Death of an Elgin Marble

by David Dickinson

  ‘What did she mean?’

  ‘She thought that the whole performance was a colossal display of male vanity. It was, she said, like watching a male peacock with those iridescent tails with the markings of blue, gold, red, and other colours. They use the large train in mating rituals and courtship displays. It can be arched, as you know, into a magnificent fan that reaches across the bird’s back and touches the ground on either side. Females, believe it or not, are thought to choose their mates according to the size, colour and quality of these outrageous feather trains.’

  ‘Really?’ said Powerscourt, ‘the females do that? You don’t say, Lucy. And does your informant relate if the mating display was effective on this particular weekend?’

  ‘Good point, Francis. I was told, I’m afraid, that not one, but two female peacocks, known as peahens, succumbed on the weekend in question.’

  ‘God bless my soul,’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt.

  New York millionaires like to stick together. Who wants to share their piece of sidewalk with a nobody after all? And only in close proximity to their fellows can the millionaires indulge in one of their favourite sports, that of conspicuous consumption. What would be the point of banquets the Roman epicure and glutton Lucullus would have been proud of if nobody was there to see them and join the queue for the vomitarium? And when New York grew too crowded for truly vast construction projects, what would be the point of extravagant palaces, fit for a Persian emperor, in Newport or the Hamptons if nobody else could look at them and marvel at the expense?

  But there were exceptions to the clubbing together of the wealthiest in the land. Wilbur Lincoln Mitchell was one of them. He was probably richer than most of your average millionaires but he chose to live in upstate New York, a couple of miles from the military academy at West Point, in a very large farmhouse built by his grandfather to house eleven children, expanded and extended ever since. Riverside, for that was what his ancestors had christened it, looked down on the great sweep of the Hudson as it made its way to the Atlantic. There was a large garden, big enough for small children to get lost, and a tennis court for the more athletic of the adults.

  Wilbur Mitchell made his first fortune in railway tickets. He invented a family of machines that could manufacture tickets of any size or shape required for use on the railway systems of America. By the year 1905 he had cornered the market all along the Eastern seaboard. Four years later he had penetrated the West as far as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. His second fortune, even larger than the first, came several years later with a formula for cheap but effective soap, discovered by accident when searching for the perfect liquid to oil the ticket printing machines. In the meantime, he went to Europe. Mitchell spent a long time working out his own itinerary. He was not going to travel in some expensive touring party where everything was prepared for you and special guides were on hand in all countries to ensure you only had to speak English wherever you happened to be at the time.

  After a leisurely tour of southern England, he moved to Italy where he marvelled at the canals in Venice and the austere masterpieces of the Uffizi in Florence. In Rome he fell in love. He discovered a previously unknown passion for ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and the early glories of the Renaissance. The twirling torsos of the Baroque and the Rococo left him cold. And he discovered something more important than love in his quest for ancient sculpture. For some reason he never knew, Wilbur Lincoln Mitchell could tell the fake from the genuine with an unerring facility. He was like a water diviner with an infallible touch. The three ancient statues he bought from Rome’s most expensive dealer were, as their owner ruefully admitted after Mitchell had left, the only authentic pieces in his possession. He moved on to Greece. He watched the sun go down over Delphi, the colours fading fast from the peaks, the ancient force of the site pressing down upon him, the power of the gods numinous as the light faded and the mountains went dark against the sky. He climbed up to the Acropolis in Athens. He saw another sunset at Cape Sounion on the coast, the remains of Poseidon’s temple clear and bright, the blue sea stretching far away, speckled with islands, a glowing golden sky above with a glittering ball of fire in the centre of the horizon. At Olympia he purchased his fourth and last piece on this tour, a statue of a charioteer with vine leaves in his hair. In time all four were delivered to him in upstate New York, where he built an orangery with great windows to house them, modelled on the one at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, by the Thames in London. Here was the new home for the charioteer and Apollo from Mitylene, the Roman Emperor Hadrian and Athena from the first century AD. If they quarrelled or fought, if they went for walks or made love, they did so under cover of darkness.

