CHAPTER 13 #2
“I think Stackpole is up to his neck in it as well.” Tennant nodded.
“Margot Miller told Kathleen that her bloodstains were worth ‘the other half of twenty quid.’ And Stackpole shouted that phrase at Annie O’Neill when he came looking for Margot weeks ago.
He said Miller owed him ‘the other half’ of twenty pounds for ‘the goods.’”
“The goods,” Dr. Lewis spat out. “Trading and trafficking the bodies of young girls. The law makes men the guardians of female interests, but we do a terrible job.”
“That’s the hole in the suffrage argument, isn’t it, Grandfather? That it’s enough for husbands and brothers to legislate for their wives and sisters. But if women had the power to decide, would we set the age of consent at twelve? Never.”
“My dear, if I had the power, I would herd the gentlemen of Parliament into a surgical theater. Force them to witness the ravages of childbirth on an immature mother’s body. The tearing, the fistulas that leave a girl permanently incontinent—if she survives the attendant infections and lives.”
Julia looked at Tennant. “Just now, only one of us has the power to do anything.”
She thought of their many disputes about men, women, and their place in the world and the times she’d thought him deaf to rational argument. How often her judgments about him had been wrong.
He looked surprised when she said, “I’m glad it’s you in charge of this case.”
Julia hooked her arm around her grandfather’s elbow, and they walked to the door. Mrs. Ogilvie waited with Tennant’s overcoat.
As the inspector shrugged it on, he asked, “What do you know about the Topkapi, sir? It’s the new club on Pall Mall.”
“Not so new anymore. It must be ten years since it opened those extraordinary front doors.” Dr. Lewis chuckled. “Many of my fellow clubmen are happy they face Whitcomb Street off East Pall Mall.”
Tennant smiled. “Yes, the facade is something of an Ottoman fantasy. What sort of members do they admit?”
“Retired diplomats, East India Company men, Indian Army officers. Men who served the Empire.” Doctor Lewis laughed. “One fusty old boy at my club said, ‘They might as well let in a pack of Johnny Foreigners from the bloody abroad.’”
Julia handed Tennant his hat. “What’s your interest in the Topkapi Club?”
“I’m not sure. Just a secondhand comment passed along to me.”
“And?”
“Strangely, its name keeps cropping up.”
* * *
The following day, Tennant hailed a cab and headed to the South Kensington Museum with Allingham and Allen’s printed copy of the Pleasure Gardens catalog and the matching folder of erotic art.
The hansom dropped him off at the North Cloister gardens, still dormant in early April but showing signs of life. A guard directed him to the offices of the museum’s director, Henry Cole.
A rumpled figure with a bristly thatch of white hair and a fringed, snowy beard invited Tennant to sit. “Should I be anxious about our treasures?”
“Not at all, Mister Cole. I have some questions about this book.” Tennant held up Pleasure Gardens. “And about your collection of Chinese art.”
“You have an advantage over me, Inspector. I’ve only seen the galley pages, not the finished product. What is your interest, if I may ask?”
“I’ll get to that, sir. But first, am I right that the museum produced this book to coincide with an exhibit?”
“That is correct. Pleasure Gardens: The Art of the Ming Dynasty opens Saturday, the twentieth of April.”
“How did Allingham and Allen acquire the publication rights?”
“Well, they are a well-regarded house—in the forefront of fine arts publishing, as it happens. And Charles Allingham was the moving force behind the exhibit.”
“In what way?”
“Allingham acted as the broker for several pieces. We’ve been expanding our collection of Far Eastern art these last ten years, and Charles secured the loan of works that will be on display.
” Cole shook his head. “His death was a great loss. His connoisseurship of Chinese art was unmatched in Britain.”
“May I view the works in the exhibition?”
“Yes, I suppose so, although it’s not fully hung. See here, Inspector, what is this all about?”
“Forgery, of a sort, and murder.”
Cole stared. “But I thought . . . well, I thought Charles Allingham took his own life. Didn’t he?”
“I refer to the murder of another person.” Tennant stood. “Shall we proceed to the gallery?”
Cole looked shaken. As Tennant strode the long hallway, their footsteps echoing, the director hurried to keep up, peering at the inspector as if trying to parse his expression.
Tennant said, “Chinese art seems an exotic interest. How did Mister Allingham develop his expertise?”
“He has friends who’ve spent time in the East,” Cole wheezed, catching his breath. “Men who have a good eye, based on the quality of the work they’ve lent for this exhibition.”
“Is interest in Chinese art increasing?”
