Much Ado About Lewrie

by Dewey Lambdin

  “You could go, Chute,” Rushton suggested.

  “Me, a fellow with a fraud in his own shop, looking to make three thousand pounds off it?” Clotworthy objected. “No thank you! You’re a Viscount, though. They’d listen to you, Peter. Practically get down on their knees and grovel, most-like. You go hunt them up.”

  “Oh, very well,” Rushton said with a groan, loath to miss any of the action. “Here, Chute. Take this pistol of yours. Does anyone have a clue where one might find a constable?”

  “Eh … ah,” Chute said as he took the pistol, then fumbled for the key to unlock the door.

  “Back in a tick, I hope,” Rushton said as he left.

  “I’m getting tired of looking at these Frogs, Alan,” Chute said, unsure of what to do with his own pistol. “Why don’t we just lock the door and stand guard in the hall ’til Peter comes back.”

  “Fine with me,” Lewrie agreed. “Hoy, you … Chalmont. Get back in your studio or whatever it is, with the others,” he ordered, waving his pistol to direct him. “Vite, vite!” he added, using what little French he knew.

  The large iron key worked from both sides of the lock, clanking securely. Lewrie took hold of the door knob, tried turning it, and gave the door a hard shove, satisfying himself that the ones they had apprehended were truly locked in with no way out short of using an axe to tear the door apart.

  “Oh, put it in your pocket, Clotworthy,” Lewrie told him, “your pistol ain’t even at half-cock. It’s safe as houses … unless you got a pair of real bad’uns. Why’d you buy ’em if you don’t know the very first thing in how to use ’em?”

  “The bores look big if one’s on the receiving end, Alan, and the clack of the whatyecallit when one cocks it sounds menacing,” Clotworthy said, taking off his hat and using a handkerchief to mop his brow. “I never even loaded them ’til you insisted. Damn. I’ve some cigarros, but not a candle in sight that’s lit. I should’ve lit one inside, before we looked them in.”

  “Never loaded ’em before…?” Lewrie gawped. “Good God, what’s the world comin’ to?”

  * * *

  It took Peter Rushton nigh an hour before he clumped back up the stairs, joined by two constables with their truncheons already drawn, and a chief constable who was much better dressed.

  “Right, then, gentlemen,” that fellow said with authority, “You are the other two who discovered the hiding place of the art forgers?”

  “We are, sir,” Lewrie replied, introducing himself and Chute.

  “Well, let’s be at them, sirs,” the chief constable ordered, and Clotworthy produced the large key and turned the lock mechanism, then shoved the door wide open.

  “Well, where are they, then?” he demanded, fists on his hips as he scanned the room. The parlour was empty, and so was the dining room beyond. The easels and fake paintings were still there, but nobody was home.

  “Perhaps they’ve hidden in one of the bedchambers,” Lewrie said.

  “Root them out, lads,” the chief constable ordered his men, and they went to both bedchamber doors, kicking them open.

  “Ain’t nobody ’ere, sir,” one of the policemen reported.

  “There were four of them,” Chute spat, “three men and a woman, we locked them in!”

  “’Nother door ’ere, sir,” one of the police said from the left-hand bedchamber. “H’open, h’it is. There’s back stairs, for servants, goin’ down. Dusty, like they ain’t been used in a long time. Shoe-prints in th’ dust.”

  “Back garden’s not fenced, or walled, neither, sir,” the other policeman said, looking out a rear window in the other bedchamber. “A sea o’ mud. More prints goin’ out South t’Tisbury Court. Shaftesbury Road is just over. Looks like they scampered.”

  “Aha! And did they, now?” the chief constable barked, most-displeased, and casting black glares at Lewrie, Rushton, and Chute. “It appears we’ve come on a goose-chase.”

  “Look there, sir,” Rushton pointed out, thrusting a finger at the un-finished The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba, and the identical landscapes. “This is the third copy of this painting we’ve seen, and these two are twins. And here’s a detailed sketch of yet another, ready to be painted. Evidence of their crimes, sir!”

  “The third?” the chief constable asked.

