Death of an Old Master (23 page)

Powerscourt groaned inwardly. That could take weeks, months, even years. The main phalanx of his wife’s relations, the brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and their varied progeny, would have
constituted a reasonable congregation for Evensong in any cathedral in Britain. Add in the auxiliaries and the outriders of Lady Lucy’s family diaspora, the first cousins, the second cousins
and their appendages, and there would be standing room only at the back of the nave.

‘There’s no need to make that face, Francis.’ Lady Lucy was smiling now. ‘I’ve been trying to help you in your investigation.’

‘I’m very grateful to you, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, cheered by the thought that he didn’t have to make contact in person with the entire tribe, ‘and what have you
discovered?’

‘Well,’ said Lucy, sitting in a chair by the fire, ‘I thought I’d ask around about these art dealers. The Clarkes have been there for years and years, no skeletons in
their family cupboards apart from one earlier proprietor who ran away with his neighbour’s wife.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How far did he get?’

‘He only got as far as Dover, I’m afraid. His sons went after him and persuaded him to come back just as he was about to board the packet to Calais.’

‘They must have been very persuasive, the sons, I mean,’ said Powerscourt, looking keenly at Lady Lucy’s eyes.

‘Pistols, not words, apparently, were the order of the day. They say the father never forgave them. However, that’s not important. Then there are the Capaldis, originally from Italy.
Very devout Catholics, apparently, friendly with all those people at the Brompton Oratory.’

Powerscourt had a sudden vision of Christopher Montague, the empty bookshelves, the empty cupboards, the great wounds on his neck, just one hundred yards from the Oratory in Brompton Square.

Lady Lucy paused. ‘That leaves de Courcy and Piper,’ said Powerscourt, suspecting that some crucial piece of evidence was about to be revealed. ‘Which one of those two has the
interesting past?’

‘It’s de Courcy, Francis, Edmund de Courcy.’

Powerscourt suddenly remembered Lucy telling him a story during one of his earlier investigations into the death of Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. That had been a fairy story with a
young man and his mother, a young man in love, a dead wife at the bottom of the steps leading down to her garden.

‘There are three branches of the de Courcys, Francis, as I’m sure you know.’

Powerscourt didn’t but he nodded vigorously all the same.

‘One lot are in Cumbria,’ Lady Lucy went on, ‘enormous estates, lots of money, all they do is hunt and fish, that sort of thing. Then there are the Nottinghamshire de Courcys,
pots and pots of money from coal. Now, this is the interesting part, Francis, Edmund de Courcy says he comes from the Nottinghamshire de Courcys. But he doesn’t. He comes from another branch
altogether.’

Powerscourt thought of the de Courcy family as a train line, branching out all over England, red lines on his map connecting Nottinghamshire to Cumbria. Change at York, probably.

‘So where does he come from?’ he said. ‘And why should he lie about his origins?’

‘I can only guess about why he should lie,’ said Lady Lucy, trying to stick to the facts in the manner approved by her husband. ‘But he comes from Norfolk. The Norfolk de
Courcys have lived for centuries in a huge house near the sea, not far from Cromer. But the family fortunes have collapsed. Edmund de Courcy’s father, Charles Windham de Courcy, ran away to
the south of France to live with some Frenchwoman. He left three children behind in Norfolk, Edmund, who was the eldest, and his two sisters. Then this Charles de Courcy had another two children
with the Frenchwoman. When he died they discovered that he had spent most of the family fortune. What was left was divided between the English branch, including Edmund’s mother, and the
French family. But there wasn’t enough money to go round. The great house is closed up. Nobody lives there now. Edmund has entered the art world.’

Lady Lucy looked sad, the bald facts of her narrative hiding so much private pain, a family torn apart.

‘And where are the mother and the two sisters now, Lucy?’

‘They’re living abroad. It’s so much cheaper over there.’

Powerscourt asked the obvious question. ‘But why should Edmund lie about his family? There’s no shame attached to going to live abroad. People go to the south of France or Italy all
the time. And would you suppose that the mother would be happy in France, fearing she might bump into her husband’s mistress at the bakery or the hairdresser’s or somewhere like
that?’

