‘The Beecham Stud, Louisville, Kentucky.’
When the details were complete the American took his paddle and wandered into the saleroom. Peregrine Slade was about to mount the podium. As he reached the bottom step there was a deferential tug at his elbow. He looked down. Her bright eyes were alight.
‘Martin Getty. Shortish, grey hair, goatee, shabby coat, dressed down.’ She glanced around. ‘Third row from back, on the centre aisle, sir.’
Slade beamed his pleasure and continued his climb to his own Olympus. The auction began. The Klaes Molenaer at Lot 18 went for a tidy sum and the clerk below him noted all the details. The porters brought the masterpieces, major and minor, to the easel beside and below the podium one after the other. The American failed to bid.
Two Thomas Heeremans went under the hammer and a fiercely contested Cornelis de Heem fetched double the estimate, but still the American failed to bid. Slade knew at least two-thirds of those present and he had spotted the young dealer from Amsterdam, Jan de Hooft. But what was the mega-rich American there for? Dressing down in a shabby coat, indeed. Did he think he could fool the ace he faced, the supreme Peregrine Slade? The Adriaen Coorte was Lot 102. It came up just after eleven fifteen.
At the outset there were seven bidders. Five had gone by £100,000. Then the Dutchman raised his hand. Slade glowed. He knew exactly whom de Hooft represented. Those hundreds of millions made from foaming lager beer. At £120,000 one of the bidders dropped out. The remaining one, a London agent, contested with the impassive Dutchman. But de Hooft saw him off. He had the bigger cheque book and he knew it.
‘At one hundred and fifty thousand, any advance on one hundred and fifty thousand?’
The American raised his head and his paddle. Slade stared. He wanted the Coorte for his Kentucky collection. Oh joy. Oh unbridled lust. A Getty versus Van Den Bosch. He turned to the Dutchman.
‘Against you, sir. I have one hundred and sixty thousand on the aisle.’
De Hooft did not blink. His body language was almost contemptuous. He glanced at the figure on the aisle and nodded. Inside himself Slade was in a transport of delight.
‘My little Dutch Johnny,’ he thought, ‘you haven’t the faintest idea who you are taking on.’
‘One hundred and seventy thousand, sir, any . . .’
The American flicked his paddle and nodded. The bidding went up and up. De Hooft’s demeanour lost its at-ease attitude. He frowned and tensed. He knew his patron had said ‘Acquire it’ but surely there were limits. At half a million he drew a small mobile from his pocket, jabbed twelve numbers into it and spoke in low, earnest Dutch. Slade waited patiently. No need to intrude into private grief. De Hooft nodded.
By £800,000 the hall was like a church. Slade was going up in modules of £20,000. De Hooft, a pale man when he entered the hall, was now paper-white. Occasionally he muttered into his mobile and went on bidding. At £1,000,000 sanity in Amsterdam finally prevailed. The American raised his head and nodded slowly. The Dutchman shook his.
‘Sold for one point one million pounds, paddle number twenty-eight,’ said Slade. There was a collective exhalation of breath. De Hooft switched off his mobile, glared at the Kentuckian and swept from the hall.
‘Lot one hundred and three,’ said Slade with an imperturbability he did not feel. ‘Landscape by Anthonie Palamedes.’
The American, cynosure of all eyes, rose and walked out. A bright young beauty accompanied him.
‘Well done, sir, you got it,’ she burbled.
‘Been quite a morning,’ drawled the Kentuckian. ‘Could you tell me where Ah would find the men’s washroom?’
‘Oh, the loo. Yes, straight down and second door on the right.’
She watched him enter, still carrying the tote bag he had had all morning, and maintained her position. When he came out she would accompany him to the accounts department for the boring details.
Inside the washroom Trumpington Gore took the calfskin attaché case from the tote bag, and extracted the black Oxford shoes with the Cuban heels. In five minutes the goatee beard and grey wig were gone. Ditto the tan slacks and shabby coat. All went into the tote bag which was dropped out of the window into the courtyard below. Benny caught it and was away.
Two minutes later the very pukka London businessman emerged. He had slicked-back thin black hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He was two inches taller, in a beautifully cut, but rented, pinstripe suit, Thomas Pink shirt and Brigade of Guards tie. He turned and walked straight past the waiting girl.
‘Damned good auction, what?’ He just could not resist it. ‘See that American fella got his piece.’
He nodded towards the door behind him and strode on. The girl kept staring at the lavatory door.
It took a week before the fertilizer really hit the fan but when it did it went all over the place.
Repeated enquiries revealed that though the Getty dynasty contained many family members it did not contain a Martin and none of them had a Kentucky stud. When word got around, Darcy in general and Peregrine Slade in particular became a laughing stock.
The hapless vice-chairman tried to persuade the underbidder, Jan de Hooft representing Old Man Van Den Bosch, to settle at a million. Not a chance.
‘I would have had it for a hundred and fifty thousand but for your impostor,’ the Dutch dealer told him down the phone. ‘So let’s settle for that.’
‘I’ll approach the vendor,’ said Slade.