Читать книгу Crime and Mr. Campion - Margery Allingham - Страница 23

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“My dear, I must be getting old.”

Belle patted her muslin headdress into position as she spoke. She was standing in front of the small oval mirror with its frame of white Dresden flowers which hung over the gilt console table between the two windows. She remained surveying herself, while the roar of Max’s acceleration died away in the street below.

In actual fact she looked considerably younger than of late. The clash had brought out some of her old fire, and there was a trace of the “Belle Darling” of the Louvre in her quick smile as she turned to nod at Campion, who had just entered.

After the greeting she returned to the mirror.

“I like these bonnets,” she remarked. “They make me look so clean, don’t you think? Old women often look so mothy, put away for the summer without being brushed. That little whippersnapper, my dear! He talked to me as if I were a case of senile decay living on the parish.”

Mr. Campion looked apprehensive.

“You behaved like a lady, no doubt?” he ventured.

“Not in the least,” said Belle with satisfaction. “I washed my hands of him, absolutely, irrevocably. Johnnie and I never put up with people when we really disliked them, and I’m not going back on the habit of a lifetime. I have taken the rest of the Lafcadio business out of Master Fustian’s hands. I’ve told him he takes those pictures abroad over my dead body.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Campion.

Belle laughed, but Linda, who had not spoken since Max left, regarded the young man thoughtfully. The old lady reseated herself.

“Now I want a cup of tea,” she said. “Touch the bell, Linda, child.”

Five minutes later, as they sat round sipping out of the famous crackleware cups mentioned in so many books of reminiscence, the sensation of calamity which had returned to Mr. Campion as he came up the staircase burst into his fullest mind.

Max in the drawing room, Max at a reception, or in the gallery, might be a ridiculous, overexaggerated poseur; but there was another Max, a Max as yet unseen, but who, when reconstructed from the facts gathered about him, was certainly no person for a hot-headed old lady to offend.

Altogether it was not a very comfortable meal. Belle was stimulated and frankly pleased with herself. Linda remained unaccountably silent. Donna Beatrice sulked in her room, refusing to appear, and Lisa hovered round the tea tray, a gloomy, nerve-racked ghost.

Yet the presence of John Lafcadio was still apparent.

If he had been forgotten in the storm which had burst over his house, as soon as it had subsided he had returned to his former importance.

For the first time in his life Mr. Campion was faintly irritated by that flamboyant, swashbuckling shade. Its presence conveyed an air of confidence and protection which was naturally not genuine. In spiritual dangers and mental pitfalls John Lafcadio’s memory might be a tower of strength to his household, but in physical attack it was hardly so effective.

The appearance of Matt D’Urfey was a welcome diversion. He put his head round the door, a picture of mild reproach.

“I’ve been hiding in your studio,” he said to Linda. “I didn’t know you were all feeding. Is the conference over?”

“My dear,” said Belle, fussing shamelessly, “come and sit down at once. Linda dear, you haven’t looked after him.”

Looking at the newcomer, Mr. Campion felt again a liking for this naïve, friendly spirit who regarded the world as an odd sort of party upon which he had dropped in by mistake.

He sat down by Linda and received the tea which Lisa handed him as his right, like a child or a puppy which has been overlooked and discovered just in time.

Even with his advent Linda did not become talkative. She sat looking into the fire, her elbow resting on her knee and her shabby painter’s hand playing idly with her coarse, wild curls.

Suddenly she rose to her feet.

“When you’ve finished eating, Matt,” she said, “come back to my studio. I want to talk to you.”

She took a cigarette from the box on the table, lit it, and went off to her room with a nod and a smile at Belle.

D’Urfey stayed until he had finished his repast, neither hurrying nor being deliberately slow, but when he had finished he returned his cup and plate politely to Lisa, smiled engagingly at Mrs. Lafcadio, and rose to his feet.

“I’ve got to go and talk to Linda now,” he said and went off.

Belle looked after him.

“Just like Will Fitzsimmons before he made his name,” she said. “Success brought that man down to earth. He began thinking in terms of money and finally died of depression.”

Campion grimaced. “What an outlook for D’Urfey!”

