The Eloquence of the Dead (25 page)

‘Thank you, Sir. Was that a yes or a no to my request for leave?'

‘If that's what makes you content, go ahead. Good luck to you.'

 

THURSDAY OCTOBER 6
TH
, 1887

 

FORTY

The numbers in Lily Grant's painting class were down. That always happened, she knew, after the first few lessons. Some pupils lost their courage or their confidence. Lily was indifferent. She believed a good art teacher should ruthlessly identify talent and let the no-hopers go their own way.

She was mildly surprised to see Swallow among the early arrivals this afternoon. The newspaper had been full of crime stories all week, and he seemed to have figured in most of them.

Although she was reluctant to admit it to herself, she was also embarrassed by the disaster of Maria's Sunday evening dinner party. Having largely engineered the event in an effort to get Swallow and her sister back into some sort of civil dialogue, she knew that she carried much of the responsibility for the debacle.

‘I wasn't sure we'd see you this week,' she said cautiously. ‘You've been a busy man.'

‘That can't be denied,' he laughed. ‘But I'm committed to this. A murder or two wouldn't keep me away.'

Katherine Greenberg had taken the chair next to him.

‘There might have been more than one murder if Mr Swallow hadn't been so promptly on the scene on Monday,' she said.

‘Of course, Miss Greenberg. What an ordeal you've had. And your father. I read about it in the papers.'

She stared hard at Swallow.

‘Was it just a coincidence that you were on the scene? It was very fortuitous, wasn't it?'

‘I was in Capel Street on police business,' he said icily.

Katherine cast him a look of admiration that was almost possessive. He knew it was intended to be.

‘Sergeant Swallow didn't hesitate,' she said. ‘If he had, I might be dead by now, and my father. The newspaper accounts couldn't do justice to the courage he showed.'

‘I wouldn't doubt it,' Lily said tersely. She turned to Swallow, her back to Katherine.

‘It was very pleasant to see you at Mrs Walsh's – Maria's – for dinner on Sunday evening. I hope you enjoyed it.'

He was calculatedly sharp.

‘She went to a lot of trouble. It was nice to know that Mr Weldon returned her kindness by taking her to the theatre during the week.'

Lily's expression betrayed nothing.

The room was filling with the hum of conversation. Easels and paintboxes clattered onto tables. Chairs scraped across floorboards as the would-be artists took up their favoured positions. She walked to the front of the classroom and clapped her hands.

‘Good afternoon. I hope everybody has done their homework.'

She slipped quickly into professional teaching mode.

‘I shall be going around shortly in order to see what each of you has accomplished. But first, I want you have a look at something very unusual. When you see it – or him, more accurately – I want you to think about how you would paint him, what colouring you might use, what pigments you might mix.'

She looked to the back of the room and gestured to a man of about Swallow's own age, standing in the doorway, clad only in a woollen blanket. It took Swallow a moment to recognise the Neapolitan features of Charlie Vanucchi.

‘Please come in, Charles,' Lily called.

Vanucchi made his way to the front of the class and sat on a low dais beside her. He drew his blanket around him and gave a wide, beaming grin to the class.

‘I'd like to introduce you to Charles,' Lily said. ‘He has very kindly agreed to act as our model this afternoon. Now, this is not a drawing class so I'm not asking you to consider too closely any of the rules of anatomical drawing. What we're concerned with here this afternoon is how to bring the right colours together to paint Charles as he is.'

On cue, Vanucchi dropped the blanket to the side of his chair, leaving only a small, white loincloth to protect his modesty. Charlie Vanucchi was practiced in this routine, Swallow reckoned.

At the same moment, he realised the immensity of Lily's challenge to her pupils' amateur talents.

Italian, Irish and God knows what other bloodlines had merged to give Charlie Vanucchi's body a combination of flesh tones that ranged from waxen white to pale brown. The face and hands were dark, but the torso was light as a church candle.

‘Charles has unusual colouring,' Lily said. ‘This is why we're so grateful to him for his willingness to help here at the Art School. The task for you all this afternoon is to see if you can devise colours using your basic pigments that can accurately reflect the complexity of the tones you see in front of you.'

