A Palace of Art

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘Miss Montacute isn’t here now. Not any longer. She left after breakfast.’

  ‘Oh – thank you very much.’ Jake had turned round and seen that the speaker was a young woman – a very pretty young woman – more or less of Gloria’s age. She had a Scotch accent and the appearance of being more competent than, perhaps, it is wholly desirable that a pretty and promising girl should be. Jake, however, being in the condition he was, regarded her without the shadow of an improper thought. ‘Do you mean she’s left Venice?’

  ‘Yes.’ The pretty Scotch girl came to a full stop on this monosyllable. Jake gathered that he had to produce credentials before communication could be carried further.

  ‘My name’s Counterpayne,’ he said. ‘I’m Gloria’s cousin, as a matter of fact.’ (For the moment, Jake forgot his conviction that second cousins aren’t cousins at all.) ‘If you’re a friend of hers, I expect you may have heard of me.’

  ‘No.’ The pretty girl had no doubts in the matter. ‘I never have.’ She looked at him consideringly. ‘I’m Miss Anderson.’

  ‘How do you do?’ It struck Jake as extremely funny that anybody should say ‘I’m Miss Anderson’. But no doubt it was quite the thing in North Britain. ‘Have you been travelling with her?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Miss Anderson seemed to have discovered something answeringly funny for herself. ‘Although it’s rather a grand word for it. We haven’t exactly been to the sources of the Nile.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Jake was a shade intimidated, or he wouldn’t have made this weak reply. He rallied. ‘Will you come out and have some coffee?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’ This reply surprised Jake. He’d been undergoing a scrutiny to which it hadn’t occurred to him that he was standing up all that well. ‘There’s a little place just beside the Accademia,’ Miss Anderson added.

  ‘Then come on.’ Jake led the way out of the pensione with alacrity. If he wasn’t going to be baffled – or baffled at least for a time – his only chance lay in chatting up Gloria’s friend. Gloria might have gone off abruptly, but it wasn’t likely to have been to an unknown destination. ‘Had you arranged to split up?’ he asked when they were in the open air. He tried to put this question casually, but it turned out not to be the kind of question that can be spoken that way. It must be perfectly evident that he was in a state about Gloria.

  ‘Sooner or later, we were going to. In a few days, in fact. My parents are at a place called Ortisei – that’s up north – and I’m joining them for the rest of their holiday before going home.’ Miss Anderson seemed prepared to be communicative, at least about herself. ‘I’ve got to be back at work, the Monday after next. I’m a nurse.’

  ‘And Gloria has to be back at work too?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Giving out tea, isn’t it?’

  ‘She’s changing jobs. She’s going to run the Admin canteen.’

  ‘I see.’ Jake hadn’t much idea what an Admin canteen was, but it didn’t sound exactly glamorous. The important thing, however, was that he’d gained some sort of footing or tolerance with the Anderson girl. He nursed this carefully with occasional becoming remarks until they reached the cafe. ‘My name’s Jake,’ he there thought it possible to announce.

  ‘I suppose that’s really James? I’m Christine, but generally called Kirstie.’ Miss Anderson seemed instinctively to compensate for this moderate advance in familiarity by putting a certain distancing into her tone. ‘Did you and Gloria meet yesterday?’ she abruptly asked.

  ‘Yes, we did – just for a few minutes.’ Jake was taken by surprise. If Gloria had mentioned their meeting to Kirstie, Kirstie wouldn’t now be asking if a meeting had taken place. If, on the other hand, Gloria hadn’t mentioned it, what was putting the question into Kirstie’s head? The only possible answer seemed to be that Gloria had arrived back at her pensione still distinguishably in a state to need accounting for, but had offered no explanation to her friend. And then – this morning, indeed only a few hours ago – she had bolted from Venice, still leaving Kirstie in the dark. And here was the explanation of Kirstie Anderson’s having agreed to come out and have coffee with him in this way. She suspected he held some key to a mystery, and was resolved to get hold of it. And he, in his turn, was in the same position in relation to her.

