“Oh,” Dortmunder said.
Did that twitching in Chauncey’s cheek indicate anger? “Perhaps the Scottish painting is mine,” he said, “and the pedigree is faked; you’ll know that better than I. On the other hand, perhaps Veenbes did that subject twice, and both are originals. It’s been known to happen before, and it’s certainly the defense I’ll try in court. But in either case our situation is the same. You have taken my money, you have taken my painting, and you have laid me open to a lawsuit from my insurance company.” Chauncey took a deep breath, got himself under control, and went on. “That’s my story,” he said. “Now tell me what this copy is for, so Leo can shoot you and I can go home.”
Dortmunder frowned, and in the lengthening silence he seemed to hear the faint skin of bagpipes. “Scotland,” he said, thoughtfully, while fighting men in kilts reeled before his eyes.
“Never mind Scotland.” Chauncey jabbed a finger once more at Porculey’s fake. “That’s what I want to know about.”
Dortmunder sighed. “Sit down, Chauncey,” he said. “As much as it goes against my principles, I think I’m gonna have to tell you the truth.”
Chapter 3
“And that’s the truth,” Dortmunder finished.
“By God, it sounds it.” Chauncey sat back on the sofa, shaking his head. He was the only one seated; Zane stood over near the door, silent as the grave, while Dortmunder and Kelp and May stood in a row facing Chauncey.
Dortmunder had told the whole story himself, but now Kelp chimed in, with a nervous glance toward Zane, saying, “The thing is, Mr. Chauncey, it wasn’t Dortmunder’s fault. He was stuck in that elevator shaft when it got lost. If he’d been along, it never would have happened. You wanna know whose fault it is, it’s whoever took that elevator ride.”
Chauncey said to Dortmunder, “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
Dortmunder looked at him, saying nothing.
Chauncey nodded. “You’re right.” Twisting around, looking at the copy on the wall once more, he said, “It is good, I have to admit it. Your friend is very very good.”
“Maybe you’d like to see some of his other stuff,” Dortmunder said. “I could introduce you to the guy. His name’s Porculey.”
Chauncey gave Dortmunder a sharp look, and shook his head. Getting to his feet, he said, “I’m sorry, Dortmunder. I know you’re trying for the human touch, and it may be you’re just the victim of circumstance, but the fact is, I’ve been very badly dealt with. I’d never be able to look myself in the mirror again if I did nothing about it.” He looked uncomfortable but determined. “You’ve been effective to this extent,” he went on. “I no longer want to be present when it happens.” Turning to Zane, he said, “Wait a minute or two after I leave.” And he started for the door, stepping over the array of suitcases and wicker baskets.
“Uh,” Dortmunder said. “Uh, wait a minute.”
Chauncey paused, but only just; looking back over his shoulder, his attention clearly already out of the room. Even his voice seemed to come from far away: “Yes?”
“I might, uh–” Dortmunder spread his hands, shrugging. “I might have an idea,” he said.
THE FINAL CHORUS
Chapter 1
Ian Macdough (pronounced Macduff: no relation to Macbeth’s friend) was a happy man. He had been unknown, and he would be famous. He had been poor, and he would be rich. He had been an unwilling country squire confined by circumstance to the family manse near Inverness, and he would be a London toff. A bluff, big-boned, red-haired, hearty, freckled gent of forty-odd, Ian Macdough was a happy man, and he wanted the world to know it. “Bring us another bottle of Teacher’s,” he told his floor valet at the Savoy, though it was barely lunch time, “and a little glass for yourself.”
“Thank you, Mr. Macdoo,” said the floor valet, who was a Portugee or Eyetie or some other sort of swarthy unfortunate, “but I shouldn’t drink on the job. I’ll bring the bottle straight away.”
“Macduff,” said Macdough, a bit shortly. He didn’t like people who refused to drink with him, nor did he like them to get his name wrong. Most of the people he’d met so far in London would drink with him right enough, but few and far between were those who’d get his name right first crack out of the box. Macdoo indeed. Up north in the Grampians everybody knew his name.
