The letter from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police arrived at breakfast time in Markham Square. It was written in the clipped style Powerscourt remembered, as if Sir Edward Henry were sending a message from some remote mountain station where the telegraph was slow and unreliable, and the natives might come over the hill at any moment.
‘Dear Powerscourt,’ it began, ‘took call yesterday from Ragg at British Museum. Some important old statue has gone missing. Panic among museum people. Have agreed to help. Ragg most insistent officers had to be discreet and intelligent. My inspector is well known for reading a lot, particularly modern novels. Has been seen with books by that man Forster who writes about rooms with views and the end of Howard. Have suggested he call on you this morning on his way to meeting with Ragg. Inspector Christopher Kingsley. Joined us after resigning from Army. Probably passed port wrong way. Regards, Henry.’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt to Lady Lucy who was finishing a piece of toast and surreptitiously surveying a Georgian rectory in north Oxfordshire in the pages of Country Life.
‘Well what, my love,’ asked Lady Lucy, reluctant to tear herself away from the four reception rooms and the eighteenth-century pavilion in need of some refurbishment – was the thing actually falling down? she wondered.
‘Well done, Theophilus Ragg, that’s what I say,’ her husband replied. ‘I didn’t think he’d do it.’
‘Do what, Francis?’
‘Sorry, Lucy, he’s actually called in the police. I thought he’d never manage it. The Commissioner writes that the inspector in charge, fellow by the name of Kingsley, will be calling here on his way to the museum.’
‘Is he interested in antiquities, do we know? Or is he a sportsman, forever playing for the Met Eleven at weekends?’
Lady Lucy had long maintained that in the police force, as with the Foreign Office, any private expertise, fluency in Spanish for example, or knowledge of burglary techniques, would guarantee that you were never employed in any capacity where that knowledge might come in useful, like the Embassy in Madrid or a campaign to lower the crime rate in the East End.
‘The fellow reads modern novels, apparently. Commissioner believes he is well acquainted with the works of E. M. Forster.’
‘My goodness,’ said Lady Lucy who had not trodden very far through the pages of Where Angels Fear to Tread before giving up completely.
Ten minutes later a tall, slim young man in a dark grey suit that was well cut but had seen better days was shaking hands in the Powerscourt drawing room on the first floor. He was clean-shaven and had the most remarkable blue eyes Powerscourt had ever seen. He was reminded of the closing words of a biography of some long dead Scottish statesman: ‘he had in his eye the look of a man searching for a far country’.
‘Christopher Kingsley,’ the Inspector said, bowing slightly to Powerscourt. ‘I’ve heard so much about your time in India.’
‘That’s very civil of you,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘it was a long time ago now.’ He longed to ask about the policeman’s service in the Army and his subsequent departure from the military, but felt a first introduction might not be the best time.
‘Now then, perhaps you could tell us what you know of the affair of the missing Caryatid?’
‘Well, my lord –’ the Inspector had a light tenor voice that was most attractive and suggested that he should sing in a choir ‘– the most important thing, so far as I can work it out, is that nothing has happened. The official story is that there has been no theft, the Caryatid in place is the real one, we cannot question the people on the spot who might have noticed something unusual.’
‘Have you been involved in a case like this before, Inspector?’
Christopher Kingsley smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I have. I suspect that’s why I’m here. Late last year Sir William Sudburgh of Sudburgh, the chap who owns half the coal in Wales, had a painting stolen from his London home in Eaton Square. It was a half-length portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of one of his ancestors, dressed up in that bright red uniform they wore for the American Revolutionary Wars. Like the British Museum, Sir William wanted no publicity whatsoever. We couldn’t talk to anybody at all except those on the periphery, as it were.’
‘And?’ Powerscourt cut in. ‘Did you manage to apprehend the thief and recover the work?’
‘We did,’ Inspector Kingsley laughed, ‘but it had nothing to do with us, really. The thief, poor man, was a junior footman and desperate for money, deep in hock to the moneylenders. He took the painting to the nearest shop with paintings in the window and asked how much it was worth. My men had already circulated all the antique dealers in central London with details of the picture. The antique dealer was quick on the uptake, I must say. He suggested that he could only give a proper opinion about the value by consulting an expert. Perhaps the footman could return at ten o’clock the following morning? He could? Splendid. The poor footman was arrested before the antique dealer’s front door had closed when he went back. He’s still in Wormwood Scrubs. I know. I visited him in there just before Easter.’
