The Violin

by Lindsay Pritchard

  “The owner of the cheque book asked me to do it for him, sir.”

  The Magistrate found him guilty and he was sentenced to a short spell in a borstal in Rochester.

  Learning from his experiences that petty crime only produced petty returns, Harry began to construct a new persona for himself. This was a time after the ending of the Great War that, in the fluctuating cosmopolitan mix that was London, it was relatively easy to become someone you were not.

  Harry invented a new back story for himself which he learnt to carry off with suave charm and confidence. There was a hint of aristocratic parents. His father had been a senior officer in the Indian army but had come back to London after sustaining injuries. He had lived in London and worked as a successful stockbroker with a house in Chelsea and a weekend home by the river in Marlow. To avoid any prying enquiries, his father had latterly emigrated to Canada and his mother had died in giving birth to him, a flourish that was sure to elicit great sympathy.

  Of course his story could only be validated if he looked and sounded the part. He began to affect an upper-class accent, a social entrance ticket to many restricted milieus. He had calling cards printed with a fictitious name, of course neglecting to pay the printer. He included the prefix ‘Honourable’ and an address in Jermyn Street.

  With supreme self-confidence and peppering his conversation with names and anecdotes from society gatherings, he was welcomed in good restaurants and hotels. To enhance his image, he obtained a line of credit at Gieves the Tailor, Formal, Colonial and Sporting. A mature-looking boy with utter self-confidence, he had a range of tailor-made clothing run up for him. There were pinstripes ‘for business’, herringbone, and tweeds ‘for shooting and the races’. He ordered white tie and tails for more formal occasions, and even an officer’s full naval uniform, having convinced the shop that he had been a serving officer.

  Naturally these needed to be topped off with shirts, hats, loungewear and a smoking jacket. At another gentleman’s outfitters, confidently referring to his account at Gieves (‘In Savile Row. You know them, of course?’) he took out another line of credit for cufflinks, silk ties, tiepins and lemon gloves, which he had decided would be his trademark.

  Having now fully adopted the persona of a gentleman it was relatively straightforward to carry off more frauds, acquiring clocks, jewellery, barometers, cigars, spirits and other portable items of eminent marketability.

  There were one or two troublesome cul-de-sacs on the wide road to fortune. He was caught trying to fence a stolen necklace by a coppers’ nark in Highgate and appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Under a new alias of Buckland Boodle as a first offender, he was given twelve months’ probation and allowed out instantly to continue his depredations. And, as a known man about town – the man with the lemon gloves – he was able to ply his underhand trade amongst the unsuspecting leisured class.

  “Do you know Seymour Oakwell?”

  “Yes, we met at the Mills’ party in Oxford. Nice fellow and what a total scream!”

  He was amazed at how credulous and gullible people were. And from there it was only a short step from extracting money and valuables from the situation. Harry had a special talent for finding and exploiting secrets and weaknesses. He was staying at the country seat of Viscount Kemacott, having befriended his wastrel son over several bottles of Scotch in Brown’s in London. A party which, however, did not attract a bill as all the food, drinks and cigars were to be charged to the account of ‘Charles Hogwood’, who would prove very elusive to chase for payment.

  *

  The Kemacott estate was in Ayrshire and Harry was invited up for grouse shooting in August 1929, when the season opened. The shooting had been productive and a brace of pheasant appeared on each plate at a splendid candlelit dinner. The gentlemen repaired to the library and told bawdy jokes and anecdotes over much fine port. Harry had excused himself early, pleading an early return to London, although attracting much ribaldry for his premature departure. Climbing the back stairs of the south wing he made his way along the corridor to his bedroom. Hearing noises and whispers he stopped outside a bedroom door.

  “Yes, there. Oh please, just a little harder. Oh yes, touch me there!”