“Mick-duff,” agreed the Mediterranean, and bowed himself out of the suite.
Well, what could you expect from a foreigner? Nothing could spoil Macdough’s mood for long these days, so while be waited for the bottle to arrive he stood smiling out of his sitting-room windows at the Thames, gleaming and glistening beneath midsummer sunshine.
London. All roads elsewhere might lead to Rome, but all roads in the British Isles lead to London. (Which is one of the reasons the traffic is so snarled.) A Scotsman or a Welshman or an Ulsterman might sit at home and think his dour dark thoughts about England, that often bullying big kid of the United Kingdom, but when his thoughts turned to a city, a real city, it wasn’t of Edinburgh or Cardiff or Belfast he thought, but of London. Happy is he who can stand at the window of a suite in a major hotel in one of the world’s queen cities, and smile out at the summer sun.
Bring bring, went the phone. Bring bring. London calling. The smile still lighting his ruddy face, Macdough turned from the view and replied: “Are you there?”
An extremely English male voice, one of those voices in which the vocal cords seem determined to strangle each word before it can struggle out to freedom, said, “Mister Macdow?”
“Macduff,” said Macdough. The combination of the mis-pronounced name and a public-school accent was enough to curdle his smile completely.
“I’m so sorry,” garbled the voice. “Leamery here, from Parkeby-South.”
Which put Macdough’s smile right back on his face, redoubled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “They did tell me you’d call.”
“Praps you could drop over this afternoon? Would four be convenient?”
“Certainly.”
“Fine, then. Just ask for me at the cashier’s desk.”
“At the cashier’s desk? Certainly. At four o’clock.”
“Till then.”
As Macdough cradled the receiver, his mind turned idly to the amazing series of events that had led him to this happy moment. The brawl in New York last winter, during the Queen’s Own Caledonian Orchestra’s performance (which he had attended through the generosity of old fellow-officers from the Brigade), his own lucky escape from the swarming police, and his utter astonishment when, in his hotel room next morning, he had awakened (a bit hung over) to find himself in possession of an extremely valuable painting stolen – according to the newspaper brought by room service with his breakfast – just the evening before. The terror he’d felt while smuggling the thing home (concealed inside a great mawkish framed landscape purchased for twenty-five dollars specifically for that purpose, the valuable Old Master undetected behind the dreadful New Monstrosity) was only a dim memory now, as was the utter bewilderment he had felt when faced with the question of how to turn his stroke of luck into actual cash. If Aunt Fiona hadn’t chosen that moment to pass away (not prematurely; she was eighty-seven, as mad as an African general and as incontinent as Atlantis), Macdough would still be at a loss. Blessed Aunt Fiona, nothing became her life like the leaving of it.
The Macdough clan, which included Ian and his Aunt Fiona among its scores and multitudes, was one of the oldest and least successful families in all of Scottish history. Over the centuries, whenever the Scots fought the English they seemed to do so on Macdough land, and the Macdoughs got the worst of it. If Scot fought Scot, the Macdoughs invariably lined up on the wrong side. The Campbells and MacGregors might ebb and flow, but the Macdoughs immemorially ebbed.
So it was with low expectations that Macdough, as Aunt Fiona’s sole heir, had first learned of her demise. The old lady had never owned anything in her life except rubbish bequeathed her by prior indigent Macdoughs. Several sheets of the inventory attached to the will were actually in scrabbly spidery eighteenth-century handwriting, describing pikestaffs and saddles and pewter plates which, while theoretically passing from hand to hand down the generations, had actually remained untouched and unwanted in various barns and basements and in the still-enclosed portion of the uninhabitable Castle Macdough high in the grim Monadhliath Mountains. However, the rituals had to be observed, and so Macdough had sat in a cluttered musty solicitor’s office in Edinburgh and listened to the reading of the will, which included an endless droning recital of the inventory – what rubbish was here being gallantly preserved! – and was very nearly asleep when he suddenly sat bolt upright and stared at the solicitor, who, startled, stared right back. “What?” said Macdough.