Death of an Old Master

by David Dickinson

  ‘1,’ he wrote: ‘Isabella, wife of Emperor Charles V of Spain. 2: Christ on the Cross.’ Then he wrote ‘titian’ without the capital T to remind himself that the paintings were not genuine works by the master. He continued through a whole series devoted to ancestor worship which took him from Number 3 to Number 41 across four pages of his book. A cavalcade of previous Hammond-Burkes, sometimes simply Hammond, at other times simply Burke, stared down at him. There were Thomases and Sarahs, Alices and Williams, Henrys and Constances. Most of them looked pretty pleased with their lot, apart from one old woman, painted by an unknown hand, who was scowling at the painter as if she wished he would go away. The artists were various, a couple of Knellers that looked genuine, a couple of Gainsboroughs that looked doubtful.

  But it was a painting to the left of the fireplace in the dining room that took his fancy. It was listed in his black catalogue as Number 75.

  The Holy Family with Lamb, the inscription on the frame declared. Rafaello Sanzio, called Raphael. De Courcy peered at it carefully. In the top left-hand corner was one of those imaginary Renaissance cities on the edge of a lake, two small figures trudging towards it along a dusty road. In the bottom left-hand corner was the lamb with the infant Christ sitting astride it. Holding on to the child was a Madonna in deep blue with a red blouse. Above her stood an old man, leaning on a staff, peering with adoration at the sacrificial victims below. The painting was suffused with a pastoral devotion. The Madonna, de Courcy decided, was not one of those Florentine beauties to be found in the Uffizi or the Pitti Palace. This one looked as though she might have tilled the fields or milked the cows herself. But Raphael. Was it a Raphael? De Courcy stepped back to inspect the picture from a distance. He took a small eyeglass and looked closely at the brushwork. He contemplated the composition of The Holy Family with Lamb. He looked out of the window at the river rushing past the terrace, the deer grazing peacefully in their pasture.

  Two thoughts were uppermost in Edmund de Courcy’s mind as he completed his entry in the black book. The first was that Raphael commanded very high prices. For some reason he always had. Murillos might drift in and out of fashion, Lawrences could come and go, but Raphael, along with Leonardo and Michelangelo, always sold for fabulous sums. Less than twenty years ago the Government had purchased Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna for the National Gallery for seventy-thousand pounds from the Duke of Marlborough. The second thought was that this house merited three stars in his private annotation of relative penury. The Hammond-Burkes were virtually bankrupt, if not worse.

  He strolled back through the house to greet his host. Hammond-Burke was seated at a small table in a sitting room just off the Great Hall. Outside de Courcy could see the weeds bursting through the gravel, the untrimmed lawns, the broken windows still unrepaired. He remembered the many damp patches on the walls of the dining room. Hammond-Burke was looking disconsolately at a pile of papers in front of him. Reading one or two of them upside down de Courcy noticed that they were bills, probably unpaid, possibly final demands.

  ‘What a splendid collection of pictures you have here,’ he began with a flattering smile. ‘Easily one of the best I’ve seen.’

  His host was not encouraged by the news. He continued staring at his bills.

  ‘Is there any chance,’ de Courcy went on brightly, ‘that you might want to add to your collection? Two Gainsboroughs are always an asset, four Gainsboroughs would be more than twice as good!’

  James Hammond-Burke laughed. He went on laughing. The laugh turned hysterical. He picked up a couple of his bills and threw them defiantly in the air. ‘Add to the collection, did you say?’ His face had turned very red. ‘Add to it? That’s good. That’s very good.’ He paused and put his hand to his face. ‘That’s the best thing I’ve heard this year, oh yes, easily the best.’