“Oh yes. But a lot of inferior pieces are churned out for the export market. One needs to be discerning.” They came to a stairwell. “This way, Inspector.”
They climbed to the upper gallery, passing a sign that read THE RAPHAEL CARTOONS.
“A gift to the museum from Her Majesty. One of the great gems of our collection. They are Raphael’s original color sketches for a series of tapestries.”
Tennant glanced through the doorway. Two artists had set up side-by-side camp chairs. The woman leaned forward, intent on her sketchbook. Over her bowed head, William Quain locked eyes with the inspector and nodded.
“A lovely girl, Miss Allingham,” Mister Cole murmured as they walked by. “I feel for her and Charles’s widow. Such a beautiful woman, Louisa Allingham, and so young. A tragedy.”
“Yes. I’ve met them,” Tennant said.
“Of course, indeed. In the course of your duties.”
Cole flipped through a ring of keys at the door to the Chinese gallery and unlocked the door. After a quick count, Tennant identified eight pictures in his folder that matched paintings labeled “On Loan to the Collection” without listing the lenders’ names.
“Who provided the artwork without an owner’s attribution?”
“Charles’s friends and fellow clubmen.”
“Members of the Topkapi Club?”
The director cleared his throat. “The gentlemen are anonymous under the terms of our arrangement, I’m afraid.”
“Mister Cole, I’m afraid murder tosses anonymity out the window. I will know who they are, sir.”
The director scowled and named three men. One the inspector knew: Dr. Preston Scott.
* * *
Mary Allingham and Will Quain had spent the morning sketching in companionable absorption. At noon, they folded their camp chairs, packed their sketchbooks, and headed out the exit.
“Is that Inspector Tennant?” Mary nodded at a receding figure.
Quain glanced over his shoulder. “It looks like him.”
They walked the length of the museum’s carriage drive. Quain glanced down at the silent Mary. She’d folded in her lower lip, a habitual tick. Her eyes flickered up and away. Making up her mind about something, Will thought.
“I . . .” She flushed. “I owe you an apology . . . or at least, an explanation. Quite by accident, I drew the inspector’s attention to you. He asked for your address, and I gave it to him.” She added in a rush, “You see, Charles had given me your folder and—”
“What folder?” Good God, he thought, he couldn’t have shown her . . .
“Your Irish watercolors and the sketches of Margot Miller.”
“Oh. Those.”
“The inspector wanted a sketch, and I had none that showed her full face. Then I remembered yours, so Tennant took Margot’s pictures away. He . . . it was only then he said he wanted to track down all the artists who had painted her. I should have warned you.”
In a heavy brogue, he said, “’Tis a kindness to be worrying yourself over the likes of me. Why were you thinking I’d be needing a warning, Miss Mary Allingham?”
“How should I know?” she snapped. “And I’ll thank you to stop your Irish nonsense when I’m being serious.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And you haven’t been forthcoming with me. Neither has Inspector Tennant. Or Charles, for that matter, and he took his secrets to the grave, whatever they were. That very first day, the day Charles . . . the inspector said something about blackmail.”
Quain said nothing. How could he be candid with her without tarnishing her brother’s memory? And I don’t come off very well, either.
Mary stopped at a four-wheeler parked at the end of the carriage drive. She said stiffly, “It looks like rain. May I drop you on Kensington Road?”
“Thank you.”
Quain climbed into the seat across from her. “Mary . . .”
“Yes?” she said, sounding coolly polite.
“I know only a small part of the story. It involves copies made of other artists’ works and Margot Miller’s role in the scheme.
I recognized one of the originals of the copied paintings and told the inspector.
” He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, trying to draw her gaze. “Tennant doesn’t tell me very much.”
Mary looked out the window. “We’d better be on our way.” She tapped the carriage roof with her umbrella.
Bruised clouds had massed in the south. They billowed toward them, erasing the sun and throwing the carriage into twilight. The wind shifted, and a pelleting rain caught the carriage as it turned right on Cromwell Road.
Mary’s husky voice came from the shadows. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Sometimes, I think I’m turning into Louisa, unable to face reality.” She drew a long breath. “Charles is dead and by his hand. It’s still inconceivable to me, but nothing will change that.”
One thing likely to change was a sister’s memory. Quain wondered how Mary would react if she found out the truth. But what was the truth?
He, too, had been surprised by Allingham’s suicide.
Charles had seemed a sunny sort of chap.
Someone who took life as it came. Not a brooder.
Still, Mary had hinted he’d grown secretive and morose.
And Quain had seen enough of the world to know that hidden sorrows beat in other hearts, buried and unfathomed.