The old lady shook her head.

“I don’t think so. Have you seen his work?”

“Does Linda like him?”

“Very much, I think.” Belle seemed complacent about the suggestion. “They’d have a very happy, untidy sort of existence together, which is after all the main thing. She would have been miserable with poor Dacre. Love so seldom means happiness.”

Mr. Campion was still reflecting upon this facet of the tragedy when Linda reappeared.

She looked a little more dishevelled than usual, and there was a note of underlying authority and purpose in her voice which Campion had not heard there before.

“Albert,” she said, “I wonder if you’d mind coming upstairs for a moment.”

“Anything wrong?”

“Good heavens, no. Why should there be? I only want to show you some drawings.”

Her tone, although it was evidently intended to be so, was not particularly reassuring.

Belle nodded in response to Campion’s unspoken question.

“Run along, my dear,” she said. “I won’t come with you. I’ve grown very tired of pictures. All painters’ wives feel like that in the end.”

Linda led Campion up to her little studio where he had found her on the day of the reception. It was in much the same state of chaos now, and as he came into the room the recollection of Mrs. Potter, briskly practical, came back vividly to his mind.

Matt D’Urfey was sitting on the window sill, his hands in his pockets, the expression in his china-blue eyes that of the intelligent but detached spectator.

Linda turned to him.

“I think I shall show him,” she said.

“Very well,” said D’Urfey.

“You think it’s an idea, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think so.” In spite of his words, D’Urfey did not seem particularly convinced either way.

Campion’s curiosity was whetted.

“What’s up?” he enquired.

Linda went to her famous cupboard, which was believed in the family to contain somewhere in its depths everything which had ever been mislaid in the house, and produced a brown-paper parcel. She brought it to the table, swept aside a miscellaneous collection of paintbrushes, pots of paint, bottles of varnish, odd reels of cotton, and other débris, and proceeded to unpack it.

Campion looked over her shoulder.

What he saw was a careful pencil study of a woman’s figure in a ragged blouse, a basket in her arms and a curious, half-horrified, half-eager expression on her face. Apart from the fact that the model had clearly been Mrs. Porter, he saw nothing unusual about it, except that the draughtsmanship was exceptionally fine.

He looked up to find Linda peering at him.

“Notice anything?” she enquired.

“No,” said Mr. Campion. “Not particularly, I mean. What is it? A study for an oil?”

Linda sighed. “Wait a minute.”

More rummaging in the cupboard produced an old number of The Gallery. She turned over the illustrated pages impatiently and finally pounced on the sheet she sought.

This was a full-page reproduction of an oil painting, showing the crowd round the Cross in modern dress. In the foreground was the completed figure from the sketch.

It did not take even Mr. Campion, who was an amateur in these matters, long to decide that.

Linda turned the magazine round so that he could read the descriptive paragraph upon the opposite page:

“We reproduce here the seventh of the Lafcadio pictures, unveiled in London in March last. This work, which is perhaps in some ways the most disappointing of the whole collection of posthumous pictures left by John Lafcadio, R.A., is nevertheless well up to the standard of that brilliant technician’s later work. It has been purchased by the Warley Trust for the Easton Art Gallery and Museum.”

“Now do you see what I mean?”

Mr. Campion picked up the study.

“Is this your grandfather’s? I thought all his stuff was preserved somewhere.”

“So it is,” said Linda. “Sit down. When I was in Rome this time I came back through Paris. I told you I hadn’t been very successful in finding any of Tommy’s stuff. Someone had been round before me and cleared off everything. But when I was in Paris for a few days it occurred to me that he might have given a sketch or two to old D’Epernon, who keeps a filthy little café in Montparnasse. I looked him up. He lets lodgings as well, and Tommy used to take a room there whenever he came up from Rome.”

Mr. Campion nodded to show that he was still attentive, and she hurried on.

“D’Epernon hadn’t got a thing, but the wineshop people over the way were more helpful and finally fished this out. Apparently they had a daughter whom Tommy used to flirt with. He gave her this sketch as a parting present. I bought it and brought it home. Now do you see what I’m driving at?”

Mr. Campion had the uncomfortable sensation that he was being very stupid.

