The Veteran

  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.

  SEPTEMBER

  Peregrine Slade remained silent on the matter of his own intentions for that day, and was pleased that Alan Leigh-Travers 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 £2,000,000 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 fina
lly 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.

  ‘Entitled The Game Bag,’ Slade said clearly. ‘What am I bid? Do I hear a thousand?’

  Bertram raised his paddle.

  ‘A thousand at the back. Do I have an advance on a thousand?’

  Another paddle went up. The man must have been short-sighted. The rest of the bidders, dealers, collectors, agents and gallery owners were staring in something close to disbelief.

  ‘It’s against you, sir, at two thousand pounds,’ said Slade, looking fixedly at Bertram. He lowered his left eyelid a fraction. Bertram raised his paddle.

  ‘Three thousand pounds,’ said Slade. ‘Do I hear four?’

  There was silence. Then the Japanese nodded. Slade was confused. He could see the thick black hair flecked with grey, but the almond eyes were masked by the bottle-thick lenses.

  ‘Was that a bid, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Hai,’ said Mr Yamamoto and nodded again. He sounded like Toshiro Mifune in Shogun.

  ‘If you would be kind enough to raise your paddle, sir,’ said Slade. The man from Tokyo said clearly, ‘Ah, so,’ and raised his paddle.

  ‘Four thousand pounds,’ said Slade. His composure was still intact though he had never expected anyone to want to outbid the stolid Bertram. On cue, Bertram raised his paddle again.

  The bemusement in the hall was nothing to that felt by Alan Leigh-Travers, who was leaning against the back wall. He had never seen or heard of The Game Bag, and if he had it would have been on its way home to Suffolk in the next van. If Slade wanted to introduce an extra lot into his sale, wildly post-catalogue, he might have mentioned it. And who was McFee? He had never heard of him. The ancestor of some shooting pal of Slade, perhaps. Still, it had already made £5,000, God knew how, so no matter. A respectable price for anything and a miracle for this daub. The commission fee would keep the directors in decent claret for a while.

  In the next thirty minutes the composure of Leigh-Travers was knocked sideways. The Japanese gallery-owner, the back of whose head he could see, kept nodding and saying ‘Hai’ while someone out of sight behind a pillar further up the back wall kept raising him. What the hell did they think they were doing? It was a wretched daub of a painting, anyone could see that. The room had lapsed into utter silence. The price went through £50,000.

  Leigh-Travers shuffled and jostled his way down the back wall until he came to the pillar and had a look round it. He almost sustained a heart attack. The mystery bidder was Bertram, for Pete’s sake. That could only mean Slade was buying in, for the House.

  Ashen-faced, Leigh-Travers caught Slade’s glance across the length of the hall. Slade grinned and gave him another lascivious wink. That confirmed it. His vice-chairman had gone certifiably insane. He hurried from the hall to where the paddle girls sat, seized an internal phone and rang the chairman’s office, asking Phyllis to put him through to the Duke of Gateshead as a matter of urgency.

  Before he got back to the hall, the bidding had climbed to £100,000 and still Mr Yamamoto would not back off. Slade was raising now in multiples of £10,000 and beginning to worry badly.

  He alone knew that millions of pounds lay beneath the two partridge, so why was the Japanese bidding? Did he also know something? Impossible, the painting was a walk-in from Bury St Edmunds. Had Professor Carpenter shot his mouth off somewhere in the Far East? Equally impossible. Did Yamamoto simply like the painting? Had he no taste at all? Did he think the tycoons of Tokyo and Osaka were going to flock to his galleries to buy this rubbish at a profit?

  Something had gone wrong, but what? He could not refuse to take the bids from Yamamoto, not in front of the entire hall, but knowing what lay beneath the partridge he could not indicate to Bertram to stop, either, and thus let the work head for Japan.

  The rest of the bidders realized something extremely weird was afoot. None of them had ever seen anything like it. Here was an appalling daub on display that normally should never have appeared in anything above a car-boot sale, and two bidders were driving it through the roof. One was an old codger in a walrus moustache and the other was an implacable samurai. The first thought that occurred to all of them was ‘inside knowledge’.

  They all knew that the art world was not for the squeamish and that some of the tricks of the trade would have made a Corsican knifeman look like a vicar. Every veteran in the hall recalled the perfectly true tale of the two dealers attending a miserable sale in a decrepit old manor house when one of them spotted a still life of a dead hare, hanging in the stairwell. Not even on display. But they backed a hunch and bought it. The dead hare turned out to be the last recorded painting ever done by Rembrandt. But surely old Harmenszoon on his deathbed and gripped by palsy could not have delivered those awful partridge? So they peered and peered, looking for the hidden talent, but could see none. And the bidding went on.