At that moment, the naked Vanucchi recognised Swallow. The grin widened and he gave a thumbs up sign. He called cheerfully across the class.

‘Ah, howya, Misther Swalla'? I didn' know ye was involved in this caper. Talk to ye later, wha'?'

Mixing colours to paint Charlie Vanucchi was indeed a challenge. When Lily Grant called the usual break, an hour into the afternoon, Swallow's effort was a hotch-potch of greys and creams with streaks of brown that prompted various unsanitary comparisons in his imagination.

Katherine Greenberg seemed to be doing marginally better. She had achieved a translucent white that to some degree picked up the tones of the model's torso. But the nether regions, which she had attempted to depict in a mix of grey and pink, had clearly defeated her.

Swallow put down his brush and palette and strolled to the front of the class.

‘You're doing a bit of modelling on the side then, Charlie?'

Vanucchi had drawn his blanket around himself again. Someone had supplied him with a mug of hot tea.

‘I started doin' it as a kid,' Charlie grinned. ‘A shillin' for two hours. Sure it was money for jam. But I like it too. Mebbe it's the eye-talian in me. Very artistic people, ye know. That fella' who done ‘The Last Supper,' he was a cousin on me grandmother's side, I think. She was a Vinci, ye know, the Vincis are big around Napoli.'

‘I wouldn't doubt a word of it,' Swallow said. He lowered his voice. ‘Your fellows must have given our Mr Shaftoe a fair going-over. We're still trying to sort out how much of his story is true.'

‘Oh, I think you'll find its true enough, Misther Swalla'. He wasn't keepin' much back by the time the lads was done with him. I wouldda said he was uncooperative at first. An', of course, you'll remember ye owe me the balance of a fiver at th' end of it all.'

Katherine tapped him on the shoulder.

‘I'm going to the cafeteria downstairs for a cup of tea, Joe. Would you like to come?'

‘I think I could do with stretching the legs,' Swallow was glad of the excuse. ‘And the tea would be welcome.'

The cafeteria in the basement of the Art School was crowded and noisy, but they squeezed into a table in a corner. The two teas Swallow ordered from the waitress were served immediately.

‘This man that you arrested in the cathedral,' she asked, ‘is he the one … the English man who … had the gun at the shop?'

She sipped her tea.

‘I believe so. He's under lock and key, so he won't be a threat to you.'

‘What did he tell you?'

‘We're questioning him still. He says he was hired by somebody in London to find out who sold you the tetradrachms.'

She shrugged.

‘It makes no sense. They're worth a few pounds, yes. But why come all the way from London for them?'

Swallow had decided that Katherine did not need to know anything further about Teddy Shaftoe's story.

‘That remains to be seen,' he said, finishing his tea. ‘In the meantime, until we get to the bottom of it all, we'll be keeping a detective at the shop night and day.'

Katherine smiled.

‘You're very vigilant for us. And it's greatly appreciated.'

They worked through the second half of the class. Lily circuited the room, offering a word of advice here, an admonition there.

By the end of the lesson, Katherine had made progress, even in the challenge of colouring Charlie Vanucchi's nether regions. Swallow's board was by contrast a mess. No human form ever carried the hues and shades in which he sought to represent the leading figure of the city's criminal underworld.

Lily shook her head silently and passed on.

As the class ended and the first pupils exited to the corridor, a moustachioed constable, helmet in hand, put his head around the door. He gestured urgently.

Swallow folded his portfolio and crossed the room. The policeman backed into the corridor.

‘Sorry to be waylayin' you, Sergeant,' he apologised. ‘I was ordered to wait 'till ye were finished inside but not to let ye away. This is from Chief Mallon.'

Swallow opened the official envelope and read the message from the office of the Chief Superintendent, G-Division.

Swallow,

I regret that notwithstanding it being your rest day, I require you to attend here as soon as possible. Significant information has come to hand.

Yours faithfully,

John Mallon (Detective Chief Superintendent.)

