The Mysterious Commission

by Michael Innes

  Mr X, of course, couldn’t survey this transformed scene. But it was obvious that he had been aware of each vehicle as it drove up. He was distracted, and so was Honeybath. Honeybath suddenly got a high-light grotesquely wrong. It was most confoundedly annoying.

  ‘Is there a board meeting?’ Mr X asked.

  Honeybath was startled. It wasn’t an expression which Mon Empereur could conceivably use of a council of war at which the Marshals of France gathered themselves deferentially around him. Moreover, Mr X’s voice had been a new voice. And it was evident that it alerted Peach at once.

  ‘He’s got it wrong, hasn’t he?’ Peach had jumped up and advanced upon Mr X in a disagreeable way. ‘He’d better quit that line, had he not?’

  ‘Sit down, sir.’ Mr X’s pallid countenance had amazingly taken on a faint flush. ‘Do you think I’m going to be spoken to in that way by a damned jumped-up clerk? Behave yourself, or a week’s wages will he the end of the matter. And you can whistle for the ghost of a reference from me. You’ll be tramping the streets on public assistance, or whatever the nonsense is called, within a month.’

  Honeybath would have relished this odd metamorphosis but for the fact that there was something brutal about it. Here was Mr X, for a change, in some character he had once really owned, and it didn’t suggest itself as at all estimable.

  ‘Now, come to your senses,’ Mr X said. He hesitated for a moment, almost as if dimly aware of the curious character of these words from his lips. ‘And answer me,’ he continued hectoringly. ‘Is it a board meeting?’

  ‘And what if it is?’ Peach showed signs of losing grip of the situation. ‘What has it got to do with you, you old lunatic? A pretty figure you’d cut at a high-level thing like that. Belt up, do you hear?’

  ‘Take me to it at once.’ Mr X was struggling, feebly and distressingly, in his chair. His voice had risen a pitch – as, indeed, Peach’s had done. ‘I’ll have you know I know my rights in this place. I’ll have you up before the Governor. I’ll let no bloody screw–’

  Quite suddenly, Mr X collapsed. He slumped, and a faint froth of spittle appeared on his lips. Honeybath was horrified – partly, perhaps, for the selfish reason that he didn’t want to find himself painting a corpse. And he saw that Peach, having recovered himself, was about to wheel his employer, patient, captive – impossible to define the relationship – from the room.

  ‘One moment,’ Honeybath said peremptorily. ‘Just what does this mean? Why is he talking about a Governor? What does he mean by a bloody screw? I insist–’

  ‘Only another of his fancies, Mr Honeybath. Another of the poor old gentleman’s imaginary lives, you might say. And a very distressing one – a very distressing one, indeed. Particularly embarrassing for the relations, sir – the family always having been so highly respectable, and lucky enough to keep clear of anything of the kind. I have very strict instructions about when it happens, Mr Honeybath. Immediate rest and quiet is what Mr X must have on these occasions. So you’ll be good enough to let me pass at once. I dare say he may be sufficiently recovered to continue the sittings this afternoon. Wonderfully resilient he is, isn’t he?’ Again this last question was addressed directly – but scarcely in an affectionate tone – to Mr X. Mr X, however, was not in a condition to offer an opinion on the matter. He appeared to be in some sort of coma. And Peach wheeled him out.

  Honeybath returned to his room. He was thoroughly upset himself, and ventured on a stiff whisky earlier in the day than usual. This might have been expected a little to lull his senses, but, in fact the effect was rather to the contrary. At least his hearing seemed to become oddly acute. Normally the great house in which he was all but immured was soundless to a point of inducing nervous distress. Now it seemed alive and breathing. He heard, or imagined he heard, purposive footfalls in long corridors, doors briskly opening and closing, voices, now and then a telephone bell, even the muted clatter of a typewriter. His solitary lunch turned up as usual, and at about the same time there was a distinguishable change in the bruit and rumour from below. The voices were louder for a time, as if among a large group of people animated talk was going on. There was a clink and rattle of cutlery and glass. The volume of sound increased. It hinted jollity, as if the wine had been going round at some informal buffet occasion. Then it ceased almost abruptly. The board – it came suddenly to Honeybath – had renewed its deliberations. Once more, there were only occasional footsteps, an opening or closing door.

