Death of an Elgin Marble Read online

  ‘Fellow said you had come about the robbery a year or so back,’ he boomed.

  ‘That is correct, Colonel.’

  ‘I should say at once that the bloody silver has nothing to do with me. Most of the chaps here wouldn’t know the difference between a cruet and a candlestick. My family have a certain amount of the stuff so the top brass put me in charge.’

  ‘Could you tell me a little about the silver collection, Colonel? I’m afraid I didn’t know the regiment had such a thing.’

  ‘Not many people do. Stuff’s so valuable it wouldn’t do to advertise it to any thieves or art dealers passing through Knightsbridge, don’t you know.’

  The Colonel stopped suddenly and placed a monocle carefully in his right eye. He leant over to inspect Powerscourt as if he were a badly turned out lieutenant on parade.

  ‘I’ve heard of you, dammit, man, I’m sure I’ve heard of you! Wait a minute. Aren’t you the fellow who reorganized Army Intelligence in the Boer War? Didn’t you have a sidekick called Johnny who could drink a depot dry?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘My companion in arms Johnny Fitzgerald is a reformed character now. He only starts drinking before lunch rather than before breakfast. There are rumours of a rich widow in Warwickshire.’

  ‘Are there, by God. Heaven help the widow!’ The Colonel began pumping Powerscourt’s hand in a bonecrushing embrace, beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘You’re one of us! You’re one of us!’ he said, throwing his swagger stick and his monocle onto a chair and loosening the buttons at the top of his jacket. ‘Let’s sit down and put our feet up for God’s sake! I only do this swagger stick, formal Life Guards officer routine because I’ve had to represent the regiment in talks with the War Office. Bastards tried to amalgamate us with some damned peasants in the West Country. Nothing against peasants, myself, plenty of them good workers at our little place in Shropshire, but we don’t want to join the buggers.’

  The Colonel leant back and pressed a bell. ‘Claret please, Corporal! Two glasses if you would! One of our better bottles if you will, not that rotgut you served up the other evening. I think we should drink your health, Powerscourt, and to your temporary return to the military fold!’

  The Colonel had now kicked his boots off and was sprawling in an armchair with his feet up on a small stool. ‘We’d better go back to the bloody silver, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘It would be helpful, Colonel, if you could tell me something of its background, how the regiment came to acquire it, that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s part of the trouble,’ said Colonel Erskine, indicating to the Corporal that he should put the claret on the round table by the window, ‘nobody thinks it would be very sensible to have people asking where we got it.’ He poured two very full glasses of claret and peered at the label. ‘This looks more like it. Your health, welcome back to the Army, Lord Powerscourt!’

  Powerscourt nodded his appreciation of the wine. ‘Forgive me, Colonel, why would it not be very sensible to have people asking how you got the silver?’

  ‘Damn it, man, you worked out how to find the bloody Boer in South Africa, I’m sure you can work out the answer to that one!’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘I really do. Spoils of war? Booty from the battlefield? Houses of the rich ransacked after a siege? How about that, Colonel?’

  ‘You’ve got it in one, Lord Powerscourt. The regimental silver collection dates back to the late seventeenth century so I suppose they must have started making off with the stuff right from the start. They got an enormous haul after the battle of Vitoria near the end of the Peninsular War when Napoleon’s brother, acting King of Spain, was foolish enough to bring a great deal of material with him in his baggage train, paintings, silver, valuables of every sort. There’s quite a lot of that baggage train in Wellington’s Apsley House by the way. They bring out heaps of Vitoria silver every year for the Waterloo Dinner.’

  ‘So what exactly have you got? In general terms, obviously.’

  ‘Don’t ask me for a full inventory, for God’s sake. I should say that if it exists in silver we’ve got it. We’ve got cruets and salt cellars and any number of combinations of those. We’ve got enough candlesticks to light the Albert Hall and have lots left over. We’ve got plate and cups and goblets of every shape and size, decorated wine coolers and ornamental chamber pots, we’ve got an elaborate rococo epergne, sort of multi-purpose holder for condiments, matching sugar casters and salt cellars that would have stood on its branches. God knows where we stole that from. Better not ask.’

