They walked over to a series of crates of differing sizes, though each was approximately eight inches wide.
“Let’s see how many there are first.” Maisie nodded to Billy, who already had his notebook in hand. “And keep your ears open for voices. We have to be as quiet as we can.”
“Right you are.” Billy nodded in agreement, then shrugged as he touched a number on the top of a crate. “What d’you reckon these are for?”
Maisie scrutinized the numbers, which were marked 1/6, 2/6 and so on until the final crate, which was marked 6/6. “All right, this looks fairly straightforward, though we won’t know until we get inside. This has to be the main piece for the exhibit and the numerals suggest that it comprises six pieces.”
“So, it’s not a triptych then?”
“We’ll soon find out.”
“Are we going to open all of them?”
“Perhaps. Then we must search this place for anything pertaining to the placement. Nick gave Alex and Duncan a guide to positioning anchors and other fixtures that would secure the works, though he didn’t reveal how many pieces, or in what order they should be put in place. There must be a master plan here somewhere, something he worked on…and there has to be a cache of sketchbooks that contain the preliminary drawings and roughs that he used to create the work.”
“What about all those books you saw down in Dungeness?” Billy asked Maisie while studying a tool rack. “Gawd, even ’is tools’re kept neat and tidy.”
“The sketchbooks were revealing in that I could see his progress, the images that moved him, right from his early days as an artist. But even though they contained his reflections upon the war, I think there are books, somewhere, that definitely pertain to this collection.”
“Crowbar, Miss?”
“That’ll do, but take care.”
“Which one shall I start with?”
Maisie touched the first crate. “This one. It’s one of the largest, and it’s on the outside, so let’s be logical and open it first.”
Billy shimmied the crowbar between two slats of wood, pulling them apart. With each crack as a nail came free, both Maisie and her assistant stopped all movement and listened to ensure they had not drawn unwanted company. Finally, the crate was opened, and Maisie reached to pull out a painting that had been packed in a similar manner to those she had seen unloaded by the smugglers. Billy helped her stand the work against another crate before removing a hopsack covering, followed by a clean linen cloth, which, when pulled back, revealed the painting.
In a plain wooden frame, the piece appeared to be a horizontal panel measuring approximately eight feet by three feet.
“Blimey.”
Maisie said nothing, feeling the breath catch in her throat.
Billy reached to touch the piece, and though she thought it would be better to stop him, Maisie found that she couldn’t, for she understood the action as a reflex of memory.
“It’s got me right ’ere, Miss.” He touched his chest with fingertips that had lingered on the painting.
“Me too, Billy.”
The panoramic scene depicted two armies marching toward each other, with every last detail so clearly visible that Maisie felt that she could focus on the face of a soldier and see into his soul. Across and through the barbed wire they ran forward to meet the enemy, then, to both left and right, men began falling, with wounds to head, to leg, arm and heart taking them down. In the mural, so full of movement that it appeared animated, the two armies were not shown in combat, for instead the foot soldiers had become stretcher-bearers, running to their wounded, caring for the dying, burying their dead. Ants in khaki going about the business of war, the toil expected of them. The work suggested no victor and no vanquished, no right side and no wrong side, just two battalions moving toward each other with the terrible consequence of death. Blending skill with passion, Nick Bassington-Hope had revealed the landscape of war in all its darkness and terror—the sky lit by shellfire, mud dragging down those who remained unfelled and the stretcher-bearers, those brave souls who hurried across no-man’s-land in the service of life.
“If that’s just one of ’em, I’m not sure I can look at the rest.”
Maisie nodded and whispered, as if to speak aloud would dishonor the dead. “I just need to see one or two others, then we’ll pack them all up again.”
“All right, Miss.” He lifted the crowbar and began to open the next crate.
THE TASK COMPLETED, Maisie and Billy leaned against shelving to rest for a moment.
“Does anyone know what Mr. B-H wanted to call this ’ere masterpiece?”
“Not as far as I know. People don’t even know what to call it, and because he was so interested in the triptych form while in Belgium before the war, they all assumed that’s what it was.”
“I don’t reckon I ever want to ’ear the word triptych again, not after this.”
“I don’t think I do, either. Now then, if you search through those shelves over there, I’ll attack this chest of drawers.”
Both began work in silence, as a bladelike shaft of sunlight piercing through the clouds came to their aid with a shimmering beam onto the glass above. Taking up a series of papers and rough sketches, Maisie looked over at her assistant, who was pulling out a collection of completed but unwrapped canvases. “Will your boys be home soon, Billy?”
“Reckon by the weekend. The ’ospital talked about convalescence somewhere on the coast—you know, fresh air to clear the lungs. Of course, if Doreen’s brother-in-law ’adn’t decided to throw in ’is lot to come up to London, we could probably ’ave done it, but not now. Costs money, does that. But the boys will be all right, you’ll see.” He hesitated, just for a second. “Of course, they know about their sister now, that we’ve lost Lizzie.”
“I see,” Maisie said as she pulled a collection of thick sketchbooks from a drawer. Of quarto dimension, they were each numbered in the same manner as the crates in which Nick had identified his masterwork. “Oh, look…one, two, three, four…” She leafed through each one in turn. “These are the sketchbooks where Nick did his preparatory work for the pieces, but—”
“What is it, Miss?”
“Two are missing.”
“P’raps Mr. B-H put them somewhere else, took them down to ’is cottage in Dungeness.”
“Yes, of course, they must be down there.”
“Do you remember seeing them?”
“No, but—”
Billy was silent, then, for his thoughts had kept pace with Maisie’s. She set the sketchbooks to one side.
“Those are coming with us. I think we can go now.”
“Don’t we need to find the diagram thing that shows how all the bits of art are put together on the wall?”
Maisie shook her head. “No. From the pieces I inspected, each segment has a certain shape and will only fit logically in one place, just like a puzzle. It shouldn’t be difficult to work out.”
They ensured that everything in the lock-up was left as they had found it, then secured the doors and walked to the MG. Billy glanced sideways at Maisie and cleared his throat, ready to ask a question.
She responded before he uttered a word, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m all right, Billy. It’s just those paintings…”
Eighteen