Cat O'Nine Tales: And Other Stories (15 page)

“Mind you,”
continued Max, “I’m not complaining, because if they had charged me with the
crime I did commit, I would have ended up with a much longer sentence...” he
paused...”and nothing to look forward to once I’m released.”

Max knew he had
aroused my curiosity, and as I had nowhere to go for the next three hours
before the cell door would be opened for Association–that glorious forty-five
minutes when prisoners are allowed out of their cell for a stroll around the
yard–I picked up my pen, and said, “OK, Max, I’m hooked. So tell me how you
came to be sentenced for the wrong crime.”

Max struck a
match, lit his
handrolled
cigarette and inhaled
deeply before he began. In prison, every action is exaggerated, as no one is in
a hurry. I lay on the bunk above and waited patiently.

“Does the
Kennington
Set mean anything to you?” Max began.

“No,” I
replied, assuming he must be referring to a group of red-coated gentlemen on
horseback, glass of port in one hand, whip in the other, surrounded by a pack
of hounds with intent to spend their Saturday morning in pursuit of a furry
animal with a bushy tail. I was wrong.

The
Kennington
Set, as Max went on to explain, was in fact a
chess set.

“But no
ordinary chess set,” he assured me. I became more interested. The pieces were
probably crafted by Lu Ping (1469-1540), a master craftsman of the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644). All thirty-two ivory pieces were exquisitely carved and then
delicately painted in red and white.

The details
have been faithfully recorded in several historic
documents,
though it has never been conclusively established exactly how many sets Lu Ping
was responsible for producing in his lifetime.

“Three complete
sets were known to be in existence,” continued Max as smoke spiraled up from
the lower bunk.

“The first is
displayed in the throne room of the People’s Palace in Peking; the second in
the Mellon Collection in Washington, and the third at the British Museum. Many
collectors scoured the great continent of China in search of the fabled fourth
set, and although such efforts always ended in failure, several individual
pieces appeared on the market from time to time.”

Max stubbed out
the smallest cigarette butt I have ever seen. “I was at the time,” continued
Max, “carrying out some research into the smaller objects of
Kennington
Hall in Yorkshire.”

“How did you
manage that?” I asked.

“Country Life
commissioned Lord
Kennington
to write a coffee table book for Christmas, in
which he detailed the treasures of
Kennington
Hall,”
Max said, before rolling a second cigarette. “Most considerate of him,” he
added.

“Among the
peer’s ancestors was one James
Kennington
(1552-1618), a true adventurer,
buccaneer
, and loyal
servant of Queen Elizabeth I. James rescued the first set in 1588, only moments
before he sunk the
Isabella.
On
returning to Ply-mouth, following a seventeen-four victory in the match against
the Spanish, Captain
Kennington
lavished treasure
plundered from the sinking ship on his monarch. Her Majesty always showed a
great deal of interest in anything solid, especially if she could wear it–gold,
silver, pearls or rare gems–and rewarded Captain
Kennington
with a knighthood.

Elizabeth had
no use for the chess set, so Sir James was stuck with it. Unlike Sir Francis or
Sir Walter, Sir James continued to plunder the high seas. He was so successful
that, a decade later, his monarch elevated him to the House of Lords, with the
title the first Lord
Kennington
, for services
rendered to the Crown.” Max paused before adding, “The only difference between
a pirate and a peer is who you divide the spoils with.”

The second Lord
Kennington
, like his monarch, showed no interest in
chess, so the set was left to gather dust in one of the ninety-two rooms in
Kennington
Hall. As there were few historical incidents
worthy of mention during the uneventful lives of the third, fourth, fifth or
249/595 sixth Lords
Kennington
, we can only assume
that the remarkable chess set remained in situ, its pieces never moved in
anger. The seventh Lord
Kennington
served as a
colonel in the 12th Light Dragoons at the time of Waterloo. The colonel played
the occasional game of chess, so the set was dusted down and returned to the
Long Gallery.

