Death of an Elgin Marble Read online

  Theophilus Ragg went to the stationery cupboard after he had despatched his letters. He took out a large new black notebook and wrote the day’s date on the inside cover in red ink. He began a doodle on the opening page and stared out of his window. He had asked his experts for their views and he knew he had to wait for their report but he felt sure the young American was right. Where was the wretched Caryatid now? Was she still in one piece? Who on earth could have taken her? How on earth had they taken her? Where had they found a replacement? Had they made more than one?

  Ragg had started his life after taking his degree at Oxford as a teacher of classics and junior housemaster at one of Britain’s leading public schools. After three or four years he found the prevailing spirit of hearty athleticism tinged with what he privately termed ‘the traditions of the philistines’ more than he could bear. He longed to hear eulogies of the odes of Pindar rather than of the triumphs of the football team and the military values of the combined cadet force. When a position was advertised as a Junior Fellow at one of the smaller Oxford Colleges, lecturing on textual criticism in the ancient Greek tragedians, Theophilus was accepted immediately. The conversation at the Shrewsbury College High Table, he told his parents, certainly took a turn for the better after the banalities of the school common room. Theophilus’s talents as an organizer, if not of genius, then certainly of very remarkable powers, only came about by accident. The College Bursar, an expert in the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, dropped dead of heart failure at four thirty one summer’s day in the Fellows Garden, just as the dons in residence had assembled for afternoon tea. The Warden, a deeply impatient historian who regarded all his colleagues as ignorant fools, sought among his fellows for a replacement. Of newcomer Ragg he knew nothing at all. This was a virtue. He was appointed to the post immediately.

  Like most great generals, Ragg moved slowly at first. He spent an entire term observing the working lives of the college staff, the cooks, the porters, those who waited at table and those who cleaned the young gentlemen’s rooms. Their hours and their movements were all written down in his notebook. When the workers returned to Shrewsbury for the Hilary Term, their hours had been changed. There were fewer of them. Most were working slightly longer hours than before. All were better paid than in the past. The College made considerable savings. Over the years Ragg turned his attention to other questions of detail, the supply of food and drink to the College and its members, where he discovered a mass of swindles and petty corruption, to the costs of maintaining the ancient buildings where he replaced most outside contractors with permanent masons and carpenters employed directly by the College. Eventually, after fifteen years in post, he screwed up his courage and asked the Warden, now a genial theologian with a great weakness for Château Margaux, if he could take a look at the College investments and financial strategy. The usual progress, slow but well thought out, was followed. By now, Theophilus Ragg, who had originally been a figure of fun, taking detailed notes of the college laundry lists as his early critics maintained, was the hero of the hour, particularly among the better informed heads of Oxford houses who regarded him as a financial Clausewitz and tried to lure him away to their own establishments. Ragg turned down all positions of bursar or newer, even grander, titles invented specially for him, at Merton, Lincoln, Exeter and New College. Only one institution was able to lure him away, and that was, in part, because it was an old boy of his own college who made the offer.

  Andrew Cronan had read Classics at Shrewsbury. Ragg had been his tutor and had treated him well. When he became Director of the British Museum, Cronan realized that the administration of his empire was in chaos with costs out of control and prima donnas and private satrapies rampant among the Hittites and the Assyrians. But he thought he needed a bait to draw Ragg down to London. The museum had, somewhere in its vast archive, a store of the manuscripts of ancient Greek philosophers and playwrights. Early editions of Aristotle and Aristophanes and Aeschylus were snuggled down in the basements beneath the pavements of Great Russell Street and the regular traffic of the Piccadilly Line. He asked Ragg to combine the roles of bursar and archivist at a salary rather greater than that of most of the heads of Oxford colleges. Cronar knew the high costs would be recouped many times over. And he enlisted an important ally, one whose very existence always brought on dark sighs of ‘Who would have thought it?’ or ‘Well, I never,’ or even ‘I haven’t heard of anything so remarkable this year or last.’ Cronan’s ally was the key factor in Ragg’s decision to move. For, to the astonishment of his peers, he had, some years before, secured for himself a most beautiful wife who produced a small phalanx of equally beautiful children. Christabel Ragg was determined to conquer the larger field of literary London as she already had the academic communities of north Oxford. She would become, she told her husband proudly, the Zuleika Dobson of High Holborn and Sicilian Avenue.

