The Orkney Scroll (2 page)

“I suppose. Where’d you find the drawing?”

“In the right-hand drawer! Can you believe it? It was under about a hundred years’ worth of liner paper. I didn’t find it until later.”

“It could still be a copy,” I said. Trevor’s exuberance was trying, or maybe I was just jealous.

“It could, but it isn’t,” Trevor said. “I’m convinced of it. Charles designed and built the furniture. His wife Margaret did the stained glass. It has her stamp all over it. You’ll notice it’s in remarkable condition, just a bit of wear on one of the drawers and the legs.”

“How much?” Baldwin repeated.

“One very similar sold at auction in the late nineteen-nineties for something in the neighborhood of one-point-five million U.S.,” Trevor said. “But I’m prepared to negotiate.” As he said one-point-five million, there was a crash upstairs and some scuffling. Mr. Bicycle Clips had apparently tripped over something else. I would have been up the stairs in a flash. Trevor ignored it.

“Babe?” Baldwin said.

“I don’t know, Blair,” I said. “All I can say at this moment is that I can’t find anything wrong with it.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Trevor said, winking at me. At that very moment the phone rang. “Sorry,” Trevor said. “I should take this. You two can chat. Dez!” he said into the phone. “You got my message?” Blair paled. There may be a lot of Dez’s in the world, but only one who would be calling Trevor right at this minute. Desmond Crane was also a lawyer, and Crane and Baldwin often found themselves on the opposite sides of various lawsuits. Word was the antipathy they displayed toward each other in court was absolutely genuine: they disliked one another intensely. It did strike me as a little overly convenient that Dez had chosen this very moment to call, but perhaps Trevor had suggested the time, all part of the plan to entice Blair to buy on the spot.

“Do you think it’s genuine?” Blair asked quietly.

“I think it could be,” I said, albeit reluctantly. I really wanted more time.

“It may still be available,” Trevor said, looking right at Baldwin. “I’m talking to Blair right now.”

“I’ll take it!” Blair said.

Trevor nodded and smiled in our general direction. “Call you back, Dez,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I’m off,” I said. I didn’t want to know what Blair was going to pay for this passion of his, and I sure didn’t want to find myself in the middle of a dustup between Baldwin and Crane. After all, both were customers.

“I’ll be at the Stane later,” Trevor called as I dodged past the Doberman again. “If you’ll join me, hen, I’ll stand you to a single malt or three.”

I didn’t take up Trevor’s offer of a scotch at the Stane, or rather The Dwarfie Stane, his favorite bar, there being only so much gloating I can stand in one day. I did see him a few days later, however. Baldwin, never one to quietly enjoy a victory over a competitor, held a rather grand cocktail party in his Rosedale mansion to show off his purchase. Trevor came with his latest girlfriend, Willow somebody or other. There was no point trying to remember her last name. If the relationship followed the normal course, she wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter. She had the standard Trevor girlfriend look, long dark hair and even longer legs, a certain innocence of expression. Like most of them, she had an unusual name. McClintoch & Swain was represented by both me and my business partner—and ex-husband—Clive Swain. I brought my life partner, Rob Luczka, as my date, and Clive brought his, my best friend Moira Meller.

Blair’s home was a shrine to Art Nouveau. It was a little over the top, but far be it for me to criticize, given I’d helped him to acquire a lot of it. Even the powder room walls had been covered in genuine Art Nouveau fabric. Not a copy, the real thing. Every room was a little museum, decorated to the point of excess and beyond. He had pieces from many of the masters of Art Nouveau, including some lovely furnishings by Josef Hoffmann, Carlos Bugatti, Henry van de Velde, and Victor Horta among others, and now of course he had a Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In the smaller items, he had much from Steuben and Tiffany, Sevres and Meissen and many lesser known but still important pieces dating to the period, and of course, determined as Blair was to erase his first mistake, a few genuine pieces of Galle glass. All were carefully placed, and artfully lit, none more so than the Mackintosh writing cabinet which was on a raised platform in an alcove off the living room all by itself. It was, to continue the shrine analogy, the holy of holies in Blair’s residence, the spot where he placed his prized possession of the moment.

