Landscape of Lies

by Peter Watson

  Isobel Sadler shook her head as Michael offered her a whisky. ‘I hope he was the burglar,’ she said. ‘Then I’ve maimed him.’

  Michael had a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other. He was never happier. ‘In fact he was very crafty. It was cunning of him to offer you a thousand pounds to “swap” the picture for the other documents. If he’d offered you any more you might have been suspicious and if you had agreed he would have had both the inventory and the picture. As it is, the boot’s on the other foot. We have the important bit and he has nothing—what’s the matter?’

  Isobel Sadler had jumped to her feet. ‘Oh no!’ She coughed as she regained her breath. ‘No, no. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t know it was important. It didn’t seem relevant.’ She took another breath. ‘When he turned up that day, when he said he had come across from Cirencester, and I showed him around, he brought a camera with him. I didn’t see him use it and he didn’t ask. But at one point I was called away to the phone. The vet, I think. For a few minutes Molyneux was alone and near the painting. He probably photographed it!’

  There was a long silence in the room. It was still raining outside and pellets of water skidded down the windows, like tiny snails that left a hundred silver trails. At one point Patrick put his head round the door but before he could say anything Michael snapped, ‘Not now!’ Then, more softly, ‘Not now, Paddy. Later.’ The bow tie—today it was blue with yellow spots—vanished.

  The silence resumed. Michael was again looking out of the window, down into Mason’s Yard. A new gallery had opened up recently, selling Scottish art. He had never imagined there to be so much, but the young man who ran the gallery seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. Michael watched him now as he took a number of canvases from the back of a car.

  The rain worsened. Gusts of wind rattled the windows, as if the building shivered. Michael alternated between sips of whisky and pulls on his cigar. The blue smoke dissolved as it drifted from him, slipping away like the wake of a ship. He got up and went round the desk, to stand in front of the painting once more. Isobel Sadler turned in her seat.

  ‘So. Molyneux has a start on us. I don’t know why he needed to steal the original when he had a photograph. To stop anyone else following him, I suppose. Still, that’s not our main worry. The main thing is that he may be uncatchable, I’m afraid. It’s a pity about the photograph. A great pity. That snap may have cost you nearly eight million pounds. Still, what’s done is done, and we’ve either got to go forward or give up.’ He brushed his hand through his hair. ‘I’ll show you what I’ve worked out so far and then we can decide what we’re going to do. Whatever it is, the fact that Molyneux has a photograph means we have to decide today, now. He’s got enough start on us already. We mustn’t give him any more.’

  Michael turned back to the painting and pointed the unlit end of his cigar at the canvas, at the chapel.

  ‘This is the easy bit. This is where we start. See this column here?’ He moved the cigar up and down a thick, red-brown marble column. ‘At the top there’s a scene carved into the capital—see?’

  Isobel Sadler nodded.

  ‘A naked man and a naked woman, an apple and a serpent in a tree.’

  ‘Adam and Eve.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Eden. Genesis. The first book, the beginning. We start here.’

  Isobel Sadler stood up for a closer look at the scene.

  As they stood there together, Michael could smell the shampoo on her hair. Willowherb. He moved his cigar to the right. Here, because of the way the column was drawn, a second side of the capital at the top was visible. ‘This isn’t too difficult, either. It looks to me like a man holding a stick, descending some stairs—agreed?’

  She nodded.

  Now Michael moved back to the desk to where there was a thick, brick-shaped book with a piece of paper wedged as a marker. He set down his whisky glass, jammed the cigar into his mouth, and looked at the spine of the book. ‘This is by an American named Rowland. It’s called The Classical Tradition in Western Art and it’s more or less an encyclopaedia of myths, gods and goddesses. I think I’ve found the right reference—tell me what you think.’ He sat down and opened the book at the place he had marked. ‘Here we are.’ Speaking out of the side of his mouth, he began to read. ‘“Wand: A red-hot iron wand, or staff, held by a figure, usually a man, is sometimes used to indicate the Truth. A long staff is used in classical tradition to fend off the Cloud of Unknowing.”’ He looked up at Isobel Sadler. ‘If I’m right, this figure with the wand represents the reader of the picture, chasing the truth. If that’s the case, then the path the figure is following is important. Remember the prayer: follow the path.’ Again Michael raised himself from his seat, edged around the desk and stood in front of the picture. He pointed to the top of the red-brown column. ‘As you can see, the figure is descending some steps.’ He took his cigar from his mouth and held it longways near the canvas so that it almost touched the tops of the steps and pointed diagonally downwards. ‘Now look where the path leads.’