  “One was bought from Boydell’s for five thousand pounds, one to Clotworthy Chute, here, at his emporium in New Bond Street, and this!” Rushton told him.

  At the mention of his name, and his connection to one of the fake paintings, Clotworthy began to look nervous, and in need of his handkerchief, again. “I was assured it was real by the seller, and one of the miscreants, a Madame Pellatan, a noted French portraitist, vouched for it. She was here with the others when we first entered the rooms.”

  “It’s at your shop now?” the chief constable demanded.

  “Yes, it is,” Chute admitted. “I haven’t sold it, yet. It’s on consignment only, so no one’s been cheated.”

  He gave the name of the seller, who lived at this address, and a brief description. Rushton supplied Bagby Blakeley’s name and home address. “He keeps offices at East India House,” he added.

  “We shall have to talk with him, and confiscate his copy of this painting,” the chief constable said, making pencilled notes in a wee notebook.

  “I suppose we should’ve scouted this place before we knocked and were let in,” Lewrie confessed. “Didn’t know what we would find.”

  “Yes, you should have, sir,” the chief constable gravelled. “We shall take all this for evidence, and keep an eye on the place should any of them come back. Thank you for bringing the matter to the proper authorities. You can go, gentlemen.”

  * * *

  Out in the street, re-boarding Peter’s coach, they all three had the look of men who had fumbled, somehow, and let the side down.

  “At least your copy of the painting’ll be off your hands, Chute,” Lewrie told him as he handed him the second pistol. “You’ve come off as innocent as a baa-lamb.”

  “I was looking forward to the money I’d’ve got for it, though,” Chute confessed.

  “You know, if you had someone paint over the faked artist’s name, and put in, oh … Etude, 1802, like an art student’s copy done in one of the museums in Paris, you could have gotten at least one hundred pounds,” Peter suggested.

  “You’re breaking my heart, please stop!” Chute all but wailed.

  “Or, taken it home and hung it at your house,” Lewrie quipped.

  “Alan, old son,” Clotworthy said, getting arch. “I may pass off goods like that on other people, but never on myself!”

  “I suppose you’ll miss the fun of tellin’ ‘Rajah’ Blakeley he’s out his painting and his five thousand pounds,” Lewrie told Rushton.

  “Well, I was day-dreaming on how to go about that very thing, but now I think about it, it’s best coming from the police,” Peter said with a fetching smile. “I never liked him, anyway. Drop you off in Dover Street?”

  “No, I think I’ll flag a hackney,” Lewrie decided. “I need to tell Jessica and her father, the Reverend. By the time I get there, and clue them in, Madame Berenice Pellatan should be showing up at the manse … her last place of refuge.”

  “Have fun, then, Alan,” Rushton said in parting. “Ta ta!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Dear Lord in Heaven,” the Reverend Chenery said mournfully, and sank even further into an armchair in St. Anselm’s manse’s drawing room as Lewrie laid out the damning evidence. “How could she? All these … all these years, I never saw a sign. No one did! And all these years, from the moment that she and her husband washed up on our shores as refugees … do you imagine that both of them shammed poverty, lived on the church’s charity, that all along they were forging paintings, and earning a small fortune with their criminal enterprise?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, sir,” Lewrie had to admit. “It’s only a few paintings that we know are fakes, the Claude L
orrain, and a landscape that looks like Italy in their set of rooms. There could be more, but they may already be sold.”

  “This is so disturbing,” Jessica said with an audible sniff. “I cannot believe it. I practically grew up under Madame Berenice’s care and guidance. All these years she’s been so helpful, so encouraging of my art, from my childish drawings to my first oil painting. Why, I cannot even imagine her guilty of such a thing. It seems so out of character!”

  “Yet, we are warned that those who would beguile us and lead us astray practice the art of the sweet smile,” Rev. Chenery reminded her, “the honeyed speech, and the gentlest, kindest, and most innocent facade. Ah, me.”

  There’ll be a sermon on that Sunday, Lewrie cynically thought.

  “Perhaps she can explain herself,” Jessica hoped aloud. “Alan, you said there were others, émigré artists, who might have led her to join them. I know for a fact that Madame Berenice hasn’t had all that many commissions for portraits, the last two years, or longer, really. Growing old, being out of fashion, living on the church’s good will, and what little the parish can pay her to teach drawing at our grammar school … some money for her aged years must have looked so tempting.”