  He stopped as if he had said too much. The normal look of melancholy pain returned to his features. De Courcy waited. This was the crucial moment. In the early days he and William Alaric Piper had rehearsed the various ways these interviews about the compendium might develop. Piper had the ability to become an irascible if impoverished duke or a proud and haughty squire who would both be quick to anger if the wrong proposition was put to them. Englishmen after all are always loath to part with their possessions, however trying the circumstances. De Courcy thought that the Marlborough sale must have made it easier for them. If one of the foremost members of the aristocracy could sell the most valuable objects in his collection to pay his debts, then the smaller fish in the pond might feel easier about doing likewise. On more than one occasion in these rehearsals the Piper figure had thrown de Courcy out of the imaginary house for impudence and discourtesy.

  Sometimes de Courcy waited before he mentioned the word ‘sell’. Then a letter would follow his visit, after a respectable ten days, informing the owners that if there was ever any wish on their part to dispose of any of their possessions the firm of de Courcy and Piper would, reluctantly of course, oblige. On other occasions he struck immediately. If de Courcy felt the lack of funds was quite obvious, that family pride was not in the ascendant, he would strike at once.

  ‘Well,’ de Courcy said, thinking that he was not going to be offered a cup of tea, ‘there is only one other thing I would say about your excellent collection.’ He paused. Hammond-Burke looked up at him with miserable eyes. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck four.

  ‘If – and I’m sure it’s highly unlikely – if, as I say, you ever wanted to sell, that Raphael would fetch a good price.’ De Courcy smiled a deprecating smile. ‘A very good price.’

  Hammond-Burke’s reaction was the most unusual de Courcy had yet seen. Normally the owners protested that that was very interesting, but that they had no wish to sell. Only after some time had elapsed would a rather sad letter arrive at Old Bond Street inquiring about possible disposals. Even then they rarely mentioned money.

  Hammond-Burke looked up at him.

  ‘How much?’ he said. De Courcy was taken aback. ‘How much is that Raphael worth?’

  De Courcy slipped into his most polished mode. ‘Difficult to say immediately,’ he said. He was thinking rapidly of possible purchasers, trying to remember if any American millionaires were due to visit London shortly. He had heard that a number, including the Olympian figure of J. Pierpoint Morgan, whose appetite for art was almost as voracious as his appetite for money, might be coming over in the next month or so.

  ‘I would need to consult with my colleagues.’ Always keep them in the plural, he said to himself, bankers, lawyers, advisers, anything to make it grander than a quick conversation in William Alaric Piper’s little office in Old Bond Street. ‘However, even at this juncture, without such a consultation, I would say that it might fetch as much as thirty thousand pounds. Possibly more.’ De Courcy’s calculation of the selling price started at seventy-five thousand pounds. Prices had gone up since the Marlborough sale, after all.

  Hammond-Burke looked slightly less miserable. He bent down to retrieve the fallen bills. ‘I’d be obliged if you could find out how much it would fetch. And let me know at once.’

  As Edmund de Courcy made his way out down the long drive James Hammond-Burke watched him go. Then he walked slowly into his dining room. He stared at the Raphael on his walls. He remained there, locked in contemplation of his Holy Family, until the light faded some hours later.

  2

  Lord Francis Powerscourt had just sat down in his favourite armchair by the fire in the family’s London home in Markham Square. It was early evening. A black cat was asleep at his feet. Something was rubbing at his back. He turned round and extracted a very small Russian doll from behind the cushions. It was brightly painted in red and blue. Powerscourt looked at it affectionately. It must be one of Olivia’s collection, he said to himself, and opened his newspaper.

  Footsteps were sounding along the hall outside. Lady Lucy Powerscourt stepped slowly into the room. Even after seven years of marriage the radiance of her pre
sence often gave Powerscourt a sort of warm glow inside. She was reading a letter.

  She smiled at her husband. ‘It’s from one of my cousins,’ she said.

  Powerscourt felt a moment of exasperation as he contemplated his wife’s relations. There were so many of them. He had already met over a hundred and fifty. There were still twenty or thirty to go. He thought that by the law of averages one of these relations must one day become Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury or, better still, Captain of the England cricket team.

  There was a sudden gasp from Lady Lucy. ‘Oh no,’ she said very quietly, ‘how terrible. He’s been killed.’

