Thus Was Adonis Murdered ht-1

by Sarah Caudwell

  Interested by the connection, I looked at the piece more closely. It was called “The Death of Adonis.” My readers will remember the story from Ovid and Shakespeare — the young Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, meets his death while out hunting and is transformed into a flower. I could not tell if Ned might have served as the model — the artist had disdained portraiture; but he had suggested persuasively the notion of the young man becoming rooted to the place where he fell, sinking perpetually down towards the earth, while the spiky-blossomed flowers pushed upwards among his limbs. The price set by Frostfield’s on this achievement was £15,000.

  “Kenneth’s rather fond of that sort of subject,” said Benjamin. “You know — Daphne turning into a bay tree and Narcissus turning into a narcissus and so forth.”

  “What kind of flower is it supposed to be?” asked Ragwort.

  “Traditionally,” I said, “Adonis is reputed to have been transformed into some kind of anemone. I think, however, that the artist has preferred to believe that it was a species of amaranth. The flower called in English lovelies-bleeding.”

  Our spirits a little clouded, we went into the room which contained the exhibition. Eleanor, it seemed to me, had not dealt so meagrely with the promising young artists as accounts of her had led me to expect: the catalogue was attractive if not luxurious; the distance between the paintings was less, perhaps, than might have been insisted on by an established artist, but only fractionally so; the effervescent white wine which was offered to the guests was one of the more respectable substitutes for champagne.

  “My dear Hilary,” said Benjamin, shrugging his shoulders, when I remarked on these matters, “what less could she do? This is, after all, Frostfield’s.”

  As for the assertion he had made on the previous evening that it was pointless to hold an exhibition in September, because no one would be there — it was all too false: the long room was crowded to the point of discomfort with artists and potential customers. The artists, said Benjamin, were the ones in suits; the ones in jeans and flowered shirts were the customers — solicitors and stockbrokers and so forth. Eleanor herself was at the far end — the chances of any conversation with her seemed pitifully remote.

  “She is moving round the room,” said Benjamin, “in a clockwise direction. Unless you have any superstitious objection to our moving widdershins, we ought to coincide with her somewhere near that picture of the Doges’ Palace, which will make an excellent starting point for the conversation you want me to engage in.”

  Following the course which he suggested, we seemed unlikely to reach the point of coincidence with Eleanor in much less than an hour. I wondered if Benjamin could remember so long the lines I had allotted him; and I observed anxiously that he gave no sign of being engaged in silent rehearsal, but allowed himself to be led into gossip by almost everyone we met on our anti-clockwise progress. I recalled dismally that the rumours of his diligent First had come from a usually reliable source.

  My mind was a little distracted from these anxieties by our encountering a singularly beautiful girl. I should mention, perhaps, lest I be thought in any way to have misled my readers, that her figure was pudgy, her complexion sallow and her hair a rather drab shade of brown. These possible defects, however, pass unnoticed in a young woman whose expression is that of a medieval saint after a particularly satisfactory vision of the Eternal City. She smiled ecstatically at Benjamin. She smiled ecstatically at me. She smiled ecstatically at Ragwort.

  “Congratulations, Penelope,” said Benjamin.

  “Thank you,” said the girl. “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?” Those who think the adjective inadequate to describe the joys of Paradise have not heard it spoken in such a tone.

  “What,” asked Ragwort, when she had drifted blissfully away, “was that about?”

  Benjamin pointed to a small brown and grey abstract hanging a few feet away. A little red star had been stuck to the corner. “That’s hers, you see. And the star means it’s sold. For rather less, I dare say, than she could earn with a fortnight’s temporary typing — and Frostfield’s, in any case, will be taking the lion’s share. These considerations, however, do not weigh much with an artist who has just discovered, for the first time, that a total stranger may care for their work enough to pay hard cash for it.”

