Constable Through the Meadow (10 page)

‘Ah, I’ve obviously just caught you, Constable. Are you in a hurry? You can spare a minute or two?’

‘Yes, of course,’ and I offered to take him into my office but he said he could tell me his business where we stood in the front garden.

‘You know the Moon and Compass Inn, at Craydale?’ he put to me.

‘Yes, it’s on my beat,’ I said.

‘Ah, well, there is a problem. A delicate one, I might add,’ he began. ‘I hate to make accusations which I cannot substantiate, but I feel you ought to be aware of this …’

I wondered what was coming next, but waited as he gathered his words together.

‘It’s the picture of Winston Churchill,’ he said eventually. ‘You know it?’

‘It hangs over the fireplace in the bar,’ I informed him. ‘A nice picture, very realistic. I know it well.’

‘And so you should!’ His voice increased in pitch. ‘It was
commissioned from a special sitting – Churchill actually posed for that picture, Constable. It’s not a copy, not a print but the original by Christopher Tawney. It’s the only one in the world, Constable.’

‘It must be valuable, then?’ I said inanely.

‘I have no idea of its value,’ he said shortly. ‘No idea at all; it’s not an old master so we’re not talking in huge sums, but I’d guess it can be measured in thousands, if not tens of thousands. And this is why I’ve called, Constable. That painting has been stolen. It should not be there; that pub has no right to that picture, no right at all.’

‘Stolen? But it’s been in that pub for years,’ I told him. ‘Long before I came here. Eight or ten years even. Are you sure it’s the one you think it is?’

‘I’ve never been so sure in my life, Constable. You see, I had it done, I was the person who commissioned the artist and
persuaded
Winston to undertake that sitting. I know that picture like I know my own belongings. If you care to examine it, you’ll see Tawney’s signature in the bottom left-hand corner too.’

‘You’d better come into the office,’ I said.

I asked Mary to make a cup of tea, and to include the gentleman’s wife who waited in the car. She was persuaded to come into the lounge where Mary and the children entertained her as I discussed this matter with her husband.

His name was Simon Cornell and he was a retired director of one of Britain’s largest and most famous manufacturers of cigars.

‘I retired about six years ago,’ he said. ‘And now Jennie and I spend a lot of time touring England, seeing places we’ve never been able to visit until now. Always too busy, you know, leading the hectic life of a businessman.’

‘So what about the painting?’ I was taking notes. ‘What’s your involvement with that?’

‘It was done for an advertisement series,’ he said. ‘Winston was happy enough for us to use that picture in our adverts – restrictions weren’t so rigid then, although he did ask for us to give the equivalent of his fee to a charity of his choice. So we had the oil painting executed by Christopher Tawney; several prints were run off it and you might have seen copies of them on
cigar-box lids, adverts in the papers and magazines and so on.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I thought I’d seen that picture before. To be honest, Mr Cornell, I didn’t pay a great deal of close attention to it …’

‘Exactly, because there are so many copies still around, a lot of them hanging in pubs, by the way, like this one. They’re the same size too. But the one in the Moon and Compass is the original. I can vouch for that.’

I took a long handwritten statement from him which
confirmed
what he had told me, and then noted his address and telephone number for future use.

I did extract from him that he was not acting in any official capacity on behalf of the company for whom he had worked; he was merely drawing police attention to a theft which had occurred many years ago. He did inform me that, so far as he could recall, the picture had been hanging in the boardroom and it had been painted soon after Churchill had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Some time around 1956, it had disappeared.

‘Company records will give the exact date of its
disappearance
,’ Mr Cornell informed me. ‘But that’s roughly the sequence of events.’

‘So it might have been here at least ten years?’ I said. ‘And I do know the present landlord has been here only four years. He bought the picture with the inn, by the way; he told me that when I was admiring it some time ago. He did not bring it with him – it was part of the fittings.’

‘So who does it belong to now, eh?’ smiled Cornell.

‘I think that’s a matter between the company and the landlord of the Moon and Compass,’ I said. ‘But clearly, you’d be interested in tracing the thief?’