  ‘Could you tell me about the theft, Colonel?’ Powerscourt had been warned that this might be a tricky subject.

  ‘Ah yes, well, that’s all rather embarrassing really.’ The Colonel drained his wine glass and poured himself a refill.

  ‘Never mind,’ he continued, ‘orders must be obeyed by all ranks, time to advance, Steady the Buffs! It was the Regimental Feast, you see. That’s what did the damage.’

  The Colonel paused again. He stared at an ornate pair of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. Powerscourt waited.

  ‘Once a year, at the beginning of September, we have a Regimental Feast or Dinner, if you prefer. We dine by candlelight off silver plate. The wine is served in ornate silver goblets, the ones for white slightly smaller than the ones for red. There are silver cruets and silver salt cellars, enormous silver wine coolers, everything silver to do with food is on display and used as its original owners intended. The fancy epergne thing stands in the centre of the top table where the generals are. In the centre of the tables, and ranged round the edges, are the pick of the remaining pieces, Communion vessels, more goblets, ewers, the pick of the collection.’

  ‘So what happened exactly?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘This is the embarrassing bit, my friend. As you can imagine, the wine on these occasions flows like nectar in paradise. We used to have a very fine wine cellar, by the way, also liberated from the nation’s enemies, but that’s all been drunk by now. Well before the coffee and liqueurs there were officers passed out on the floor. By the time the last Life Guards finally left, every man jack present was drunk, very very drunk. There are records of an earlier Regimental Dinner in the 1800s, Lord Powerscourt, where the average consumption per man was two and a half bottles each, not counting liqueurs. This time it was worse, much worse.’

  ‘What about the theft?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. It was early afternoon the next day when the steward and his people realized some of the silver was missing. They have to check everything in and out from an enormous list, you see. A number of pieces weren’t there. But – and this is the really embarrassing bit – when the adjutant, who wasn’t at the dinner, being, if not actually teetotal, a puritan kind of a man who doesn’t like being surrounded by the totally inebriate, began asking questions, nobody could remember anything. Most of those present had difficulty recalling their own names. Nobody had seen anything untoward. Nobody had seen a thief come or go. Nobody had watched the stuff walk out of the door of its own accord. Nobody could remember a thing.’

  ‘What about the servants? Couldn’t they help?’

  ‘Help? They were even more helpless than the officers. Five of them were still stretched out on the scullery floor at nine o’clock the next morning. They have a tradition on these occasions – all the wines have to be tasted by the staff before they are served. At least a glass at a time. No wonder they were all laid out.’

  ‘So what exactly was taken?’

  ‘Four ornate silver plates, early 1700s, French. A pair of exquisite candlesticks believed to have come from the high altar of the cathedral in Badajoz, Spanish, late 1700s. Very beautiful silver wine cooler, English, early nineteenth century. Oh, I nearly forgot, a tiny silver salt cellar, believed to have belonged to Mr Samuel Pepys. God knows how we got hold of that.’

  ‘What did the police say? I presume the thing was reported.’

&n
bsp; ‘Funny you should mention that, my friend. Two policemen came, summoned in to see Officer Commanding, asked me what was gone and then they vanished. Rather like the bloody Boer in that damned war, disappearing into the veldt all the time.’

  ‘And you never heard of the stolen silver again? No blackmail notes arrived, suggesting a rendezvous and a handover and a pay-off?’

  ‘I’d like to see the villain who tried to blackmail the Life Guards. No, nothing like that. It’s been as silent as the grave ever since. The police never came back with any news. They just write to us every three months and say inquiries are progressing but there’s nothing new to report. Do you know what’s happened to our silver, Lord Powerscourt?’

  Powerscourt did not reply.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the Colonel, ‘don’t expect you could say even if you did know.’ He raised himself once more in the direction of the claret. ‘Better finish this off while you’re here. Stuff never tastes the same after you’ve put a bloody cork in halfway down. Don’t suppose you can tell me what this is all about? Fellows like yourself don’t come poking about unless there’s something fishy going on.’