I idly wondered what had happened to the objects previously displayed there. At one time the alcove had held a Josef Hoffman walnut-veneered sideboard, another time a rather unusual carved wood chair by Antoni Gaudi no less. I hadn’t seen either of those pieces in awhile. I wondered if he sold stuff he got tired of, or simply stored it in the basement, which would be unfortunate. Blair had paid just over a hundred thousand for that one chair, which was a deal considering how unique it was. He’d got it for a few tens of thousands less than the going rate because it had a very small cigarette burn on the seat. A shame really, which is perhaps why the chair was nowhere to be seen anymore. The Mackintosh writing cabinet was, if not his proudest acquisition, then perhaps his most extravagant. Blair was a Collector, with a capital
C.

“Do you like this stuff?” Rob asked as we wandered from room to room. “All these swirls on everything?”

“I do, but not all in one place. I prefer a home to be a little more relaxed,” I replied. “Consistency can be a virtue of course, but rigid adherence to one particular design aesthetic may not be an entirely good idea if you have to live with it. There comes a point where it’s just too much, and with Art Nouveau, that point may come sooner rather than later. I haven’t told Blair that, of course. I’m not that stupid. Actually maybe I am. I did tell him once early on that he might consider mixing stuff up a little. I believe all he said was ‘babe’ in a pained tone.”

“Personally, I believe a home decorated entirely in one style is the product of a diseased mind,” Clive said. He does, too. A house like this makes Clive, who is the designer of our team, nauseous. Given his surroundings, on this particular occasion, he was holding up rather well.

“I think I’d have to agree with you there, Clive,” Rob said. This was something. Rob and Clive agreed about once every year or so. “The desk thing is nice, though. It seems cleaner in design.”

“Yes, Mackintosh’s furniture is more pleasingly geometric than most of the pieces from that period.”

“It’s the bugs on everything I wonder about,” Moira said.

“But that’s the point, you see,” I interjected. “Art Nouveau appeared in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to industrialization, the mass production of everything. The people who espoused it believed objects should be made by hand, by artists and real craftspeople, and the motifs went back to nature, tendrils, leaves, insects and crustaceans, organic designs really.”

“Okay, but who wants to eat off platters with bugs on them?” Rob said.

“Just about everybody, apparently,” Clive said. “Have you seen the way people are attacking the mounds of shrimps and oysters and lobster, to say nothing of the gallons of real champagne being swilled? You can fault Blair’s design sense, but you can’t complain about the food.”

He was right. The party was an extravagant event. Blair didn’t seem to know how to do anything in a quiet way. I confess I do not enjoy parties like this, but both Blair and Trevor were so excited about the Mackintosh it would have been churlish to refuse to attend, and furthermore, as Clive is always pointing out, it is good for business for us to be seen in such company. Everybody, but everybody was there: media types, film stars, the usual hangers-on, titans of industry, various civic leaders, including the mayor, and even the chief of police, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how a fair number of Blair’s legal successes must have galled him and how many of Blair’s clients, some of whom looked to be auditioning for a part in
The Sopranos,
were also in attendance.

“Didn’t I arrest that guy for something?” Rob said. He’s a Mountie, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so he can ask questions like that.

“Arrest whom?”

“The guy on the far side of the buffet table scarfing down all the shrimp. What is he doing here? I’m sure I arrested him for something.”

“If you didn’t, you should have. Anyone who wears a green suit like that deserves to languish in a dungeon forever,” Clive said.

“You are such a design snob, Clive,” Moira said.

“Yes, I am. Someone has to try to set some aesthetic standards for this great city of ours. Tough job, I’ll grant you. Ah, Trevor, there you are. Nice sale. We at McClintoch and Swain are consumed with envy.”

“What? Oh, thank you, Clive,” Trevor said, before he hastily moved on to the next room.

“What’s eating him, I wonder?” Clive asked. “It’s not every day I hand out a compliment. I expected him to be revoltingly cheerful, if not downright triumphant about the whole thing, and he just looks kind of nervous. Maybe he’s having a fight with his girlfriend. Attractive one, that. What’s her name? Balsam or something?”

“Willow, you twit,” Moira said, giving him a dig in the ribs.

