Money from Holme Read online

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  Money From Holme

  First published in 1964

  © Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1964-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 075512104X EAN: 9780755121045

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

  After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

  By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

  After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.

  Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

  His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

  Part One

  1

  The Sebastian Holme Memorial Exhibition was being held in the Da Vinci Gallery, just off Bond Street. The Da Vinci, the proprietor of which was a certain Mr Hildebert Braunkopf, had never been understood in the trade to enjoy more than a modest prosperity. Until, you might say, today – the day of the Holme private view.

  There could be no doubt of what was happening today. Certainly Mervyn Cheel hadn’t been in the Da Vinci five minutes before he realized that this was the artistic event of the season. He didn’t have to look at the pictures to grasp the fact. (For that matter, there was such a crush that the pictures would be hard to fight one’s way to.) He had only to look at the people who had given themselves the trouble to turn up.

  At many affairs of this kind members of the public were inclined, he supposed, to nudge each other, point at him, and murmur ‘the distinguished critic and pointillist painter, Mervyn Cheel. (Just at the moment, he was covering Art in a provincial paper for a financially nugatory consideration: a disadvantageous circumstance which he would explain as arising solely from his exceptional professional integrity.) But at this affair, Cheel had soberly to admit, the nudging (if there had been elbow-room for it) would have been mainly prompted by others. Several sorts of big people were here. And they hadn’t turned up because the absurd Braunkopf, in an Edwardian frock-coat and a gardenia probably intended to suggest the late Lord Duveen, was dispensing champagne somewhere at the back of his rather poky premises. They had come because they believed – whether on the strength of informed judgement or of fashionable tattle – that Sebastian Holme’s paintings were eminently worth buying.

  But the champagne wasn’t to be despised. Cheel began to edge in its direction. A couple of glasses would carry him on nicely till luncheon. And then, with luck, he might find among the sillier part of the crush some art-struck woman who would offer him a meal. His northern newspaper was unsympathetic to his representations about an expense account. Most impertinently, it had offered instead some species of voucher which he could exchange for a snack in a milk-bar. He doubted whether it fobbed off its financial correspondent (or even its parliamentary correspondent) in that fashion. Which just showed how, when you were dedicated to Art, you had to play your own hand in a pretty ruthless way. Yes, a free feed would be convenient.

  He continued a crabwise progress through the room. Every now and then the crowd would part for a moment and he would catch a glimpse of a picture. Many had little red labels attached to them already, and some bore cards which he knew must announce their acquisition for some national collection. Between this room and the next he paused to inspect, pinned to the wall, a list of the prices which Braunkopf was thinking proper to ask for his current masterpieces. He stared as he read – for the figures seemed unbelievable. You could imagine them attached to Cézannes and Renoirs, or to some absolute top craze of the moment, like Jackson Pollock. Yet the Holmes were undoubtedly selling, and the actual sums must be at least in some relation to those thus announced. How had Braunkopf done it? There was only one explanation. He must have begun by getting a couple of rival American collectors into the market, and thus established a yardstick at the start. Once you managed that, it seemed, there was every chance of the most inflated prices holding up and hanging on.

  ‘Hullo, old boy, hullo!’ A corpulent man in City clothes was shouting at Cheel across a sea of women’s silly hats and jostling bosoms. ‘Not seen you since St Tropez, eh? How’s dear old Meg?’

  Cheel scowled. He was unencumbered by a dear old Meg; he had never been to St Tropez, which was doubtless the most vulgar of plushy resorts; and the corpulent man was totally unknown to him. Observing, however, that the corpulent man was holding high above his head two perilously brimming glasses, and conjecturing that he was prepared to bestow one of these upon anyone acknowledging his acquaintance, Cheel let his scowl melt into a glance of gay recognition. ‘How are you, my dear chap?’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll be delighted.’
He edged forward a further two feet, and the glass was in his hand.

  ‘Cheers,’ the corpulent man said, and drank.

  ‘Cheers,’ Cheel said with distaste, and drank too. The effect was almost instantly invigorating. ‘Big crowd,’ he added with civility.