  “Aye, I s’pose so,” Lewrie allowed, “but those dog buffers wanted money, too, and so do pickpockets, house breakers, and everyone who goes criminal. Need is no excuse, in the eyes of the law.”

  “If she’s taken up and put on trial,” Rev. Chenery said with a groan. “The shame of it, directed at our parish. On all of us!”

  “I could almost wish that she found a way to escape all of that,” Jessica declared, pressing a handkerchief to her nose. “What would the punishment be?”

  “People who forge Bank of England notes, or counterfeit coins, are usually hung at Tyburn,” Lewrie blurted without thinking.

  “Oh merciful God!” Rev. Chenery almost wailed.

  The heavy-set older housekeeper of the manse bustled into the drawing room, looking excited for the first time in months. “Beg your pardon, Reverend, but there’s something odd going on in the garden. It sounds like a horse is tryin’ t’push through the hedges.”

  Chenery and Lewrie leaped to their feet and rapidly went to the back of the house, with Jessica following along more sedately, even to the point of getting her warm cloak from the entry hall.

  It must here be noted that St. Anselm’s Church had been on its lot for over two hundred years, its lawns and the churchyard cemetery had been sodded for the same length of time, and could now rival the lawns of Windsor Castle, and its encircling yew hedges had grown to a dense, thick, and entertwined barrier, proof against battering rams.

  Something, though, was trying to plough through it. As Chenery and Lewrie emerged into the back garden in all its winter bleakness, they saw a section of the hedge thrashing, bending, and creaking as if the hedge was struck by a powerful, limb-snapping gale, whipping back and forth in a dark green froth, and a figurative snowfall of leaves.

  “What in the world?” Jessica gaped as she joined them.

  “Should we arm outselves?” the Reverend fretted aloud.

  That’s the second time someone’s asked that today, Lewrie thought, grinning despite what threat was to emerge from the hedge.

  “It might be someone desperately in need of salvation, ye know,” he japed, instead. “They might need a confessor.”

  Some colours began to appear as whatever it was finally forced its way through, almost into the back garden. There was a burgundy splotch, which turned out to be a cloak; then a blot of white Lewrie recognised—Madame Berenice Pellatan’s high-piled and decorated wig. The sleeves of her gown appeared, shoving the last branches to part. Her wig snagged on the hedges as she wriggled her way free of it at last, as did her reticule. She stood before them, her clothing snagged and torn, overly done makeup smeared, and panting like a terrorised heifer. She turned and tried to tug her wig free.

  “Couldn’t you just come knock on the front door?” Lewrie asked.

  He was thankful he did not know much French, for what little he could make out sounded remarkably similar to “cochon,” “salaud,” and “va te faire foutre.” It appeared that her coolly aristocratic mien had always been a sham, and Madame Pellatan could curse like a Billingsgate fishwife.

  “Madame! Really!” Jessica scolded, frowning deeply.

  “Pardons,” Madame Pellatan said, snatching her snagged gown and cloak free of the last impediments, wrapping them into place, and then flouncing cross the back garden with her chin held high, even if her wig was now jammed on her head with a starboard list and turned halfway sideways.

  “Madame Pellatan,” Rev. Chenery began, glaring in righteous indignity. “We have heard some distressing news of you and some of your fellow émigrés. That you were caught red-handed at some lodgings in Old Compton Street, where you and they have been forging paintings, then selling them for thousands of pounds, defrauding gullible subjects of the Crown. As bad a crime as making counterfeit money, which Sir Alan tells me is a capital offence. What have you to say for yourself?”

  “That I am in need of hot tea, M’sieur Abbé,” Madame Pellatan said, one brow up, striving for her old superior airs.

  “What? Tea?” Rev. Chenery spluttered. “What gall!”

  “Gauls have a lot of gall, sir,” Lewrie quipped.

  “Oh, Madame, how could you?” Jessica all but wailed.