‘It’s a pretty big place, the south of France,’ said Lady Lucy defensively. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of hairdressers, more than enough to go round.’

‘Suppose the family had plenty of pictures up there in Norfolk, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Edmund could have gone into the art world to get the best prices for them. When
he’s got enough money, he’ll bring the rest of his family home.’

‘That still doesn’t explain why he lied about them,’ Lady Lucy replied.

‘Or,’ Powerscourt rushed on, his mind racing through the facts of his investigation since the death of Christopher Montague, ‘suppose the opposite. There are no pictures in the
house in Norfolk. De Courcy employs a forger. Maybe the forger is in the same place as his family. Maybe one of his sisters is rather a star with the brushes and the impasto. Maybe it’s some
embittered local artist, desperate for money. Every time de Courcy crosses the Channel to see his family he brings a lot of forgeries back with him, hidden in the bottom of a suitcase, wrapped up
inside his fishing gear, God knows. Did nobody know exactly where they had gone, the mother and the sisters de Courcy?’

Lady Lucy paused. She knew somebody had mentioned somewhere unusual to her.

‘Corsica,’ she said at last. ‘Northern Corsica. Place called Calvi, I think.’

‘Calvi?’ said Powerscourt, suddenly remembering Johnny Fitzgerald telling him about a great bundle of paintings arriving at the de Courcy and Piper Gallery. What were Johnny’s
words? ‘It said on the front that it came from Calvi or Galvi, somewhere like that.’

He picked up the atlas on the floor and began turning the pages furiously. Ireland, no. Scotland, no. Germany no. France, yes. Off the southern coast, its northern section pointing like a finger
at the Italian Riviera, was Corsica. And in a bay at the northern end of the island sat Calvi.

He showed Lady Lucy the map and smiled at her. ‘We’re going on a journey,’ he said. ‘What do you know of Corsica, Lucy?’

Lady Lucy paused. ‘Mountains,’ she said, ‘huge mountains. Wild coastline, I think. And,’ she shuddered slightly as she thought of going to the granite island,
‘feuds, bandits, vendettas, murderers.’

‘Premises secured,’ said the telegraph message. ‘Corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Sixth Street. Ample space for display of treasure.’

William Alaric Piper rubbed his hands together with delight. At last, his agent in New York had secured a base for him, a base that would be converted into a gallery for the display of his
paintings. The Venetians, currently on display on the floors above him to the ungrateful Londoners, who had bought in insufficient quantities in Piper’s view, the Venetians would cross the
Atlantic. Surely, he reflected, America must have been discovered in Titian’s lifetime, if not that of Giorgione. Perhaps they had met Amerigo Vespucci on their travels. Now they could all be
reunited in the plutocratic magnificence of Fifth Avenue. He read on.

William Alaric Piper was having trouble with his latest millionaire. He had taken Lewis B. Black on his normal introductory tour, the National Gallery, the weekend at a grand house in the
country, the reverential tour round his own exhibition. William P. McCracken, Piper reflected bitterly, may have been overly susceptible to the views of the elders of the Third Presbyterian in
Lincoln Street in his home town of Concord, Massachusetts. His wife might have had strong views about pictorial propriety. But at least he had talked. Lewis B. Black scarcely spoke at all. In the
National Gallery on a visit lasting almost three hours he had uttered precisely two words in front of a Turner. ‘Nice sunset.’

In Piper’s own gallery he had hummed and erred in front of various paintings. He seemed to be pregnant with speech. But no words came out. For a man of Piper’s temperament, volatile,
mercurial, this was maddening. He wanted to pick up Mr Black, not a very large man, and shake him. After two or three hours in his company Piper would feel exhausted, emotionally worn out. He
wondered if it was damaging his health. He would have to go to his doctor. Maybe there would be some pills he could prescribe.

When William Alaric Piper tried to work out why Black spoke so little he could only guess. Maybe words were like money. The less you talked the richer you would become. After ten or fifteen
years you would become a word millionaire, you would have a hoard, a treasure trove of unspoken thoughts. Maybe Black spent his life surrounded by people who wanted him to make decisions. Close
down that factory. Invest in these bonds. Buy this mansion in Newport Rhode Island. Silence would torture his staff as surely as it tortured Piper. Surely, he felt, Cornelius P. Stockman could not
be another of the silent plutocrats.