  Mitchell never left any of the European galleries or sculpture houses without leaving his card and without a request to let him know of any future treasures he might fancy. If these delights were genuine, he implied, he could well cross the Atlantic to see them and, who knows, to buy once more. So great was his wealth, and so great his reputation as a man with an eye for the fakes that filled the market, that the transatlantic cable was never used for the first few years after Mitchell’s return to the United States. Then, in the summer of 1911, the year after the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, a slight whisper reached Riverside, high above the Hudson River. It came from a dealer Mitchell had heard of, but not met, in New Bond Street, London. It claimed that quite soon one of the most spectacular pieces of ancient sculpture ever to be offered for sale might become available, not to the highest offer at auction, but to the highest private bidder at the auction house. Nothing like this had come onto the market in over two thousand years. The piece had no name.

  3

  The letter from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police arrived at breakfast time in Markham Square. It was written in the clipped style Powerscourt remembered, as if Sir Edward Henry were sending a message from some remote mountain station where the telegraph was slow and unreliable, and the natives might come over the hill at any moment.

  ‘Dear Powerscourt,’ it began, ‘took call yesterday from Ragg at British Museum. Some important old statue has gone missing. Panic among museum people. Have agreed to help. Ragg most insistent officers had to be discreet and intelligent. My inspector is well known for reading a lot, particularly modern novels. Has been seen with books by that man Forster who writes about rooms with views and the end of Howard. Have suggested he call on you this morning on his way to meeting with Ragg. Inspector Christopher Kingsley. Joined us after resigning from Army. Probably passed port wrong way. Regards, Henry.’

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt to Lady Lucy who was finishing a piece of toast and surreptitiously surveying a Georgian rectory in north Oxfordshire in the pages of Country Life.

  ‘Well what, my love,’ asked Lady Lucy, reluctant to tear herself away from the four reception rooms and the eighteenth-century pavilion in need of some refurbishment – was the thing actually falling down? she wondered.

  ‘Well done, Theophilus Ragg, that’s what I say,’ her husband replied. ‘I didn’t think he’d do it.’

  ‘Do what, Francis?’

  ‘Sorry, Lucy, he’s actually called in the police. I thought he’d never manage it. The Commissioner writes that the inspector in charge, fellow by the name of Kingsley, will be calling here on his way to the museum.’

  ‘Is he interested in antiquities, do we know? Or is he a sportsman, forever playing for the Met Eleven at weekends?’

  Lady Lucy had long maintained that in the police force, as with the Foreign Office, any private expertise, fluency in Spanish for example, or knowledge of burglary techniques, would guarantee that you were never employed in any capacity where that knowledge might come in useful, like the Embassy in Madrid or a campaign to lower the crime rate in the East End.

  ‘The fellow reads modern novels, apparently. Commissioner believes he is well acquainted with the works of E. M. Forster.’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Lad
y Lucy who had not trodden very far through the pages of Where Angels Fear to Tread before giving up completely.

  Ten minutes later a tall, slim young man in a dark grey suit that was well cut but had seen better days was shaking hands in the Powerscourt drawing room on the first floor. He was clean-shaven and had the most remarkable blue eyes Powerscourt had ever seen. He was reminded of the closing words of a biography of some long dead Scottish statesman: ‘he had in his eye the look of a man searching for a far country’.

  ‘Christopher Kingsley,’ the Inspector said, bowing slightly to Powerscourt. ‘I’ve heard so much about your time in India.’

  ‘That’s very civil of you,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘it was a long time ago now.’ He longed to ask about the policeman’s service in the Army and his subsequent departure from the military, but felt a first introduction might not be the best time.

  ‘Now then, perhaps you could tell us what you know of the affair of the missing Caryatid?’