  ‘And the stock selling like hot cakes, eh? But I got one, all the same. Rang Braunkopf before market hours. This fellow Holme, it seems, was knocked out while still among the young entry. By niggers, too, somebody said. Poor show, eh? But as soon as Debby told me the story I got on the blower. When a great painter dies at that age – well, you damned well can’t go wrong. Eh?’

  Cheel was on the point of saying something rather rude (he disliked a coarse and mercantile approach to Art) when he observed that the corpulent man, who had long arms like a baboon, was actually within reach of one of Braunkopf’s magnums. He contented himself therefore with holding out his glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ the corpulent man said, when he had done what was required of him. ‘Mind you, my own interest is naturally in growth yields. So I have them do me a lot of security analysis. “Guestimates”, as those chaps like to say. Ha-ha.’

  ‘Ha-ha,’ Cheel said. He had taken half the second glass at a gulp.

  ‘Mind you,’ the corpulent man said, ‘although you fix it on the blower it’s always wise to come along and check up. Even if it lands you in a bloody long-haired crowd.’ The corpulent man stared broodingly at Cheel for a moment, as if measuring the length of his locks. He appeared to arrive at some favourable – or at least charitable – decision. ‘Old boy,’ he said, ‘–care to come out and have a bite on Debby and me? L’Aiglon, perhaps. Or the Caprice. Or Pipistrello, if you’ve a fancy for it. And, of course, dear old Meg too.’

  For a moment Cheel hesitated. The proposal held its substantial temptation. But the hazards were obvious. Debby might not be so vague about her St Tropez acquaintance as her husband was. And Cheel might find himself, when questioned, improvising a totally implausible Meg. ‘Thanks a lot, old boy,’ he said. ‘But I have a luncheon date, worse luck. Love to Debby, though.’ He proceeded to edge his way on in the crush. ‘At the Mansion House,’ he added over his shoulder, and for good luck. The corpulent man, he was gratified to glimpse, seemed sobered and impressed.

  There was, of course, some sort of Sebastian Holme legend. Holme had died in circumstances which could be represented as romantic or at least picturesque. Cheel had been slack on his homework of late, and he didn’t know much about it. But the corpulent man had been referring to it in his crude talk about being knocked out by niggers. Cheel had known Holme at one time. Indeed he had enjoyed, or suffered, what must be called an encounter with him. But the fellow had gone abroad and been forgotten about. Perhaps he had sent work to be exhibited in London in a small way now and then. Perhaps he had contrived the beginnings of a reputation as an exotic painter, a sort of latter-day Gauguin.

  Anyway, it had all been unimportant, and there had been no occasion for a distinguished critic to take any cognizance of it. But now there was this. Mervyn Cheel continued to edge around through this with a mounting sense of annoyance and even indignation. He had to acknowledge a lurking and vexatious feeling of being a little out of it. Lord Crawford appeared to have forgotten him. He received rather a bleak nod from Sir Herbert Read. Kokoschka patted him in a kindly way on the arm as he went by, but plainly because he had mistaken him for some Central European émigré. When he made too sharp a turn and awkwardly jabbed in the stomach the Director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Director, although taking this winding in good part, seemed indisposed to make it a basis of conversation.

  Being thus put a shade out of countenance, Cheel decided to retreat from the ephemeral spectacle of mere humanity to the sempiternal world of art – or at least to that world to the extent that it was embodied in the work of Sebastian Holme. He began therefore to fight his way towards the pictures. The process wasn’t without beguilement in itself. Since the mere humanity assembled in the Da Vinci Gallery was preponderantly female, and since the jam had now reached something like rush-hour density on the Underground, the obstacles to be squeezed through in the quest of this aesthetic refreshment were constituted largely by les tétons et les fesses. A little ingenuity was thus enough to lend a curious interest to his progress. Only once, however, did he positively venture to pinch. This was when he felicitously found himself edging between a plump girl and the Direttore of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. If the girl squeaked (he thought happily as his finger and thumb closed) the Direttore, being Italian, would get the blame.

  Flushed from this exploit, Cheel found himself standing in front of one of the largest of Holme’s canvases. So far as quality went, he knew already, of course, approximately what he was going to see. All these grandees weren’t here for nothing, and Holme’s fame must already have gone abroad in a manner that he himself had somehow missed out on. All the same, he was unprepared for what hit him now.