  After a quick trip up the Great North Road where the Daimler could show its paces, the little party returned to Markham Square. Octavius Stratton was hardly out of the Powerscourt front door when Thomas grasped his father firmly by the arm and made him promise not to buy the car. It was, Thomas assured his parent, a very bad investment. Octavius’s parents might have been very successful in the numbers of children produced, but their eighth had no grasp of figures or of engineering principles. If the physical details of the Daimler’s engine, as described by Stratton, were correct, said Thomas, shaking his light brown curls sadly as he spoke, the car would probably go backwards. Or possibly even sideways.

  Powerscourt suddenly remembered the elation with which Thomas had greeted the arrival of the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, the family’s first motor car, several years before. He would huddle into the corner of the back seat, his cap firmly placed on his head, and wave at the passing pedestrians condemned to travel by foot and even at the cows and the sheep in the Home Counties countryside. Once Thomas had disappeared completely from the house in Markham Square. It was some hours before he was discovered, sitting happily on the back seat of the Silver Ghost, doing his homework.

  Thomas was prepared to carry on about the Daimler for some time when his mother appeared and gave Powerscourt a small cream envelope. This requested him to present himself at the address at the top of the page as soon as possible. It was a matter of the greatest consequence. It could, the writer said, be described without exaggeration as a matter of the utmost national importance. The author looked forward to seeing Powerscourt within the hour. The signature was that of Theophilus Ragg, Deputy Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC.

  2

  The old port in Corfu is guarded by an ancient fort, one of two that stand sentinel over the island’s capital. The harbour front has the usual collection of cafés, bars, rundown tavernas and ship chandlers offering to sell you anything from fresh cordage to tinned food that will last for months in the hold of your vessel. And, hard by the oldest and most disreputable bar, the Hermes, stood a branch of the telegraph office. Sitting at a little table under the broken shade of the Hermes, a Greek sea captain was refilling his glass with ouzo and staring moodily out to sea. He was waiting for a message. He had been waiting for two days already but he knew he would wait as long as it took for the message to arrive. There was, he had been promised, a generous commission, a very generous commission awaiting him.

  Captain Dimitri’s vessel, in theory, was a seaborne circus, travelling with her entertainments back and forth through the Corinth Canal, across the island towns and cities of the Aegean and the Ionian Seas. Sometimes she carried things that had little to do with circuses.

  The ship was old and dirty, the paintwork peeling with age, the sails no longer white but flecked with streaks of grey. There was a mangy lion in a twisted cage by the main cabin, flanked by a couple of querulous monkeys. A pair of jugglers practised with dirty plates, specially hardened in taverna ovens so they would not break. A dark acrobat tumbled about in the rigging from time to time.
All kinds of strange-looking packages went aboard the first day, amphorae, presumably filled with wine that might have been thousands of years old, tiny decorated vessels filled with honey that could have inspired a poet to write an ode to a Grecian urn. The Captain spat expertly into the oily waters of the little harbour and refilled his glass. The message had not come yet, but the ouzo was cheap, the taverna served a fine if rather greasy moussaka, and the waitress, daughter of the house, was of remarkable beauty. Captain Dimitri prepared himself for a long wait.

