Silence Observed (14 page)

“Only Van Gogh,” he said, “ever painted an eye in that way.” And he handed the scrap back to Appleby.

“Well, that’s fine. And the queer thing is that – even while I didn’t see what you’ve now told me – I felt familiar with the thing. Can you name the actual painting? Oddly enough, it was a question I was minded to put to Gulliver.”

Bendixson nodded absently. He thought for a moment.

“I’m no authority on Van Gogh – Lord knows,” he said. “I don’t even like the man. But – yes – I can see the picture. It’s a self-portrait, painted round about 1886. And now it’s knocking about the Mediterranean, on board some millionaire’s damned brassy yacht.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on board a millionaire’s damned brassy yacht. And yet I have this feeling that it’s familiar to me. So that would be in a reproduction too.”

“No doubt. It’s a familiar print, I think.” Bendixson hesitated. “Is it permissible to ask how such a thing can be of any interest to you professionally?”

“A lot of odd things are.” For a moment Appleby let this reply serve. “I’d like to know who owned the print, and where it ultimately came from.”

“It doesn’t sound easy. But let me look at it again.” Bendixson took the scrap and examined it more carefully this time. “You want the opinion of a first-class print-seller,” he said. “But I think I know what he’ll tell you. It’s an absolutely tip-top job. German, probably. The Germans do most of the best things that have high-grade optical work behind them. Almost depressing – the excellence of this sort of stuff nowadays. Science catching up on inspiration, and so forth.” Bendixson offered this lazy bit of thinking with a suitable air of laziness. And he picked up his newspaper again. “
Do
tell your wife how much we enjoyed it,” he said.

“She’ll be delighted,” Appleby said. And he went out of the room.

It was only to collide, however, with somebody in the doorway. And the newcomer, having glanced past him, drew back.

“That that fellow Bendixson?” the newcomer murmured.

Appleby shut the door.

“Yes,” he said. “Bendixson. He’s in process of recovering from a disdainful look cast at him by a Romney.”

“I’m dashed if I want to see the beggar. Only the other day he made me pay the deuce of a lot for a Toulouse-Lautrec.”

Appleby laughed.

“My dear fellow – if you must please yourself with buying these fashionable things, what are you to expect? Not even shipping will stand it for long.”

The newcomer – his name was Moultrie and he was a very wealthy man indeed – nodded gloomily.

“True,” he said. “Absolutely true. It’s a mug’s game. I wish I’d taken up postage stamps.”

“You don’t wish anything of the sort.” The two men were now strolling down a corridor, “I can see that you’re just stuffing with satisfaction over your blessed Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course that’s nothing singular in this club. A place more reeking of acquisitive instinct doesn’t exist in London. How I drifted into it, I just can’t think.”

“Beer mugs dug up at Stonehenge, I’ve been told. Haven’t you more of them than any other man in the country? So I’ve been assured.” Moultrie was evidently in high good humour. “And as for this new picture of mine, I’m not at all sure. There seem to be rather a lot of the little devil’s canvases about.”

“Ah,” Appleby said. “Doubt about the scarcity value. Well, well.”

“You think of me, Appleby, just as another damned commercial man.” Moultrie was genially unoffended. “But in fact I have a passion for the artistic life. I don’t merely buy these things. I read about the chaps who made them. It’s a world full of horror and romance and all the rest of it. This fellow Lautrec, for instance, that Bendixson has peddled me–”

“Peddled you?” Appleby was interested. “You mean he sold you this painting privately? You didn’t get it at auction through his firm?”

“Just that. And I’ve paid, as I said, a damned sight too much. But that was because of the romantic slant on the affair – which is what I was getting round to telling you. Not that I
ought
to tell you. Bendixson wouldn’t approve.”

“Silence is observed,” Appleby said.

“What’s that? Oh, I see.” Moultrie had sat down on a somewhat decayed leather settee in the corridor, and he gestured to Appleby to do the same.

“But, since I’ve started, here goes. Lautrec, you remember, was a shocking little slobbering dwarf. Tough on him. Old aristocratic French family, you know, with men who thought mostly about hunting and hawking and capturing women. But for this wretched little cripple all that was out. So he became a painter. Amazing thing.”

“Amazing thing,” Appleby said.

