by Simon Brett
‘You Jezebel!’ she cried, showing a depth of biblical reference that spoke rather well for the education supplied at St Wilhelmina’s Convent.
Twinks shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘I’m not going to apologize, Dimpsy, because I haven’t done anything.’
‘No? You have deliberately set your cap at my man!’
‘I can assure you that if I ever were to “set my cap” at any man – an eventuality that I regard as extremely unlikely – it would be at something with rather more “bottom” than this specimen.’ At times Twinks could sound amazingly like her mother, the Dowager Duchess.
She looked down with pity at Gaston Tacquelle, who gazed up at her in adoration.
At that moment the outside door opened and there irrupted into Bistrot Julien another small angry Frenchman in beret and paint-spattered overalls. To his lip too was fixed a tyre-burning cigarette. He pinioned Gaston Tacquelle with an eye that ripped into him like an auger. ‘Salaud!’ he hissed.
‘Hello,’ said Blotto, really getting into the swing of things now.
Dimpsy Wickett-Coote stepped across to the newcomer and pressed her magnificent body against him. ‘Eugène,’ she purred. ‘You may have all that you have ever desired! I will be completely yours!’
‘You mean, ma petite cochonette,’ the man asked, ‘that you will sit for me in the mornings as well as the afternoons?’
‘Of course I will! That way you will have a much better chance of finishing your chef d’oeuvre! And I will be immortalized in a painting by the greatest of the Triangulistes!’
‘Eugène Blocque – “the greatest of the Triangulistes”?’ Gaston Tacquelle spat out the words in a fusillade of spit and contempt. ‘C’est affreux, c’est ridicule! The only Trianguliste who will be venerated by posterity will be Gaston Tacquelle!’
Eugène Blocque gave one of those shrugs of contempt involving his whole face that only the French can do. (Blotto subsequently spent many hours trying to perfect it in front of his shaving mirror before concluding that Englishmen’s lips weren’t built the right way. Not that that worried him, of course. There were so many other benefits to being English.)
‘I will be venerated,’ cried Eugène Blocque, ‘because I will have painted the definitive Trianguliste depiction of the most beautiful woman in the world! Dimpsy Wickett-Coote!’
He turned to face the object of his adoration, but in doing so he found Twinks in his eye line. ‘Sacré bleu,’ he murmured. ‘What a fool I have been – quel idiot! For so long I have believed that Dimpsy is the most beautiful – la plus belle du monde – but up until now I have been blind. Until this moment I had not seen you, ma cherie! What is your name?’
It was entirely possible that Twinks might have answered his question, had not Gaston Tacquelle, by now mad with jealousy, hurled himself at his rival, uttering what Blotto thought must be ‘ghastly imprecations’ (ghastly imprecations are recognizable in most languages).
Eugène Blocque came back with some ghastly imprecations of his own and within seconds the two painters were scrabbling on the floor, exchanging fisticuffs. Soon their shouted oaths gave way to coughing so violent that it seemed unlikely either of them would ever complete his chef d’oeuvre.
Suddenly the bistrot’s front door again burst open to admit, muffled up in a tweed Ulster coat and scarf, the Marquis of Bluntleigh.
The moment he saw Twinks, he dropped down on one knee and declared, ‘I have followed you all the way from England, Twinks. It is impossible for me to live without you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world!’
Twinks did not even acknowledge his presence. Taking an astonished Dimpsy Wickett-Coote by the hand, and saying, ‘There are things we need to talk about, my girl,’ she led her out into the Parisian murk. The shabby door clattered shut behind them.
Buzzer Bluntleigh looked with puzzlement at the grappling Triangulistes on the floor, then turned a bemused eye on Blotto.
‘Strange beasts, women, aren’t they?’ he said and received a nod of sympathy. ‘I thought I’d got the plan to end all plans – chasing your sister all the way over to Paris and then telling her she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Wheeze had to be a copper-bottomed winner with the rest nowhere. And then the filly just walks out on me. I don’t think I’m probably the first man to have aired the question, but what do women want? I mean, do you think there’s anything else I could have done?’ asked the Marquis in desperation.
