picture had in very truth disappeared, and that the French police,
despite its much vaunted acumen, had entirely failed to find the
slightest trace of the thief, we at once began to look about for a
romantic solution of the mystery. M. le Duc de Rochechouart and his
pretty Duchesse had above all our deepest sympathy, for it had very
soon transpired that neither the Ingres masterpiece, nor indeed any
of the Duc's valuable collection of art works, was insured. This
fact seems almost incredible to English minds, with whom every kind
of insurance is part and parcel of the ordinary household routine.
But abroad the system is not nearly so far-reaching or so extended,
and there are numberless households in every degree of the social
scale who never dream of spending money on insurances save, perhaps,
against fire.
Be that as it may, the fact remained that "La Fiancée" was not
insured against theft, and that through the action of an unknown
miscreant the Duc and Duchesse de Rochechouart would, unless the
police did ultimately succeed in tracing the stolen masterpiece, find
themselves the poorer by half a million dollars. With their usual
lack of logic, readers of the halfpenny Press promptly turned their
attention to Mr. Aaron Jacobs, the intending purchaser. Being a
Chicago multi-millionaire does not, it appears, render a man immune
from the temptation of acquiring by dishonest means the things which
he covets. Anyway, the public decided that Mr. Jacobs was not so
rich as he was reputed to be, but that, on the other hand, being as
greedy for the possession of European works of art as any ogre for
human flesh, he had stolen the picture which he could not afford to
buy; and ten, or mayhap fifteen years hence, when the story of the
mysterious theft will have been consigned to oblivion, Mr. Jacobs
would display the masterpiece in his gallery. How this was to be
accomplished without the subsequent intervention of the police those
wiseacres did not attempt to explain.
The mystery remained impenetrable for close on two years. Many other
sensations, criminal or otherwise, had, during that time, driven the
affair of the Ingres masterpiece out of the public mind. Then
suddenly the whole story was revived and in a manner which proved far
more exciting than any one had surmised. It was linked--though the
European public did not know this--with the death in July, 1919, of
Charles B. Tupper, the head of one of the greatest cinematograph
organisations in the States--a man who for the past few years had
controlled over two thousand theatres, and had made millions in his
day. Some time during the war he had married the well-known cinema
star, Anita Hodgkins, a beautiful entirely uneducated girl who hailed
from Upper Tooting. The will of Mr. Charles B. Tupper was proved for
a fabulous sum, and, as soon as his affairs were settled, Mrs.
Tupper, who presumably had remained Cockney at heart as well as in
speech, set sail for England with the intention of settling down once
more in the country of her birth. She bought Holt Manor, a
magnificent house in Buckinghamshire, sent for all her splendid
furniture and belongings from America, and, early in 1920, when her
palatial residence was ready for occupation, she married Lord
Polchester, a decadent young nincompoop, who was said to have fallen
in love with her when he first saw her on the screen.
Presumably Mrs. Anita Tupper _née_ Hodgkins hugged herself with the
belief that once she was styled my lady she would automatically
become a social star as she had been a cinema one in the past. But
in this harmless ambition she was at first disappointed. Though she
had furnished her new house lavishly, though paragraphs appeared in
all the halfpenny and weekly Press giving details of the sumptuous
establishment of which the new Lady Polchester was queen, though she
appeared during the London season of 1920 at several official
functions and went to an evening Court that year, wearing pearls that
might have been envied by an empress, she found that in
Buckinghamshire the best people were shy of calling on her, and the
bits of pasteboard that were from time to time left at her door came
chiefly from the neighbouring doctors, parsons, or retired London
tradespeople, or from mothers with marriageable daughters who looked
forward to parties at the big house and consequent possible
matrimonial prizes.
This went on for a time and then Lady Polchester, wishing no doubt to
test the intentions of the county towards her, launched out
invitations for a garden party! The invitations included the London
friends she had recently made, and a special train from Paddington
was to bring those friends to the party. Among these was Mr. Aaron
Jacobs. He had known the late Charles B. Tupper over in the States,
and had met Lady Polchester more recently at one of the great
functions at the United States Embassy in London. She had interested
him with a glowing account of her splendid collection of works of
art, of pictures and antique furniture which she had inherited from
her first husband and which now adorned her house in Buckinghamshire,
and when she asked him down to her party he readily accepted, more I
imagine out of curiosity to see the objects in which he was as keenly
interested as ever than from a desire to establish closer
acquaintanceship with the lady.