  With her eyes, Isobel Sadler followed the line of the cigar. ‘It points to that figure there, the one with the tunic, with what you called the eagle vase and a clock.’

  ‘Yes, I think so too. Whatever your friend Ryan says, this detective work is new to me, but I think we’re being instructed to start with this figure in the tunic.’

  He returned to the ‘Scotch’ books and retrieved the bottle of Islay. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a drink? It’s Laphroaig.’

  She shook her head again. ‘Not in the middle of the day.’

  He poured himself another enthusiastic slug and splashed some water on top. ‘As I said, that was the easy bit. Now I’m stumped. I don’t recognise that first figure and, what’s worse, I haven’t a clue how to start finding out.’ He checked himself. ‘Well, that’s not quite true. I do know my way around the art libraries. But the question is: do we want to pursue this now? Is the chase worth it? Can we overtake Molyneux and, even if we do, will there be anything at the end of the line?’

  Isobel Sadler was still examining the painting. She said nothing and Michael continued. ‘I haven’t been in this exact situation before but I have been in others like it. For example, it sometimes happens that I get a suspicion that a picture coming up for sale at auction is more than it appears. It’s more valuable than the auction house seems to think, and may even be by a quite different painter, someone who is much better known than the painter given in the catalogue.

  ‘That’s what this art game is all about. When that happens I have to drop everything and concentrate on just one thing for a few days before the auction takes place. I spend whole days in libraries, looking up books and articles in academic journals. I pore over countless photographs, comparing how this artist drew hands, or that one painted flesh. Sometimes that leads to the need to look at other paintings, in private collections—pictures by the artist I think painted the work to be sold at auction. That means I have to find out which collections and then persuade the owners to let me look. It’s frenetic but a lot of fun … and what I’m saying is this: if we are going to follow this up, that’s what it will be like. We have to give days—a week, two weeks—to the project. And we have to decide now, this minute. We have to get going today if we’re going to make a start at all. Molyneux has over two weeks’ start, which may mean it’s too late already. But last time you were here you sounded as though the farm couldn’t do without you, that you can’t get away for more than one night a week …’ He tailed off.

  Again there was silence, if you could call the drone of a jumbo jet, two thousand feet above, and the hiss of driving rain, silence. At length Isobel Sadler took her gaze off the painting, sat down and put her elbows back on the desk. She seemed unaware of the way her dress strained over her breasts. ‘I do have a farm manager—Tom. He’s been an angel, especially since the break-in.’ She bit her lip and went on quietly, almost as if talking to herself. ‘If I take any days off at t
his time of year he may just leave.’ And then, just as on her first visit, she was gone, preoccupied, busy in her own world.

  ‘I understand—’ Michael began, but she interrupted him.

  ‘On the other hand, what the farm really needs now is investment, new equipment … some more land would make the whole operation more cost-effective … my father never had the chance to do that but I do. Three hundred acres have become available right next to us.’ She rubbed the back of her neck with a hand. ‘If I can’t raise the money to buy that land and some new vehicles, I’ll probably have to sell the farm in a year or so anyway …’ Absently, she waved yet more cigar smoke back towards Michael. ‘A few days, you say?’

  He shrugged. ‘Probably more. If it took only a few days, that would mean Molyneux has already found it. I know how the art market works but, as I told you last time, my field is really late eighteenth—and early nineteenth-century English painting.’ He drained the whisky glass and sat back in his chair. ‘I am not necessarily the best person to decipher this picture for you. Possibly, I can find the right books and the right museums to help us with the clues, but it may be better, and much quicker from your point of view, to let someone else help you, someone who can read allegories better than I can.’