‘You could have tried coughing,’ said Blotto.
7
La Rive Gauche
‘Oh, it’s all guff and toffee,’ said Twinks impatiently. ‘I didn’t pongle over to Paris simply to be squabbled over by amorous swains. I’m here to find the stenchers who snaffled the Tawcester Towers’ Gainsborough and Reynolds.’
She looked moodily out from the high windows in their suite at the Hotel de Crillon on to a frosty Place de la Concorde. French people, lagged in coats and scarves, hurried on their way to do whatever it was that French people did.
It was rarely that Blotto saw his sister in a bad mood. Like his, the needle of her barometer was set permanently to ‘Sunny’. But the events of that morning had been enough to put lumps in anyone’s custard.
They had risen early, leaving the Hôtel de Crillon before breakfast. From past experience they both knew that nothing sharpened the appetite like a confrontation with a couple of malefactors.
They had taken a horse-drawn cab. (A number of these still existed in Paris, catering quaintly for the tourist trade.) And Twinks had given very specific instructions to the driver. First to La Rue des Folies-de-Grandeur in the Cinquième Arrondissement, and from there to La Place Biscuit de Garibaldi.
As they got out of the cab, excitement sparkled in the eyes of both siblings. This was the bit of every investigation that they really enjoyed – coming face to face with the perpetrators. Granted, in this particular case their journey had been fairly straightforward, but that didn’t mean that the next few moments would be pure creamy éclair.
It didn’t take long for their hopes to be dashed. The moment they approached the east side of Les Appartements Clichy, they saw that the doors and windows of their target had been boarded up.
The birds – the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt or whoever they really were – had flown.
That was the reason why a testy silence had hung between Blotto and Twinks as the cab clip-clopped back to the Hôtel de Crillon. And why Twinks was more irritated than she normally might have been by the excess of masculine attention that she had encountered in Le Bistrot Julien the previous evening.
Her brother tried to calm her, taking on the voice that he used when his hunter Mephistopheles had been disturbed by a pheasant breaking cover. ‘Look, you ought to know the runner and riders by now, Twinks me old shoe-tree. Every time you waft into a room anywhere, some poor trumble’s going to fall for you like a guardsman in a heat-wave. You should be used to it. It’s just part of the job of being Twinks. Surely the penny’s gone in the slot for that one by now?’
‘Well, it’s a real stye in the eye.’ His sister moved disconsolately to the window. ‘And I don’t like the threat it poses to my friendship with Dimpsy.’
‘Why does it pose a threat, me old jar of mint sauce? All you have to do is ignore the amorous swains. Let them moon and mawk as much as they want to – just don’t take any notice. And, come on, this Blocque and Tacquelle circus act are hardly our sort of boddos. No reason why you should ever see either of them again.’
‘But I have to see them again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they are my entrée.’
A furrow appeared in Blotto’s patrician brow. ‘You’re going to eat them?’
‘No, bro. Blocque and Tacquelle are my entrée to the Parisian art world.’
‘Ah. Thinking of buying a painting, are you, Twinks?’
‘No, but in the art world there will not only be painters, but also another kind of person …?�
��
She let the implication dangle for him. ‘People to clean their brushes?’ suggested Blotto.
‘Not them. I refer to art thieves.’
‘Ah.’
‘To find the art thieves in the art world, one must first infiltrate that art world.’
‘And how do you propose doing that, Twinks me old library steps?’
‘It is simple. I will take over Dimpsy’s role as a model for Blocque and Tacquelle.’
Blotto was shocked. ‘What, in the … um …? Without any …? You know, I mean, not wearing any …? Because I’m not sure the old mater would—’
His sister overrode him. ‘Usually an artist’s model justifies taking her clothes off “in the cause of art”. I will be doing it for an even greater purpose. I will be doing it “in the cause of investigation”!’
Blotto’s sense of impropriety evaporated. ‘Oh well, in that case, fair biddles to you.’
‘I am having my first session this afternoon with Eugène Blocque. Dimpsy always did her afternoons with him.’