  It was a tricky situation, Jake thought. But he didn’t approve of making things trickier than they had to be, and he decided to take the initiative with a few direct questions.

  ‘Has Gloria gone home?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She’s gone off in an Alitalia plane by way of Milan. It was the first offering.’

  ‘You mean she was in a great hurry? Had she had bad news from England – anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She mentioned nothing.’ Kirstie had left Jake’s first question unanswered. She seemed disposed to turn reticent again. But Jake had a feeling that this was a temporising process, a holding operation while she studied him. She wasn’t doing this in quite the way that he’d sometimes been gratified to notice in girls; for instance, she seemed less interested in his eyes or his mouth aesthetically regarded than in how he looked and spoke. It was a bit of character appraisal that was going on. He wished she’d step on it.

  ‘Do you think she’s gone back to Nudd?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose she may have. I think she rather feels she’s been putting it off – her problem there, I mean.’

  ‘Her problem?’ For a moment Jake took this to refer to nothing less than the dangerous Harry Carter himself.

  ‘What she’s going to do about all the valuable things there.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’ Jake was much relieved. ‘She’ll liberate them, if she takes my advice. Scatter them around – so that there will be a nice bit of this or that here and there. That’s how everything of that sort ought to be – don’t you think, Kirstie? The Russians made a frightful mistake after their Revolution – just embalming everything in the same pompous old museums and palaces and places. In China—’

  ‘Did you air these views to Gloria when you met her yesterday?’

  ‘No, I didn’t – but I expect I shall. Not that it’s all that important, really. Museums and picture galleries have their points, I suppose, even although I don’t happen to care for them myself.’ Jake was being entirely reasonable. ‘You can nip in whenever you please, and nip out with precisely what you’ve wanted ten minutes later.’

  ‘If everybody did that,’ Kirstie said stiffly, ‘there soon wouldn’t be much left.’

  ‘You’ve got me wrong.’ Jake was much amused, but immediately became serious again. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I don’t know Gloria all that well. I haven’t, I mean, seen her a great deal. But she’s terribly important to me, Kirstie. And clearly she’s upset. She’s gone off in a state. Isn’t that so? Be honest. I want to know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a state. Gloria’s a controlled sort of person. But it’s true that she’d rather suddenly had enough of Venice.’

  ‘Why? What was it?’

  ‘I think it’s her that you ought to ask about that.’

  ‘But she’s probably over Mont Blanc by now! And I want to know.’

  This urgency had at least the effect of causing Kirstie to stir her coffee thoughtfully. The café – or the open-air part of it – was on the restless side: close to the Accademia landing-stage, with motoscafi scurrying and vaporetti loitering in and out all the time. Jake, who didn’t possess much historical information, wondered what imbecile impulse had induced people to build up a city in which you had to slop around in this way. It wasn’t dignified, as in Gentile Bellini’s State occasions set here; or at once idealised and lively, as with Carpaccio whom that chap yesterday evening had been on about; or all dissolved into such lights as never were, which had been Turner’s notion of coping with the scene. Turner’s Venice – it came to him suddenly and brilliantly – was Venice in the second that the bomb dropped: visually enthralling, and in the next instant it would be g
one forever.

  Only here it still was – busily engaged in sinking into the sea, according to some authorities on the subject. But that, quite obviously, was no more than a hoax or a racket. The place was destined to go on mouldering for centuries. Of course you could fall in love with it in a necrophilous way. He saw that clearly enough.

  These thoughts – which illustrate the fact that professional preoccupations can be irruptive even within states of considerable personal urgency – left Jake scowling at Miss Anderson in a fashion which had the sudden effect of swinging her to his side of some invisible but significant fence.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you,’ she said, ‘just what I know. But it really isn’t much. You might put it that Gloria has been pestered by somebody.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean a young man pursuing her to Venice and pretending a romantic interest in her, when he was really just after what she’s inherited.’

