Prelude to Terror (2 page)

“There’s nothing wrong with it. Come on, Veronica, time to leave.”

“But I’ve only been here twenty minutes.” She was half annoyed, half teasing. “Can’t you spare one of your devoted admirers just a few moments?” She picked out a book, which she had been eyeing, from the shelf behind his desk. Now she was serious. “Really, Colin, I do admire you. This, for instance.” She held up the book. It had been published ten years ago when he was twenty-nine and brash enough to think his ideas would dazzle the art world. A slight little volume, now out of print, but it had helped him get the job in Washington. He took it out of her grasp and replaced it on the shelf.

She was saying, “You could write so easily in Springs. You’d love the cottage. There’s a desk in the guest-room, and it has French windows and a terrace all of its own. Why don’t you come there in August? Plenty of swimming—your choice between the Atlantic and the Sound. Tennis, too. And, of course, the kind of people you’d love to meet.” She rattled off the well-known names of three painters, a writer, and two museum directors. “There are even people around who are rich, but filthy rich. The kind who buy paintings and need advice. So good for the Gallery’s business, don’t you think?”

He could only stare at her.

“That’s part of your job there—advising people on what to buy. Isn’t it?”

He turned on his heel. “This way,” he said.

“Colin—”

He had left the room. She followed slowly. By the time she reached the hall, he was at the front door with her handbag and package in one arm.

“Colin,” she said, “if you would only
try
August down on Long Island—”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s so cool in the evenings, quite unlike New York. And I promise you’ll be left alone—I won’t disturb you. I promise.”

He opened the front door. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye? Just like that.” She mustered a forgiving smile as she took the handbag. She ignored the parcel of food. “Darling, I’m sorry I arrived at the wrong time. Forgive me?”

So she hadn’t got his message. “You forgot something.” He thrust the paper bag into her arms, urging her over the threshold.

For a moment, soft sweetness vanished. The pretty mouth hardened, widened, with lips now spread in anger. “You—” She regained part control and quieted her rising voice. “You can give this to your lousy elevator boy.” She dropped the package at her feet. “There goes the hock,” she added, smiling normally once again.

He closed the door. She had got two things wrong: there was no elevator boy, lousy or otherwise; and the wine bottle, probably bolstered by a thick cushion of Brie, had given no sound of breaking. It would all have been comic, except for the ugly moment of fury. Medusa. In that brief instant, the mass of red ringlets had changed to snakes.

Depressed and angry, he made his way back to the living-room. He was already feeling a touch of guilt—it was the first time he could remember being actually rude to a woman. He had better keep Medusa in mind.

* * *

No more work on the article was possible. The phrases wouldn’t come, his train of thought disjointed. He tried cooling off in a shower, resisted the idea of going out for a late lunch—too heavy on the budget. Always that damned budget to think of. He’d have to get a full-time job: free-lance articles bolstering his part-time work at the Schofeld Gallery were barely enough to cover New York expenses. The Gallery carried prestige, of course. Its reputation was high, and his position there as adviser in acquisitions sounded impressive enough. He had been lucky to get it, even if it seemed only a temporary halt in his real career. My God, he thought as he opened a tin of sardines and poured himself some beer—it would be a heavy enough evening ahead at the Gallery with the cocktail party for Dali’s illustrations of Dante’s
Inferno
beginning at five—do museum directors never die? At present, they all seemed to be well under retirement age, and lusty. As the junior officers in the British Navy used to toast in their wardroom, “Here’s to a bloody war or a sickly season!”

He drank his beer with the first smile he had had on his face that day: partly because of the black humour of the junior officers’ toast, partly because of the amount of useless information that was picked up over the years and then suddenly surfaced at appropriate moments. He might be drifting along in his career, but his memory was still working. Even if he might not wish for bloody wars or sickly seasons, he had one firm desire—the one that had been with him for the last ten years. He couldn’t paint—he had tried that, and admitted his failure. But he did know something about artists, past and present. And what better job than getting their works, often buried in private collections, out into the public daylight? Not by force or thievery. Getting them out through the power of friendly persuasion. With, of course, strong guarantees for their safety and protection. No private collector was ever going to unlock his sweet treasures unless he could trust their temporary guardians. That’s where the cultural boys in the State Department had been useful during his nine years in Washington: their backing had influenced several very hard heads among some of the foreign art-gatherers. But in the last three years there had been a decline in government interest as exhibition costs mounted and inflation soared. Understandable, of course. Social services and defence made art a very poor relation. What was the lecture he had been given by that determined New York Congresswoman when he had faced her on one of the minor but inevitable House committees? Man could live on bread alone if need be, but he’d surely perish on a diet of frills. Her word, frills. So much for fine art and expanded knowledge. New York, New York, you’re a helluva town, where the debts pile up and the streets go down.