  “If I have your permission, Reverend,” Madame Pellatan said with an incline of her head, which set the wig to shifting more to the right, “I will go to my room and pack my things? You will not have to abide my presence any longer.”

  “But, why did you do it, Madame?” Jessica demanded to know.

  “I must pack, Jessica, chérie,” Pellatan firmly stated, “Then I will explain.” And she swept past them into the manse with the air of a Vicomtesse, leaving them all gap-jawed and speechless.

  There was naught to do but return to the drawing room and ring for tea.

  It took quite a while for the tea set to arrive, with cream and sugar pared off a cone; there was no more lemon to be had in winter.

  “I never heard the like,” Rev. Chenery spluttered. “A bit more of the sugar, as you are playing ‘Mother,’ dear, thankee.”

  “How much was Mister Chute going to ask for that painting we saw at his shop, Alan?” Jessica asked as she spooned a bit more sugar into her father’s cup.

  “Three thousand pounds,” Lewrie told her. “And the one she sold through Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery went for five thousand. Shared ’twixt all four, that’s still a nice pile of ‘the blunt.’”

  “And none of it donated to Saint Anselm’s, to repay our generosity,” Chenery carped between sips.

  “Of course, Boydell’s probably kept thirty percent,” Lewrie told them, “and Clotworthy’s consignment fee is more like sixty percent. Even so, that’s … fourty four hundred pounds, right there, and only God knows how much they made off other paintings we don’t know about.”

  “You called the police?” Rev. Chenery asked him. “Do they have people who deal in such crimes?”

  “We did,” Lewrie said, which made the good Reverend flinch with potential embarrassment. “We gave them two names, and their descriptions, but who the other two were is a mystery, and all they have to do is to choose new names, move away from their old lodgings, and get clean away with it. There could be fake paintings turning up for years.”

  There was a bustle on the stairs as one of the housemaids came down with a pair of carpet bags that she sat down in the entry hall, followed by the stout housekeeper holding up one end of a wood chest, and Madame Pellatan bearing the other handle strap.

  The men were English gentlemen; even the arrival of a criminal drew them to their feet in deference to a lady.

  “Gentlemen, Jessica chérie,” Madame Pellatan said as she swept into the drawing room, smoothed the skirts of a drabber woolen gown more suited to the weather, and for travelling, and attempted to
give them all a reassuring smile. “Ah, bien. The tea. May I prevail upon you, Jessica? Merci.”

  “You said you could explain,” Jessica impatiently snapped. “Do proceed to do so, Madame.”

  I’ll wager this’ll be one Hell of a tale! Lewrie thought, sitting back on the settee and making himself more comfortable.

  “Yes, just how long have you been a forger?” Rev. Chenery said, looking down his nose at her.

  “Only for a short time, actually,” Madame Pellatan matter-of-fact-ly told them, after a warming sip of creamed and sugared tea. “Do you recall, Jessica, the time we went to Ackermann’s in the Strand, before you and Sir Alan wed? And the marvellous supper we had at that restaurant in Savoy Street? There was a painting there, done by my old, old and dear friend, Jacques-Louis David … a painting of the Roman general Belisarius and his daughter, begging. I rushed to see it, wondering how such a masterpiece could make its way to England.

  “But it wasn’t a David,” she went on, making a moue and sighing. “It was the wrong size, and while it was a remarkably good copy, it was not David’s work, nor his brush work. It was his composition, but not his choice of colours.”

  “So, that made you think of faking…?” Lewrie began to ask.

  Madame Pellatan raised a hand to shush him.

  “I spoke of that art show, and the grand quality of that meal when next I met with my French friends,” the old fraud went on, “and I must confess that I lied to you, Sir Alan, and M’sieur Chute, when I was in his shop. I said none of my friends were artists, but that isn’t true. Almost all of us are, and oh la, what a crowd we were in the old days in Paris, of the café set, wild Bohèmes, going to the museums, the galleries where our amis had pieces hung. We were popular, our art sold well, but, alas, people who lived creatively, with style, were too close to the ‘aristos’ who bought our art, and that condemned us all to the sham trials of The Terror that executed milliners and hairdressers who were close to the wealthy and titled.”