The Mysterious Commission (5 page)

‘My dear Mr Honeybath, how do you do?’ The stranger had extended a cordial but not over-eager hand. ‘I am Basil Arbuthnot. How good of you to have fallen in with our plans so handsomely. And to have come straight away! You must have had to drop all sorts of important things. It has really been quite beyond our expectation. We are
most
grateful.’

Mr Arbuthnot delivered himself of all this without the least effect of haste or of the garrulous. He had a small pointed beard turning grey; his smoking-jacket was an affair of faded maroon velvet and dim maroon silk; he would have looked very well if posed against a baronial background in the interest of one of the more expensive brands of malt whisky.

‘I do hope,’ he went on, ‘that you had a pleasant run? A pity there is no moon. Perhaps it was the moon that you were glancing out of the window in search of? Or the pole star, or something like that?’

‘The pole star would do to be going on with, Mr Arbuthnot.’ Honeybath had decided to speak robustly. ‘If I’m looking for my bearings, you can’t be exactly surprised. You won’t be unaware, sir, that you’ve involved me in an uncommonly odd situation.’

‘But indeed yes! I do fully understand your feeling. But we are a whimsical family, I suppose, and you must bear with us.’

‘A family? Is this person you are pleased to call Mr X related to you?’

‘The poor fellow is my uncle, Mr Honeybath. But shall we sit down?’ Arbuthnot had turned back into the room. ‘Not that I must play the host in what are to be your own quarters.
You
are the one to do that.’

‘Then let me get you a drink,’ Honeybath said rather shortly. This punctilio hadn’t particularly amused him. And he was beginning to feel distinctly tired.

‘Marc, if you please – and no more than a dash of it.’ Mr Basil Arbuthnot sank down in a chair in a thoroughly relaxed way. Then he anxiously straightened up again. ‘But shall I be boring you, if I start to tell you all about ourselves? Shall we put off anything of the kind until tomorrow?’

‘Certainly not. The sooner I hear a little sense about this uncle of yours the better.’ Honeybath poured Arbuthnot his drink, uncomfortably conscious of having employed a discourteous form of words. This was highly absurd – for hadn’t he, after all, virtually been kidnapped? But the feeling was inescapable. ‘About your uncle,’ he said, stonily and by way of correction. And he poured himself a little more brandy.

‘Then let us have at least a preliminary talk at once.’ Arbuthnot smiled with the most perfect candour. ‘And would it be most satisfactory if you simply asked me questions?’

‘I’ve no reason to suppose so. It wasn’t a method that got much out of that fellow Peach.’

‘Peach?’ Arbuthnot was momentarily at sea. ‘Ah, yes! Peach had his instructions, of course. But you and I can allow ourselves a little more freedom, Honeybath, don’t you think?’

‘Very well.’ Honeybath wasn’t at all sure that he had cared for this familiar form of address. ‘You say your name’s Arbuthnot. Why the dickens should you insist that your uncle be called Mr X?’

‘Ah, an excellent question. There’s a harmless enough reason, which I’ll be delighted to explain to you.’

‘And so you want me positively to address him as Mr X?’

‘Well, no. It might conceivably puzzle him. Indeed, it might annoy him. In fact, my dear sir, you’d greatly oblige us all by addressing him as
Mon Empereur
.’

‘As
what
?’

‘
Mon Empereur
. My uncle believes himself, unhappily, to be Napoleon Bonaparte. It’s something quite common, we are told, among persons of his – um – way of thinking.’

‘Certainly it can’t be called very inventive,’ Honeybath said dryly. Whether rationally or not, he really was a little disappointed at this information about Mr X. When one is virtually press-ganged into giving a substantial span of time to painting a lunatic, one may surely hope for a subject with a slightly less commonplace delusion than this. ‘Will he be dressed in the Corsican ruffian’s clothes?’

‘Oh, no – nothing like that. It’s all, you may say, no more than inside my poor uncle’s head. We don’t have to stage a court for him, or anything of that sort – as in some play or other I remember seeing once. By Strindberg, would it have been?’

‘Pirandello, I imagine.’ Honeybath’s patience was wearing thin. ‘Have you really anything relevant to tell me, Mr Arbuthnot, or are you merely putting in a little time talking round the thing?’