“How did Dacre get hold of it in the first place?” he demanded. “Did you give it to him?”

Linda picked up the magazine.

“You’re not very intelligent,” she said. “Look here. This picture, Grandfather’s seventh posthumous exhibit, was solemnly unpacked at the Salmon Galleries just before Show Sunday last year. It wasn’t supposed to have been touched or the original seals broken before that date. By that time Tommy had said good-bye to the wineshop girl for over six months and she herself was safely married and living in Aix with her husband, who’s a baker or something. Her parents assured me that they’d had this sketch in the house for over eighteen months.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Campion, on whom the truth was slowly beginning to dawn. “Where is all this leading?”

“You’ll see,” said Linda grimly. “Look at the paper this sketch is drawn on.” She held it up to the light. “See the watermark? That’s Whatman Fashion Surface, slightly rough. That paper wasn’t manufactured until about seven years ago. I remember it coming out when I was a student.”

“Which would argue,” put in D’Urfey from the window sill, “that Daddy Lafcadio didn’t make the drawing.”

Campion frowned. “You’re sure Dacre couldn’t have seen your grandfather’s picture at some period before it was officially opened?”

“And copied it, you mean? I don’t think so. The pictures were kept in the cellar at Salmon’s. Max made quite a fetish of them. He’d hardly let a student see them, and no one else. Oh, Albert, don’t you see what I’m driving at?”

Mr. Campion regarded her mildly through his enormous spectacles. “You’re suggesting, I suppose,” he said slowly, “that Dacre painted the picture?”

“I’m not suggesting,” said Linda. “I’m telling you.”

Mr. Campion rose slowly to his feet and stood looking out at the canal. His face was completely expressionless, and he appeared to be looking at something far away in the mist on the opposite bank.

“If this is true,” he said at last, “it explains ... well, quite a number of things.”

Linda shot an appraising glance at him and was clearly about to speak, but a second thought occurred to her and she stood fingering the drawing meditatively.

Mr. Campion roused himself from his reverie.

“It’s rather a dangerous yarn, isn’t it?” he said with an attempt at his old levity. “I mean, I shouldn’t go spreading it around. It might get you into a lot of trouble. There is probably some perfectly innocent explanation, anyway.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But, my dear girl, how can you be sure?” Campion snapped the question intentionally. “I should keep very quiet about it if I were you.”

The girl regarded him coolly, and he noticed, as one often notices irrelevant things in times of stress, that her eyes were quite green save for the little flecks of brown in them. She was really astoundingly like Lafcadio himself.

“I should keep quiet—I have, for two or three weeks—if I didn’t think the time had come to talk. You see, Albert, I’m as sure as anybody can be sure that the seventh picture, which the Warley Trust bought last year, was painted by Tommy, and I’m open to bet that if there are any Lafcadios left in the Salmon cellars at least three of them were painted by Tommy, too.”

“My dear girl, you mustn’t make unfounded suggestions like this.” Mr. Campion was shocked.

Matt D’Urfey, who had given up listening to the conversation and had been pottering with some drawings of Linda’s in a corner, now returned to it to some purpose.

“Have you told him about Lisa?” he enquired.

Mr. Campion spun round.

“What are you two hiding?” he demanded. “Believe me, it’s most dangerous at this stage.”

Linda looked up at him.

“So you’ve guessed, too, have you?” she said. “I did, but not until this afternoon, and that’s why I decided to talk to you. We don’t want Max getting his teeth into Granny, do we?”

Her remark was so unexpected and echoed his own thoughts so completely that for a moment Mr. Campion was silenced. Finally he took the girl by the arm.

“What do you know about this business?” he said urgently. “What’s this yarn about Lisa? That woman runs through this affair like a squib. You never know where she’s going to explode next.”

“Lisa’s all right,” said the girl carelessly. “She’s very simple, though. People don’t seem to realize that. She doesn’t think like ordinary people. She’s never had occasion to. She was a complete peasant when she came here. I don’t suppose she knew more than a hundred words in any language. She doesn’t mean to be secretive. She just doesn’t know what’s important and what isn’t. When I came back from Paris I got her up here one night and made her remember quite a lot of things. She told me something which explains everything. You see, Grandfather didn’t leave twelve pictures; he left eight. Lisa knows, because she helped him to seal them up.”

