“I happened to see it in a Hoxton shop,” Bobby said and paused. “The odd thing is,” he said, “I was there in connection with Mr. Atts’s disappearance.”
“Atts?” Sir Walter repeated. “Atts? Hoxton? What on earth . . .” He left the question unfinished. He picked up the picture from his desk where he had laid it down. “Painted on a panel,” he said, as if only now had he noticed the fact. “Unusual. Mahogany, isn’t it? Signed J.J., I see. Could that be young Jasmine, you mentioned him just now. Jasmine? Hoxton? Atts? There can’t be any connection,” and now he was looking not so much worried as uneasy.
“If there is any connection, it’s not very apparent,” Bobby remarked. “Why should anyone choose a bit of mahogany to paint on?” And once again he found that word ‘mahogany’ flickering to and fro in his mind as if it bore some significance he ought to recognize but did not.
“Canvas is cheaper,” Sir Walter said. “Wood has to be specially prepared. Or a tin tea-tray. That was Turner. Some men will use anything handy—from a tablecloth to a brick wall. A panel has advantages. Easily cleaned if you want to begin again. Can’t be rolled up either if it’s to be smuggled abroad. Or if it’s been stolen and has to be hidden. That happens.”
“I know there have been cases,” Bobby agreed. “But this time it’s an art critic has disappeared, not a picture.”
“And won’t,” declared Sir Walter. “Nothing we have here will disappear so long as I’m Director. I wanted to get permission for our night watchman to carry a revolver. They wouldn’t grant it. Could you help, do you think?”
“I am afraid that is out of my province,” Bobby explained as he began to busy himself replacing the ‘Everlasting Bonfire’ in his suit-case. “The Department is inclined to be very sticky about granting firearms certificates,” he went on, wondering why Sir Walter seemed to have so much on his mind the possible theft of one of the pictures in his charge, and if by any chance he had reason to suppose such a scheme was in contemplation.
“You could show it to Jasmine,” Sir Walter was saying now, as Bobby finished putting the picture away. “That is, if he’s here to-day. It may not be his work at all but I think it is. He has considerable talent, more, a touch of genius even, only somehow he doesn’t seem able to get it out.”
“That may be dangerous,” Bobby said; and Sir Walter looked startled as if he did not understand this remark, nor like it, nor indeed for that matter did Bobby himself quite know what it meant or why he had said it.
He went away then, following the Watercolour Corridor to the Long Room where Jasmine was at work on his Teniers copy, now nearly completed.
At the moment, however, he was not actually working, for his brushes had been laid aside. He was sitting motionless on his little stool and seemed absorbed in contemplation of the painting he had been copying. Perhaps, Bobby thought, it was this capacity for complete absorption in the original that accounted for Jasmine’s success in capturing its spirit. He looked better, too, this morning, more normal, and he was evidently entirely oblivious of the two or three visitors wandering vaguely round the room. Not even when Bobby halted at his side did he look up, not till Bobby said ‘Good day’, and even then Jasmine only stared at him in a vacant sort of way, as if not yet fully returned from the world of dream and vision in which it was as though he had been so utterly lost. Only when Bobby opened his suitcase and produced the ‘Bonfire’ picture, did he seem to become fully aware of his surroundings.
“I think this is yours, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.
“Where the hell did you get it?” Jasmine demanded angrily. He got to his feet. Still more angrily so that Bobby almost thought the boy was going to attack him, he said: “What are you up to? Who are you? That’s mine. Give it me.”
CHAPTER X
JASMINE ANNOYED
THE YOUNG MAN’S voice had been so loud, his manner so aggressive, that the other people in the room—there were only two or three now—turned to stare. Bobby said:
“Gently, gently. We mustn’t make a scene here or Mr. Hyams will turn us both out and we don’t want that, do we?” Hyams had in fact now appeared, but seemed uncertain whether to approach or to remain at a distance. Bobby went on: “I guessed it was your work. I got it from a man who said he had it from someone whose name he didn’t seem to want to give. I paid ten bob for it.”
“More fool you,” Jasmine snarled. He seemed quieter now. He said: “Seven and six above market value.”
