‘The Trust bought it from the administrators of the estate; the family no longer has any formal connections with Osmington.’
‘Anyone left of the family – locally, I mean?’
‘Miss Hilgay.’
‘Miss Hilgay?’ Dryden wondered if he would have to repeat everything the woman said.
‘Yes. She’s the last of the family. She must be seventy by now – Ely, I think. A home, perhaps. She was the only child.’
‘The car?’ asked Dryden.
‘The car?’ she said, clearly vexed that she might have to repeat everything the young man said.
‘The sports car.’
‘Ah. Mr Tobias – from the National Gallery. Visits quarterly to check the collection. When the estate collapsed the pictures were sold but the Trust is allowed to show some of them here, with appropriate security of course.’
It took Dryden half an hour to find Mr Tobias. He trailed through rooms where the smell of beeswax polish was almost hallucinatory in its power, and past four-poster beds which reeked of mothballs. At the top of the house, in the roof space above the Great Hall and just below the exit to the battlements was the Long Gallery, with polished oak floorboards a foot wide and whitewashed walls displaying about twenty paintings in heavy gilt frames. Mr Tobias, Dryden presumed, was the man on a footladder working with a scalpel at the edge of a large, crowded canvas.
Mr Tobias wore an expensive suit, Dryden noted, which on a brief inspection was probably worth more than the pictures.
Dryden paced the gallery, laying his heel down first with a sharp click like a military boot. One wall appeared to be full of the paintings of one artist, scenes of Europe’s antiquities – from the Parthenon to Pisa, the Colosseum to the ruins of Pompeii, all depicted by moonlight. The opposite wall held a variety of work, but all, again, showed the moon, or were scenes by moonlight. Most exhibited a sickly Victorian sentimentality which brought on in Dryden an almost overwhelming desire to blow raspberries. He diverted this urge by squirrelling into his pockets and extracting a Cornish pasty, which he begun to nibble by the crust.
Mr Tobias worked on, oblivious to Dryden’s manic presence. The canvas receiving treatment was one of the moonlit antiquity series, this one a rather wobbly rendition of the Oracle at Delphi.
‘Moonlight,’ said Dryden.
Tobias turned, the spell of concentration broken.
‘Who was the collector?’ asked Dryden, his mouth full of potato and gristle.
Tobias jumped down, landing with surprising agility on the wooden floor, and began to wipe the scalpel clean of oil paint.
‘The Hilgay family – mainly Sir Robyn – collected between about 1880 and 1949. The war stopped the spending, I guess, and he died sometime soon after – but there were no further acquisitions.’
‘Philip Dryden,’ said Dryden, offering his hand.
‘John Tobias – National Gallery.’ The accent was neutral, without a trace of the art world twang Dryden had expected.
‘The gallery owns the pictures, I understand,’ said Dryden. ‘How much are they worth?’
Tobias began to pack the scalpel away in an expensive black leather bag, and took his time annotating a moleskin notebook. ‘Today? Difficult to say. The collection was bought by an anonymous benefactor and presented to the gallery. The price was something in the region of £30,000 at that time – 1950.’
‘That doesn’t seem very much.’
‘The Pethers aren’t very sought after, I’m afraid.’
‘These?’ said Dryden, pointing to the moonlit European tourist spots.
‘Yes. I think they’re what started Sir Robyn off on the theme. The Moonlight Pethers. A whole family of artists – they knew they were on to a good thing and kept painting. There’s hundreds around – a good one by Samuel is worth £10,000 today – perhaps. They’re local – to Norfolk, anyway.’
‘There was a burglary during the war. Was it these paintings they took?’ asked Dryden.
‘Er, yes. Yes, I believe it was. You can see the damage here.’ Tobias slipped out a metal pointer from the black leather bag and tapped it on some blemishes on two of the Pethers. ‘Water damage. They stuffed them in a potato store, would you believe? They were recovered very quickly, within weeks, I think. They were kept above water level but you can see what the damp has done even in that short time.’
‘But no real harm done?’
‘Not to these. But one of the paintings was never returned. It’s still missing.’
Tobias stopped, reluctant to go on. Dryden nodded and took a closer look at one of the Pethers. ‘And what do we know about the missing painting?’ he said finally.