  She shook her head firmly. ‘No. I trust you, Mr Whiting. You told me about all this when you didn’t have to. You could simply have taken a photograph of the painting, without telling me, and got on the trail yourself. Then you wouldn’t have needed to split any profits with me. If we brought in another expert he could do the same to both of us. Not only that: if medieval studies are as small a field as you say they are, anyone we got to help would be known to Molyneux. We could never be certain that he might not know our every move. As it is, although Molyneux has a start on us, he can’t be certain that we are on the trail. He doesn’t know that we know, if you see what I mean. He may not feel there is any urgency. That’s our one advantage.’

  ‘You sound as if you’ve made up your mind.’

  ‘I have. I won’t say farming is fun but it is satisfying. This may be a wild-goose chase. But I don’t have any choice. I’ve got to take my opportunities as they arise. This one is not exactly copper-bottomed but it’s all I’ve got. I must ask one favour, though.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A raincheck on dinner.’ She looked at her watch. ‘There’s a train at two-thirty. That means I can’t get back to the farm till around five, five-thirty. I’ll need most of tomorrow to brief Tom on what to do at the farm while I’m away. I can be back in London, with a suitcase, by tomorrow night, ready for an early start the day after. I know it means more delay, but I can’t just drop everything. Tom would leave then and I couldn’t blame him.’

  ‘That needn’t matter. What matters is that I start today, digging in the libraries. Maybe, by the time you come back to town, I’ll have some news.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about that. A hotel could get very expensive, if this thing goes on too long.’

  ‘You could stay with me; there’s a spare bedroom injustice Walk.’

  She shot him another sharp glance. ‘No, thank you, Mr Whiting. I do have friends in London, you know. I expect I shall be able to stay with them. I will have dinner with you soon, since you’ve won your wager. But that’s all. Who do you think I am—Rita Hayworth?’

  3

  When Isobel Sadler arrived in Michael’s office the next time it had been rearranged. There were now two desks instead of one, and, to make room for the second, several piles of books had been removed from the floor. Patrick Wood, in a bright red bow tie today, showed her upstairs. Inside the office, Michael was talking to a tall, thin, balding man who she guessed, from the similarity to Patrick, must be Michael’s partner, Gregory. They were introduced.

  ‘Let me have him back as soon as you can, Miss Sadler, please. He won’t tell me what all this is about—but … well, we get these mysteries from time to time. The best security is ignorance, I suppose. Good luck with the project, anyway, whatever it is.’ He smiled and went out.

  Isobel Sadler looked around. On one desk stood a jug of coffee. Piles of books littered the other.

  ‘Booty from the London Library around the corner,’ said Michael, following her look. ‘I rather fancy that a lot of our work is going to be done in books. These are the standard reference works on iconography. Arnold Whittick’s Symbols, Signs and Meaning, Gilbert Cope’s Symbolism in the Bible and the Church, John Vinycomb’s Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, plus that stock over there. I asked a friend at the V and A and she gave me the titles—don’t worry, I didn’t say what I wanted them for.’ He pointed. ‘You can use that desk.’ Michael was again in his shirt sleeves. The same bright red braces, like fairground ribbons, slashed across his shirt. The room was already filled with the fug of tobacco smoke. His hair was chaotic and without his jacket he looked slimmer and younger.

  Isobel Sadler looked over her shoulder to the wall. ‘Where’s the painting?’

  ‘Downstairs. I’m having it photographed properly, in full colour. Then we can put the real thing in our vault. If we have to travel around, as we will do if we get anywhere, it will be much easier to use photos than the picture itself.’

  She took off her coat. Today she was wearing jeans and a sweater. Ready for work. She helped them both to coffee. ‘Any luck yesterday?’