“I’ll hold for a rise,” Bobby told him. “I would give more for that,” he added, nodding at the nearly completed copy of the Teniers. “You’ve caught much of the painter’s vision.”
“No depth to it,” Jasmine said, apparently placated to some degree by this compliment. “Teniers saw very clearly but not very far. I see, too, but I don’t know what.”
“And Rembrandt?” Bobby asked.
“Rembrandt?” Jasmine repeated. “Rembrandt?” He sounded suspicious now. “What about him?”
“I was thinking of one of his things in the next room,” Bobby explained. “‘Girl Peeling Apples’. The first time I saw it it made an impression on me I shall never forget. It’s not quite the same now.”
Jasmine made no comment. He began to put away his things.
“I’ve done enough for to-day,” he said.
“Do you always use a panel to paint on?” Bobby asked. “The old painters did very often, didn’t they? Is it easier to reproduce their effects if you use the same material? I should think what you’ve just done could easily pass for the original.”
“Well, hardly,” Jasmine said, though plainly pleased by the suggestion. “I always sign—my initials and the date. Anyhow, everyone knows Teniers’s ‘Milkmaids’ is here—just as everyone knows the ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ is here, too. Not much object in copying, say, Hogarth’s ‘Shrimp Girl’ and pretending it was the original.”
“No, I suppose not,” Bobby agreed. “You know, I’m rather wondering what made you give your picture to—to whoever you did give it to?”
“I expect I wanted a drink and hadn’t enough to pay for one, and a chap they call Irish Joe offered to pay in exchange for that thing you’ve got there. I can’t think why. Drunk, I expect.”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“Not likely. No. Some of my pals might have stood a drink if they happened to be flush but none of ’em would want any of my stuff. Got enough of their own, all of them. I don’t suppose I should know the bloke again if I saw him. Look, what do you want to know for?”
“Well, you see,” Bobby said, “it was when I was making inquiries into the disappearance of Mr. Atts, the art critic, that I came across your picture.”
“What are you getting at?” demanded Jasmine. “What’s it got to do with Atts having done a bunk? What do you mean, making inquiries?”
“Well, you see, I’m a policeman,” Bobby explained, “and we’re getting a bit worried about what’s happened to him.”
“A copper, are you?” Jasmine said. “Well, why come to me? I never saw the man in my life as far as I know. I’ve heard of him, of course. A critic—one of the chaps who can’t, so they take it out of us, who can. He did me down once, blast him, and he can go to hell and stay there for all I care.”
“I thought you said you had never seen him?”
“No more I have,” Jasmine snapped. “You don’t suppose you have to meet a critic to have your work damned in the tail end of a paragraph. Or that he has to see your work either as far as that goes, if he thinks you’re not in the right set and so you’re easy meat. You may want to kill him without ever setting eyes on him, and he can do for you without noticing or caring, the same way you would squash a fly—especially Atts when he wants to be funny about your name. Good thing if every damn critic vanished for ever. Pack of parasites living on us chaps when we can hardly get a living at all.”
“Now, Mr. Jasmine,” interposed Hyams, who, almost unnoticed, had now made up his mind to join them, “I
shall have to ask you to leave if you get so excited.”
“Oh, all right,” Jasmine said, subsiding suddenly as to a voice of authority, “only this chap’s a copper, he says, and he’s been talking about Atts as if I knew anything about the blighter or cared either.”
Bobby was still holding the ‘Bonfire’ picture, and he saw Hyams looking at it—not that that was surprising. It had at least the merit of catching the eye.
“Your work, Mr. Jasmine?” Hyams asked.
“Says he gave ten bob for it,” grumbled Jasmine. “Offer him twelve and six and then he’ll have his profit.” And with that, without another word to either of them, he walked away.
“Very talented young gentleman,” Hyams said, watching him go. “But moody. One thing one day, different the next. Very bitter, too.”
“He certainly didn’t seem to like critics—especially not Mr. Atts,” observed Bobby.
