“But what problem are you alluding to?” I persisted.
“The problem that is in my mind,” he replied, “is suggested by the very remarkable story that Oldfield related to us last night. You listened to that story very attentively and no doubt you remember the substance of it. Now, recalling that story as a whole and considering it as an account of a series of related events, doesn’t it seem to you to suggest some very curious and interesting questions?”
“The only question that it suggested to me was how the devil that arsenic got into the bone-ash. I could make nothing of that.”
“Very well,” he rejoined, “then try to make something of it. The arsenic was certainly there. We agree that it could not have come from the body. Then it must have got into the ash after the firing. But how? There is one problem. Take it as a starting point and consider what explanations are possible; and further, consider what would be the implications of each of your explanations.”
“But,” I exclaimed, “I can’t think of any explanation. The thing is incomprehensible. Besides, what business is it of ours? We are not engaged in the case.”
“Don’t lose sight of Blandy,” said he. “He hasn’t shot his bolt yet. If he can lay hands on Boles, he will give us no trouble, but if he fails in that, he may think it worth while to give some attention to Mrs. Gannet. I don’t know whether he suspects her of actual complicity in the murder, but it is obvious that he does suspect her of knowing and concealing the whereabouts of Boles. Consequently, if he can get no information from her by persuasion, he might consider the possibility of charging her as an accessory either before or after the fact.”
“But,” I objected, “the choice wouldn’t lie with him. You are surely not suggesting that either the police or the Public Prosecutor would entertain the idea of bringing a charge for the purpose of extorting information—virtually as a measure of intimidation?”
“Certainly not,” he replied, “unless Blandy could make out a prima facie case. But it is possible that he knows more than we do about the relations of Boles and Mrs. Gannet. At any rate, the position is that I have made a conditional promise to Oldfield that if any proceedings should be taken against her I will undertake the defense. It is not likely that any proceedings will be taken, but still it is necessary for me to know as much as I can learn about the circumstances connected with the murder. Hence these inquiries.”
“Which seem to me to lead nowhere. However, as Kempster remarked, you know—which I do not—what obscurities you are trying to elucidate. Do you know whether there is going to be an inquest?”
“I understand,” he replied, “that an inquest is to be held in the course of a few days and I expect to be summoned to give evidence concerning the arsenic poisoning. But I should attend in any case, and I recommend you to come with me. When we have heard what the various witnesses, including Blandy, have to tell, we shall have a fairly complete knowledge of the facts, and we may be able to judge whether the Inspector is keeping anything up his sleeve.”
As the reader will have learned from Oldfield’s narrative—which this account overlaps by a few days—I adopted Thorndyke’s advice and attended the inquest. But though I gained thereby a knowledge of all the facts of the case, I was no nearer to any understanding of the purpose that Thorndyke had in view in his study of Gannet’s pottery; nor did I find myself entirely in sympathy with his interest in Mrs. Gannet. I realized that she was in a difficult and trying position, but I was less convinced than he appeared to be of her complete innocence of any complicity in the murder or the very suspicious poisoning affair that had preceded it.
But his interest in her was quite remarkable. It went so far as actually to induce him to attend the funeral of her husband and even to persuade me to accept the invitation and accompany him. Not that I needed much persuasion, for the unique opportunity of witnessing a funeral at which there was no coffin and no corpse—where “our dear departed brother” might almost have been produced in a paper bag—was not to be missed.
But it hardly came up to my expectations, for it appeared that the ashes had been deposited in the urn before the proceedings began, and the funeral service took its normal course, with the terra-cotta casket in place of the coffin. But I found a certain grim humour in the circumstance that the remains of Peter Gannet should be enshrined in a pottery vessel of obviously commercial origin which in all its properties—in its exact symmetry and mechanical regularity—was the perfect antithesis of his own masterpieces.
CHAPTER 15
A Modernist Collector
My experiences at Mr. Kempster’s gallery were only a foretaste of what Thorndyke could do in the way of mystification, for I need not say that the most profound cogitation on Oldfield’s story and on the facts which had transpired at the inquest had failed completely to enlighten me. I was still unable to perceive that there was any real problem to solve, or that, if there were, the physical properties of Gannet’s pottery could possibly be a factor in its solution.
But obviously I was wrong. For Thorndyke was no wild goose hunter or discoverer of mare’s nests. If he believed that there was a problem to investigate, I could safely assume that there was such a problem; and if he believed that Gannet’s pottery held a clue to it, I could assume—and did assume—that he was right. Accordingly, I waited, patiently and hopefully, for some further developments which might dissipate the fog in which my mind was enshrouded.
The further developments were not long in appearing. On the third day after the funeral, Thorndyke announced to me that he had made, by letter, an appointment, which included me, with Mr. Francis Broomhill of Stafford Square, for a visit of inspection of his famous collection of works of modernist art. I gathered, subsequently, by the way in which we were received, that Thorndyke’s letter must have been somewhat misleading, in tone if not in matter. But any little mental reservations as to our views on contemporary art were, I suppose, admissible in the circumstances.