  Theophilus Ragg, Deputy Director of the British Museum, led Powerscourt straight to the last known home of the missing Caryatid. He didn’t let Powerscourt linger long by the replacement. He took him straight back to his office without saying a word. Only when he was sitting opposite his visitor on a long sofa in the centre of his office did Ragg speak. The Caryatid Powerscourt had just seen was a fake. British Museum staff had, with great reluctance, admitted to the Deputy Director that the American was correct. The original had been stolen, possibly during a fire alarm the week before. The only people who knew about it were the American scholar who had discovered the switch, now sworn to silence and awaiting instructions in Brown’s Hotel, and the Deputy Director himself. The Director himself was out of contact in the Middle East on a shopping expedition and not expected to return for some time. Would Powerscourt take on the case? Would he find the Caryatid? He would? Excellent. He, Deputy Director Ragg, would be happy to answer questions for the rest of the day, if need be.

  Powerscourt began with the most obvious query. Why had the Director not sent for the police? Surely there must be stipulations in the insurance and so on? My decision and mine alone, the Deputy Director replied sadly. Men in uniform tramping through the museum would attract attention. The matter would appear in the newspapers. Publicity in a case as important as this could be ruinous. Other thieves might come calling for other treasures. The nation’s cultural heritage was in danger. Lord Powerscourt should be aware that this Caryatid was the best preserved of her kind in the world. She was unique.

  ‘Let me remind you, Lord Powerscourt, that it is only weeks now since the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Salon Carré in the Louvre. I do not know if you are aware of the tremendous outcry that has convulsed the city. The Parisian press have reports on the search for the criminal every day. Our own newspapers are also convulsed by the theft. The Director and staff of the Louvre have been vilified in a way France has not seen since the Dreyfus Affair. There is still no sign of the painting. Do you think we at the British Museum wish to be engulfed in such a firestorm? Our Caryatid may not be as famous as the Mona Lisa of Leonardo but she is still the finest example of her kind in the world.’

  Powerscourt thought that the Museum Deputy Director was old and close to retirement. The prospect of a repeat of the controversy in Paris had turned his bones to water. He was a man of scholarship, not of the wider world that swirled around outside the walls of his museum. Theophilus Ragg could not, for the moment, see beyond the scandal that could ruin his reputation and sully his last days in office beyond repair. It was to be over a week before Powerscourt realized, as he told Lady Lucy rather sadly later on, that Ragg was not a brittle tree, liable to fall in the first gales of winter, but an oak, a sturdy oak that would be left standing long after the storms had passed.

  Powerscourt reminded the Deputy Director, as gently as he could, that the Metropolitan Police were perfectly capable of appearing in plain clothes and being discreet. His new employer seemed astonished to hear of the existence of a plain clothes policeman. Caryatids, said Powerscourt, wore long sleeveless dresses with great folds at the waist. Greek heroes on the Parthenon frieze wore short tunics with swords to kill their enemies. Some policemen went about in dark uniforms with helmets. Some did not. Each to his allotted station.

  Treading carefully now, Powerscourt asked what seemed to him at this early stage the two most important questions. How much was the Greek lady worth? And who might want to steal her?

  She was priceless, Ragg said after a long pause, staring down at his notebook. Neither the finest bursar in Oxford or Cambridge nor London’s most experienced art auctioneer could put a price on a Caryatid. The Deputy Director could not imagine anybody wanting to steal such a rare and beautiful creature. Lord Elgin would surely be turning in his grave.

  With great difficulty Powerscourt refrained from pointing out that the Caryatid had only reached Great Russell Street because Lord Elgin had stolen her in the first place. It was an hour and a half into the interview before Powerscourt realized that he had one last card left to play. This, he thought, might be his last chance.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Ragg,’ he ventured in his most affable manner, ‘have you met the present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police?’

  ‘Sir Edward Henry, isn’t that his name?’ replied Ragg. ‘No, I have not.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I know him quite well. I first met him years ago when he was Inspector General of the Bengal Police Force and we have kept in touch since. I feel sure that he would be happy to help and provide one of his most discreet and intelligent officers to lead a plain clothes team to look into the vanished Caryatid. I could ring him on your behalf, if you like, to effect an introduction. I can promise you would be in good hands.’