  Our path at long last crossed Eleanor’s, under, as Benjamin had calculated, the picture of the Doges’ Palace. His estimate of the welcome which would be accorded me, as one commanding substantial funds for investment in works of art, proved well founded. Eleanor was charming. That is to say, her manner seemed designed to merit that description: she displayed towards us a sort of girlish archness, such as a doting father might have found captivating in an only daughter at the age of eight. The effect was as of attempting to camouflage an armoured tank by icing it with pink sugar: a stratagem, in my view, doomed to failure.

  I was wondering how I could discreetly prompt Benjamin to his first line, which I now felt sure he had forgotten, when the girl Penelope, pursuing some more erratic course than ourselves, came floating again towards us. There being in rapture no discernment, she smiled ecstatically at Eleanor.

  “Ah, Penelope, my dear,” said Eleanor, “I see we’ve sold your little painting. How very nice. Have you had a word with the buyer yet?”

  “No,” said Penelope. “Should I have done?”

  “Well, my dear,” said Eleanor, “I do think it would be rather a good idea, don’t you? Of course, it’s a very nice little picture. But knowing that particular purchaser as one does, one can’t quite believe that the purchase had nothing at all to do with the fact that the artist was a rather attractive young lady. So I think it would be sensible if you had a little chat to him, Penelope dear.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, her rapture growing dim. It was at this stage, I suppose, that I actually observed those possible defects of the face and figure which I have previously mentioned. I began to think Cellini had underestimated the enemies of art; and to wonder whether Eleanor might not, perhaps, have murdered Ned in a spirit of mere vandalism.

  “Surely, my dear Mrs. Frostfield,” said Benjamin, “you speak in jest. From what one knows of that particular purchaser, it would only be if the artist were a charming young man that one could suspect an ulterior motive.” Benjamin has since admitted to me that there was no basis for this suggestion. He is, however, a kind-hearted fellow, always to be relied on to sign petitions and give donations to good causes.

  “What a delightful picture that is,” he went on, “of the Doges’ Palace. Always a popular subject, of course, but that one is charmingly done. By the way,” he continued, looking at Eleanor with an expression of rustic innocence, “I gather, dear Mrs. Frostfield, that you’ve been in Venice quite recently?”

  I felt a little relief from my anxieties: Benjamin had spoken his first line with admirable smoothness.

  “Venice?” said Eleanor, waving her jewelled knuckles in a gesture of repugnance, “Venice? Oh, my dear Benjamin, please don’t ask me to talk about Venice.”

  Upon being invited, however, to explain her distaste for the subject, she appeared willing to tell us at some length of the appalling experience which she had lately endured in that city. I do not set out verbatim her account of the murder, for it differed in no material respect from what we had heard already from Marylou. The emphasis, certainly, was a little different: Eleanor seemed to regard the matter principally as demonstrating a gross neglect on the part of the management of the Cytherea of their duty to ensure her own comfort and well-being. She concluded by saying dramatically that she would never stay there again.

  Though her news was not in truth new to him, Benjamin managed to show on hearing it all proper signs of amazement and distress. For myself, as one not acquainted with either Ned or Kenneth, more general expressions of outrage seemed appropriate, mingled with a natural curiosity.

  “Have they any idea who did it?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. A girl travelling in the same gr
oup as ourselves. They arrested her almost at once. She’d been having some sort of affair with poor Ned apparently, and I suppose they must have quarrelled. I must say, I wasn’t at all surprised about that — I always thought her a rather unstable type: always drinking too much and falling over things. I never cared for her.” Poor Julia — so much for Ruth and Naomi.

  Ragwort did splendidly. He lavished on Eleanor a generous mixture of sympathy (for her appalling experience), admiration (for her fortitude in surviving it) and indignant outrage (at the failure of the hotel to protect her from it). There were moments when I felt that he might be overdoing it;

  but he assures me that with women such as Eleanor this is not possible.

  “And you were actually interrogated by the police? Oh, Mrs. Frostfield, how perfectly disgraceful. Surely someone could have done something?”

  “My dear boy, the Manager was simply hopeless. And the Graziella woman, who was supposed to be our courier, wasn’t even there. One was obliged to submit.”

