‘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:
‘Dear Mr Slade, I am sure you will know by now that before he departed on holiday Alan Leigh-Travers asked me to have a look at a small oil painting purporting to be of the late-Victorian period and executed in this country.
‘I have to say that the task turned out to be most challenging and finally very exhilarating.
‘At first sight this picture, apparently titled The Game Bag, seemed to be of impressive ugliness and lack merit. A mere daub by a talentless amateur about a hundred years ago. It was the wooden panel on which it was painted that caught Alan’s attention and therefore it was to this that I turned my principal attention.
‘I removed the panel from its Victorian frame and studied it closely. It is undoubtedly of poplar wood and very old. Along its edges I discovered traces of ancient mastic or glue, indicating that it was probably a fragment panel, once part of a much bigger work such as an altarpiece from which it has been broken away.
‘I took a tiny sliver of wood from the rear of the panel and subjected it to tests for age and place of probable origin. You will know that dendrochronology cannot be used for poplar, since this tree, unlike oak, has no rings to denote the passing years. Nevertheless, modern science has a few other tricks up its sleeve.
‘I have been able to establish that this piece of wood is consistent with those used in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Further examination under a spectromicroscope revealed tiny nicks and cuts left by the blade of the cross-saw used by the sawyer. One minuscule irregularity in the blade created marks identical to those found on other panels of the period and the place, again consistent with fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Italian work.
‘The Victorian painting of two dead partridge and a shotgun has beyond any doubt been painted over a much earlier work. I removed a tiny fragment of the oil, too small to detect with the naked eye, and established that the paint beneath is not oil but tempera.
‘Taking an even smaller piece of the tempera for further spectro-analysis, I found it revealed the exact combination of ingredients used by several of the Masters of the period. Finally I X-rayed the painting to see what lies beneath.
‘There is a tempera painting beneath, and only the crude thickness of the paint applied by the anonymous Victorian vandal prevents greater clarity.
‘In the background is a rural landscape of the period mentioned, including several gentle hills and a campanile. The middle ground seems to have a road or track emerging from a shallow valley.
‘In the foreground is a single figure, evidently of the sort to be found in the Bible, staring straight at the viewer.
‘I am not able to give precise identification of the artist but you may have here a hidden masterpiece that comes straight from the time and place of Cimabue, Duccio or Giotto.
‘Yours sincerely, Stephen Carpenter.’
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 300 years, turned out to be by Michelangelo. Asking
price? £8,000,000. 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.