“Not much to tell yet because we haven’t had time to haul in an expert on vintage cars. The essential fact is that we have the remains of a car, it is in style one from the thirties, it is very swish, and we have found no record of its being reported missing. Beyond that is pure guesswork. It could have disappeared roughly at the time the house—Walbrook Manor—changed hands, but stayed within the extended family of the original builder: the Quarleses and the Fienneses represent two wings of the family, usually at odds with each other.”
Colin Winstanley sat, thoughtful, his fingers in a cat’s cradle position now that they had finished the canteen’s sandwiches.
“Any particular reason why it should be when the house changed hands?”
“Not really. The exchange was not amicable, it ended for a time any connections between the two wings. Tim Quarles had been an ambiguous figure with links to Hitler sympathizers, whereas the father of Rupert Fiennes, Montague by name, was an old-fashioned patriot with a strong interest in going to war, defeating the European fascists. Why do you ask?”
Again Winstanley considered over his cat’s cradle.
“What happened to your ‘swish’ car when war broke out? I know a little about that because I wrote a chapter about the LGI in wartime. There were two possibilities when it became clear that the petrol supply was not going to be continued as far as private cars and their owners were concerned: either they were put to work for the public sector—they became emergency ambulances, attending on air raids, fires, and so on. The alternative was to put them into storage—mothball them. As with fine gates and railings which, rather than being melted down for the war effort, were put in the stables or the barns and tucked away nicely—not hidden, you understand—”
“Oh, no, of course not. Preserved for posterity.”
Winstanley laughed. “Oh, yes, for the owner’s posterity. You could call it a sort of patriotism: preserving the national heritage. But you can understand why Joe Average, the man in the street, didn’t see it like that. Baldwin, the ex-PM, got quite a lot of flack by trying to save his wrought-iron gates from being melted down.”
“Interesting. So what you’re saying is?”
“Don’t jump to conclusions about the car and the date of the incident. If it was mothballed in 1939 or 1940—the family pictures, the Lely and the Gainsborough, were put in a bank vault, the more bulky treasures would go into unused buildings, attics, even caves.”
“And the great man concerned would pray that no question would be asked.”
“Right. And even more to the point, extremely good care would be taken of the bulky treasure—the Bugatti or whatever—so that when in 1945 or ’6 it was carefully removed from hiding, unpacked, and—hey, presto—”
“A car as good as new, ready to be driven again.”
“Yes—if they could get the petrol. It was still rationed, but people in the know could still get hold of black market oil and petrol. It had to be done with care and sensitivity, but it was possible. And when it was—abracadabra! A new old car—flash, shiny, oozing speed and comfort, and hardly anything on the milometer!”
“I’m grateful for the explanation,” said Charlie. “Do any names occur to you of people who might have done, or did, this sort of mothballing? Your father for example?”
“Grandfather. My father was an exemplary citizen, but he was still in his teens when war ended. No, you’re quite right about my grandfather. He was the sort of man who drives a Rolls and says he regards it as a patriotic duty. That’s what he did up to the declaration of war in ’39, and again from ’45. The great, the world-class surgeon supporting British industry by driving a gas-guzzling car. He was also, let’s remember, a wonderful surgeon—that at least was true. So he had done a lot of favors in the past, brought about by fantastic surgery. If he wanted a car mothballed, there were always ex-patients ready and waiting.”
“Is there anyone else in this part of the world with a connection to the Walbrook families who was likely to possess similar cars?”
“Well, you can rub out Timothy Quarles. Couldn’t have afforded one. Left the area as soon as the house changed hands. Montague Fiennes had the money but was too careful of his image to flaunt an expensive car doing ten miles to the gallon. He was wanting to go into politics. Rollses were definitely out for such Tories in the late forties.”
“Anyone else?”
Colin Winstanley thought again.
“Have you thought of Mrs. Isabel Quarles?”
“Is that the mother of Stafford and Graham?”