  ‘She couldn’t believe—!’ Jake was for a moment utterly at sea. Confusedly, he saw his yesterday’s encounter with Gloria, and the idiotic line of talk he’d developed in it, as perfectly supporting some mad and low accusation. ‘You might think . . . but Gloria could never think—’

  ‘Somebody we’ve been tagging about with for a week.’ Kirstie had looked at him round-eyed, and spoken very quickly. ‘I’ll tell you his name. Octavius Chevalley.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ Jake had taken a deep breath. ‘Does he know Gloria well?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think she’d ever heard of him either.’

  ‘It sounds crazy. What’s his line?’

  ‘He works for some firm that has to do with pictures and things. I remember he said something about a man called Domberg.’

  ‘Then he’s had a first-rate training as a parasite and blood-sucker.’ Jake announced this with robust conviction. ‘Anyway, he’s been exposed.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it that. He exposed himself.’

  ‘He—?’ Jake almost got this one wrong too. ‘Just how?’

  ‘He had a change of heart, or something, and thought it wasn’t nice.’ Kirstie didn’t speak as one who professes charitable feelings. ‘He explained his unworthy designs, and withdrew.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, just yesterday. When Gloria and he went to Torcello. I’d gone to Chioggia.’

  ‘And Gloria told you about it afterwards – when she’d got back here in the afternoon?’

  ‘Yes. It had been a shock to her.’ Kirstie paused. ‘A bigger shock,’ she added grimly, ‘than it damn-well ought to have been.’

  ‘But she didn’t tell you about meeting me?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Don’t you think that was a bit odd?’ Although he tried to conceal it, Jake was dismayed.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Kirstie considered this coolly. ‘It was just a casual meeting with a cousin – and when she had something else very much on her mind.’

  ‘There was nothing casual about it for me.’

  ‘So you’ve rather conveyed to me.’ Kirstie regarded Jake gravely. ‘The question is, what did you convey to her? Did you pretend it was a casual meeting – as Mr Chevalley did a week ago?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Jake was aware of something unusual happening in his blood stream; a fuss or flurry liable to produce anger or a flare-up of injured pride. ‘Not that it wasn’t difficult.’

  ‘Difficult ?’

  ‘The trouble is that we don’t—do we?—believe in love at first sight. As a generation, I mean.’ Jake was speaking carefully. ‘Lust at first sight, yes. You know? I’m bloody well going to lay that girl. You hear it said.’

  ‘You may. I don’t.’

  ‘Sorry. But you see what I mean. Instant lust’s in order. But not the other thing.’

  ‘The Romeo line, as it were?’ The question came so drily from Miss Anderson that a detached observer might have suspected her of being, despite herself, a little affected by this turn in the talk. ‘The point is, you came clean?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t say: “Oh, Miss Montacute, how surprising to meet you here” – which is what this filthy Shubunkin seems to have said.’

  ‘Chevalley.’

  ‘All right – Chevalley. I mean that I simply told Gloria I’d come to Venice to find her.’

  ‘And dower her with your hand?’

  ‘If you like to put it in that offensive way.’

  ‘I don’t believe you were offensive.’ Kirstie came out with this handsomely. ‘But you mayn’t just have been—’

  ‘All right – don’t I know it? The question is what I do now.’

  ‘Then I can give you the answer, if you want it.’

  ‘Of course I want it.’

  ‘You proceed as planned.’

  ‘Faint heart never won fair lady?’

  ‘Very occasionally, perhaps. But not much of a lady.’

  ‘Then I’ll go right ahead.’ Jake was much heartened.

  ‘But can I give you a lift to Ortisei? It’s only a few hours, and I can go home over the Brenner.’

  ‘But you’d lose a day that way. So I think not.’

  ‘Kirstie, you’re a very nice girl.’

  Part IV

  Chapter Twenty

  INDIGNATION IN GRAY’S INN

  ‘Impossible!’ Domberg said.

  ‘It’s surprising, I agree.’ Mr Thurkle, ensconced behind his own broad desk, deprecated perturbation. ‘But, like it or not, that’s what he calls himself. The Montacute Curator.’

  ‘The thing’s outrageous. Can’t you get rid of him?’

