The Mysterious Commission (2 page)

‘Well, no – I’m afraid not.’ It was much to his own surprise that Honeybath – at present unemployed as we have seen him to be – heard himself produce this reply. ‘Two thousand guineas is at present my fee for a portrait, Mr Peach. Unless, of course, some special circumstance or connexion suggests the propriety of a different figure.’

‘Thank you.’ Peach, who didn’t seem at all disconcerted, accompanied his words with a small bow suggesting that propriety was quite his thing too. They were back, so to speak, with Lesson Six again. ‘And may I ask,’ he continued, ‘if that includes hands?’

‘Certainly.’ Honeybath was impressed. Hands are usually an extra, and work out at a hundred guineas each. So here was further evidence that the fellow had been taught his onions. Behind Peach was somebody who knew his way around. And anybody who knew
that
would also know that two thousand guineas was a pretty stiff demand from Charles Honeybath. It was this thought that had thus prompted him to declare that he himself was in the generous habit of throwing in eight fingers and two thumbs gratis. ‘But robes, orders or decorations,’ he hastened to add urbanely, ‘are another matter. They can be very tricky, my dear sir. Particularly when they clash with the flesh tones. So anything of that kind has to be a matter of separate negotiation.’

‘There wouldn’t
be
anything of that kind.’ Peach appeared quite clear about this. ‘But I am instructed to say that, in general, any little pecuniary difficulty that turned up would be settled entirely at your discretion.’

Honeybath began to feel that the situation sounded rather promising. At the same time, there remained something about Mr Peach that prompted caution. It was true that the early stages of arranging a portrait commission were sometimes oblique and even mysterious. For example, in both commercial and academic life the proposal to present a notability with his likeness can be pretty well a matter of handing him – as in
Treasure Island
– the Black Spot, and it may seem desirable that the plan should be far advanced before a breath of it reaches the chap who is thus to be railroaded out. It was a shade unusual, however, or so Honeybath thought, for
pourparlers
to be opened through a person of Mr Peach’s sort. In any case, it would be sound policy not to give the impression of jumping at what this clerkly person had been deputed to bring along.

‘Of course I shall be delighted,’ Honeybath said, ‘to discuss any proposal you have to make, and equally delighted to give you any disinterested advice or information you may seek. Frankly, it may turn out that you would do better to go to another man. For a portrait, Mr Peach, cannot be executed satisfactorily except upon the basis of an established personal relationship. And that can be – can it not? – a hit-or-miss affair. For this reason it is customary – on the whole, and if painter and sitter are not already friends or at least acquaintances – to arrange some informal meeting before any agreement is entered upon. And again, one likes to know a good deal more about one’s subject than the address of his tailor and the shape of his nose.’ Honeybath as he said this produced a well-practised whimsical smile. ‘One likes to read what one can about him. And even to pick up a little in the way of anecdote and gossip from his connexions – although in a discreet fashion, I need hardly add.’

‘Nothing of the kind would be possible in the present case.’ Peach finished his sherry, and glanced at Honeybath sharply and confidently, as if he had sensed that two thousand guineas was going to prove a potent bait. ‘In fact your sitter,’ he continued, ‘would be anonymous. I am instructed to refer to him as Mr X.’

If Charles Honeybath wasn’t exactly staggered by this bizarre information, the reason was an almost fortuitous one. Not long before, he had heard from a fellow portrait-painter about something of just this kind happening. His colleague had been offered a really large sum of money – much more than was on the carpet now – to execute, under conditions of the utmost secrecy, the portrait of what proved to be an African gentleman of the most marked sophistication and intelligence. He had, it was clear, emerged from an emergent country, whether constitutionally or otherwise, as its President, Prime Minister, or Top Man. And while in London he had wanted a slap-up portrait of himself (which was a blameless and indeed honourable ambition) with no publicity and no cheques passing. This recollection now gave Honeybath pause. The flesh tones customary on the Niger, the Congo, or the Limpopo are undoubtedly very tricky indeed, and such as require much study in an artist accustomed to paint pallid provision-merchants, or pale-pink
décolletée
dowagers, or the refined but rosy progeny of the proprietary classes for the walls of the Royal Academy in Burlington House. Robes, orders or decorations are child’s play in the comparison. If this was the state of the case, the price could be pushed up quite a lot.

‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘whether your client is black?’ Having produced this question, Honeybath was conscious that it might have sounded a disparaging and even racialist note. ‘Of course black is beautiful,’ he added hastily. ‘Veronese is only one of those who did amazing things with negroes. And Carpaccio sometimes, too.’

‘A black?’ It was apparent that Mr Peach was uninterested in these aesthetic reflections. There was even a hint of indignation in his voice. ‘Nothing of the sort, Mr Honeybath. We have kept clear of anything of that kind, I am glad to say. Mr X is no blacker than you are, if it comes to that. Begging your pardon, that is.’ Peach had relapsed abruptly into his most distressingly plebeian idiom. ‘But I’ll tell you something at once. Quite straight, I will. He’s out of his mind.’

This time, Honeybath was really astonished.

‘Do I understand,’ he asked dazedly, ‘that you are inviting me to execute the portrait of a lunatic?’

‘And why not, Mr Honeybath?’ This time, Peach spoke with spirit. ‘I don’t doubt that others have done it before you. Verynosey, Carpatchy, and all that lot.’

‘Possibly so.’ Honeybath dimly wondered whether his visitor was a student of
Finnegans
Wake
. ‘But, if they were, they were undoubtedly constrained to it by tasteless patrons. It is a canon – an absolute canon of art, Mr Peach – that the sheerly pathological is unfit for the purposes of any sort of representative fiction.’ Honeybath spoke with dignity. He might have been Sir Joshua Reynolds pronouncing one of his celebrated Discourses. ‘The thought, sir, is abhorrent to me.’

‘But wouldn’t there be a good many mad folk, Mr Honeybath, in Shakespeare and the like? And even in the Bible, if I remember aright.’

‘The Bible isn’t art. It’s history.’ Honeybath would not have produced this imperfect reply had he not been a good deal staggered by all this cultural resource on Peach’s part. ‘And an anonymous zany! It’s out of the question. I have my reputation to consider.’

‘And very high that is, Mr Honeybath. Otherwise I shouldn’t be troubling you. And I assure you that Mr X is a very quiet gentleman – a very quiet and civilly behaved old gentleman indeed. Nothing in the nature of howls and grimaces; nothing of that sort at all. Conversable, in a manner of speaking, Mr X is. Advantages, he’s had.’ Lesson Six was fading out as Mr Peach strove to carry his point. ‘An Eton College boy in his time.’

‘Do I understand that he might be described as an Aristocratic Eccentric?’ Honeybath was weakening. If these people had money to burn, the sky could be pretty well the limit if one were to undertake so extraordinary a commission. ‘And is your Mr X at least sufficiently
compos mentis
himself to desire such a thing?’ Honeybath had a brilliant thought. ‘Would it be a comfort or consolation to him in his darkened state of mind?’

‘Precisely that; sir. Very much that, indeed. It is what is in the relatives’ mind. A Christian thought, Mr Honeybath.’

‘I see.’ Honeybath’s hand went out to the sherry decanter. ‘You had better tell me a little more about all this.’

‘Certainly, Mr Honeybath. Whatever my instructions allow. But confidentiality must be the keynote, if you follow me. And not only in the matter of the gentleman’s identity. His place of residence as well.’

At this point Charles Honeybath glanced rather desperately round his studio. He might have been Mr Sherlock Holmes (to whom he was addicted) hoping to secure the commonsensical if not wholly percipient counsel of his friend Dr Watson. It was upon just such unlikely missions as Mr Peach’s, indeed, that enigmatical plenipotentiaries had been prone to present themselves in Baker Street. Perhaps Mr X wasn’t a mere President or Prime Minister. Perhaps he was a Crowned Head, and Honeybath would end up with a pair of diamond cufflinks, the gift of Mr X’s second cousin once removed, a Very Gracious Lady. It would be
The Case of the Mysterious Commission
.

Honeybath pulled himself together. He even pushed his own sherry-glass unobtrusively away from him. One obviously needed a clear head. Might not Watson have hinted that they were in the presence of a practical joke? Malicious rivals of Honeybath’s – and he laboured, after all, in a crowded vineyard – had got together over their own bottle of wine, and there had been a wager that he could be despatched on a fool’s errand. But where on earth had they got hold of a creature like Peach? Perhaps Peach was an out-of-work actor. And here he was, hired to practise upon the innocence of an out-of-work portrait-painter.

