‘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.
JANUARY
‘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 twenty-fourth.’