  Powerscourt assured the Colonel that he was right in his assumptions but that, just for the moment, he could not speak about it. He was sure the Colonel would understand.

  ‘Of course, of course, my friend. Drink up, drink up! Any time you need a little help with your inquiries, show of muscle here, discreet disposal of your enemies there, let me know. Erskine and the Life Guards will be there for you, have no fear!’

  11

  Another one engaged! That was the third or the fourth this year! There couldn’t be many of them left, surely. One of Lady Lucy’s innumerable cousins was holding a drinks party in honour of her daughter Hermione’s engagement to a young solicitor called James Wentworth. Powerscourt reckoned that there must be over a hundred people in the room, most of whom must be related to him in some way or other but whom he did not recognize. He had belonged to this enormous extended family for years now. He still did not feel part of it. The record turnout for one of these huge family assemblies had been the christening of the Powerscourt twins in Chelsea Old Church some years before when he had counted a grand total of 127 in-laws.

  He took refuge in a small sitting room with his brother-in-law William Burke. Burke was a noted financier in the City of London who now collected directorships as he once collected old volumes of Wisden.

  ‘Bloody noisy in there, Francis,’ said Burke, clipping the end of a large Havana.

  ‘Much better in here,’ agreed Powerscourt.

  ‘How’s business? They tell me you’ve been looking into the missing Caryatid at the British Museum. That so?’

  ‘Afraid it is. I’m not having much success so far.’

  ‘I took our youngest, Miranda, the one you stood godparent for, to see that Caryatid when Miranda was little. I always remember her telling me she was going to be a Caryatid when she grew up. She liked the girdle, apparently, something like that. Oddly enough, I’ve had a lot of dealing with those wretched Greeks this week.’ Burke looked rather troubled at this point. ‘The modern ones, I mean, not the ones who went around all day talking philosophy and putting Socrates to death.’

  ‘Is all not well in Plato’s cave, William?’

  ‘You’re bloody well right, all is not well in Plato’s cave. They need a wizard in money and finance rather than philosophy. Whole bloody country’s pickled in debt, Francis, pickled. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Really? I don’t recall seeing anything about it in the papers.’

  Burke laughed bitterly. ‘Plenty of people have been taking plenty of trouble to keep it out of the papers. It’s been going on for years now. Some so-called friends in the City of London advanced the rebels a lot of money to fund the sacred cause of Greek independence. Bonds. Plenty of money up front, plenty of interest to pay ever after. Our Greek friends had trouble paying those bonds so they borrowed some more. Then their main export collapsed about twenty years ago so the money dried up. Sorry, Francis, do you know what the main Greek export was?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Currants, would you believe it, currants. Then they lost a war with the Turks and had to pay a huge indemnity. Guess how they decided to pay that off? You’ve guessed it, Francis. Another bloody loan. So now all Greek loans are supervised by an international consortium of six leading countries. I’m one of the British representatives on this Tower of banking Babel, so help me God.’

  ‘Do you think this is any use to me, William, investigating the theft of a Greek statue from the British Museum?’

  ‘Can’t see how it is. Just one thing, though, Francis.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s that old saying about don’t trust Greeks bearing gifts. Be even more suspicious than usual. Chances are the buggers won’t be able to pay for anything. Not for a long while.’

  The lecture hall close to the British Museum was almost full. Londoners were crowding in to hear a lecture called ‘Some Reflections on the Lost Caryatid’, by Dr Tristram Stanhope, former Fellow of St Luke’s College, Oxford, Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. The event was being staged by a new body calling themselves the Caryatid Committee. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were seated on the side near the back. The principal players were already on stage. There was a bishop in his finest purple with a silver cross prominent round his neck. He was attended by a humbler man of the Church, clad in plain black, possibly his chaplain. A harassed-looking man sat beside him, checking his notes. There were a couple of substantial citizens who looked as though they might be important players in the City. Of the principal speaker, there was, as yet, no sign.