Of course I accepted gleefully for I was on the tiptoe of curiosity as to Thorndyke’s object in making the appointment. Moreover, the collection included Gannet’s one essay in the art of sculpture; which, if it matched his pottery, ought certainly to be worth seeing. Accordingly, we set forth together in the early afternoon and made our way to the exclusive and aristocratic region in which Mr. Broomhill had his abode.
The whole visit was a series of surprises. In the first place, the door was opened by a footman, a type of organism that I supposed to be virtually extinct. Then, no sooner had we entered the grand old Georgian house than we seemed to become enveloped in an atmosphere of unreality suggestive of Alice in Wonderland or of a nightmare visit to a lunatic asylum. The effect began in the entrance hall, which was hung with strange, polychromatic picture frames enclosing objects which obviously were not pictures but appeared to be panels or canvases on which some very extravagant painter had cleaned his palette. Standing about the spacious floor were pedestals supporting lumps of stone or metal, some—to my eye—completely shapeless, while others had faint hints of obscure anthropoidal character such as one might associate with the discarded failures from the workshop of some Easter Island sculptor. I glanced at them in bewilderment as the footman, having taken possession of our hats and sticks, solemnly conducted us along the great hall to a fine pedimented doorway, and opening a noble, many-panelled, mahogany door, ushered us into the presence.
Mr. Francis Broomhill impressed me favourably at the first glance; a tall, frail-looking man of about forty with a slight stoop and the forward poise of the head that one associates with near sight. He wore a pair of deep concave spectacles mounted in massive tortoise-shell frames; looking at those spectacles with a professional eye, I decided that without them his eyesight would have been negligible. But though the pale blue eyes, seen through those powerful lenses, appeared ridiculously small, they were kindly eyes that conveyed a friendly greeting, and the quiet, pleasant voice confirmed the impression.
“It is exceedingly kin
d of you,” said Thorndyke, when we had shaken hands, “to give us this opportunity of seeing your treasures.”
“But not at all,” was the reply. “It is I who am the beneficiary. The things are here to be looked at and it is a delight to me to show them to appreciative connoisseurs. I don’t often get the chance; for even in this golden age of artistic progress, there still lingers a hankering for the merely representational and anecdotal aspects of art.”
As he was speaking, I glanced round the room and especially at the pictures which covered the walls, and as I looked at them they seemed faintly to recall an experience of my early professional life when, for a few weeks, I had acted as locum-tenens for the superintendent of a small lunatic asylum (or “mental hospital” as we say nowadays). The figures in them—when recognizable as such—all seemed to have a certain queer psychopathic quality as if they were looking out at me from a padded cell.
After a short conversation, during which I maintained a cautious reticence and Thorndyke was skilfully elusive, we proceeded on a tour of inspection round the room under the guidance of Mr. Broomhill, who enlightened us with comment and exposition, somewhat in the Bunderby manner. There was a quite considerable collection of pictures, all by modern artists—mostly foreign, I was glad to note—and all singularly alike. The same curious psychopathic quality pervaded them all, and the same odd absence of the traditional characteristics of pictures. The drawing—when there was any—was childish, the painting was barbarously crude, and there was a total lack of any sort of mental content or subject matter.
“Now,” said our host, halting before one of these masterpieces, “here is a work that I am rather fond of though it is a departure from the artist’s usual manner. He is not often as realistic as this.”
I glanced at the gold label beneath it and read: “Nude. Israel Popoff,” and nude it certainly was—apparently representing a naked human being with limbs like very badly made sausages. I did not find it painfully realistic. But the next picture—by the same artist—fairly “got me guessing,” for it appeared to consist of nothing more than a disorderly mass of streaks of paint of various rather violent colours. I waited for explanatory comments as Mr. Broomhill stood before it, regarding it fondly.
“This,” said he, “I regard as a truly representative example of the Master; a perfect piece of abstract painting. Don’t you agree with me?” he added, turning to me, beaming with enthusiasm.
The suddenness of the question disconcerted me. What the deuce did he mean by “abstract painting”? I hadn’t the foggiest idea. You might as well—it seemed to me—talk about “abstract amputation at the hip-joint.” But I had got to say something, and I did.
“Yes,” I burbled incoherently, gazing at him in consternation. “Certainly—in fact, undoubtedly—a most remarkable and—er—” (I was going to say “cheerful” but mercifully saw the red light in time) “most interesting demonstration of colour contrast. But I am afraid I am not perfectly clear as to what the picture represents.”
“Represents!” he repeated in a tone of pained surprise. “It doesn’t represent anything. Why should it? It is a picture. But a picture is an independent entity. It doesn’t need to imitate something else.”
“No, of course not,” I spluttered mendaciously. “But still, one has been accustomed to find in pictures representations of natural objects—”
“But why?” he interrupted. “If you want the natural objects, you can go and look at them; and if you want them represented, you can have them photographed. So why allow them to intrude into pictures?”
I looked despairingly at Thorndyke but got no help from that quarter. He was listening impassively; but from long experience of him, I knew that behind the stony calm of his exterior his inside was shaking with laughter. So I murmured a vague assent, adding that it was difficult to escape from the conventional ideas that one had held from early youth; and so we moved on to the next “abstraction.” But warned by this terrific experience, I maintained thereafter a discreet silence tempered by carefully prepared ambiguities, and thus managed to complete our tour of the room without further disaster.
