Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  ‘Every word I used to tease the Lord Chairman! She said it all to me!’

  ‘She said “lie back and enjoy a faked orgasm”?’

  ‘Not exactly that. Although perhaps she faked one or two for the benefit of old Pomfret. But she said, “The point is, was it painted by a very clever person and does it give you pleasure?” She wanted me to admire her for being such a beautiful forger!’

  ‘Then we can’t sell it!’ Maggie was determined. ‘Once we start flogging off fakes ...’

  ‘We might lose our jobs?’

  ‘I love you, Ben. You’ve got such a practical approach to art.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Not true that you’ve got a practical approach?’

  ‘Not true that you love me.’ Ben tried to comfort himself on the méthode champenoise and decided that it tasted like vanilla-flavoured Alka-Seltzer.

  On the other side of the room, under a painting of the Lily Maid unwinding her auburn tresses, Nick was assuring Roy Deracott that the Bronzino brought into Klinsky’s was dead right. ‘Of course, I’m only a humble wine-o, but Spoofy Saltery is my second cousin. We’ve got indisputable proof of provenance.’

  If it is right, Roy Deracott thought, there might be no harm and many advantages in spreading some healthy doubts about it. Such tactics had worked extremely well with the Raphael portrait.

  The Pater Institute in Oxford is a kind of artistic hospital, filled with the latest technology, where paintings may be examined, scrutinized and submitted to exhaustive tests so that all diseases, faults and weaknesses are exposed and lies detected. The world of high-art trading is often reluctant to use the Institute. Like patients who would rather not know about their fatal diseases, dealers prefer to rely on optimistic art experts rather than on machines that tell uncomfortable truths. The Institute’s report on a picture is only seen by a potential buyer who, not liking to admit that he was nearly taken in, often keeps quiet about it. The faulty picture then goes on its merry way to exhibitions, galleries and museums and keeps its shameful secret. Maggie wasn’t content to leave Sarah Napper’s picture untested. She drove over Magdalen Bridge with it in the back of her Opel, knowing that she had no right to do what she fully intended to do.

  ‘You got a note from the owner saying we can do this?’ Walter Starkie, the wispy man in a white coat, asked as he took careful possession of the slate. ‘Of course!’ Maggie started to search her handbag, said she couldn’t find it, offered to ring and have it sent over, but Walter, who had conceived the idea of asking Maggie to lunch at Browns, shrugged his shoulders and carried the perhaps Bronzino into the operating theatre. There it was to undergo ultra-violet light and the infra-red Vidicon system, have radiographs and an X-ray print taken and submit to examination through a binocular microscope. The pigment was analysed and the backing compared with a sample of Genoese slate borrowed from the Geological Institute. Maggie and Walter Starkie stood in a queue in Browns and had lunch together as this process started. Then she drove back to London to wait for the results of the chemical tests and the final report. Walter had spent lunchtime telling her stories of outrageous forgeries and trying to hold her hand. She felt no particular hope for the perhaps Bronzino.

  Matters of human medicine were being discussed in Pomfret’s picture restorer’s, where Dr Hanley, still wearing jeans and carrying his telescopic umbrella, had, as he said, just dropped in to Sarah. ‘I was passing. I thought I’d see how you were.’

  ‘I’m all right. Perfectly all right, thank you.’ She seemed in no mood to chat.

  ‘I was thinking about Mr Pomfret.’ The doctor sounded only moderately anxious.

  ‘Were you? I don’t think of him, very often.’

  ‘He was impossible, of course. One of my most difficult patients. But he shouldn’t have died like that.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he have died? He was old, wasn’t he?’ Sarah’s voice rose irritably. ‘Why shouldn’t he have died like that?’

  ‘Well, not as quickly, perhaps. He was taking the GNT tablets regularly, wasn’t he?’

  ‘You saw what he did. Spilled them all over everywhere. What should I have done? Watched him take them?’

  ‘You didn’t do that?’ Dr Hanley frowned.

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I’ve got this shop to look after, and all the restoration work. I didn’t have time to stand by and see he took his medicine like a child. I have better things to do.’