“I heard about that,” Hyams said. “A picture dealer was talking of building up Mr. Jasmine the way dealers try to if they think you’ve promise, and then Mr. Atts made some joke on him and his name and the dealer went back on it. Said it wasn’t any use trying to build up a man when everyone was laughing at him. Very bad luck it was. Mr. Jasmine got talking rather wildly about what he would do—give Mr. Atts a good thrashing, he said. Of course, it came to nothing. Mr. Jasmine hasn’t the build for that sort of thing.”
“Just as well,” Bobby commented. “He looks to me as if he needed building up in another sense.”
“Yes, sir,” Hyams agreed. “You’re right there. Very ill he looks. I always thought it was T.B., but there’s stories seemingly he takes drugs. I’ve heard he was arrested once on suspicion of trafficking in them but they had to let him go at once. No evidence.”
Bobby was busy now, finishing packing away the ‘Bonfire’ in his suitcase.
“Jasmine seems to prefer a panel to work on instead of canvas,” he remarked.
“That’s when he’s doing a copy,” Hyams said. “He claims it’s easier to get the same effect if you use the same medium.”
“He uses a panel for his own work, too,” observed Bobby. “That thing of his I picked up is on a nice bit of mahogany.”
“Most likely given him by the dealer he’s doing these copies of his for,” Hyams suggested carelessly, and yet now with an odd underlying note of unease in his voice, as if he did not much care for this persistent interest Bobby seemed to be taking in Jasmine’s use of mahogany panels. “Easier to clean, too,” Hyams was continuing, “if you don’t like what you’ve done and want to start fresh. Mr. Jasmine never likes his own work; never gets it down, he says, as he’s seen it.”
“Some day perhaps he will,” Bobby remarked; and then returned to Central, where at once he got in touch with a C.I.D. man who was a specialist in the drug traffic that is showing disconcerting signs at present of an unwelcome and considerable increase. The C.I.D. man remembered well the case mentioned by Hyams.
“Big marihuana gang,” he explained. “We got information and smashed it. Cleared it up completely. I got my promotion over that job. Only thing that went wrong was taking in Mr. Jasmine. Not a shred of evidence against him and a plausible excuse for being there. Doing sketches, he said, and there were the sketches to show. Book half-full of them. We had to let him go with apologies but we have the sketch-book still. Better than snaps. Got ’em exact. Not lifelike so much as the way they are.”
“Had no right to keep the book, had you?” Bobby asked in rather a senior officer disapproving way of any action not strictly within the rules.
“Well, no, sir, no,” the other agreed, unabashed, “not really, but you know how it is. Somehow it got mislaid and when Mr. Jasmine was offered an apology and five pounds compensation he took them both pronto—especially the five pounds. Hard up, I should say.”
“Very likely,” Bobby agreed. “Young artists often are. I should like to have a look through that book if you’ll get it for me. I might recognize some old friends.”
The drug squad man went off accordingly to get it, and a moment or two later the phone rang. Bobby picked up the receiver. A familiar voice—an even too familiar voice—announced:
“This is your uncle Mac, waiting to tip you off.”
“Oh, is it?” growled Bobby, who didn’t like being ‘tipped off’, especially not by newspaper men, especially not, among newspaper men, by Mr. Sandy McKie of the Daily Press, a gentleman whose idea of Heaven was a place where he was on confidential terms with all the archangels, knew all the ‘inside stories’, and brought off a fresh ‘exclusive’ every week at least. “Well, carry on,” Bobby said. “As it happens I have a few minutes to spare.”
“Atts case,” said McKie. “Bit of a dead end for you blokes, isn’t it?”
“Dead end?” repeated Bobby indignantly. “What on earth put that into your head? We don’t even know yet if there’s anything in it for us to handle. Atts may turn up at any moment and we aren’t interested in raking up spicy bits for gossip columns.”
“Come off it,” retorted McKie. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. Atts wouldn’t have missed giving that lecture, not for nuts he wouldn’t. Not him. Not if he could help it. And now one of the brightest of our boys has got hold of a taximan who saw a bloke answering Atts’s description being hauled into a private car on Vauxhall Bridge the day Atts disappeared. What about it?”
“It may need looking into,” Bobby said cautiously, and this coldly correct official response brought an angry snort from the other end of the line. “Have you got the taximan?”