  Half an hour later, he returned to his painting-room. He doubted whether Mr X would indeed be trundled in again that day, but there was still plenty he could do. In the background to the figure several small areas remained to be animated without being rendered too busy, or irritating the aerial perspective. He addressed himself to one of these, but was unable quite to trust his touch. He had developed, in fact, the ghost of an intention tremor, which is a disability not comfortable for an artist to contemplate. So he gave over, and prowled the room. He peered through the window. One of the parked cars was backing out; it swung clear and drove away.

  There were voices in the open air below. The party was breaking up. First one and then another figure appeared on the sweep; soon there were half a dozen or more, talking rather loudly to each other, or shouting hearty farewells. They appeared, on the whole, a burly but rather out-of-condition crowd; their heads were visible, bobbing above large circumferences of foreshortened bellies and buttocks. Honeybath could distinguish nothing of what was being said, but gained a sharp impression of the tones and accents employed. There were voices, among which he thought he distinguished Arbuthnot’s, luxuriating in the purities of the Queen’s English; but there were rather more voices in one degree or another unrefined. Vulgar voices, to put it broadly.

  What sort of people of that kind drove around in large cars and attended mysterious conclaves in congruously large country mansions? People who managed the affairs of important football clubs? Or who promoted prize-fights at world championship level? Or who ran gaming-houses, or revivalist religious rackets, or clip-joints (whatever clip-joints were), or call-girl services? Of any one of these numberless goings-on of human life Honeybath knew, if possible, less than of another. But he did know that these men were not Royal Academicians holding a soirée, or Professors of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture in conference. It didn’t even seem likely that they were the Confederation of British Industry or the Trades Union Congress intent upon marvellously mending the world. Fleetingly he wondered whether they were just plain crooks.

  That evening, life returned to normal. With his dinner Honeybath was sent up a bottle of Moët et Chandon, Dom Perignon, 1964, and Arbuthnot came in and took a glass of it with him towards the end of the meal. Mr X, Arbuthnot said, was now quite himself again; there had been a small family gathering in the middle of the day, and the sight of all his relations had quite set the old boy up. They were a very united family, Arbuthnot said. There was nothing of which they were more aware than that dissention simply doesn’t pay.

  7

  The portrait was completed. The brief moment had arrived – it always does – in which Honeybath saw his work for exactly what it was. The canvas by no means embodied that irradiated conception which had visited him halfway through. He was far – oh, so far! – from having achieved one of the great paintings of the world. Even so, he had never achieved anything like it before. His Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman would go into the histories and monographs as a signal instance of an accomplished academic painter’s transcending himself.

  But what was to happen to the thing? There was, of course, a sense in which its immediate fortunes didn’t matter. The likelihood of its perishing unregarded, of being tossed contemptuously on some scrapheap twenty or thirty years on, was mercifully small. His mere signature on the canvas, spelling a reasonable little heap of guineas (and just conceivably a large one) in any civilized future, was an adequate assurance of that. It would be pleasant, all the same, if its existence could be made known to
an informed public now. If no more than two or three eminent critics had a glimpse of it, that would be enough in itself to establish the fact that he had achieved a notable thing. Unfortunately, in view of the mania for secrecy these people had, it didn’t look as if anything of the kind could be managed.

  He was to leave after dinner, and on this final occasion there was again a bottle of champagne. Arbuthnot, however, didn’t turn up to share it. Honeybath had no great fondness for Arbuthnot, and in general would as soon have enjoyed his room as his company. On this occasion, however, he found himself disposed to feel that a courtesy had been neglected. It was as if he had done his job, and that was that, and he could clear out and not be heard of again. It was true that on his dinner-table there had appeared a small packet which proved to contain fifty-five £20 notes, so that he was now in possession of his entire two thousand guineas. This was mollifying – but he derived no great comfort from it, all the same. What was chiefly in his mind was that he might never again set eyes on the best thing he had ever done.