The garden party at Holt Manor, as the place was called, does not
appear to have been a great social success. For one thing it rained
the whole afternoon, and the military band engaged for the occasion
proved too noisy for indoor entertainment. But some of the guests
were greatly interested in the really magnificent collection of
furniture, tapestries, pictures and works of art which adorned the
mansion, and after tea Lady Polchester graciously conducted them all
over the house, pointing out herself the most notable pieces in the
collection and never failing to mention the price at which the late
Mr. Charles B. Tupper purchased the work of art in question.
And that is when the sensation occurred. Following their hostess,
the guests had already seen and duly admired two really magnificent
Van Dycks that hung in the hall, when she turned to them and said,
with a flourish of her plentifully be-gemmed hands:
"You must come into the library and see the picture for which Mr.
Tupper gave over half a million dollars. I never knew I had it, as
he never had it taken out of its case, and I never saw it until this
year when it came over with all my other things from our house in New
York. Lord Polchester had it unpacked and hung in the library. I
don't care much about it myself, and the late Mr. Tupper hadn't the
time to enjoy his purchase, because he died two days after the
picture arrived in New York, and, as I say, he never had it unpacked.
He bought it for use in a commercial undertaking which he had in mind
at one time, then the scheme fell through, and I am sure I never
thought any more about the old picture."
With that she led the way into the library, a nobly-proportioned room
lined with books in choice bindings, and with a beautiful Adam
chimneypiece, above which hung a picture.
Of course there were some people present who had never heard of the
stolen Ingres, but there must have been a few who, as they entered
the room, must literally have gasped with astonishment, for there it
certainly was. "La Fiancée" with her marvellously painted Eastern
draperies, her exquisitely drawn limbs and enigmatic smile, was
smiling down from the canvas, just as if she had every right to be in
the house of the ex-cinema star, and as if there had not been a
gigantic fuss about her throughout the whole art world of Europe.
We may take it that the person by far the most astonished at that
moment was Mr. Aaron Jacobs. But he was too thoroughly a gentleman
and too much a man of the world to betray his feelings then, and I
suppose that those who, like himself, had thought they recognised the
stolen masterpiece, did not like to say anything either until they
were more sure: English people in all grades of society being
proverbially averse to being what they call "mixed up" in any kind of
a fuss. Certain it is that nothing was said at the moment to disturb
Lady Polchester's complacent equanimity, and after a while the party
broke up and the guests departed.
Of course people thought that Mr. Aaron Jacobs should have informed
Lord Polchester of his intentions before he went to the police. But
Lord Polchester was such a nonentity in his own household, such a
frivolous fool, and, moreover, addicted to drink and violent fits of
temper, that those who knew him easily realised how a sensible
business man like Mr. Aaron Jacobs would avoid any personal
explanation with him.
Mr. Jacobs went straight to the police that self-same evening, and
the next day Lady Polchester had a visit from Detective Purley, one
of the ablest as he was one of the most tactful men on the staff.
But indeed he had need of all his tact in face of the infuriated
cinema star when that lady realised the object of his visit.
"How dared they come and ask her such impertinent questions?" she
stormed. "Did they imagine she had stolen a beastly picture which
she would as soon throw on the dust heap as look at again? She, who
could buy up all the pictures in any gallery and not feel the
pinch..." and so on and so on. The unfortunate Purley had a very
unpleasant quarter of an hour, but after a while he succeeded in
pacifying the irate lady and got her to listen calmly to what he had
to say.
He managed to make her understand that without casting the slightest
aspersion upon her honourability or that of the late Charles B.
Tupper, there was no getting away from the fact that the picture now
hanging in the library of Holt Manor was the property of the Duc de
Rochechouart from whose house in France it was stolen over two years
before--to be quite accurate it was stolen on July twenty-fifth, 1919.
