The Art of the Matter

The hospitable Trumpy offered them both a share of his morning pot of tea. Since his windfall of more than £5,000 three months earlier he no longer needed to use the tea bags twice. While the two youngsters drank he read the page-long spread in the Sunday Times that Benny had brought with him. His jaw dropped.

‘Is that it?’ He pointed at the full-colour illustration of the Sassetta.

‘That’s it, Mr Gore. Your old painting in its brown hessian wrapping. Cleaned, restored and authenticated as a genuine and very rare Sassetta. Siena, about 1425.’

‘Two million pounds,’ breathed the actor. ‘Oh, calamity. If only I had known. If only Darcy had known.’

‘They did,’ said Benny. ‘At least they suspected. I was the valuer. I warned them. You have been swindled and I have been destroyed. By a man who cut a private deal with this art gallery.’

He began at the beginning, with a last group of hand-ins and a director impatient to get away for his Christmas break. When he had finished the actor stared at the picture of the Annunciation in the paper.

‘Two million pounds,’ he said quietly. ‘I could have lived comfortably for the rest of my life on that. Surely, the law—’

‘Is an ass,’ said Suzie. ‘The record will show that Darcy made a mistake, an error of judgement, and that Fanshawe acted on a hunch and came up a winner. It happens. There is no recourse in law.’

‘Tell me something,’ said Benny. ‘On the form you filled out, it said as profession “actor”. Is that true? Are you an actor?’

‘Thirty-five years in the profession, young man. Appearances in almost a hundred films.’

He forbore to mention that most of these appearances had lasted a few seconds.

‘I mean, can you pass as someone else and get away with it?’

Trumpington Gore drew himself up in his chair with all the dignity a tatty old bathrobe would allow.

‘I, sir, can pass for anything, in any company, and get away with the impersonation. It is what I do. Actually, it is all that I do.’

‘You see,’ said Benny, ‘I have an idea.’

He spoke for twenty minutes. When he had done the impoverished actor pondered his decision.

‘Revenge,’ he murmured. ‘A dish best eaten cold. Yes, the trail has gone cold. Slade will not be expecting us. I think, young Benny, if I may, that you have just gained a partner.’

He held out his hand. Benny took it. Suzie placed her own over theirs.

‘One for all, and all for one.’

‘Aye, I like it,’ said Benny.

‘D’Artagnan,’ said Trumpy.

Benny shook his head. ‘I were never much good at the French Impressionists.’

The rest of April was very busy. They pooled their funds and completed the research. Benny needed to invade the private correspondence file of Peregrine Slade, having access to all his private e-mails.

Suzie elected to go into the Darcy system via Slade’s private secretary, Miss Priscilla Bates. Her e-identity was not long in coming. She was P-Bates as far as the database was concerned. The problem was her password.

MAY

Trumpington Gore followed Miss Bates like a shadow, in such a variety of disguises that she suspected not a thing. Having secured her private address in the borough of Cheam, it was Benny who by night raided her garbage bin and took away a binliner full of rubbish. It yielded little.

Miss Bates lived a life of blameless rectitude. She was a spinster and lived alone. Her small flat was as neat as a pin. She commuted to work on the train and underground to Knightsbridge and walked the last 500 yards. She took the Guardian newspaper – they tried ‘Guardian’ as a password, but it did not work – and she holidayed with a sister and brother-in-law at Frinton.

They discovered this from an old letter in the trash, but ‘Frinton’ did not work either. They also found six empty tins of Whiskas.

‘She has a cat,’ said Suzie. ‘What’s its name?’

Trumpy sighed. It meant another trip to Cheam. He appeared on the Saturday, knowing she would be in, and masqueraded as a salesman of pet paraphernalia. To his joy she was interested in the scratching post for bored cats, who otherwise shredded the loose covers.