‘This is most impressive, Moore,’ he said. ‘I am very much obliged to you. Tell me, is there any evidence that they broke into this room here, to effect the theft?’
‘Not in here,’ said Moore, ‘but let me show you something next door.’ He led them out through the baronial hall into a long room looking out towards the fountain, adorned with three pairs of grey marble columns. ‘This used to be the front door,’ he said, nodding at the great window in front of him, ‘and this used to be the entrance hall. My grandfather changed all this lot round. Now, if you look carefully at the sash on the window next to the one that was the front door, you can see dirty smudge marks on it. The parlour maids noticed them the morning after the robbery and I told them to leave them where they are. It’s my belief that they took the pictures out this way to some kind of conveyance round the corner. It would have been easy to do – the grass would have muffled the noise.’
‘Do you know how they got in?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.
‘There’s a broken window in the kitchen down below,’ Moore said. ‘I think they came and went that way. There is another room where they could have passed the pictures out of the house, mind you, but there are no telltale smudges in there. Come, I’ll show you where the other paintings were.’
He took them into a billiard room opposite the dining room, a full-size table with a couple of balls lying on the green baize, waiting for the next match. ‘This used to be the library,’ he said sadly, ‘but my grandfather threw all the books out one day. He said they were annoying him so they all had to go. He organized a great bonfire outside on the same day and they all went up in smoke.’ Life, Powerscourt thought, was never dull in Moore Castle.
‘Our three Old Masters,’ Moore pointed again to further gaps on the walls, ‘the Titian and the two Gainsboroughs, were here. They used to be in what was the entrance hall, but my father moved them in here.’
‘I believe you said when you arrived at Butler’s Court that the Gainsboroughs might not be authentic,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did your great uncle establish that, before he went mad, I mean?’
‘He did and he wasn’t at the time, mad, if you follow me. He was said to have been in good health when he said the Gainsboroughs weren’t painted by the hand of Gainsborough, if you see what I mean. One artist’s hand looks very much like another, if you ask me.’
‘And the Titian?’ Powerscourt carried on. ‘Was that real?’
‘Nobody ever said it wasn’t,’ said Moore defiantly. ‘Not to me at any rate.’
He led them back out into the galleried hall with its great timbered roof. ‘This,’ he waved expansively at the enormous space, ‘used to be the main staircase. Then my grandfather threw that out.’
‘Before or after he burnt the books?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.
‘After,’ Moore laughed, ‘he must have got into the swing of it by then. This other double staircase’ – an enormous Victorian affair, made of oak, beckoned – ‘used to be where the wall on the side of the old stairs was. They extended the house backwards, if you follow me, to put the new staircase in.’
William Moore took his visitors round the rest of the house, the dark wood panelling, the strange over-decorated Victorian chapel where Powerscourt felt God would not stay for long if ever he called at all, and out into the gardens by the fountain. Moore talked continuously, giving the names of his ancestors and the dates of construction. High up on the outside of the third floor Powerscourt saw a strange contraption like a bosun’s chair, hanging from the roof by a series of ropes and pulleys. Standing rather precariously inside was a small young man with torn trousers who waved happily at them and shouted Good Morning.
‘What on earth is that?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald, pointing upwards.
‘That’s John,’ said Moore. ‘Normally he works in the stables but today he cleans the windows. His elder brother Seamus used to do it but he kept falling off the ladders. They’re not very good with ladders for some reason, Roscommon people. No head for heights at all. I rigged the thing up myself – naval fellow told me how to do it. But come, I think it’s time for some coffee, or something stronger if you would prefer.’
Powerscourt and Fitzgerald assured their host that coffee would be fine. It came in the long room with the pillars that used to be the entrance hall.
‘Now then, Moore,’ Powerscourt began, ‘all these pictures gone, smudges on your window, your wife upset, I don’t suppose you have any idea at all who is responsible?’
‘No idea at all.’
‘Tell me, pray,’ said Powerscourt, resolved to try a different tactic with Moore than he had employed on the other two victims, ‘what do you say in reply to the letter they sent you?’
Moore turned red and began rubbing one side of his face as if that would make his discomfort go away. ‘Letter?’ he said in a querulous tone. ‘I had no letter.’
‘I think you did, Moore, I’m virtually certain of it.’
‘No, I did not.’
‘Consider this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Somebody spent a lot of time planning these robberies. Maybe they are common or garden thieves but I doubt it. There is a great deal of stuff lying about these houses, silver and so on, which would be worth a lot more than your ancestors. It’s possible they were just burglars but I don’t believe it. I think they want something. I have no idea what the something is, but I think you do. Because they told you. In a letter.’
‘How many times,’ said Moore, still red in the face and sweating slightly now, ‘do I have to tell you, Powerscourt, there was no letter.’
‘Let me make a stab,’ said Powerscourt, not giving up, ‘at telling you what the last sentence said. This or something like it. If you do not comply – maybe they would have said agree rather than comply – with our requests, your wife is next. That also applies if you tell a single human soul about this letter.’
‘How on earth -’ Moore began and then stopped suddenly. ‘There was no letter,’ he hurried on as if trying to retract what he had just said, ‘no letter.’ He sat back in his chair. Johnny Fitzgerald took up the attack. He and Powerscourt had carried out interviews like this many times in their lives. They knew the moves so well they hardly needed to communicate with each other, like tennis partners who have been playing doubles together for years.
‘How about this then?’ said Johnny, in the manner of a man trying on another coat in a gentleman’s outfitters. ‘You took the paintings yourself. You crept down in the middle of the night and removed them to some hiding place or other. God knows, you could hide the Crown Jewels in a place this size and nobody would find them for years, however hard they tried. You’re broke, or you’re nearly bankrupt like so many of your fellow landlords, in hock to the banks and the insurance companies and those seedy moneylenders in Dublin. The art market’s booming, even for Irish ancestors I shouldn’t wonder. You were going to sell the pictures when all the fuss has died down and pay off some of your debts. There must have been enough debt after all this building work to float a steamer on the Shannon. Admit it, man, you did the whole thing yourself!’
‘I did not,’ said Moore. ‘There are all sorts of things I would sell before I sold those paintings. They’re part of our history, part of our family heritage going back to Cromwell’s time, let me tell you. It’d be like selling members of my own family.’
Powerscourt was suddenly visited by the bizarre image of Michael Henshaw Moore or Casterbridge Moore from Thomas Hardy’s novel, selling off his wife in the marketplace in Sligo town.