Kingston knew, however, that this was not the case with the painting in his hand, nor the other two. They were too detailed and the paint too heavily applied. The wooden stretcher was also relatively new. Attempting to remove the paint would destroy, or damage beyond repair, any painting that might be underneath. He turned the canvas on its side. Not unexpectedly, the staples looked fairly new, in keeping with the canvas that showed little signs of age. He put the painting down and picked up the landscape, staring at it, perplexed. As Jamie had said, it didn’t make sense.
‘Why don’t we see what’s in the trunk?’
‘Right, but let me try something first.’ Kingston had pulled out his Swiss army knife and opened the large blade. He started prising out one of the staples. One by one he worked his way round the stretcher until they were all removed and the canvas was free. Jamie watched, saying nothing, while he scrutinized the canvas. He turned it over and was focusing on one corner. ‘Bring the lamp over here would you, Jamie?’
He held the edge of the canvas up close to the light and poked at it gently with the knife. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he muttered. ‘I think we’ve got two canvases here.’ Kingston had switched to a smaller blade and was working it down the edge of the fabric. As he did so, the canvas started to separate. Gripping each edge, he carefully peeled the two pieces apart. Setting aside the phony Seurat, he held up the other canvas to the light where Jamie could also see it.
‘Can you see the signature, Jamie?’
‘Turn it a little bit … there. No, I can’t quite make it out.’
‘It’s C. Pissarro—Camille Pissarro. And if it’s the real thing—which I’m ninety-nine per cent sure it is—it’s worth a mint.’
In turn, Kingston removed the top canvas from the other two paintings. Underneath one was a Matisse portrait of a peasant woman and under the other, a winter landscape that he guessed to be by Sisley: the signature was not immediately apparent.
‘What do you think they’re worth?’ Jamie asked.
‘I’ve really no idea but if I were to hazard a guess, the three of them together, in the many millions—twenty, thirty—could be much more.’
‘My God. Why didn’t Ryder sell them?’
‘Maybe he couldn’t. There was a time when the market in fine art sales took a dive. There’s also the possibility that these three paintings were on circulated lists of stolen works. That would make them doubly difficult to unload.’ Kingston had replaced the wooden lid on the crate and laid out the three canvases on top of it with the Pissarro uppermost. ‘Perhaps, for whatever reason, Ryder decided to keep these three,’ he said, finding it hard to take his eyes off the Impressionist masterpiece.
‘If he did, why would he keep them sealed in a crate in a locked room? One would think that he would want to have them exhibited so that he could enjoy them.’
‘Maybe they were at one time. Hanging in one of the upstairs rooms of the house where nobody would ever see them.’ Kingston was carefully putting the three canvases back in the metal case. ‘Who knows? There could be all kinds of explanations.’
Jamie was on her haunches studying the padlock on the steamer trunk. ‘I wonder what’s in here?’ she said. ‘It has to be something valuable or Ryder wouldn’t have it locked up here, would he?’
Kingston turned the padlock toward the light to get a better look at it. ‘Valuable, yes—but perhaps something that Ryder didn’t want anybody to know about.’ He took out the Swiss army knife again and, with his ear close to the padlock, he began picking away at the lock with the knife’s tiny probe tool. After a silent minute, broken only by an occasional mumble or grunt, he finally gave up. ‘It’s a pin-tumbler lock but it looks like it’s got spool pins which makes it damned near impossible for someone like me to pick. We’ll have to drill it open.’
Kingston was about to reach for the drill in the nearby tool bag when his hands froze and his pulse skipped a beat. Suddenly there was another light, brighter and moving, shining on the surface of the metal trunk. Then, before he could turn to see where it was coming from, he heard Jamie gasp just as the man spoke.
‘You can pass those canvases up to me, if you would, please.’
Kingston stood, turned and looked up to the top of the ladder. With the flashlight shining directly into his eyes, he couldn’t see who was holding it. The voice was not familiar.
‘It’s Fox,’ Jamie whispered. ‘I swear it.’
Kingston placed a hand on her arm. ‘You may have to come down here and get them,’ Kingston replied, shielding his eyes.