  ‘Do you think our friend with the peacock feathers is going to be late, Francis?’ whispered Lady Lucy. ‘And who is that bishop?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Stanhope is late. He’s probably been here for some time, just dying to make a dramatic entrance. The worried chap is that Liberal MP from Bristol who always supports the latest fashionable craze. The purple Bishop is called Jeffreys, bishop of Oxford. They believe they’re closer to God in Oxford, the bishops, always have.’

  Lady Lucy looked sharply at her husband, but he pretended to be fiddling with his shoelaces. One floor above, latecomers were being ushered into the last available seats at the back of the balcony. The Bishop began to look rather anxious. Outside the bells of a nearby church were striking seven o’clock. The lecture was due to begin. Powerscourt watched carefully as the Bishop closed his eyes, possibly in prayer. At last, a curtain at the back was flung open. Tristram Stanhope strode dramatically to the centre of the stage and took his seat. He was wearing a long smoking jacket in dark blue velvet with a cream cravat and a yellow carnation in his buttonhole.

  ‘That’s the peacock feather equivalent, Lucy,’ Powerscourt muttered. ‘Wait for the bloody carnation to expand into an ornamental tail halfway through the lecture.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ The MP was on his feet at the lectern now. ‘For those who do not know me, my name is Archibald Street, Member of Parliament for the City of Westminster. It is my great pleasure here this evening to welcome one of the most distinguished classicists of his generation, Dr Tristram Stanhope of the British Museum. Dr Stanhope.’

  The Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities made his way to the rostrum quite slowly. He spread his arms out over the sides and waited until his audience was completely quiet. Then he waited a moment or two longer.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘It’s good to be back here so soon! Less than a year ago I was honoured to be chosen to give one of the Lipton Classical Lectures in this very room on the Roman Idea of Virtue. I am glad to be able to report that on that occasion, as on this one, the hall was full to overflowing!’

  He paused. Lady Lucy poked her husband gently in the ribs.

  ‘This evening is a sombre occasion for all of us concerned with the study and sch
olarship of the classical world in this country. As you all know, a Caryatid, the Caryatid as we like to call her, has been ripped from her place in the British Museum and replaced with a forgery.’

  There was a long pause while Stanhope adjusted his notes and fiddled with his glasses.

  ‘I want you to picture a column or a pillar,’ he went on, ‘slender, graceful, taller than a man, adorned with the marks of the Ionic or the Doric or the Corinthian orders. Now I want you to imagine your column standing beside other columns in a row of six or eight or twelve. Your column may be standing to attention as part of the front of a building – it could be the Bank of England or the Royal Exchange here in London, it could be the front of the Pantheon in Rome, it could be the front of one of Andrea Palladio’s churches in Venice. Your column might be on display inside a Renaissance church – it was the masterstroke of the architects of that time to turn the classical order inside out. In ancient Greece or Rome, the columns or the pillars were on the outside, the brick building contained within them was on the inside. Brunelleschi and his colleagues turned it round, with the brick walls on the outside and the columns on the inside. Think of your column in all those places and then go back to the beginning, to the building on top of the Acropolis in Athens, the building that now serves as a visual shorthand for Greece itself, the Parthenon and its rich panoply of columns. The history of our columns is a key part of the history of Western architecture and of Western culture.

  ‘The Parthenon and the Acropolis are also a key part of the Caryatid’s story. Above all else, Athens is the city of the goddess Athena. A giant statue of her, eighteen feet tall, adorned with gold and jewels was the centrepiece of the building contained within the inner Parthenon walls. The Acropolis is a memorial to the days of Athens’s glory in the wars against the Persians. The unlikely victories at Marathon and Salamis are all woven into the story of the buildings on Athens High City. Each year there was a great festival to Athena, the PanAthenaica, and we believe that the people taking part in the procession to the Acropolis, the soldiers, the horsemen, the maidens who made the new cloak for the goddess every year, the animals for sacrifice, the charioteers, are all shown on the Parthenon frieze we have in the British Museum.