  ‘Who has been killed, Lucy?’ Powerscourt felt a quick stab of professional interest. He had often joked with Lucy in the past that one day some member of the tribe would be involved in a terrible crime and he, Powerscourt, would have to investigate. Now it was coming true.

  Lady Lucy composed herself and sat down by the fire. ‘It’s Christopher,’ she said. ‘Christopher Montague. You know Christopher.’

  Powerscourt racked his brains. Sometimes he wished he could have an instantly accessible filing system with all the relations neatly tabulated beside their photographs. It would make life so much easier. Montague, Christopher Montague, had he ever met this Christopher Montague? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘Oh, Francis,’ Lady Lucy said sadly, ‘you are hopeless. You met him at Sarah’s wedding.’

  Which Sarah, Powerscourt thought desperately. There were at least four if not five of those. Then it came to him like the mist clearing on a spring morning. He saw a slight young man in his early thirties at a wedding reception, glass of champagne in hand. He was quite short and perfectly turned out in a grey morning suit. He had a small moustache. The mental image of the late Christopher Montague was telling his companions about the beauties of the Italian countryside.

  ‘Youngish sort of chap, not very tall?’ said Powerscourt hesitantly. Privately he felt that there must be at least ten of Lady Lucy’s relations who would fit that description.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Lady Lucy sadly. ‘That was him.’

  ‘How did he die?’ asked Powerscourt, relieved that the question of identification had been resolved.

  ‘He was garrotted. I think that’s what his sister said. Garrotted means having a rope or something similar pulled tight round your throat until you die, doesn’t it?’

  Powerscourt felt embarrassed that his wife’s knowledge of his macabre profession meant that she knew the meaning of the word. ‘That is what garrotted means, Lucy. Where did it happen?’

  Lady Lucy wiped her eyes. ‘He lived with his sister in Beaufort Street in Chelsea. Christopher wasn’t married. But he had a little flat in Brompton Square where he used to work. That’s where he was killed.’ Lady Lucy looked sadly at her husband. ‘You will investigate his death, Francis, won’t you? I’m sure the family would want you to.’

  ‘Of course I will, Lucy. But what did Christopher Montague do for a living? Did he have private means?’

  ‘I think he did have a little money of his own,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘but he did quite well out of his writing.’

  ‘Did he write for the newspapers? Was he a journalist with one of the papers?’

  ‘I think he did write for the Morning Post sometimes. But always about exhibitions and that sort of thing. You see, Christopher was just beginning to make a name for himself as an art critic.’

  Powerscourt wondered what it might be about an art critic’s life that could lead to his violent death. Surely, he thought, their days were spent in galleries and libraries, their eyes fixed on the higher glories of the Quattrocento or the allegorical masterpieces of Poussin. Then he remembered all those heads of John the Baptist presented on a plate to Salome, Judith and Holofernes, the terrible torments of the damned in Hieronymus Bosch. Maybe death and art were not so far away. But it could also have been Christopher Montague’s private life that had led to his end.

  ‘Francis, Francis, come back, come back.’ Lady Lucy brought him out of his reverie. ‘There’s something else.’ She pulled a key out of the envelope. ‘His sister has given me the key to his flat. I thought you might want to go and see for yourself.’

  ‘Surely Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the dead man is not still there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘He was only found this morning.’

  Powerscourt took the key to Number 29 Brompton Square and set out across the London twilight. He passed crowds of people outside South Kensington underground station. He could see the Brompton Oratory rising in its Catholic splendour at the junction of the Cromwell and Brompton Roads. The square was tucked in behind the main road, a pleasant collection of late Georgian houses with a garden in the centre.

  Number 29 was in the far left-hand corner, Montague’s flat on the first floor. A policeman was on guard inside the porch. After a quick conversation to establish Powerscourt’s credentials, he let him pass inside the house. Inspector Maxwell, the constable informed his visitor, was the officer in charge of the case.

  ‘Good evening to you, sir,’ said the Inspector warily. ‘May I ask what is the nature of your business here?’ The Inspector was in the kitchen, staring at a couple of clean glasses on the draining board. Maxwell was a tall, pencil-slim young man with a mop of curly black hair.

