Honeybath's Haven (19 page)

The telephone directory made manifest the fact that Mrs Gutermann-Seuss, at least, was the figment of nobody's imagination, and a preliminary reconnaissance established her abode as an enormous mansion occupying an elevated situation on the Marine Parade. Had it not presented, as it decidedly did, a somewhat run-down appearance, the inescapable inference would have been that its proprietor was in the enjoyment of affluence. Honeybath took a turn along the front to think things over, and then returned and rang the bell. The bell failed to function, so he knocked on the door. After a pause he banged very loudly, and this not wholly civil behaviour yielded results. There was a slithering sound as of ill-fitting slippers on a tiled floor, the door opened, and there was revealed an elderly woman who appeared to be having trouble with her hair. Although it was mid-afternoon, she was dressed in what Honeybath thought of as a kimono, so that it was to be feared that he had disturbed her during a period of repose.

‘Good afternoon,' Honeybath said politely. ‘Mrs Gutermann-Seuss?'

‘Nothing today, thank you.' The woman said this vaguely and quite inoffensively.

‘I must apologize for disturbing you. My name is Honeybath…'

‘I never encourage beggars.' This also came without animus, but so promptly that Honeybath's name might have been taken instantly to reveal him as some mendicant notorious along the whole south coast of England.

‘…and I have called,' Honeybath continued rather desperately, ‘to inquire about certain pictures.'

‘Pictures?' The expression of Mrs Gutermann-Seuss was quite blank, as if the class of objects thus denominated were wholly unknown to her. ‘Would you care to come in?' she asked unexpectedly, and stood back from the door. As she did so a shrill whistle made itself heard somewhere in the depths of the house: momentarily low, and then rising to a pitch as of desertion and despair. ‘The kettle,' Mrs Gutermann-Seuss said. ‘You'll have to wait.' And she disappeared first into half-light and then into a near-darkness in which her entire establishment seemed to repose.

Honeybath found himself in a large hall. It was hung with pictures frame to frame and reaching to the ceiling; most of the floor-space was invisible beneath huddled furniture and piled bric-a-brac over which spiders had spun their webs for many a year. A handsome staircase, however, was comparatively unencumbered, and was hung with a rising tier of photographs, all the portraits of male persons, and all inscribed with greetings and signatures in the manner particularly favoured by the theatrical classes. These, however, were not actors, and Honeybath advanced and inspected them cautiously.
Cordially, Andrew Mellon,
he read
. Yours, Samuel H Cress… H H Huntington, California… Frick… Adam Verver, American City… With kind regards, B Berenson… Gratefully, Joseph Duveen.
Everybody who had ever bought anything (or flogged anything) in a sufficiently big way was here. There could be no doubt of the standing at least of the original Mr Gutermann-Seuss. But who was the lady who now bore his name?

She proved to be his grandson's widow – and stranded amid all these proliferations of abandoned art (the bad buys and failed baits, one had to suppose) to her own complete bewilderment. There could never have been woman more totally without instinct for or interest in the deliverances of art than the present Mrs Gutermann-Seuss. She gave Honeybath tea (that was what the kettle had been for) and was perfectly willing to talk.

‘Do you know a man called Ambrose Prout?' Honeybath asked baldly.

‘Mr Prout? Oh, yes. He comes and goes.'

‘On business?'

‘He takes one thing or another. And leaves this or that.'

‘
Leaves
this or that?'

‘He buys pictures or not pictures but perhaps something else of one sort or another sort. In Brighton or perhaps not in Brighton but round about. And stores them with me for a time. Just tucks them away in one corner or another. On top of this or under that, perhaps.'

‘And does he buy things from you too?'

‘Oh, yes. Pictures, mostly. There are a great many, you know. Some in one room and some in another. And in the cellars.'

‘I see. May I ask if he pays you in cash, Mrs Gutermann-Seuss?'

‘Yes. He seems to like cash. I quite like it too. It's handy in one way and another.'

‘Do you sign receipts for him?'