‘I think that would be impossible now,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you will contact the company and inform them of my discovery, and perhaps warn Mr Grayson, your landlord, of this
conversation
?’

‘Yes, of course. And I’ll let you know what progress I make.’

And so Mr Cornell left me with this problem.

As he drove away, his wife chirping with delight at her warm reception by our little brood of four children and I was left with
the thought that David Grayson had no idea he was in
possession
of stolen property. I was equally aware that the matter could not be ignored, but knew that if I mentioned the affair to Sergeant Blaketon, he would charge into action like the
proverbial
bull in a china shop. His heavy-handed, rule-bound methods would wreak havoc every inch of the way as he had me arresting everyone in sight for theft or for receiving stolen property. It was my belief that this allegation, for it was nothing more than an allegation at this stage, required some rather delicate handling.

And so I waited for Sergeant Charlie Bairstow to come on duty. I felt he would adopt a more reasoned approach. It meant a delay of just one day, but I felt it was justified. I caught him during a quiet moment over an early-morning cup of coffee in the office at Ashfordly, and presented him with the story. He listened carefully and I showed him the statement made by Simon Cornell.

‘A tale of villainy if ever there was one,’ he smiled. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘About the truth of it, you mean?’ I asked.

‘Yes, is Cornell having us on, or is that picture the genuine thing as he says.’

‘I believe him.’ I spoke as I felt and, of course, I had
witnessed
Cornell’s reaction as he had relayed his tale.

Sergeant Bairstow thought for a while and I knew he was weighing up all the problems that might accrue, both emotional and legal, and then he said, ‘We’d better go and have a look at it. And we’d better warn Grayson of this.’

‘He bought it legally,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, and that gives him a claim to the painting,’ he said. ‘A claim of right made in good faith, as the Larceny Act so aptly puts it.’

And so we drove out to Craydale and popped into the Moon and Compass. David was working in his cellar when we arrived, stacking crates and cleaning out his beer pumps. He was happy enough to break for a coffee.

‘Well, gentlemen.’ He took us into the bar which was closed to the public as it was not opening hours. ‘This looks
business-like
, two of you descending on me.’

‘It is a problem,’ Sergeant Bairstow said. ‘Nick, you’d better explain.’

I told him of Cornell’s visit and allegations, and he listened carefully, a worried frown crossing his pleasant face as I
outlined
the theft of the picture from the cigar company. We closely examined the painting and it was clearly executed in oils and signed, and on the back was a certificate of authenticity. It was the genuine thing; of that, there was no doubt. David kept looking at the image of Sir Winston and was clearly upset at our unpleasant news.

‘So what do I do now?’ he asked us both, looking most anxious and apprehensive.

‘Nothing,’ said Charlie Bairstow. ‘Just sit tight; there’s no suggestion that you stole it, we want you to know that. Our next job is to contact the cigar firm and tell them the picture has been found. But you do have a claim to it, David, because you bought it in good faith, as part of the fittings of the pub.’

‘When did you say it was stolen?’ he asked.

‘1956, as near as we can tell,’ I said.

‘That was two landlords ago,’ he added. ‘I took it over from Jim Bentley, and he came here in 1959. I’m not sure who was here in 1956.’

‘Our liquor licensing records will tell us,’ said Bairstow. ‘We’ll chase up that angle.’

‘But I don’t want that bloody picture hanging here if it’s worth a fortune!’ he cried. ‘Somebody might pinch it!’

‘It’s been there years without that happening,’ Bairstow said. ‘Anyway, I’d say it’s yours now, David, but you might need a solicitor to do battle for you, from the ownership point of view, especially if the cigar people decide they want it back and make a claim upon it.’

‘I think I’ll hide it upstairs,’ he smiled grimly. ‘So what happens now?’

‘Leave it with us,’ said Charlie Bairstow. ‘We will contact the cigar company and see what they say.’

‘Thanks for telling me all this first,’ David was clearly
grateful
for our action. ‘So I might be sitting on a fortune after all this?’

‘Cornell thought it was worth a lot of money,’ I said. ‘But he
wouldn’t commit himself to an amount. Don’t forget that this is the original, David.’