These reflections – which at least showed that, at a pinch, Honeybath might prove an adversary of a wariness to be reckoned with – now suggested to him the uses of a protective irony.

‘Am I to be conducted into your nameless client’s presence,’ he asked, ‘at the end of a blindfolded journey in a hansom cab?’

‘Something of the kind would be a prerequisite, Mr Honeybath.’ Peach, recovering his more cultivated manner, enunciated this with the utmost coolness. ‘But only after an earnest of the seriousness of our intention. Guineas are a shade awkward when it comes to spot cash. But we can say one thousand pounds down.’ With a dexterity suggesting a well-rehearsed effect, Peach produced a bulky wallet from a capacious pocket. He opened it and extracted, one by one, several highly compacted bundles of what were plainly ten-pound notes. These he laid on a table in front of him. ‘Shall we count them over?’ he asked blandly.

‘I think not,’ Honeybath said austerely. But he was a good deal shaken. This astonishing display seemed at once to knock the practical-joke or hoax theory out of court. He had only to sweep the notes into a drawer and they did become precisely the earnest Peach had spoken of. He had only to carry them the few yards to his bank next door and they would be recoverable by Peach only at his own, Honeybath’s, pleasure. If the banknotes were forgeries (and anything seemed possible in this untoward situation), the teller would probably be sufficiently surprised at receiving so large a sum in this form to scrutinize them with sufficient care to discover the fact. He wouldn’t, on the other hand, be astounded, or even venture to ask an old-established customer questions. Honeybath knew that a good many commercial transactions were conducted on just such a cash basis, and that it was not a bank’s business to take any initiative in exploring whether some tax-dodging manoeuvre was involved. So now he temporized.

‘Do I understand,’ he asked, ‘that this portrait would not be painted here in my studio?’

‘It would not. I hope I have made it clear that a high degree of privacy is required.’

‘But there’s nobody here except myself. I live elsewhere, and at present I am not employing an assistant of any sort. Your client, if any slight strangeness in him makes it undesirable to attract curiosity, could come and go without the least danger of anything of the kind.’

‘It must be a condition, I fear, that the sittings take place in his private residence.’

‘And that I don’t even know where that is?’ Not unnaturally, Honeybath found it hard to accept that anything so melodramatic and absurd as this proviso was being advanced with a seriousness.

‘Just that.’

‘Very well. I will undertake the commission, Mr Peach. But, until I have familiarized myself with the circumstances, and can be assured that there is nothing scandalously irregular about so strange an arrangement, I shall require to be accompanied by a friend.’

‘No.’

‘No? Mr Peach, did I hear you aright?’

‘Certainly you did. We are trusting you’ – Peach pointed uncompromisingly at the banknotes – ‘and it’s fair that you should trust us.’

Honeybath was baffled. Peach undeniably had a point. Moreover Honeybath doubted whether he himself had a friend in the world to whom he would care to confide the undignified and indeed demeaning bargain he seemed about to accept. But probably – he told himself – he was exaggerating that side of the thing. Sensitive natures such as his were inclined to be touchy. Peach had stated frankly that the prospective sitter was off his head. Perhaps those around him were a bit off their heads too, and it was a dotty sensitiveness of their own which had resulted in the thinking up of all this nonsense. At least he could go and see. And even before he did that, he could perhaps extract at least a modicum of further information from his visitor.

‘Provisionally, then,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘the affair is settled. We can relax a little, my dear Mr Peach. May I offer you another glass of sherry?’

Peach made no bones about embracing this further modest entertainment. He even raised his glass towards Honeybath and said ‘Cheers’ before drinking from it. Honeybath, although he might have resented so unwarranted a familiarity, decided to accept the ritual as signalling the establishment of a full measure of confidence between the contracting parties. It seemed the right moment to gather in and lock up the banknotes; and this he now briskly achieved. Peach watched him unconcernedly, even with a distinguishable air of benevolence.

‘Would you care to have a receipt, Mr Peach?’

‘Dear me, no. Nothing of the kind is at all necessary, sir. But there are one or two questions, if they may be allowed me. Sittings, for example. Would you say that fourteen are likely to be enough?’