Death of an Elgin Marble (13 page)

‘I wish I could come too,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘There is one thing that occurs to me, however. You always say, Francis, that, when you know how, you are well on the way to knowing who. Maybe after the Rosebery advert and the alarm we shall be a little clearer. But I do wonder about that container, the one that went all the way to Brindisi and broke into pieces on the quayside. It came from Victoria, I think you said, Inspector. But how did it get to Victoria? There must be a record of its arrival at the station, surely. Where did it come from? There can’t be that many firms who send containers shooting round about the place like children playing tiddlywinks, can there?’

‘Good point, Lady Powerscourt, very good point. I shall put my people onto it. Trailing through official records is the perfect occupation for policemen. No time for speculation there. There is one thing I forgot to tell you both. You remember I said I was going to look into the financial records of the people at the museum? Well, some of them will take a very long time. They can involve complicated negotiations with the Bank of England and the tax people, so help me God. But we have established that two members of the museum staff recently received very large payments into bank accounts specially set up for the purpose.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘I think I could make a good guess.’

‘Have a go,’ replied the Inspector.

‘I should say the recipients were Kostas and his brother. And – this is pure speculation, Inspector – I should hazard a guess that the bank in question was the Greek one with a branch in Notting Hill?’

‘God bless my soul,’ said the Inspector, ‘I shall never complain about speculation again. You are right on both counts, my lord, absolutely right.’

Brother Andreas had been a monk for nearly ten years. He was part of the Orthodox community of St John the Divine on the Greek island of Kythnos in the Cyclades. The monks were now the only residents of Kythnos. Their monastery started on the little quayside and climbed back up the hill. There were olive trees to nurture and vines on the lower slopes. Twenty monks were resident here, a life alternating between work and prayer. The little church had remarkable frescoes, miraculously preserved, and even now, visitors sometimes came from the mainland in the summer time to wonder at them. The monastery had a series of deep caves below the surface, some converted into chapels with paintings of the saints on the walls. Every monk on this island had his own special role to make the community prosper: the baker, the tailor, the gardener, the cook, the icon painter. Andreas was the boatman, responsible for maintaining the small sailing vessel and a couple of rowing boats. Part of his duty was to provide the fish that was served on feast days. If supplies or stores were needed from the mainland, it was his responsibility to bring them back safely.

The lives of the monks were regulated by the different bells that summoned them to services during the day and night. They prayed together by the icons of centuries past on the chapel walls. In their cells they prostrated themselves time after time, a symbolic act that represented the path from sin to forgiveness, from the darkness of sin to the light of redemption. When they died their bodies were placed in the earth higher up the hill. There they rested for three years before their remains were taken out and replaced by a brother who had just died. The bones were transferred to the charnel house, the air made sweet by mountain flowers.

The monks of the monastery of St John, like the clergy of the Orthodox Church, had always been patriotic Greeks. Their efforts had helped keep Greek identity alive during the long years of the Turkish occupation. It was well known that the monks from a monastery on the mainland had blessed the first revolutionaries at the very beginning of their struggle for Greek Independence and consecrated their weapons to God. That spirit still lived on, with the wider community of Orthodox monks in favour of the Greek Diaspora, the greater Greece which would encompass all the places where Greek was spoken across southern Europe.

Every morning and evening now after prayers Brother Andreas would stand at the edge of the sea and look out for a ship. They had promised him that one would come, his two brothers in London. They had assured Andreas that he would be told what to do with the cargo. But as the sun rose and fell on the blue waters, the ship did not come. Brother Andreas was worried. His eldest brother Kostas had never let him down. Why should he start now? Where was the ship?

‘What’s the matter with this jacket, Lucy?’ Lord Francis Powerscourt was struggling to climb into a special uniform in Markham Square on the morning of the fire alarm in the British Museum. ‘I can’t seem to make it sit properly.’ Lady Lucy came and pulled quite hard at the sections at the back and sides of the garment. She pulled the hem at the rear down as hard as she could. There was a grunt from her husband.

‘Steady on, Lucy, you make me feel as though I’m being trussed up ready for market.’