  “Dreadful,” said Ragwort, “quite dreadful. And refusing to find you a room in some other part of the hotel — I find that completely unforgivable. To expect you to spend the night in the same room, almost next to the one where you’d found this unfortunate young man lying murdered—”

  “It wasn’t I who actually found him, of course,” said Eleanor. If, as Ragwort afterwards maintained, her disclaimer came more promptly than was natural, it was by a fraction of time too minute for my own perception. “But I had seen him carried out on a stretcher, only a few feet away from me. With a sheet over him, thank God. But that was quite dreadful enough, I do assure you.”

  “Appalling,” said Ragwort. “I do think it’s wonderful of you to be here, Mrs. Frostfield, so soon after such a frightful experience.”

  “One has one’s responsibilities,” said Eleanor heroically. “I couldn’t let down my young artists, you know — it means so much to them to have me here in person. By the way, Benjamin, you naughty man, how did you know I’d been in Venice? I thought it was quite my own little secret.”

  I almost began to feel a measure of good will towards her: she could not have offered Benjamin a better cue if she had read my script herself.

  “That’s the extraordinary thing,” said Benjamin, now looking so innocent as to be practically half-witted. “I had a postcard from Venice, you see, from someone who said they’d seen you there. And they simply signed themselves Bruce and said they were looking forward to seeing me. Which is really rather embarrassing, because I can’t think who they are. I’ve been racking my brains to think who it could be. So I’d rather been hoping, Mrs. Frostfield — this frightful news about Ned made me forget all about it — I’d rather been hoping, as it’s obviously someone who knows you, that you might be able to work out who it is and save me from some unspeakable faux pas when I next meet them.”

  I was filled with relief. Benjamin is a dear, good, intelligent young man: I do not doubt that the rumours about his First are inspired entirely by malice. “Bruce?” said Eleanor. “Bruce? How very mysterious, Benjamin. I certainly didn’t meet anyone called Bruce in Venice. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone at all of that name. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  There was nothing in her gunmetal-blue eyes to suggest that she was lying; though, if Julia’s account of her conversation with Kenneth was to be relied on, it seemed certain that she must be.

  “Benjamin,” I said, “about this painting that was stolen in Verona.” After leaving Frostfield’s, he had hospitably invited us back to his flat for another glass of wine. “Have you been able to give any further thought to the matter?”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin, looking rather pleased with himself, like a man about to put on an amateur conjuring performance at a village fair. “Yes, I have. You believe, Hilary, as I understand it, that Bob Linnaker has the picture but doesn’t believe it has any particular value. Which, indeed, so far as one knows, it hasn’t. In order, however, to persuade him to admit he has it, you wish to pose as a customer anxious to acquire it.”

  “That,” I said, “is an admirable summary of the position.”

  “Well, the obvious thing, of course, would be to say that there’s a Tiepolo or something painted underneath it. But it’s difficult to see how you’d know about something like that — and anyway, that would just make Bob start scraping away at the thing himself. So I thought of something else, which I hope may quite appeal to you. May I invite you to entertain an hypothesis?”

  “Certainly,” said Ragwort, “we shall be delighted to.”

  “Well,” said Benjamin, “I should like you to suppose that at some time round the turn of the century the Committee, or whatever it is, in charge of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Verona had a meeting. And that one of the members pointed out that on one of the walls they had a rather boring blank space, which would look much better with a picture over it. And that another, while agreeing that this was the case, said it wasn’t on, because all round the space were a lot of nice pictures by Bassetti and other great Masters of the seventeenth century and it’d have to be something that fitted in with them, and they didn’t paint pictures the way Bassetti did any more. To which the first speaker replied that in the next village but one there was a young man, called, let’s say, John Smith — or, since my hypothesis is set in Italy, Giovanni Fabbro — who could paint, if called on to do so, just like Bassetti, or indeed like any of the other great Italian Masters. Who could produce, in short, the sort of thing that the speaker, while not professing to be an expert in such matters, would personally be prepared to call Art, which was more than could be said for any of this Impressionist and Cubist rubbish. Will you accompany me so far in my hypothesis?”

  “Certainly, Benjamin,” I said. “Do proceed.”