“Exactly.”
“No, I hadn’t thought of her. I thought they were one of the poor branches of the Quarles family tree. Then some seem to say she was mortally sick and died soon after the family’s stay in the Dower House. She apparently had an affair with your grandfather—”
“Not apparently. That was for real.”
“Yes. But it was hardly an affair likely to bring long-lasting riches.”
“No. I’m not suggesting that. But first of all she didn’t die. Not at the time of the change of ownership, nor yet immediately after the war. She and my grandfather were still meeting after the war. That was one of the reasons Granddad wasn’t wanted when LGI was nationalized as part of the NHS.”
“Why on earth was that? Not anyone’s business but their own, surely?”
“True. What wasn’t—or wasn’t considered—their own business was the fact that she had left her family and set up as a high-class-brothel keeper in London. With an offshoot in Manchester by the by.”
“Is that where the customer base was? I’m surprised by Manchester.”
“What can you do when it’s raining and all the streets are up? Rumor has it she was planning one in Belfast.”
“When was that?”
“About the time she left the scene. A year or two after the war she seemed to tire of the sex scene. First my Grandpa slipped out of the way. Wanted to put up a respectable facade for the Labour Party rulers. He was tired out as well: if ever there was a case of someone ‘broken down by age and sex,’ it was my grandpa, so they say. He managed to get most of the documentation of the enterprise out of the way though.”
“But what about Isabel Quarles?”
“She just disappeared from the brothel scene. I’d guess she found herself a more permanent man than my grandpa and went off somewhere with him. They do that, whores. Just get tired of the life. It gets to be too much trouble to keep up the pace.”
“And when was this?”
Colin Winstanley shrugged. “A year, a couple of years, after the war. My dad helped with the clearing-up of the premises. He told me about it much later. That was a big shock for Dad. He had to get a young doctor of vast experience to explain some of the things he found—sex toys and things.”
“And what was the brothel—essentially?”
“Just a cover and side earner for Isabel’s real business. There was some genteel blackmail, particularly of the politicians, but also of the big business chiefs if they were in the sort of business that had a healthy, family appeal.”
“And what you’re saying is that Isabel Quarles was the sort of woman—businesswoman—who might be driving a swish, gas-guzzling car well into the postwar years.”
“I’m saying it’s worth investigating.”
“How would you describe her?”
“Mad, wild, daring, disobeying every code, moral or social.”
“Nothing else?”
Colin Winstanley shifted in his seat. “Well, there must have been, mustn’t there? If she was just the madcap I’ve described, no one would have paid up when she tried anything. She must have had a responsible, straightforward, trustworthy side, or nobody would have thought of paying up. They must have realized that if she said, ‘So-and-so many thousand and that’s an end to it,’ she meant it and would enforce it. The victims probably came from a pretty restricted social background—people like Timothy Quarles, my granddad, top civil servants. They could do a bit of
asking around in a dignified whisper, and when they found she was reliable, they paid up.”
“And do you think she and Rose Patchett—”
“Who?”
“One of the maids at Walbrook who had Timothy’s child and seems to have tried a bit of low-grade blackmail on him.”
“Then in answer to your question, I doubt if any Yorkshire woman starting a brothel-and-blackmail in London would be wise to employ another Yorkshire woman. Down South, Northern accents are absolutely distrusted, and Yorkshire accents most of all. Very bad for business in all sorts of ways.”
“But Isabel Quarles probably didn’t have one,” Charlie pointed out. “That class of person never does. They go away to school and have it ironed out of them. Take Rupert Fiennes and his cousin Mary-Elizabeth. I don’t know if you know them, but they have not a trace of regional accent.”
“I take your point. You could say I’m a victim of the same process. Yes, Isabel and Rose Patchett could have joined up. Or then Rose Patchett could have branched out with a few ham-fisted extra demands. ‘Five shillings wasn’t enough, I want more.’ And it could have been her undoing.”
