‘Then he has no right to be sensitive about it.’
‘I’m trying to make sure that he never does become sensitive about it,’ she said.
‘Successfully?’
‘He’s better about it than I ever dared hope,’ she said. Then she spoiled it by adding, ‘So far,’ in a thoughtful tone.
*
When Mr Stoep arrived it was in an enormous Volvo estate — chosen, I supposed, for its ability to carry small to medium-sized lots on behalf of less well equipped clients. When I considered that many of the clients selling valuables would be elderly widows, I could see the logic of his choice.
With Ronnie as guide and furniture-shifter, we started our tour in the house. Mr Stoep admired the John Emms foxhounds but pronounced my estimate out of date. He put its value at twice my figure. At ten thousand pounds it would make good almost one per cent of Elizabeth’s loss. But, I reminded myself, the big is only the accumulation of a lot of littles or, in the Scots, mony a mickle maks a muckle. He put a disappointing figure on the miniatures.
We moved on to the outbuildings. From the first, disappointment was in the air. The previous house on the present site had burned to the ground many years earlier and very little of its contents had been saved. But the original family seat had been up north in an even more gloomy but otherwise similar baronial hall. When Peter’s wife, Lady Hay, had no longer been around to cherish ostentation above comfort, he had been quick to dispose of it, complete with all sporting rights and such contents as the purchaser had had a fancy for. Some of the smaller and better of what Peter had been left with had been used to furnish the new house. The remainder had then been stored in the stables of the original building, which had escaped the fire, and in the attic of the new house. Those in the outbuildings seemed to consist of items too massive for most modern homes, not of particularly good periods and mostly infested with woodworm, furniture beetle, death-watch beetle and a variety of moulds and fungi — everything, as Mr Stoep said, but dandruff. One table which would otherwise have been of value had been transported at some time to India and embellished with carving by some local craftsman. Try as he might, Mr Stoep could not bring his estimate of the value at auction to a figure which would contribute noticeably to our present deficit. We earmarked half a dozen pieces for the saleroom, in the hope that some rich eccentric might have a rush of blood to the head on sale day.
We adjourned to the house and climbed to the spacious, floored and lined attic. Here, under the broad skylights and the electric lamps, the prospect was a little brighter. Mr Stoep searched through the pictures, mostly Victorian oil paintings by artists of whom I had never heard, of gloomy subjects made gloomier by their treatment and by the bitumen which was leaching out of the paints. He made use of such cheerless phrases as ‘on a good day’ and ‘given a little competition between collectors’, but his total estimate began to grow by thousands instead of hundreds. Much of the china was chipped and incomplete although an almost complete tea-and-dinner service for twenty-four people, by Wedgwood, dating from around 1800, made a useful but still far from sufficient contribution. An early Lowestoft dish from around 1760 and a Sèvres chamber pot would have made substantial contributions but for some bad cracks. An Edward Clifford watercolour had at some time hung in too bright a room and was badly faded.
I was losing heart and on the point of apologizing to Mr Stoep for wasting so much of his valuable time when we came to the last item, half hidden by an art deco screen of singular hideousness and a Turkish rug which turned out to be sadly worn and moth-eaten. This was a long, ornate Japanese box from, I guessed, the late seventeenth century.
‘Fake?’ I suggested from the depths of my disenchantment.
Mr Stoep studied the decoration through a lens. ‘Not a bit of it,’ he said. ‘Perfectly genuine.’
‘Made for export?’
He sighed. ‘You would be so easy to rob blind,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wish I was a crook. This was made for the house of a very rich man. Tell me, how much would you hope to get for it?’
His words implied a considerable value so I thought of a number and doubled it. ‘Twenty K?’ I suggested. I waited for his cry of derision.
‘At that price I’d take three of them. And I haven’t even looked inside yet. If it’s what I think it is . . .’
