Death of a Ghost (2 page)

Campion eyed her contemplatively. ‘There's always a new Lafcadio story about this time of year,' he said. ‘Do you invent them?'

The old lady looked demurely at the handkerchief in her hand.

‘No,' she said. ‘But I sometimes improve on them – just a little.' She became suddenly alert. ‘Albert,' she said, ‘you haven't come here on business, have you? You don't think someone's going to steal the picture?'

‘I sincerely hope not,' he said in some alarm. ‘Unless, of course, that super-salesman Max is planning a sensation.'

‘Max!' said Mrs Lafcadio, and laughed. ‘Oh, my dear, I've had a sweet thought about him. His first book about Johnnie which came out after the Loan Collection in Moscow was lost was called
The Art of John Lafcadio, by one who knew him.
His eighth book on Johnnie came out yesterday. It's called
Max Fustian Looks at Art
–
a critical survey of the works of John Lafcadio by Europe's foremost critic.
'

‘Do you mind?' said Mr Campion.

‘Mind? Of course not. Johnnie would have loved it. It would have struck him as being funny. Besides, think of the compliment. Max made himself quite famous by just writing about Johnnie. I'm quite famous, just being Johnnie's wife. Poor dear Beatrice considers herself famous just being Johnnie's “Inspiration”, and my blessed Lisa, who cares less about it than any of us, really is famous as “Clytemnestra”, and “The Girl at the Pool”.' She sighed. ‘I think that probably pleases Johnnie more than anything.' She looked at her visitor with a half-apologetic grimace. ‘I always feel he's watching us from somewhere, you know.'

Mr Campion nodded gravely. ‘He had the quality of fame about him,' he said. ‘It's amazing how persistent it is. If I may say so, regarded from the vulgar standpoint of publicity, this remarkable will of his was a stroke of genius. I mean, what other artist in the world ever produced twelve new pictures ten years after his death and persuaded half London to come and see them one after the other for twelve years?'

Belle considered his remark gravely. ‘I suppose it was,' she agreed. ‘But you know, really Johnnie didn't think of it that way. I'm perfectly certain his one idea was to fire a Parthian shot at poor Charles Tanqueray. In a way,' she went on, ‘it was a sort of bet. Johnnie believed in his work and he guessed that it would boom just after his death and then go completely out of favour – as of course it did. But he realized that as it was really good it would be bound to be recognized again eventually and he guessed that ten years was about the time public opinion would take.'

‘It was a wonderful idea,' the young man repeated.

‘It wasn't in his will, you know,' said the old woman. ‘It was a letter. Didn't you ever see it? I've got it here in the desk'.

She rose with surprising agility and hurried across the room to a big serpentine escritoire, and after pulling out one untidy drawer after another, finally produced an envelope which she carried back in triumph to the fireplace. Mr Campion took the curio reverently and spread out a sheet of flimsy paper scribbled over in Lafcadio's beautiful hand.

The old lady stood beside him and peered over his shoulder. ‘He wrote it some time before he died,' she said. ‘He was always writing letters. Read it aloud. It makes me laugh.'

‘Belle darling,' read Mr Campion. ‘When you return a sorrowing widow from the Abbey, where ten thousand cretins will (I hope) be lamenting over some marble Valentine inscribed to their hero (don't let old Ffolliot do it – I will not be commemorated by nigger-bellied putti
or
uni-breasted angels) – when you return, I want you to read this and help me once again as you have ever done. That oaf Tanqueray, to whom I have just been talking, is, I discover, looking forward to my death – he has the advantage of me by ten years – to bask in a clear field, to vaunt his execrable taste and milk-pudding mind unhampered by comparison with me. Not that the man can't paint; we Academicians are as good as beach photographers any day of the week. It's the mind of the man, with his train of long-drawered village children, humanized dogs, and sailors lost at sea, that I deplore. I've told him that I'll outlive him if I have to die to do it, and it has occurred to me that there is a way of making him see the point of my remark for once.

