WHERE TO BEGIN this story? Perhaps by stating that Mr Sparrow did not defraud the old and infirm without good cause. We should always try to be fair, even to Mr Sparrow. And on this occasion he had cause to feel that he was owed something.
“Sorry,” said the white-haired gentleman with an apologetic smile. “We gave the job to the other firm. They’ll be clearing the house next week. I did leave a message on your mobile, saying not to come round.”
“Or on somebody else’s mobile,” said the white-haired lady, with the knowledge of husbands that forty years of marriage bestows. “He’s hopeless with technology. I’m sorry he’s caused you a wasted trip.”
“And everything is going?” asked Mr Sparrow, viewing as much of the Davenports’ hallway as he could from his vantage point on the wrong side of the half-opened front door. It looked like good stuff – antique or first-class modern reproduction. The other firm (whoever they were) would make a bob or two on this house clearance.
“The new flat is so much smaller than this,” said the gentleman regretfully. “Apart from one or two things we’re taking with us, yes, it’s all spoken for.”
“Except his ‘Canaletto’,” said the lady. The word caught Mr Sparrow’s attention, hidden though it was in inverted commas.
“Canaletto?”
“He wanted an extra thousand for it. They wouldn’t pay.”
“Sounds good value for a Canaletto, Mrs Davenport.”
“Oh, it’s not the real thing,” said the lady.
“It certainly is,” said the gentleman.
“Your father paid a fiver for it in Petticoat Lane.”
“A tenner,” said the gentleman. “You couldn’t get a Canaletto for a fiver, even then.”
“Him and his ‘Canaletto’,” snorted the lady, replacing the picture in its dubious quotation marks.
“Mind if I take a glance anyway, Mrs Davenport?”
The white-haired gentleman and his wife looked at each other.
“Happy to see the back of it,” she said.
Left alone in front of the picture, Mr Sparrow scanned it carefully. To be fair to Mr Sparrow, and we should always try to be fair, he did know a bit about art. The picture was badly hung in an obscure corner – not properly lit even. But everything about it told him it was the genuine article. He’d expected an oil painting of the Grand Canal, with cracked glaze, gondolas and masked gallants, but this was a small chalk and brown-ink drawing of a domed church with men at work in front of it. Not the sort of thing you’d fake if you were hoping to fool the unwary. It had to be worth fifty, sixty thousand?
“It’s wasted on them,” he muttered under his breath.
“What do you think?” asked a voice behind him. “My old dad always used to say it was worth a few hundred, so I won’t take less than a thousand.”
“It’s probably a fake,” said Mr Sparrow. “If I had a fiver for every fake old master I’ve been offered, I’d be a rich man.”
“My father checked it out at Christie’s – that would have been forty or fifty years ago, of course. It’s real. But my wife has always found it a bit dull, and it’s only his oil paintings that go for big money. It’s yours for a grand. Cash.”
To be fair, Mr Sparrow had a conscience, though he was not always sure where he had left it. For the shortest of moments he was tempted to advise the gentleman to go straight back to Christie’s. But – and this was one of Mr Sparrow’s favourite maxims, quoted after work in the bar of the Feathers or at home in front of the television – he couldn’t help it if other people were stupid, could he? “We’ll have the police round here one day if you’re not careful,” his wife would observe, whenever he chose to say it in front of the television. “I’m always careful,” he’d reply.
“My wife,” said Mr Sparrow, “tells me I’m far too trusting for this line of work. But you have an honest face, Mr Davenport.”
He handed over the money in twenties.
“Do you want to count it, Mr Davenport?”
“I’m very trusting too,” said the gentleman.
If Mr Sparrow had any remaining doubts, they were largely dispelled by a painting in the hallway.
“Isn’t that a Howard Hodgkin?” he asked.
“Another of dad’s bargains,” said the gentleman. “He had an eye for it.”
“We think we’ll take that one with us,” said the lady.
“Definitely,” said the gentleman.
Where to end this story? Not, I think, with Mr Sparrow, driving home with a carefully wrapped bundle on the passenger seat of the van, wondering if he really knew as much about Canaletto as he thought. Nor should we end with him walking confidently, a couple of days later, up Bond Street to a well-known auctioneer to obtain an estimate of the value of his recent purchase, though his face fifteen minutes later … would you mind terribly if I described it as “a picture’? “Not a fake,” said the auctioneer. “But regrettably, it is stolen. Of course, on the plus side, its real owners will be very pleased to see it returned. I don’t think there’s any reward, I’m afraid.”
No, let’s end the story with the Davenports, the real Davenports, returning from holiday to discover that the lovely old couple who had been minding their house – a couple who came with such excellent references and to whom they had unfortunately already issued another excellent reference – had been selling stolen goods from their home. The couple’s contact address proved to be an ingenious work of fiction.
When their own Howard Hodgkin was stolen a few weeks later, by a thief apparently using forged keys and with a good knowledge of their burglar alarm, the Davenports put it down to one of those strange coincidences that occur from time to time. And, to be fair, it may have been just that.