The Veteran (17 page)

“Darcy storage number F 608,” he read.

Her face cleared. She had a number for the computer on the table behind her.

“One moment,” she said, turned and consulted the fount of all wisdom.

The oracle explained matters to her. She saw that this item had left the store for examination at the Colbert on the authority of the absent director of British Modern and Victorian art. And now it was being returned. She rang for a porter of her own. Within minutes she had signed the Colbert man’s receipt form and the wrapped painting had been taken back to store.

“If I spend any more time in that building,” thought Trumpington Gore as he emerged onto the hot pavement, “I ought to start paying them rent.”

On the 20th Professor Stephen Carpenter’s report arrived by recorded delivery at Peregrine Slade’s manor in Hampshire. He took delivery of it over a late breakfast after a pleasing swim in the pool. As he read it his eggs went cold and his coffee formed a film of skin. The letter said:

Peregrine Slade sat transfixed, the letter lying on the table in front of him. Cimabue ... Oh God. Duccio ... Jesus wept.

Giotto ... bloody hellfire.

The nervous tic by his left eye began to flicker again. He reached up a forefinger to stop the trembling. He wondered what he should do.

He thought of two recent discoveries, both made (to his considerable frustration) by Sotheby’s. In an old armoire in a manor on the Suffolk coast one of their valuers had discovered just such a panel and had spotted the hand of a Master. It had turned out to be by Cimabue, rarest of them all, and had sold for millions.

Even more recently another Sotheby’s man had been valuing the contents of Castle Howard. In a portfolio of overlooked and low-rated drawings he had spotted one of a grieving woman, head in hands, and had asked for more expert examinations to be carried out. The drawing, unsuspected for three hundred years, turned out to be by Michelangelo. Asking price?

Eight million pounds. And now it seemed that he too had a priceless treasure masquerading as two dead partridge.

Clearly another swindle with Reggie Fanshawe would never work. Getting rid of the very junior Benny Evans was one thing. Alan Leigh-Travers was quite another. The board would believe Alan, even though he might have no copy of the airport letter. Anyway, Fanshawe could never be used again. The art world was not that gullible.

But he could and would make his name and reputation and restore the House of Darcy to its original pillar of respect. If that was not worth a six-figure Christmas bonus, nothing would be. Within an hour he was washed, dressed, at the wheel of his Bentley Azure and eating up the miles to London.

The picture store was empty and he was able to rummage at his leisure until he had found the item logged as F 608.

Through the bubble wrap he could make out the forms of two dead partridge on a hook. He took it to his office for further examination.

God, he thought as he looked at it in his room, but it is ugly.

And yet, beneath it ... Clearly there was no question of letting it go for a song in the auction hall. It would have to be bought by the House, and then discovered by accident.

The trouble was. Professor Carpenter. A man of integrity. A man who would have filed a copy of his report. A man who would protest in outrage if some miserable plebeian, the original owner of the daub, was cheated by a certain Peregrine Slade.

On the other hand, he had not said that the hidden painting was certainly a masterpiece, only that it might be. There was no rule against an auction house taking a gamble. Gambles involve risks and do not always pay off. So if he offered the owner a fair price, taking into account the lack of certainty ...

He punched up Vendor Records and traced Mr. Hamish Mcfee of Sudbury, Suffolk. There was an address. Slade wrote, stamped and despatched a letter offering the miserable Mcfee the sum of £50,000 for his grandfather’s ‘most interesting composition’. To keep the matter to himself he included his personal mobile phone number as a means of contact. He was quite confident the fool would take it, and he would run the bill of sale to Sudbury personally.

Two days later his phone rang. There was a broad Scottish accent on the line and a deeply offended one at that.

“My grandfather was a magnificent artist, Mr. Slade. Overlooked in his lifetime, but then so was van Gogh. Now I believe that the world will finally recognize true talent when it sees his work. I cannot accept your offer, but I will make one of my own. My grandfather’s work appears in your next auction of Victorian Masters early next month or I shall withdraw it from sale and take it to Christie’s.”

When Slade put the phone down he was trembling. Van Gogh? Was the man a retard? But he had no choice. The Victorian sale was slated for 8 September. It was too late for the catalogue, which had gone to press and would be available in two days. The miserable partridge would have to be a late entry, not uncommon. But he had the copy of his letter and offer to Mcfee and had taped the recent phone conversation.

The offer of £50,000 would go a long way to appeasing Professor Carpenter, and the board of Darcy would back him to the hilt against any later flak.

He would have to buy the painting ‘for the House’ and that would mean a bidder in the hall to do exactly what he was told yet not look like a Darcy executive. He would use Bertram, the head porter, a man on the threshold of retirement, utterly loyal after forty years’ service and with the imagination of an earwig.

But able to obey orders.

At the other end of the phone Trumpington Gore had hung up and turned to Benny.

