The Veteran (12 page)

Something about the way the fingers curled. Had he not seen fingers curl like that before? But the clincher was the face.

Another small pursed mouth, and three tiny vertical crease lines above the eyes. Where had he seen small vertical, not horizontal, lines on a forehead before? He was sure he had, but could not recall where or when. He glanced at the hand-in sheet. A Mr. T. Gore. No phone. Damn. He dismissed the last two pictures as worthless rubbish, took the sheaf of forms and went to see Deirdre, the last remaining secretary in the department.

He dictated a general letter of regret and gave her the forms. On each was the valuation price of the submitted but rejected picture, as was also the name and address of the owner.

Although there were forty-three of them, the word processor would get every name and valuation different, yet the rest of the text identical. Benny watched for a while in admiration. He had the sketchiest knowledge of computers. He could just about set one up and peck at the keys but the finer points eluded him. After ten minutes Deirdre was doing the envelopes, fingers flying. Benny wished her a merry Christmas and left. As usual he took the bus to the top end of Ladbroke Grove. There was a hint of sleet in the air.

The clock by his bedside told him it was two in the morning when he woke. He could feel the sexy warmth of Suzie beside him. They had made love before sleeping and that usually guaranteed a dreamless night. And yet he was awake, mind spinning as if some deep-buried thought process had kicked him out of slumber. He tried to think what had been on his mind, apart from Suzie, as he drifted into sleep three hours earlier. The image of the hessian-wrapped picture came into his thoughts.

His head shot off the pillow. Suzie grunted in sleepy annoyance. He sat up and delivered three words into the surrounding blackness.

“Bloody, fooking ‘ell.”

He went back to the House of Darcy the next morning, 23 December, and this time it really was closed. He let himself in by a service entrance.

The Old Masters library was what he needed. The access was by an electronic keypad and he knew the number. He was an hour in there, and emerged with three reference books. These he took to the viewing room. The hessian-wrapped package was still on the high shelf where he had left it.

He borrowed the powerful spotlight again, and a magnifying glass from Sebastian Mortlake’s private drawer. With the books and the glass he compared the face of the stooping man with others known to have come from the brush of the artist in the reference books. In one of these was a monk or saint: brown robe, tonsured head, a round bombe forehead and three tiny vertical lines of worry or deep thought, just above and between the eyes.

When he was done he sat in a world of his own as one who has tripped on a stone and may have discovered King Solomon’s Mines. He wondered what to do. Nothing was proved. He could be wrong. The grime on the picture was appalling. But at least he should alert the top brass.

He replaced the picture in its wrapping and left it on Mortlake’s desk. Then he entered the typing pool, switched on Deirdre’s word processor and tried to work out how it functioned. Within an hour he had begun, finger by finger, to type a letter.

When he had finished he asked the computer, very politely, to run off two copies and this it did. He found envelopes in a drawer and hand-addressed one to Sebastian Mortlake and the other to the Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, the Hon. Peregrine Slade. The first he left with the picture on his departmental chief’s private desk, the second he pushed under the door of Mr. Slade’s locked office. Then he went home.

That Peregrine Slade should return to the office at all so close to Christmas was unusual but well explained. He lived only round the corner; his wife, the Lady Eleanor, was almost permanently at their Hampshire place and by now would be surrounded by her infernal relatives. He had already told her he could not get down until Christmas Eve. It would shorten the purgatory of the Christmas break playing host to her family.

That apart, there was some snooping on senior colleagues he wished to accomplish and that needed privacy. He let himself in by the same service entrance that Benny Evans had left an hour earlier.

The building was pleasantly warm—there was no question of turning off the heating during the break—and certain sectors were heavily alarmed, including his own suite. He disconnected the system for his office, passed through the outer office of the absent Miss. Priscilla Bates and into his own inner sanctum.

Here he took off his jacket, took his laptop computer from his attache case and plugged into the main system. He saw he had two items of e-mail, but would deal with them later. Before that, he wanted some tea.