  ‘I see ...’ He looked at her doubtfully.

  ‘Well, other things, anyway. Did I have to see he took his pills? Is that the law? Is it?’

  ‘No. No, it isn’t. I was just worrying in case there was anything more we should have done.’

  ‘I’m not worrying. Thank you very much.’ She opened the shop door so that there was nothing to stop him leaving.

  ‘No. No, I can see you’re not. Well. I’m glad you’re all right.’ And, because he could think of nothing else to say, the doctor went.

  In the Old Masters Department, Maggie was reading out the Pater Institute report to Ben. It was long, thorough, extremely methodical and started: “‘The base appears to be Genoese slate and has passed all the geological tests. The ground and pigments have all the characteristics of mid sixteenth-century material. Radiographs and X-ray prints showed under modelling and sure handling of the drawing. The infra-red Vidicon system showed details which appeared spontaneous. The binocular microscope showed up coarse pigment particles consistent with grinding colours.’” When she had finished reading, Ben gave a long, low whistle. Maggie folded the report neatly and went to pay another visit to the much-visited Miss Sarah Napper.

  They were alone together in Pomfret’s workroom. Sarah was pale, with a smudge on her forehead because she had pushed back her hair with paint-stained fingers. She looked with considerable hostility at Maggie Perowne who stood with her feet apart, a white raincoat swung open, a silk scarf at her neck, her hair wet from the rain which drummed against the shop windows, looking like a young soldier in some distant war, ready to attack. And then Sarah was half laughing at her, as she said again loudly and triumphantly exactly what she had told Nick Roper.

  ‘I painted it, I tell you. Can’t you understand that? I did it! Sarah Napper painted your so-called Bronzino. Here. Here in this little prison. All alone. He didn’t do it. He didn’t even help. I painted the Allegory. The masterpiece. The picture he loved to look at. Sarah Napper is the great artist who did that!’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a great artist, Miss Napper,’ Maggie told her quietly.

  ‘Oh, no! I know you don’t. You didn’t like my picture, did you? My windmill against a cloudy sky. You despised it! You thought I had nothing to say. You were going to throw it out with the rubbish. But when you thought what I painted was Bronzino ... Well, then you were all falling over yourselves to say how brilliant I was. What a marvellous, gifted artist!’

  ‘How did you know I didn’t like your picture?’

  ‘Because I painted it. It’s not a Bronzino. It’s a Napper. Can’t you understand what I’m telling you?’

  ‘How did you know I wanted to throw your picture away?’

  ‘Because he told me.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Your boyfriend. Your precious Nick Roper.’

  ‘Nick told you!’ Maggie couldn’t bear to believe it.

  ‘Oh, yes. Very nice to me he was too. Bought me champagne! A great admirer of my work. But he didn’t want me to tell the truth about my great masterpiece. “Let them sell it as a Bronzino!” That’s what he said to me, smiling and pouring out the bubbly. “Keep quiet,” he said, “and we’ll go halves, won’t we, old girl?” ’

  ‘You’re not telling the truth!’ But Maggie, sickened, suspected that she was.

  ‘Oh, yes, I am. Can’t you take it? Is the truth too strong for you?’

  ‘You’re not telling the truth about the Bronzino. We’ve had a report. Listen ... No, just listen to this.’ Maggie began to read: ‘ “T
his is, indeed, the work of Bronzino. No forgery could come through our tests unless it had been done in the 1550s and left for some four and a half centuries.” That’s the result of the scientific examination.’

  ‘Scientific examination! I didn’t give permission for that. They asked me. I refused permission.’

  ‘All the same, we did it. Stop lying, Miss Napper. To me and to yourself. You can’t even paint a picture of your own, and you can’t paint a Bronzino. I understand how much you want to be a painter. We all did, perhaps. All of us fluttering round the fringes of the art world. You wanted it so much that you were prepared to tell a lie that might have landed you in prison!’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’

  But Sarah sat at her easel and said, with complete conviction, ‘You don’t understand anything at all.’

