‘Tell me something,’ said Benny. ‘On the form you filled out, it said as profession “actor”. Is that true? Are you an actor?’
‘Thirty-five years in the profession, young man. Appearances in almost a hundred films.’
He forbore to mention that most of these appearances had lasted a few seconds.
‘I mean, can you pass as someone else and get away with it?’
Trumpington Gore drew himself up in his chair with all the dignity a tatty old bathrobe would allow.
‘I, sir, can pass for anything, in any company, and get away with the impersonation. It is what I do. Actually, it is all that I do.’
‘You see,’ said Benny, ‘I have an idea.’
He spoke for twenty minutes. When he had done the impoverished actor pondered his decision.
‘Revenge,’ he murmured. ‘A dish best eaten cold. Yes, the trail has gone cold. Slade will not be expecting us. I think, young Benny, if I may, that you have just gained a partner.’
He held out his hand. Benny took it. Suzie placed her own over theirs.
‘One for all, and all for one.’
‘Aye, I like it,’ said Benny.
‘D’Artagnan,’ said Trumpy.
Benny shook his head. ‘I were never much good at the French Impressionists.’
The rest of April was very busy. They pooled their funds and completed the research. Benny needed to invade the private correspondence file of Peregrine Slade, having access to all his private e-mails.
Suzie elected to go into the Darcy system via Slade’s private secretary, Miss Priscilla Bates. Her e-identity was not long in coming. She was P-Bates as far as the database was concerned. The problem was her password.
MAY
Trumpington Gore followed Miss Bates like a shadow, in such a variety of disguises that she suspected not a thing. Having secured her private address in the borough of Cheam, it was Benny who by night raided her garbage bin and took away a binliner full of rubbish. It yielded little.
Miss Bates lived a life of blameless rectitude. She was a spinster and lived alone. Her small flat was as neat as a pin. She commuted to work on the train and underground to Knightsbridge and walked the last 500 yards. She took the Guardian newspaper – they tried ‘Guardian’ as a password, but it did not work – and she holidayed with a sister and brother-in-law at Frinton.
They discovered this from an old letter in the trash, but ‘Frinton’ did not work either. They also found six empty tins of Whiskas.
‘She has a cat,’ said Suzie. ‘What’s its name?’
Trumpy sighed. It meant another trip to Cheam. He appeared on the Saturday, knowing she would be in, and masqueraded as a salesman of pet paraphernalia. To his joy she was interested in the scratching post for bored cats, who otherwise shredded the loose covers.
He stood in the doorway, false buck teeth and heavy glasses, and a piebald tom emerged from the sitting room behind her to stare contemptuously at him. He enthused over the beauty of the animal, calling it ‘puss’.
‘Come here, Alamein, come to Mummy,’ she called.
Alamein: a battle in North Africa in 1942 where her father had died when she was a baby of one. In Ladbroke Grove Suzie logged on again and punched it up. For the Darcy database Miss Priscilla Bates, private and confidential secretary to Peregrine Slade, was P-Bates ALAMEIN. And she had right of access to all her employer’s private e-mails. Pretending to be her, Suzie downloaded a hundred personal letters.
It was a week before Benny made his selection.
‘He has a mate on the Arts pages of the Observer. There are three letters here from the same man, Charlie Dawson. Occasionally Dawson hears of things going on at Christie’s or Sotheby’s and tips Slade off. He’ll do.’
Using her cyber-skills, Suzie created a letter from Charlie Dawson to Peregrine Slade for later use. Benny was meanwhile studying the catalogue for the next major Darcy sale. Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, scheduled for 20 May. After a while he tapped the illustration of one small oil on paper, laid on canvas.
‘That one,’ he said. Suzie and Trumpy peered at it. A still life showing a bowl of raspberries: a blue and white Delft bowl and beside it several seashells. An odd composition. The bowl stood on the edge of an old and chipped table.
‘Who the hell is Coorte?’ asked Trumpington Gore. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’