"Then," retorted the lady, by no means convinced or mollified, "I can
prove you all to be liars, for the late Mr. Charles B. Tupper bought
the old thing long before that. He had been on the Continent in the
spring of 1919 and landed in New York again on May eighteenth. He
told me then that he had made some interesting purchases in Europe,
amongst them there was a picture for which he had paid half a million
dollars. I scolded him about it, as I thought he was throwing his
money away on such stuff, but he said that he wanted to make use of
the picture for some wonderful advertising scheme he had in his mind,
so I said no more about it. But that is the picture you say was
stolen from some duke or other in July, when I tell you that it had
been shipped for New York a month at least before that."
Perhaps at this point Detective Purley failed to conceal altogether a
slight look of incredulity, for Lady Polchester turned on him once
more like a fury.
"So you still think I stole the dirty old picture, do you?" she
cried, using further language that is quite unprintable, "and you
think that I am such a ninny and that I will give it up simply
because you are trying to bully me. But I won't, so there! I can
prove the truth of every word I say, and I don't care if I have to
spend another million dollars to put your old duke in prison for
talking such rot about me."
Once again Purley's tact had to come into play, and after a while he
succeeded in soothing the lady's outraged feelings. With infinite
patience he gradually got her to view the matter more calmly and
above all not to look upon him as an enemy, but as a friend whose one
desire was to throw light upon what certainly seemed an extraordinary
mystery.
"Very well, then," she said, after a while, "I'll tell you all I can.
I don't know when the picture was shipped from Europe but I do know
that a case addressed to Mr. Charles B. Tupper and marked 'valuable
picture with great care' was delivered at our house in New York on
July eighteenth. I can't mistake the date because Mr. Tupper was
already very ill when the case arrived and he died two days later,
that is on July twentieth, 1919. That you can ascertain easily
enough, can't you?" Lady Polchester added tartly. Then as Purley
offered no comment she went on more quietly:
"That's all right, then. Now let me tell you that the case
containing this picture was in my house two days before Mr. Tupper
died, and that I never had it undone until a couple of months ago,
here in this house. I had it shipped from New York, not along with
all my things, but by itself; and there is the lawyer over there, Mr.
George F. Topham, who can tell you all about the case. I was too
upset what with Mr. Tupper's illness and then his death, and the will
and the whole bag of tricks to trouble much about it myself, but I
told the lawyer that it contained a picture for which Mr. Tupper had
paid half a million dollars, and it was put down for probate for that
amount; the lawyer took charge of the old thing, and he can swear,
and lots of other people over in the States can swear that the case
was never undone. And the shipping company can swear that it never
was touched whilst it was in their charge. They delivered it here
and their men opened the case for us and helped us to place the
picture.
"And now," concluded Lady Polchester, not because she had nothing
more to say but presumably because she was out of breath, "now
perhaps you'll tell me how a picture which was over in New York on
the eighteenth of July can have been stolen from France on the
twenty-fifth; and if you can't tell me that, then I'll trouble you to
clear out of my house, for I've no use for Nosey Parkers about the
place."
The unfortunate Purley had certainly, by all accounts, rather a rough
time of it with the lady. Nor could he arrive at any satisfactory
arrangement with her. Needless to say that she absolutely refused to
give up the picture unless she were forced to do so by law, and even
then, she dared say, she could make it very unpleasant for some
people.
§3
The next event of any importance in this extraordinary case was the
action brought by the Duc and Duchesse de Rochechouart here in
England against Lady Polchester for illegal detention of their
property.
It very soon transpired that several witnesses had come over from the
States in order to corroborate tie lady's assertions with regard to
her rightful ownership of the picture, and the public was once more
on the tiptoe of expectation.
The case came on for hearing in March and lasted only two days. The
picture was in court and was identified first by the Duc and Duchesse
de Rochechouart and then by two or three experts as the genuine work
of Ingres: "La Fiancée" known throughout the entire art world as
having been purchased by the Duc's grandfather from the artist
himself in 1850, and having been in the family uninterruptedly ever
since. The Duc himself had last seen it in his own château at
half-past four on the afternoon of July twenty-fifth, 1919.