He brushed away a layer of dust and lifted the lid. About twenty of what looked like glass slides in gold or gilt frames were slotted into place in a long row. He drew two of them out and handed one to me. I received it gingerly. It would be in line with our current luck if I should break one and spoil the set. The neat, gold frame held a thick glass plate embellished on each side with an exquisite painting, a landscape with figures, perhaps six inches square. The paintings were executed in lustrous enamel and the salient details were raised in tiny, ivory carvings.
‘Now how much?’ Stoep asked.
I tried to imagine one of the paintings suitably framed coming up for auction and visualized the bidding. Then I multiplied the figure by forty. The resultant sum was so far beyond credibility that I scaled it down. ‘Fifty thou’?’ I suggested.
He snorted with amusement. In his eye I could see the gleam of the true enthusiast on a hot trail. ‘Even for what you can see, you’re a long way on the mean side. Now let’s have another look. I’ve seen one of these before. Not as good, not as big and not in such good condition but I think . . . say a little prayer . . .’
He studied the example in his hand and fiddled with the ornamentation of the frame. ‘This hasn’t been touched since Victoria was a girl,’ he said. But he must have found the catch he was looking for, because something clicked and moved and I saw that the ‘slide’ was composed of two pieces of glass with a third sandwiched between. He drew out this third piece and held it very carefully for me to see. Again, each side was painted in glowing colours by a master hand, with the intimate little details raised in ivory, but this time the subject matter would have brought a blush to the cheek of . . . But no. Examples typifying sufficient breadth of mind are outside my experience. I can only say that I have never seen nor dared to imagine such lavishly erotic concepts. That these were intensely pleasurable to the participants, male and female, was more than evident from the expressions meticulously displayed on their faces. Even Ronnie was looking curious but mildly shocked.
Stoep looked up from the example in his hand. ‘I doubt if Sir Peter ever knew that these were there,’ he said. ‘This is not the kind of thing that was discussed and handed round within families. It was probably brought back from the Orient by one of Sir Peter’s ancestors, who would have enjoyed it in secret and then taken that secret to the grave with him. To his descendants, it would just be a box of rather pretty pictures.’
‘I’m certain that Mrs Ilwand doesn’t know,’ I said. ‘And I hope she never will. Just at the moment, after years of considering her late grandfather to be an outdated fuddy-duddy, she’s come round to thinking of him as a sort of latter-day saint. I wouldn’t want to sow any doubts in her mind.’
‘I would have thought,’ Mr Stoep said gently, ‘that the fact that the box has been gathering dust in the attic should have been reassurance enough.’
‘All the same, could you conduct a sale discreetly? We can credit the balance to the estate without being too specific about exactly what went under the hammer?’
‘We can do that, though you may be worrying needlessly. Women can be very matter-of-fact about pornography. Usually, they think it’s rather funny.’
‘Let’s not chance it. Her grandmother would certainly have ordered that it be taken outside and smashed up. Ronnie?’ I said.
‘I’ll haud my wheesht.’ He sounded rather subdued.
‘Your turn now,’ I told Stoep. ‘What value would you put on it now?’
He gave the glass pane a last, loving look and then gently slid it back into its slot and replaced both slides in the box. ‘I wouldn’t care to put a figure on it,’ he said. ‘For once, I’m at
a loss. I can think of several collectors who would give all their teeth for it and probably throw in a testicle as a makeweight. Get them competing in a private auction by telephone and you’re in write-your-own-cheque territory.’ He produced his ever-present notebook and pen. ‘I’ll send a van for the other items some time next week, but I’m going to write you out a receipt for this one item and take it away with me now. It is simply too precious to remain here, now that we may have drawn attention to the possible existence of something valuable.’
We made a very quick inspection of all the inner slides — it had occurred to me that Mr Stoep or one of his minions might be tempted to make off with all but the two we had seen and swear that the others must have been sold or damaged many years ago. I made sure that the receipt recorded the fact that the set was complete and undamaged. ‘How long before we can expect to see the money?’ I asked.
‘To realize its full value, we must make haste slowly. At a guess, some time early in the New Year.’