‘Good ticket.’
‘And then tomorrow morning I will be modelling for Gaston Tacquelle.’
‘Hoopee-doopee, Twinks. So it will be your jolly old body that will be remembered by posterity as the crowning achievement of the Trianguliste Movement?’
A shrug of the slender shoulders dismissed the importance of such a thought. ‘My only reason for doing it, Blotters, is so that I can track down the two stolen Ruperts.’
‘Yes, of course. On the same page with you about that. Erm … one thing?’
‘What, Blotto?’
‘Well, your taking over the modelling duties for Blocque and Tacquelle is all tickey-tockey, I’m sure, but isn’t Dimpsy going to be absolutely fumacious about it? I mean, yesterday she was being told she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and suddenly you’ve got that billet and she’s cast out among the also-rans and uglies. From what I’ve heard, women don’t take kindly to a return to the ranks.’
‘Dimpsy may be upset at the moment,’ said his sister judiciously, ‘but I have devised a way of chewing that particular rusk.’
‘Beezer. I knew you would have.’
‘It involves you, Blotto.’
‘Good ticket, Twinks!’ Her words cheered him. He’d been rather worried about being left out of the investigation. He couldn’t envisage much of a role for himself sitting in Blocque and Tacquelle’s draughty studios watching his sister being transformed into triangles. It would be embarrassing, apart from anything else … if Twinks hadn’t got any … oh, biscuits, thought Blotto.
But what his sister said next wasn’t quite such creamy éclair. ‘Dimpsy will only feel put out if she does not have an amorous swain on hand. And, as you can’t have helped twigging last night, she very much likes the look of you, Blotto …’
Oh, broken biscuits, he thought. ‘But, Twinks me old coal-scuttle, I can’t—’
Remonstrance, as he knew it would be, was vain. His sister had planned everything. And, for his sister’s plan to work, he had at least to pretend romantic interest in Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. What a gluepot! She was a tasty enough joint of womanflesh, but all the same …
He had hardly found his feet after this first assault on his equilibrium, when he was hit by another. ‘Then, Blotto, there is also the matter of the Marquis of Bluntleigh.’
‘Old Buzzer?’
‘Yes. His arrival in Paris is most inconvenient. Having him around, panting like a pop-eyed lapdog, is just the sort of thing to hobble my investigation.’
‘Our investigation.’
‘Yes, our investigation, of course, Blotto. We are in this together …’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’
‘… and you have a vital role to play in the next stage of that investigation.’ He beamed his gratitude. ‘Because what I want you to do, Blotto, is to head Buzzer off at the pass.’
‘Sorry, not reading your semaphore?’
‘I want you to keep the Marquis of Bluntleigh entertained.’
Visions of a repeat of his unwelcome duty at Tawcester Towers rose ominously in Blotto’s mind.
They didn’t get any less ominous when his sister continued, ‘There are lashings of really good art galleries in Paris.’
Oh, biscuits shattered into a million tiny pieces, thought Blotto.
The studio of Eugène Blocque was up a series of rickety stairways on the top floor of a sagging building not far from Le Bistrot Julien. It was a gloomy attic, one side of which had been opened out and glassed in, presumably to let in the light. But the windows were so cracked and discoloured, so slime-stained and leaf-bestuck, that very little of the watery November sunshine could trickle through.
Within the studio everything was layered with sticky grime. The air was a foetid cocktail of sweat, cheap perfume, car-tyre cigarette smoke, mouse droppings and elderly Camembert. Every surface was so spattered with paint that it was a miracle that the painter had ever managed to get anything on the canvas.
And yet against the noxious walls were stacked piles of presumably finished paintings. From what Twinks could see of them as she entered the squalor, they were all more or less identical, assemblages of triangles in colours that ran through that small segment of the spectrum between mustard and gravy.
Seeing where her eyes were straying, Eugène volunteered that the canvases were all nude portraits of former models. ‘And when I say former models, of course what I mean is former lovers.’