  At £200,000 there was a disturbance in the doorway as people gave way and the wuthering height of the Duke of Gateshead slipped in. He stood against the back wall like a condor alert for a bit of living flesh to peck.

  By £240,000 Slade’s self-control was beginning to disintegrate. A sheen of sweat beaded his forehead and reflected the glare of the lights. His voice had gone up several octaves. Something inside him screamed for this farce to stop, but he could not stop it. His carefully scripted scenario was completely out of control.

  At a quarter of a million the tic near his left eye began to act up. Across the hall old Bertram saw the endless winking and just went on bidding. By this point Slade wanted him to stop, but Bertram knew his orders: one wink, one bid.

  ‘Against you, sir,’ Slade squawked at the pebble glasses from Tokyo. There was a long pause. He prayed the nightmare would finally end. In a clear voice Mr Yamamoto said, ‘Hai.’ Slade’s left eye was going like the front end of a speeding ambulance, so Bertram raised his paddle.

  At £300,000 Leigh-Travers whispered furiously in the duke’s ear and the condor began to move purposefully down the wall towards his employee Bertram. In the silent hall all eyes were on the Japanese. He suddenly rose, placed his paddle on his seat, bowed formally to Peregrine Slade, and walked towards the door. The crowd parted as the Red Sea before Moses.

  ‘Going once,’ said Slade weakly, ‘twice.’

  His gavel banged on the block and the room erupted. As always with the ending of unbearable tension, everyone wanted to say something to his neighbour. Slade recovered somewhat, wiped his brow, handed over the rest of the sale to Leigh-Travers and descended his podium.

  Bertram, released from his duty, headed for his cubbyhole to brew a nice cup of tea.

  The duke bent his head to his vice-chairman and hissed: ‘My office. Five minutes, if you please.’

  ‘Peregrine,’ he began when they were alone in the chairman’s suite. No more ‘Perry’ or ‘dear old bean’. Even the façade of amiability was gone. ‘May I ask exactly what the devil you thought you were doing down there?’

  ‘Conducting an auction.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, sir. That appalling daub of two partridge, it was junk.’

  ‘At first sight.’

  ‘You were buying it in. For the House. Why?’

  From his breast pocket Slade retrieved the two-page letter and report from Professor Carpenter at the Colbert.

  ‘I hope this explains why. I should have had it for £5,000, maximum. But for that lunatic Japanese, I would have.’

  The Duke
of Gateshead read the report carefully in the sunlight from the window, and his expression changed. His ancestors had murdered and plundered their way to prominence, and, as with Benny Evans, old genes die hard.

  ‘Different complexion, old bean, entirely different complexion. Who else knows about this?’

  ‘No-one. I received the report at my home last month and kept it to myself. Stephen Carpenter, me, now you. That’s it. Fewer the better, I thought.’

  ‘And the owner?’

  ‘Some idiot Scot. To cover our backs, I offered him £50,000. The fool turned it down. I have my letter and the tape of his rejection. Now, of course, I wish he had taken it. But I could not foresee that crazy Japanese this morning. Damn near robbed us of it.’

  The duke thought for several moments. A fly buzzed on the pane, loud as a chainsaw in the silence.

  ‘Cimabue,’ he murmured. ‘Duccio. Good God, we haven’t had one of those in the House for years. Seven, eight million? Look, settle up with this owner without delay. I’ll sanction. Who do you want for the restoration? The Colbert?’

  ‘It’s a big organization. Lots of staff. People talk. I’d like to use Edward Hargreaves. He’s among the best in the world, works alone and is silent as the grave.’

  ‘Good idea. Get on with it. In your court. Let me know the moment the restoration is complete.’

  Edward Hargreaves did indeed work alone, a dour and secretive man with a private studio in Hammersmith. In the restoring of damaged or overpainted Old Masters, he was peerless.

  He read the Carpenter report and thought of contacting the professor for a conference. But the senior restorer at the Colbert would be less than human if he were not deeply offended that the fascinating commission had gone to someone else, so Hargreaves decided to stay silent. But he knew the Colbert stationery and the professor’s signature, so he could use the report as a base for his own labours. He informed Slade, when the Vice-Chairman of Darcy delivered the Scottish still life to his studio personally, that he would need two weeks.