His wife gave one final heave. ‘I wonder if it isn’t too small, this thing,’ she said, standing back to inspect her work. ‘But I think it’ll do now.’

She smiled at her creation. Sergeant Powerscourt of the Metropolitan Police stood before her, shifting from foot to foot as if the boots were too small as well. It had been Inspector Kingsley’s suggestion. ‘Only a small disguise, my lord, but I don’t think we want any staff in the British Museum recognizing you. Once you’re a sergeant you’ve got freedom of movement. You’ll be able to go wherever you want without any questions being asked. It’ll be an independent command. I look forward to seeing our latest recruit. You don’t have to salute your Inspector every time you meet him, my lord.’

‘It’s a pity the twins have just gone off to school,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I wonder if I could have arrested them without being recognized.’

Forty-five minutes later he was waiting with the Inspector and a couple of constables in a police car behind the British Museum. ‘You do look the part, my lord,’ the Inspector said cheerfully, ‘ten or twelve years’ service, I should say, at the very least. Now then. We would normally be called in by the fire brigade whenever there is a major alert like the one we’re about to have here.’ Kingsley peered out into the street. ‘The starting pistol should go off any minute.’

A few moments later the British Museum fire alarm sounded. Powerscourt thought it sounded as loud as an artillery salvo at the start of a battle. Even the ancient statues, thousands of years old, must have felt a faint tremor passing through their limbs. The inmates of the museum fled out into the front of the building. Nobody emerged from the exits at the rear. Powerscourt’s first concern, once they were inside, was to find the shortest route between the Caryatid and the loading bays in the basement. The basement was a huge area with enormous doors for the arrival and departure of ancient artefacts great and small. The thieves must surely have been waiting for the alarm in a side street close to the back entrance and then brought their replacement in here once the building was empty. A series of ramps led to the Elgin Rooms on the upper floor where the Caryatid lived along with her brothers and sisters from the metopes and the Parthenon frieze. Powerscourt and the Inspector commandeered a large trolley and set off. It took six minutes from the basement to the statue. Powerscourt stood very still for five minutes beside the Athenian maiden, then they retraced their steps. Powerscourt thought it must have taken twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, to wheel the fake Caryatid in from the basement and take the original out, assuming the thieves were nimble at the business of taking one marble woman, seven and a half feet tall, down from her place on the porch and slotting another one in. All that must, as the Inspector pointed out on the return journey, have taken a great deal of experience and expertise. Once they were back in the basement, the two men looked around. They were surrounded by a host of strange equipment, with ropes of every size, hoists, small cranes, trolleys great and small lying about in no particular order. Over to one side was a great variety boxes, packing cases and, to Powerscourt’s great delight, a cluster of wooden railway containers, all of them empty, as if they had already given up their booty. Powerscourt pointed at them, still panting slightly from their exertions with the trolley.

‘That must have been how they did it, Inspector, another bloody container.’

‘Don’t suppose this one came all the way from Brindisi,’ the Inspector muttered, ‘somewhere closer to home, I’m sure.’ He looked at his watch once more. ‘I think you should go back to the car, my lord. I’ll head out through the museum and tell the fire people to sound the all clear. You’d better be out of here before they come back.’

As the Museum staff, porters, scholars, secretaries and admission staff made their way back into the building nobody took any notice of a nondescript man in dark overalls in the front of the crowd. He made his way directly to the Deputy Director’s office and deposited a plain envelope on the secretary’s desk. It was addressed in a familiar handwriting: Theophilus Ragg, Deputy Director, British Museum, Great Russell Street. The dark overalls slipped away with a giggle to be lost in the crowds of Holborn.

It was late afternoon when the plain van climbed up the final ascent to Wilbur Lincoln Mitchell’s great house high up in the Hudson Valley in upper New York State. The four men who got out had no markings on their overalls and made no identification to their hosts.

