‘It’s an overcrowded field,’ I said, smiling broadly myself.
We were both feeling the euphoria which follows the safe deliverance from danger. ‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’
He drove to the Hilton, parked, and carried the folder and pictures up to my room. He moved with his sailing speed, economically and fast, losing as little time as possible before returning to Sarah on the racecourse and acting as if he’d never been away.
‘We’ll be back here as soon as we can,’ he promised, sketching a farewell.
Two seconds after he’d shut my door there was a knock on it.
I opened it. Jik stood there.
‘I’d better know,’ he said, ‘What won the Cup?’
12
When he’d gone I looked closely at the spoils.
The more I saw, the more certain it became that we had hit the absolute jackpot. I began to wish most insistently that we hadn’t wasted time in establishing that Jik and Sarah were at the races. It made me nervous, waiting for them in the Hilton with so much dynamite in my hands. Every instinct urged immediate departure.
The list of Overseas Customers would to any other eyes have seemed the most harmless of documents. Wexford would not have needed to keep it in better security than a locked filing-cabinet, for the chances of anyone seeing its significance in ordinary circumstances were millions to one against.
Donald Stuart, Wrenstone House, Shropshire.
Crossed out.
Each page had three columns, a narrow one at each side with a broad one in the centre. The narrow left-hand column was for dates and the centre for names and addresses. In the narrow right-hand column, against each name, was a short line of apparently random letters and numbers. Those against Donald’s entry, for instance, were MM3109T: and these figures had not been crossed out with his name. Maybe a sort of stock list, I thought, identifying the picture he’d bought.
I searched rapidly down all the other crossed-out names in the England sector. Maisie Matthews’ name was not among them.
Damn, I thought. Why wasn’t it?
I turned all the papers over rapidly. As far as I could see all the overseas customers came from basically English-speaking countries, and the proportion of crossed-out names was about one in three. If every crossing-out represented a robbery, there had been literally hundreds since the scheme began.
At the back of the file I found there was a second and separate section, again divided into pages for each country. The lists in this section were much shorter.
England.
Half way down. My eyes positively leapt at it.
Mrs M. Matthews, Treasure Holme, Worthing, Sussex.
Crossed out.
I almost trembled. The date in the left-hand column looked like the date on which Maisie had bought her picture. The uncrossed-out numbers in the right hand column were SMC29R.
I put down the file and sat for five minutes staring unseeingly at the wall, thinking.
My first and last conclusions were that I had a great deal to do before Jik and Sarah came back from the races, and that instincts were not always right.
The large print-folder, which had so excited Jik, lay on my bed. I opened it flat and inspected the contents.
I daresay I looked completely loony standing there with my mouth open. The folder contained a number of simplified line drawings like the one the boy-artist had been colouring in the Arts Centre. Full-sized outline drawings, on flat white canvas, as neat and accurate as tracings.
There were seven of them, all basically of horses. As they were only black and white line drawings I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed that three were Munnings, two Raoul Millais, and the other two... I stared at the old-fashioned shapes of the horses... They couldn’t be Stubbs, he was too well documented... How about Herring? Herring, I thought, nodding. The last two had a look of Herring.
Attached to one of these two canvases by an ordinary paper clip was a small handwritten memo on a piece of scrap paper.
‘Don’t forget to send the original. Also find out what palette he used, if different from usual.’
I looked again at the three identical finished paintings which we had also brought away. These canvases, tacked on to wooden stretchers, looked very much as if they might have started out themselves as the same sort of outlines. The canvas used was of the same weave and finish.
The technical standard of the work couldn’t be faulted. The paintings did look very much like Munnings’ own, and would do much more so after they had dried and been varnished. Different coloured paints dried at different speeds, and also the drying time of paints depended very much on the amount of oil or turps used to thin them, but at a rough guess all three pictures had been completed between three and six days earlier. The paint was at the same stage on all of them. They must, I thought, have all been painted at once, in a row, like a production line. Red hat, red hat, red hat... It would have saved time and paint.
The brushwork throughout was painstaking and controlled. Nothing slapdash. No time skimped. The quality of care was the same as in the Millais copy at Alice.
I was looking, I knew, at the true worth of Harley Renbo.
All three paintings were perfectly legal. It was never illegal to copy: only to attempt to sell the copy as real.
I thought it all over for a bit longer, and then set rapidly to work.
The Hilton, when I went downstairs an hour later, were most amiable and helpful.
Certainly, they could do what I asked. Certainly, I could use the photo-copying machine, come this way. Certainly, I could pay my bill now, and leave later.
I thanked them for their many excellent services.
‘Our pleasure,’ they said: and, incredibly, they meant it.
Upstairs again, waiting for Jik and Sarah, I packed all my things. That done, I took off my jacket and shirt and did my best at rigging the spare bandages and clips back into something like the Alice shape, with my hand inside across my chest. No use pretending that it wasn’t a good deal more comfortable that way than the dragging soreness of letting it all swing free. I buttoned my shirt over the top and calculated that if the traffic was bad Jik might still be struggling out of the racecourse.
A little anxiously, and still faintly feeling unwell, I settled to wait.
I waited precisely five minutes. Then the telephone by the bed rang, and I picked up the receiver.
Jik’s voice, sounding hard and dictatorial.
‘Charles, will you please come down to our room at once.’
‘Well...’ I said hesitantly. ‘Is it important?’
‘Bloody chromic oxide!’ he said explosively. ‘Can’t you do anything without arguing?’
Christ, I thought.
I took a breath. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I need ten minutes. I’m... er... I’ve just had a shower. I’m in my underpants.’
‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said. The telephone clicked as he disconnected.
A lot of Jik’s great oaths galloped across my mind, wasting precious time. If ever we needed divine help, it was now.
Stifling a gut-twisting lurch of plain fear I picked up the telephone and made a series of internal calls.
‘Please could you send a porter up right away to room seventeen eighteen to collect Mr Cassavetes’ bags?’
‘Housekeeper..? Please will you send someone along urgently to seventeen eighteen to clean the room as Mr Cassavetes has been sick...’
‘Please will you send the nurse along to seventeen eighteen at once as Mr Cassavetes has a severe pain...’
‘Please will you send four bottles of your best champagne and ten glasses up to seventeen eighteen immediately...’