‘Honeybath, my dear fellow, just give me a chance.’ Arbuthnot said this with an urbanity so unruffled, and so charming a smile, that Honeybath found himself almost taking to the man. ‘I have to pick my words, you know – because of certain pledges I have given to some needlessly nervous kinsmen. But I am most anxious to be perfectly open with you. You are entitled to complete frankness, and complete frankness you shall receive.’ Arbuthnot made a resigned gesture. ‘Aside, that is, from one or two necessary reservations. But here, for a start, is the nub of the whole matter. My uncle is supposed to be dead.’

‘Whereas, if there is to be a portrait, I suppose it is a matter of
Vive l’Empereur
.’ Honeybath was rather pleased with this witticism – which, indeed, was extremely well received by Mr Arbuthnot.

‘Precisely so,’ Arbuthnot said. ‘You make the point most felicitously. A portrait we all feel we must have, and my uncle must be brought alive for the purpose. But only very cautiously, and on a strictly temporary basis. Not a breath of his brief resurrection must reach the public. Hence the precautions we have felt constrained to take.’

This time, Honeybath remained silent. There was something thoroughly indecent, he told himself, in this riddling and quibbling talk about a mentally afflicted man, and he ought not for a moment to have allowed himself to joke about it. And Arbuthnot must have been aware of this reaction, for he now assumed a serious expression.

‘He was a remarkable man, my dear Honeybath. One ought not, of course, to speak of him in the past tense – and yet one does so, almost inevitably. His career now seems to belong to a vanished age. Or, rather, his careers seem to do that. For he was a notably versatile person. He was undoubtedly the best amateur golfer of his day, and equally undoubtedly among its three or four most distinguished mountaineers. And these distinctions formed, surely, a tolerably unusual prelude to a Nobel Prize.’

‘What did he get that for?’

‘Ah, I must not be too specific. We have given certain pledges – those of us in the family who want this portrait – to those others who are rather misdoubting about it. I mustn’t say anything – and I assure you this does embarrass me very much – which might lead to an identification of your sitter.’ Arbuthnot produced his easiest smile. It was perfectly evident that embarrassment was among the human frailties unknown to him. ‘For example, I must not, I feel, divulge to you whether or not my uncle has received the Order of Merit. If I said he has, it would rather narrow things down, would it not? But his distinction was of that calibre. Naturally, we are very proud of him.’

‘Naturally you are – and I suppose your wanting a portrait is a way of showing it. But I’m bound to say I don’t understand why, as a family, you should be so keen on having him supposed dead.’

‘It does appear to call for a word of explanation, I agree. So what shall I say? At least you may exclude – what I am sure will be a great relief to you – the more psychopathological motivations. The death-wish within the family, and things of that sort. On the contrary, I think I can honestly claim that we are a devoted little clan. Again, it had nothing to do with missing heirs, lost wills, unmentionable vices, or anything of the sort. You may be absolutely reassured, my dear fellow, as to that.’

Honeybath wondered how much of what Arbuthnot said he was at all seriously expected to swallow. The speculation prompted another sip at his brandy, but this afforded him little comfort. The brandy was Arbuthnot’s brandy, and drinking it simply enhanced his sense of having got himself into a false position. It would be impossible to maintain that he had been dragged into the depths of the countryside and tumbled into this unaccountable mansion while vigorously screaming, biting and scratching. He had come of his own free will, and upon a very substantial financial consideration. This chatter, so far, was dawning on him as an insulting diet of poppycock. But it wasn’t being offered so crudely that he could very reasonably stand up and walk out (or attempt to walk out – since the sense of an element of all but naked imprisonment was growing on him). But at least he could maintain a note not too abjectly accommodating.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I really must be treated to
some
sense. I accept it that your uncle’s nervous state is such that you want this portrait-painting to be a very quiet affair. I even accept the implication – although it is an outrageous one – that you cannot safely trust my discretion not to go round the clubs and pubs making a funny story out of you – so that I must leave as I have come, not knowing who the devil any of you really are. But this business of your uncle having to be brought back briefly from the dead – ’ Honeybath hesitated for a moment; it was not for the first time that words were in danger of failing him. ‘It’s just a bit too much, you know. You say you’re going to explain it. Will you kindly do so?’

‘My dear fellow, I’m on the verge of precisely that!’ The urbane character calling himself (no doubt wholly faithlessly) Basil Arbuthnot looked innocently surprised. ‘It’s merely a matter of coming a little along the road of our Mr X’s notable career. To all the business in – well, I’ll call it Outer Mongolia. Not that it
was
Outer Mongolia. There! You see how absolutely candid I’m being with you.’

