‘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.
He set it on an easel beneath the north light and for two days he simply stared at it. The thick Victorian oil paint would have to come off with extreme delicacy so as not to damage the masterpiece beneath. On the third day he began to work.
Peregrine Slade took his call two weeks later. He was agog.
‘Well, my dear Edward?’
‘The work is finished. What lay beneath the still life is now fully exposed to view.’
‘And the colours? Are they as fresh as the day they were painted?’
‘Oh, beyond a doubt,’ said the voice down the phone.
‘I’ll send my car,’ said Slade.
‘I think perhaps I should come with the painting,’ said Hargreaves carefully.
‘Excellent,’ beamed Slade. ‘My Bentley will be with you in half an hour.’
He phoned the Duke of Gateshead.
‘Splendid work,’ said the chairman. ‘Let’s have an unveiling. My office, twelve hundred hours.’
He had once been in the Coldstream Guards and liked to pepper his talk to subordinates with military phrases.
At five to twelve a porter set up an easel in the chairman’s office and left. At twelve sharp Edward Hargreaves, carrying the tempera-on-panel wrapped in a soft blanket and escorted by Peregrine Slade, entered the room. He placed the painting on the easel.
The duke had cracked open a bottle of Dom Perignon. He offered a glass to each guest. Slade accepted, Hargreaves demurred.
‘So,’ beamed the duke, ‘what have we? A Duccio?’
‘Er, not this time,’ said Hargreaves.
‘Surprise me,’ said Slade. ‘A Cimabue?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Can’t wait,’ said the duke. ‘Come on, lift the blanket.’
Hargreaves did so. The painting was indeed as the letter apparently from the Colbert had described it. Beautifully executed and precisely in the style of the early Renaissance of Florence and Siena.
The background was a medieval landscape of gentle hills with, in the distance, an ancient bell tower. In the foreground was the single living figure. It was a donkey, or Biblical ass, staring forlornly at the viewer.
Its organ hung limply towards the ground as if recently and thoroughly pulled.
In the middle ground was indeed a shallow valley with a track down the centre. On the track, emerging from the valley, was a small but perfectly identifiable Mercedes-Benz.
Hargreaves contemplated a point in space. Slade thought he might succumb at once to a fatal heart attack, then hoped he would, then feared that he might not.
Inside the Duke of Gateshead five centuries of breeding grappled for control. Finally the breeding won and he stalked from the room without a word.
An hour later the Hon. Peregrine Slade left the building on a more permanent basis.