‘Well done, all the same,’ said Powerscourt, trying and failing to remember any policeman of his acquaintance who had been to see his victims in prison. ‘I don’t recall seeing anything of the affair in the newspapers.’
‘No, it never got that far. Could I ask you a question, my lord? Do you think the Caryatid was stolen to order? That somebody had received part of the payment for the theft before it disappeared? You couldn’t walk into an art dealer’s like Linfords in New Bond Street and say I’ve got a Caryatid from the Acropolis outside, do you want to make me an offer?’
‘The honest answer is that I just don’t know. If you pressed me, I would say that is the most likely account of how the theft was organized, with a client or clients already in place and a price agreed.’
‘I see. Can I ask you another question, my lord, if I may? How do you propose that we divide up the various tasks we can carry out without letting people know that we believe the Caryatid has been stolen? The Commissioner said he didn’t think the four horsemen of the apocalypse would shift Mr Ragg from his obsession with secrecy. I shall, no doubt, be reminded of that when I see him later this morning.’
‘Have you any suggestions about such a division of the spoils, as it were?’
‘I have been thinking about that this morning, my lord. I think you should talk to the art dealers, the connoisseurs if you like. I think you should be our liaison point with the Deputy Director. He obviously thinks we policemen have mud on our boots and spend our time arresting minor criminals in the poorer parts of London. Well, let him think that. He will talk to you more freely than he would to me. I propose that we should put out feelers to our colleagues on the Continent and across the Atlantic, asking them to keep their eyes open, without specifying exactly what is missing. I think we should also talk to former employees who have left in the last couple of years. And I propose to find out all we can about the private circumstances of the leading figures in the museum. Somebody in that organization may have given information to the thieves after all. It seems highly likely that this was an inside job, or at least one where inside help was available. I haven’t seen the actual statue yet, but one of my colleagues went to see it last year and he said that only people from the inside or professional removal men could have taken one Caryatid out and put another one in. The job was too complicated for your common criminal.’
‘Did you say all the leading figures in the museum, Inspector?’
‘I did. And that includes the Deputy Director and the Director himself. Who knows who was short of money? Who knows whose private life could lead to blackmail? We shall, of course, be discreet.’
‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt, thinking that the novels of this man Forster must encourage a suspicious mind. ‘Could I just make one request? I was involved years ago in a case involving art fraud. My companion in arms, Johnny Fitzgerald, is at present returning from Sicily and will be with me tomorrow. On that earlier occasion he developed close relations with the porters of the leading art dealers. They even showed him the accounts on one occasion, though Johnny rather doubted if they knew what they were doing, so much drink had they consumed. I propose to ask Johnny to do the same thing in this case.’
‘I’m sure that will be most helpful,’ said the Inspector, checking his watch. ‘Just one last thought before I report to the Deputy Director.’
‘And that is?’
‘I suggest we tell Ragg as little as possible about our investigations. Maybe he will become curious. Maybe we could say that we will tell him what we know when he lets us tell the world the Caryatid has been stolen. In the meantime let him stay in the dark with his ancient Egyptians and all those volumes ranged round that famous Reading Room. It’ll be good for him in the end.’
‘Very well. One last query, if I may,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do the police have any inside intelligence about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre? I think that pushed Ragg into reluctance to have any publicity or to call in the police. Do you think there might be a link between the two crimes? Is there some international gang at work, stealing the world’s most celebrated pieces of art?’
‘We have had inquiries from the French police,’ the Inspector admitted. ‘But these were routine, asking us to contact the art dealers and so on and to report back if we saw anything suspicious. If the Mona Lisa and the famous smile are in London they’re pretty well hidden. I don’t know of any international gangs at work. Mind you, if they were any good we wouldn’t have heard of them, would we? I did ask one or two people at the Yard who are meant to ask about these things and they hadn’t heard of any gangs either.’
The man in the velvet smoking jacket was sitting at the writing desk by the window of his hotel room. He had a blank sheet of writing paper in front of him. The man began giggling quietly as he started his letter. He did not put an address at the top.