‘Receipts?' It appeared to be with difficulty that Mrs Gutermann-Seuss identified the nature of these instruments in her mind. ‘Yes, receipts. Or things like that. I don't much look at them, I suppose. There's nothing of any importance left in this house, you see. I was told that, or something like that, years and years ago. But it's quite comfortable. They say the roof leaks. But that's four floors up – or is it five? I don't go to look, so it doesn't bother me. Will you have another cup of tea? Or a rock bun? I haven't brought the rock buns. But I think I have some put away somewhere.'

Honeybath declined rock buns but accepted a second cup of tea, which at least gave him time to look around him. But the notion of conducting any search of the place was wholly out of the question. If Prout had tucked away another early Lightfoot or two amid this vast jungle of junk he alone could find them again. Short of an army of qualified persons, the situation was just that. In fact Prout's discovery of Mrs Gutermann-Seuss was an astounding instance of serendipity. And his exploitation of it amounted to genius. Honeybath presently took his leave (Mrs Gutermann-Seuss having proved completely incurious about the object of his visit), and retired to the comforts of his hotel. He had at least exchanged doubt for certainty in the matters of nefarious activity on the part of poor Edwin's brother-in-law.

Over his
apéritif
that evening – this time reassuringly consumed among persons of the polite or quasi-polite class – a useful, if fragmentary, perception came to him. What had been the immediate occasion of Edwin's suddenly breaking off their Italian holiday and insisting on returning to England? Considering this question earlier, he had taken the reason to have been simply the general upsettingness of Melissa's turning up on them in that restaurant in Rome. But now he recalled that Edwin had said something very explicit as the taxi took them back to their hotel. He was going back to Hanwell Court, he had declared, in order ‘to clear things up there'. And he certainly hadn't employed this phrase in the sense of ‘to tidy up' – perhaps before quitting the place. He had been envisaging something much more significant than that. He had been intending to
elucidate
something. Just what, Honeybath now had to elucidate himself. So what had occurred at that meeting with Melissa that could have set Edwin's mind in this direction? Suddenly Honeybath knew the answer. It had been Melissa's announcement that Prout was now claiming to possess no less than three of those hypothetical lost early Lightfoots. That, somehow, had been too much for Edwin. It was this situation that he had said he was going to clear up. And ithad been at Hanwell Court that he proposed to do it. He had returned there. And within a very short space of days he was dead.

All in all – Honeybath told himself with a strange mingling of satisfaction, horror and dismay – things were looking bad for Ambrose Prout.

 

 

 

He paid a call on Prout. It was perhaps an odd way of distinguishing one whom he was beginning seriously to suspect of homicide, and at first he had favoured the alternative plan of going to see the exalted Adamson at the London Metropolitan Police Office instead. Honeybath knew enough about the organization of the constabulary in the British Isles to be aware that a certain improbability had attended the prompt turning up of such a person in the wilds of Berkshire so hard upon Edwin's death. Adamson was almost part ofthe mystery – which was something dead against the canons of the
roman policier
affair now thickening around Charles Honeybath RA. And as Adamson certainly couldn't be said to have taken Honeybath into his confidence, Honeybath hesitated, perhaps somewhat irrationally, before making any corresponding movement himself.

Quite aside from this, moreover, it was only fair that Edwin's brother-in-law should be taxed (or at least tested) in a private manner before being denounced to the police. Honeybath felt this to be the civilized thing, even if the situation were to turn into an unusual one. After breakfast – he resolved as he prepared that simple meal for himself – he would go straight to Prout's flat. If he arrived early enough, he would almost certainly find its owner in.

There can be no doubt that he was also hoping to find something else as well. The problem of Edwin's lost paintings was still predominating in his mind even over the problem of Edwin's death. Nothing could really be
done
about Edwin's death, apart from giving Nemesis a nudge and setting her to work. He knew that ultimately there was going to be no more than a flawed satisfaction obtainable from that. He suspected that it would be more flawed under the present law of the land. It must have been very shocking to have been responsible for having a man hanged. But being aware of having sent to prison a man who was still there after twenty years would conceivably be worse.

About the pictures something
could
be done. If they existed (as he now believed them to do) they could be recovered from fraudulent hands, specious representations, perhaps clandestine or semi-clandestine sale. That would be a real service to Edwin's memory.

