A Game of Consequences

by Shelley Smith

  The furniture-depository men came and removed into store the pieces he had selected for Jeremy, leaving some nasty bare-looking places here and there; which didn’t really matter, since no one was going to see it.

  Tom wrote three almost exactly similar letters: one to a Herr Nöckelheim of Zurich, one to a Monsieur Boudin of Paris, and one to Herr Strauss of Berlin, to the effect that he, the undersigned, was coming to Paris (or Berlin, or Zurich) shortly and knowing of his correspondent’s especial interest in paintings by Spanish artists of the 17th century would like to show Herr Strauss (or Nöckelheim, or M. Boudin) the extraordinarily fine example of the period that had come into his possession. He was, etc. Thomas M. Ransome, late of Jennets of London.

  The operation which took the longest time was preparing the Velázquez for the journey. Tom particularly did not want to detach the canvas from the stretcher and roll it up (which would have been the simplest method of concealing it) for fear of damaging the surface, which so far had suffered little from craquelure. He wished to keep it that way. What he had to do was to disguise it in such a manner that it would not be noticed, would pass unremarked by the keenest Customs official.

  It took him two days poking around in junk shops to find what he was looking for: an artist’s paintbox, containing half-used and twisted tubes of paint, some worn brushes, and a paint-encrusted easel. A convincing apparatus.

  In an Art shop in Winchester he bought two canvases of the same dimensions as the picture, also a length of unprimed canvas, some size, primer, brushes, architects’ drawing-pins, canvas pliers and a framer’s hammer and some tacks.

  Tom first of all removed the painting from its gilded frame and carefully disjointed the frame, wrapping each separate piece in black tissue and tucking them under the back seat of the car. Then he laid the painting face down on a linen sheet, removed the bevelled mahogany wedges from the stretchers and lined the back of the painting with new canvas and replaced the wedges. Next he stretched a new length of unprimed canvas over the face of the picture, tacking it down to the very edge of the stretchers so that the original canvas was completely hidden, back and front. The new canvas had then to be sized and primed, to match the other two. He now had three new canvases, a genuinely new one on either side of the other. He tied the three securely together. Then wrapped the three of them in brown paper and stuck down all the flaps and corners. Even if a douanier insisted on opening the rectangular package he would only find blank canvases inside. But there was no reason why anyone should want to; with his paintbox and folding easel, Tom would appear to be a painter going abroad on a working holiday.

  *

  On the 18th day from the family’s departure the final arrangements were made. The car was packed up ready to leave. The electrical distribution board was in a cupboard beneath the main staircase. The alarm clock was wound-up and set to midnight, the mechanism was then connected by a wire to a socket; with a secondary wire running from it into a canister of Sodium Chlorate. At exactly midnight in eight days’ time, the live wires would touch and the heat generated would explode the chemical.

  The worst that could happen would be that the apparatus might fail to work. In which event nothing would occur. But it would work. It was bound to. It was so simple: the commonplace technique of half the political crimes wrecking the world today. But what Tom was doing could not be said to be on a par with that kind of wickedness. It was not an act of malevolence or revenge by which innocent persons would be maimed and killed.

  No one was going to be hurt by Tom’s deed. Except for the comparatively miniscule financial loss suffered by that immense organisation, the insurance company concerned. And that seemed somehow less real and less significant than robbing a bank even.

  Not at all the same thing in fact. People who robbed banks used face-to-face violence and applied every technique of modern science. Nothing amateurish about them. Whereas Tom was merely mimicking the deeds of violent men the way a child imitates with her dolls the absurdities of a grown-up tea party.

  He went round the house making sure that all the windows were fastened. Nothing had been overlooked. He locked the back entrance, the entrance to his apartment, and the front door, and slipped the keys into an envelope addressed to the bank manager, with a letter inside explaining that he’d been called away urgently on a family matter. He dropped this into the Night-box of the bank on his way through the village. The sound of the church clock striking twice was carried on the still air. He began to croon to himself his own rhyming version of a nursery ditty as he drove:

  ‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

  Stole a pic and away did run.

  The pic was sold

  For lots of gold

  And kept Tom rich till he was old.’