‘Dear Mr Ragg,’ it began, ‘I am writing in connection with the missing Caryatid. I have the statue in my care. Today is Monday, 9 October. You have two days to follow my orders or the consequences will be severe. If you send us £100,000 by Wednesday, 11 October, you will receive instructions about where to collect the statue. Details of where and how to effect the payment will be sent to you once you have accepted this very generous offer. For every day you do not comply with these requests after that date, the payment will increase by £10,000. By Saturday, 21 October the figure will have risen to £200,000 and The Times and the Morning Post will have been informed about the theft. The news, and the details of your own role in the affair, will be all over the papers.’
The author paused and ran his fingers over his bald patch. The hair had not returned. When he started the next paragraph he was chuckling once again.
‘We know where you live,’ the letter went on, ‘we know where your wife buys her clothes. We know where your children go to school.
‘Any attempt to inform the authorities or to organize a payment supervised by the police will result in immediate action. That action will be violent.
‘I look forward to hearing from you at the address below.
Friends of the British Museum. c/o The Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly W1.’
The man read the letter three times. He put it into a plain envelope and addressed it to Theophilus Ragg, Deputy Director, British Museum, Great Russell Street WC. As he popped it into the letter box in the crowded street outside his hotel, attentive passers-by might have heard a faint sound of mocking laughter.
‘Atlas flycatchers! Black-winged stilts! Bar-tailed desert larks! Bonelli’s eagles!’
There was a note of reverence, almost of worship, in the speaker’s tone as he mentioned the birds he had seen on his latest trip, and he began circling round the furniture in the Markham Square drawing room as if he were a rare gull on some Mediterranean cliff high above the sea.
‘Sicily, Lady Lucy, upon my word, Sicily, I’ve never seen a place like it for the wildlife. Fantastic, that’s what it is!’
Johnny Fitzgerald, Powerscourt’s companion in arms across India and in all his investigations since, had just come home from a research trip for his next book on birds of the Mediterranean. His mind was still on some hot Sicilian mountainside, his binoculars searching the skies. But the case of the vanishing Caryatid in the British Museum soon had all his attention.
‘Tall female creature, rather snooty looking, holding a temple on her head, that the one?’
‘Exactly so, Johnny.’
‘And you are telling me, Francis, that the dry old stick in charge isn’t letting the police interview anybody at all? The whole thing has to be hushed up?’
‘Right again, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘we have to approach the thing from the side and the edges, as it were.’
Johnny Fitzgerald looked down at the carpet for a moment and then looked up at his friend with hooded eyes as if he were a bird of prey measuring the distance to its victim.
‘I see, Francis, I see. Now I know why all those messages have been left for me to get in touch at once. Most immediate, they said. It’s those auction house porters and the ones at the British Museum, isn’t it? You’re like some bloody elephant, Francis, you never forget. You’ve been thinking about that case years ago with Orlando the forger and that beautiful girl of his and the fake paintings up in Norfolk and me conducting negotiations with the art gallery porters all through the night in the Rat and Parrot at the back of New Bond Street.’
Powerscourt tried hard not to smile.
‘Come to think of it,’ Johnny went on, ‘it wasn’t the Rat and Parrot, was it? What was that bloody pub called? It had a name to do with animals, I’m sure of that.’
‘Fox and Hounds?’ offered Lady Lucy. ‘Pig and Whistle?’
‘Did you ever work out what the pig had to do with the whistle, Lady Lucy? No, it’s not that. Landlord came from Castlebar in County Mayo, I seem to remember, name of Cassidy and he had wooden legs. Slug and Lettuce? Three Horseshoes? Memory’s going, you know, definitely going.’
‘Spread Eagle? Red Lion? Green Dragon? Blue Boar?’ Powerscourt tried his hand through the colours.
‘No, no, you’re confusing me now.’
Johnny Fitzgerald walked slowly over to the window. Nothing moved in Markham Square. Even the local birds seemed to have gone quiet. Johnny tapped quite loudly on the window.
‘The Black Swan! The Black bloody Swan! That’s what the pub was called! Thank God I’ve remembered it. I was beginning to feel quite flustered.’
There was a hesitant, almost an inquisitive knock at the door. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, coughed apologetically and handed Powerscourt a letter.
‘Just arrived, my lord. From the British Museum, my lord. Said to be very urgent. The porter person is below, my lord, waiting for a reply.’
