Giotto's Hand

In contrast to Flavia’s preoccupation with the present, Argyll instead took much of the afternoon off. As there was little for him to do, and in any case the Italian interest in Forster seemed to be winding down, he passed the time among the pictures. Loosely connected with the case, of course, but his main interest was merely to look at them, and check that they were all there. There was always the hope that, by mere mischance, something had been overlooked.

So, forgetful of thieves and murderers and with the two inventories of paintings in his hands, he padded quietly around the house, trying to identify the pictures mentioned in all these bits of paper with the ones which still hung on the walls of Weller House.

It was surprisingly easy; both inventories were virtually the same, and judging by the ease with which he found the paintings they referred to, he strongly suspected that they had not even been taken down for a good dusting in the past fifteen years. Possibly not since they’d been bought in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. So much for Forster’s care and attention.

In many ways it was not a rewarding experience: there were seventy-two paintings in the inventories and he rapidly managed to count seventy-two hanging on the walls of the house. Fifty-three were nondescript family portraits. Portraits, anyway, as some were so filthy and dark that it was difficult to tell who they were; in many cases it would cost more to clean them up than one could hope to get by selling them. The dining room in particular was rather depressing, a glorious oak-panelled room which should have resounded to the tinkling of crystal, the scrape of mahogany on floorboards and the soft pad of a butler’s footsteps. Instead, the windows were covered over, it was dark, unkempt and had a distinct smell of must. The huge mirror over the fireplace was cracked across its width and so decayed it reflected nothing at all. Not that there was much to reflect: the lights no longer worked and, although he tried to open the shutters, he found they’d been wedged shut.

The paintings of illustrious ancestors, which were meant to look down on the diners and impress them with the length of the lineage, were now little more than black patches surrounded by tarnished gilt frames. By peering carefully, and cheating by checking the few inscriptions on frames, Argyll could work out that these were the set of six seventeenth-century members of the Dunstan family, the aristocratic former owners who had been saved by reluctantly marrying their daughter Margaret to the lowly, but stinking rich, London merchant called Beaumont. The smallish half length of Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont was the one allegedly by Kneller, and was probably the only one which would fetch a halfway decent price. Although it was so unutterably filthy you could only just work out that it was a portrait. That it was a portrait of a young woman was as much guesswork as anything else. Even the attribution seemed doubtful, although Argyll did concede to himself that having to study it by the light of a match was not the best way of fully appreciating its subtleties. Still, it didn’t look like Kneller to him. It seemed the valuer had been right on that one.

Giving up for fear of eye strain, Argyll thought that it was about time another rich merchant came along to refill the family coffers. Pity Mabel didn’t do her duty. Otherwise, he concluded as he ticked the portraits off the list, her daughter is going to have to sell up pretty soon.

That completed, he returned to the attic to check out two old pictures which were said to be up there. They were. They were also said to be in bad condition and of no value and Argyll, again, could scarcely fault the acumen of the people who had drawn up the valuation. Once he’d done that, he settled down again with the pile of boxes he’d discovered, just on the off-chance that an old account book might contain some small details of when and where the pictures were bought. Even a date can do wonders for a painting’s value.