“Mmmh.”
There was a growing body of cards filed in old shoeboxes, a card for each collector writing in, and a spare list of antiques for which people, mostly genuine collectors, were writing, urgently wanting special lists. These are almost always coins, medals, hand weapons, clothes, or paintings. Then there was the catalog file, the biggest. Michelle tried talking me out of one card per antique, thinking she’d discovered a quicker way.
She tried the wheedle, even the vamp, to no avail. I made her stick to my scheme. I also made her keep an nth file, of those antiques which I’d told her to reject. She again played hell. “What’s the point of recording details of antiques we’ll never see—?”
I clapped a hand over her mouth. This was the alluring lady who’d so joyously rushed to find me when the first letters came. Now we were inundated, she was falling behind and inventing ever-dafter ways of ballsing up the documentation. A born administrator.
“You, Michelle, are attractive, desirable, and rapidly becoming a pest for other reasons, too. Get help if you like, but do as I say. And hurry up.” I let go. I had to sort the last of Tachnadray’s genuine stuff out in the Great Hall. “I’ve a job for you to do, later.”
This time the items arranged at the far end of the Great Hall were superb. Among them I recognized Shona’s —well, Elaine’s—double snuff mull. Some things make you smile.
The silver wasn’t plentiful. One triumph was a bullet-shaped teapot. Not a lot of people admire the shape (“bullet” meaning spherical, as an old lead bullet), which is a ball with a straight spout. The lid completes the roundness, with a mundane finial topping the lid off. They were made from the late 1700s for sixty years. The engraved decoration of these characteristically Scottish teapots is one pattern carried round the join of lid and body. It sat among the rest glowing like, well, like Elaine smiling. Edward Lothian of Edinburgh, 1746, before the fluted spout came in. There was also a silver centerpiece.
These so-called epargnes (it’s posh to give things French names) usually weigh a lot, so you’re safe buying one by weight alone, never mind the artistry. This was 1898, Edinburgh, a dreadful hodgepodge of thistles, tartan hatching, drooping highlanders, wounded stags. It was ghastly. It’d bring in a fortune.
The furniture was dominated by a genuine Thomas Chippendale library table. It was practically a cousin of the mahogany one at Coombe Abbey, mid-eighteenth century, solid and vast. I honestly laughed with delight and clapped. You see so many rubbishy copies that an original blows your mind. Five Hepplewhite-design chairs (where was the sixth?) with shield backs and an urn-pattern center splat were showing their class. A few good Victorian copies of the lighter Sheraton-style chair were ranged along one wall. In the catalog I’d call them something like “Louis Seize a l’Anglais,” as Tom Sheraton designs were termed in Paris at the time. Only I’d be sure to put it in quotation marks, which would legalize my careful misattribution. It’d give Trembler a chuckle.
Predictably the porcelain was anything. The retainers had clearly preserved what impressed them most. They’d gone for knobs and colors, hoarding with knobs on, so to speak. A few times they’d guessed right. A royal-blue Doulton vase, marked “FB 1884,”
indicated that factory’s famous deaf creator whose wares Queen Victoria herself so admired. It might not bring much, but it’d “thicken” the rest. A lone Chelsea red anchor plate in the Kakiemon style—here vaguely parrot- looking birds, brown and blue figures on white, and flowers—would bring half the price of a car, properly auctioned. I loved it, and said hello, smiling at the thrilling little bong it made in my chest. The stiltmarks were there, and those pretty telltale speckles in the painting. The rest were mundane.
Sadly, sober George the Fifth stuff. Not one Art Deco piece among them. That set me thinking.
The paintings were ridiculous recent portrait travesties, some modern body’s really bad idea of what a “gen- yoo-wine” Highland chief would have been wearing. Talk about fancy dress. These daft-posh portraits are so toffee-nosed, they become pantomime.
The one painting I did take note of was a little scene of Tachnadray, done with skill in, of all things, milk casein paint. These rarities give themselves away by their very matt foreground. (Be careful with them; they water-splash easily.) You let skim milk go sour, and dry the curd out to a powder. Then you make a paste of it with dilute ammonia (the eleventh-century monks used urine), and it’s this which you mix with powder paint.
“Pity you’re very new, though,” I told it. The painter had varnished it to make it resemble an oil painting.
This is quite needless, because casein is tough old stuff. You can even polish the final work to give it a marvelous lightness. It’s brittle, though, so you paint on rigid board… I found myself frowning at the painting. Two figures were seated on the lawn, quite like statues. Modern dress, so there was no intent to antiquize.
A wheelchair’s tires whispered. “What now, Ian?”
“I think some painters must have frigging good eyesight, love. This casein painting’s too minute for words.” Casually I replaced it. “Pity it’s practically new.”
“Is it any good?” She was oh so detached.
“High quality. The artist still about?”
“Me.”
I nodded, not surprised. Now I knew it all. “You’re a natural, love. Who taught you about casein paint?” No answer, so under her steady stare I decided to swim with the tide. “Your dad? Or Michelle?”
“Yes. Michelle.”
“And egg tempera? You’ve a great career ahead of you, love. Copy a few medieval manuscripts for me and —”
“Stop that!” Michelle came in. “I’ll not have you inveigling Miss Elaine into your deceitful ways!”
With Elaine laughing, really honestly falling about, I escaped into Duncan’s workshop for my stint with the paneling. Michelle had come a fraction too late.
Later that day Mrs. Buchan brought up two candidates to help Michelle in the office.
One was a plump lass, fawnish hair, beneath a ton of trendy bangles and earrings, lovely eyes. The other was Mrs. Moncreiffe, an elderly twig scented with lavender and mothballs.
Michelle chose the twig.