  The younger manservant carried his possessions to the lift. When he himself emerged on the ground floor the familiar chauffeur took charge of him, whisking him, as on that earlier occasion, straight into the limousine. They moved off at once. The briskness of this confused Honeybath’s feelings. He told himself that this was escape, and that he should be nothing other than thankful for it. Like the Thane of Cawdor’s guests, he was standing not on the order of his going, but going at once. He remembered the physician (also resident in Macbeth’s castle) who had remarked that, were he from Dunsinane away and clear, even the hardest cash would not take him back to the place. To this place he was pretty sure he would never willingly return himself. He felt an odd pang on parting from it, all the same. He was leaving his masterpiece behind him.

  It was already very dark. And the car was already stuffy. Several times during his immurement he had cast his mind back to his first journey, and he had convinced himself – incredible though it seemed – that some stupefying drug had been brought into play upon him. Perhaps it had been provided by the sinister Sister Agnes. As he hadn’t swallowed anything, or been conscious of the slightest prick or jab, it must, he supposed, have been an anaesthetic gas. He certainly wasn’t going to stand for anything of the kind this time. They hadn’t emerged from the drive – there seemed to be a notably long drive – before he had picked up the intercom affair and addressed the chauffeur in a tone of the sternest command.

  ‘I can’t stand this atmosphere, my man. And I don’t propose to put up with any of your damned air-conditioning, either. Be good enough simply to open one of these windows at once.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. You have only to mention it.’ The chauffeur was as smooth as his vehicle. He appeared to touch a button on the dashboard (which they no doubt called the control panel) and the window by Honeybath’s left ear shot down to its full extent. ‘Is that agreeable to you, sir?’

  ‘Excellent.’ The air now so freely admitted was soon going to prove uncommonly chilly, but Honeybath turned up his collar and was resolved to suffer it gladly. He would at least stay awake. So, even if he could make little of their route, he would be able to reckon just how long the journey took, and remark eventually from what direction they entered London. In a way, he oughtn’t to be caring a damn. So long as he was returned to Chelsea (and not dumped into the Thames) the affair would be ending reasonably enough. But he was a little on his mettle. It would be satisfactory to collect at least one trick.

  They drove for a surprisingly long time, and entirely through rural solitudes. A good deal of careful planning, Honeybath thought, must have gone to finding a seemingly endless succession of country roads which didn’t traverse so much as a single identifiable hamlet. They covered at least fifty miles that way. And fifty miles represents a considerable stretch of territory in tight little England.

  Something was happening to the engine. It was misfiring in a manner not at all pardonable in a car of this kind. The car began to move jerkily; to lose momentum and then pick up again. There was something wrong with the ignition, or with the feed. Suddenly all the lights went out, and Honeybath thought he could actually hear the chauffeur swear loudly as he abruptly drew to a halt. Then there was the swaying light of an electric torch, and the man had opened a door and was getting out. He came at once to Honeybath’s open window.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I’m afraid it’s the alternator. It’s quite shocking, the way even high-class cars are turned out of British factories these days. What kind of a foreign market can they expect?’

  ‘What kind, indeed.’ Honeybath didn’t much mind about this. The whole wide world was already abominably over-crammed with cars. But he did feel impatient. ‘Can you fix it yourself?’

  ‘Oh, yes. No difficulty, sir, about a temporary repair. But it may take the best part of a quarter of an hour. Very sorry, sir – but that’s how it is. Would you care for the rug, sir? A chilly night.’

  Honeybath accepted the rug. He was a little assuaged by this ready solicitude. The chauffeur raised the bonnet of the car, and together with the torch more or less disappeared beneath it. There were tinkering sounds. Quite a long time passed. Honeybath fidgeted. Eventually the man reappeared.