  The Deputy Director of the British Museum might have appeared as mouse rather than man to the outside world, but he was damned if some upstart investigator was going to introduce him to London’s senior police officer.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he snapped, ‘I’m perfectly capable of ringing the man myself.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ purred Powerscourt, ‘sorry if I gave offence. It was not intentional, I can assure you. Tell me this, please, if you would, Mr Ragg, before I go.’

  Powerscourt decided that retreat in the current climate might be the better part of discretion.

  ‘Let us suppose that you were an art thief, one of the highest class, a Napoleon of crime. Let us suppose also that you stole the Caryatid with a view to selling her. Who would you approach? Which London firm would do the selling for you?’

  ‘Every single one of them, I suspect,’ replied the Deputy Director morosely. ‘I’m sure all the major art dealers and auctioneers, the ones with international links, Linfords, Gonzagos, Whites, would all tell you at the front door that they could not possibly undertake such a business and then readmit you immediately via the rear entrance to discuss terms and percentages. I have no faith in any of them.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Ragg. As a matter of form I shall have to contact them all, but forewarned is forearmed. I am most grateful.’

  Powerscourt was leaving a couple of calling cards on the Deputy Director’s desk when Ragg looked up at him with a pleading look in his eye.

  ‘Do tell me, Lord Powerscourt, you don’t think it’s all just a terrible mistake, do you? I mean you don’t expect she’ll turn up in the end?’

  Powerscourt felt rather sorry for the man, plunged so suddenly into a world of which he knew so little.

  ‘No, Mr Ragg.’ He spoke as kindly as he could. ‘I don’t think it is just a terrible mistake. The Caryatid will only turn up when we find her.’

  ‘Did you have the time to ask him about Tristram Stanhope, Francis?’ Lady Lucy’s first reaction on hearing of the assignation and the interview back in Markham Square was to enquire about her distant relative, the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Powerscourt rather stiffly, ‘we were discussing the disappearance of one of the most valuable pieces of sculpture in Britain, not the current whereabouts of one of the darlings of Mayfair. Tell me, Lucy, why is everybody so obsessed with this man? What is so special about him?’

  Lady Lucy felt that she might have made a tactical mistake.

  ‘Of course, Francis, you are absolutely right. Please forgive me if I spoke out of turn. Tristram Stanhope? Why are people so obsessed with him, you ask. Maybe because that�
��s how he wants the world to be, to be obsessed with him.’

  ‘Can you give me some facts about the fellow?’

  ‘Of course. Born into an old aristocratic family. Tristram Stanhope has classic English good looks, blue eyes, blond hair, a fine figure. He went to Eton and Christ Church and scored a hundred for his school against Harrow at Lord’s. Elected to Pop and collected all the garlands of schoolboy glory. Our Tristram went to Oxford with the laurels of Victor Ludorum and all the rest. He took first-class honours in Greats as well as being a bulwark of the Bullingdon Club. They said he had the most glittering Eton and Oxford career since the young Rosebery at Christ Church a generation or two before. Then Stanhope went exploring in the Middle East and India for a couple of years after graduation. He was said to have discovered a previously unknown tribe speaking a previously unknown language somewhere at the back of the Hindu Kush. The language was thought to be very close to ancient Greek, so some scholars said it might have been left behind, as it were, by Alexander the Great.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Powerscourt, ‘what did he do next? Walk on water? Bring down the walls of Jericho?’

  Lady Lucy laughed. ‘He might well have done both of those, Francis. You see, he went to work for the Foreign Office on a series of secret missions. When he finally resurfaced he had a slight scar on the left-hand side of his face which he refused to talk about.’

  ‘Would I be right in supposing, Lucy, that the women found the mixture of athletic and academic success, spiced with a tempting dose of danger and secrecy, virtually irresistible?’

  ‘You would, Francis, you certainly would. I’ve always remembered what one of my cousins said to me after a weekend spent in Tristram Stanhope’s company at some grand country house party. She said he was a professional Adonis.’