  ‘Well, my lord –’ the Inspector had a light tenor voice that was most attractive and suggested that he should sing in a choir ‘– the most important thing, so far as I can work it out, is that nothing has happened. The official story is that there has been no theft, the Caryatid in place is the real one, we cannot question the people on the spot who might have noticed something unusual.’

  ‘Have you been involved in a case like this before, Inspector?’

  Christopher Kingsley smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I have. I suspect that’s why I’m here. Late last year Sir William Sudburgh of Sudburgh, the chap who owns half the coal in Wales, had a painting stolen from his London home in Eaton Square. It was a half-length portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of one of his ancestors, dressed up in that bright red uniform they wore for the American Revolutionary Wars. Like the British Museum, Sir William wanted no publicity whatsoever. We couldn’t talk to anybody at all except those on the periphery, as it were.’

  ‘And?’ Powerscourt cut in. ‘Did you manage to apprehend the thief and recover the work?’

  ‘We did,’ Inspector Kingsley laughed, ‘but it had nothing to do with us, really. The thief, poor man, was a junior footman and desperate for money, deep in hock to the moneylenders. He took the painting to the nearest shop with paintings in the window and asked how much it was worth. My men had already circulated all the antique dealers in central London with details of the picture. The antique dealer was quick on the uptake, I must say. He suggested that he could only give a proper opinion about the value by consulting an expert. Perhaps the footman could return at ten o’clock the following morning? He could? Splendid. The poor footman was arrested before the antique dealer’s front door had closed when he went back. He’s still in Wormwood Scrubs. I know. I visited him in there just before Easter.’

  ‘Well done, all the same,’ said Powerscourt, trying and failing to remember any policeman of his acquaintance who had been to see his victims in prison. ‘I don’t recall seeing anything of the affair in the newspapers.’

  ‘No, it never got that far. Could I ask you a question, my lord? Do you think the Caryatid was stolen to order? That somebody had received part of the payment for the theft before it disappeared? You couldn’t walk into an art dealer’s like Linfords in New Bond Street and say I’ve got a Caryatid from the Acropolis outside, do you want to make me an offer?’

  ‘The honest answer is that I just don’t know. If you pressed me, I would say that is the most likely account of how the theft was organized, with a client or clients already in place and a price agreed.’

  ‘I see. Can I ask you another question, my lord, if I may? How do you propose that we divide up the various tasks we can carry out without letting people know that we believe the Caryatid has been stolen? The Commissioner said he didn’t think the four horsemen of the apocalypse would shift Mr Ragg from his obsession with secrecy. I shall, no doubt, be reminded of that when I see him later this morning.’

  ‘Have you any suggestions about such a division of the spoils, as it were?’

  ‘I have been thinking about that this morning, my lord. I think you should talk to the art dealers, the connoisseurs if you like. I think you should be our liaison point with the Deputy Director. He obviously thinks we policemen have mud on our boots and spend our time arresting minor criminals in the poorer parts of London. Well, let him think that. He will talk to you more freely than he would to me. I propose that we should put out feelers to our colleagues on the Continent and across the Atlantic, asking them to keep their eyes open, without specifying exactly what is missing. I think we should also talk to former employees who have left in the last couple of years. And I propose to find out all we can about the private circumstances of the leading figures in the museum. Somebody in that organization may have given information to the thieves after all. It seems highly likely that this was an inside job, or at least one where inside help was available. I haven’t seen the actual statue yet, but one of my colleagues went to see it last year and he said that only people from the inside or professional removal men could have taken one Caryatid out and put another one in. The job was too complicated for your common criminal.’

  ‘Did you say all the leading figures in the museum, Inspector?’

