by George Sims
‘I believe the black sheep may be taken back into the fold. I’ve learnt a lesson in the last few weeks. And I don’t think Toby has really understood what has happened. With Prudence it’s different of course…’
A very faint smile was shown only in the curving corners of Olivia’s mouth. She nodded vehemently, urging on his confidence. ‘Of course you can change things. You’ll see—with Prudence. Life is an oxymel, a bitter-sweet thing at best, but its great gift is the possibility always for change. Any day while one is alive there is the chance of making a new start.’
Balfour said: ‘I had the same advice from my friend Sam Weiss but then, alas, I was not in the mood to take it. And now he’s dead, well I can’t admit that I was wrong.’
‘Don’t let that thought weigh too much on you,’ Olivia said quickly. ‘You know, when I was a young girl I went to a fair at Stow and saw a grossly deformed man, a kind of human monster in an ill-lit booth. It was an image of pointless human misery that haunted me for years. But I did eventually learn from it—to concentrate my energies on what can be done, rather than brooding on things that cannot be remedied. Did Mr Weiss have a family?’
‘He wasn’t married. His only living relative is his sister who is a good deal older and I don’t think she is in very good health. She lives in Tel Aviv. Sam asked me to be his executor and I shall have the job of seeing that his things are disposed of, I suppose. At least I can see that the pictures and books are sold to good advantage—half of everything he left is to go to the “Save the Children” fund.’
‘He sounds very sympathetic to me. Now I regret that I didn’t get a chance to talk to him at that auction. How odd life is—the people you see and could have known. To hear someone like that described…There, you see, I’m indulging in useless regrets which I warned you against.’ Olivia had a rueful expression. ‘Poor Mr Weiss! Do you know why he killed himself?’
‘No. And I don’t think I ever shall now.’
Chapter XV
‘Was it an old party?’ The taxi-driver had been talking in a confidential manner, through the side of his mouth, most of the way from Piccadilly. It had been quite interesting stuff, about how long it took to become a taxi-driver, how the trainee had to go round London on a bicycle for a year or more finding addresses and the best routes, but his voice was indistinct and Balfour had missed a certain amount of his confidences. Now Balfour leaned forward so that his head was near to the glass partition and asked, in a slightly amused voice: ‘What party?’ Though he had not heard all the conversation he did not see how it had got on to the subject of parties.
‘The party you’re going to see in Cedars Road, Clapham. I’m not just being nosey. All that area’s been knocked practically flat for a council building scheme. It looks just like the City after the blitz.’
‘I’m not going to see anyone. There’s a sale of the contents of a house. Furniture, pictures, that kind of thing.’
‘Ah, that explains it, you see. The council slapped compulsory purchase orders on all the houses that had to come down, but in a few cases where a very old party, eighty-odd say, was concerned they let them stay on as long as possible. I know that one or two houses were still there, scattered about. It’s probably one of those old parties has popped off.’
‘Eagle House, Cedars Road, Clapham Common. Property of the late Colonel F. K. Green, DSO,’ Balfour read from the front of the catalogue.
‘I know it. I know it all right.’ The driver nodded vigorously. ‘Whacking great eagles they are too. Stone ones. Quite a big house, rather gloomy, Victorian—you know the kind of thing. Sticks out like a sore thumb now. It gives you rather a shock when you see it standing there and the rest razed. Looks as if it’s survived the Bomb. As soon as we’ve crossed the Wandsworth Road you’ll see it on the left. About the only one there I think, in that particular plot.’