‘Larksissimo!’ said Twinks. ‘But in my case, I should warn you not to count your blue tits before they’re born.’
‘Je ne comprends pas. What do you mean?’
‘I mean you should not assume that I will ever become your lover. Because I won’t.’
He looked bewildered by her words. ‘But it is how things work here on la Rive Gauche. It is la vie parisienne. Artists always sleep with their models.’
‘Not in my case.’
‘All right. Maybe not on the first sitting, but—’
‘Never!’ cried Twinks. And in her azure eye was the steely look of Lyminsters past, practised in the business of facing down Frenchmen from Agincourt and before. The expression had its customary effect and Eugène Blocque was silent.
‘So where’s the painting you were working on with Dimpsy?’
‘I have destroyed it.’
‘But you had been doing it for months. All that hard work …’
‘When I started the work, I thought I was painting the most beautiful woman in the world. Now I know that is not the case! Of what possible use is a half-finished painting of the second most beautiful woman in the world?’ This impassioned outburst brought on a fierce paroxysm of coughing.
‘Have you seen someone about that cough?’ asked Twinks solicitously.
‘What is the use of seeing someone? What does a médecin know? There is no cure for the phtisie.’
‘But are you sure that what you’ve got is the phtisie?’
Blocque was affronted by the suggestion. ‘Of course it is the phtisie. It is of the phtisie that I am dying,’ he added proudly.
‘But maybe you don’t need to die. There are sanatoria in Switzerland which have brought about cures. And a warmer climate can help. I’ve been told that there are doctors in the South of France who—’
‘Tais-toi! I will not hear of such ideas. Le Triangulisme est un mouvement parisien. I cannot work away from la Rive Gauche.’
‘But if you took a bit of time off in the South of France you might build up your strength to …’
But Twinks’s arguments had no effect. Eugène Blocque was determined to stay in Paris to complete his greatest work – what he kept referring to as le chef d’oeuvre du Triangulisme – even if he died in the attempt. In fact, he gave the impression that he’d be jolly disappointed if he didn’t die in the attempt.
Twinks had no worries of the prudish kind. Used from an early age to being dressed and undressed by servants, she was unconcerned by her ow
n nakedness. And though she had never before spent an entire afternoon naked on a grubby chaise longue in the sole company of a lubricious Frenchman, she remained totally unfazed by the experience. Without actually spelling it out, Twinks had somehow communicated to Eugène Blocque that he had only to lay one finger on her and he’d soon be smashing out through his own grubby window to land way down on the cobbles below.
So, while the artist brushed away at his canvas, converting her perfect contours into beige triangles, Twinks interrogated him about the criminal side of the Parisian art world.
The following morning, in another equally squalid studio, also on la Rive Gauche, she went through a more-or-less verbatim repetition of the same scene with Gaston Tacquelle. He too had destroyed his work-in-progress on Dimpsy Wickett-Coote. He too refused to seek medical help to cure his phtisie. He too was deeply affronted at the idea of a model not sleeping with the artist who was painting her. And he too recognized the wisdom of not laying a finger on Twinks.
But neither of the Triangulistes could give her any pointers that might help her to track down the so-called Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Sales-Malincourt.
8
Les Deux Mangetouts
‘And is it not inevitable that, if one subscribes to Schopenhauer’s view of the Wille zum Leben, one must inevitably have a Weltanschauung that is pessimiste?’
‘Erm, possibly,’ said Blotto.
‘But at the same time Schopenhauer recognizes the imperative of the sexual urge, though he believes that in the pursuit of l’amour, l’homme moyen sensuel is doomed to disappointment. For it is in the nature of all human ambitions to aspire to an ideal which can never, ipso facto, be réalisable, n’est-ce pas?’
‘You could be right,’ said Blotto.
He wasn’t feeling at his most comfortable. Given that his most comfortable was astride Mephistopheles galloping over the beloved acres of Tawcester Towers, this was no great surprise. The café Les Deux Mangetouts, was about as far from that ideal as was possible. They had come there on the recommendation of Dimpsy Wickett-Coote, who was an habituée of this large, busy venue in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.