‘In the cellar I shall leave twelve canvases, boxed and sealed. In with them is a letter to old Salmon, with full particulars. You are not to let them out of your hands for five years after the date of my death. Then I want them sent to Salmon as they are. He will unpack them and frame them. One at a time. They are all numbered. And on Show Sunday in the eleventh year after my death I want you to open up the studio, send round invitations as usual and show the first picture. And so on, for twelve years. Salmon will do all the dirty work, i.e. selling, etc. My stuff will probably have gained in value by that time, so you'll get the crowd out of mere curiosity. (Should I be forgotten, my dear, have the shows for my sake and attend them yourself.)

‘In any case old Tanqueray will have an extra twenty-two years of me hanging over his head, and if he outlives that, good luck to him.

‘Many people will try to persuade you to open the packages before the date appointed, urging that I was not of sound mind when I wrote this letter. You, who know that I have never been of sound mind in the accepted sense of the term, will know how to treat any such suggestion.

‘All my love, my dear. If you see a strange old lady not at all unlike the late Queen, God bless her, mingling with the guests on the first of these occasions – it will be my ghost in disguise. Treat it with the respect it will deserve.

‘Your husband, Madame,

‘John Lafcadio.

‘(Probably the greatest painter since Rembrandt.)'

Mr Campion refolded the letter. ‘Did you really see this for the first time when you returned from his funeral?' he demanded.

‘Oh dear me, no,' said Mrs Lafcadio, tucking the envelope back into the drawer. ‘I helped him write it. We sat up one night after Charles Tanqueray and the Meynells had been to dinner. He did all the rest, though. I mean, I never saw the pictures packed, and this letter was sent to me from the bank with the rest of his papers.'

‘And this is the eighth year a picture has been shown,' said Mr Campion.

She nodded, and for the first time a hint of sadness came into her faded brown eyes. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘And of course there were many things we couldn't foresee. Poor old Salmon died within three years of Johnnie, and some time later Max took over the Bond Street business from his executors. And as for Tanqueray, he barely lasted eighteen months longer than Johnnie.'

Mr Campion looked curious. ‘What sort of man was Tanqueray?' he said.

Mrs Lafcadio wrinkled her nose. ‘A clever man,' she said. ‘And his work sold more than anyone else's in the nineties. But he had no sense of humour at all. A literal-minded person and distressingly sentimental about children. I often think that Johnnie's work was unspoilt by the conventions of the period largely because he had a wholly unwarrantable dislike of children. Would you like to come down and see the picture? All's ready for the great day tomorrow.'

Mr Campion rose to his feet.

As she tucked her arm through his and they descended the staircase she looked up at him with a delightfully confidential smile.

‘It's like the mantelpiece in the Andersen story, isn't it?' she whispered. ‘We are the china figures. We come alive on one evening of the year. Tomorrow afternoon we shall retaste our former glory. I shall be the hostess, Donna Beatrice will supply the decorative note, and Lisa will wander about looking miserable, as she always did, poor creature. And then the guests will go, the picture will be sold – Liverpool Art Gallery this time, perhaps, my dear – and we shall all go to sleep again for another year.'

She sighed and stepped down on to the tiled floor of the hall a little wearily.

From where they stood they could see the half-glass door to the garden, in which stood the great studio which John Lafcadio had built in eighty-nine.

The door was open, and the famous view of the ‘master's chair', which was said to be visible to the incoming guest once he stepped inside the front door of the house, was very clear.

Belle raised her eyebrows. ‘A light?' she said, and added immediately, ‘Oh, of course, that's W. Tennyson Potter. You know him, don't you?'

Mr Campion hesitated. ‘I've heard of him and I've seen him at past Private Views, but I don't think I've ever actually met him,' he said.

‘Oh, well, then –' She drew him aside as she spoke, and lowered her voice, although there was not the remotest chance of her being overheard. ‘My dear, he's
difficult.
He lives in the garden with his wife – such a
sweet
little soul. I mean, Johnnie told them they could build a studio in the garden years ago when we first came here – he was sorry for the man – and so they did. Build a studio, I mean, and they've been here ever since. He's an artist; an engraver on red sandstone. He invented the process and of course it never caught on – the coarse screen block is so like it – and it blighted the poor man's life.' She paused for breath and then rushed on again in her soft voice which had never lost the excited tone of youth. ‘He's having a little show of his engravings, as he calls them – they're really lithographs – in a corner of the studio as usual. Max is angry about it, but Johnnie always let him have that show when an opportunity occurred, and so I've put my foot down.'