  ‘My dear sir, I am not this man Guise’s employer. It appears that he has been at Nudd for a very long time. Longer than the Montacutes themselves, in fact. So I certainly can’t do anything rash. It is very possible that he enjoys a considerable measure of my client’s confidence.’

  ‘He’s certainly acting as if he did. And where is that confounded girl, anyway?’

  ‘Miss Montacute?’ Thurkle had raised his eyebrows at the unseemly cast of this enquiry. ‘It is possible that she is back at Nudd by now. I have written to her, and am awaiting her next instructions. I can’t bully her, you know.’

  ‘Nor influence her in any way?’ Domberg stared glumly at the lawyer. ‘That’s what Chevalley seems to have decided, too.’

  ‘Chevalley?’

  ‘The young man you met in my office. He suggested to me – most resourcefully and perfectly properly – that he should go out to Venice and contact this … and contact Miss Montacute. Have a chat with her about the future of the collection, and so on.’

  ‘He may be said to have gone to Venice,’ Thurkle blandly asked, ‘in the character of a tout?’

  ‘Confound it, Thurkle, that’s a most uncalled for way of putting it. Comberback and Domberg were – informally, of course – Mrs Montacute’s professional advisers in various artistic matters for many years. It was—’

  ‘I don’t recall anything of the kind appearing in the lady’s accounts. No doubt you acted in an honorary capacity.’

  ‘That goes without saying.’ Domberg made the gesture of one whose whole life-style vindicates his aloofness from monetary considerations. ‘But about Chevalley. He has behaved damned oddly. He hadn’t been in Venice more than a week – and on the firm’s cash, mark you – when he wrote in throwing up his job with us. He says he has hopes of a junior lecturership in the history of art in some outlandish provincial university. What do you make of that?’

  ‘It is no doubt natural that he should seek to better himself.’ Thurkle appeared to offer this opinion without malice. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’

  As the tea had actually been brought into Thurkle’s room and placed on Thurkle’s desk, Domberg was hardly able to refuse. Kitchenmaid’s tea, he told himself ill-temperedly, in chipped kitchenmaid’s cups. It was unfortunate that the late Mrs Montacute had chosen as her solicitor one so blind to all aesthetic decency.

  ‘I suppose you
agree,’ he said, ‘that this fellow Guise, whether enjoying the young woman’s confidence or not, must be off his head? Criminally, for that matter. “Montacute Curator” is sheer imposture.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Thurkle was urbane. ‘I am not, of course, particularly conversant with criminal law. In this office, as you can imagine, it doesn’t often come our way. But I have a fancy that the point you raise would depend for its validity entirely on Miss Montacute. If she is aware that Guise is calling himself that, and sees no reason to take any steps about it, then he is that. We might find Counsel to produce another opinion, I suppose. But then one can find Counsel to produce pretty well anything. I ought to have asked whether you take sugar. There may well be some in the office.’

  ‘Thank you, no. What earthly title—’

  ‘Well, it appears to be Guise who has got those people lined up. We can’t blink that. Once one has come to think of them they’re a most obvious resource. Which is something you appear not to have done, my dear Domberg.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense. I clearly recall its being in my mind on the very day Mrs Montacute died. And before she died. I mentioned it to somebody. To that unprincipled Chevalley, in fact. He pointed out – and he was absolutely right – that the American universities and foundations and so forth are simply no longer spending money in that way. They haven’t got the dollars. It sounds incredible, but it’s the truth. Big new foreign-campus ventures – which were always just prestige stuff – are out for an indefinite time ahead. You could travel from coast to coast, my dear Thurkle, without finding anybody who’d be prepared to go beyond the million dollar mark on such a venture. However, the Japanese are said to be becoming interested. I heard of one the other day who has more than half an eye on Blenheim. But that’s scarcely relevant to our problem.’

  ‘Miss Montacute’s problem. What I was saying, however, is that Guise has in some manner educed expressions of interest from at least two reputable seats of learning in the United States. One of them has even had architects and surveyors down at Nudd, looking into the possibility of extensions to the house – dormitories and so forth.’