‘Come,’ said Piper, alighting from the carriage, ‘we must find our host.’ Johnston struggled towards the house with a number of heavy bags, including a number of long metal tubes.
James Hammond-Burke too seemed to have been touched by the benison of the Old Masters. He greeted them warmly in his hall. He smiled. He offered them tea in the morning room, their conversation broken occasionally by the shouts of the builders.
‘Mr Hammond-Burke, good morning to you,’ said William Alaric Piper, in fulsome mood. ‘Allow me to introduce Mr Roderick Johnston, the art expert of whom we spoke earlier. Mr Hammond-Burke. Mr Johnston.’
Piper beamed happily round the room in proprietorial mood. ‘Work has already commenced, I see,’ he said. ‘How proud I am to think that the beautiful Raphael has enabled you, Mr Hammond-Burke, to beautify your own surroundings in this way.’
James Hammond-Burke might have been feeling more cheerful. But he was as keen on money as before. ‘You said that Mr Johnston was going to make a proper inventory of the pictures here,’ he said. ‘What do you think the chances are of finding some more Old Masters?’
Piper looked serious. ‘The quest for beauty is admirable indeed,’ he said, ‘but it will not be rushed.’ Don’t let them raise their hopes too high before we start, he said to himself. ‘Mr Johnston will look at the pictures on display. Then he will search the rest of the house to see if there may be some hidden away in the servants’ bedrooms or piled up at the back of an attic. Then Mr Johnston will work on his inventory. It may not be completed for some time. I see you have already looked out some of the papers and other documents relating to the purchase of the works.’
Piper jumped slightly as a loud crash from outside echoed round the room. It sounded as though an entire section of bricks from the roof had all come down at once. The dust was rising half-way up the windows.
‘My goodness me,’ he said, ‘the price of restoration may be temporary inconvenience, but it will pass. Is everything clear, Mr Hammond-Burke? My carriage is waiting and I propose to leave you in the tender care of Mr Johnston here. You could not be in better hands!’
As his carriage rolled through the countryside back to the railway station, Piper thought again of the asterisk system developed by his partner Edmund de Courcy These told the initiated how severe were the financial problems of the owners of the paintings. One asterisk meant major trouble, might be persuaded to sell. Two asterisks meant technically insolvent, desperate to raise money. And three asterisks meant that financial Armageddon was imminent and might only be averted by the judicious sale of some of the family heirlooms. The fourth asterisk meant a house where rather newer Old Masters could be planted to provide a history and a provenance that would convince unwary buyers. Creating a legend for the painting was how Piper put it to himself. For concealed in Johnston’s luggage was a remarkable Gainsborough, and an eighteenth-century frame, broken down into sections. Johnston was to leave the Gainsborough in an attic for a few days while he worked on the main body of the pictures on the walls of the house. Then it would be discovered. Johnston also had in his possession a couple of documents written on eighteenth-century paper with eighteenth-century ink. These concerned the commission and receipt of a full-length portrait of Mr and Mrs Burke of Truscott Park, Warwickshire, and their two children. The correspondence came from Bath. The signature at the bottom of the documents was of one Thomas Gainsborough, painter and Royal Academician.
Four asterisks, in the Piper code, meant that the owner was not to know that the painting had been planted on him, rediscovered, as Piper preferred to put it. He felt sure that Hammond-Burke would be perfectly convincing in defence of the picture, particularly when he had been shown the papers. The alternative, the fifth asterisk, was to pay the alleged owner a large sum of money to pretend the painting had been in his family for generations. William Alaric Piper didn’t like the option of the fifth asterisk. Think how much money he was paying out already. He had paid for the painting to come into existence. He might have to pay more for a correct attribution. He had to pay for his gallery. It was hardly worth the enormous amount of time and thought and trouble he took to bring new Old Masters into the world as it was.
As his train pulled out of Stratford station he thought again of Mr William P. McCracken. Piper had already promised him the possibility of a tasty morsel. How delighted, how generous McCracken would be when it was dangled in front of his nose!
Lord Francis Powerscourt was back in the Royal Academy offices in Burlington House. Sir Frederick Lambert, President of the Academy, was looking slightly better than on the last occasion, although the flesh was still sagging round his eyes. Powerscourt noticed that Dido preparing her pyre, one of Lambert’s own works, on view the previous visit, had been removed from the walls. Perhaps the pyre had consumed her. In her place was a rather plaintive canvas, of Ariadne standing on the beach at Naxos, surrounded by her handmaidens. All bore the marks of a night of debauchery, leaves and sections of bushes attached to their scanty robes, marks of wine, or perhaps blood, turning from purple into dark black. Just visible in the trees was Dionysus, a cluster of grapes in his hair, a stick in his hand, grinning salaciously at his new initiates. On the hill behind the god, a solitary bull stood, pawing the ground, a reminder perhaps of the Bull Ring and the Minotaur Ariadne had left behind in Crete. Higher up the hill a flock of sheep were grazing peacefully. Ariadne was staring sadly out to sea, one bloody hand raised to her forehead. Making good speed across the dark blue waters of the Aegean, a ship with black sails was heading for Athens. Ariadne had been abandoned by her paramour. Theseus had deserted her on the island.
‘Sir Frederick,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I have been thinking a lot about the late Christopher Montague.’
Sir Frederick bowed his head as if they were both attending a memorial service.
‘How damaging would his article have been to the firm of de Courcy and Piper? Could it have brought them down?’
‘Well . . .’ said Sir Frederick, pausing while a coughing fit racked his body. ‘Forgive me. The article would have caused a sensation. It might have brought them down – all would depend on the strength of their financial position, their reserves and so on. It is certainly likely that they would have lost a lot of sales. But they could have survived.’
‘And what of Montague’s own position?’ Powerscourt went on. ‘Would he have become the foremost authority on Venetian paintings, whether they were genuine or not, I mean?’
Another coughing fit reduced Lambert to silence. He took a clean handkerchief out of his drawer and wiped his lips. Powerscourt saw that the handkerchief was now flecked with blood. Was time running out for the President of the Royal Academy?
‘He would have become the leading expert on that period, yes.’
‘So how much would he have been able to charge for these attributions, Sir Frederick? Presumably they could have added tens of thousands of pounds to the value of the painting? And, equally pertinent,’ Powerscourt was trying to make the interview as short as possible, ‘who would he have replaced as the main authenticator of such pictures?’
Sir Frederick looked at him sadly. A minor coughing fit gave rise to another handkerchief, produced as if by magic, from the drawer. Powerscourt wondered how many he had to bring with him each day. Ten? Twenty?
‘When I became President of this institution, Lord Powerscourt, I tried to introduce a code of conduct for the attribution of paintings. I was trying to take it out of the shadows of greed and secrecy where it has dwelt for so long. I failed. None of the participants would agree to it.’