  Intrigued and aroused he sensed an opportunity. Of course he could pretend he had mistaken the door of his own bedroom in his well-lubricated state. There was clearly some country house adultery here and where there was sin there was money. Opening the door and shining his candle in, immediately apologising for his mistake, what he saw surprised even him.

  Lady Caroline Barlington, whose husband had unfortunately been detained on business in London, was splayed sideways across her bed like a starfish. Kneeling on the floor in front of her was her maid, naked, whom he had seen earlier in the day, a tall, good-looking girl called Miriam. She was now comforting her Lady with tongue and fingers, and Lady Caroline was evidently enjoying the experience. It was some seconds before they were distracted from their pleasures, engrossed as they were.

  “Oh, I do apologise,” leered Harry. “I thought I had opened the door of my room which is in fact the last on this corridor. Good night.”

  He made sure that they had clearly seen who had witnessed their illegal Sapphic goings-on, shutting the door and smiling a thin smile of satisfaction and lust.

  He found his room and went to bed, considering how he could best turn this to his advantage. He need not have taxed his brain. Less than ten minutes later, there was a quiet knock at the door. He opened it and there was a flushed Lady Caroline twisting in the wind, looking abashed.

  “I know you saw it, but I entreat you to keep the matter to yourself. It would be ruin for me. Sir James would divorce me. The press would hound me. It could be prison. Please will you keep this in absolute confidence?”

  Harry, with the smile of a man who knew he had the upper hand, enjoyed this scene of an aristocratic young woman being beholden and submissive to him. He felt himself hardening and pulled Lady Caroline into the room shutting the door behind her.

  “Well, I am sure we can overlook one little peccadillo,” he leered.

  “Oh thank you, sir. I would be forever grateful,” she said, visibly relieved.

  “But what’s in it for me, though?” he asked, meaningfully.

  He told her to strip naked and after a brief protest she did as she was told, standing, flushed, in front of him while his eyes devoured her body. Grasping her by the wrist he pulled her onto the bed and in only a few seconds had her ankles around her ears like a trussed chicken.

  “Please no!” she appealed.

  “You weren’t saying no ten minutes ago, were you?” he said, and with that he thrust several times and spent himself inside her. Now he had finished, he told her she should go. As she left, she looked over her shoulder.

  “And that is the end of it, is it not?” she asked beseechingly.

  “Yes, that’s the end of it. For now.”

  “What do you mean ‘for now’?”

  “Well, I am sure it is worth it to you to keep your little secret. A small contribution to my finances would not go amiss. Shall we call it quits at, say… a hundred pounds?”

  “A hundred pounds! That will prove very difficult.”

  “Ah well, I am sure Sir James values his reputation and that of his wife at a much higher price than that. What a scandal it would be! The newspapers would be full of it. In fact, I have a friend on the staff at a famous broadsheet who would pay handsomely for such a scoop. And think of how poor Sir James would be portrayed – unable to satisfy his lusty wife who has to turn to her maid for sustenance. Dear, oh dear.

  “No I am sure that you can find the money and then we can keep this little episode just between ourselves.”

  Lady Caroline left, despairing, but the money was found and dropped into his apartment the following week.

  *

  Harry
grew accustomed to the high life with a little blackmail here, a forged will there, and an inexhaustible line of credit for his own expensive lifestyle. He began forgetting his origins and family. His mother did write regularly to his poste restante address, which in the early years following his departure, he had found useful for receiving the occasional postal order. One note from his mother notified him that Henry Sheriff, the old boy who had called in that day, had sadly shot himself as a result of the trauma of his wartime experiences. Harry thought nothing of it.

  Why is she bothering to tell me? He’s of no interest to me, he thought, but continued with his misbegotten activities.

  But, obtaining goods by deception and selling them on was becoming small beer and very irksome. Harry, by now, had attached himself to a like-minded criminal called Ronan McMurtry, who was like himself: tall; well-dressed; suave, but with the added cachet of a lilting Dublin accent. They had come across each other in the Petty Sessions and had hit it off immediately. Soon they were as thick as thieves are supposed to be.