“We have,” came the prompt response, “and his story as well. But don’t worry, we are giving you blokes all the kudos. Magnanimous. That’s us. ‘Police now believe—’ That’s our line. Not a word about our bright boys. The modest shrinking violet has nothing on us when it comes to claiming credit. Appreciation is not asked for, merely deep, silent, lasting gratitude.”
Neither gratitude nor appreciation was a sentiment Bobby experienced, for he knew well all this simply meant that the Daily Press didn’t want to take full responsibility for a story that might turn out a fake but was by no means averse to creating a general impression of being on specially confidential terms with the authorities. And if rival reporters got the idea, sedulously fostered by McKie, that Bobby gave him information not handed out to others, then all those rival reporters would get busy sharpening their collective knife for Bobby’s benefit. Without much hope that the advice would be followed, he said:
“Better not publish anything just yet. You might let yourself in for a good deal of trouble. Atts can be a nasty customer. Defamation of character and swinging damages. Your affair. Send your taximan along and we’ll see what we can make of him.”
CHAPTER XI
TAXIMAN’S TALE
THE STORY TOLD by the taximan on his arrival was plain and simple. Crossing Vauxhall Bridge he had noticed a private car drawn up by the kerb and the driver call to a passing pedestrian. The pedestrian halted, apparently recognized the driver, but seemed reluctant to accept what had the air of being a somewhat urgent and imperious invitation to enter the car. A minor traffic block was being caused. The taximan hooted, a car in the rear did the same. The pedestrian thereupon entered the car which then drove on. The taximan had hardly thought of the incident again till he happened to see in an evening paper a photograph of the missing Mr. Atts. This he recognized immediately as that of the pedestrian he had seen on Vauxhall Bridge entering a car there with some apparent reluctance. Mentioning this to a fellow taximan, he had received the worldly-wise advice to go first, not to the police, but to one of the papers.
“The coppers might hand out a bob or two or they mightn’t,” had said the worldly-wise one. “The newspaper blokes might be good for as much as a quid, if they thought it a bit of all right.”
Bobby told the taximan severely that his duty as a good citizen was to come first to the police; brushed aside the taximan’s not unreasonable protest tha
t he had done so as soon as he understood that his information might be of value; noted with some inner amusement that McKie’s implied boast of how his bright young man had succeeded in unearthing useful facts while Bobby’s had failed boiled down in the end to the lucky receipt of a phone call: and then set himself to try to get as good a description as possible of the Vauxhall Bridge motorist.
But of him the taximan had had only the merest glimpse. All he could say was that he thought the motorist had been of medium height, inclined to be stout, wore no hat, was beginning to grow bald, and had a moustache. On the whole as good a description as could be expected. But then Bobby had noticed before that taximen often instinctively took notice of their customers in an effort to estimate the probable size of the tip to be expected.
The interview concluded and the taximan dismissed, Bobby set himself to consider who this unknown motorist might be. Someone obviously who had, or thought he had, something urgent to say to Mr. Atts and something apparently that the latter was not very anxious to hear. Of those Bobby had so far seen in connection with the case only the Head Porter at Crescent Court wore a moustache, and he was certainly not the man. Bobby picked up his phone and after some difficulty and delay and after explaining that it was a police call—a statement not accepted till checked by an Exchange which knew something of the wiles of reporters—managed to get through to Mrs. Atts.
“Scotland Yard speaking,” he said. “You have met Mr. Bardolph, I think. Can you say if he has a moustache?”
“A moustache?” repeated an entirely bewildered voice from afar. “Yes, I think he has. Whatever—”
“Just a detail,” Bobby interposed, cutting short further demands for explanation. “Thank you so much. We will get in touch with you again as soon as we have any definite information.”
He hung up then and hesitated whether to send a subordinate to interview Mr. Bardolph, whose identity with the Vauxhall motorist seemed probable but certainly not established, or whether to go himself. At this his overflowing ‘In’ tray practically got up on its hind legs in violent protest. Bobby slammed it down again. A great part of his general success had been founded on his personal reactions and his ability to gather an impression of the guilt or innocence, of the general honesty or the reverse, of those he questioned. Now he felt this method was again indicated.
Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 8