Powerscourt opened the envelope and whistled quietly to himself.
‘What is it, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Have the centaurs gone missing from the Parthenon frieze? The charioteers picked up their reins and walked?’
‘Much worse than that,’ her husband replied. ‘That dry old stick, as Johnny referred to him, Deputy Director Ragg has had a blackmail letter, asking for one hundred to two hundred thousand pounds. And he and his family have been threatened. That bloody Caryatid may have been dead over two thousand years but she’s still causing a lot of mischief.’
As Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald clattered down the stairs, one to the British Museum, the other to the Black Swan, Powerscourt thought Johnny Fitzgerald was saying his prayers.
‘Scopoli’s shearwaters,’ the murmur came, ‘stone curlews, Heuglin’s gulls, rock partridges, steppe grey shrikes . . .’
The birds of Sicily were making a reverse migration to Markham Square and the fleshly delights of the King’s Road, Chelsea.
Leisure time at the Hellenic College near Amersham was always busy. The college was the only boarding school for Greek boys and girls in Britain, founded for the parents of Greek merchants in London and the Home Counties who might have to relocate abroad for years at a time. The Greek Orthodox Church, well used to running schools attached to its places of worship, was the principal mover in the school, and the chairman of the governors and a third of its membership were priests or archimandrites of the Orthodox faith. There was even a small Greek Orthodox church on the site with the most ornate iconostasis in the south of England.
The large estate had been built by one of the great devotees of Antiquity of the eighteenth century. He had filled his grounds with replica temples of every sort. There was a temple of Vesta by one of the three lakes, a temple of Apollo hidden in the woodland. A miniature Parthenon stood on top of a Chiltern hill and a tiny Pantheon by the side of the water. The house and the estate were a tribute to the eighteenth-century conceit that the classical world was superior to the present and the study of ancient Greece and Rome was the only path to a proper education. Stourhead and Stowe and Chiswick House outside London with their fabulous gardens were the templates for the Hellenic College.
Boys and girls studied all the usual subjects taught in the English public schools with special emphasis on ancient Greek language and culture. The eighteen girls, who lived in Penelope House, were taught weaving and dressmaking in the Greek style, the boys in Patroclus House learned carpentry and model-making. Every year Penelope House had to produce a new peplos, a garment originally designed for the goddess Athena. The boys had to make a working chariot and four of their number had to learn to drive it.
Powerscourt found Inspector Christopher Kingsley waiting for him on the steps of the British Museum.
‘Thought it might be a good idea,’ the Inspector said, ‘if we went in together. Move about in pairs like Father Christmases in the East End where the natives are liable to regard them as airborne burglars and treat them accordingly. Have you seen the actual letter yet?’
‘Not so far,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully and led the way inside.
Deputy Director Ragg handed the letter over at once. Sitting side by side on the museum sofa, the detective and the policeman read it together.
‘Thank you for showing this to us so promptly,’ said Powerscourt.
‘I presume it came in the morning post?’ The Inspector was copying the letter into his notebook as he spoke.
‘That’s right,’ said Ragg. ‘It’s a bloody outrage, that’s what it is. Ridiculous blackmailing person, threatening me and my family, asking for hundreds of thousands of pounds. How are we to know he has got the Caryatid anyway? He could be a fraud and a chancer in some back room, making it all up.’
‘How right you are, Mr Ragg.’ Inspector Kingsley was still scribbling as he spoke. ‘What would you like us to do about it?’
‘I do not intend to take this lying down. This museum has an international reputation. It is respected the world over for the breadth of its collections and the depth of its scholarship. Whatever steps are necessary for the apprehension and incarceration of this blackmailing criminal should be taken. I and my family will cooperate in whatever way you suggest. I am more than happy to take a crash course in firearms and carry a pistol at all times. If I should meet the miscreant, believe me, I should not hesitate to shoot on sight.’
It was at this point that Powerscourt realized that he had underestimated Theophilus Ragg. Beached in the dusty backwaters of academe he may have been, but he had courage. He was like an earlier Queen before the coming of the Armada, who knew she had the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but she had the heart and stomach of a king.