  Both had been aware of a clever fraud that had been perpetrated through the pages of the Daily Mail and which had been widely reported. A crook by the name of Marriott had appealed for investors to cash in on a non-existent technical invention that would cut the fuel consumption of steamships by 50 per cent. Complex calculations and financial projections demonstrated that this was a lucrative investment that could not fail. Many fell for it and advanced money for shares in the venture. However, a police detective became aware of it and, after a short investigation, Marriott was arraigned and sentenced. Nevertheless, Harry Farquharson and Ronan McMurtry, considering themselves intellectually a cut above Marriott, thought this an easy way to money. Styling themselves as the Talbot and Caroll Agency – Introductions for Young Gentlemen, they placed an advert in the Daily Telegraph in autumn 1930.

  VACANCY for a YOUNG GENTLEMAN, as private secretary to an IRISH COUNT. Must be of university education, impeccable breeding, well-groomed and prepared to travel extensively.

  This is a private arrangement and not employment. First-class travel and all expenses paid. Salary £1,000 per annum. References required.

  Applicants were invited to write their applications to an address in Greville Street, London, W1. Letters poured in from across Britain and beyond. Each applicant was offered the appointment, pending a check on the ‘authenticity of your qualifications and following receipt of five pounds in respect of Agent’s Fees and administrative expenses’.

  A second letter was then sent asking, plausibly, for a passport photograph as the Irish Count ‘would shortly be leaving for the United States of America’.

  The cash arrived by the sackful to the brass plate London address and was quickly removed. The perpetrators had given themselves enough time to disappear whilst ‘qualifications were being checked’.

  Eventually, the police were alerted but the Talbot and Caroll Agency was found, of course, to be a fiction. The landlord of the Greville Street premises was an innocent dupe and Harry and Ronan were long gone.

  They had swindled more than £3,000 from ambitious but gullible young men.

  Congratulating themselves, and looking for an adventure away from London in case the trail eventually led to them, they resolved, now flush with funds, to try their hand elsewhere.

  “Pastures new, McMurtry! Pastures new!”

  And they bought two tickets on the Cunard Line to New York.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Emil counted his blessings, and they were many: he was unscathed by war; he had a wife he adored; he was back in Berlin. Furthermore, his keen eye for a marketable violin and his entrepreneurial flair had never been surer, despite the privations of war, capture, imprisonment and the circumnavigation of the globe back to his roots.

  All those dinner table exercises kindly demanded by the father of the young Emil had been imprinted in his brain. Coupled with a love for the violins themselves, the players and the music, he found himself uniquely positioned at a time when circumstances in Germany and the USA offered him almost immeasurable opportunities.

  His first stroke of luck had come in Russia. A violinist called Louis Bohm had a remarkably fine Stradivarius, which he had taken to Russia and sold to Viktor Popov, Professor of Music at the Moscow Conservatoire. Somehow, in the aftermath, violence and upheaval of 1917, this had ended up in a pawn shop in Vladivostock. Emil, during their brief stop before boarding the railway to Manchuria and freedom, had chanced upon it. It was displayed in a corner along with other exotica such as an ancient gramophone, a prosthetic wooden leg, a display of medals and foreign coins and an ear trumpet. Recognising, he thought, the distinguishing marks of a classical violin he had negotiated with the pawnbroker, agreeing to take it off his hands for a decent handful of roubles, and trying to disguise his delight as he left the shop.

  Through the vicissitudes of rail and sea crossings back to Berlin, Emil hugged the violin close, realising that here was a chance that Providence had sent him to prosper and look after his wife and – soon to be – family.