Now don’t get bitter, he warned himself. The Congresswoman was worried—pushed by a hundred thousand voters clamouring for bread alone, which included a TV set, petrol at cheap prices to give them some week-end driving, and all the other inalienable pleasures that accrued automatically at birth. So don’t get bitter. Besides, there were some important exhibitions being carefully nursed around the country. The big museums could still manage that. But it took a splash of a name like Tutankhamen, or the Mona Lisa, or the Venus de Milo, to catch public support. What about the great works of art that were never on view? Unknown, because they were hidden inside a castle, a mansion, a palace, a private collection perpetually closed. Their owners, of course, saw a virtue in this, a nobility of purpose. What was the phrase he had heard so often? “Preserving art for posterity...” Whose posterity? Theirs?

Cut that out, he warned himself for the third time, or else you’ll lose any friendly persuasion you once possessed. And it did succeed, sometimes—just often enough to keep alive your belief in human generosity. But even that phrase sounds too sarcastic. Preserve me from becoming the middle-aged grouch with a permanent sneer and jaundiced eye, he thought as he cleared up the kitchen: without beliefs and enthusiasms, our daily bread would turn to a diet of ashes. Now, why didn’t I tell that to the Congressperson?

* * *

All clear in the kitchen. Desk in the living-room put in order, ready for some more immortal passages of impassioned prose in the morning. Nothing more to be done here, in this empty apartment. Or should he forget about duty, and skip the party? The exhibition had been his idea originally, but Martin Carfield had taken it over, and a cocktail party had been tacked on. Max Seldov, who usually supported Colin, had backed down and decided that a party was in the Dali tradition. Old Schofeld, of course, thought anything that pleased their clients was good for art, as well as for the Gallery.

An empty apartment to match an empty life, he thought as he stood in the bedroom, peeling off his damp shirt, preparing for another shower, his eyes on Jennifer’s photograph. It stood on the chest of drawers, always there, always watching his moods with those teasing blue eyes and a smile just breaking on her lips. Her head was tilted slightly, as it used to be when she was listening to something preposterous, her smooth dark hair falling over her brow. In another moment, she would speak, saying something equally preposterous, and they’d both burst into laughter.

He had chosen this particular photograph of Jennifer to keep beside him, and blot out the memory of a face almost unrecognisable, cruelly smashed by a bullet in the side of the head. A late September afternoon, a small quiet street in Washington. A boy speeding on roller-skates. Jennifer walking far ahead. The boy—fifteen perhaps, one of the two witnesses said, maybe sixteen; thin and tall, all arms and legs—steadying himself with his two skates drawn parallel as he drew near Jennifer. “All too quick,” the nearer of the witnesses had said. “Only saw dark blue clothes and the hair. I thought he was going to veer around her, scare her, they do that, you know. I didn’t even see a gun until I heard the blast.” One shot, and the skater was flying on his way, down to the corner where the busier street began. And was lost. And never found.

Colin Grant touched the photograph. “You’re curing me,” he told it. He could now, objectively, almost coldly, let himself recall the witnesses’ accounts. The wound was healing, although the scar was permanent. Then he began dressing. He’d arrive at the Schofeld Gallery ahead of time, even if he walked the six blocks, choosing the shaded side of the street, from here to Madison Avenue. What else was there to do? Besides, Schofeld’s had air-conditioning.

As he waited for the elevator, he suddenly remembered, looked back quickly at his front door. The paper bag was gone. Now, who the hell—? The service man had been off duty since noon; the front elevator was automatic; the tenants opposite were away for the summer; the people next door had jobs that kept them absent until six o’clock. Ronnie—surely not. Yet who else? She’s telling me something, he thought angrily. She’s wiping out all reminders of a temper tantrum, and let’s forget today: it didn’t happen. My God, did that woman never get the message?