The eighth Lord
Kennington
was slaughtered during the Charge of the
Light Brigade, the ninth in the Boer War, and the tenth at Ypres. The eleventh,
a playboy, led a more peaceful life, but eventually found it necessary, for
pecuniary reasons–
Kennington
Hall required a new
roof–to open his home to the public. They turned up every weekend in countless
numbers, and for a small sum were allowed to stroll around the Hall; when they
ventured into the Long Gallery they came across the Chinese masterpiece on its
stand, surrounded by a red rope.

With mounting
debts, which the public’s entrance fees could not offset, the eleventh Lord
Kennington
was forced to sell off several of the family
heirlooms, including the
Kennington
Set.

Christie’s
placed an estimate of £100,000 on the masterpiece, but the auctioneer’s hammer
finally fell at £230,000.

“When you next
visit Washington,” added Max between puffs, “you can view the original
Kennington
Set, as it’s now part of the Mellon Collection.
This would have been the end of my tale,” continued Max, “if the eleventh Lord
Kennington
hadn’t married an American striptease artiste,
who gave birth to a son. This child displayed a quality that the
Kennington
lineage had not troubled themselves with for
several generations–brains.

“The Honorable
Harry
Kennington
became, much to the disapproval of
his father, a hedge-fund manager, and thus the natural heir to the first Lord
Kennington
. He was a man who took as easily to the currency
market as his pirate ancestor had to the high seas. By the age of twenty-seven,
Harry had plundered his first million as an asset stripper, much to his
mother’s amusement, who suggested that stripping was clearly a hereditary
trait. By the time Harry inherited the title he was chairman of
Kennington’s
Bank. The first thing he did with his
new-found wealth was to set about restoring
Kennington
Hall to its former glory. He certainly did not allow members of the public to
pay five pounds to park their cars on his front lawn.

“The twelfth
Lord
Kennington
, like his father, also married a
remarkable woman. Elsie
Trumpshaw
was the offspring
of a Yorkshire cotton mill proprietor, and the product of a Cheltenham Ladies’
College education. Like any self-respecting Yorkshire lass, Elsie considered
the saying,
If
you take care of the pennies, the
pounds will take care of themselves
to
be a creed, not a
cliche
.

“While her
husband was away making money, Elsie was unquestionably the mistress of
Kennington
Hall. Having spent her formative years wearing
her elder sister’s hand-me-downs, carrying her thumbed books to school and
later borrowing her lipstick, whatever the color, Elsie was well qualified to
be the guardian of a hereditary pile. With consummate skill, diligence and good
housekeeping, she set about the maintenance and upkeep of the newly restored
Hall. Although she had no interest in the game of chess, she was irritated by
the empty display cabinet in the Long Gallery. She finally solved the problem
while strolling around a local car-boot sale,” said Max, “and at the same time
changed the fortunes of so many people, myself included.” Max stubbed out his
second cigarette and I was relieved that he didn’t immediately roll another, as
our little cell was fast coming to resemble Paddington Station in the era of
the steam engine.

Elsie was
trudging around a car-boot sale in
Pudsey
on a rainy
Sunday morning–she only ever attended such events when it was raining, as that
ensured fewer customers and it was therefore easier for her to strike a
bargain. She was rummaging through some clothes when she came across the
chessboard. The red and white squares brought back memories of a photograph she
had seen in the old Christie’s catalog, dating from when the original set had
been sold. Elsie bargained for some time with the man standing at the back of
an ancient Jaguar, and ended up having to part with £23 for the ivory
chessboard.

When Elsie
returned to the Hall, she placed the newly acquired board in the empty display
cabinet and was delighted to discover that it was a perfect fit. She thought
nothing more of the coincidence, until her uncle Bertie advised her to have it
valued–for insurance purposes, he explained.

