A Family Affair (11 page)

‘Being fooled, Mr Meatyard?’

‘No, no. This business of painting and painters. I’d never given it much thought before – although, mark you, we had all the proper things in the house. Everything hand-done – except for etchings and the like, which are no more, you might say, than half-and-half. But then I took to this looking into it – starting with your Reynolds, who I tell you I don’t think much of. But do you know Gainsborough, now? Lived at very much the same time, it seems. I took to Gainsborough. I’ve got a couple by him in the next room. Then Cézanne.’

‘Cézanne?’

‘Not in Gainsborough’s class, of course, since he comes in a hundred years later. Pricey, all the same. I wouldn’t like to tell you what I had to pay for my Cézanne. I just wouldn’t have signed the cheque, Sir John, except for the feeling he gives me. As if I was inside that canvas, and moving around. You know what I mean? I’ve worked it out it has something to do with how all those flat slabby bits lean this way and that. Orderly, too. Like good bookkeeping, you might say. A pleasure to look at.’ Mr Meatyard paused. ‘Yes,’ he said contentedly. ‘I find I’m very fond of pictures. Would you ever have been in Florence, by any chance?’

‘Florence?’ Appleby contrived to be perfectly solemn. ‘Yes, I have been there.’

‘There’s a very good golf course.’

‘A golf course?’ This time, Appleby was pretty well caught off his guard. ‘What an extraordinary thing!’

‘Very creditable it is, considering the climate. But I just don’t take my clubs there now. Too many pictures. Martha and I go round and round the Uffizi. A nice place. Clean toilets, and a very tolerable snack to be had, looking down over the city. But the pictures are the thing. Painted to absolutely top specifications, and more of them than you’d believe.’

‘They are certainly very notable.’ Appleby found he was failing to take a proper pleasure in this unexpected sequel to Mr Meatyard’s encounter with the spurious Sir Joshua. That his mild misadventure should have brought into the worthy man’s life hitherto unknown satisfactions in the field of aesthetic experience was no doubt a wholly gratifying circumstance. But it didn’t look like being of much use to Appleby in his self-imposed quest. A more forthright approach seemed required. ‘At least,’ Appleby went on, ‘you’ve got wise to a good deal by now. You wouldn’t be taken in after the same fashion again.’

‘I’d like them to have another go at me, Sir John. I’d show them a thing or two, mark my words.’

‘I’m afraid they’re not likely to single out the same victim twice. But they are in business still – or that’s my guess. And it’s why I’ve called on you. You must admit that, once you’d recovered from your first annoyance at being defrauded by this bogus Sir Joshua–’

‘It wasn’t so much that. It was their making a fool of Martha, you know. That, and disappointing her so. Ringing the bell at this great painter’s studio, and nobody there. That was what took me to the police.’

‘The impulse did you credit, Mr Meatyard. But then you backed out. Wouldn’t that be a fair way of putting it? I ask because I can see that you’re a fair-minded man.’

‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. I saw that we’d have all the papers laughing at us. Martha wouldn’t have liked that.’

‘So you minimized the whole affair by naming a totally inaccurate sum as what you’d been cheated of.’

‘And just how would you substantiate that, Sir John?’

‘My dear sir, it is quite self-evident. An elaborate imposture of that sort isn’t mounted for the sake of peanuts.’

‘Well, now, Sir John – that would depend, wouldn’t it? An imposture may be a fraud, or it may be a hoax. And doesn’t this sound more like a hoax – a practical joke – than a fraud? Here is a self-made man – Albert Meatyard, with no education to speak of – believing that he can have Mrs Meatyard’s portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It’s a regular scream, wouldn’t you say? And if they top off their bit of fun by getting twenty pounds out of him for some worthless painting, that’s as great a lark as if they got twenty thousand. And is modest enough to keep them out of gaol, likely enough, if they’re found out. The fellow on the bench – one of your public school and varsity men – is amused by the whole thing.’

‘I see all that. In fact, I keep on seeing something very like it in connection with one or two other affairs. But be honest, Mr Meatyard. You were had for a proper Charlie – and in solid LSD.’

‘£8,000, Sir John.’ Mr Meatyard – whom Appleby was beginning to take to – suddenly smiled cheerfully. ‘A stiff bill for the start of an education in art, you might say. And I’ll show you what I got for it. Painted by hand, sure enough. But you couldn’t say much more than that.’

‘£8,000?’ There was the most innocent surprise in Appleby’s voice. ‘Not peanuts, of course. But not far off it. You have been a minor victim, Mr Meatyard.’