We left it at that. I had Ronnie carry the box down to Mr Stoep’s car and I preceded him down the steep little stair just in case he tripped on the way down. I might still mend again, I felt, but all that glass would not.
An accident between Newton Lauder and Edinburgh would result in almost infinite complications. Before Mr Stoep left, I took him into the vacant sitting room and made him phone his insurers to arrange special cover. The value that he put on the Japanese box for insurance purposes almost put me into a state of shock but his insurers seemed to take it as a matter of course.
I watched him drive away, just to reassure myself that he was driving with appropriate care. I had a little bet with myself that before he was ten miles up the road he would pull in to the verge and have a private gloat over the hoard. I considered making it a condition of the sale that I should receive a set of photographs. But then I thought of Isobel’s face if she came across them after my death and I put the idea out of my mind.
Elizabeth’s inheritance seemed secure again. In my relief, I was walking six inches above the floor. All the same, when Elizabeth asked me at dinner how we had got on I only said that things looked hopeful. In part, this was because Joanna was in the room, serving the main course; but also because, in the antiques business, the old proverb about cups and lips applies many times over. A second opinion might pronounce the cabinet a fake. Or the Hay family title to it might be disputed. Or a scandal in the media might result in no one bidding for it. I had no wish to see Elizabeth indulging in extravagant investments on the basis of a windfall which might never arrive.
‘The signs,’ I said when Joanna had left, ‘are that you can meet your obligations and that we may not have to borrow from our lottery winner for as long as I feared.’
‘But I have to tell Mrs Ombleby not to count on my backing?’
Rather than risk seeing Elizabeth lose the chance of a profitable investment because of my caution, I had to follow a compromise course. ‘Stay in touch with her. You never know.’ I decided to borrow a couple of phrases from Mr Stoep. ‘On a good day, and given a little competition between collectors, anything can happen.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘I’ll send her an e-mail, holding out hope.’
That caught my attention. ‘You’ve been exchanging e-mails with her? Is she — what do they call it? — computer-literate?’
‘Very,’ Elizabeth said, laughing. ‘She used to teach computing at one of the technical colleges. Just now she’s working full time on the computer programs for the new business. They have to gather up all the best recipes and allow for people who don’t like this or that, for visitors at one meal but not the others that day, and they have to make allowances for vegetarians and diabetics and vegans. And it all needs to be digitized, so that somebody can look in the menu catalogue and phone or e-mail some simple codes. Keeping it simple can get very complicated.’
I could see what she meant. I was on the verge of pointing out that Mrs Ombleby would seem to be one person who knew the e-mail address and was trying to raise huge sums of money, but Elizabeth’s next words distracted me. ‘One of those paintings was believed to be by Raeburn,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that right?’ she added to Duncan.
‘Don’t bring me into it,’ Duncan said placidly. ‘It’s your money and your heirlooms. I only know what you’ve told me.’
‘School of,’ I told Elizabeth. ‘And not a very apt pupil.’ Then I realized that a reputed Raeburn might make a satisfying explanation for an unexpectedly large windfall. I took comfort from the fact that the sale of a collection of antique Japanese pornography was unlikely to be the subject of a press release. I preferred her never to know that her grandfather, whether he knew it or not, had bequeathed to her about forty pieces of top quality erotic art. ‘But that’s only my opinion,’ I added hastily. ‘We’ll have to see what the experts make of it. I think you’ll be able to go ahead with your warning reflectors.’
‘Now?’ she asked quickly.
‘Not yet,’ I said cautiously. ‘I don’t think you could get it done in time for most of this season’s long hours of darkness anyway. Did you make any progress tracing the e-mails?’
She looked smug. ‘A little. The e-mail to me definitely originated in Britain. Code one nine four is the UK. And they used the service provider Demon. I couldn’t make head nor tail of anything else. I thought we’d wait until we’d seen Ian.’
‘We’ve already waited about four days,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose another will matter. We’ll see Ian together. Then, when you can escape, try to leave me alone with him and I’ll see what else I can find out.’