Balfour looked at his watch and was surprised to find it was only 1.20. They had crossed the Chelsea Bridge and were making very good time in light traffic along the Queenstown Road. The sky was a uniform pale grey and the light rain looked as if it was set in for hours. He had spent the morning in his office examining the list of the collection of manuscripts in Ireland which Leo Spiegl had described—he had been surprised both to find it in his post and that Leo had not exaggerated the size and interest of the collection. It had taken him two hours to go through it with reasonable care. Then he had had an early lunch at the Vega Restaurant, the Imperial Salad with stuffed eggs, Gruyère cheese, asparagus tips and ‘Sauce Piquante’. Now he was looking forward to the auction; he always enjoyed house sales more than those in the solemn atmosphere of the main London rooms, and this particular one looked as if it might be rather unusual and interesting. He had known other auctions when certain lots were withdrawn due to a query about the legal title, but it was rare for a whole sale to be postponed.
‘There it is. Now I didn’t exaggerate did I?’
Balfour looked along the road which was exactly as the taxi-driver had described it. For about a quarter of a mile all the houses had been demolished and the ground completely cleared, then one tall dark house loomed up. In a row of similar properties it would have appeared commonplace but alone it looked odd and forbidding. Everything about it was still intact—it was surrounded by a red brick wall about four feet high with a heavy spiked iron chain strung above it, the garden contained several straggly lilac bushes, and a Monkey Puzzle tree grew too near the front door. Lace curtains covered all the windows and added to the atmosphere of secrecy—it was easy to imagine a chronic invalid leading a recluse’s existence there. There was a row of cars parked along the kerb in front of the house and more of them filled the semi-circular drive.
When the taxi stopped Balfour noticed that the driver was engrossed in watching something in his mirror. ‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘You look back there, guv. See that light blue car—the Ford Galaxie? That’s followed us all the way here—I noticed it first in Sloane Street. Powerful job that, you know. Six-litre engine. Could have passed us zoom, but it didn’t. Now we’ve stopped and heigh presto it’s stopped too! And there’s nothing to stop for, right?’
Balfour wheeled round and saw the big blue car was being backed off the road. As the taxi-man had pointed out, there was no reason why it should stop there, halfway along the cleared site. He watched it move forward into the road again and then turn back the way it had come. After he had paid the taxi-driver and seen him U-turn to follow the Galaxie, Balfour remembered that Squibb had said Victor Maddox owned ‘a big, baby-blue American car’. It seemed possible that the Maddox gang might still be watching him to see if he was ‘nosing into’ their affairs, and he was glad that a visit to a house sale at Clapham must surely appear innocent enough from their point of view.
Several men were leaving the house and one of them was having difficulty extricating his car from the queue in the drive: there was not much room and he had to do a good deal of jockeying backwards and forwards. ‘What a game,’ he called out to Balfour, ‘and all for nowt!’
Ignoring the rain Balfour stood for a moment looking at the stone eagles, which were badly eroded and practically black, and then at the house. The topography conformed roughly to his nightmare when he had been searching an old house from room to room, although this one was larger. At one time no doubt it had looked quite grand, but it had obviously been left without repairs in recent years and the brick-work badly needed re-pointing. Water was gushing down one wall from a stopped-up gutter. There was a smell of drains.
When he approached the front door Balfour realized he was being watched by two men who were hesitating beneath the tiled porch as if undecided whether to brave the rain. One man held his nose and then made a movement to pull an imaginary lavatory chain. Balfour recognized him as a silver dealer he had met at various country sales. The man grimaced at him with an expression of mixed humour and bitterness: ‘You’re wasting your ti
me, old cock. All the good stuff’s gone.’
Balfour looked at his watch: ‘Really? Surely the sale doesn’t start for three-quarters of an hour yet?’
‘No, you misunderstand me, laddie. They’ve whipped the right goods and left the crap. The bastards. It’s a right balls-up.’ His fat companion who had a rich air of fraudulence about him, as if his smart clothes had been hired from a theatrical store as part of a confidence trick, extended a curiously symmetrical hand, like a flesh-coloured starfish, to point at Balfour’s catalogue. ‘That’s out of date now. Been replaced by this. And believe me, mate, you’re welcome to it.’ He handed Balfour a duplicated list. ‘All the silver’s gone. And the Meissen. The singing bird boxes. It stinks! Messrs Haley & Coote haven’t heard the last…’ He strode off into the rain making empty threats.
