“Well, the poor old Pre-Raffs have had a pretty rough ride from the critics over the years. Too medieval, too Gothic, too sentimental, too moralizing; there’s never been a school of painting so slagged off. Much Pre-Raphaelite art is narrative, of course, and that’s a form which has fallen from fashion. A lot of it is symbolic, and decorative, and they’re undesirable qualities, too. Who wants art that looks nice these days? We live in a world of strikes and bombings. It’s taken a long time for people to get past the pre-Raff subject matter to the beauty within. Take a look at these.” He selected several volumes from a shelf and lovingly laid them open.
“Artists like Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais revived the poetic and spiritual qualities of fifteenth-century Italian art. Romance and colour for a drab old world. At first everyone made fun of them, but the movement was pretty much legitimized by its popularity. Having lots of tits helped, of course. Victorian nipples were always acceptable in a classical setting. Many a dull parlour wall was brightened up with a nice bit of repro-cheesecake.” He tapped a grimy forefinger on a colour plate entitled
“Tell me about the exhibition.”
“It was a bugger to organize, because the low values have helped to scatter the paintings into private collections. Manchester Art Gallery has a lot of the decent stuff. The rest are all over the place. We still don’t know where some of the Waterhouse paintings are. This is a study for the one that was destroyed. The finished work is much more detailed.”
Summerfield tipped the art volume to the light. The picture was of a young man seated on a throne, feeding pigeons from a salver while his councillors waited for an audience. “
“How did it end up in Australia?”
“At the end of the nineteenth century the big Australian galleries bought quite a few Pre-Raffs. There are two oil studies for this picture, both in private collections. One had been mistitled
“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to destroy such a painting?”
Summerfield pulled at the paint-daubed strands of his beard. “Certainly no one could be offended at the subject matter. It’s pretty innocuous stuff. Perhaps your vandal wanted to cause some diplomatic damage. The availability of Commonwealth paintings is a touchy subject at the moment.”
“So I understand. Do we have any other pictures here on loan?”
“Yes, two other Waterhouses, as a matter of fact.
“We’ll have to get them removed from display. I want you to keep thinking for me.”
“That’s just it…” Summerfield glanced from one print to the next. “There’s something odd which I can’t quite – ”
“Something about the paintings?”
“Not really. More the act of vandalism. There’s a resonance here. Something very familiar. I’ll need to think about it.”
“Well, if you have any ideas at all,” suggested Bryant, “call me.”
A shrill beep startled them both. “It’s this stupid new radio-pager gadget May makes me wear,” Arthur explained, rummaging in the folds of his coat. “Can I use your telephone?”
“Arthur, I know you’re tied up today, but I need your help,” May told him. “Oh, and there’s a lead on your vandal.”
¦
“Of course, it wasn’t the snake that puzzled me but the bite,” said May as they crossed Camden Town’s humpback bridge. A thin layer of mist mooched over the surface of the canal below. Bryant pulled his scarf over his nose. If he’d known what global warming would do decades later, he might have enjoyed the vaporous damp.
“If you got bitten by a snake you’d run about shouting, warning people,” May continued. “You wouldn’t calmly go back to your seat and resume reading your newspaper.”
“You say he sustained a fall?”
“Backwards, according to Finch.”
“Could be your answer.” Bryant’s watery eyes peered over the scarf like a pair of insufficiently poached eggs. “Suppose he was chloroformed? Once he’d fallen to the floor unconscious, his attacker could have induced the snake to bite his neck.”
“Don’t be daft. The only possible reason for using such a ridiculous murder weapon would be to frighten the victim first. Why go to all that trouble if your victim doesn’t even get to see it?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s not my case. What have you got on my vandal?”
“Seems he damaged something in his flight,” replied May, savouring his partner’s anticipation. “We did a sweep of the gallery stairs and found this.” He removed a clear plastic sachet and shook out a wooden splinter almost two inches long. Green flecks in the paintwork gave it an iridescent sheen. “It appears to have come from his cane. The varnish is new.”
May had given the splinter to a colleague who owed him a favour, knowing that this would be quicker than sending it into the system’s Bermuda Triangle of evidence examination. “Stokes remembered seeing a unique cane under your vandal’s arm. I popped this over to a cane maker in Burlington Arcade. He agreed that it’s a piece from a hand-turned malacca walking stick. The green flecks are malachite, basic copper carbonate. He knows only one company that still makes them.”
“James Smith and Sons,” said Bryant, who had purchased something similar a few Christmases ago.
“Exactly,” agreed May. “Care to take a stroll down there?”
¦
The brass-paneled store on the corner of Gower Street and New Oxford Street had sold canes and umbrellas for ever. Impervious to the changing times, it survived with unmodernized decor and traditional service, a charming oddity from the past, marooned in a fuming sea of oneway traffic.
The detectives stepped past the freshly polished nameplate and into a room filled with glistening wood. Walking sticks, shooting sticks, canes, and parasols of every size and description hung in racks like forgotten torture instruments. The genial shop assistant required a single glance at the evidence to describe the cane from which it had been broken.
“I think we’ll have a record of this particular item, Sir,” he said, turning the splinter over in his palm. “Canes with graining this rich are expensive, and are only produced as special commissions. The customer usually requires an engraved silver top.” He pinched the wood between thumb and forefinger, and gently sniffed it. “Less than a year old, I’d say. Won’t keep you a moment.”
He summoned an assistant, and they marched to the rear office. Minutes later, they returned bearing a slip of paper. “We’ve made only two of these in the past year, one for a Japanese gentleman – ”
“Not the person we’re seeking,” said May.
“The other we engraved for an elderly gentleman.”
“What was the engraving he required?”
“A small symbol, fire in a goblet, surrounded by a circle of flame. The gentleman was very specific about the design, even drew it out for us. I served him myself.”
“Is there an address on your receipt?”
The assistant checked the slip of paper. “NW3. Looks like somewhere in Hampstead.”
“You don’t recall anything odd about your client, I suppose?” asked Bryant.
“Most certainly,” replied the assistant. “I remember commenting to the cashier that his clothes were more suited to the previous century. Of course, we could have sold him the same cane back then.”
