The Merciless Dead

by John Burke

  ‘Could be something relevant among all the posh stuff. Fixing for him to bring a selection round?’

  ‘Says he’s got too many things for him to lug a portfolio over here. Suggests someone goes to his studio and he’ll give them a good look round.’

  ‘What does her ladyship think? Or Morwenna?’

  ‘They’re out. Visiting a collector I sorted out from the pile. Lady Torrance had heard of him, and agreed he was worth a follow-up. Meanwhile I thought I might go to this bloke’s place and have a preliminary recce.’

  ‘Watch it, girl. I seem to remember he’s done some sexy fashion shoots in his time. Probably try to lure you into posing in the nude.’ Luke looked her up and down in what might have been regretful reminiscence; or merely a kind of amiable punctuation mark in the conversation. ‘Not that I’d blame him.’

  Beth decided she was entitled to a breath of fresh air. The walk across the gardens and down the hill would provide a welcome break from that suffocating accumulation of letters, emails and faxes.

  *

  Randal Grant’s studio was at the top of three flights of stairs. When he opened the door he appeared all too convincingly the sort of young man Luke had conjectured. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired and with a ragged beard which did not conceal sensually smiling lips. Some might have called his grey-green chinos and stained blue corduroy shirt arty-crafty; but he was rather too hefty for anyone to risk doing so out loud. After they had shaken hands he let his fingers drift, apparently by chance, a few inches up her arm. Beth stiffened; yet the sensation wasn’t entirely displeasing.

  ‘Miss Crichton, right? Do come in to Chaos Towers.’

  The interior was cluttered with bits and pieces of photographic equipment, lamps, and a miscellany of benches and tables, some with large prints spread out on them.

  ‘My last girlfriend called it carnival night on a rubbish tip,’ said Grant.

  Last girlfriend … intimating what?

  Beth said: ‘What have you got that might interest us?’

  ‘Let me show you the general subjects first. The backdrops you may need, that sort of thing.’ His hand was on her arm again, steering her round the hazards on the floor towards a display along one wall. ‘You probably think you’ve seen these places often enough before. Always churning out pretty picture books of Bonnie Scotland for the tourist. And for boxes of shortbread. Keeps me in business.’

  It was true, many of the scenes were overfamiliar. Eilean Donan, Urquhart Castle, sunset over Ben Loyal. Yet there was a freshness about them that set them apart, as if a painter rather than a photographer was bringing out hitherto unnoticed colours, shadows, depths. Beth could not repress a murmur of admiration, only to find that it provoked a disturbing reaction in the way he looked at her, as if he too had found something to appreciate.

  There were also prints of works by the Faeds, Hornel, Ramsey and others. ‘All authorized by the owners or the relevant public authorities,’ he said in a mock solemn tone, as if to anticipate any query she might raise.

  ‘Not really relevant to the period we’re covering.’

  ‘Something a bit less pretty-pretty, then?’ His fingertips were very light on her arm as he steered her across the room again. ‘You could build up a selection of the genre painters — Geikie, Allan, Wilkie and one or two you may not be familiar with. There’s this sad one of a ship carrying folk away … and this is one that gave me some difficulty. Getting the right light to bring out the lettering without blurring it.’

  The photograph showed a hazed church window with a wavering pattern of scratches. A few initials had been incised more deeply. Running unevenly across the glass were scrawled messages: Glencalvie people was here … John Ross shepherd … Glencalvie is a wilderness blow ship them to the colony …

  ‘Scores of them, men, women, children,’ said Randal Grant, ‘driven from their homes and huddling in Croick churchyard, wondering where the hell to go next.’

  As if to emphasize the unremitting darkness of the theme, he flipped over a number of photostats of illustrations from old newspapers such as the Inverness Courier and the Military Register. One etching seemed to scream off the page at Beth. It showed a young woman sprawled on the ground with a horseman leering down at her from above. Her shawl and a part of her woollen dress had been ripped aside, showing the dark, bruised imprint of a horseshoe above her left breast.

  ‘Or something less grisly?’ suggested Grant. ‘Domestic stuff from the kitchens and firesides.’

  He produced a sequence of pictures of a flat iron, a cruisie lamp, a pair of button boots, a cotton weaver’s pirn, a crude carding comb, and a fragment of patchwork rug.