Colin Winstanley glanced at the clock. “I can leave all that to you, can’t I? You want to know about Isabel and I’ve told you all I know. I’ve got a bowel cancer to see to, so I’ll sum up. Isabel marries a member of the Quarles family, a second cousin of Timothy, probably dull, certainly not well-off. She has children, does her family duty, then is ready to break free of the family. She has cancer, or possibly invents it, maybe even in cahoots with my granddad. The family come to live in the Dower House at Walbrook—it’s where the poor relations were put; I learned that from my dad—and she went twice a week to see him in LGI. I’d bet a thousand quid she never paid him. When they went back home, life was intolerably humdrum for her. She had been spoiled by Rolls-Royces and top surgeons. She left hubby and the children and went to London. Maybe she took with her Rose Patchett, or more likely Rose was already there. There was a war on, but war meant soldiers still more separated from female companionship than usual. There was a nice little income to be made. That, I take it, is the background. Any details about cars, pools, bodies, you will have to fill in yourself. I will go to my cancer, which is even more monotonous as a part of my profession than the male member probably was to Isabel and her profession.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Charlie. “I’ll be as careful about what you’ve told me as I can be.”
“It’s not for me,” said Winstanley. “It’s for my poor dead father, who was sensitive on the subject. He thought people forgot his father’s brilliance as a surgeon and concentrated on his various love lives. He never faced up to the fact that ‘ ’twas ever thus.’ You can’t make a cancer into a page-one story.”
Walking back through the decrepit corridors and staircases of the Leeds General Infirmary, Charlie thought that this last comment was not quite fair: cancer can be a page-one story if the sufferer is well enough known. We live in an age of celebrities, alas, and few virtues and talents are needed to make a publicity-hungry man or woman into a national figure. And on a local level mere lust could make someone notorious. The elder Winstanley proved that.
Charlie scratched his head as he got in his car. Some other figure in the case resembled the eldest Winstanley in his pursuit of power or notoriety. Maurice something. Took over the song cycle after Ivor Gurney’s death. Pursued the great and not-so-good for their contributions. No—he was not himself a celebrity but he was a hounder of celebrities. Maybe he was not an art historian, but he could well be a hoarder of dubious artifacts. Policemen in the past had ridiculed the existence of millionaire collectors who hoarded “hot” paintings and sculptures purely for the joy of having exclusive access to them. Could Maurice What’s-it be one who serviced such men?
Worth finding a bit more about him.
CHAPTER 13
Art Nouveau
Charlie didn’t have many opportunities (wrong word, he said to himself) for contacting New Scotland Yard. A thick barrier of distrust and contempt existed between the policemen of the North and the South of England. To the South the North was a grim hellhole full of criminals with a gangland mentality, speaking in impenetrable dialect that would need subtitles if it ever got on television. To the North the South was a sewer crawling with drawling toffs whose own connections with metropolitan gangland made them near to impossible to work with.
Charlie, of course, had begun his police career in East London. He still had friends there, or people who had once been friends and could at a pinch be useful—especially if Charlie could turn the talk into an off-the-cuff briefing.
“Hello, Charlie,” said Detective Inspector Janet Forster. “Congrats on your promotion.”
“It took its time in coming,” said Charlie equably. “But when it did come, it was very welcome.”
“What can I do for you? Because I know—”
“I wouldn’t ring you if I hadn’t drawn a blank up here. There’s a modicum of truth in that.”
“ ‘Modicum of truth.’ I can tell you’ve got married to a writer.”
“She’d be delighted to hear you say that. She gets quite shirty when people describe her as an academic. Right—here it is. I hear you do a lot of work for the stolen-art people these days. Is that right?”
“About ninety percent of my time’s taken up with that.”
“A man called Maurice Matlock. Ring any bells?”
“Plenty, but all very old and cracked. He must have died round about 1970.”
“I thought he must be dead.”
“But the surname lingers on.”
