‘I knew about it,’ said Mrs Buckley proudly. ‘I had a key to that flat in Brompton Square. I used to go and see Christopher when it was dark.’
Powerscourt could see her now, hurrying along in the shadows, keeping out of the light, racing towards the sanctuary of her lover hidden away behind the Brompton Oratory.
‘Can you remember what it said?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Forgive me if these questions are painful.’
Mrs Rosalind Buckley looked hard at Powerscourt. ‘I can’t remember the arguments,’ she began. ‘They were very learned with lots of references to Italian and German professors in Rome and Berlin. But basically he said that most of the paintings on show in the exhibition of Venetian Paintings at the de Courcy and Piper Gallery weren’t genuine. Some of them were copies and some were recent forgeries.’
Powerscourt had been reading Christopher Montague’s first book about the birth of the Renaissance. An idea suddenly struck him. For the one thing that rang out from the Montague writings about Italian paintings was that he loved Italy, he loved the art, he loved the light, he loved the countryside, he loved the cities, he loved the food, he even loved the wine.
‘You know that Mr Montague inherited a very large sum of money abut six months before he died,’ he said quietly. ‘Do you know what he intended to do with it?’
There was a long pause. Powerscourt noticed that Rosalind Buckley’s hands were gripping the sides of her chair very tightly. Lady Lucy’s granddaughter clock was ticking softly in the background. There was a sudden sound of crying as if Thomas or Olivia had fallen down the stairs.
‘I do,’ she said. She said no more. Powerscourt waited. The crying was dying down as the child was carried up to the nurseries on the top floor. Still Powerscourt waited. Then he could bear it no longer.
‘Let me try to help you, Mrs Buckley, if I may.’ He was looking directly into the large brown eyes. ‘Please correct me if I’m wrong. I think Mr Montague was intending to buy a house or a villa in Italy. Maybe he had already bought it. Somewhere in Tuscany, I would imagine, would have been his favourite. He wrote beautifully about Tuscany, and about Florence in particular. Somewhere between Florence and Siena perhaps?’
There was another of those pauses. Rosalind Buckley looked as if she might cry.
‘You’re absolutely right, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said sadly. ‘Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, bought a villa near Fiesole up in the hills two months ago. He was going to write his books there.’
Powerscourt felt the questions were getting more difficult.
‘And were you going to join him there, Mrs Buckley?’ he asked quietly. ‘Up there in the hills with those wonderful views across the mountains?’
This time there was no pause.
‘I was,’ she said defiantly. ‘Of course I was going to join him.’
Powerscourt thought they would have been very happy, Montague writing his articles under the shade of a tree perhaps, Mrs Buckley keeping house in the sunshine, tending the flowers in the garden. But the worst part had now arrived.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you about your husband now, Mrs Buckley. It won’t take long.’
Rosalind Buckley bowed her head. Powerscourt couldn’t tell if it was shame or an invitation to proceed.
‘Did Mr Buckley know about your friendship with Mr Montague?’
Mrs Buckley kept her head bowed, staring at the patterns in the Powerscourt carpet.
‘He did,’ she said.
‘How long ago did he find out?’
‘About four or five weeks ago.’
That would be about a week before Montague’s death, Powerscourt reminded himself. Just a week. Long enough to make a plan.
‘Do you know how he found out?’ asked Powerscourt softly.
‘I think he found a letter from Christopher in my writing desk,’ she said sadly, her eyes now looking up at Powerscourt. ‘He had no business to do such a thing.’
‘Indeed not.’ Powerscourt was quick to sympathize. ‘May I ask what his reaction was?’ he said in his gentlest voice.
Rosalind Buckley replied in even quieter tones. Powerscourt had to lean forward to catch the words. ‘He said he was going to horsewhip the two of us,’ she whispered. ‘My husband may be a lawyer but he can be very violent.’ Rosalind Buckley shuddered. ‘He said Christopher’s behaviour was unworthy of a gentleman.’
Powerscourt wondered whether he should ask the next question. He felt he had no choice. ‘Do you know where your husband was,’ he asked, ‘round about the time when Christopher was killed?’
‘I wish I could help you there, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, ‘but I can’t. You see, since the day when he found out about my friendship with Christopher, my husband hasn’t been in the house. I haven’t seen him at all since then.’
After she had gone Powerscourt stretched out on the sofa. Damn, he said to himself, damn. I forgot to ask her about Christopher Montague’s will. Had she inherited all the money? The house in the Tuscan hills? And he wondered about her phrase towards the end when he asked about her husband’s whereabouts at the time of the murder. I wish I could help you there, she had said. Was that simply what it appeared? Or did she wish that she could implicate her husband in Montague’s death, and be rid of him once and for all?
I wish I could help you there.
11
Orlando Blane pulled two paintings away from the wall and into the light by the window in his Long Gallery. On the left was the Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman by Zorzi da Castelfranco, better known as Giorgione. On the right was the Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman, by Orlando Blane in the manner of Zorzi da Castelfranco, better known as Giorgione. Through a window in the top left-hand corner was a hazy outline of Venice’s Doge’s Palace, with the prisons to the right. Inside the room a man in dark clothes stood with a counter in front of him. On the counter there rested a book, maybe an account book. The man’s right hand rested on the book, holding a blue package, possibly containing money. The man was looking sideways at the painter, as if Giorgione, or Orlando Blane, owed the Venetian gentleman a substantial sum, late in repayment.
The two paintings were identical, except in one regard. Orlando pressed his thumb very gently into the paint on the left-hand portrait. It was hard, dried out over four hundred years. Then he repeated the process with the painting on his right. It was soft. The hardening process would have to be speeded up. Tomorrow he would put the fake Giorgione in a specially adapted oven in the stables.
Then he would apply a coat of size, and later, when the size was properly dry, he would put on a coat of varnish. By that time he hoped the two pictures would be indistinguishable. Orlando had only used paints that would have been available in Giorgione’s time. He had consulted a number of volumes in his library from Vasari On Technique to Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters by Charles Eastlake. He felt sure that none of the so-called experts could tell which one was a fake. In three days the fake would be despatched he knew not where by his jailers downstairs.
The original would stay in the Long Gallery for a week or two to make sure there was no possibility of the original and the forgery being swapped over accidentally. Then it too would be despatched to an unknown destination from Orlando’s prison. Orlando suspected, but he did not know for sure, that the original had been sold. The unfortunate purchaser would eventually carry away not a Giorgione but a Blane. Of what his masters intended to do with the original he had no idea.
‘Let’s just run through the possibilities,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There seem to me to be a number of people, far too many people, in fact, who might have wanted to kill Christopher Montague.’ Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy were sitting on the sofa, Powerscourt on the chair by the fireplace. Dusk was falling over Markham Square.