  Beth ventured: ‘And the Ross Tapestry. You wouldn’t by any chance have come across that on one of your various assignments?’

  ‘The Ross Tapestry. Mm.’ She could not tell whether he was seriously considering it or mutely jeering at her. ‘A lot of folk would like to have that in their collection. If it exists. If it ever did exist.’

  Hadn’t she heard those words before?

  ‘You do know about it, though.’

  ‘I’ve read about it, yes. Like a lot of things.’

  Abruptly he was closing a folder of prints, tidily stacking up a few loose photographs, and letting one slip to the floor. It was a full-length study of a nude girl, lying relaxed on a plumped-up mound of violet velvet cushions.

  ‘So that’s the sort of magazine you contribute to?’

  ‘When commissioned. No drapes or thongs or pouting lips. There’s nothing pornographic about the naked body itself.’

  ‘No.’ She looked at the set of his shoulders and the hair as dark and sleek as sealskin down his forearms, and wondered … and forced herself to stop wondering. ‘No, of course not. She’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Very.’ He was smiling, not quite mocking, but …

  What right had she to wonder whether that graceful figure was that of an old flame, or one still burning?

  ‘A pity,’ he went on airily, ‘that when she’s achieved the modelling status she’s set on, and perfected the correct sullen pout, it’ll take quite some genius of a ghost-writer to produce a readable autobiography without the word ‘me’ at least a hundred times on each page.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Ever thought of posing for some fashion shots yourself?’

  ‘You call that a fashion shot?’

  ‘Very much in fashion nowadays. But we could add clothes if you were so inclined.’

  His deplorably suggestive grin made her want to laugh. She felt ridiculously at ease with him, as if they had known one another way back and were getting fun out of meeting again.

  ‘Anyway.’ He was abruptly crisp and businesslike. ‘Perhaps you’ll bear me in mind for any photographic work you need during your campaign.’

  ‘I’ll have to discuss it.’

  ‘But of course. Big discussions. Brainstorming sessions. That’s how it works, isn’t it?’ At the door, he shook hands quite formally, then with unexpected intensity said: ‘From what I know about that neck of the woods, there’ll be people anxious to muck up whatever you’re aiming for.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘You’re aiming to keep alive the memory of folk who had a raw deal all those years ago. And appealing to their descendants overseas to visit and contribute.’

  ‘I thought that had been made pretty clear.’

  ‘Just so. But don’t forget the other descendants — the successors of those exploiters who did well out of that deal. They’re still around. And still with their claws on a lot of the land. A few of them may not care to have old memories stirred up.’

  ‘I think we can cope.’

  ‘I hope so.’ As he was closing the door he said: ‘I do hope so. Now that we’ve met, I wouldn’t want you to come to any harm.’

  6

  As a detective inspector, Lesley Gunn had never been easily intimidated. As Lesley, Lady Torrance, she was even less likely to be overwhelmed by anyone presum
ing to lay down demands too aggressively. Yet she had to admit to a tremor of defensiveness when in the company of Mrs Morwenna Ross.

  Not that the woman was aggressive, or too vulgarly flaunting the fact that she had a lot of money to spend and wanted everything done exactly according to her own impetuous wishes. But the undertone was there — what Nick, with his musical background, would probably have categorized as a ground bass, implacable and not to be deviated from.

  ‘Another interesting morning’s work so far.’ It was said flatly, without condescension but with no particular approval. ‘At least we know a lot of things we needn’t waste any more time on.’

  They were sitting in the lounge of her suite at Drovers Court with a silver pot of coffee and a plate of shortbread fingers on the tray between them. The room was high-ceilinged and airy, its decor in pastel shades and slender lines skilfully stolen from the concepts of Rennie Mackintosh. Everything about the building was spacious and relaxing, even though it was crushed into a traffic-choked square. Lesley’s own suite was smaller than Morwenna’s, but in no way cramped. Unnecessarily plushy, she thought, for the limited use to which she would be putting it. Going home at weekends when it suited her — a proviso she had laid down from the start — would leave it empty for a large part of the time. But this was typical Ross. Money no object, as had been made clear in her retainer for the job. Drovers Court had been an over-large and fading hotel, taken over and expensively reconditioned by Ross Enterprises for visiting customers, distinguished guests, and key overseas staff on visits. A suite was kept in permanent readiness for any of Mr Ross’s rare and unpredictable visits.