‘A
minor
victim?’ Perhaps for the first time, Mr Meatyard glanced at Appleby with unflawed respect. ‘Eight thousand quid for “Autumn Woods”, and you talk about peanuts?’

‘It was called that?’

‘ “Autumn Woods” – and signed “Jos Reynolds”, bottom right.’ Unexpectedly, Mr Meatyard roared with laughter. ‘I don’t deny, mark you, that eight thousand quid hurt a little. And that being had for a sucker hurt a good deal more. But you’re not going to leave this house believing that I don’t see the joke. Would you say, now, that we might have a drink on it?’

Appleby, although not very anxious for another drink before dinner, would have been churlish to decline this proposal. Mr Meatyard rose and toddled – physically, he had a slight resemblance to Mr Hildebert Braunkopf – to what appeared to be an impeccable piece of eighteenth-century cabinet work in the Chinese taste. He pushed something – perhaps the head or tail of a curly golden dragon – and an impressive array of bottles and glasses was instantly revealed, bathed in a tasteful pinkish light. Appleby almost expected his host to roar with laughter again, since this contraption appeared so clearly to date from the pre-aesthetic period of the Meatyard life-style. Mr Meatyard, however, merely poured gin and vermouth with an anxious and precise attention to the proportions in which his guest signified that his pleasure lay.

‘ “Minor victim”,’ Mr Meatyard said, returning to his chair. ‘Could we get that clear?’

‘The set-up that took you in, Mr Meatyard, involved a certain outlay, as you can see. What might be called research, to begin with, in order to find a gull.’

‘A what, Sir John?’

‘A gull – old-fashioned word for a dupe. Then there was the studio, or supposed studio, and the stuff exhibited in it. There was the getting in and out of it in a way that would leave the fewest possible traces if you cut up really rough, and the police pitched in their resources in a big way. All that would take time, wouldn’t you agree? And time is money.’

‘That’s a true word.’ Mr Meatyard had nodded appreciatively. ‘Many’s the time I tell it to my younger men. “Lads,” I say, “time’s brass”. You have something there, Sir John.’

‘So a mere £8,000 gross was not all that large a figure. Or not for the class of criminal we’re dealing with. I don’t want to sound disparaging, Mr Meatyard. But in the series of frauds I’m investigating, yours must be regarded as comparatively small beer.’

‘Is that so?’ Not unnaturally, there was some indignation distinguishable in Mr Meatyard’s tone. ‘Not really rating, perhaps, for the top-level attention of you folks?’

‘Come, sir – you can’t quite say that. Not after saying yourself that you’d parted with no more than a few five-pound notes. But there’s something I must make clear. I’m not inquiring into this matter in any official way. My days as a policeman are behind me.’

‘Do you mean that somebody has hired you as a private detective?’

‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to anybody to do that.’

‘Then you’re acting out of pure curiosity?’ A slight impatience had come into Mr Meatyard’s voice. ‘Of course, it’s a great pleasure to meet you, Sir John. But, all the same–’

‘I’d rather call it a sporting interest. A match at long odds, you might say.’

‘Well, of course, that’s another matter.’ Mr Meatyard spoke with revived interest. ‘I’m always ready for a bit of sport. Or a bit of a flutter, as you might say. Martha and I usually look in on the tables when we go to the Riviera. And why not? A little of it never did any harm to those that can afford it. Are you saying that those crooks might be uncommonly hard to catch?’

‘Just that. I have a line on several of their jobs – but they stretch over quite a term of years, and fresh clues will be difficult to find. But something might be done, it seems to me, if we put our heads together. A man of your well-known abilities, Mr Meatyard, would be a formidable opponent.’

‘But we’d need Martha too.’ Mr Meatyard had spoken suddenly and incisively. ‘And here she is.’

Sir John Appleby was presented to Mrs Meatyard in form, and the lady provided by her husband with a rum and blackcurrant. She was a comfortable woman, whom one would not have supposed given to the ready expression of emotion. Nevertheless her expression kindled promisingly – Appleby thought – as soon as the purpose of his visit was made clear to her.

‘I never did want the thing dropped,’ she said, ‘but Albert is always too considerate. He couldn’t bear the thought of our friends poking Charlie at me. I don’t deny but what they would have. You know what friends are.’

‘At both of us,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘But I tell Martha it was business instinct, Sir John – and it’s business instinct that has made me what I am. Very bad for business indeed, is being laughed at. I’ve seen it time and again.’