  ‘My name is Powerscourt. I am an investigator. The family have asked me to look into Montague’s death. I am a distant relation of his.’

  Inspector Maxwell shook him by the hand. ‘The Commissioner has often talked about you, sir. Good to have you on board.’

  Powerscourt had been involved with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on a number of his previous cases. He had always taken great care to maintain good relations with the police force of London.

  ‘The basic facts are these, my lord,’ said Maxwell, checking in his notebook. ‘The body was discovered by Mrs Carey, the lady who comes to clean the flat, at about eleven o’clock this morning. The doctors think he was killed sometime yesterday evening. They think the murder weapon was probably piano wire or picture cord, something very simple the murderer could have carried in his pocket. There’s another doctor coming any minute before the body is removed. Perhaps you’d like to have a look, my lord. It’s not a pretty sight,’ he went on, ‘but I’m sure you’ve seen lots of dead bodies in your time, my lord.’

  Powerscourt felt nervous as he opened the door of the main room of Montague’s flat. Heaven knows, he had seen enough bodies in his time, some mutilated in war, others desecrated in peace, but the prospect of finding another one in a pleasant London square within walking distance of his home did not appeal.

  The room must have been the drawing room when the house was a single unit, before it had been turned into three flats. It had high ceilings and fine windows. Bookshelves lined the walls. Slumped at a desk, his head fallen low on to his chest, there was the figure of a man. Christopher Montague might have been working when his killer struck. Powerscourt looked with distaste at the fatal marks on his neck, great weals of purple and black where the murderer had pulled the cord or the wire tight round his neck. Death must have been pretty quick, he thought. He noticed a mark on the leg of the chair where the killer might have placed his shoe to gain extra purchase on Montague’s throat.

  But the strangest feature of the drawing room of Number 29 Brompton Square was what had happened to the possessions. A number of books had been removed, gaps in the shelves sticking out like recently extracted teeth. Any papers left on or inside the desk had gone. Gently Powerscourt opened the drawers on either side of the knee-hole desk. They were empty.

  Powerscourt crawled along the floor, trying to see if any scraps of paper, any notes, might have fallen into one of the dusty corners. There was nothing. He checked the single bedroom. A fine collection of Montague suits and shirts still hung in the cupboards, but there were no books or documents to be seen. Gingerly Powerscourt checked all the pockets. Somebody had be
en there before him. They were completely empty. Powerscourt thought it impossible that anybody could have completely empty pockets in their jackets. He was always finding old bills, theatre ticket stubs, currency notes in his own pockets. Here there was nothing.

  He went back to the kitchen. ‘I presume, Inspector,’ he said, ‘that you and your men have not removed anything from the drawing room?’

  ‘Certainly not, my lord.’ Inspector Maxwell was quick to defend the professionalism of his team. ‘We haven’t moved a thing. And Mrs Carey, the cleaning woman, left everything exactly as she found it. She hasn’t touched a thing. Somebody seems to have removed some of the books, mind you. And the desk is empty too. Mrs Carey says he was always scribbling away there, as she put it. Do you suppose the killer took Montague’s writings away?’

  ‘We can only assume that he did,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But why? The man wrote about art, for God’s sake. It’s not as if were a spy or a diplomat writing out the clauses of some secret international treaty.’

  ‘I’m worried about these wine glasses,’ said Inspector Maxwell. ‘Mrs Carey says Montague hardly ever had any visitors here. He lived somewhere else. This was where he worked. But here are two glasses which must have been used since Mrs Carey’s visit yesterday. She says her Mr Montague never washed anything up in his life. But here we are. Two clean glasses. Two people having a drink.’

  ‘One of them the killer, perhaps?’ said Powerscourt. ‘And if that is the case then Montague must have opened the door to let him in. He must have known the person who killed him.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly, my lord. Not that it takes us much further forward, mind you. People usually know their killers after all.’