“And now,” said our host as we turned away from the last of the pictures, “you would like to see the sculptures and pottery. You mentioned in your letter that you were especially interested in poor Mr. Gannet’s work. Well, you shall see it in appropriate surroundings, as he would have liked to see it.”
He conducted us across the hall to another fine door which he threw open to admit us to the sculpture gallery. Looking around me as we entered, I was glad that I had seen the pictures first; for now I was prepared for the worst and could keep my emotions under control.
I shall not attempt to describe that chamber of horrors. My first impression was that of a sort of infernal Mrs. Jarley’s; and the place was pervaded by the same madhouse atmosphere as I had noticed in the other room. But it was more unpleasant, for debased sculpture can be much more horrible than debased painting; and in the entire collection there was not a single work that could be called normal. The exhibits ranged from almost formless objects, having only that faint suggestion of a human head or figure that one sometimes notices in queer-shaped potatoes or flint nodules, to recognizable busts or torsos; but in these the faces were hideous and bestial and the limbs and trunks misshapen and characterized by a horrible obesity suggestive of dropsy or myxoedema. There was a little pottery, all crude and coarse, but Gannet’s pieces were easily the worst.
“This, I think,” said our host, “is what you specially wanted to see.”
He indicated a grotesque statuette labelled “Figurine of a Monkey: Peter Gannet,” and I looked at it curiously. If I had met it anywhere else it would have given me quite a severe shock; but here, in this collection of monstrosities, it looked almost like the work of a sane barbarian.
“There was some question,” Mr. Broomhill continued, “that you wanted to settle, was there not?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied, “in fact, there are two. The first is that of priority. Gannet executed three versions of this figurine. One has gone to America, one is on loan at a London Museum, and this is the third. The question is, which was made first?”
“There ought not to be any difficulty about that,” said our host. “Gannet used to sign and number all his pieces and the serial number should give the order of priority at a glance.”
He lifted the image carefully, and having inverted it and looked at its base, handed it to Thorndyke.
“You see,” said he, “that the number is 571 B. Then there must have been a 571 A and a 571 C. But clearly, this must have been the second one made, and if you can examine the one at the museum, you can settle the order of the series. If that is 571 A, then the American copy must be 571 C, or vice versa. What is the other question?”
“That relates to the nature of the first one made. Is it the original model or is it a pressing from a mould? This one appears to be a squeeze. If you look inside, you can see traces of the thumb impressions, so it can’t be a cast.”
He returned it to Mr. Broomhill who peered into the opening of the base and then, having verified Thorndyke’s observation, passed it to me. I was not deeply interested, but I examined the base carefully and looked into the dark interior as well as I could. The flat surface of the base was smooth but unglazed and on it was inscribed in blue around the central opening “Op. 571 B P. G.” with a rudely drawn figure of a bird, which might have been a goose but which I knew was meant for a gannet, interposed between the number and the initials. Inside, on the uneven surface, I could make out a number of impressions of a thumb—apparently a right thumb. Having made these observations, I handed the effigy back to Mr. Broomhill who replaced it on its stand, and resumed the conversation.
“I should imagine that all of the three versions were pressings, but that is only an opinion. What is your view?”
“There are three possibilities, and bearing in mind Gannet’s personality, I don’t know which of them is the
most probable. The original figure was certainly modelled in the solid. Then Opus 571 A may either be that model, fired in the solid, or that model excavated and fired, or a squeeze from the mould.”
“It would hardly have been possible to fire it in the solid,” said Mr. Broomhill.
“That was Mr. Kempster’s view, but I am not so sure. After all, some pottery articles are fired solid. Bricks, for instance.”
“Yes, but a few fire cracks in a brick don’t matter. I think he would have had to excavate it, at least. But why should he have taken that trouble when he had actually made a mould?”
“I can imagine no reason at all,” replied Thorndyke, “unless he wished to keep the original. The one now at the museum was his own property and I don’t think it had ever been offered for sale.”
“If the question is of any importance,” said our host—who was obviously of opinion that it was not—“it could perhaps be settled by inspection of the piece at the museum, which was probably the first one made. Don’t you think so?”
“It might,” Thorndyke replied, “or it might not. The most satisfactory way would be to compare the respective weights of the two pieces. An excavated figurine would be heavier than a pressing, and, of course, a solid one would be much heavier.”
“Yes,” Mr. Broomhill agreed with a slightly puzzled air, “that is true. So I take it that you would like to know the exact weight of this piece. Well, there is no difficulty about that.”
He walked over to the fireplace and pressed the bell-push at its side. In a few moments the door opened and the footman entered the room.
“Can you tell me, Hooper,” Mr. Broomhill asked, “if there is a pair of scales that we could have to weigh this statuette?”
“Certainly, sir,” was the reply. “There is a pair in Mr. Laws’s pantry. Shall I bring them up, sir?”
“If you would. Hooper—with the weights, of course. And you might see that the pan is quite clean.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 233