Playing With Fire

A

In some ways, A

She decided on a salad with pears, walnuts and crumbled blue cheese to start, and a wild mushroom risotto as her main course, then put the menu aside. Phil was still studying his.

“Problem?” A

“Just can’t decide between the venison and the guinea fowl.”

“Sorry, can’t help you there.”

Phil laughed and put his menu down. “I don’t suppose you can.” He took out a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air and caught it. “Heads,” he said, looking at the way it had landed. “Venison.”

“How do I know you didn’t cheat?”

“Actually, I did,” he confessed. “It was supposed to be heads for the guinea fowl but I realized at the last moment I really wanted venison. Wine?”

“Please.”

Phil chose a bottle of 1998 Chianti Classico. Not too ostentatious, A

“How’s the Turner?” she asked when they had given their orders.

“Still resting comfortably. It should be up for auction soon. The Tate’s interested, naturally, but so are the V and A and several private collectors.”

“It’s definitely genuine, then?”

“Oh, yes. So the team of experts attests.”

“It wasn’t just your opinion?”

“You must be kidding. Not a chance. It would be immodest of me to say my voice doesn’t carry some weight, but a discovery like that comes under incredible scrutiny. Any art forger worth his salt wouldn’t pick a big-name artist like Turner or Constable to copy. Forgers with any sense stick to less famous artists. Turner’s a national treasure. You might as well try and pass off a Da Vinci or a Van Gogh.”

“It has been done, though, hasn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. It has been done. Tom Keating, for one, comes to mind. He did Rembrandt, among others. And Eric Hebborn did all right with Corot and Augustus John. But that was in the fifties and sixties. These days, there are far more forensic tests and, as I said, a battery of experts to get past. This one’s been verified through fingerprints, among other things.”

“Fingerprints?”

“I thought that might interest you. They can last a very long time, you know. Prints have even been found on prehistoric cave paintings and pottery unearthed at archaeological digs.”

“But how can you verify them? Turner’s been dead for more than a hundred and fifty years.”

“Painting can be a messy business. You get your hands dirty, and as often as not an artist applies his fingers to the paint and the paper or canvas during the process of painting. Especially oils, but even with watercolors like this one. If you examine the surface carefully with a magnifying glass – a bit like Sherlock Holmes, I suppose – you can often find very good fingerprints.”

“But how do you check against the artist’s original?”

“That’s the problem. It’s not always possible, and the results are sometimes dubious, but in the case of Turner, it actually works very well.”

“Why?”

“His prints are on file in the Tate archives.”

“Of course,” said A

“Naturally, you need an impeccable source. A painting with credible provenance leading right back to the artist. But not many other people would have been in a position to get their fingerprints in the paint on a Turner canvas. He was known to work alone, without assistants.”

A

“And it’s been done before,” Phil went on. “A Canadian called Peter Paul Biro pioneered the whole technique some years ago. He worked with the West Yorkshire Police to identify a Turner called Landscape with Rainbow in 1995. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

“In 1995 I was a mere DC in Somerset and Avon.”

“Well, that explains it.”

“We tend not to notice that much outside our immediate areas,” A

“I understand,” said Phil.

“How much do you reckon it will go for?”

Phil pursed his lips and thought for a moment, then said, “About three hundred thousand. Maybe a bit more, seeing as it’s part of a set.”

The wine came and the waiter first showed off the bottle, then presented the cork and a tiny splash in Phil’s glass. “Just pour it,” said Phil. “I’m sure if it’s corked you’ll bring us another bottle.”

“Of course, sir,” said the waiter. A

Phil sipped some wine and looked around. “Turner actually dined here once,” he said, “on the same tour he did the sketches for that watercolor.”

“Really? I knew the place was old but…”

“Well, I don’t think it was the same chef. Mostly he complained about the weather. Bit of a miserable bugger, was J.M.W. Bit of a miser, too.”

“He’d fit in well up here, then.”

“I’ve never found Yorkshire folk to be anything less than generous.”

“I agree, actually. It’s just one of the myths around these parts, and people sometimes seem quite proud of it, the parsimony.”

“They’re ca

A

The starters arrived and both ate in silence for a while. “One thing I never got around to asking you is why this painting went missing for so long,” A

“There are plenty of Turners unaccounted for,” said Phil. “As you know, this one was part of a series of twenty watercolors Turner painted for the History of Richmondshire. He delivered the first twelve to the publisher for engraving in spring 1817, and the other eight in December of the same year. After that, the originals were sold to various buyers. The one we saw, Richmond Castle and Town, was one of six that the publishers of the history were selling off at cost. Twenty-five guineas. Can you believe it? Previously the only record of it seems to have been at an exhibition of the Northern Society in Leeds in 1822. After that, nothing. Anyway, three of the twenty went missing, two untraced – until last summer – and one destroyed in a fire.”

A

“Ah, I see. You’re thinking about the boat fire you’re investigating, aren’t you? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but this was decades ago. There’s no co

“But there’s still one more missing from the set?”