‘How can I? It’s funny this has arisen,’ he added. ‘I’ve often said to Madge – my wife that is – that this looked like an oil painting and not a copy. I know some copies look so realistic now, even down to a rough surface, but well, this did have a genuine feel to it. I never thought of looking at the back for that certificate!’

‘Well,’ said Sergeant Bairstow. ‘You hang on to it, and we’ll see what happens next.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ and we left him to his thoughts.

Back in the office, I compiled a report on the matter for despatch to the Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary in whose area the cigar factory was based. In the terminology of the time, I asked him if he would allow an officer to search his records in an attempt to locate the report of the original theft, and then allow an officer to visit a senior official of the cigar company to inform him of the painting’s present whereabouts. Sergeant Bairstow also asked me to include a paragraph to ask whether, in view of the passage of time, Surrey Constabulary required any further action by us in this matter.

The reply came ten days later. A detective sergeant in
Guildford
had established that the crime had been reported on 28th April 1956, the picture then being worth £850.

The original’s disappearance had not been noticed for some time because one of the copies, in an identical frame, had been substituted. It had never been recovered, nor had the thief been arrested. Enquiries at the time had revealed that one of the suspects had been a salesman who had subsequently resigned from the company, but nothing had ever been proved against him. That man’s name was not supplied, but Surrey Police did say the file had never been closed; they went on to add that it would be appreciated if steps could be taken to ascertain the name of the person who had sold the painting to the landlord of the Moon and Compass.

We did trace the long-retired landlord, an old character called Ralph Whalton who now lived with his married daughter in a bungalow at Eltering. He did not remember anything of the painting, but his daughter did. A plain girl approaching her
thirties, she remembered its arrival.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You must remember, Dad!’

The old man shook his head. ‘I’m too old now, Jill. They gave me all sorts of publicity stuff, I stuffed most of it in the cellar. I couldn’t put it all up in the bar.’

‘Well, I remember it well. I was about eighteen or nineteen at the time, and helping behind the bar. A salesman came in, not the regular one, with a box of those cigars you always bought. And he had that picture of Churchill. He said every pub was being given one and he hoped we would display it in a public area.’

‘Was I there?’ he asked, clearly puzzled.

‘You might not have been,’ she now realised. ‘Maybe not, maybe that’s why I was helping out. Mebbe you’d gone away somewhere. Anyway, we took a picture down, it was one of those pen-and-ink drawings of a Scottish mountain scene, and hung Sir Winston instead. He’s been there ever since.’

She was unable to provide a description of the salesman and did not know his name. We passed this information to
Guildford
Police and it was about three weeks later when I received a telephone call to say that Guildford Police were closing this file because (a) the picture had been located and (b) their suspect salesman was now known to have died in 1962. Apparently, their records showed he was working in the North Riding for a short period during the spring of 1956. He was a very positive suspect.

So who did the picture now belong to? I knew that if someone was convicted of stealing it, the court could make an order for its restitution to the cigar company, but this was impossible in this case because several innocent buyers had since been involved and, apart from that, no one had been convicted of its theft. This latter fact alone ruled out this form of restitution through the criminal courts; now, of course, no one would ever be convicted for stealing it.

David Grayson, landlord of the Moon and Compass, now had a strong legal right to that picture, and I do know that he changed his mind about hiding it upstairs.

He was very proud of it, particularly as it had spawned so many copies throughout the country, and he told me that the
cigar company had eventually offered him one of the many surplus copies in an identical frame, but he had refused. They desperately wanted the original to be returned for display in the company head office, but they did not offer him any money or compensation for it. After all, he had paid good money to acquire it quite legally and perhaps the company should have made some form of financial gesture.

Instead, following David’s refusal, the company had made a half-hearted threat of attempting to recover the painting through the civil courts, but that was never proceeded with. I don’t think it would have succeeded. So even now, if you go into the bar of the Moon and Compass at Craydale, you will see Sir Winston Churchill’s image beaming over the customers. And no one knows how or why it came to be in this remote North Yorkshire pub.