  He was looking at what might be called, perhaps, a jungle scene. It was full of horrible greens which had been made, somehow, to suggest intolerable heat. There were blue shadows, not receding harmlessly from the picture plane but menacingly reaching out at you. And in two tremendous places Holme had triumphantly modelled deep into mysteriously luminous tunnels through the fiercely proliferating vegetation which was his subject. There wasn’t much to be said in front of the thing except that England had decidedly never had an exotic painter of this stature before.

  Mervyn Cheel was almost abashed. If he hadn’t taken a firm grip of himself his spirit might simply have been rebuked before the painting’s sheer power. And yet it wasn’t in the least a bravura piece. The underlying geometry was faultless, and there wasn’t a passage that hadn’t been calculated in millimetres. That was no doubt why Sir William Coldstream (whom Cheel now perceived to be his left-hand neighbour) was studying the picture with concentrated attention.

  The sense of irritation which had been mounting steadily in Cheel was now reinforced by a strong feeling of injustice and deprivation. Largely endowed with intellect and sensibility though he was, his nature was perhaps a shade lacking in that final generosity which can only rejoice in the good fortune of others. Cheel too was an artist – even if an artist on the critical and analytical side. Who was Sebastian Holme (whose recollected features now rose vividly before him) that all this success should have come to him? The man had been (he now clearly remembered this too) an ignorant and undisciplined dauber – neither more nor less. And now this had happened. Holme was the sensation of the year; Cheel had to cadge meals and drinks.

  He was not left long with this wholly sombre view of the matter. This was a memorial exhibition. Sebastian Holme was dead. Whoever was in the gravy as a result of this affair, it wasn’t that young oaf (he would still be quite a young oaf) Holme. He had once (Cheel now remembered) taken what you might call a smack at Holme. Indulging himself in a reminiscent grin at this, Cheel, for some reason, made a half turn towards his right. He thus became aware that he had a right-hand neighbour (rather a close neighbour) too. He took a glance at this neighbour, and the grin froze on his face.

  There couldn’t be a doubt of it. The man next to him was Sebastian Holme.

  2

  As was not unnatural in such an exigency, Mervyn Cheel fell for some seconds into considerable confusion of mind. It is quite usual (he found himself reassuring himself) for artists to attend their own private views. Yes (he found himself replying), but dressed in their best clothes, standing before their best picture, and assuming whatever pitiful simulacrum of the manners of a gentleman they think may soften up the boobs and suckers who are being introduced to them. And alive. Not dead.

  At this point a cold shiver ran down Cheel’s spine. He turned to his left, with the blind intention of making some desperate appeal to Sir William Coldstream. But Sir William had disappeared. So – he saw, glancing wildly round – had Lord Crawford, Sir Herbert Read, and the Directors of the Metr
opolitan and the Brera. Perhaps he had imagined all these distinguished persons. Perhaps he had imagined – He turned cautiously to his right again. Sebastian Holme was still there.

  With a staggering gait, and all oblivious of the pleasures of letting a hand or thigh brush those so-enticingly-circumjacent female posteriors, Cheel made his way to one of the Da Vinci’s over-stuffed and moth-eaten plush settees, sank down on it, and endeavoured to collect his thoughts. He positively could not believe, he found, that he was in the grip of simple hallucination. The idea was too utterly repugnant to his just intellectual pride. Only stupid and besotted people see things in that vulgar sense. He remembered having read a book called Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, and in the light of this recollection he took a cautious glance across the room. But the figure before the jungle painting failed at all convincingly to suggest a Veridical Phantasm of the Dead. It suggested nothing at all except plain Sebastian Holme.

  There remained only one explanation on this side of sanity: the very obvious one of mistaken identity. It was something that was constantly happening, after all. Why, only a few minutes ago the corpulent man had been taking him for somebody with whom he had once painted jolly old St Tropez red. So here was somebody like the late Sebastian Holme. The thing was as simple as that.

  Unfortunately – and this seemed the really terrifying fact – the figure was not all that like Sebastian Holme. It couldn’t be, since it was heavily bearded, whereas he had never known Holme other than clean-shaven – or at least in some slovenly approximation to that state. What had happened was that, quite contrary to at least superficial appearance, he had received a convinced impression that this was Holme. And surely this wasn’t how simple mistakings of identity worked.