  ‘The alignment’s been faulty from the start, sir, if you ask me. It’s bound to take a bit longer than I reckoned. If another car came by, I think I’d have them take a message to the nearest garage. It could probably provide a car to run you into town. I’ve no doubt it’s what Mr Arbuthnot would desire. He would be most upset at your being put to this inconvenience.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Rather wildly, Honeybath reflected that, once safely in a hired vehicle, he would be secure against even that remote possibility of being chucked into a river. ‘Wasn’t that something like a main road that we shot across a quarter of a mile back?’

  ‘Yes, sir – and quite a lot of traffic. I wonder whether you would care to walk back yourself, and hail something. You’d have the authority, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘I think I will.’ Honeybath was gratified at having authority attributed to him. He was even more gratified by the mere blind thought of getting away.

  ‘I have a second torch, sir. So you needn’t be blundering in the dark.’ The chauffeur dived into his own part of the interior, and the second torch was produced. ‘Stretch your legs, anyway,’ he said benevolently.

  So Honeybath set out. He hadn’t walked fifty yards before being cheered by a flash of headlamps somewhere ahead of him. He could certainly stop a car. People were very decent, on the whole, about that sort of thing.

  He became aware of a sound behind him. There must be another car approaching from that direction too. But the sound didn’t increase. It rapidly faded. He turned round. Mr Arbuthnot’s car and Mr Arbuthnot’s chauffeur, together with the personal and professional effects of Charles Honeybath RA, were vanishing into distance, swallowed up by the night.

  PART TWO

  KEYBIRD INVESTIGATES

  8

  Honeybath decided to contact the police. It wasn’t a necessary decision; it mayn’t even have been a wise one. He was in no sense badly stuck or stranded. There really was a main road close by; and anybody prepared to stop and take him to a police station would presumably have been equally willing to take him to a garage. He had money in his pocket (an embarrassingly large amount of it, although he didn’t think of this), and in no time he could have hired himself a Rolls Royce had he a mind to it. The truth is that he chose to search out the local police because he was feeling uncommonly vindictive.

  He had been dismissed from his recent employment, it appeared to him, with precisely the equivalent of a mocking guffaw and a contemptuous kick in the pants. He told himself (but he was wrong in this) that there was no reason at all why those people, without the slightest risk to themselves, should not have returned him to his studio exactly as they had brought him away from it. Playing this final trick on him was a gratui
tous impertinence. The fact that they had handed him the balance of his promised fee, when they could perfectly well have cheated him of it, was a consideration which somehow merely added to his sense of insult. He waved quite furiously at one or two disregarding and obviously unsuitable vehicles.

  And then a police car actually came along. It wasn’t an imposing affair; in fact it was no more than a small dun-coloured van. But it did have on its roof one of those reassuring revolving blue lights. It drew to a halt at once upon Honeybath’s waving at it.

  ‘Yes, sir. Can I be of any help to you?’ The constable at the wheel was reassuring too. Spend a fortnight in irregular and outrageous captivity, and any policeman will probably strike you like that.

  ‘I want to be taken to the nearest police station. I have something serious to report. Is it far away?’

  ‘Only a couple of miles, sir, and I’m on the way there now.’ The constable politely opened a door, saw Honeybath seated beside him, and drove on. ‘Becoming quite chilly,’ he said. He didn’t seem particularly impressed or curious.

  ‘It’s to be expected at this time of year.’ Honeybath had decided against immediately pouring out his story to this rather stolid-seeming officer. Come to think of it, it was rather an odd and complex story – if indeed it was a story at all. What you reported to the police were burglaries, assaults, public nuisances, stolen cars, missing persons. Honeybath didn’t really have anything in these categories to complain about. Nothing at all had really happened to him – he suddenly saw – that the law would be prepared to take an interest in. He was making a fool of himself. And his only grievance was that he himself had lately been made a fool of.