rooms and National Trust-style prestige instead gave off something of a museum quality.
The portrait was oil on canvas by an unknown artist, circa 1650. The gallery had acquired it in 1896, along with several others. Officially the work was denoted Unknown man and woman.
The purchaser at the time had called it by a different title.
Oliver Cromwell and his daughter.
Lady Elveston led him into a sitting room with light blue walls, large character windows and a white ornamental fireplace that hadn’t been lit since the Second World War.
Cliff entered the room slowly. Over twenty paintings lined the walls, all of which were portraits. He had visited the room recently, a fortnight ago, but the layout had changed since then. A new addition had been added to the far end. The picture was of an attractive lady with dark hair and eyes, dressed in an elegant black dress in the style of the 17th century, and standing alongside a man with long dark hair. Cliff looked at the painting and gasped.
Oliver Cromwell.
The lesser known.
He was almost lost for words. “When did Andrew bring this here?”
“I told you before, darling. It was yesterday teatime.”
“Did he bring anything else?”
The woman shrugged breezily. “Not that I can recall.”
“Did he take anything away?”
“Absolutely not, he departed empty handed,” she said before throwing him an inquisitive stare. “You know you really are behaving most strangely today, Daniel. Let me get you some more tea.”
Cliff looked at the painting: the woman, the man, the fact that it was there. Finally he smiled. The portrait had been recorded as being in the gallery storeroom; it had been there over ten years.
Until yesterday.
“Thank you, Lady Elveston.
“But first, may I use your telephone?”
25
St Ives, Cambridgeshire
They arrived at 3:50pm, two and a half hours after leaving Long Marston. The drive had been straightforward, parking surprisingly easy. The layout of the town was centralised, the river running right through its heart.
The bridge was impossible to miss.
The view largely resembled what Cooper had seen in the picture. There were six arches in total, none of which were exactly alike. He had heard a story that the bridge had once been partially destroyed, ironically by Cromwell, and later rebuilt. The arches on the south section were more rounded, as opposed to the longer gothic portions on the north. The inconsistencies had become almost iconic, and caused a slight unevenness in the slope.
He wasn’t sure when the bridge had been rebuilt. Common sense told him it must have been completed by the time Cromwell buried the jewels, at least a month after the end of the civil war, but the drawing confirmed this was not the case. The shape of the arches on the north side matched what he had seen on paper; the two rounded arches on the south side, however, were not present in the drawing. Instead, a wooden drawbridge had once existed at the point where the fourth arch ended, manned by uniformed soldiers armed with swords and muskets. Access to the bridge was restricted to passing trade, their activities clearly under constant surveillance.
He knew Cromwell wouldn’t have dared bury something so precious in a ruin.
Aside from the drawbridge, little had changed. The water flowed southeast, lapping against the north bank where a flock of geese had assembled. In the drawing, there were trees in the background, large merchant houses on the left, and a half-timber building on the right. The merchant houses had long since vanished, the old making way for the new, the trade for the residential. Where once upon a time dark stone buildings stood overlooking the bridge, today yellow walls and brown roofs soaked up the late afternoon sunshine. The timber building remained in the same place; except for the windows, its appearance hadn’t changed. A small white boat was moored along the north bank, in line with the last archway, at the exact point where 300 years earlier a small rowboat had been tied to a wooden pole. Cooper watched as its small hull bounced against the gentle waves while its owner sat on the bank, gazing out across the town. For a moment Cooper became lost among the sense of timelessness: visually taking in the sight where two merchants had once participated in active conversation. The scene was uncanny. Familiar.
History repeats itself.
The building in question was a chapel. Cooper had recognised it the moment he saw the drawing. The chapel was located at the middle of the bridge, on the east side. Its stone façade was paler than the rest of the bridge and appeared undamaged. Two plain glass windows occupied arch-shaped niches on the north and east sides, another feature that appeared in the drawing. A dark rectangular doorway, cut into the stone at the easternmost point, was accessible via a narrow ledge and surrounded by iron railings, less than two metres above the water.
He assumed, the entrance.
Cooper had visited St Ives before. The bridge was smaller than he had remembered. As opposed to the wide double-lane roads that crossed most of England’s rivers, the narrow pedestrian highway in front of him was just wide enough to accommodate a motorcar though clearly not designed for them. Immediately Cooper understood Cromwell’s fascination with the site. Aside from it being the only access point into the town in the 1600s, a town Cromwell knew as well as any, the centre of the bridge provided a perfect vantage point.
Things had changed since then. North of the river, Bridge Street was bustling with activity. Citizens and tourists walked in both directions, many window-shopping at one of its retailers. Cars parked on both sides of the road, restricting access to one way. Its buildings shared the pedigree of its past. Half-timber Tudor buildings stood side by side with stone-built terraced homes, providing tangible reminders of four centuries of the town’s history. Across the bridge, where Bridge Street ended, London Road followed the incline down the hill and into the nearby countryside. If Cooper could sum the town up i
n one word, it would be ‘integration’.
Standing to his left, Jérôme was confident they had found the correct place. They lingered on the north bank for less than a minute before he ordered the march to the bridge. Despite the crowds, the bridge itself was devoid of people, allowing them a rare opportunity to enter the chapel unobserved. The hatches that had once formed part of a medieval tollhouse were still visible on the west side, close to the main entrance.
Cooper was wrong. The entrance was on the bridge itself, a single wooden door that had all the hallmarks of an original feature. Though the chapel was open to the public, he saw no sign of an entrance charge or an obvious closing time.
Jérôme opened the door and invited Cooper to enter first. The interior was small and enclosed, with white sparsely decorated walls and a 1930s timber ceiling that had once provided the base of two higher stories. A small wooden altar, less impressive in size and appearance than a desk from a Victorian classroom, was surrounded by three dark brown throne-like seats, and before a set of wooden benches set on a wooden floor. Four identical leadlight windows overlooked the river at equal points, their frames lined by simple Barnack stone and exterior lighting that provided night-time illumination.
Cooper gazed at his surroundings from the doorway. Sunlight shone brightly through each of the four windows and reflected off the walls. There were niches in the walls, a combination of square, round and pointed; he could tell from the type that once upon a time they had been used to house images of saints. Instinct told him they were as good a place as any to search for missing jewels, but nothing he saw matched the scene in the second drawing. The drawing suggested they were looking for a tiled floor, not wooden.
The Cromwell Deception Page 11