‘I think I’m coming to estimate your candour accurately enough. But go on. Just for the moment, it’s all I ask.’

‘I can see that my uncle’s very eminence – which I could so easily have concealed from you – must make the fact and character of his mission almost implausible. I grant that most freely. But consider! He was the one man in England with the authority and the knowledge to put it through. And the courage, I can honestly add. The danger, the strain, the long drawn-out concentration required must be evident in the issue – in the issue, that’s to say, on its unhappy, and not on its blessedly triumphant, side. It cost him his reason. I don’t see that you could ask for fuller proof than that.’

‘Do I understand you to be asserting that your uncle, after scaling unknown peaks–’

‘In Outer Mongolia – yes.’

‘–and collecting a Nobel Prize, and being enrolled, or just not enrolled, by command of the Sovereign, among the twenty-four Members of the Order of Merit, then started in as a secret agent, or something of that kind?’

‘Very much something of that kind. He got what was needed. He got it
out
. And then they caught him, and gave him a very bad time. In the end, they simply buried him, without much troubling themselves as to whether he was actually already dead or not. That’s their charming way, no doubt. And he
wasn’t
dead.’

‘He unburied himself?’

‘The job was done for him by a pack of jackals, or hyenas, or obliging creatures of that sort. And then he crawled for hundreds of miles. Finally–’

‘You can spare me the finality, Mr Arbuthnot.’ Honeybath was rather pleased with this. ‘It became expedient that dead it should continue to be?’

‘Just so. You are admirably quick, my dear Honeybath.’

‘And he is admirably dead to this moment?’

‘Alas, yes. It had to be so. There were considerations of high policy, of
very
high policy. And remember that his mind was irrevocably darkened. It was obvious that the remainder of his days must be passed in total seclusion. So the course adopted was really the most humane thing. Inevitably, however, his nearest and dearest had to know – and to arrange for caring for him. But it’s really no burden. You’ll find him a most charming old man.’ Arbuthnot paused. He evidently felt that he was concluding on a truly sunny note. ‘By the way, would you care for a hot-water bottle? There is, of course, an electric blanket of the thermostatic kind. But some prefer the old-fashioned thing. I confess I do myself.’ Arbuthnot rose gracefully to his feet. ‘And I’ve kept you up far too long. Believe me, I do apologize.’

Honeybath hadn’t needed a hot-water bottle. He didn’t need the thermostatic blanket either. The whole bedroom was a damned sight too thermostatic. It was like an excessively well-appointed madhouse cell. Lying in its darkness, he came to wonder whether, when they buried him, they might not be a shade careless as to his being already dead too. More temperately, he realized that, at the end of an excessively trying day, he had been subjected for half an hour to the play of an alarmingly insolent and morbid sense of humour. He tried to persuade himself that he at least retained a certain intellectual curiosity as to what sort of person Mr X would really turn out to be. But he had to acknowledge that, through what would certainly prove to be a sleepless night, there wasn’t going to be much room in his consciousness for anything except humiliating apprehensiveness over his mere personal safety. He’d been chucked into something like an idiotic tale of terror by Edgar Allan Poe.

Somewhere out in the night, a clock struck eleven. It might be a church clock, a stable clock: impossible to tell. There was a hitch, a muted effect – he mechanically noted – on the ninth stroke. A little later, and again with that effect of being surprisingly near at hand, a railway engine produced a rising and then swiftly declining wail. It was a Diesel engine – the sound from which is even eerier and more discomfiting in the night than used to be that from the steam engines of an earlier day. Then midnight struck, and with the same odd acoustic effect as before.

Very unexpectedly, Charles Honeybath went to sleep after all.

Artists tell us – or at least some artists do – that painting absolutely anything is like performing the act of love. One’s subject may be a heap of turnips or a pair of old boots, but with these one is interfusing one’s own deepest being as one works. This is perhaps a highly coloured view of the matter, and one which chiefly reflects the curiously pan-sexual slant of our modern thinking. But be this as it may, it is certainly possible for a painter,
qua
painter, to fall in love at first sight. That Honeybath did so – of course in a loose and figurative sense – with the strange old creature Mr X proved to be must be held to account for the fact that, after all, he settled in with tolerable satisfaction to the assignment which had so bizarrely and uncomfortably come to him.