The silver dealer remained and said to Balfour: ‘Still, you might as well go in. There’s a free buffet of sorts. Good German wine. Ad lib if you like that sort of thing.’
The inside of the house was a good deal gloomier than Balfour had expected. The large lilac bushes obscured the windows, and the walls of the hall were covered with a paper imitation of dark oak panelling. A small, high electric bulb’s glow extended only a few feet. But despite the dim light and the faintly depressing atmosphere there was plenty of spirited conversation and laughter going on somewhere. Gradually he tracked it down to the back of the hall. There was a hubbub of voices, glasses clinking and the occasional pop of a bottle being opened. The imitation oak panelling was covered with dusty spears, shields, and swords all hopefully looped with lot numbers. Halfway along the hall a tall man with a stony expression was fiddling with an ancient cabinet gramophone: he was playing a scratched record of Jeannette Macdonald singing ‘Lover Come Back to Me’ but by altering the speed switch he was making her sound alternatively like Minnie Mouse and a lugubrious bass. As Balfour walked past he saw that the man was playing another game, sprinkling needles on the spinning record so that they were flung off. An empty Moselle bottle and a tumbler stood on the floor by his feet.
Balfour opened the door to find himself in a large old-fashioned kitchen crowded with people gaily chattering as if a cocktail party was being held there. On a bare scrubbed table there were some plates of sandwiches backed by a row of Moselle and Hock bottles. He dusted a tumbler with a paper napkin and quickly downed two glasses from a Moselle bottle on which the paper label was so damp-stained as to be illegible.
‘Hi, Ned!’ Balfour looked round to see Maurice Erskine, an American book-dealer who spent as much time in London as he did in New York. Silver-haired, immaculate, urbane, he drifted nonchalantly through the world apparently to better effect than most of those who worked ten hours a day: business for him was usually conducted over dining-tables or at parties from which he emerged with an author’s archive or the entrée to a ducal library. His lips were ironically compressed as if he wanted not to smile too obviously. ‘Ha-ha, I feel much better seeing you fell into the same elephant trap. But whisper it not in New Bond Street that we’ve been had. Secret. However, the wine’s not bad and the price is right.’ He proffered a cobwebbed bottle. ‘Some of the wine was withdrawn from the sale too, but the porters had very ingeniously stood a lot of bottles upright and they were described as spoilt and left to console the frustrated—us. So be my guest. Ah drink up the bitter cup of discontent. Is that bad Omar or did I make it up?’ He slopped wine into Balfour’s already half-full glass so that it ran over at the brim. ‘There we are. If this failing palate does not deceive me, a rareish vintage from the old Wurttenberg estates, Weingut Graf Metternich. Yes, whoever liberated this had taste—or luck. But I have taste.’
Balfour drank the mixture of wines greedily. It should not have been good, and probably would not have been to a connoisseur, but he enjoyed it. He felt rather frustrated as it seemed probable that the Swinburne manuscript had been withdrawn with the other interesting items, and the odd situation made him feel like drinking a lot. The supply did appear to be unlimited. ‘Liberated? What you mean liberated?’ He slurred his words deliberately but knew that he would soon be feeling light-headed and was looking forward to it.
Maurice Erskine took his cue and leant forward slightly in a mock drunk stance. ‘I mean just simply liberated, old mansh. You were in the army, didn’t you ever liberate anything, a camera or some such unwanted trifle? Why, it was rumoured that some of my GI brothers-in-arms even carried pincers to “liberate” gold fillings from corpses.’
Balfour frowned: ‘You mean old Colonel Green looted this stuff?’
Erskine shook his head: ‘No, I don’t think so; I’m told the Colonel was crippled in the First World War and the disiecta membra we are mourning quite plainly came out of Germany in the 44/45 campaign. But why am I having to tell you all this—weren’t you here in July when this crazy affair was first hatched?’