Elizabeth’s mood had improved markedly, perhaps in celebration of her modest success. Her manner became flirtatious and Duncan, seeing the resumption of marital relations as a very real prospect, responded. My own mood, following Mr Stoep’s discovery, was already upbeat. We had another glass of wine apiece and exchanged mildly risqué stories.
Ian brought the jollity to an end by arriving as we finished our meal. He brought with him an untidily dressed young woman with a dumpy figure and rather coarse features who yet managed to exude sex appeal. This puzzled me at first until I pinned it down as being the outcome of full lips, perfect skin and eyelids which drooped over large and lustrous eyes. This appeal was not just my uncertain opinion but was visibly echoed by Duncan and I saw Elizabeth’s hackles rise. Ian introduced her as WDC McLure. Deborah had already fed them both, Ian explained, declining the offer of coffee on their joint behalves.
We settled in the study.
‘I brought Miss McLure along because she has relevant expertise,’ Ian said. ‘She has a computing degree from Strathclyde and we met on the course on computer fraud. She’s been in on several computer fraud cases including a major embezzlement.’
Miss McLure looked modest.
‘Glad to have you along,’ I told her. She smiled faintly but remained silent.
‘It’s a stroke of luck that I could borrow her from Edinburgh,’ Ian said. ‘She was free and she came straight away. I’ve told her the background in strictest confidence. So . . . what fresh news do you have for us?’
Elizabeth and Duncan looked at me. I found it strange that they should defer to me in an area where their expertise was so much greater than mine. Apparently the honour was mine because I had noticed the first discrepancy. ‘Nothing seemed to be happening,’ I said, ‘so I had a good look at two versions of the e-mail, the one that was sent to Mrs Ilwand and another which I had been given in Edinburgh. I took a close look at the addresses. These are usually taken on trust, which I suppose is why nobody seems to have noticed two differences. One of the few things I know about e-mail addresses is that you have to get every letter, every punctuation mark and any spaces right or the computers don’t recognize it. But take a look for yourselves. There’s a spelling mistake and the omission of a capital letter. Perhaps there’s some other explanation, but I suspect that somebody was duplicating the original fraud and made inconspicuous chan
ges to the address in order to route the replies back to himself. Then Mrs Ilwand took a good look at the rest of the gobbledegook following the address and discovered that hers originated in Britain whereas we understood that the main series comes from Canada. What we want to know is, do we wait for it to come to the front of the SFO queue, do we call it to their attention now in the hope that they’ll give it priority or do we look into it ourselves?’
Ian and WDC McLure pored over the two papers. ‘My guess would be the same as yours,’ Miss McLure said suddenly. It was immediately obvious why she was sparing in her use of words. Her voice was musical but her accent was atrocious, stemming from Glasgow at its discordant worst. At least, I decided, she was not trying to hide it under that veneer of gentility which is so much more demeaning than the natural voice. ‘The one to Mrs Ilwand did come from a different source, originating in the UK. And the other one is Canadian. That, of itself, isn’t conclusive, of course. Anyone could have sent any of them from anywhere. It’s even possible to route messages through somebody else’s mainframe. But the indications of a different point of origin are certainly there.’
Elizabeth, on the introduction into her home of another young woman, and one gifted with more insidious sex appeal than herself, had been looking distinctly put out, but now she brightened again. I thought that the feet of clay — in the form of the atrocious accent — might have had a lot to do with it. ‘That’s what I thought,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And it came through Demon, another service provider. I called Demon, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me anything about the source.’
‘We can find out where it came from,’ said the WDC. ‘We can probably find what identity he gave himself. Not that that’ll get us very far on its own. There are too many ways to break the trail, but I dare say we can get there eventually.’ She looked at her cheap, digital watch. ‘But not tonight. The banking day ends at five and the out-of-hours staff at the service providers can’t find their own bums in the dark to scratch them. I’ll make a start in the morning. Don’t expect miracles.’
Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12) Page 13