  He was feeling triumphant and excited to the point of euphoria. Happiness lay before him like a road on a map, clear and straightforward.

  *

  Tom’s plan of campaign began in Paris. He took a room in a small quiet hotel in the Rue Obligado, near the Bois.

  His first move was to ring his business acquaintance, Monsieur Boudin, and make an appointment for the following morning.

  Then he divested the Velázquez of its canvas overcoat, reassembled the gilded frame, and set the painting into it again. It looked wonderful: unmistakeable.

  For a long while he sat on the bed staring at it with the strangest feelings. He was trembling with excitement and nerves. It was a queer sensation indeed to be alone in a locked room with an object worth, at a modest estimate, a million pounds: it made the head reel. He could not quite realise it. What had been a wild fantasy had become reality … Incredible.

  Tom parcelled the picture up in strong brown paper for the morrow and went downstairs.

  ‘M’sieur va diner ici?’ inquired the bewigged lady in the reception. He shook his head. He could not have swallowed food; but he ordered a large brandy and put through his customary evening call to Le Zoute.

  The weather was fine; Kate was fine: they had all been swimming: tomorrow they were going to Ghent with a nice English family who had a car. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What sort of day have you had?’

  ‘Oh, the daily task, the common round. You know. Had a drink with Belper, very depressed because he says Violet’s pregnant again. But who’s to blame for that if not himself? So like him to behave as though it’s an Immaculate Conception.’

  Her laugh came through clearly, as if she was standing beside him.

  ‘Here’s Dinah,’ she said.

  ‘Hullo, sweetheart.’

  ‘Hullo, Daddy. What are you doing?’

  ‘Talking to you. I hear you swam fifty metres, that’s very good.’

  ‘I swam all the way and back.’

  ‘I’m so glad you came back. I miss you, sweetheart.’

  ‘I miss you too, Daddy, I wish you were here. Biddy, don’t! Biddy wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Hullo?’ said Biddy in her small faraway voice. And after a somewhat lengthy pause remarked: ‘A boy threw a ball at me.’

  ‘Did he indeed! I hope you threw it back.’

  ‘He speaks French.’

  ‘Goodness me, whatever next!’

  ‘He is French.’

  ‘Ah, then that explains it. Listen, I’m sending you a big kiss down the phone Did you get it?’

  And then Kate came back on the phone and they said goodbye. After which Tom felt steadier, it always reassured him to speak to his beloved family, the way other people are restored to calmness and confidence by talking to God (an idea Tom would have regarded with amusement and pity). He stopped rehearsing the morrow’s encounter and seated himself at a table surrounded by box-trees in tubs outside a restaurant, ordered an Entrecôte Minute and half a bottle of Nuits St. Georges and consumed them with pleasure. Afterwards he wandered about the city in a pleasantly numb state of mind for several hours, returning to the hotel so tired that he fell into bed and sank into a sleep heavy with confusing dreams.

 
Next morning after breakfast he ordered a taxi: it would never do to arrive at Boudin’s in his rattlebreak old car.

  ‘Boudin Frères. Rue Boissy d’Anglas,’ he said to the taxi-driver, as he seated himself in the back with his hand on the package beside him, adding with a cry as the driver shot across the road into the path of an articulated lorry: ‘Et prenez garde, je vous en prie!’ Monsieur Boudin was a tall pale gentleman with a soft voice belied by the beady expression in his black eyes. He greeted Tom politely and led him through to his private office, talking with an air of courteous indifference of the political situation — which demanded, one would have thought, some expression of concern if not horror. Tom, face impassive, sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded on his thigh, saying Yes and No at appropriate intervals, preserving an air of imperturbable calm to match the other’s own. He would not be the one to make the first move; though he did after some minutes just glance down at the watch above his folded hands. It did not escape Monsieur Boudin’s notice, who at once said in an altered tone: ‘But I must not waste your time: you have brought something to show me. Let me help you unwrap it.’

  The picture was uncovered.