Lord Francis Powerscourt felt like a pygmy, a dwarf, a midget. He was surrounded by other pygmies, dwarves and midgets, humans ranged in front of the west front of Lincoln
Cathedral, a vast structure like a fortress guarding the glories of God within. Powerscourt had been in the city for two days now in search of the elusive Horace Aloysius Buckley and the sheer
size, the weight, the massiveness of the ancient building still overpowered him. It makes Stonehenge look like something a group of children might put together if they were left with a heap of
bricks in a garden, he thought. Maybe God had prefabricated it in heaven and dropped the whole edifice down on to this unlikely Lincolnshire hill. The later bits, he reminded himself, dated from
somewhere about 1265, over six hundred years before.

In the mornings Powerscourt waited in attendance at the railway station, looking at the passengers who decamped off the services from London or Peterborough or Ely. In his pocket he had the
likeness of a scowling Horace Aloysius Buckley in cricket flannels and a white sweater, bat in his hand. No Buckley had appeared so far. Powerscourt carried his likeness from the lower section of
the town up the aptly named Steep Hill. He carried Mr Buckley round the glories of the cathedral, the friezes showing Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, little stone people with
little stone animals in a little stone boat leaving Noah’s Ark, the Harrowing of Hell where the monstrous jaws of hell itself are stuffed with the souls of tiny naked sinners, Lust, with a
man and a woman having their private parts gnawed at by serpents. He took him along the nave, drenched with space and light, the stone vaults reaching up to heaven. He showed the likeness of Horace
Aloysius Buckley the Lincoln Imp, frozen in stone up a pillar, a little devil complete with horns and claws, covered in feathers, unable to prey on humankind any more.

Powerscourt would always remember the moment he found the living Horace Aloysius Buckley. Faintly from somewhere outside the cathedral, a house in the close perhaps, a choir was practising. And
his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. The voices soared upwards, the strings chasing them through the octaves to rise above the choir,
knitting the sound together, driving it forwards, higher and higher. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hall-el-uj-ah. The word echoed in Powerscourt’s brain all through his first conversation with the
London lawyer, husband of the beautiful and enigmatic Rosalind Buckley, former lover of the late Christopher Montague.

Buckley was sitting on a stone bench in front of the Angel Choir, messengers of God dispensing the justice of the Lord. He was wearing, not cricket flannels, but a nondescript suit of pale blue
with a dark shirt and an undistinguished tie. His shoes were scuffed as if he had been walking a great deal.

‘Are you Mr Horace Buckley?’ said Powerscourt in his gentlest voice.

Buckley stared at him in terror, his eyes bulging, his hands clutching at his watch chain as if it would deliver him from evil. ‘I am,’ he stammered, ‘and who on earth are
you?’

Powerscourt felt he could have announced himself as the Angel Gabriel or Moses recently returned from the mountain top and been believed.

‘My name is Powerscourt,’ he said softly. ‘I am investigating the deaths of Christopher Montague, art critic, and Thomas Jenkins, late of Emmanuel College, Oxford.’

Buckley looked paler yet. His hands began a series of convulsive movements round the watch chain, like a nun with her rosary. ‘I see,’ he said finally, with the air of a man whose
past has finally caught up with him, ‘I see.’

‘I don’t think we should talk in here,’ said Powerscourt, looking apprehensively at the various representatives of God’s purpose on the surrounding walls of the Angel
Choir. ‘Come with me.’

Powerscourt led him past the north choir aisle and along the north-east transept into the cloister. There was a feeble sun here, casting faint shadows across the cloisters. Hallelujah,
Powerscourt heard in his head again, Hall-el-uj-ah. He realized suddenly that he had Buckley’s movements the wrong way round. He couldn’t have come from the south at all. He must be on
his way back from the north, from Durham perhaps, last resting place of the Venerable Bede. Maybe Carlisle, though Powerscourt remembered from his train map with the red lines that connections were
difficult.

‘How many cathedrals have you visited now? For Evensong, I mean?’