‘No, I was in Corsica on vacation.’
‘Ah, well you missed some fun. You see it appears the more interesting stuff was found crated up in cellars and added rather as an after-thought. Ludicrously underdescribed. The harpy, officially the Colonel’s housekeeper but some say mistress, to whom the old boy left the stuff, was overjoyed at the idea of extra cash and careful not to inquire from whence it had come. She did not know what the word provenance meant, let alone care about it. So on 18th July we were all running around like mad guys, making wonderful discoveries. Excuse the cliché but it was like being set free in Aladdin’s cave—well a mini-Aladdin’s…I came across those manuscripts, all beautifully done up in black morocco cases. But they’ve been taken out too, so you’ve no need to be so cagey, Ned.’
Balfour reached for another bottle. ‘It certainly is rather a swindle. I shall have to do some serious thinking to recoup my expenses.’
Erskine said quietly: ‘Yes, but do find time to pop up and have a look at the old Colonel. His portrait I mean, on the landing. Tell me if it doesn’t remind you of a mutual customer. In the meantime I’m going to prime the fool auctioneer and get the rest of the story. There’s some dark secret here and I’m rather hooked on it. You see that pompous little man, that’s the famous Mr Stanley Coote—he’ll tell me all before I’m finished.’ He moved off brandishing a bottle like a weapon at a small dapper man, with a flushed complexion, who had been nodding portentously through a young woman’s conversation and now said: ‘Agreed it is an ad hoc situation, but I think we are coping.’
Balfour went back along the ill-lit hall. Through an open door on his right he could see that a large room had been prepared for the sale with rows of chairs set round a table covered with a green baize cloth. The joker with the gramophone was playing ‘If I Had a Talking Picture of You’ but had again slowed the speed down so much that the singer uttering ‘you-ou-ou’ sounded in great pain. The joker said benignly ‘Picturesquissima, eh?’ pointing at the stuffed animal heads which were displayed on the wall leading upstairs. The art of taxidermy was the one Balfour rated lowest, but the grotesque collection did exert a strange fascination as he went slowly upwards. There was a strong smell of dust and decay; a stifling atmosphere of stagnation. It seemed impossible that anyone would want these literally moth-eaten relics. He noticed that a glass eye was hanging down from an empty socket in a tiger’s head and tried to push it back, but only succeeded in starting a steady trickle of sawdust.
Along the corridor at the top of the stairs the unattractive animal exhibits were replaced by a few large and unfashionable paintings. Midway there was a portrait without a lot number. A skilful oils lettered on the heavy gilt frame: ‘Colonel F. K. Green, DSO’, showing a handsome, well-fed face with full wings of grey hair under the dark blue dress cap. The first impression was flattering—Balfour felt that in reality the light blue eyes could not have been so large nor the complexion quite so clear, the eyebrows perfectly arched and diminishing down to points as if they had been plucked. But studying the painting Balfour felt that the artist�
�s attitude to his sitter had been ambivalent. It was a clever study which no doubt had pleased the Colonel and yet hinted at a not altogether favourable impression of his character. The grey moustache was meticulously trimmed to frame a small ‘rosebud’ mouth that was faintly epicene: some masterly touch had achieved a nuance of depravity in the bold soldier-like stare from periwinkle-coloured eyes.
‘Ned! Kiddo!’ Balfour had taken a step backwards to further appraise the portrait and was standing pressed against the banisters. He turned round on hearing his name to see Leo Spiegl at the bottom of the stairs. Spiegl exclaimed ‘Say, this must be the place!’ in a theatrically loud voice. He was dressed in a navy blazer with brass buttons, pale grey cotton trousers, navy tie decorated with gold chess castles, white buckskin shoes and a straw fedora with a snap brim and wide navy ribbon. He looked and sounded as if he should be on stage opening a musical comedy and for a moment Balfour half expected a chorus line to trot out from one of the doors in the hall.