  ‘Ahh!’ said Monsieur Boudin. And that was all. He gazed and gazed at it. Tom said nothing. He waited. Monsieur Boudin approached and began to examine it from close to, scrutinising it with his long nose nearly touching the paint. He surveyed it from corner to corner and edge to edge through a magnifying-glass. He studied the reverse. He stepped back and regarded it again, his head on one side, his forefinger pressed against his upper lip, thoughtfully.

  ‘It is evidently a very nice picture,’ he said with a gentle smile. His dark brows drew together in a puzzled frown: ‘But I cannot immediately recall it to mind. You have been able to trace its provenance, Mr. Ransome?’

  Tom said in an offhand manner:

  ‘Velázquez, we know, painted El Primo several times. And no one would be so foolish as to suggest this was not genuine; painted, one would say from the style (would you not agree), at the same period as Las Meninas.’

  ‘It could indeed be so … May I ask, Mr. Ransome, how it came into your possession?’

  ‘It was sold to me by the owner, a member of one of our aristocratic families. It had been in her family for more than a hundred and fifty years — that much I know. Really, more than that I cannot tell you. I am not at liberty to divulge the vendor’s identity, Monsieur Boudin; that was part of the treaty between us. Under our new tax laws, so much would have been taken by the Treasury if it had been offered for public sale that ultimately the more money the picture fetched, the less the owner would have received,’ Tom said with a slight laugh. ‘You can understand the difficulties of her position.’

  ‘Ah, evidently. And you are in the same boat?’

  ‘Well … no. It is not quite the same. I will be open with you, Monsieur Boudin; I cannot afford to wait, I need the money now; I had to borrow so heavily in order to buy it that I must pay it back as quickly as possible.’

  ‘So you brought it to me.’

  ‘Knowing your interest in Velázquez.’

  ‘Have you shown it to anyone else?’

  ‘No one. I wished you to see it first.’

  ‘That was very nice of you.’ Monsieur Boudin sat down behind his desk and fiddled with his paperknife.

  Now was the moment, Tom thought; the crucial moment when Boudin had to decide what figure to offer. A matter of nice judgement. It had to be a reasonably realistic figure for ‘openers’ from which the bargaining could commence. Tom’s heart was banging in his ribs. Monsieur Boudin gave a deep sigh and looked aside:

  ‘Mr. Ransome, I am sorry. I so much regret to have to tell you, the picture does not interest me.’

  Tom stared at the other blankly, as though uncomprehending. What the man had said was so utterly unexpected that he was completely taken aback.

  ‘I don’t understand. Is it that you think it is not authentic? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘I am not saying that. I do not bring myself to that point. I am saying simply that I do not feel inclined to make you an offer for it.’

  ‘But why? This is a Velázquez. I do not need to tell you that it is immensely valuable, of great artistic merit, and one could say almost beyond price. You cannot really mean that you do not want to handle it.’

  Monsieur Boudin raised long graceful hands in a gesture like an El Greco saint.

  ‘Would you like twenty-four hours to consider?’

  ‘Mr. Ransome, it is not necessary. It is just that something — reason or instinct — tells me not to touch it.’ He bestowed upon Tom a resigned and sorrowful smile, still in the manner of an El Greco saint.

  Tom’s mouth had become strangely dry. He could not even pass his tongue between his lips, they were stuck together. The wrapping paper crackled loudly in the silence as he picked it off the floor and lifted down the picture. He began to wrap it up, saying in a dry expressionless tone:

  ‘How curious that you should feel like that, Monsieur; that your instinct should advise you to throw away a fortune. When one considers that the last time a Velázquez came on the market — the little portrait head of his Moorish servant, it realised, as you must know, the unprecedented sum of £2,000,000.’

  ‘Perhaps you have touched on exactly what troubles me, Mr. Ransome. If it was of less consequence I should not hesitate. But a work of this stature, if it is genuine, one might find difficult to dispose of just because it has no provenance, no guarantee of authenticity. You have had enough experience in these matters to know that what I say it true, my dear Mr. Ransome.’

  ‘What do you mean, if it is genuine? It speaks for itself. A work of art is its own authentication, Monsieur Boudin. You yourself said — ’

  ‘Of course. One does not wish to be impolite. And it is undoubtedly very fine. Yes, but a little question creeps in. It is in a remarkable state of preservation. Almost too good, wouldn’t you think? Scarcely a hint of craquelure,’ said Monsieur Boudin with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘It is your privilege to question, Monsieur. I happen to know that the picture is authentic, and that satisfies me. Good day, M’sieu.’ There was nothing else to say.