  Michael shook his head as he relit his cigar. ‘Our friend, the first figure, is holding, as you may recall, the clock in one hand with the eagle vase nearby. I looked up “clock”. Obviously it’s a symbol of time passing—but I can’t see how that helps. Apparently it’s also a symbol of temperance, that someone abstained from liquor or had a temperate nature. Again, I don’t see what use it is. He’s not Father Time, whose attributes are a scythe and an hour-glass. It could mean that the person holding the clock is a scientist—so I called the Royal Society. Unfortunately, they weren’t founded until 1662.’

  He sat down and drank his coffee. ‘Not a good day at all, yesterday. I drew a blank on the picture, and lost a wager.’

  She glanced at him sharply.

  ‘Who are we today?’ he asked, his mouth full of cigar. ‘Not Zelda or Rita. They wouldn’t be so disapproving. Victoria maybe, or Boadicea—you look ferocious enough.’

  She smiled.

  ‘That’s better. It was a good wager—and harmless. Yesterday was the summer sale of Impressionist paintings in New York. We all had to guess how many pictures would sell for more than fifty million dollars. I said three but I was way out. One Van Gogh, three Renoirs, two Degas and a Monet. Amazing.’

  ‘What other bets—sorry, wagers—have you got on at the moment?’

  ‘Only two. The length of the longest traffic jam on the M25 this year. I have thirty-seven miles. And how many nations finally boycott the Olympic Games. I say twenty. As you know, seventeen already have.’

  ‘What are the odds on us reading the picture before my farm goes bust?’

  Now he smiled. ‘Abloodypalling, and getting worse all the time we sit gassing about something else.’ He sat up. ‘Tell you what. I’ve been through all these books and drawn a blank. I was planning to have a dig in the National Fine Art Library. That’s part of the V and A—want to come? It might be a relief—I can’t smoke in there.’

  Isobel Sadler was already on her feet. ‘The answer’s not here, as you say. Anything to get away from that filthy cloud. Let’s hope we don’t bump into Molyneux.’

  They took a taxi to South Kensington. Michael was always rather overawed by the vast V & A building. To him it looked as though it had been designed by a mad Victorian architect who had adapted designs for either a railway station or an asylum. Bela Lugosi baroque, he called it. Walking through the sculpture gallery, they turned into a short corridor devoted to fakes and forgeries, past a beautiful golden screen, about fifteen feet high and showing the lives of the saints, then climbed some wide stone steps to the fir
st floor, where the library was. They signed in. There was no sign of Molyneux.

  Michael made for the subject index. There were eleven entries under ‘clock’ and he filled out a slip for each one. Then they sat at a desk waiting for the references to be brought to them. After some minutes an assistant carried over a pile of books and Michael divided them into two stacks. ‘You look through these,’ he said, pushing across one set. ‘I’ll take the others.’

  For two hours they sat reading. Eventually, when Michael was beginning to miss a cigar, he said, ‘Any luck?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ whispered Isobel Sadler. ‘The only halfway relevant thing I’ve found is that in many still-life paintings a clock has the same meaning as a candle—to indicate the passing of time, as you said. I’ve also found that several individuals in history used a candle as their symbol.’ Michael looked at her eagerly as she said this but Isobel Sadler shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, all of them—Bridget of Sweden, Sybil, Genevieve, Isabella d’Este—were women. We are looking for a man. What have you found?’

  ‘Zero. Zilch. Nix. Apparently the ancient Greeks confused their word for “time”, chronos, with their old god of agriculture, Cronus, who had a sickle for his attribute. That’s why Father Time carries a sickle. The Roman god of agriculture was Saturn—I suppose we might try him.’

  Michael went back to the index to look up Saturn. This time there were fifteen references, and filling out the forms in itself took many minutes. When the books arrived they sat leafing through them for another hour, again with no luck. Michael sighed heavily. ‘This is hopeless.’ Just then a buzzer sounded—the library was closing. ‘A complete waste,’ he grumbled as they handed back the books at the main counter. ‘And we are another day behind Molyneux.’

  As they descended the stairs by the tall screen, Michael turned to Isobel Sadler and said, ‘The men’s loo is just along here; do you mind waiting?’