The appointment with Blair and Trevor did not start out well. First, I had to push my way past a very large Dober-man in Trevor’s doorway: by large I mean we were almost eyeball to eyeball, a somewhat intimidating way to start. The dog’s owner, who was about as wide as he was high and would have looked more at home keeping the riffraff at bay at the door of the aforementioned Goth bar than in an antique shop, was admiring a not particularly appealing bronze lamppost, and obviously eavesdropping at the same time.
Blair was impatiently tapping his fingers on Trevor’s front counter and looked as if he were about to tear my face off for my tardiness. Trevor, on the other hand, resembled the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary, and I just knew he was going to lord his find, whatever it was, over me.
“You’re late, babe,” Baldwin said, through clenched teeth, as a rather scruffy looking individual in a rumpled beige suit with bicycle clips holding his pant legs edged past the Doberman and into the shop. The new visitor didn’t look as if he belonged there any more than the bouncer did. Given the time I’d just spent with the police on the subject of robberies, I viewed him with some suspicion.
“This is going to blow you away, hen,” Trevor said, kissing me on both cheeks. Trevor was from Scotland and looked and sounded a little like a young Sean Connery, which is probably why I tolerated him. “Hen” is, I believe, Glasgow slang for any female. All this hen and babe stuff was making me nauseous. “This way,” he said, indicating the back room. The man with the bicycle clips, trying to look nonchalant, tripped over a pair of flatirons and almost fell down.
“Are we ready to be impressed?” Trevor asked, hand on a sheet that covered a fairly substantial object of some kind, maybe four feet high and three wide. Baldwin swallowed hard and nodded.
“Lara?” Trevor said.
All this drama was getting on my nerves. “Get on with it, Trevor,” I said. “Although maybe you want to close the door?” I could see both Mr. Doberman and Mr. Bicycle Clips edging toward the office. When Trevor went to the doorway, Bicycle Clips clomped up the stairs to the shop’s second floor.
“No one to guard the merchandise, I’m afraid. So… lights,” he said, flicking a switch that turned a little spotlight on the object. “Gloves,” he added handing both Blair and me a pair.
“Ta dah!” Trevor exclaimed, as he swept the covering away.
After all this, I didn’t expect to be impressed, but this piece just blew me away. Standing under the spotlight was a single piece of furniture, a writing desk, or rather a writing cabinet. It was exquisite, ebonized wood, mahogany, and when you opened the doors, which Trevor did with a flourish, there was a lovely leaded glass panel, and some perfect inlaid woodwork. There were slots, pigeonholes for papers, and drawers that opened beautifully. Beside me, Baldwin made little squeaking sounds.
“It can’t be, can it?” I said, turning to Trevor.
“I wasn’t sure when I found it,” he replied. “I took a chance, but I’m convinced it is.”
“Babe?” Baldwin managed to say.
“It looks to be the right age,” I said carefully. “The style is definitely Glasgow School. I’d have to do some research.”
“I’ve done it already,” Trevor said, handing me a file. “Be my guest.” Baldwin impatiently leaned over my shoulder as I opened it.
There was only one sheet of paper in the file. It was a drawing of the desk in question, complete with exact specifications. And it was initialed: CRM/MMM.
“Good lord,” Baldwin gasped and sank into a chair.
“Charles Rennie Mackintosh,” Trevor said. “Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.”
“Are you all right, Blair?” I said. “You aren’t going into shock or anything, are you?”
“I’ll make tea,” Trevor said. “And perk it up a bit with this.” This was a bottle of rather fine single malt scotch. Trevor was feeling pretty cocky.
“I know this looks convincing,” I said. “But it isn’t definitive.”
“There’s more,” Trevor said, bringing a book down from a shelf above his desk and opening it. “Here’s something similar. Take your time.”
“How much?” Baldwin said.
“Blair!” I cautioned. The book in question was a very good text on Art Nouveau, an international style that emerged about 1890 and was highly popular until it burned itself out in about 1904, but which had names associated with it—like Tiffany and Lalique—that remain famous today. Several brilliant individuals were part of this movement, of which Glasgow’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one. Mackintosh, while not terribly favored in Britain at the time, was a huge influence on European designers like Josef Hoffman and the Weiner Werkstatte. His work, like the Art Nouveau movement itself, was something of a flash in the pan, but after some decades of neglect is now much sought-after. Very occasionally a piece comes on the market. Trevor had marked a page in the book with a yellow sticky and there was a photograph of a writing cabinet similar, but not absolutely identical to the one in front of me, in the book.
“I think Mackintosh made two to this design,” Trevor said. “That is not, after all, unprecedented. He sometimes made a second piece for himself when he’d been commissioned to design something for a client.”
“Where did you find it?” I said, nodding toward the cabinet.
“I was on my regular trip in Scotland,” Trevor said. “One of my pickers told me that an old lady was holding a contents sale on the weekend and might have some interesting stuff. I went over early, and had a look, and charmed her into selling the piece to me, a couple of pieces, actually. The other one didn’t pan out. This one did. Lucky for me. If it hadn’t, I’d have been royally screwed. I paid a lot for it, way too much if my hunch wasn’t right. But that’s the business we’re in, eh, hen?”
“I suppose. Where’d you find the drawing?”
“In the right-hand drawer! Can you believe it? It was under about a hundred years’ worth of liner paper. I didn’t find it until later.”
“It could still be a copy,” I said. Trevor’s exuberance was trying, or maybe I was just jealous.
“It could, but it isn’t,” Trevor said. “I’m convinced of it. Charles designed and built the furniture. His wife Margaret did the stained glass. It has her stamp all over it. You’ll notice it’s in remarkable condition, just a bit of wear on one of the drawers and the legs.”
“How much?” Baldwin repeated.
“One very similar sold at auction in the late nineteen-nineties for something in the neighborhood of one-point-five million U.S.,” Trevor said. “But I’m prepared to negotiate.” As he said one-point-five million, there was a crash upstairs and some scuffling. Mr. Bicycle Clips had apparently tripped over something else. I would have been up the stairs in a flash. Trevor ignored it.
“Babe?” Baldwin said.
“I don’t know, Blair,” I said. “All I can say at this moment is that I can’t find anything wrong with it.”
“I’m sure we can work something out,” Trevor said, winking at me. At that very moment the phone rang. “Sorry,” Trevor said. “I should take this. You two can chat. Dez!” he said into the phone. “You got my message?” Blair paled. There may be a lot of Dez’s in the world, but only one who would be calling Trevor right at this minute. Desmond Crane was also a lawyer, and Crane and Baldwin often found themselves on the opposite sides of various lawsuits. Word was the antipathy they displayed toward each other in court was absolutely genuine: they disliked one another intensely. It did strike me as a little overly convenient that Dez had chosen this very moment to call, but perhaps Trevor had suggested the time, all part of the plan to entice Blair to buy on the spot.