Death of a Ghost (24 page)

‘Oh, dear,' said Mr Campion.

Belle laughed, but Linda, who had not spoken since Max left, regarded the young man thoughtfully. The old lady reseated herself.

‘Now I want a cup of tea,' she said. ‘Touch the bell, Linda child.'

Five minutes later, as they sat round sipping out of the famous crackleware cups mentioned in so many books of reminiscence, the sensation of calamity which had returned to Mr Campion as he came up the staircase burst into his fullest mind.

Max in the drawing-room, Max at a reception, or in the gallery, might be a ridiculous, over-exaggerated
poseur
; but there was another Max, a Max as yet unseen, but who, when reconstructed from the facts gathered about him, was certainly no person for a hot-headed old lady to offend.

Altogether, it was not a very comfortable meal. Belle was stimulated and frankly pleased with herself. Linda remained unaccountably silent. Donna Beatrice sulked in her room, refusing to appear, and Lisa hovered round the tea-tray, a gloomy, nerve-racked ghost.

Yet, the presence of John Lafcadio was still apparent. If he had been forgotten in the storm which had burst over his house, as soon as it had subsided he had returned to his former importance.

For the first time in his life Mr Campion was faintly irritated by that flamboyant, swashbuckling shade. Its presence conveyed an air of confidence and protection which was naturally not genuine. In spiritual dangers and mental pitfalls John Lafcadio's memory might be a tower of strength to his household, but in physical attack it was, of course, hardly so effective.

The appearance of Matt D'Urfey was a welcome diversion. He put his head round the door, a picture of mild reproach.

‘I've been hiding in your studio,' he said to Linda. ‘I didn't know you were all feeding. Is the conference over?'

‘My dear,' said Belle, fussing shamelessly, ‘come and sit down at once. Linda
dear
, you haven't looked after him.'

Looking at the newcomer, Mr Campion felt again a liking for this naïve, friendly spirit who regarded the world as an odd sort of party upon which he had dropped in by mistake.

He sat down by Linda and received the tea which Lisa handed him as his right, like a child or a puppy which has been overlooked and discovered just in time.

Even with his advent Linda did not become talkative. She sat looking into the fire, her elbow resting on her knee and her stubby painter's hand playing idly with her coarse, wild curls.

Suddenly she rose to her feet.

‘When you've finished eating, Matt,' she said, ‘come back to my studio. I want to talk to you.'

She took a cigarette from the box on the table, lit it, and went off to her room with a nod and a smile at Belle.

D'Urfey stayed until he had finished his repast, neither hurrying nor being deliberately slow, but when he had finished he returned his cup and plate politely to Lisa, smiled engagingly at Mrs Lafcadio and rose to his feet.

‘I've got to go and talk to Linda now,' he said, and went off.

Belle looked after him.

‘Just like Will Fitzsimmons before he made his name,' she said. ‘Success brought that man down to earth. He began thinking in terms of money and finally died of depression.'

Campion grimaced. ‘What an outlook for D'Urfey.'

The old lady shook her head.

‘I don't think so. Have you seen his work?'

‘Does Linda like him?'

‘Very much, I think.' Belle seemed complacent about the suggestion. ‘They'd have a very happy, untidy sort of existence together, which is after all the main thing. She would have been miserable with poor Dacre. Love so seldom means happiness.'

Mr Campion was still reflecting upon this facet of the tragedy when Linda reappeared.

She looked a little more dishevelled than usual and there was a note of underlying authority and purpose in her voice which Campion had not heard there before.

‘Albert,' she said, ‘I wonder if you'd mind coming upstairs for a moment.'

‘Anything wrong?'

‘Good heavens, no. Why should there be? I only want to show you some drawings.'

Her tone, although it was evidently intended to be so, was not particularly reassuring.

Belle nodded in response to Campion's unspoken question.

‘Run along, my dear,' she said. ‘I won't come with you. I've grown very tired of pictures. All painters' wives feel like that in the end.'

Linda led Campion up to her little studio where he had found her on the day of the reception. It was in much the same state of chaos now, and as he came into the room the recollection of Mrs Potter, briskly practical, came back vividly to his mind.