“Well, I knew it was a tree.”

“Is that Desmond Crane?” Rob said. “The lawyer who competes with Baldwin to get the most slime off on technicalities? It is Crane, isn’t it?”

It was. On Dez’s arm was his wife Leanna, who was tipsy as usual. The two lawyers’ dislike for each other both in court and out didn’t stop Blair from inviting him and Dez from showing up.

“I can’t believe you’ve brought me here,” Rob said. Usually he is very amiable about the social events I ask him to accompany me to, finding something interesting in all of them to talk about later. Now he sounded grumpy.

“I came to that Christmas party at one of your police pal’s home, you know, the one where the host looked down the front of my dress the whole time, and some young kid drank so much he almost puked on my suede shoes. You were perhaps thinking I would accompany you again this year?”

“Great party,” he said, giving my waist a little squeeze. “I think I’ll go and have some shrimp if that sleazeball left any for the rest of us.”

Dez steered his wife over to the writing cabinet, where they both looked at it carefully, or at least he did. “Nice,” he said to Trevor, sending a cheery wave in my direction. For some reason I expected more than that, Dez being almost as competitive and arrogant as Blair. Perhaps he was determined not to show his disappointment at being bested by Baldwin. So unperturbed by the Mackintosh being in his rival’s hands was Dez that I found myself wondering if the telephone call to Trevor at the very moment Blair was deciding whether or not to purchase the cabinet had been faked, with someone else entirely on the line. Faked or not it had had the desired effect on Blair. There didn’t seem to be any way that I could ask Dez, and it didn’t really make any difference anyway. Blair was going to buy the cabinet that day no matter what it cost. I was also very curious to know what Blair had paid for it, but I didn’t know how to ask that question directly either, and my subtle attempts to find out from both Trevor and Blair had been roundly ignored.

In truth, most people paid the writing cabinet scant attention, being more interested in the food, drink, and company. It caught my eye often, though. There was something about it that bothered me, a feeling that I put down to my ambivalence on the subject of ownership of such a beautiful piece. While I’d love to sell just about anybody an antique for any reason at all, should my advice be asked, it will always be to buy something you like and something you’ll use. You wouldn’t catch me slapping my laptop and coffee mug down on a one-point-five million writing cabinet, believe me. Perhaps more importantly, while Blair was obviously enthralled and that was nice, I always feel that something of this quality, created by the hand of a master like Mackintosh, really belongs to everyone, not just one bazillionaire. I was hoping that after he’d had it for a while, Blair could be persuaded to donate it to an art museum. I was sure there would be many who would prize it.

One who clearly was not only interested but also covetous was the curator of the furniture galleries at the Cottingham Museum. Blair was either rubbing Stanfield Roberts’s nose in it, since the Cottingham was probably eager to have such a piece in its collection, or he was genuinely pleased to show off his acquisition to a man who would certainly agree with me that the Mackintosh belonged in a museum. Stanfield had barely had time to blurt out the required social niceties in the entrance hall before he rocketed right over to the writing cabinet. He posed, there is no other word for it, looking very artistic and interested, his chin resting on his left hand, while the elbow was supported by his right. Finally, after a few minutes of contemplation, he approached the cabinet and had a much closer look. After examining it carefully, he stepped back with a very slight smile on his face. I didn’t know whether this meant he was thrilled to be in the presence of such a wonderful piece, or something else. I do know that Trevor watched his every move and gesture.

“I’d love to have a closer look, privately,” Stanfield said to Blair who approached him. “I wouldn’t dream of doing it now, with everyone here, but might I come over some time this week?”

“Of course,” Blair said. “You and your colleagues at the Cottingham are always welcome to study my collection.” For a man who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, this must have been a rather important moment for Blair.

“I look forward to it,” Stanfield said, but for some reason he looked amused rather than pleased.

As the evening wore on, Leanna, who by this time was really plastered, managed to weave her way over to Blair and immediately spilled some champagne on his jacket, which clearly annoyed him. I can’t say I’ve ever seen Leanna completely sober, but then I only ran into her at events like this. It may well be that she is sober on numerous occasions, but this wasn’t one of them. Clive liked to call her Leanna the Lush—not to her face of course.