“Tremendous virility, the little chap had. Awkward for him. But it seems that talented women gave him a spin now and then. Suzanne Valadon, for example. I’ve got her. Of course she wasn’t anything like the painter her illegitimate son was. Utrillo, you know. I’ve got him too. Middle period, before his brain and his painting went soft.”

“That’s splendid,” Appleby said.

“Lautrec’s life was mostly brothels and drink. A terrible story, really terrible. Died at thirty-seven. DTs, and the inevitable sort of disease. Quite shocking. During his last year or two his work went off badly – except for one notable period of recovery. But perhaps you know all this.”

“I don’t know about the notable period of recovery,” Appleby said. He was finding the tone of this talk rather hideous. But instinct prevented him from breaking it off.

“Exactly!” Moultrie’s voice had a ring of triumph which was only too familiar to Appleby. It went with collector’s mania. “It happened here in London, as a matter of fact. Lautrec came here from time to time. His English was good, and he liked it. Sometimes he went round with friends among the English painters. They would take him to see Oscar Wilde, and that sort of thing. But sometimes he’d come and just wander around in solitude, like a lost soul. His last visit – it seems to have escaped his biographers – was like that. But then, one day in the British Museum, he met this girl.”

“This girl?” Appleby repeated. He had a sudden fascinated sense of the direction in which Moultrie was taking him.

“A French girl, as a matter of fact. Her name was Armandine de la Gallette–”

“It was
what
?”

“Armandine de la Gallette. A noble but impoverished family, it seems, and the girl had taken a job as a governess in the household of some English lord or duke. But she had seen Lautrec’s work in Paris, and she revered his genius.”

“So she set about saving him?”

“Just that.” Moultrie appeared impressed by this perceptive question. “She was what poor Lautrec had always dreamed of: a pure and cultivated woman who was not revolted by his physical appearance. They spent three weeks at Rye together, before Armandine’s people heard of the affair and insisted on bringing her home. She was only nineteen.”

“I see. And in those three weeks Lautrec painted your picture.”

“Exactly, Appleby.” Moultrie was again struck by this penetration. “It’s called
Femme
assise
. ‘Seated Woman’, you know. Needless to say, it’s of Armandine de la Gallette herself. And I don’t think it’s too much to say that it’s Lautrec’s masterpiece.” Moultrie paused. “I certainly hope it is,” he added, a little wistfully. “For there’s no doubt I paid the devil of a price. I only wish that poor Armandine had got the money. She’s quite, quite charming.”

Appleby stared.

“You mean she’s
alive
? Didn’t Toulouse-Lautrec die in about 1900?”

“1901. Armandine must be nearly eighty. The fascinating thing is that she’s quite recognizable in the portrait. It gave me a turn, that did, I’m bound to say.”

“It certainly gives a touch of refinement to the whole affair. You say the painting wasn’t in her possession?”

“No. It was in the hands of a private collector, who didn’t want to be known. That was why Carl Bendixson fixed it up that I should actually see the old lady and question her. It fixed the provenance of the painting so securely.”

“‘Fixed’ seems just the word.” Appleby was staring at Moultrie rather grimly. “Where did you see her?”

“A little place in the New Forest, Winterbourne Crucis. She has a cottage. Rose Cottage, it’s called. Rather commonplace, eh? But the interior’s a dream.”

“A dream? Well, well.” Appleby was now looking rather wonderingly at this captain of industry. “How has Armandine come to end up there? I thought her people had taken her home.”

“So they had. But she was always very Anglophile. When she came into a minute private fortune, she decided to retire into the English countryside. She brought a few sticks of furniture with her. The finest eighteenth-century French stuff. But the rest of the place is quite bare. It’s too touching. And – do you know? – I rather took advantage of her being so poor. Not that I didn’t give her a terrific price.”

“I thought you said–”

“Oh, not for the painting. All she could do was to tell me the story of that. What she sold me was her last relic of Lautrec. His famous walking stick flask.”

Appleby found himself taking a deep breath.

“You astonish me,” he said.