Matt D'Urfey was sitting on the window-sill, his hands in his pockets, the expression in his china-blue eyes that of the intelligent but detached spectator.

Linda turned to him.

‘I think I shall show him,' she said.

‘Very well,' said D'Urfey.

‘You think it's an idea, don't you?'

‘Yes, I think so.' In spite of his words, D'Urfey did not seem particularly convinced either way.

Campion's curiosity was whetted.

‘What's up?' he enquired.

Linda went to her famous cupboard, which was believed in the family to contain somewhere hidden in its depths everything which had ever been mislaid in the house, and produced a brown-paper parcel. She brought it to the table, swept aside a miscellaneous collection of paintbrushes, pots of paint, bottles of varnish, odd reels of cotton, and other debris, and proceeded to unpack it.

Campion looked over her shoulder.

What he saw was a careful pencil study of a woman's figure in a ragged blouse, a basket in her arms and a curious half-horrified, half-eager expression on her face. Apart from the fact that the model had clearly been Mrs Potter, he saw nothing unusual about it except that the draughtsmanship was exceptionally fine.

He looked up to find Linda peering at him.

‘Notice anything?' she enquired.

‘No,' said Mr Campion. ‘Not particularly, I mean. What is it? A study for an oil?'

Linda sighed, ‘Wait a minute.'

More rummaging in the cupboard produced an old number of
The Gallery.
She turned over the illustrated pages impatiently and finally pounced on the sheet she sought.

This was a full-page reproduction of an oil painting, showing the crowd round the Cross in modern dress. In the foreground was the completed figure from the sketch.

It did not take even Mr Campion, who was an amateur in these matters, long to decide that.

Linda turned the magazine round so that he could read the descriptive paragraph upon the opposite page:

‘We reproduce here the seventh of the Lafcadio pictures, unveiled in London in April last. This work, which is perhaps in some ways the most disappointing of the whole collection of posthumous pictures left by John Lafcadio, R.A., is nevertheless well up to the standard of that brilliant technician's later work. It has been purchased by the Warley Trust for the Easton Art Gallery and Museum.'

‘Now do you see what I mean?'

Mr Campion picked up the study.

‘Is this your grandfather's? I thought all his stuff was preserved somewhere.'

‘So it is,' said Linda. ‘Sit down. When I was in Rome this time I came back through Paris. I told you I hadn't been very successful in finding any of Tommy's stuff. Someone had been round before me and cleared off everything. But when I was in Paris for a few days it occurred to me that he might have given a sketch or two to old D'Épernon, who keeps a filthy little café in Montparnasse. I looked him up. He lets lodgings as well and Tommy used to take a room there whenever he came up from Rome.'

Mr Campion nodded to show that he was still attentive, and she hurried on.

‘D'Épernon hasn't got a thing, but the wineshop people over the way were more helpful and finally fished this out. Apparently they have a daughter whom Tommy used to flirt with. He gave her this sketch as a parting present. I bought it and brought it home. Now do you see what I'm driving at?'

Mr Campion had the uncomfortable sensation that he was being very stupid.

‘How did Dacre get hold of it in the first place?' he demanded. ‘Did you give it to him?'

Linda picked up the magazine.

‘You're not very intelligent,' she said. ‘Look here. This picture, grandfather's seventh posthumous exhibit, was solemnly unpacked at Salmon's Gallery just before Show Sunday last year. It wasn't supposed to have been touched or the original seals broken before that date. By that time Tommy had said good-bye to the wineshop girl for over six months and she herself was safely married and living in Aix with her husband, who's a baker or something. Her parents assured me that they'd had this sketch in the house for over eighteen months.'

‘Yes,' said Mr Campion, on whom the truth was slowly beginning to dawn. ‘Where is all this leading?'

‘You'll see,' said Linda grimly. ‘Look at the paper this sketch is drawn on.' She held it up to the light. ‘See the watermark? That's Whatman Fashion Surface, slightly rough. That paper wasn't manufactured until about seven years ago. I remember it coming out when I was a student.'

‘Which would argue,' put in D'Urfey from the windowsill, ‘that Daddy Lafcadio didn't make the drawing.'