A well-known peculiarity about the masterpiece was that it had
originally been painted on a somewhat larger canvas, and that the
artist himself, at the request of the original purchaser, had it cut
smaller and re-strained on a smaller stretcher; this alteration was,
of course, distinctly visible on the picture. The frame was new; it
was admittedly purchased by Lady Polchester recently. When the
picture came into her possession it was unframed.
On that lady's behalf on the other hand there was a formidable array
of witnesses, foremost amongst these being Mr. Anthony Kleeberger,
who was the late Charles B. Tupper's secretary and manager. He was
the first to throw some light on the original transaction, whereby
"La Fiancée" first came into his employer's possession.
"Mr. Tupper," he explained, "was the inventor of a new process of
colour photography which he desired to test and then to advertise all
over the world by means of reproduction from some world-famous
masterpiece, and when during the spring of 1919 I accompanied him to
Europe, one of the objects he had in mind was the purchase of a
picture suitable for his purpose. It pretty soon was known all over
the art world of the Continent what we were after and that Mr. Tupper
was prepared to pay a big price for his choice. You would be
surprised if I were to tell you of some of the offers we had in
Vienna, in London, even in Rome.
"At last, when we were staying in Paris, Mr. Tupper came to me one
day and told me he had at last found the very picture he wanted. He
had gone to the studio of a picture restorer who had written to him
and offered him a genuine Ingres. He had seen the picture and liked
it, and had agreed to give the owner half a million dollars for it.
I thought this a terrific price and frankly I was a little doubtful
whether my employer had a sufficient knowledge of art to enter into a
transaction of this sort. I feared that he might be badly had, and
buying some spurious imitation rather than a masterpiece. But Mr.
Tupper was always a queer man in business. Once he had made up his
mind there was no arguing with him. 'I like the picture,' was all
that he ever said to me in response to some timid suggestion on my
part that he should seek expert advice, 'and I have agreed to buy it
for half a million dollars, simply because the fellow would not part
with it for less. I believe it to be genuine. But if it is not I
don't care. It will answer my purpose and there it is.'
"He then gave me instructions to see about the packing and forwarding
of the picture and this I did. I must say that I had terrible
misgivings about the whole affair. I certainly thought the picture
magnificent, but of course I am no judge. It had a worthless frame
around it which I discarded in order to facilitate the packing. The
picture restorer's studio was up a back street in the Montmartre
quarter. He and his wife saw to the packing themselves. I never saw
anybody else in the place. I arranged for the forwarding of the
case, for the insurance and so on, and I myself handed over to the
vendor, whose name was given to me as Matthieu Vignard, five hundred
thousand-dollar bills in the name and on account of my employer, Mr.
Charles B. Tupper. Of course, I presumed that the snuffy old man and
his blousey wife were acting for some personage who desired to remain
unknown, and as time went on and there was no talk in the art world
or in the newspapers then about any great masterpiece being stolen, I
soon forgot my misgivings, and a couple of months later I set out on
Mr. Tupper's business for Central America where I remained for close
on two years.
"Half the time during those years I was up country in Costa Rica,
Venezuela and so on where newspapers are scarce, and when the hue and
cry was after a picture stolen from the house of the Duc de
Rochechouart, I knew nothing about it. But this picture now in court
is certainly the one which Mr. Tupper bought in Paris at the end of
June, 1919, and which I myself saw packed and nailed down in its case
and forwarded to New York where it arrived two days before Mr.
Tupper's death."
That was the substance of Mr. Kleeberger's evidence, by far the most
important heard on the first day of the action. After that the
testimony of other witnesses went to confirm the whole story. There
was the well-known New York solicitor, Mr. George F. Topham, who took
charge of the picture after the death of his client, Mr. Tupper, and
the managing director of the Nebraska Safe Deposit Company where it
was stored until Lady Polchester sent for it. There were the
managers of the shipping companies who forwarded the picture from
Paris to New York in June-July, 1919, and from New York to Holt Manor
in the following year, and there were the removal men and servants
who saw the picture unpacked and taken into the library at the Manor.