* * *

In spite of weather and late-afternoon traffic, he covered the six blocks in six minutes flat. His anger had receded. But he was still unaware of the thin middle-aged man, waiting near his apartment house, who had been hard pressed in keeping up with Grant’s stride. The stranger watched him disappear into Schofeld’s, made sure he stayed there, and then used the telephone in the bar-and-grill on the opposite side of Madison.

“He’s there.”

“Good,” said a woman’s voice, clear and decided. “Keep an eye on the place till five thirty. If he doesn’t leave by then, you can take off.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

An easy assignment, thought the thin man; it made little sense to him. Few of them did. Why waste money in making certain she’d find her quarry where she expected him to be? There could be no other explanation; and his agency would know nothing beyond his instructions and a good fee. He ordered a beer, took a table at the window, looked out at the street, and kept an eye on both his watch and Schofeld’s. Long ago he had given up speculating about women and their motives: one tenth on the surface, nine tenths below. He’d like to see this one, though. The cool decided voice had been concise in giving him ’phoned instructions that morning. She knew what she wanted, that girl.

By five thirty, the trickle of individual arrivals at Schofeld’s had thickened to people in batches. He scanned the latest group converging from their taxis: two portly gentlemen and one tall young man with long waved locks; three women—separate: one old; one around thirty; one early twenties, in gypsy-style dress. He placed his bet on Ms. Thirty, chic as all-get-out. It was the turban she wore, all wrapped around her head: couldn’t tell what her hair was like, or who she’d be without it concealed. Yes, she was his choice for a cool, determined voice.

Five thirty and two minutes over. Time to knock off. The thin man rose and paid, and vanished from the scene.

The Schofeld Gallery stretched far beyond what it seemed from the street. From a single shop-front, fifty years ago, it had expanded—once the Depression and the War were over—to double windows, a solitary picture displayed in each of them against a background of grey velvet. The tone was set before anyone ventured beyond the door: restraint, taste, privacy, and great expense.

Inside was a further study in greys, from silver carpeting to pale oyster walls, a combination that was carried up the wide staircase to each of the three floors above. “The pictures give the colour,” Maurice Schofeld had said. And modern technology had given excellent lighting and elaborate alarms against fire and burglary. He was a cautious Swiss, highly intelligent in art and skilful in business, and not entirely convinced that the machine age was perfect. So there were guards, one to every floor, trying to look merely part of the background. Today, Colin Grant noted, there were two additional guards inside the entrance. They, at least, seemed as cool as the air-conditioning. Everyone else was at boiling-point.

“Why the frenzy?” he asked Max Seldov, sombre in dark suit and tie, who managed the Gallery along with Martin Carfield. Schofeld himself, pushing eighty, now made only occasional appearances, although his pronouncements still came loud and clear from his hotel suite. Like Jove on Mount Olympus hurling his thunderbolts. “The pictures were all in place two days ago, the lighting was arranged yesterday, and—”

“That’s what we were worried about.” Seldov looked up the staircase at the second floor where the exhibition had been installed. “Martin thought that the Dalis should have more general lighting.”

“When I saw them in Venice, they were exhibited in the Doge’s Palace—down in the cellars, in a room that was as black as the Night Court itself. Keep the room fairly dark and the lights on the pictures.”

“Pinpoint them?”

“How else? They’re meant to scare you.”

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“So is Dante’s
Inferno
.”

Seldov was hurrying off, bound for the second floor and some last-moment agonising. He’d probably leave the lights the way Carfield had changed them. And where was Martin Carfield, smooth of face and manners? There he was, instructing the waiters on the subjects of drinks. (“Keep it down to one apiece, we don’t want champagne sloshed all over the carpet.”) Next, telling Miss Haskins to leave those flowers where they were, and why weren’t they white roses as ordered? After that, fussing over the invitation list with the girl (the prettiest one, naturally, with the sincere smile all primed to welcome) whom he was installing at the entrance-desk with two polite young men from the junior staff to make sure invitation cards were produced and collected. I’m the only man in the room, thought Grant, who isn’t in dark suit, dark tie. What the hell am I doing here, anyway? He edged away, but not quite in time. Or perhaps Carfield had had him in his sights all along.