Campion frowned.

‘You're sure Dacre couldn't have seen your grandfather's picture at some period before it was officially opened?'

‘And copied it, you mean? I don't think so. The pictures were kept in the cellar at Salmon's. Max made quite a fetish of them. He'd hardly let a student see them and no one else. Oh, Albert, don't you see what I'm driving at?'

Mr Campion regarded her mildly through his enormous spectacles.

‘You're suggesting, I suppose,' he said slowly, ‘that Dacre painted the picture?'

‘I'm not suggesting,' said Linda. ‘I'm telling you.'

Mr Campion rose slowly to his feet and stood looking out at the canal. His face was completely expressionless, and he appeared to be looking at something far away in the mist on the opposite bank.

‘If this is true,' he said at last, ‘it explains … well, quite a number of things.'

Linda shot an appraising glance at him and was clearly about to speak, but a second thought occurred to her and she stood fingering the drawing meditatively.

Mr Campion roused himself from his reverie.

‘It's rather a dangerous yarn, isn't it?' he said with an attempt at his old levity. ‘I mean I shouldn't go spreading it around. It might get you into a lot of trouble. There is probably some perfectly innocent explanation, anyway.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘But, my dear girl, how can you be sure?' Campion snapped the question intentionally. ‘I should keep very quiet about it if I were you.'

The girl regarded him coolly and he noticed, as one often notices irrelevant things in times of stress, that her eyes were quite green save for the little flecks of brown in them. She was really astoundingly like Lafcadio himself.

‘I should keep quiet … I have, for two or three weeks … if I didn't think the time had come to talk. You see, Albert, I'm as sure as anybody can be sure that the seventh picture, which the Warley Trust bought last year, was painted by Tommy, and I'm open to bet that if there are any Lafcadios left in the Salmon cellars, at least three of them were painted by Tommy, too.'

‘My dear girl, you mustn't make unfounded suggestions like this.'

Mr Campion was shocked.

Matt D'Urfey, who had given up listening to the conversation and had been pottering with some drawings of Linda's in a corner, now returned to it to some purpose.

‘Have you told him about Lisa?' he enquired.

Mr Campion spun round.

‘What are you two hiding?' he demanded. ‘Believe me, it's most dangerous at this stage.'

Linda looked up at him.

‘So you've guessed, too, have you?' she said. ‘I did, but not until this afternoon, and that's why I decided to talk to you. We don't want Max getting his teeth into Granny, do we?'

Her remark was so unexpected and echoed his own thoughts so completely that for a moment Mr Campion was silenced. Finally he took the girl by the arm.

‘What do you know about this business?' he said urgently. ‘What's this yarn about Lisa? That woman runs through this affair like a squib. You never know where she's going to explode next.'

‘Lisa's all right,' said the girl carelessly. ‘She's very simple, though. People don't seem to realize that. She doesn't think like ordinary people. She's never had occasion to. She was a complete peasant when she came here. I don't suppose she knew more than a hundred words in any language. She doesn't mean to be secretive. She just doesn't know what's important and what isn't. When I came back from Paris I got her up here one night and made her remember quite a lot of things. She told me something which explains everything. You see, Grandfather didn't leave twelve pictures; he left eight. Lisa knows because she helped him to seal them up.'

Mr Campion took off his spectacles and polished them. An enormous knot in the skein was unravelling before his eyes.

‘It was very difficult to get it out of her,' the girl went on. ‘It took endless questioning. But as far as I could gather this is what happened. The year before Grandfather died – that is, in nineteen eleven – Belle was very ill. She had rheumatic fever and when she recovered she went down to stay at San Remo with the Gillimotts. He was a poet and she painted. Funny nervy people, I believe. Belle was down there for about six months, and it was during that period that Grandfather packed up the pictures and put the whole scheme in order. So Belle saw some of the pictures and some she didn't. Mrs Potter had seen them, because she was hovering about as usual. Old Potter was away somewhere, teaching probably, in Scotland, and Lisa remained to look after the house. Grandfather was very secretive about the whole business. Everybody put that down to his age whereas, of course, the old boy had a perfectly sound reason for keeping it all so dark.'