Mr. Campion took off his spectacles and polished them. An enormous knot in the skein was unravelling before his eyes.

“It was very difficult to get it out of her,” the girl went on. “It took endless questioning. But as far as I could gather, this is what happened: The year before Grandfather died—that is, in nineteen-eleven—Belle was very ill. She had rheumatic fever, and when she recovered she went down to stay at San Remo with the Gillimotts. He was a poet, and she painted. Funny, nervy people, I believe. Belle was down there for about six months, and it was during that period that Grandfather packed up the pictures and put the whole scheme in order. So Belle saw some of the pictures, and some she didn’t. Mrs. Potter had seen them, because she was hovering about as usual. Old Potter was away somewhere, teaching, probably, in Scotland, and Lisa remained to look after the house. Grandfather was very secretive about the whole business. Everybody put that down to his age, whereas of course the old boy had a perfectly sound reason for keeping it all so dark.”

She paused.

“There’s one point you’ve got to understand,” she said at last. “It may strike you as hard to credit, but it seems perfectly logical and natural—to me, at any rate. And it’s this: The main reason why Grandfather did the thing at all was to get his own back on Charles Tanqueray. He really hated Tanqueray, and he left the pictures to discourage him. He wanted to leave a lot. He wanted to sound as if he were going to be in the limelight for a long time. He only had eight canvases he could spare, and so he labelled those ‘1924,’ ‘1925,’ and so on. But the last four parcels were fakes. Lisa says, as far as she remembered, one contained a kitchen tray, and one of the others a big cardboard sign advertising beer. Just anything, you see. The Victorians had that sort of humour, you know. It wasn’t lunacy. He was that sort of old boy—a buffoon of a person.

“Lisa told me all this quite solemnly,” she went on. “Apparently she promised him to keep quiet and helped him nail up the packing cases and couldn’t understand what he was so amused about. She said he was in tremendously good humour when they’d finished and made her drink a whole bottle of Lafite with him.”

“But the hoax was certain to be found out,” said Campion.

“Of course it was,” said Linda impatiently.

She seemed to share some of her grandfather’s enthusiasm for the scheme.

“But that wasn’t the point. Don’t you see, Tanqueray was younger than Grandfather, and it had occurred to him that his hated sparring partner was only waiting for the Lafcadio demise to set up unpersecuted as the Grand Old Man of the art world. Grandfather gave him ten years to cool his heels, with the infuriating knowledge that at the end of that time Lafcadio was going to return with a spectacular stunt which would keep him in the public eye not for one year only but for another twelve. The fact that he had only eight canvases and hadn’t the energy or the time to paint any more—he was portrait-painting right up to the time of his death, you know—made him slip in the faked packing cases for the last four years. I daresay he reckoned that eighteen years would about see the end of old Tanqueray. He overestimated it, poor darling. Tanqueray didn’t live to see the first picture. Have you got that far?”

Mr. Campion signified that he had. The tangle was unravelling fast.

“Well, now,” said Linda, “the rest is a sort of guess, I know, but it fits in perfectly. Some years ago someone at Salmon’s—and I think it’s pretty obvious who—had a peep into the packing cases and hit upon the obvious swindle. After all, as far as the authenticity of a picture is concerned, preconceived ideas are half the battle. If the fake’s good enough you’d be surprised at the authorities who get taken in. Here was everything all ready. Everybody knew there were twelve Lafcadio pictures, everybody expected twelve Lafcadio pictures. Even if one of them was howlingly indifferent, why should anyone think that Lafcadio hadn’t painted it? Whatever it was like, it was worth its price. Lafcadio’s reputation was made. One dud, or even four, couldn’t hurt it much.”

“Quite,” said Mr. Campion, who found these revelations very enlightening.

“Four years ago, before Tommy went to Rome, he took an extraordinary holiday. Matt’ll tell you about it. He completely disappeared for about ten months. No one heard from him; no one saw him. At that time he was trying to be a portrait painter, very much in the Lafcadio manner. When he came back he gave up oils suddenly and went to Rome to study tempera.”