  Maggie put the copy of the report on the paint table. ‘I’ll leave this for you to read. Think about it and then ring me. I propose to attribute your picture to Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino.

  The Jewellery department at Klinsky’s was closely guarded by a number of electronic devices which only opened doors to those who knew the code numbers and pressed buttons in the right order. At that time it contained a collection of precious gems, in ornate settings, which had been smuggled out of Russia before the Great War, sold and re-sold, became the property of a Middle-Eastern ruler, and were now to be auctioned on behalf of his widow who didn’t think she would have much use for a tiara when she returned, as she had always planned, to Godalming, her place of birth.

  Lord Holloway had promised Camilla a view of these glittering objects. They both appeared in the outer office when an efficient girl called Caroline, who carried all the code numbers in her head, led them through doors which opened at the touch of her finger, and into the inner cavern which housed the most precious property. There, she thought it more tactful to leave them to browse.

  ‘One thing about my work at Come Into The Garden Foods,’ the Chairman said, when they were alone, ‘we didn’t often get to see diamond tiaras, once the property of a Russian Royal. It’s a bit more glamorous than inspecting the cold meat counter.’

  ‘I meant to tell you’ – Camilla never missed a golden opportunity – ‘Maggie’s going to give the iffy Bronzino a full attribution. It’ll be the story of the Raphael all over again.’

  ‘I gave her fair warning.’ Holloway looked anxious. ‘We can’t afford any more mistakes.’

  ‘I told you, Bernard. It comes from doing art history at Manchester. And not growing up with beautiful things. In Florence you learn to be so very sensitive to what’s right.’

  ‘That’s the first thing I noticed about you, Camilla. Your sensitivity.’

  ‘Was it, Bernard?’ Camilla purred.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of a shake-up in Modern British Paintings. It needs new leadership.’

  ‘Really? Who were you thinking of?’

  ‘Perhaps someone who’s grown up with beautiful things ...’ Bernard Holloway had in some ways a romantic nature which had often led to embarrassing situations. Now he unwrapped, with trembling fingers, the principal tiara which was, in size and shape, like a coronet. He turned to Camilla and placed it in a ceremonial manner on her bright, recently restyled hairdo. ‘I crown you, Camilla,’ he told her, ‘head of Modern British Paintings.’

  ‘Head of a department?’ Camilla was smiling with delight. ‘You know I never dreamt of anything like that. But, thank God, Mummy persuaded me to do the History of Art.’ She smiled at him and said, ‘Shall I wear it to work?’

  Ben Glazier came to the conclusion that it was about time that the Chairman saw the Pater Institute report and took it down to the third floor only to be told that Lord Holloway had just popped up to Jewellery. So Ben followed the Holloway trail and found that Caroline had gone off to do a lengthy job on her make-up, leaving the lists of code numbers on her desk with a delightful disregard for security. Less happily, the Lord Chairman hadn’t remembered the magic formula needed to release him and his friend from the inner chamber. When Ben came down the passage he saw a face peering, like an angry and confused fish lately added to the aquarium, through the glass panel of the door. Once released, the red-faced Chairman came stamping out, telling Ben that it was an unsafe system of working, and furthermore, he was nearly suffocated, and as for the Pater report he would study it at his leisure. When he looked into the strongroom, Ben saw Camilla topped with diamonds and apologized for interrupting her coronation.

  Owly Johnson’s beleaguered shop had been attacked again, and this time he had called in the law. Detective-Sergeant Strachan and Detective-Constable Lacey were on his premises and a plaintive Owly was telling them his woes. ‘And they pinched a super Edwardian epergne and the most delicious little chocolatière,’ he told them. ‘And that’s the third break-in in the last two months. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Well insured was they, Owly?’ Detective-Sergeant Strachan wasn’t over-sympathetic.

  ‘That’s not the point. There’s been a break-in! Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Until we find out different,’ the Detective-Sergeant allowed.

  ‘I’m not always here at night,’ Owly told them. ‘That’s the problem. Sarah Napper, the lady who works at Pomfret’s next door, she’s always here at night. I wonder if she heard anything.’

