‘Have you any idea what he was working on at the time of his death? A book or an article for the newspapers or magazines?’
Jenkins replied that he had no idea what his friend was working on at the time of his murder.
‘I mustn’t keep you any longer,’ said Powerscourt. ‘One last question. Did he belong to any clubs in London? Anywhere he might have gone to relax and chat to his friends?’
‘Christopher wasn’t a very clubbable sort of man,’ Jenkins said. ‘I think he belonged to the Athenaeum, but he didn’t go there much. He sometimes said that his favourite place in London was the reading room of the London Library in St James’s Square.’
As Jenkins left, a puzzled Powerscourt asked if he could consult him again. ‘Of course,’ had been his reply. ‘I could take you to Christopher’s favourite place in Oxford. But it won’t give you any clues to his death.’
5
The Raphael Holy Family was going home. Not to Florence or to Rome, but to the English country house whose walls it had graced for the past two hundred years. Wrapped innumerable times in soft cloth and rolls of thick brown paper, tightly secured with heavy string, it nestled between two men in a first class railway carriage en route from London to Warwick.
To its left, by the window, William Alaric Piper stared moodily at the passing countryside, wishing that the train could go faster. To its right sat Edmund de Courcy, searching for something in a great pile of papers on his lap.
‘Here we are, William,’ he said at last. ‘These two estimates might prove useful.’
Piper saw that one was from a building firm in Stratford, the other from one based in Warwick itself, for repair and restoration work on the Hammond-Burke home.
‘How on earth did you get these, Edmund?’ asked Piper, his eyes racing down the columns until he reached the Total figure at the bottom of page three of the Stratford firm.
‘Well,’ said de Courcy, ‘it wasn’t difficult. I borrowed some of our lawyers’ notepaper and said I was representing a distant relative called Jason Hammond, currently residing in Worcester, Massachusetts. This Jason character was now an old man but he had made a great deal of money. The letter said that he wished to leave his cousin enough money to effect the restoration of the ancestral home, but needed to know how much would be required. I gave them the details of the interior work from memory, saying it came from another member of the Hammond-Burke clan who had recently been to visit. And I suggested the builders take a discreet look round the property themselves for the roofs and the upkeep of the stables and so on. For some reason, unknown to the lawyers, Mr Jason wanted to keep his intentions secret.’
‘One lot of builders say fifteen thousand pounds, another say twenty thousand pounds,’ said Piper. ‘Let’s just suppose, Edmund, that you had an old mansion in need of restoration.’
‘You know perfectly well that I do have such a mansion,’ replied de Courcy .
‘But would you believe these estimates?’ asked Piper quickly.
‘No, I would not,’ said de Courcy bitterly. ‘I checked recently with some families in East Anglia who had raised sufficient funds, as they thought, to restore their properties. On average the final bill was over fifty per cent larger than the original estimate. In one case it was almost twice the original figure.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Piper happily. ‘Now, let us suppose that you are this Mr Hammond-Burke we are due to meet,’ Piper checked his watch, ‘in less than one hour’s time. You want to repair your house. A nice dealer from London offers you, let us say, twenty-five thousand pounds for the Raphael. Would you accept?’
‘We don’t know if Hammond-Burke has asked other dealers what they would pay him for the painting.’ De Courcy looked down at the brown paper and string beside him.
‘Ah, but we do,’ said Piper. ‘I have paid out quite a lot of money in the last few days to the junior staff of our competitors. Nobody has been asking about the price of a Raphael. Unless he has gone to Paris, which I doubt. Perhaps I should have checked there too.’
‘To come back to your original question, William,’ said de Courcy, ‘I think we can assume that Hammond-Burke has a very good idea how much the restoration would cost.’
‘Ah, but he doesn’t know that we know, if you follow me.’
‘I don’t think that matters,’ said de Courcy. ‘If I were him, I would hesitate before taking twenty-five thousand pounds. He could have spent all that and still not have finished. He could end up with the roof off and no money left to replace it.’
‘So what would you offer?’
De Courcy looked out of the window. Rows of terraced houses were replacing the green fields of Warwickshire. ‘I would offer him thirty or thirty-five thousand pounds, maybe even more to be certain. If only there was some way we could hold out the prospect of more money from selling more of his paintings, in case he runs short.’
‘Are his other paintings worth anything at all?’ said Piper.
‘No, they’re not. Not money on the scale we’re talking about.’
Piper looked very thoughtful indeed. ‘But what happens, Edmund, if he were to find a painting hidden away somewhere? A painting that might be worth tens of thousands of pounds.’
De Courcy laughed. He patted the genuine Raphael beside him. ‘You mean that Hammond-Burke could become, as it were, the fourth asterisk?’
‘Precisely so, Edmund. We can only form a judgement when we meet the fellow. We mustn’t rush things. But, look, here we are. For God’s sake handle that Raphael very carefully indeed. It wouldn’t do to drop it now. Not now when we may be in sight of the fourth asterisk!’
Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were walking arm in arm up Pall Mall to a family lunch at his sister’s house in St James’s Square. Lady Lucy was very excited about a recent piece of Powerscourt family gossip.
‘Is it true, Francis, that William and Mary Burke have just bought a villa near Antibes? An enormous villa?’ Mary Burke was the second of Powerscourt’s three sisters, married to a very successful financier called William Burke.
‘I believe it is true, Lucy, though I do not have any accurate information as to the size of the establishment.’
‘Oh, Francis, you’re not investigating your own family. Will we be able to go and stay, do you think?’
‘I’m sure we will be able to. I’m not sure that society down there will be much to my taste. I’ve got nothing against millionaire grocers and successful stock market speculators, I just don’t think it would suit me.’
Lady Lucy laughed as they turned the corner into St James’s Square. ‘You’ll be a frightful snob when you’re old, Francis. I shall have to push you along the Promenade des Anglais in your wheelchair, checking to make sure your rug is comfortable, while you complain about the Riviera parvenus and the nouveaux riches of Cannes.’
Powerscourt laughed and squeezed his wife’s arm. ‘I look forward to that, Lucy, I really do.’
Lady Rosalind Pembridge’s house was on the right of St James’s Square. They were just a couple of paces away when Powerscourt stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Lucy, do you mind going in ahead of me? There’s just something I’ve got to do.’
Lady Lucy gazed at her husband with a mixture of exasperation and affection. ‘You’re not going to be long, are you?’ she said anxiously. She remembered the stories of Francis disappearing through the kitchens at a very grand Foreign Office dinner some years before. She distinctly recalled him vanishing again at a reception given by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace, leaving her alone making small talk with the Archbishop’s wife until he reappeared some hours later when the reception had long ended. Business, he had said cryptically. She looked desperately around St James’s Square. Had Francis spotted some old army acquaintance? Was his closest friend Johnny Fitzgerald, recently gone to Spain on holiday, returned to lurk beneath the trees in the central garden?