‘But Albert shouldn’t have concealed that he lost all that money. Has he shown you “Autumn Woods”?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Albert, and not me, will have to do the showing of it to you. We keep it in the chauffeur’s lavatory at the back of the house. I had it valued, Sir John, just to make quite sure. It was before Albert and I had taken our fancy to pictures, and of course we were that ignorant you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Your first response to “Autumn Woods”, Mrs Meatyard, was one of admiration and pleasure?’

‘I dare say I thought it very pretty.’ Mrs Meatyard glanced at Appleby with faint amusement, and it was clear that she was far from being a stupid woman. ‘But when we found out about 1792–’

‘1792?’

‘About Sir Joshua having died then. It’s been a joke between Albert and me ever since. “1792”, we say to each other. Well, when we knew just how badly we’d been cheated, I had a dealer to come and look at the thing. He said nothing. Very much the gentleman, he was, and so the situation embarrassed him. Then, point-blank, I asked him what he’d give me for “Autumn Woods”, frame and all. At that he caught my eye, you might say, and that seemed to cheer him up.’

‘Martha has a way with people,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘She learned to get along with the highest in the land a tidy time before I did.’

‘“Fifteen shillings, Mrs Meatyard,” he said to me. So I gave him a stiff tot of Albert’s best whisky, and we had a good laugh together. Not that it was all that of a joke, if you ask me – seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds five shillings wasn’t. Of course, to this day Albert makes light of it. “Plenty more where
that
came from,” he says. Not that Albert doesn’t know the value of money, Sir John. He was a fine upstanding lad, as you can guess. But I made sure his head was screwed on the right way before I married him.’

‘It was very prudent of you.’ The Meatyards were north-country folk, and Appleby was coming to feel much at home with them. ‘You’d still like to see the thief – for he was a thief, and nothing else – be caught up with and meet his deserts?’

‘Maybe, Sir John – although I think I’d hardly call myself a vindictive woman. Mostly, it’s just that I’d like the thing explained to me – made a bit of sense of. I don’t like unsolved mysteries.’

‘No more do I.’ Appleby, like the gentleman who had come to value ‘Autumn Woods’, found Mrs Meatyard cheering him up. ‘But just where do you think the chief mystery in the thing lies?’

‘In all that about Sir Joshua.’ Mrs Meatyard’s reply was convinced and immediate. ‘It was no joke, as I’ve said. A plan to go after £8,000 isn’t a joke. But the part about Sir Joshua was. You see what I mean?’

‘I think I do.’ Appleby looked seriously at this admirable woman. ‘But will you explain?’

‘It’s something I can hear, Sir John. On an inner ear, as you might say. And I can see it, too. In one of those clubs in Pall Mall. Two or three idle upper-class men – the kind Albert and I meet at the banquets of the livery companies – with half a skinful of liquor in them. And one of them says to the others: “I’ll wager you I can find a well-heeled character in the City of London so damned ignorant that he can be persuaded to have his wife’s portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds”. And another of them says: “Done! But deuced hard times, old boy. Shall we make it a dozen of Moët et Chandon ’59” Sir John, can
you
hear that?’

‘Yes, Mrs Meatyard, I can.’

‘Martha,’ Mr Meatyard said, ‘has uncommon power of mind. If she’d gone into cost accountancy, there would have been no stopping her.’

‘But it doesn’t seem to connect up with the £8,000.’ Mrs Meatyard, with a certain air of homely connoisseurship, took a sip at her rum and blackcurrant. ‘You see what I mean? Going after £8,000 is sensible enough, whether criminally or otherwise. But relying on Albert and Martha Meatyard’s not knowing that Sir Joshua Reynolds is dead belongs to what you might call a world of pure fun. Why shouldn’t they have said Kokoschka or Coldstream or Sutherland? Supposing they put through the whole fraud quick enough, there would have been far less risk in that. So we have a hard-bottomed fraud–’

‘Martha,’ Mr Meatyard said, ‘never minces her words.’

‘We have a hard-bottomed fraud and a typical old-fashioned gentlemanly practical joke queerly mixed up. It annoys me, Sir John. I’d gladly find another £8,000 myself just for the explanation of it.’ Mrs Meatyard checked herself. For the first time, she seemed momentarily confused. ‘I always say things wrong,’ she said. ‘But Albert has taught me my way around. You won’t think, Sir John, that I’m offering
you
a cheque.’