Miss. Bates would usually make this for him, of course, but with her gone he had to force himself to make his own. He raided her cupboard for the kettle. Earl Grey, bone china cup and a slice of lemon. He found one piece of that fruit and a knife. It was while he was looking for a socket for the kettle that he saw a letter on the carpet by the door. As the kettle brewed he tossed it onto his desk.

Bearing his cup of tea at last he returned to his own office and read the two e-mails. Neither was so important that it could not wait until the New Year. Logging on with a series of private access codes, he began to prowl through the database files of his department heads and fellow board members.

When he had trawled enough, his thoughts turned to his private problems. Despite a very handsome salary. Peregrine Slade was not a rich man. The younger son of an earl, hence the handle to his name, he had nevertheless inherited nothing.

He had married the daughter of a duke, who turned out to be a pettish and spoiled creature, convinced she was entitled as of right to a large manor in Hampshire, an estate to surround it and a string of very pricey horses. Lady Eleanor did not come cheap. She did however give him instant access to the cream of society, which was often very good for business.

He could add to that a fine flat in Knightsbridge, but he pleaded that he needed this for his work at Darcy. His father-in-law’s influence had secured him his job at Darcy and eventual promotion to Vice-Chairman under the starchy and acerbic Duke of Gateshead, who adorned the Chair of the board.

Shrewd investments might have made him wealthy but he insisted on managing his own and this was the worst advice he could have taken. Unaware that foreign exchange markets are best left to the geeks who know about them, he had invested heavily in the euro currency and had watched it tumble thirty per cent in under two years. Worse, he had borrowed heavily to make the placement and his creditors had delicately mentioned the word ‘foreclosure’. In a word, he was in a hole of debt.

Finally there was his London mistress, his very private peccadillo, an obsessional habit he could not break, and hideously expensive. His eye fell on the letter. It was in a Darcy envelope, therefore in-house and addressed to him in a hand he could not recognize. Could not the fool use a computer or find a secretary? It must have appeared during the course of this day or Miss. Bates would have seen it last night. He was curious.

Who worked through the night? Who had been in before him?

He tore it open.

The writer was clearly not good with a word processor. The paragraphs were not properly inset. The ‘Dear Mr. Slade’ was in handscript and the signature said Benjamin Evans. He did not know the man. He glanced at the letterhead. Old Masters department.

Some wretched staff complaint, no doubt. He began to read.

The third paragraph held his attention at last.

When he saw the name. Peregrine Slade choked violently and spilled a mouthful of Earl Grey all over his Sulka tie.

“I feel the precaution may be worthwhile, despite the expense, of having the picture cleaned and restored and, if the similarities are then more clearly visible, of asking Professor Colenso to study it with a view to possible authentication.”

Slade read the letter three more times. In the building off Knightsbridge his light alone burned out into the blackness as he thought what he might do. On his computer he accessed Vendor Records to see who had brought it in. T. Gore. A man with no phone, no fax, no e-mail address. A true address in a penurious district of cheap bedsitters. Ergo, a pauper and certainly an ignoramus. That left Benjamin Evans. Hmmmm.

The letter ended, below the signature, with the words: cc Sebastian Mortlake. Peregrine Slade rose.

In ten minutes he was back from the Old Masters department holding the hessian package and the duplicate letter. The latter could be incinerated later. This was definitely a matter for the Vice-Chairman. At that point his mobile phone rang.

“Perry?”

He knew the voice at once. It was prim but throaty and his mouth went dry.

“Yes.”

“You know who this is, don’t you?”

“Yes, Marina.”

“What did you say?”

“Sorry. Yes, Miss. Marina.”

“Better, Perry. I do not like my title being omitted. You will have to pay for that.”

“I am really very sorry. Miss. Marina.”

“It has been over a week since you came to see me. Mmmmm?”

“It has been the Christmas rush.”