‘Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Director, what the Metropolitan Police can offer you at this time,’ said Inspector Kingsley. ‘We shall maintain a discreet twenty-four-hour watch over the post room at the Ritz Hotel, though I fear the villain, if he is genuine, may already have private arrangements in place to intercept any communication addressed to the Friends of the British Museum. We shall keep watch over your house at all hours of the day and night. Your wife and children will not be able to take a step outside your front door without being watched by one of our plain clothes officers. I propose to send the letter – if you would allow us to borrow it for a day or so – to a couple of graphologists the Yard has used in the past. We do not like to advertise our connections with these people, but they have sometimes been useful in earlier cases.’
‘That all sounds very efficient, Inspector. I am more than grateful. But tell me, what do you gentlemen think I should do about the blackmail? Should I reply to this letter? Should I offer to make an appointment to meet with this person? Are the British Museum and its Deputy Director to be turned into a human honeypot to tempt a passing blackmailer? I do hope not. Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I have to confess I have little experience of this sort of blackmail. If it were me, I should be happy to place myself in the hands of the police.’
‘I too, Mr Deputy Director,’ Inspector Kingsley added, ‘have little experience of these negotiations, nor of sums as large as these. But I do know that the Commissioner believes it is always a mistake for those directly involved to negotiate with blackmailers.’
‘I see. Thank you for that, both of you.’ Theophilus Ragg smiled a wintry smile as if two undergraduate essays had just found favour with their tutor.
‘And what, pray, do you make of the choice of the Ritz Hotel as headquarters?’
‘Good choice, I believe,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘It’s always busy, the pavements outside are always crowded, a man could operate happily from there without being noticed. I’m sure the Inspector here will check the guest list most carefully.’
‘Of course.’
‘Gentlemen, thank you for your advice. I shall follow it to the letter and I am, as I said, most grateful for your assistance, Inspector. I suggest we meet again at four o’clock this afternoon. I have a meeting with the Sumerians in five minutes. Is there anything else you would like to say about the letter?’
‘I hope we shall not keep the Sumerians waiting,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if they were going to arrive in original costumes, ‘but there is one thing that concerns me. It has to do with the publicity and the threat of exposure of the loss of the Caryatid.’
‘Exactly so,’ put in the Inspector, ‘I too was going to mention the threat to tell The Times.’
‘If you are both in agreement, then my guests may have to wait a moment or two. Please continue.’
Inspector Kingsley gestured to Powerscourt that the older man should pick up the baton.
‘Consider the question of publicity, Mr Ragg. I’m sure the thieves thought there would be a great hue and cry once the loss was discovered. Headlines all over the newspapers, questions in Parliament from tame MPs, the usual sort of stuff. And all that, when you think about it, is to the thieves’ advantage. Let’s suppose that they had a buyer for the statue long before they stole it. The buyer will read the newspapers. I’m sure a story like this would find its way into the European and American papers too. For the buyer, the publicity acts as a kind of confirmation. He knows the Caryatid has gone. He believes it will come to him. All he has to do is wait.’
While Powerscourt paused, Inspector Kingsley picked up his train of thought. ‘But suppose you are the man who has commissioned the thieves. There is no mention of it in the newspapers. As far as the real client knows, the Caryatid may still be in place. He may not believe the thieves when they tell him that she is gone, that she is in their possession.’
‘Are you saying that the silence may promote suspicion and anger between the ultimate client and the thieves who actually took the Caryatid?’
‘We are,’ said Powerscourt. The Inspector nodded.
‘Then surely we should keep quiet for as long as possible,’ said Ragg firmly, closing his notebook with a flourish. ‘By all means let us spread discord and mutual suspicion among our enemies.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Inspector.
‘Indeed,’ added Powerscourt.
As they made their way back to the street Inspector Kingsley stopped by the railings and looked back at the museum.
‘I was so grateful, you know, my lord, when this investigation came along. I’d just looked after three murder cases in a row.’
‘And you are not fond of murder cases, would that be right?’
‘I loathe them. I absolutely loathe them,’ Inspector Kingsley spoke quietly but with great force. ‘But now I’m not so sure this Caryatid affair is going to be any better. This case is proving to be difficult and potentially dangerous.’
‘But still preferable to murder inquiries?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Oh yes.’
Neither man knew it at the time but they had not to wait long before the Case of the Missing Caryatid produced its first corpse.