  Monsieur Boudin escorted him as far as the door — that is, the door of his office — shook his hand, and watched him traverse the gallery managing his cumbersome package. Then he closed the door, returned to his desk and told the girl at the switchboard to get him Herr Strauss in Berlin and after that Herr Nöckelheim in Zurich.

  ‘Ah, my good friend,’ he said, when Herr Strauss came on the line, ‘I rather think you will shortly receive a visit from an Englishman by the name of Ransome … Ah, you have received a letter from him. I thought it probable. After all, there is only you and Karl in Zurich, beside myself, who anyone in the trade would approach if he had anything as important as a Velázquez to sell … He has just left me … Yes, it is a Velázquez … Oh, unquestionably. Well, you will see for yourself … No, I let it go, Otto. It seemed to me a crime, my friend, to let an outsider grab all that money; he is only a small man of no importance. If we handle him carefully, you and I and Karl together, we could make a nice little sum for ourselves.’

  Monsieur Boudin glanced across at his reflection in the big Ist Empire looking-glass on the opposite wall and ran a palm over his smooth black hair, a smile touched the corner of his thin red lips:

  ‘Our gentleman was considerably shaken when I turned it down. He now realises that it will not be so easy to sell as he imagined. Also I sowed a tiny seed of anxiety in his mind by suggesting that if might not be genuine,’ he gave a laugh of frank amusement. ‘In the end he will have to accept our figure. He needs the money, and quickly. He said so. Now, my dear fellow, if he visits you next, you must make some excuse, to shake him a bit further, and leave it to Karl to buy it. If he has been to Karl first, then you will buy it, you understand? Let our man haggle if he wants to, let him feel he is making good terms. But you will know how to h
andle him, Otto, I don’t have to tell you.’ Monsieur Boudin added archly: ‘It would not surprise me if you will be buying that villa in the Seychelles sooner than you thought. My love to Gisela.’

  Herr Strauss, a stout red-faced man with a handsome thatch of silver hair, played yo-yo with Tom Ransome, tossing him up in the air and letting him drop down, the way he did with his grandchildren; and all done with a cruel air of geniality.

  Unlike the restrained Monsieur Boudin, he expressed a lavish enthusiasm for the painting, declaring it to be superb! fantastic! What was more he had a customer for it, a client of his who would be certain to fall madly in love with it. If he wanted it he would pay whatever Herr Ransome asked, he was a millionaire. And for a wonder he happened to be in Berlin at that very moment. Should he ask him to come and look at it? What did Herr Ransome think?

  Tom could overhear what he was saying down the telephone: ‘I have something to show you, Herr Baron. Just come in, no one else has seen it. Very nice indeed, very special, just what you like … ’

  Herr Strauss came back looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘He’s coming. We were lucky to catch him, he’s off to Rio de Janeiro tomorrow.’

  The time of waiting was spent arguing about the money: what Tom wanted for the picture and how much Herr Strauss demanded for his cut. When Tom mentioned his figure of seven hundred and fifty thousand (pounds, not DMs), Herr Strauss’s rubicund face looked a shade disconcerted. Wasn’t that rather a large sum? Tom said, On the contrary it was absurdly modest. And hadn’t Herr Strauss said his client would pay anything if he wanted it because he was a millionaire? Here Herr Strauss looked at him pityingly and remarked that millionaires were millionaires because they clung to their money with the tenacity of someone clinging to a rockface.

  While they waited for the prospective buyer, they contested like stags in the rutting season over the percentage of Herr Strauss’s cut, which Tom found totally unreasonable. With a friendly laugh, Herr Strauss protested that Mr. Ransome must be joking; that was the accepted figure; how else were they to cover their expenses. Tom pointed out that the only expenses Herr Strauss had incurred as yet was the price of a local phone call. Herr Strauss said he was speaking, of course, of overheads. Tom considered 20% to be ample.