  ‘I did. And that includes the Deputy Director and the Director himself. Who knows who was short of money? Who knows whose private life could lead to blackmail? We shall, of course, be discreet.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt, thinking that the novels of this man Forster must encourage a suspicious mind. ‘Could I just make one request? I was involved years ago in a case involving art fraud. My companion in arms, Johnny Fitzgerald, is at present returning from Sicily and will be with me tomorrow. On that earlier occasion he developed close relations with the porters of the leading art dealers. They even showed him the accounts on one occasion, though Johnny rather doubted if they knew what they were doing, so much drink had they consumed. I propose to ask Johnny to do the same thing in this case.’

  ‘I’m sure that will be most helpful,’ said the Inspector, checking his watch. ‘Just one last thought before I report to the Deputy Director.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I suggest we tell Ragg as little as possible about our investigations. Maybe he will become curious. Maybe we could say that we will tell him what we know when he lets us tell the world the Caryatid has been stolen. In the meantime let him stay in the dark with his ancient Egyptians and all those volumes ranged round that famous Reading Room. It’ll be good for him in the end.’

  ‘Very well. One last query, if I may,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do the police have any inside intelligence about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre? I think that pushed Ragg into reluctance to have any publicity or to call in the police. Do you think there might be a link between the two crimes? Is there some international gang at work, stealing the world’s most celebrated pieces of art?’

  ‘We have had inquiries from the French police,’ the Inspector admitted. ‘But these were routine, asking us to contact the art dealers and so on and to report back if we saw anything suspicious. If the Mona Lisa and the famous smile are in London they’re pretty well hidden. I don’t know of any international gangs at work. Mind you, if they were any good we wouldn’t have heard of them, would we? I did ask one or two people at the Yard who are meant to ask about these things and they hadn’t heard of any gangs either.’

  The man in the velvet smoking jacket was sitting at the writing desk by the window of his hotel room. He had a blank sheet of writing paper in front of him. The man began giggling quietly as he started his letter. He did not put an address at the top.

  ‘Dear Mr Ragg,’ it began, ‘I am writing in connection with the missing Caryatid. I have the statue in my care. Today is Monday, 9 October. You have two days to follow my orders or the consequences will be severe. If you send us £100,000 by Wednesday, 11 October, you will receive instructions about where to collect the statue. Details of where and h
ow to effect the payment will be sent to you once you have accepted this very generous offer. For every day you do not comply with these requests after that date, the payment will increase by £10,000. By Saturday, 21 October the figure will have risen to £200,000 and The Times and the Morning Post will have been informed about the theft. The news, and the details of your own role in the affair, will be all over the papers.’

  The author paused and ran his fingers over his bald patch. The hair had not returned. When he started the next paragraph he was chuckling once again.

  ‘We know where you live,’ the letter went on, ‘we know where your wife buys her clothes. We know where your children go to school.

  ‘Any attempt to inform the authorities or to organize a payment supervised by the police will result in immediate action. That action will be violent.

  ‘I look forward to hearing from you at the address below.

  Friends of the British Museum. c/o The Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly W1.’

  The man read the letter three times. He put it into a plain envelope and addressed it to Theophilus Ragg, Deputy Director, British Museum, Great Russell Street WC. As he popped it into the letter box in the crowded street outside his hotel, attentive passers-by might have heard a faint sound of mocking laughter.

  ‘Atlas flycatchers! Black-winged stilts! Bar-tailed desert larks! Bonelli’s eagles!’

  There was a note of reverence, almost of worship, in the speaker’s tone as he mentioned the birds he had seen on his latest trip, and he began circling round the furniture in the Markham Square drawing room as if he were a rare gull on some Mediterranean cliff high above the sea.

  ‘Sicily, Lady Lucy, upon my word, Sicily, I’ve never seen a place like it for the wildlife. Fantastic, that’s what it is!’

  Johnny Fitzgerald, Powerscourt’s companion in arms across India and in all his investigations since, had just come home from a research trip for his next book on birds of the Mediterranean. His mind was still on some hot Sicilian mountainside, his binoculars searching the skies. But the case of the vanishing Caryatid in the British Museum soon had all his attention.