Death of an Elgin Marble Page 14

  ‘Our Caryatid was a human pillar, a human column. She and her five sisters took the place of columns in another temple on the top, the Erechtheion, built about 406 BC. The Caryatid was part of the continuing story of the myth of Athena, patroness of Athens and her Acropolis. Erechtheus, to whom the temple was dedicated, was a former ruler of Athens in years gone by and the building may have replaced an earlier one, dedicated to Athena Polias, Athena of the city, that was destroyed by the Persians seventy years before.

  ‘People often ask me lots of questions about our Caryatid. Was she based on a real person or did the sculptor simply invent her? We do not know the answer, of course, but it was the custom for the sculptors of the time to use models in their work. So the man who made the statue may have met the Caryatid, made a drawing of her perhaps to help him in his task. The more discerning ask at this point: how or where would the sculptor have met the model? Ladies of the night might have wandered round the streets of Athens but well-born young women – and scholars are unanimous in saying that our young lady was well born, if not actually from a noble family – the respectable kept themselves behind closed doors, rarely venturing out into public view. Our Caryatid has kept her great presence, her air of suppressed authority, a slight hint of feeling herself to be better than others across the centuries since her birth. The most interesting theory – and I have to confess here that it is my own – is that the Caryatid may have been based on one of the aristocratic women involved in the priestly rites surrounding the goddess Athena. Maybe the sculptor asked the priestesses for help in his work on the Caryatids for the new temple.

  ‘The final question may be the most intriguing of all. Was she married? Was there, as it were, a Mr Caryatid? Little Caryatids perhaps, waiting in the wings to weave the robes of the future? Once again, we just don’t know. But we do know that it was the custom for the young women involved in the cult of Athena to be married. Children, who knows. But it was one of the principal duties of Athenian womanhood to produce the warriors of the future, the beautiful young men who would serve in her armies or her navies and bring glory to the city of Athena.’

  The audience were entranced, except the Bishop. Powerscourt observed that he seemed to be nodding off, only for the black-clad chaplain to nudge him in the ribs with increasing vigour as the lecture went on.

  ‘So let me, in conclusion, ask another question. Why does this Caryatid matter so much? Why should we care about the statue of a marble girl born 2,300 years ago? I will tell you. We care because we took her in the first place. The British Government bought the Elgin Marbles, of which the Caryatid is such a distinguished member, that they should be safe in London, in better care than they would receive if they had been abandoned on some Greek hillside. Care, ladies and gentlemen, does not include theft. We care because, of all the statues that make up the Elgin Marbles in the Elgin Room, the Caryatid is the most complete. Not to put too fine a point on it, she has a head, a body, two legs and most of her arms but not her hands. That amounts to more than the goddesses and the charioteers on the frieze. But we should care for her not just because she is so nearly complete. We should care because she stands at the end of an Athenian century, the fifth century before Christ. She looks back to a glorious past and forward to a less glamorous future. Her grandparents might have fought with Miltiades at Marathon or sailed with Themistocles at Salamis. Her parents may have been present at the high point and finest definition of Athens’s glory, Pericles’ Funeral Speech over the fallen at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Members of her family will have watched the plays of Sophocles and Euripides. They will have marvelled at the work of Phidias and his sculptors on the Parthenon. They may have come across the philosophy of Plato. They could have argued with Socrates in the public spaces of the city. The Caryatid speaks to us from that long distant past. She speaks to us of the best civilization man has yet aspired to, one that has been a beacon and a model to past generations as it is for us today and will be again in the future. The Caryatid speaks to all of us of the better selves we might yet become.’

  Tristram Stanhope stared at the back of the balcony as he finished his peroration. He waited for the applause. As it came rolling out, and the audience rose to their feet, he raised his arms aloft like a victorious boxer. He was drinking in the applause, storing it up perhaps for inspiration in quieter, less eventful days ahead.

  ‘My goodness me,’ Lady Lucy whispered to her husband, ‘we certainly got the whole peacock tail on display this evening.’

  ‘Look at the man,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘I do believe he is getting bigger with all the applause. Maybe he’s going to end up twice his normal size like Toad in The Wind in the Willows.’

  The Bishop was now at the lectern, one hand raised to bring peace to the multitude. He conveyed all their thanks to the speaker.

  ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I have another happy task to perform this evening. It has fallen to me to act as the Chairman of the newly constituted Caryatid Committee. As of this afternoon, this is a legal entity, thanks to the activities of my two colleagues, Mr Hugo Findlayson of the solicitors Slaughter and May, and Mr William Finch of Finch’s Bank.’ The two substantial citizens rose to their feet and bowed to the audience.

  ‘The purpose of the committee is to raise funds to act as a reward for information leading to the recovery of the Caryatid. The cathedral authorities of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow Road have indicated that they will be happy to join the Committee, as has the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. We pray that the Lord will look kindly on our efforts. After hearing the words of Dr Stanhope I do not have to tell you how important this work is. Stewards will be waiting to take any contributions you may feel able to offer the fund as you leave the hall this evening. Or you can approach the banker or the solicitor here about other forms of payment. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we close our evening with the National Anthem.’

  ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt. ‘Why is everything going wrong this afternoon?’ The news had not been good that day in Markham Square. Lord Rosebery had reported in some irritation that nobody at all had replied to his advertisement asking for tenders to move a lot of his statues from one of his homes at Mentmore in Buckinghamshire to another one outside Edinburgh. Did Powerscourt regard this as an accident or a conspiracy? And, Rosebery’s note concluded, what did Powerscourt want him to do now?

  Lord Rosebery’s butler, Leith, had replied to Powerscourt’s query about the possibility of sending a Caryatid to America in a transatlantic liner. There were, his note said, dozens of ways in which the statue could have been sent by ship to New York, especially if she was travelling first class.

  Inspector Kingsley had called on his way to the British Museum to reveal that they were no further forward with their inquiries into the death of Kostas, the Greek porter at the British Museum who had been run over by a train. The witness who had originally claimed that she thought he was pushed changed her mind later on and said she could not be certain about anything that had happened on the platform any more. She was confused. She did not wish to speak about it again or she would become even more confused. And Inspector Kingsley’s bright young Constable Smithson, working his way through the freight records in an obscure outpost of the Great Western Railway at Paddington station, was pessimistic. There were records of the freight containers, hundreds if not thousands of them. But they were never specific about the content. The only entry in that respect was ‘Household Goods’, nothing more. And that, as the Constable pointed out, could cover a multitude of sins. He told his Inspector that you could have sent the body of the risen Christ through Paddington station in a railway container and nobody would have been any the wiser.

  There was a cough at the door. Coughs at the door in Markham Square usually meant only one thing. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler who had served with his master in India, had something to say.

  ‘Gentleman to see you, my lord. He claims to have
met you before. The gentleman is waiting in the hall below, my lord. Name of Hudson, John Hudson, representing the New York Times.’

  Powerscourt looked across at Lady Lucy. ‘Hudson?’ he asked. ‘New York Times? Ring any bells?’ Lady Lucy shook her head.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, ‘better show him up.’

  A well-dressed young man in his early thirties strode into the room and shook hands.

  ‘I can see you don’t remember me, Lord Powerscourt. Well, it was some time ago. You came to ask my advice about some paintings of Irish aristocrats that had been stolen from their houses. The ancestors of the Anglo-Irish patricians, to be precise. The pictures seemed to have walked off the walls. I was working for a little gallery off Bond Street at the time.’

  ‘Of course I remember you now,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if he himself had changed as little over the years as John Hudson. He rather doubted it. ‘How nice to see you again. Have you abandoned the galleries altogether? What made you change jobs to the New York Times?’

  ‘Well,’ said Hudson, ‘I don’t think the change is all that great. I’ve always wanted to write a book about the Renaissance, you see. The gallery took up too much of my time. I thought I would make more progress if I left.’

  ‘And did you?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Are we to see the book in Hatchards quite soon?’

  The young man laughed. ‘I’m afraid not, Lady Powerscourt. The book is as far from being finished as ever.’

  ‘And what is your role on the New York Times, Mr Hudson?’ Powerscourt asked. ‘Are you one of their London correspondents?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I am.’ John Hudson grinned. ‘I have this wonderful job title which always impresses people. I’m called European Arts correspondent.’

  ‘That sounds frightfully grand, Mr Hudson,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘What do you have to do for that?’

  ‘Well, most of the time I stay in London. When there’s a major exhibition in Paris or Berlin or Rome I travel there to see them and send back one or two reports. That depends on how I rate the show. It’s much cheaper than sending somebody over from New York one exhibition at a time. Mostly I write about what’s happening here in London. Rich Americans who read the New York Times are always keen to know what’s going on in London’s art market, who’s up, who’s down, that sort of thing. One or two of them come to visit me when they’re here and ask who or what they should buy.’

  ‘And what do you tell them?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘I make a point of never giving any advice at all. Suppose I told them all to buy French Impressionists and then the market collapsed. I’d have a lot of angry Americans on my doorstep. No thanks.’ John Hudson laughed. ‘I’m sure you know why I’m here this afternoon, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve come about the Caryatid, the one missing from the British Museum. I believe you’re trying to find her.’

  ‘Ah yes, the Caryatid. I am trying to find her, as you put it.’ Powerscourt nodded. ‘How very proper, how can I help?’

  ‘Let me put it like this, Lord Powerscourt. I have read some extraordinary things about this damned statue in recent days. They can’t all be true. She’s been stolen by the same gang of thieves who took the Mona Lisa in Paris. The Rokeby Venus, possibly the only other work of art the crime correspondents have heard of, probably because she has no clothes on, may be next. The thieves are actually working for a museum in Germany. They’ve got lots of ancient artefacts over there in Munich and Berlin but can’t stand the fact that the British seem to have more and better examples. Envy and jealousy about colonies in Africa transferred in the German mind to that enormous museum in Great Russell Street. Some psychic with Greek connections has brought her back to life and she walked out of the door in the middle of the night of her own accord. Honestly, Lord Powerscourt, I can’t send any of that nonsense to the New York Times. I’d be fired within the hour.’