  However, Berlin was unstable and perilous for a new business after the war. Emperor Wilhelm and the Reichstag had decided to finance the entire war by borrowing. Once victorious, so they reasoned, they would annexe the resource-rich lands, west and east, and impose massive reparation costs on the Allies. Such decisions later had unintended consequences. For the Germans, having lost and themselves expected to make war reparations, the decision inevitably led to the devaluation of the mark. Before the war, four marks bought a US dollar. After the war it was eight marks. By the time Emil returned to Berlin in 1921, one dollar would cost ninety marks and by 1922 the mark was practically worthless.

  In the financial chaos, many looked around to see what value they could get abroad in foreign currency by selling heirlooms. Emil was asked to secure real money by selling two valuable violins, a Guadagnini and an Amati, in London and Amsterdam, returning with pounds and dollars that increased in value daily as the mark plummeted. Yet an unstable currency and a nosediving mark was no environment for a stable and successful business. Europe was also poor and exhausted after the war.

  America was the land of opportunity and if you had a good business idea, nerve, charm, knowledge and flair, there were riches and financial security, whereas Germany was on starvation rations. To Emil, the United States seemed to have a groaning board of rich harvests, ripe plums, bumper crops, vintage wines and easy pickings.

  He also knew that the violins would follow the money. In which case, he reasoned, why would he not follow them or indeed accompany them on their journey?

  With his unique connections to newly impoverished German and Russian sellers, he set out in 1923 with a consignment of five violins and cellos and sold them all, returning to Germany with thousands of dollars in cash which appreciated in value daily. By November 1923, where once four marks bought a dollar it now required four trillion, making Emil and his clients inadvertently rich.

  Eventually, the German government regained control of the economy but Emil and Elena had decided to throw their lot in with the promise and the open vistas of the New World. German immigrants with their discipline and work ethic were welcomed in America and not subject to quotas, so Emil and his family moved continents. Soon he had a shop on 57th Street in New York, conveniently close to Carnegie Hall, which had begun to be the epicentre of world-class music and players. Emil became an habitué of the Hall, revelling in the contacts with musicians, dealers, philanthropists and buyers.

  He had a particular penchant for Italian violins. When he settled in his apartment above the shop, he estimated that there were about a dozen Strads in the whole of the USA. Thirty years later, from his country retreat he estimated there were, maybe, 250 and he had been instrumental in bringing many of them there.

  *

  The Roaring Twenties were a time of expansion, celebrity and massive profits for E
mil’s business. The New York Stock Exchange soared and speculators and collectors looking for a home for millions of dollars of paper profits now had grand houses built, collected works of art and also, to Emil’s benefit, classical violins.

  The bubble was bound to burst, as bubbles always do and the crash of 1929 dampened the animal spirits. Emil survived by closing shops and battening down the hatches. With his clever and counter-intuitive business sense, he saw it as an opportunity for nimble buyers to make realistic bargains with depressed sellers. And works of art kept their value better than stocks and shares. So Emil survived and prospered through to the 1930s.

  During his career, Emil inevitably came into contact with the Jewish diaspora, many of whom were threatened by events in Europe. Jews and violins were increasingly linked as buyers, sellers and players. When Emil had opened his first shop in Berlin before the War, a tall, clipped, correct man had appeared one day.

  “I am looking for a very good violin for my son Jascha,” he said. “I believe he is a prodigy who will astound the world of music but he has been scratching around on a serviceable but limited German instrument. I know that Italian violins are expensive but also that they are the best. However I have limited resources. What is the best that I can afford?”

  “Why don’t you bring him in to try a number of them and we can see what suits him and whether he can make it sing?” said Emil.

  The next day the man brought his son Jascha to try his hand. After several trials he settled on an elegant Tononi and the deal was done.

  Later the Russian-born boy, in circumstances that mirrored those of Emil, fled the Russian Revolution by way of Siberia, Japan and California and settled in New York.

  In 1924, Jascha and his father entered Emil’s shop on 57th Street. The smiles, the embraces told all their shared history of fleeing oppression and succeeding against the odds. This time, Mr Heifetz was happy to buy for his son, now a star, a 1742 Stradivarius that he would play for the rest of his career.