“Dear boy, do you really know what you are doing? Fifty thousand pounds is a hell of a lot of money.”

“Trust me,” said Benny.

He sounded more confident than he was. Hourly he was praying to the cynical god of Old Masters that Slade would be too greedy to reveal what he intended to do into the ear of the rigorously honest Professor Carpenter.

By the end of the month all the senior executives were back in-house and preparations were in full swing for the first major sale of the autumn, the Victorian Masters of 8 September.

Peregrine Slade remained silent on the matter of his own intentions for that day, and was pleased that Alan Leightravers was also a model of discretion, refusing even to mention the subject. Nonetheless, every time they passed in a corridor Slade gave him a broad wink.

Leigh-Travers began to worry. He had always thought the Vice-Chairman a mite too foppish for his tastes, and had heard that men in middle years with a frigid marriage occasionally turned to the idea of playing an away game. As a father of four he earnestly hoped Slade had not started to fancy him.

The morning of the 8th produced the habitual buzz of excitement, the adrenalin rush that compensates in the art world for all the drudgery and the chore of examining the dross.

Slade had asked the venerable head porter Bertram to be in early and had briefed him to the last detail. In his years of service with the House of Darcy, Bertram had seen five changes of ownership. As a young man, just back from military service, following in his father’s footsteps, he had been at the retirement party of old Mr. Darcy, the last of the line. A real gent, he was; even the newest porter was invited to his party. They did not make them like that any more.

He was the last man in the building to wear a bowler hat to work; he had in his time carried masterpieces collectively worth billions up and down the corridors and never once put his foot through one.

Nowadays he sat in his tiny office, straining endless cups of tea through his walrus moustache. His orders were simple. He would sit at the back in his blue serge suit, armed with a bidding paddle, and he would bid for only one work. Just so that he would not mistake it for any other still life, he had been shown the two bedraggled partridge hanging from their hook.

He had been told to memorize the title The Game Bag which Mr. Slade would announce in clear tones from the podium.

Finally, just to make sure, he had been told by Slade to watch his face. If Slade wanted him to bid, and there was any hesitation, he would give a quick wink of his left eye. That was the signal for the old retainer to raise his paddle. Bertram went off for a cup of tea and to empty his bladder for the fourth time.

The last thing Slade needed was to see his stooge shuffling off to the loo at the crucial moment.

Alan Leigh-Travers had selected a worthy menu of pictures.

Stars of the show were two Pre-Raphaelites, a Millais from the estate of a recently deceased collector and a Holman Hunt that had not been seen in public for years. Close behind them were two equine paintings by John Frederick Herring and a sailing ship in stormy weather from the brush of James Carmichael.

The sale started on the dot of ten o’clock. Bidding was brisk and the hall full; there were even some against the back wall.

Slade had three still-life oils involving game and shotguns, and he decided to bring in the Scottish work as an unlisted fourth to this batch. No-one would be surprised, and the matter would be over in minutes. When he greeted the assembled throng he was at his most genial.

Everything went well. At the back Bertram sat and stared ahead, paddle in lap.

On the podium Peregrine Slade exuded good humour, even joviality, as the lots went for close to, or above, the upper estimate. He could recognize most of the bidders by sight but there were a dozen he did not know. Occasionally one of the overhead lights flashed off the pebble glasses of a dark-suited man three rows from the back.

During a brief pause as one picture was carried out and another placed on the easel, he beckoned one of the attendant girls to his side. Leaning down from the podium, he muttered: “Who’s the Jap three rows from the back, left-hand side?” The girl slipped away.

At the next picture-change she was back and put a small slip of paper into his hand. He nodded his thanks. Opening it on the podium he saw:

Mr. Yosuhiro Yamamoto, the Osaka Gallery, Tokyo and Osaka. He has presented a letter of credit drawn on the Bank of Tokyo for one billion yen.

Slade beamed. About two million pounds to spend. Not a problem. He was certain he had heard or read the name Yamamoto before. He was right. That was the admiral who bombed Pearl Harbor. He was not to know that a namesake was back in Knightsbridge on a similar mission, or that the letter from the Bank of Tokyo was one of Suzie Day’s computer creations.

Mr. Yamamoto bid several times for offerings in the early part of the sale but never pursued, and withdrew in favour of others before the canvas was finally sold. Still, behind his impenetrable pebble lenses, he had established his bona fides as a genuine bidder.

The first of the four still lifes arrived. The three listed ones were all by relatively minor artists and went for between £5,000 and £10,000. As the third was removed Slade said with roguish humour:

“There is a fourth still life, not in your catalogues. A late arrival. A charming little piece by the Highland artist Collum Mcfee.”

Colley Burnside had not been able to resist the temptation to put at least part of his first name into the title of the artist. It was the only recognition he was ever going to get.