  “Good. So Giovanni is instructed to do a nice Madonna in the style of Bassetti, being reminded no doubt, when it comes to agreeing the price, that the work is for the greater glory of God and that only limited funds are available. His reputation spreading, he is commissioned to do similar work by other churches and by private patrons with the occasional gap between Old Masters on the walls of their villas and palazzos. I should like you now to assume the First World War.”

  “By all means,” said Ragwort. “We shall be happy to oblige you.”

  “Desmond, how kind. Well then, the First World War. And as a result of it, many strange vicissitudes and reversals of fortune, leading to the disposal of a number of valuable collections. And when the collection of the Barone di Cuesto or the Conte di Cuello comes up for auction, and it is well established, on the best possible authority, that the Barone’s ancestors had commissioned a number of paintings by Veronese, it is unlikely to occur to anyone that out of six paintings which all look like the work of Veronese one is actually the work of Giovanni Fabbro. Assume now, however, the passing of the years and the development of more sophisticated technologies in the authentication of paintings: so that various collectors gradually discover that some of the great Italian Masters which they are proud to possess are in fact the work of an unknown twentieth-century copyist. What,” asked Benjamin with the air of a conjuror demonstrating to his audience that the hat is completely empty, “do you think happens then?”

  “Much crossness, I should think,” answered Ragwort. “Demands for money back. Letters to newspapers about the decline in standards in the art trade. Lawyers of two continents brushing up on the law of misrepresentation.”

  “Ah yes, certainly.” Benjamin looked gratified, as if receiving confirmation that the hat was indeed empty. “Certainly, all of that. But then. Then, my dears, when the dust has settled a little and the National and the Met are selling off these impostures for what they can get, it occurs to people that old Giovanni must have been rather a clever chap to do these convincing imitations, which have taken in all the experts for such a long time. So they start thinking that if they can’t afford a real Titian or Veronese, a genuine forgery by Giovanni Fabbro mi
ght well be the next best thing. With the result, dear children,” said Benjamin, with the benevolent satisfaction of the conjuror actually producing the rabbit from the hat, “with the result that among a certain section of collectors forgeries by Fabbro become rather sought after and, in consequence, valuable.”

  “Benjamin,” I asked, “is all this probable or merely possible?”

  “It is not,” Benjamin answered, “improbable. It’s more or less exactly what happened with Van Meegeren. With whom, indeed, the point has now been reached at which people are forging Van Meegeren forgeries.”

  “Meanwhile in Verona?” I said.

  “Meanwhile in Verona, as you so astutely say, Hilary, everyone knows that the third picture on the left after the first transept is not one of their valuable Old Masters but just a rather nice picture by a comparatively modern local artist. Which would be, no doubt, what they would tell the police when it was stolen.”

  Ragwort was rather carried away by the story: he asked Benjamin if he really believed that the painting stolen from Verona might be valuable as a forgery. Benjamin found this a sufficient pretext to pat him indulgently on the shoulder.

  “Desmond dear, I don’t think anything of the kind. I haven’t the faintest idea why that particular painting should have been in the Church of Saint Nicholas and I have no reason whatever to suppose that it is the work of a celebrated copyist or forger. Giovanni Fabbro is entirely my own invention. My hypothesis is a meretricious little thing, hired out to you, as it were, for half an hour’s casual diversion: it is only Bob Linnaker, we hope, who may be sufficiently persuaded of her virtue to take her in marriage.”

  Back in Islington, feeding the cats, I reflected on the possible significance of Eleanor’s denial that she knew anyone called Bruce. One wondered if she had suspected, after all, that the story of the postcard was a fabrication, and it crossed my mind that she might, if so, telephone my College to seek confirmation of my bona fides. Had she done so, she would not, of course, have found anyone to confirm that I was authorized to invest the College funds in the purchase of works of art; on the other hand, in view of the happy indifference of most of my colleagues to the financial affairs of the College, she was equally unlikely to have found anyone to deny it. Remembering the chillness of her gun-metal-blue eyes, I found this a remarkably comforting thought.