  ‘We can ask her.’ Detective-Sergeant Strachan was prepared to go through the motions.

  ‘That would be something, I suppose.’ Owly didn’t sound hopeful.

  Sarah was sitting in her workroom, but not working. For a long time she hadn’t liked to touch the report Maggie had brought her. Then she tore it into small pieces and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. Now she sat and thought about many things, including the visit of the doctor and the bottle of pills she had bought and hidden at the back of a drawer when old Peter Pomfret cried out for them. She heard the street door and walked into the shop to be faced by two large men and Owly Johnson.

  ‘Miss Sarah Napper?’

  ‘That’s her,’ Owly said and Sarah stood staring and terrified.

  ‘We’re from the Notting Hill police station.’ Detective-Sergeant Strachan held up his card. ‘Miss Napper, we’re investigating ...’

  ‘There was nothing illegal in what I did!’ Sarah interrupted him, terrified. ‘Nothing wrong at all. I didn’t have to watch over him. He wasn’t a child. He was an old man. Very old and he was drunk. He’d drunk the whisky. If he wanted to spill his pills all over the floor, was that my fault? Was it?’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Miss Napper. We only want to ask a few questions. It’s about a crime.’

  ‘Excuse me. You’ll have to excuse me’ – Sarah was retreating – ‘just for a minute. I’ll be back. Only be gone ... a minute.’ She went rapidly through the door into the back room and closed it. The police officers looked at each other in some surprise and Owly tapped his forehead.

  Sarah’s bicycle was in the passage that led to the kitchen. She pushed it out of the back door and across the blackened piece of earth, muddy from the rain, the store place for rotting frames and useless furniture, an old bath, a broken washstand and other abandoned aids to life at Pomfret’s. She pushed her bike through the gate in the garden wall and mounted it on the pavement outside. She began to pedal fast and then faster. She had no idea where she wanted to go. Her only thought was to put as much distance as possible between herself and the policemen from Notting Hill who wanted to question her about crime, the crime which had allowed Peter Pomfret to die, her crime. That was all it could be. She was entirely sure of that.

  She was riding in the middle of Westbourne Park Road, with cars hooting and swerving to avoid her. The lights at the intersection with Chepstow Road glared red in the rain. Sarah pedalled faster, straight across. The lorry, coming down from Notting Hill Gate, braked and skidded, but couldn’t avoid Sarah. The quickly growing band of onlookers saw a smashed bi
cycle under its wheels, and a foot wearing a pink ankle sock and a grubby trainer.

  ‘Another version of his famous Allegory “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time”, painted in the year 1555. This important work is fully authenticated by a note in the Vatican Library. The re-emergence of this Bronzino is one of the most important artistic events of recent years. Estimate, six to eight million pounds.’ Maggie was alone in her flat, working on the catalogue for the great evening sale in which the Bronzino would star. There was a ring at the doorbell and, when she opened it, she had a view of a smiling Nick Roper, a bottle of Bollinger in each hand, demanding admittance.

  ‘Hallo, Nick.’ She sounded very tired. ‘You’d better take your champagne somewhere else.’

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘Because, my darling, you’re enormously beautiful, but the truth of the matter is you’re a fake.’ She shut the door on him then and leant with her back against it, staring at nothing but emptiness.

  On the night of the sale the Bentleys and Rollers, the Daimlers and the Jaguars, purred up to Klinsky’s entrance and disgorged punters in evening dress, most of whom had come to watch other people spend money. A little cluster of reporters appeared round the Lord Chairman and some cameras flashed to cries of ‘This way, Lord Holloway’ and ‘One for the Daily Telegraph.’

  ‘The Bronzino is a marvellous discovery,’ Bernard Holloway told them. ‘We’re very proud of it.’

  ‘Who identified the picture?’ The girl from The Times was challenging.

  ‘We have a superb team in Old Master Paintings. Magnificently led by Maggie Perowne and our old stalwart, Ben Glazier. I’m enormously proud of them both,’ Holloway told her in his most avuncular manner.