I dropped off Wren at her car in Savile Row and drove south of the river to where two hundred-ton cannons sat in a little green garden. I parked round the back of the museum and rang the buzzer at the service entrance. An elderly security guard who looked as though he had been roused from his slumbers answered the door. Beyond him I could see Carol negotiating her wheelchair down the tight corridor.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘He’s with me.’

She looked as if she had been expecting me.

Chapter 22

22

WE WENT BACK to Nereus Fine Art the next evening and this time it was open. It did not look so different from when it was closed. But a woman with short fair hair stood stock still in the gallery, staring out at the empty Hampstead street. She had not sold either of the two small landscapes.

‘I don’t mind you coming in,’ I told Wren as I parked behind Jack Straw’s Castle.

‘Big of you,’ she said.

‘But let me ask the questions.’

‘And what do I do?’ she said.

‘You tell me if I’m missing something.’

‘Mr Duncan doesn’t produce much work,’ the gallery woman said. She was a slight blonde in black-rimmed glasses, attractive in a brittle sort of way, and with just as much charm as was necessary she was getting rid of me. ‘He’s a bit of a recluse, I’m afraid. He doesn’t exhibit, he doesn’t talk to the press. He doesn’t need to. All his work is sold to private collectors. Very little of it comes on the market. But if you would like to leave me your card, I’ll put your details on file.’

‘Because I love his work,’ I said, not for the first time.

And it was true. I had never seen anyone paint like that. It was a city that I recognised, if only from dreams.

But she didn’t care what I loved.

‘Please leave your details,’ she said, with the warmth turned down a notch.

Wren was looking at the canvases on the walls. There was a lot of lush green countryside. I guessed there was a big market for that stuff.

‘How does he survive?’ Wren said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How does he make a living? If he doesn’t paint much, and if he doesn’t sell much, and if he doesn’t make much of an effort, how does he pay the rent?’

‘Pay the rent?’

The gallery woman stared at Wren. Wren stared right back.

‘I understand there’s some family money,’ the woman said.

‘Ah.’

‘We have some other interesting contemporary work,’ she said to me, handing me her card.

‘Do you own the gallery?’ Wren said.

‘Nereus is owned by my mother.’

Wren thought about it.

‘So if your father is an earl, then what does that make your mother? A lady, right?’