Hammond-Burke looked up at him.
‘How much?’ he said. De Courcy was taken aback. ‘How much is that Raphael worth?’
De Courcy slipped into his most polished mode. ‘Difficult to say immediately,’ he said. He was thinking rapidly of possible purchasers, trying to remember if any American millionaires were due to visit London shortly. He had heard that a number, including the Olympian figure of J. Pierpoint Morgan, whose appetite for art was almost as voracious as his appetite for money, might be coming over in the next month or so.
‘I would need to consult with my colleagues.’ Always keep them in the plural, he said to himself, bankers, lawyers, advisers, anything to make it grander than a quick conversation in William Alaric Piper’s little office in Old Bond Street. ‘However, even at this juncture, without such a consultation, I would say that it might fetch as much as thirty thousand pounds. Possibly more.’ De Courcy’s calculation of the selling price started at seventy-five thousand pounds. Prices had gone up since the Marlborough sale, after all.
Hammond-Burke looked slightly less miserable. He bent down to retrieve the fallen bills. ‘I’d be obliged if you could find out how much it would fetch. And let me know at once.’
As Edmund de Courcy made his way out down the long drive James Hammond-Burke watched him go. Then he walked slowly into his dining room. He stared at the Raphael on his walls. He remained there, locked in contemplation of his Holy Family, until the light faded some hours later.
2
Lord Francis Powerscourt had just sat down in his favourite armchair by the fire in the family’s London home in Markham Square. It was early evening. A black cat was asleep at his feet. Something was rubbing at his back. He turned round and extracted a very small Russian doll from behind the cushions. It was brightly painted in red and blue. Powerscourt looked at it affectionately. It must be one of Olivia’s collection, he said to himself, and opened his newspaper.
Footsteps were sounding along the hall outside. Lady Lucy Powerscourt stepped slowly into the room. Even after seven years of marriage the radiance of her presence often gave Powerscourt a sort of warm glow inside. She was reading a letter.
She smiled at her husband. ‘It’s from one of my cousins,’ she said.
Powerscourt felt a moment of exasperation as he contemplated his wife’s relations. There were so many of them. He had already met over a hundred and fifty. There were still twenty or thirty to go. He thought that by the law of averages one of these relations must one day become Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury or, better still, Captain of the England cricket team.
There was a sudden gasp from Lady Lucy. ‘Oh no,’ she said very quietly, ‘how terrible. He’s been killed.’
‘Who has been killed, Lucy?’ Powerscourt felt a quick stab of professional interest. He had often joked with Lucy in the past that one day some member of the tribe would be involved in a terrible crime and he, Powerscourt, would have to investigate. Now it was coming true.
Lady Lucy composed herself and sat down by the fire. ‘It’s Christopher,’ she said. ‘Christopher Montague. You know Christopher.’
Powerscourt racked his brains. Sometimes he wished he could have an instantly accessible filing system with all the relations neatly tabulated beside their photographs. It would make life so much easier. Montague, Christopher Montague, had he ever met this Christopher Montague? He couldn’t remember.
‘Oh, Francis,’ Lady Lucy said sadly, ‘you are hopeless. You met him at Sarah’s wedding.’
Which Sarah, Powerscourt thought desperately. There were at least four if not five of those. Then it came to him like the mist clearing on a spring morning. He saw a slight young man in his early thirties at a wedding reception, glass of champagne in hand. He was quite short and perfectly turned out in a grey morning suit. He had a small moustache. The mental image of the late Christopher Montague was telling his companions about the beauties of the Italian countryside.
‘Youngish sort of chap, not very tall?’ said Powerscourt hesitantly. Privately he felt that there must be at least ten of Lady Lucy’s relations who would fit that description.
‘That’s him,’ said Lady Lucy sadly. ‘That was him.’
‘How did he die?’ asked Powerscourt, relieved that the question of identification had been resolved.
‘He was garrotted. I think that’s what his sister said. Garrotted means having a rope or something similar pulled tight round your throat until you die, doesn’t it?’
Powerscourt felt embarrassed that his wife’s knowledge of his macabre profession meant that she knew the meaning of the word. ‘That is what garrotted means, Lucy. Where did it happen?’
Lady Lucy wiped her eyes. ‘He lived with his sister in Beaufort Street in Chelsea. Christopher wasn’t married. But he had a little flat in Brompton Square where he used to work. That’s where he was killed.’ Lady Lucy looked sadly at her husband. ‘You will investigate his death, Francis, won’t you? I’m sure the family would want you to.’
‘Of course I will, Lucy. But what did Christopher Montague do for a living? Did he have private means?’
‘I think he did have a little money of his own,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘but he did quite well out of his writing.’
‘Did he write for the newspapers? Was he a journalist with one of the papers?’
‘I think he did write for the Morning Post sometimes. But always about exhibitions and that sort of thing. You see, Christopher was just beginning to make a name for himself as an art critic.’
Powerscourt wondered what it might be about an art critic’s life that could lead to his violent death. Surely, he thought, their days were spent in galleries and libraries, their eyes fixed on the higher glories of the Quattrocento or the allegorical masterpieces of Poussin. Then he remembered all those heads of John the Baptist presented on a plate to Salome, Judith and Holofernes, the terrible torments of the damned in Hieronymus Bosch. Maybe death and art were not so far away. But it could also have been Christopher Montague’s private life that had led to his end.
‘Francis, Francis, come back, come back.’ Lady Lucy brought him out of his reverie. ‘There’s something else.’ She pulled a key out of the envelope. ‘His sister has given me the key to his flat. I thought you might want to go and see for yourself.’
‘Surely Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the dead man is not still there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘He was only found this morning.’
Powerscourt took the key to Number 29 Brompton Square and set out across the London twilight. He passed crowds of people outside South Kensington underground station. He could see the Brompton Oratory rising in its Catholic splendour at the junction of the Cromwell and Brompton Roads. The square was tucked in behind the main road, a pleasant collection of late Georgian houses with a garden in the centre.
Number 29 was in the far left-hand corner, Montague’s flat on the first floor. A policeman was on guard inside the porch. After a quick conversation to establish Powerscourt’s credentials, he let him pass inside the house. Inspector Maxwell, the constable informed his visitor, was the officer in charge of the case.
‘Good evening to you, sir,’ said the Inspector warily. ‘May I ask what is the nature of your business here?’ The Inspector was in the kitchen, staring at a couple of clean glasses on the draining board. Maxwell was a tall, pencil-slim young man with a mop of curly black hair.
‘My name is Powerscourt. I am an investigator. The family have asked me to look into Montague’s death. I am a distant relation of his.’
Inspector Maxwell shook him by the hand. ‘The Commissioner has often talked about you, sir. Good to have you on board.’
Powerscourt had been involved with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on a number of his previous cases. He had always taken great care to maintain good relations with the police force of London.