‘I can't imagine it,' said her escort.

A gleam came into Mrs Lafcadio's eyes. ‘Oh, but I have,' she said. ‘I told Max not to be greedy and to behave as though he was properly brought up. He needs his knuckles rapped occasionally.'

Campion laughed. ‘What did he do? Hurl himself at your feet in an agony of passionate self-reproach?'

Mrs Lafcadio smiled with a touch of the most innocent malice in the world.

‘
Isn't
he affected?' she said. ‘I'm afraid Johnnie would have made his life unbearable for him. He reminds me of my good grandmother; so covered with frills and furbelows that there's no way of telling where they leave off. As a child I wondered if they ever did, or if she was just purple bombasine all the way through. Well, here we are. It's a darling studio, isn't it?'

They had crossed the narrow draughty strip of covered way between the garden door of the house and the studio, and now entered the huge outside room in which John Lafcadio had worked and still entertained. Like most buildings of its kind, it was an unprepossessing structure from the outside, being largely composed of corrugated iron, but inside it still reflected a great deal of the magnificent personality of its owner.

It was a huge airy place with a polished floor, a glass roof, and two enormous fireplaces, one at either end. It was also bounded on the northern side by a low balcony, filled in below with cupboards composed of linenfold panelling rescued from a reconstructed farmhouse in the nineties. Above the balcony were five long windows, each about twelve feet high, through which was a magnificent view of the Regent's Canal. Behind the fireplace nearest the door was a model's room and lavatory, approached by a small archway at the extreme western corner below the balcony.

The skeleton of the room, which is always in evidence in a building of the kind, was far more massive than is usual and effectually removed the temporary air of church hall or army hut.

At the moment when Belle and Campion entered only one of the big hanging electric lamps was lit, so that the corners of the room were in shadow. There was no fire in the grate opposite the door, but the big old-fashioned stove in the other fireplace at the near end of the room was going and the place was warm and comforting after the chilly garden.

Out of the shadows the famous portrait of Lafcadio by Sargent loomed from its place of honour over the carved mantel.

Of heroic size, it had all the force, truth, and dignity of the painter's best work, but here was an unexpected element of swashbuckling which took the spectator some time to realize as a peculiarity of the sitter rather than of the artist. In his portrait John Lafcadio appeared a personage. Here was no paint-ennobled nonentity; rather the captured distinction of a man great in his time.

It is undeniably true, as many critics have pointed out, that he looked like a big brother of the Laughing Cavalier, even to the swagger. He was fifty when the portrait was painted, but there was very little grey in the dark red hair which galloped back from his forehead, and the contours of his face were youthful. He was smiling, his lips drawn back over very white teeth, and his moustache was the moustache of the Cavalier. His studio coat of white linen was unbuttoned and hung in a careless bravura of folds, and his quick dark eyes, although laughing, were arrogant. The picture has of course become almost hackneyed, and to describe it further would be superfluous.

Belle kissed her hand to it. She always did so, and her friends and acquaintances put the gesture down to affectation, sentimentality, or sweet wifely affection according to their several temperaments.

The picture of the moment, however, stood on an easel on the left of the fireplace, covered by a shawl.

Mr Campion had taken in all this before he realized that they were not alone in the room. Over in the corner by the stove a tall thin figure in shirt-sleeves was hovering before a dozen or so whitewood frames arranged on a curtain hung over the panelling of the balcony cupboards.

He turned as Mr Campion glanced at him, and the young man caught a glimpse of a thin red melancholy face whose wet pale eyes were set too close together above the pinched bridge of an enormous nose.

‘Mr Potter,' said Belle, ‘here's Mr Campion. You two know each other, don't you? I've brought him down to see the picture.'