‘I found it in an attic,’ he said. ‘Looks as if it has been there for some time. It might, it just might, be a Gainsborough.’ The duster had reached half-way down the painting by now. The four figures were clearly visible, and the avenue behind them. ‘I shall have to take it away, of course. And I shall have to look at this bundle of documents I found beside it.’ Johnston pointed to a pile of papers on the chair, mostly written with eighteenth-century ink on eighteenth-century paper. ‘These may give us some more information. It is too soon to say for now.’
‘A Gainsborough,’ said Hammond-Burke, rubbing his hand through his black hair.
‘A Gainsborough, by God. How much is that worth?’
12
Powerscourt found his brother-in-law William Burke sitting in his study with the floor covered in sheet after sheet of paper, a snowstorm of paper. A curly-haired nephew greeted his uncle with delight.
‘Good evening, Uncle Francis, have you come to see Papa?’ asked nine-year-old Edward Burke with an air of innocence. Powerscourt looked quickly at the childish scribblings on the carpet. All of them seemed to contain versions and variants of the seven times table. Not all of them were as Powerscourt remembered. Surely seven times eight wasn’t sixty-three? Was seven times nine really one hundred and seventy-four?
He smiled happily at his nephew. ‘Good evening to you, Edward,’ he said. ‘You’ve been helping your father with his arithmetic, I see. Very kind of you.’ There was a loud grunt from Edward’s father in his chair by the fire.
Edward Burke picked up his best pencil from the floor. ‘I expect you’ll want to talk business,’ he said with a worldly air that belied his years but promised well for his future. ‘May I go now, Papa?’
Powerscourt realized that his arrival had been a gift from the gods for Master Edward, now released from the torture of tables and arithmetical calculations.
‘Yes, Edward, you may go,’ said his father wearily, going down on his knees to collect the pieces of paper and throw them vigorously on to the fire.
‘Honestly, Francis.’ William Burke was married to Powerscourt’s second sister, Mary, and was becoming a mighty force in the City of London. Multiplication and division on an enormous scale were his daily bread and butter. ‘It’s hopeless. Completely hopeless. Edward has no more idea of the seven times table than I have of Sanskrit,’ he said. ‘What’s going to become of him? When I was that age I knew all those damned tables, right up to twelve times twelve. They’re not very difficult, are they?’
‘I’m sure it will come good in time,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically.
‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ said the anxious father. ‘Even when you explain to him that you can keep adding sevens, it’s no good. Three times seven is just seven plus seven plus seven. And so on. Total waste of time.’
Powerscourt felt that he too might become confused if confronted by seven plus seven plus seven. Better change the subject.
‘William,’ he said, ‘I need your advice. It’s about American millionaires.’
Burke cheered up and lit a large cigar to erase the memory of his son’s arithmetical failings. ‘Fire ahead, Francis,’ he said happily. This was safer ground.
‘I’m investigating the death of an art critic called Christopher Montague,’ Powerscourt began, knowing that his brother-in-law was as discreet as he was rich. ‘He was writing an article about that exhibition of Venetian paintings that has opened recently in London. He was going to say that most of them were fakes or recent forgeries. Ninety per cent or so.’ Powerscourt thought the percentage figure would appeal to Burke’s brain.
‘My goodness me,’ said Burke. ‘Is that the thing at the de Courcy and Piper place in Old Bond Street? Mary dragged me round it the other day. Can’t say I enjoyed it very much. All look the same to me, cheerful Virgins for the Annunciation, holy-looking Madonnas with their infants, sad Christs on the Cross. Always some bloody Italian landscape in the background, full of horseflies and mosquitoes, no doubt. What have the Americans got to do with it?’
‘The Americans, as you well know, William,’ said Powerscourt, ‘are just beginning to buy this sort of stuff. Montague’s article was never published. Nobody knows most of the things are fakes or forgeries. Should somebody warn them?’
Burke found a final piece of paper by the side of his chair. Seven times four, said the childish hand, forty-seven. Seven times seven, seventy-seven. He took another draw on his cigar.
‘Very public-spirited of you, Francis, I should say. I think, however, that unless Anglo-American relations are at a very low ebb, possibly on the verge of armed conflict, that the answer is no.’
‘Why do you say that?’ said Powerscourt.
‘If everybody in London and New York spent their time warning the other side of the Atlantic about fakes and doubtful products, Francis, the telegraph lines would be permanently jammed.’
Powerscourt looked confused.
‘Sorry, let me explain.’ William Burke leant forward in his chair and stared into his fire. The last relics of the mental arithmetic were curling into ashes.
‘Think of the two great stock markets in London and New York,’ he went on. ‘Each one is permanently trying to interest the other in its latest products. It’s like a game of tennis, except the balls are liable to explode when they hit the ground. We try to interest them in some doubtful loan to Latin America, unlikely to be repaid. They send back share offerings in Rhode Island Steel, unlikely to pay any dividends. We hit back with an unrepeatable offer in a mining company in some remote part of Borneo most of the promoters couldn’t even find on the map. They reply with watered stock in American railroads. None of those would be a safe home for anybody’s savings, but they’re traded just the same.’
‘Watered stock?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How on earth do you dilute a share?’
‘I had a beautiful example only yesterday. This is how it works. As an example of becoming even richer than you already are, it’s almost perfect. Say you buy the New York central railroad for ten million dollars. You stop all the stealing that went on under the previous man. You improve it, newer, faster engines, that sort of thing. Then you buy the Hudson railroad for another ten million dollars, which complements the New York Central in its freight transport and its passenger lines. Now, wait for it, Francis, here comes the masterstroke. You form a new company to amalgamate the two lines. You call it the New York, Hudson and Central Railroad. You float it on the New York Stock Exchange. You say this new line is worth fifty million dollars. You’ve spent twenty million on the original two. Now you award yourself thirty million dollars of new stock. You make sure the thing pays a high dividend, think how many shares you have in it, after all. Sit back and count the money. That’s watered stock, Francis. These millionaires have been at it for years, coal, steel, railroads, banks. And they have the nerve to offer the stock over here as well as in New York.’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘What you’re saying, William, is that there isn’t much difference between dubious stocks and fake paintings?’
‘Exactly,’ said William Burke. ‘In the City the doubtful stock is all dressed up in fancy language, open markets, free flow of goods and capital across international boundaries, the right of individuals and companies to make free choices. I’m sure it’s the same in the art world. There was a right load of rubbish in the catalogue of those Venetian paintings, delicate brushwork, sfumato, whatever the hell that is, sounds like something you might keep your cigars in, tonal balance. What, in God’s name, is tonal balance? Looked like a lot of hot air to me.’
‘Thank you very much, William. I shall take your advice. I shall not tell the Americans about the forgeries. And now, if you will forgive me, I must go home and make plans about Thomas’s mental arithmetic.’
Orlando Blane was looking very closely at the reproduction of Mr and Mrs Lewis B. Black in an American magazine. Orlando had no idea who Mr Black was or why he had been sent this page from the publication. All he knew was that he had to produce a painting of the Blacks, singular or plural, in the manner of a great English portrait painter. Orlando wished he knew what colour Mrs Black’s dress was – it swept round her slim figure in a beguiling fashion. On her head was a small hat composed almost entirely of feathers. Orlando liked the hat. Especially he liked the feathers. Plenty of people had appeared with vaguely similar hats in the past.