‘Tell me about the exhibition.’
‘It was a bugger to organize, because the low values have helped to scatter the paintings into private collections. Manchester Art Gallery has a lot of the decent stuff. The rest are all over the place. We still don’t know where some of the Waterhouse paintings are. This is a study for the one that was destroyed. The finished work is much more detailed.’
Summerfield tipped the art volume to the light. The picture was of a young man seated on a throne, feeding pigeons from a salver while his councillors waited for an audience. ‘The Favourites Of The Emperor Honorius, an early piece, 1883. Waterhouse’s first serious historical painting. Flavius Honorius, one of the forgotten Roman rulers. He was a bit of an ass by all accounts, lazy, greedy, seen here too busy feeding his pet birds to grant his advisors any attention. Even in this crappy reproduction you can sense the genius of the artist. A moment of anticipation captured for ever. The title is ironic, of course. It refers to the birds, not to the seven men in the picture.’
‘How did it end up in Australia?’
‘At the end of the nineteenth century the big Australian galleries bought quite a few Pre-Raffs. There are two oil studies for this picture, both in private collections. One had been mistitled The Emperor and Tortoises for years.’
‘Can you think of any reason why someone would want to destroy such a painting?’
Summerfield pulled at the paint-daubed strands of his beard. ‘Certainly no one could be offended at the subject matter. It’s pretty innocuous stuff. Perhaps your vandal wanted to cause some diplomatic damage. The availability of Commonwealth paintings is a touchy subject at the moment.’
‘So I understand. Do we have any other pictures here on loan?’
‘Yes, two other Waterhouses, as a matter of fact. Circe Invidiosa from Adelaide, and Diogenes from Sydney.’ He located the prints in his book. ‘You think these are in danger, too?’
‘We’ll have to get them removed from display. I want you to keep thinking for me.’
‘That’s just it . . .’ Summerfield glanced from one print to the next. ‘There’s something odd which I can’t quite—’
‘Something about the paintings?’
‘Not really. More the act of vandalism. There’s a resonance here. Something very familiar. I’ll need to think about it.’
‘Well, if you have any ideas at all,’ suggested Bryant, ‘call me.’
A shrill beep startled them both. ‘It’s this stupid new radio-pager gadget May makes me wear,’ Arthur explained, rummaging in the folds of his coat. ‘Can I use your telephone?’
‘Arthur, I know you’re tied up today, but I need your help,’ May told him. ‘Oh, and there’s a lead on your vandal.’
‘Of course, it wasn’t the snake that puzzled me but the bite,’ said May as they crossed Camden Town’s humpback bridge. A thin layer of mist mooched over the surface of the canal below. Bryant pulled his scarf over his nose. If he’d known what global warming would do decades later, he might have enjoyed the vaporous damp.
‘If you got bitten by a snake you’d run about shouting, warning people,’ May continued. ‘You wouldn’t calmly go back to your seat and resume reading your newspaper.’
‘You say he sustained a fall?’
‘Backwards, according to Finch.’
‘Could be your answer.’ Bryant’s watery eyes peered over the scarf like a pair of insufficiently poached eggs. ‘Suppose he was chloroformed? Once he’d fallen to the floor unconscious, his attacker could have induced the snake to bite his neck.’
‘Don’t be daft. The only possible reason for using such a ridiculous murder weapon would be to frighten the victim first. Why go to all that trouble if your victim doesn’t even get to see it?’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s not my case. What have you got on my vandal?’
‘Seems he damaged something in his flight,’ replied May, savouring his partner’s anticipation. ‘We did a sweep of the gallery stairs and found this.’ He removed a clear plastic sachet and shook out a wooden splinter almost two inches long. Green flecks in the paintwork gave it an iridescent sheen. ‘It appears to have come from his cane. The varnish is new.’
May had given the splinter to a colleague who owed him a favour, knowing that this would be quicker than sending it into the system’s Bermuda Triangle of evidence examination. ‘Stokes remembered seeing a unique cane under your vandal’s arm. I popped this over to a cane maker in Burlington Arcade. He agreed that it’s a piece from a hand-turned malacca walking stick. The green flecks are malachite, basic copper carbonate. He knows only one company that still makes them.’