It took two days to go through all that evidence, but it was never
either conflicting or doubtful. Yet the one supreme, mysterious
contradiction remained, namely, that the picture now in court, the
wonderful Ingres masterpiece, was bought by Mr. Tupper in Paris in
June, 1919, and then and there shipped over to him to New York, and
that, nevertheless, it was stated never to have left the Duc de
Rochechouart's possession from the day when his grandfather bought it
more than seventy years ago until that memorable twenty-fifth of
July, 1919, when it was stolen on the very day it was about to pass
into the possession of Mr. Aaron Jacobs. One felt one's head reeling
when one thought out this amazing puzzle, and the decision of the
learned judge was awaited with palpitating curiosity.
But after the second day of the action, just before it was adjourned,
counsel on both sides were able to announce that their respective
clients had come to an exceedingly satisfactory arrangement. All
aspersions as to the honourability of the late Charles B. Tupper or
of Lady Polchester would be publicly withdrawn and a notice to that
effect would appear in all the leading newspapers of London, Paris
and New York; and Lady Polchester would now remain in undisputed
possession of the Ingres masterpiece, having paid its rightful owner
the Duc de Rochechouart the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand
pounds for it.
So both parties we may take it were completely satisfied; at one time
it had looked as if the unfortunate duke would be done both out of
his picture and out of the money, and another as if Lady Polchester
would be so defrauded. But now all was well and the learned judge
declared himself pleased with the agreement. Not so the public who
were left to face a mystery which every one felt would never now be
cleared up.
I for one felt completely at sea, so much so indeed that my thoughts
instinctively flew to the curious creature in the blameless tea-shop
who I felt sure would have a theory of his own which would account
for what was puzzling us all.
And a day or two later I saw him, weaving a fantastic design of knots
in a piece of string. He saw that I wished to hear his explanation
of the mystery of the Ingres masterpiece, but he kept me on
tenter-hooks for some time, wearing out my patience with his sharp,
sarcastic comments.
"Do you admit," he asked me at one time, with his exasperating
chuckle, "that the Ingres masterpiece could have been in two places
at one and the same time?"
"No, of course," I replied, "I do not admit such nonsense."
"Very well, then," he resumed, "what is the logical conclusion?"
"That there were two pictures," I said coldly.
"Of course there were two pictures. And as the great Mr. Ingres did
not presumably paint his masterpiece in duplicate, we must take it
that one picture was the original and the other the copy."
Now it was my turn to grow sarcastic and I retorted drily:
"Having done that, we are no nearer a solution of the mystery than we
were before."
"Are we not?" he rejoined with a cackle like an old hen. "Now it
seems to me that when we have admitted that one of the pictures was a
copy of the other, and when we know that the picture which Mr.
Charles B. Tupper bought was the original, because that was the one
that was produced in court, we must come to the conclusion that the
one which was stolen from the château in France could only have been
the copy."
"Why, yes," I admitted, "but then again we have been told that the
grandfather of the present Duc de Rochechouart bought the picture
from the artist himself, and that it has been in the uninterrupted
possession of his family ever since."
"And I am willing to admit that the picture was in the uninterrupted
possession of the Duc de Rochechouart until the present holder of the
title or some one who had access to it in the same way as himself
sold it to Mr. Charles B. Tupper in June, 1919."
"But you don't mean----"
"Surely," the funny creature went on with his dry cackle, "it was not
such a very difficult little bit of dishonesty to perpetrate, seeing
that Mme. la Duchesse was such an accomplished artist. Can you not
imagine the lady being like many of us, very short of money, and then
hearing of Mr. Charles B. Tupper, the American business man who was
searching Europe through for a world-famous masterpiece; can you not
see her during one of her husband's pleasure trips to Paris or
elsewhere setting to work to make an exact replica of 'La Fiancée'?
We know that it always hung in her studio until the day when it was
moved to the dining-hall. Think how easy it was for her to
substitute her own copy for the original. The only difficulty would
be the conveying of the picture to Paris, but an artist knows how to
take a canvas off its stretcher, to roll it up and re-strain it.