‘Did the servant say anything about the man’s papers, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. He opened the desk and pulled open all the drawers. As in Brompton Square, they were completely empty.
‘Was Jenkins in the habit of moving his papers up and down between here and the college?’ Powerscourt asked.
‘I asked the man about that,’ said Wilson. ‘He said that Mr Jenkins never moved his papers away from that desk. Not for as long as he’d been here. He might take a few bits and pieces up to the college but he always brought them back.’
‘There was a reason why someone might want to remove the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk. Lots of reasons, in fact. But why take Jenkins’ papers too? He was a historian, wasn’t he, Chief Inspector?’
‘He was, my lord. An expert in the Tudors, so his man said. Couple of Henrys and an Elizabeth if my memory serves me.’
‘I can’t see,’ said Powerscourt, staring into the garden, ‘how detailed knowledge of the religious questions at the time of the Reformation could make you a target for a murderer.’
‘Two murders, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe only one murderer. Do you think they are connected?’ Wilson went on, more confused than ever.
‘Yes, I do,’ replied Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they are connected, though for the moment I am damned if I know how. Could I make a suggestion, Chief Inspector?’
‘Of course you can, my lord, your suggestions are always helpful.’
‘It would be most interesting to discover if this person had been in Oxford recently. It’s a lawyer who has vanished from his offices in London, a Horace Aloysius Buckley, of the firm Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, husband of Montague’s lover Mrs Rosalind Buckley. You might inquire about the wife as well, while you’re about it. I think she was a friend of Jenkins.’
The Inspector was writing the name in a small brown notebook. Powerscourt had pulled the desk out from the wall and looked down the back. There was nothing there, only the dust of Oxford.
‘Lord Powerscourt,’ Wilson was putting his notebook back in the breast pocket of his uniform. ‘I almost forgot. You asked if the college servant found anything in the room. He found this under the chair.’
He picked up a tie that had been carefully placed on the bottom tier of Thomas Jenkins’ bookshelf. ‘According to the servant, this is not one of Thomas Jenkins’ ties,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘It looks as if the murderer may have left it here by mistake.’
Powerscourt wondered briefly why a man would want to take off his tie before committing murder. Or after he’d done it. It didn’t make sense.
‘I know where that tie comes from,’ he said. ‘It’s not an Oxford tie at all. It comes from Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge, to be precise.’
And where, he wondered, as the two squirrels performed some daring acrobatics in their North Oxford garden, had Horace Aloysius Buckley gone to university?
13
‘Now then, Edmund,’ said William Alaric Piper, ‘it’s time to begin planning the next exhibition. Our Venetians are going to New York in six months’ time, as you know. What next?’
Piper checked the red rose in his buttonhole. He was in his light brown suit today with a cream silk shirt and pale brown brogues. Edmund de Courcy was in conservative tweeds, peering down at the notebooks in front of him, the records of his travels round the country in search of art that might sell.
‘What about portraits, English portraits?’ he said at last. ‘Lots and lots of those about.’
‘Excellent,’ said Piper, rubbing his hands together, ‘but not English Portraits. The English Portrait.’ Suddenly Piper could see the publicity material, the appeal to the Americans as tens or even hundreds of English aristocrats and gentry lined the walls of his gallery upstairs, resplendent Reynoldses, glorious Gainsboroughs, Romneys and Lawrences by the dozen.
‘How many do you think you could get, Edmund?’ he said.
De Courcy flicked through the pages of his notebooks, scribbling hard as he went.
‘Nearly a hundred, I should think,’ he replied finally. ‘Maybe more.’
‘And how many do you think would be genuine?’ said Piper.
‘Maybe a quarter?’ replied de Courcy.
‘Never mind,’ said Piper with a grin, ‘that’s better than these damned Venetians upstairs. Go to it, Edmund. Call the masterpieces home to the de Courcy and Piper Gallery. We shall give them a good show. And,’ he laughed, ‘good prices too, real or fake.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Mr Piper,’ said the footman, ‘Mr McCracken to see you.’
Two weeks had passed since Mr William P. McCracken, railroad millionaire from Massachusetts, had taken possession of his Raphael. Had William Alaric Piper been able to see what had happened to The Holy Family since it passed into American ownership, his heart would have been filled with joy. Most sensible people would have locked it away in the hotel safe. After all, it had cost eighty-five thousand pounds. Not William P. McCracken. He had bought an easel of the right size and placed it in the centre of his suite in Room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel. When he retired for the night he took the painting with him, not literally, but he placed the easel at the end of the bed so he could see it first thing in the morning. On one occasion he even arranged his Raphael just outside the door of the bathroom so he could view it from his bathtub.
As Piper led him upstairs to the special viewing chamber above the main gallery, William P. McCracken was excited about this new offering from de Courcy and Piper.
‘You said I could see it at the end of last week, Mr Piper. Why, I guess we Americans just aren’t very good at waiting. I’ve gotten to be very eager to see this picture. Gainsborough you said.’
Piper made soothing noises as if he were talking to a child. ‘It’s waiting for you, Mr McCracken,’ he said, ‘right here.’ Piper did not disclose that he had travelled down to Truscott Park the day before and handed over a cheque to James Hammond-Burke for eight thousand pounds for his Gainsborough. ‘There may be more masterpieces here, Mr Hammond-Burke,’ Piper had said in his most expansive mood. ‘We must wait till our man has completed his work on the catalogue.’
Once again the viewing room had been specially prepared. The windows were open this time. The painting sat on an easel, shrouded by a pair of curtains. Piper pressed a switch to bring on the illuminations. Then he pulled slowly on the cord. The curtains fell away.
There, seated on a bench in the middle of an enormous park, sat Mr and Mrs Burke, of Truscott Park in the county of Warwickshire. Standing behind them were their two children, a dog lying at their feet. It was the beginning of autumn, the leaves on the trees beginning to change colour.
‘God bless my soul!’ said William P. McCracken, staring very hard at the children. ‘It’s a miracle, it really is.’
William Alaric Piper said nothing. It was, he reflected to himself, indeed a miracle that two children should have arrived in London on the pages of an American magazine, and been turned into a new Old Master by Orlando Blane in his Long Gallery.
‘Mr Piper, sir,’ said McCracken, taking off his hat, ‘let me tell you something. I really can’t believe this. Those two girls look almost the same as my own two dear children back home. My Daisy has brown eyes, and this little girl has blue, and Dorothy’s hair is a little darker than this one here, but otherwise, it’s uncanny.’
McCracken walked to the back of the room and looked at the painting again. ‘I must have it, Mr Piper,’ he said fervently, ‘I must have it. Think of what Maisie, that’s Mrs McCracken, will say when she sees it! Think what the girls will say! I can see it now, Mr Piper, on the wall in the living room back home in Concord, Massachusetts. There’s some vulgar religious picture my wife picked up hanging above the fireplace at present, Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Well, Moses can just lead them all someplace else now. This Gainsborough will sit there perfectly. Imagine what the neighbours and the elders of the Third Presbyterian will say when they come to see it! My entire trip to Europe will have been worthwhile if I can carry it back across the Atlantic.’