‘We’ve brought the package,’ was all they said, as they began manoeuvring the outsize black coffin out of the vehicle and along the passageways to the orangery in the garden. With much swearing and a great chewing of gum, they unpacked their cargo and placed it at the far end of the great room. They checked with Mitchell that it was in the right place. He gave them a generous tip and waved them off down the road back to the city. Then, one by one, he turned on the powerful lights he had installed in this great hall. The first light illuminated the statue of Apollo from Mitylene, one of the most famous statues of the Greek world. Then the Charioteer from Zakynthos, then the Roman Emperor Hadrian who had been responsible for the Pantheon in Rome and the Athena from the first century
AD
. He paused before he turned on the last two lights. Standing proudly on her plinth stood a Greek maiden who looked as though she was carrying something on her head. A Caryatid from late fifth-century
BC
Athens had come to her new home in the New World. Wilbur Lincoln Mitchell gazed at her in wonder for a long time. Tears began to flow down his cheeks and into his well-trimmed moustache. He wondered if he should build a whole porch to make her feel at home.

No spasm of rage shook Theophilus Ragg as he opened his latest letter from the blackmailer. This one was shorter than before.

‘Very well,’ it began. ‘You have chosen to ignore our requests. Tomorrow morning the full details of the disappearance of the Caryatid will appear in
The Times
and the
Morning Post
. Your role in refusing to tell the police and the public will be made very clear.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
! Vengeance is mine.’

Ruat Caelum
, indeed, Ragg said to himself. Let justice be done even though the heavens fall. He felt a great sense of determination. Let the newspapers say what they would, he would defend his museum to the last breath in his body. He helped himself to a small glass of malt whisky from the Director’s inner cabinet and prepared to defend his conduct.
Theophilus
, he said to himself,
the end of my career may be near, it may even be nearer now than it was this morning, but I shall go down fighting to the last breath in my body. Bloody blackmailer
. The man from
The Times
was due in a quarter of an hour.

Late that evening Inspector Kingsley brought an early edition of
The Times
round to Markham Square. ‘Picked it up at King’s Cross,’ he said, ‘it was on the way to Scotland.’

The story was prominently displayed. ‘British Museum Caryatid Stolen!’ the headline said in enormous type. ‘Replaced with fake in daring raid! Theft concealed from the public!’ There was considerable detail about the robbery, none of it fresh to Powerscourt or the Inspector. Beside the article was an interview with the Deputy Director of the museum, Theophilus Ragg, described as ‘the official at the centre of this sad story of deceit and humiliation’. The readers were directed to a leading article where the editor wondered if the British Museum had failed in its duty to keep this most special statue safe in England. ‘It has long been the contention of Lord Elgin and his apologists,’ the paper thundered, ‘that the Elgin Marbles, of which the Caryatid from the Erechtheion is such a distinguished member, would be safer in London than they would have been in Athens, liable to pillaging and theft from any passing antiquary. Now the theft has indeed occurred, but in the heart of the imperial capital. This is a black day indeed for Lord Elgin and the British Museum. Let us hope it is not also a black day for Britain and the Empire.’

Ragg, Powerscourt thought, was making a pretty good fist of things, playing well with a bad hand. ‘Why did you keep it secret?’ demanded
The Times
. ‘Why were the police not called in?’

‘There have been a number of similar incidents across the world,’ Ragg had replied, ‘where the missing object is quickly returned once the thieves discover it is almost impossible to sell it. Publicity and policemen, in my judgement, would make such a course less likely.’

‘Were there any negotiations about the return of the maiden to the museum?’

‘Certainly not,’ had been Ragg’s reply. Technically right perhaps, Powerscourt said to himself, because Ragg had refused them, but an offer, however unreliable, had certainly been made.

‘Do you think the same thieves were at work here as in Paris with the theft of the
Mona Lisa
from the Louvre? Shouldn’t that have been a warning to you to take extra precautions?’

Powerscourt felt rather proud of Ragg for his next answer. ‘Of course,’ the Deputy Director had said, ‘how silly of me,’ and you could almost hear the sarcasm in his voice, ‘I should have realized that the two were obviously linked. You could pick the
Mona Lisa
off the wall and walk out of the Louvre with it under your coat and nobody would be any the wiser. The Caryatid is over seven feet high, made of marble, unable to walk on her own two feet. Only a giant of a size and strength not, alas, equalled in any of the museum’s vast collection of statuary from across the known world would be able to walk out of the British Museum with her under his arm. Apart from that, of course, the similarities between events in London and Paris are self-evident.’