  ‘I can see that your readers would not be receptive to those theories, Mr Hudson. Perhaps they would go down better in the Midwest?’

  ‘Kansas more credulous than Connecticut, Lord Powerscourt? It’s perfectly possible. Let me put my position in another way, if I may. We’re not meant to have opinions on the New York Times, unless we write the leading, articles, and even then it’s frowned upon. But I want to see the Caryatid back home in the museum. I want her back as much as you do. Is there anything I can put in my paper that would really help your investigation? I can’t print a pack of lies, obviously, but is there something I can do?’

  Powerscourt smiled at the young man. His enthusiasm was infectious. Powerscourt had liked him a lot the first time they had met. He had been helpful and discreet in the Irish investigation.

  ‘Let me propose a bargain, if I may, Mr Hudson. Not a bargain like that of Mephistopheles and Faust, but a bargain nonetheless. I will tell you now how the investigation is progressing, on condition that you give me your word that you will never tell a soul, not even your editors in New York, where the information came from. In return, I would ask that you carry out, or ask your colleagues to carry out, a little investigation for me, probably in New York, but certainly on the Eastern seaboard. And that, once again, you would not reveal where the request for the information came from.’

  John Hudson didn’t hesitate for a second. He rose and offered Powerscourt his hand. ‘I’ll shake hands on that, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe I’m out of my mind to agree to such a deal before I know what it is, but I’m sure you’ll play fair.’

  ‘Let me offer you first of all an account of how the investigation is going, Mr Hudson. The short answer is that the inquiry, as of this moment, is going absolutely nowhere. We have no idea who took the statue or why. I am working very closely with the police, of course. There are a number of theories, as you would expect, more plausible certainly than the ones you mentioned earlier, but theories nonetheless. Was it a disgruntled member of staff? Or a former member of staff? Did the thieves have a buyer before they carried out the robbery? Was it theft by mail order, as it were? If so, who did the ordering? Were they English or American or French? We have no idea. There is one titbit I can offer you to establish your credentials on this story if you like. Please don’t say where the information came from. Are you happy with that?’

  ‘I am, Lord Powerscourt, perfectly happy. I can always say I heard it from a police source. All newspaper editors believe you can buy information from the police for money; not all that much money, usually.’

  ‘What a wicked world it is!’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Now then. There is, or was, a porter at the British Museum, whose duties and responsibilities will have included the care and observation of the Caryatid. He has disappeared. He was run over by a tube train. It could, of course, have been an accident.’

  Powerscourt decided not to mention the large amount of money in the savings account, or the brother who also seemed to have vanished, possibly head first into the Adriatic. Those facts could be brought into play later on.

  ‘Really, I say, that is most interesting,’ said John Hudson, whipping out an expensive-looking leather-bound notebook and taking notes very fast. ‘I don’t believe anybody else has that part of the story. Could I ask you a question, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Those lines of inquiry you mentioned earlier, disgruntled former members of staff and so forth. I would propose mentioning them without attribution. In other words I could put them down to informed opinion, or sources close to the museum, or close to the authorities – that could be anybody right up to Prime Minister Asquith, for heaven’s sake – if that’s alright with you?’

  ‘Absolutely fine. Nobody’s going to complain about that.’

  ‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt. Now what can I do to keep my side of the bargain?’

  Powerscourt was looking at his most innocent at this moment. He’s dangerous just now, Lady Lucy said to herself, extremely dangerous. Watch your step, Mr Hudson. Mind how you go.

  ‘My proposal is this, Mr Hudson. I m
entioned before the possibility that the theft was carried out to order, that there was a customer waiting for the Caryatid long before she was stolen.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Could that customer be American? By that I mean, a great collector, one of those who buys European paintings or First Folio Shakespeares, or ancient sculptures, you know the sort of man I mean.’

  John Hudson whistled softly.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You think one of these millionaires, never too scrupulous in the business dealings that brought them their millions in the first place, broke one or two more rules to get their hands on the Caryatid? Money no object, obviously, as the European art dealers have been fleecing those people for years.’

  John Hudson stared into the fire for a long time. He began writing names in his pocket book, a list of suspects, perhaps. ‘Is it possible?’ he asked finally. ‘Of course it’s possible. I’ve been sure long before the Mona Lisa walked off the wall in the Louvre that something like this might be going on. I tell you what I’ll do when I get back to the office, Lord Powerscourt. It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning on the East Coast. I’ll send a cable to my colleague who covers the arts for the paper in New York. I’ll say there’s a rumour that a rich American collector has recently spent a fortune buying some top piece of European art. I won’t mention a specific painting or sculpture, no Caryatid or anything like that. I doubt if even my friend Franklin will make the connection. If that doesn’t work, I can try something else.’

  Mephistopheles Powerscourt smiled at the young man. ‘That sounds an excellent plan,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard, Mr Hudson. I can’t tell you our destination but I can certainly promise you an interesting ride!’