“You see, when Lautrec was a hopeless alcoholic, his family provided him with a keeper. Some sort of poor relation who went round with him and had the job of keeping him off the bottle. So Lautrec had this walking stick made. Hollow, you know, and would hold half a litre of brandy. At Rye, the poor chap believed that Armandine had reformed him for good. So he presented her with the thing. Too sad, eh? And I could see that the whole business of bringing up the past was extremely painful to the old lady. In fact, she made me promise something. You’d never guess what.”

“Not to visit her again.”

“You’re absolutely right. Remarkable knowledge of human nature you have, my dear chap.” Moultrie was looking at Appleby with deep respect. “And, of course, I’ll keep my word to her. I shall find the whole episode rather a beautiful memory.”

“And so will she, I don’t doubt.” Appleby stood up. “By the way, have you ever been to Albi?”

“Albi? Where’s that?”

“About fifty miles from Toulouse. I seem to remember that it has some associations with Lautrec.”

“Oh, a place in France. No – you know, I hardly ever go abroad. I simply haven’t the time, my dear fellow.” Suddenly Moultrie gave Appleby his rather wistful and uncertain smile. “Well, what do you think of my yarn?”

“What do I think?” Appleby, in return, was quite unsmiling. “I think that those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. Just a little mad, for a start. Inclined, say, to unseasonable jokes in the course of business. But later – well, very mad indeed.”

It was barely half-past two, and there were still plenty of lunchers lingering in the club. This gave Appleby an idea. Before putting it into execution, however, he went to the telephone room, shut himself firmly in, and called Judith.

“Busy?” he asked.

“Not in
your
sense, darling. Of course the little woman has her small employments about the house. Dusting hubby’s study – or is it den? – without disturbing the litter. Beginning to think about something tasty for his–”

“Stop it. I’m in a hurry. Do you think you could get to a place in the New Forest and back by dinnertime?”

“I might. What place?”

“It’s called Winterbourne Crucis. I seem to remember it vaguely. You find out about Rose Cottage. Whether it’s inhabited, and by whom. If it’s not, whether it’s furnished or empty. Previous tenants. Village worthies who worked there. Everything.”

“It sounds as if it were a horrid little love nest.”

“Don’t be absurd. I keep a special sort of copper for investigating that. This looks like being something rather curious.”

“All right, John. Can do.” Judith was mollified. “But hadn’t I better be put in the picture?”

“The picture? Well, there certainly is a picture. By Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“John, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Toulouse-Lautrec. I’ve just met a man who recently bought one – or believes he did. And he authenticated it by going to this Rose Cottage, Winterbourne Crucis, and interviewing Lautrec’s sitter. Does that sound like nonsense?”

“I don’t know.” Judith was properly cautious. “Is he supposed to have painted this person down there?”

“No. Probably in London. It was of a girl who befriended him in his last years, and who came to England again later. It couldn’t, I think, be later than 1897 or 1898.”

“I’ve got a book about Lautrec. What was the girl’s name?”

“Armandine de la Gallette. What do you think of that?”

Judith’s laughter crackled in the receiver.

“It must be some sort of hoax, John. The Moulin de la Gallette was one of the early cabarets in Montmartre. That would be Lautrec’s real tie-up with the name.”

“Quite so. It rang that sort of bell in my head at once. And the chap believes himself to have obtained a relic of Lautrec actually in the museum at Albi! But this business is more than a hoax, I think. It looks like large-scale fraud – and perhaps something else as well. So discover what you can.”

“All right. But hadn’t I better know who is supposed to be perpetrating this fraud?”

“I’ve nothing but a wild suspicion at the moment, I’m afraid. But it has just occurred to me–” Appleby broke off, realizing that somebody was about to enter the telephone room. “No good,” he said. “We’ll have it all out at dinnertime.” And he rang off.

Five minutes later, Judith Appleby was making a telephone call of her own.

“I hate to be a nuisance,” she said. “But do you remember borrowing a book about Toulouse-Lautrec a couple of months ago?”

“But of course I do!” The voice at the other end was enthusiastic. “It was intensely interesting. And have I hung on to it? But how unforgivable of me. I am most terribly sorry. Let me bring it round at once.”

“Certainly not!” Judith was emphatic. “I feel bad about bothering you. It’s just that I have occasion to look something up in it. Listen. I’m running down to the New Forest, to a place called Winterbourne Crucis. I’ll be passing your way in ten minutes. Do you mind if I stop and pick it up?”