“And in that time you have been an extremely naughty boy, haven’t you Perry?”

“Yes, Miss. Marina.” His stomach seemed to be running water, but so were his palms.

“Then I think we shall have to do something about that, don’t you Perry?”

“If you say so. Miss. Marina.”

“Oh but I do. Perry, I do. Seven o’clock sharp, boy. And don’t be late. You know how I hate to be kept waiting when I have my little ticklers out.”

The phone went dead. His hands were trembling. She always frightened the daylights out of him, even with a voice down a phone line. But that, and what came later in the schoolroom, was the point.

“My dear Perry, I am impressed and intrigued. Why such a sumptuous lunch, and so early in the year? Not that I am complaining.”

They were at Peregrine Slade’s club off St. James’s Street. It was 4 January, a self-indulgent country was staggering back to work, Slade was the host and Reggie Fanshawe, proprietor of the Fanshawe Gallery in Pont Street, eyed with approval the Beychevelle Slade had ordered. Slade smiled, shook his head and indicated that there were other lunchers a mite too close for absolute privacy. Fanshawe got the message.

“Now I am even more intrigued. I must wait, consumed with curiosity, until the coffee?”

They took their coffee quite alone in the library upstairs. Slade explained succinctly that six weeks earlier a complete unknown had walked in off the street with an unutterably filthy old painting that he thought might have some value. By a fluke and pressure of overwork in the Old Masters department it had come under the gaze of only one man, a young but evidently very clever junior valuer.

He slipped the Evans report across to the gallery owner. Fanshawe read, put down his glass of Special Reserve port, lest he spill it, and said, ‘Good God.’ In case the Almighty had missed the appeal, he repeated it.

“Clearly you must follow his suggestion.”

“Not quite,” said Slade.

Carefully he explained what he had in mind. Fanshawe’s coffee went cold and his port remained untouched.

“There is apparently a duplicate letter. What will Seb Mortlake say?”

“Incinerated. Seb left for the country the previous day.”

“There’ll be a record on the computer.”

“Not any more. I had an IT wiz come in yesterday. That part of the database has ceased to exist.”

“Where is the painting now?”

“Safe in my office. Under lock and key.”

“Remind me, when is your next Old Masters sale?”

“On the 24th.”

“This young man. He’ll notice, he’ll protest to Seb Mortlake, who might even believe him.”

“Not if he is in the north of Scotland. I have a favour up there that I can call in.”

“But if the painting was not rejected and returned to owner, there would have to be a report and a valuation.”

“There is.”

Slade drew another sheet from his pocket and gave it to Fanshawe. The gallery owner read the anodyne text, referring to a work, probably early Florentine, artist unknown, title unknown, no provenance. Valued at £6,000 to £8,000. He leaned back, raised his port glass in a toast and remarked, “Those beatings I gave you at school must have had some effect, Perry. You’re as straight as a sidewinder on speed. All right, you’re on.”

Two days later Trumpington Gore received a letter. It was from the House of Darcy on headed paper. There was no signature, but a stamp from the Old Masters department. It asked him to sign an enclosed form authorizing the auctioneers to proceed with the sale of his painting, which they valued at £6,000 to £8,000. There was a return-addressed envelope with stamp. Though he did not know it, the address would bring the letter, unopened, to Peregrine Slade’s desk.

He was ecstatic. With even £6,000 he could stagger on for another six months, which surely would include further acting work. Summer was a favoured time for film-making on outside locations. He signed the authority form and sent it back.

On the 20th of the month Peregrine Slade rang the director of Old Masters.

“Seb, I’m in a bit of a bind and I wonder if you could do me a favour.”

“Well, of course, if I can. Perry. What is it?”

“I have a very old friend with a place in Scotland. He’s a bit absent-minded and he clean forgot about the expiry of the insurance cover on his paintings. Reinsurance is due at the end of the month. The swine in his insurance company are cutting up rough. They won’t reissue without an up-to-date revaluation.”