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 bombé 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 e
nvelopes 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 attaché 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 30 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.
‘I do not believe it can be a fragment broken from some much larger altarpiece because of the shape and the absence from the edges of the panel of any sign of detachment from a larger piece.
‘But it could be a single devotional piece, perhaps contracted by a wealthy merchant for his private house. Even through the murk of several centuries of grime and stain, there appear to be some similarities with known works of . . .’
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?’