“He got the Prix de Rome, didn’t he?” said Campion.

“No. He didn’t. That’s the point. He got the other one, the Chesterfield Award, and Max was adjudicating that year.”

Mr. Campion was silent for a moment, setting these facts in order in his mind.

“Where was Mrs. Potter when Dacre was on his mysterious holiday?” he enquired.

Linda nodded at him approvingly.

“You’re shrewder than I thought,” she said without discourtesy. “Quite remarkably, that period corresponds exactly with the time when Mrs. Potter had what was, as far as I can gather, the one stroke of luck in the whole of her life. She got a commission to go curio-hunting in middle Europe and was away for ten months. I never heard of anything she brought back. She was supposed to be moving around the whole time, and so no one wrote to her, nor did she reply. You know how casual people like us do that sort of thing. She did her curio-hunting for Max, of course. So you see she knew all about it, which probably accounts for ... well, for everything.”

“What about the last picture?” said Campion. “The Joan of Arc one.”

“Oh, that’s genuine. It was clever of Max, wasn’t it, mixing the dud in with the others? There was a certain amount of criticism of last year’s effort, and so this year out comes the genuine thing again.”

“But look here,” protested Campion, still bothered by the technicalities, “surely an expert could tell the difference? There’s the paint, for one thing. And hang it all, the genius of the man. That couldn’t be faked.”

“You’re talking like an amateur,” said Linda. “Don’t put too much faith in experts. They’re only human. As for the rest, it was perfectly simple for Mrs. Potter to get hold of the Lafcadio paint. She was always begging little tubes of this and that from Rennie, anyway. The question of genius doesn’t come into it. I’ve told you there was a certain amount of criticism of the seventh picture, but nobody thought of questioning its authenticity. It wasn’t bad enough for that. As a matter of fact it was very good. Grandfather might easily have painted it. He didn’t turn out a masterpiece every time.

“The question of technique is the most difficult of all. That had to be copied, of course. I think Tommy copied it deliberately. I think he was paid to. I’ve told you he used to imitate—or shall we say be influenced by?—Lafcadio, anyway. And he was particularly clever in oils. Really I don’t see why he shouldn’t have done it. In fact I’m perfectly certain he did do it.”

“It would explain—” began Campion.

“It does explain,” the girl corrected him. “One of the things it explains is why Tommy suddenly chucked up oils. It was part of the bargain, you see. If ever the question of authenticity arose in future years, one of the first questions everybody would ask would be who had painted the damn things. And if there was a competent painter very much in Max’s pocket, who worked very like Lafcadio, the answer wouldn’t be far to seek, would it? So Tommy had to give up oils. I’ll never forgive Max for that.”

“There are other things that’ll take a bit of forgiving,” pointed out Mr. Campion.

The girl flushed.

“I know,” she said. “I haven’t assimilated all that yet. The full explanation of the whole ghastly business only occurred to me when Max and Belle were having that row this afternoon. That was why I decided to tell you all this. I didn’t realize you knew already. Something’s got to be done before Max takes Belle at her word. He’s got four pictures, remember; three duds and one good one. He knows his one real chance to dispose of them—and they’re worth anything up to ten thousand pounds apiece—is to take them abroad and sell them before the hoo-ha dies down. It’s a good selling tale, you know: ‘to be disposed of quietly because of scandal.’ ‘All hush-hush, but the genuine thing, my dear boy.’ ”

Mr. Campion pulled himself together.

“You must keep quiet,” he said. “That’s the main thing. Let one breath of this get about and we may lose him, if nothing else happens.”

“You can trust me,” said Linda grimly.

“And D’Urfey?”

Linda regarded the affable, blue-clad figure with affection. “It wouldn’t occur to him to talk,” she said. “He’s too lazy, for one thing.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. D’Urfey with dignity. “It’s just not my affair, that’s all.”

“You’ll do something, Albert?” Linda persisted. “You didn’t see Max’s face when he left Belle this afternoon. I did. He looked insane.”

But Mr. Campion had seen and had formed his own opinion.

He went to see the inspector.