Unconvinced,
but unwilling to slight her uncle, Elsie took the board up to London on one of
her monthly trips to visit her aunt Gertrude. Lady
Kennington
–she
was always Lady
Kennington
in London–dropped into
Sotheby’s on her way to Fortnum & Mason. A young assistant in the Chinese
department asked if her ladyship would be kind enough to come back later that
afternoon, by which time their expert would have placed a value on the board.

Elsie returned
to Sotheby’s after a leisurely lunch with Aunt Gertrude. She was greeted by a
Mr.
Sencill
, the head of the Chinese department, who
offered the opinion that the piece was unquestionably Ming Dynasty.

“And are you
able to place a value on it...” she paused...”for insurance purposes?’’

“Two thousand,
two thousand five hundred,
m’lady
,” said Mr.
Sencill
. “Ming chessboards are fairly common,” he
explained. “It is the individual pieces that are
rare,
and a complete set...” He raised the palms of his hands and placed them
together, as if praying to the unseen God of auctioneers. “Are you perhaps
considering selling the board?” he inquired.

“No,” replied
Elsie firmly. “On the contrary, I’m thinking of adding to it.”

The expert
smiled.

After all,
Sotheby’s is nothing more than a glorified pawn shop, with each generation of
the aristocracy either buying or selling.

On arriving
back at
Kennington
Hall, Elsie returned the board to
its position of honor in the drawing room.

Aunt Gertrude
set the ball rolling. On Christmas Day she presented her niece with a white
pawn. Elsie placed the single piece on the empty board. It looked lonely “And
now, my dear, you must see if you can complete the set in your lifetime,” the
old lady challenged, unaware of the chain of events she was about to set in
motion. What had begun as a whim, while attending a car-boot sale in
Pudsey
, turned into an obsession, as Elsie began to search
the globe for the missing
pieces.
The first Lord
Kennington
would have been proud of her.

When Lady
Kennington
gave birth to their first son, Edward, a
grateful husband presented his wife with a white queen. A magnificently
sculptured ivory lady adorned in a long, intricately carved royal gown. Her
Majesty stared down with disdain on the single pawn.

The next
acquisition was another white pawn, acquired by Uncle Bertie from a dealer in
New York. This allowed the white queen to reign over two of her subjects.

The birth of a
second son, James, was rewarded with a red bishop, resplendent in a flowing
surplice and carrying a shepherd’s crook. The queen and her two subjects were
now able to celebrate Holy Communion, even if they had to travel to the other
side of the board to do so. Soon the whole family began to join in the search
for the missing pieces. A red pawn was the next acquisition, when it came under
the auctioneers hammer at Bonham’s. He took up his place on the far side of the
board, waiting to be taken. By now, everyone in the trade was only too aware of
Lady
Kennington’s
lifetime mission.

Next to find
its place on the board was a white castle, which Aunt Gertrude left Elsie in
her will.

In 1991 the
twelfth Lord
Kennington
passed away, by which time
the white set was only lacking two pawns and a knight, while the red set was
short of four pawns, one rook and a king.

On 11 May 1992,
a dealer in possession of three red pawns and a white knight knocked on the
door of
Kennington
Hall. He had recently returned
from a journey through the outer regions of China. A long and arduous trek, he
told her ladyship. But, he assured her, he had not returned empty-handed.

Although her
ladyship was in her declining years, she still held out for several days,
before the dealer finally settled his bill at the
Kennington
Arms and left clutching a check for £26,000.

Despite
following up rumors from Hong Kong, flying to Boston, contacting dealers as far
afield as Moscow and Mexico, rumor rarely became reality in Lady
Kennington’s
unremitting search for the last of the missing
pieces.

During the next
few years, Edward, the thirteenth Lord
Kennington
,
came across the last red pawn and a red rook in the home of a penniless peer,
who had been on the same staircase as Eddie at Eton. His brother James, not to
be outdone, acquired two white pawns from a dealer in Bangkok.