  Morwenna Ross had an impressive memory for what they had seen this morning. She had made no notes, leaving that to Lesley as a sort of glorified secretary, but over their coffee she was quick to sum up the items worth considering. A clan exhibition in the Old Town had yielded copies of old plaids and the addresses of several useful contacts. Buying pictures and souvenirs was all too easy when the provenance was doubtful, probably phoney; not so easy when the items were genuine. Sellers were often unwilling to admit their financial need to sell, so it all had to be done discreetly.

  ‘A few elderly folk may believe that selling us their trinkets will give us a psychic hold over them,’ Morwenna reflected. She had been delighted with a horsehair sieve, some of its rotted strands dangling loose, and even more so by a corpse candle and curse stone, sealed in a jar of holy water to neutralize its power.

  The back of Lesley’s neck prickled. Did Morwenna herself believe in such powers?

  ‘As for the painters,’ Morwenna went on, ‘most of the work was done in hindsight. We can use copies in the Interpretation Centre, of course. That one of distraining for rent —‘

  ‘Wilkie, yes. And Nicol’s rural scenes.’

  Morwenna moved the coffee pot out of the way and spread out a selection of prints.

  ‘That one has a wonderful atmosphere. The Last of England. So melancholy.’

  ‘Ford Madox Brown. Mm. But it’s a bit late in the day. And they’re fairly comfortably dressed. Melancholy,’ said Lesley, ‘but not embittered.’

  ‘Where’s that one of the old woman crouched outside her front door?’ Morwenna shuffled through the prints. ‘And the factor’s heavies pulling the thatch down. Pretty compelling stuff.’

  ‘I … well, I ditched that before we left,’ said Lesley warily. ‘I’m sure it was a phoney. Contrived for the market. The dates are wrong. Too late to be a contemporary of those goings-on, and even as a recreation it’s inconsistent. The background’s authentic, but someone has superimposed figures of people into the landscape, and removed the roofs of some crofts in the background to make out they were burnt.’

  Morwenna looked stony for a moment, as if about to challenge her. Then she said briskly: ‘OK, I guess I have to defer to your judgment. That’s what you’re here for, right?’ And to add emphatic approval, she went on: ‘Like the way you brushed off that cocky little runt who assured us that sad scene of an old man being thrown out was authentic.’

  ‘Oh, the lousy copy of a Landseer? Yes, that was a bit much.’

  Lesley had always been fond of that touching scene of an ageing drover getting ready for what would probably be his last tryst in Crieff. All too easy to twist its meaning when trying to impress a gullible client.

  Morwenna reached across the scattered scenes for a shortbread finger. ‘I guess we’ll soon be getting a whole lot more from back home.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘I mean, what’s home to me. People in our offices back in Canada, New Brunswick, all round there — coming up with the most evocative things carried away from the old country. You name it — flatirons, candlesticks, stoneware crocks, an axe or two.’

  ‘Souvenirs stood a better chance of survival,’ commented Lesley, ‘than the treasures they had to leave behind. Or had them stolen before they left. So poverty-stricken, most of them, that they couldn’t have left much of any value. No real value, either, in what they could manage to carry with them.’

  ‘No commercial value, no.’ Morwenna was suddenly fierce. ‘But historically they’d be invaluable to us. D’you know, one Cape Breton family took with them a small crock of earth scratched up as they left. Two of the women died of smallpox on the voyage and were buried at sea, but the survivors clung to their last handful of the homeland. And it’s still there.’

  ‘Genuine? The original?’

  ‘Oh, sure. But yes, I’ll need to call on your expertise when we get some of the packages. Too many first-rate craftsmen in Nova Scotia go in for manufacturing mementoes of the old pioneering days, for the benefit of the tourist trade. And I’d guess you’ve got some right here doing the same sort of thing, all ready and waiting for gullible folk revisiting their ancestral lands and getting dewy-eyed about scruffy little souvenirs.’

  ‘Kitsch has never been difficult to sell,’ Lesley agreed glumly.