As he finished reading, Charlie Vanucchi, swathed in his woollen blanket, emerged from the classroom. He beamed at Swallow and the constable.

‘An' a very good afternoon to yiz, gentlemen. I was lookin' at yer efforts there Misther Swalla'. What yer lackin', if ye don't mind me advisin' ye, is a touch a' this new shade they've invented. They're callin' it beige.'

The constable's eyes popped. Like every other beat man across the city he knew Charlie Vanucchi and every one of his runners by sight.

Vanucchi pushed through the doors, back into the classroom.

‘Is that who I'm thinkin' it is,' the policeman asked, ‘or are me eyes mistakin' me?'

‘No mistake,' Swallow replied. ‘Very artistic people, these Italians, or so I'm told.'

 

FORTY-ONE

When Swallow got to Mallon's office, the chief was hunched over a file of papers on his desk. He scarcely glanced up when Swallow entered the room.

‘Ever in London, Swallow?' he grunted.

‘No, Sir. I went to Coventry once to bury an uncle.'

‘Well, you're going to London in the morning.'

He waved Swallow to a chair.

‘I think this story of Shaftoe's is standing up. Sir Edward Jenkinson at Scotland Yard telephoned me. He sent a man from the Special Irish Branch down to Sussex yesterday to see this Lady Gessel. In fairness to them, they move fairly quickly over there when you ask them to.'

He gestured to the notes on his desk.

‘She says the silver disappeared when she sold out the place down in Galway.' He glanced at the notes. ‘Mount Gessel.'

‘So it's stolen property then?' Swallow said.

‘It's not as simple as that. According to what she told the man from the Yard, it was her solicitors in Galway who told her it was gone. They said it must have been lifted out of the house by some of the tenants before the contents were auctioned. But if that's the case, nobody seems to have notified the constabulary down there.'

‘That's odd,' Swallow said. ‘A load of good silver goes missing and nobody reports it to the peelers? Wouldn't her solicitors have done that?'

‘You'd have thought so. But it doesn't stop at that. There's other things missing from the house. Some fine china and glassware. Paintings too. And  … something else very significant.'

Swallow waited expectantly.

‘According to Lady Gessel's information, the missing property also includes a collection of rare coins, Greek and Roman, put together by her late husband's grandfather, as far as she knows.'

Swallow felt a frisson of comprehension.

‘And are you going to tell me that the coins included Greek tetradrachms?'

Mallon shrugged. ‘I don't have those details. But I'd lay a penny to a pound they did.'

Suddenly he seemed animated.

‘You might say it's straws in the wind. But by God, there's a stack of them. Here's this Gessel woman telling us her property has gone missing. It's turning up here in Greenberg's and in Ambrose Pollock's pawn shop. We have your friend Shaftoe in the cells, telling us he was sent here to find out where it came from. And he claims he's working on behalf of some unknown characters pulling money out of the land transfer process.'

‘It seems to fit together.'

Mallon grunted again.

‘If this is real, the authorities will have to be told. The government will need to take the landowners' and the tenants' representatives into their confidence. They'll have to hold the process together while they sort out whatever is afoot.'

‘So when are you going to alert them?'

‘I'm not sure. If I do that now there are two problems. First, we could be wrong, in which case we'll undermine our own credibility and become a laughing stock. Second, if the word gets out that we suspect something, it could get back, giving these characters the opportunity to cover their tracks.'

Swallow understood Mallon's anxiety not to be seen to get it wrong. The Assistant Under-Secretary for Security, Howard Smith Berry, had his own cabal of detectives, mainly English and Scottish, working directly under him in the Upper Yard. Their leader, an obnoxious former Army officer, Major Nigel Kelly, was a constant critic of the G-Division and of Mallon's methods.

‘Just like you said, we need to know who's running this fellow Shaftoe,' Mallon said. ‘Who's his boss, and who sent him here? You'll have to cut a deal with him, as you suggested. I've been thinking how we'll do it.'

Swallow felt he could indulge his own sense of vindication.