“Matlock? I suppose I have heard of it.”
“Martin Matlock. Arts correspondent of the Daily Break.”
“Good God! Do they have one?”
“Oh, they have one all right. Wait—I’m just bringing him up on my computer . . . Oh, not very much. He seems to be a witness and an informer rather than a crim. There’s a mass of headlines here—must be by him and designed to give us a good laugh. ‘Covent Garden on the Game—Lulu’s Back in Town.’ ”
“Who’s Lulu?”
“The heroine of an opera by Alban Berg.”
“Sounds as if it’s a bit more bawdy than The Marriage of Figaro.”
“Much more. ‘Franz Comes Out of the Closet.’ Concerns a ballet star, real name Sam Pitts, who wanted to stay in the closet for the sake of his old ma, but he reckoned without Matlock . . . ‘Goings-On in the Carry Ons.’ Sexual doings behind the scenes of the famous British low-budget smut.”
“It’s the puns that get me,” said Charlie. “You have to be a moron to find them funny, but even more of a moron to think them up.”
“You are attacking a fine body of craftsmen there, Charlie. . . . Let’s see if there’s anything more serious than bad puns.”
“Hold on, Janet. Let’s get this straight. Who is this cretin? What relation is he to the thirties Matlock?”
“According to him no relation at all. This is not generally believed, and there are various speculative answers: son, nephew, bastard.”
“The last should be easy to prove. Why does everyone disbelieve him when he denies the honor?”
“Because he and the thirties man are so alike—not alike particularly in appearance, though there is a certain slimy resemblance, but in his interests: both are on the fringes of the arts world, getting what they can in gossip, and centuries-old speculations—‘Was Mona Lisa a Lesbian?’ sticks in the mind—and coverage of arts crimes, particularly picture thefts, if there is a sexual angle, or some suggestive angle concerning the well-heeled owner of the picture, or police incompetence.”
“ ‘Carry on, Constable,’ ” said Charlie. “I get the message. He springs to life immediately before us. What did you say his name was?”
“Martin Bernard Matlock—Marty to his readers. The father had Bernard as a middle name, so the connection didn’t demand much in the way of guesswork. Still, he denies it.”
“If the father was a dubious character, that’s understandable.”
“A bit silly, though, if it defies reason.”
“Well, thanks for the help. I’ll return the favor sometime.”
“Maybe. Our dubious characters have been known to have taken refuge up North. They return white as sheets or orange from Permatan. They usually talk as if they’ve earned an OBE. Ciao, Charlie!”
It was Felicity who rang the offices of the Daily Break.
“Could I speak to Marty Matlock, please.”
“He left the building half an hour ago. Won’t be back till Tuesday.”
“Any idea where he was going?”
“No, and I couldn’t tell you if I had one. Though with that shitbag . . .”
“Was he going to one of the stations?”
“Yes. I heard him shout ‘Euston’ to the driver in his master-to-slave tones. Taxidrivers hate him. Can’t help you any further.”
Felicity rang her husband in Leeds, and half an hour later he came back with a suggestion about the so-called journalist’s probable destination.
“First of all, the current newsworthy arts story centered on the Midlands is the return of the Hobden Lacy collection of three John Singer Sargent family pictures. Worth a lot, but not the fantastic sums you often hear of. Head of family denies he’s paid a ransom, but is not generally believed. Head of family is married to a Russian multimillionaire’s daughter. Used to be American dosh, now it’s Russian. Family seat ten miles from Coventry. When he’s in the area, Matlock usually stays at the Benison, Coventry. He’s hated in all the hotels he’s ever stayed at in the area, and Benison just covers it up better. See story with picture of the unlovely creep in today’s Daily Break. Anything else you want?”
“Do they have a crèche in the Hotel Benison?”
“Yes. Good job, it’s the Easter holidays. It’ll be open. Take a gun with you—a nice little number with pearls on the handle.”
A Charitable Body Page 15