  Their cups were empty. Morwenna had finished the last bit of shortbread. As if everything else had been merely a lead-in to the main meal of the day, she said: ‘OK, then. The Ross Tapestry. Made any headway?’

  Lesley’s heart sank. Privately she thought the existence of the tapestry was as likely as the survival of Arthur’s Excalibur in some Somerset fen. So many legends, none capable of being followed up.

  ‘I’ve been taking soundings,’ she said carefully. ‘But everything’s so vague. What exactly did it depict? How big was it? It couldn’t have been all that big. Who worked on it?’

  ‘It must have had a basic plaid pattern.’ Morwenna’s voice was confident, brooking no arguments. ‘Some of the older folk were highly skilled. Within their obvious limitations, sure. But they were used not merely to making and patching cloth but weaving and stitching ambitious patterns. Maybe they couldn’t write, but they did their damnedest to leave some sort of testimony to themselves in handiwork — as a matter of local pride, with a distinctive thread through their patterns to establish their provenance. And’ — she was becoming intense again — ‘that’s really the key to the whole thing. We have to find it. Make it the centrepiece.’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with some helpful folk on the Art Loss Register in London. They cover a lot of ground — leading auction houses, art trade associations, the insurance industry.’

  ‘And …?’

  Lesley could hardly tell her that her contact at the Register had wryly said how difficult it was to trace the movements of a missing work of art when there was no tangible evidence of that work having ever existed in the first place.

  ‘It’s not the sort of item,’ she temporized, ‘that shows up in most salerooms or house clearances.’

  ‘It has to be somewhere. Somebody, somewhere along the line, must have got their hands on it. Stolen by some goddam factor? Or saved, hidden away …’

  Her fervour was making Lesley uneasy again. Rashly she tried to lighten the mood. ‘Maybe we should go for a print of Winterhalter’s portrait of the Duchess of Sutherland. O
r Romney’s painting of her husband, Stafford. May as well have the top villains as the real centrepiece.’

  A cloud shadow across the sunlight pouring into the room fell across Morwenna’s high cheekbones, and her eyes, already a deep sloe colour, grew darker than one would have thought possible. She was in no mood for any joky asides whatsoever. Very stiffly she said: ‘We may as well have a quick lunch here, don’t you think?’

  The paintings in the restaurant were less controversial, though some diners might not have cared to eat under large studies featuring a Ross sawmill, a Ross-endowed technical college in a sylvan setting, and a touched-up, enlarged photograph of James Fergus’s grandfather sporting a vast flowering of mutton-chop whiskers. The tables were occupied by what Lesley instinctively classified as ‘men in suits’ and a few intense, breathy girls she hadn’t met but felt she had known before, in other places, showing up here in case they might miss something, or be thought not to be playing the corporate game loyally enough.

  Simon Ogilvie was in a prominent position and audible across the room, showing off to a guest. He broke off and rose self-importantly to his feet to greet Morwenna. ‘All going well, dear lady? Do let me know when we’ve got enough to send details to Toronto.’ He nodded down at his companion, a sandy-haired man wearing a lapel badge which must mean something esoteric to those who recognized it. ‘Wonderful nowadays, hm? Rattle off copies across the world in seconds.’

  And make sure head office notices how scrupulous you are, thought Lesley.

  Seated in the restaurant, Morwenna’s manner changed again. Not condescending and with apparently genuine interest, she was politely asking her companion for more details about her specialist work — with no hint that this could be merely a sly assessment of her fitness for this present job.

  ‘Forgeries,’ she said, looking straight at Lesley with an inviting smile. ‘They must make a fascinating study. You just have to let me know exactly when your book is due to come out.’

  It was a subject Lesley wasn’t reluctant to talk about. All the aspects of the research she had so recently completed, and now had seen laid out so clearly and convincingly in the proofs, were sharp-edged and real. She summed up the exploits of such brilliant craftsmen as Tom Keating, who had found himself so good at ‘restoration’ work that he attempted a fake Samuel Palmer, and succeeded so well that he went on to produce another eight which were accepted as genuine and brought in a tidy profit. Then there was the ingenious John Drewe, who contrived to get into the Tate Gallery reading room and the Victoria & Albert archives in order to insert phoney references which would ‘authenticate’ the provenance of works painted by a skilful colleague.