More simply, Honeybath just longed to see more of Edwin's work from the grand time. And it seemed probable that, if he was forceful enough, he could compel Prout to produce it. He didn't now think out a plan of campaign in any detail. He would act as the spirit prompted when the moment came. Only he wouldn't come away baffled. There had been quite enough of bafflement already in this affair.

Prout was a bachelor, and answered his own bell. He said, ‘Ah, Charles – good morning!' in a commonplace way before immediately standing back to let Honeybath enter. He was wary but couldn't have been called nervous. If he and Dr Michaelis were partners in crime, then it was he who would prove the tough one. He owned, for one thing, a dogged acquisitiveness, an immense cupidity. If he had possessed himself of certain objects worth a great deal of money, he would hold on to them with a grip as strong as a badger's jaw.

‘I've seen Mrs Gutermann-Seuss,' Honeybath said.

‘Capital! Do sit down, my dear Charles.' Prout had perhaps drawn a long breath. ‘Can I make you some coffee?'

‘Thank you, no. She seems a very simple woman.'

‘She's certainly not a very effective one. It was the first Gutermann-Seuss who was the swell, you know. Quite at the top of his tree. Do you know Verver's
The Spoils of Darius
? A wonderfully revealing account of collector's mania in the great age. And there's an amusing account of Verver's making a trip to Brighton to relieve Gutermann-Seuss the First of some Oriental tiles. Gutermann-Seuss the Second carried on successfully for a time – as his having done a little business with poor Edwin shows. But he took to drink and the business began to go to pot. Gutermann-Seuss the Third was wholly incompetent even when dead sober. His widow may be described as quite bright in comparison with him. Disreputable dealers – pure jackals – moved in, and cleared out for a song anything worth taking. Or so they thought. But they missed those Lightfoots.'

‘And you did not. You bought them? Or did you just offer to take them away?'

‘Of course I bought them – and for quite respectable sums. Would you care to see the receipts?'

‘No. But I'd like to see the pictures themselves, please.'

‘Ah.'

Honeybath waited. The monosyllable, he thought, had betrayed indecision. He rather expected Prout to say something like, ‘They've all gone to be cleaned'. But this didn't happen.

‘You can see the zinnias,' he said briefly. ‘It's the only one here. Come this way.'

Honeybath followed Prout into another room. And there the picture was. It was quite small, a bunch of flowers in a Chinese pot. It stood perched against a pile of books on a table, and in rather a poor light. But there could be no doubt about it – none whatever. Honeybath was very much moved. He didn't fail, however, to go close up to it at once and peer at the bottom left-hand corner. As always with Edwin, it was signed and meticulously dated. The date was right too.

Honeybath stood back a little, and took his time. It was an important moment. It would be fair to say, after all, that he probably had a surer instinct for Edwin's work than anybody else in the world. He wasn't looking at a forgery.

‘Very pretty,' he said. ‘Are the others all as small as this? You could carry it away in a brief-case.'

‘Lord, no! You can call this the mere
hors d'oeuvre
, my dear Charles. The others are major compositions. You'll see them one day.'

‘No doubt.' Honeybath judged that there had been a faint impudence in this last throwaway remark. ‘There were major pictures by Edwin Lightfoot tucked out of sight among all the junk in that Brighton house? And you nosed them out?'

‘Just that. I was tremendously excited, as you can guess. Never such a moment there since the good Adam Verver of American City found his doubtless priceless tiles. It's almost time for a drink.'

‘It's nothing of the sort.' Honeybath looked at the picture again, vaguely troubled. Had he ever seen it before? The mere history of his close relationship with Edwin suggested that this was possible. But could he have forgotten it? This was not possible – or so he told himself. Yet his memory had faintly stirred. ‘We'll go back to your other room,' he said abruptly, and turned away.

It was Honeybath who had a moment of indecision now. As well as having no doubt about the zinnias, he had no doubt about Mrs Gutermann-Seuss either. Neither this picture nor the others had ever reposed amid the forlorn detritus of the arts over which she unregardingly presided in that dismal Brighton house. She could be forgotten about, or forgotten about unless and until some legal row blew up about the just proprietorship of the rediscovered pictures. When that happened it might all be mixed up with a sensational murder trial. And the grim business of Edwin's death was now the next item on the carpet with Edwin's scoundrelly brother-in-law.