A Private View Read online

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  A Private View

  First published in 1952

  © Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1952-2010

  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: 0755121112 EAN: 9780755121113

  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.

  1

  Lady Appleby finished her coffee, drew on her gloves, and glanced round the restaurant. ‘John,’ she asked her husband, ‘did you say you needn’t be back at the Yard till three o’clock?’

  ‘I believe I did.’ Sir John Appleby called for his bill. ‘Was it rash of me? Are you going to take me for an hour’s quick shopping?’

  ‘Of course not. All men hate shopping. But it means we’ve just time to go to the Da Vinci. There’s a new show.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps all men hate new shows? And with you, Judith, new shows are shopping, as often as not. The number of paintings you’ve bought in the course of the last year–’

  ‘You know that all my carvings now need paintings as backgrounds.’ Judith Appleby was a sculptress by profession. ‘And at the moment I very much want something abstract, with strong diagonals, and plenty of acid greens.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous to buy modern paintings virtually as wallpaper.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s just what they should be bought for.’

  ‘And the sort of price you seem prepared–’

  ‘Very well. We won’t go. No doubt I’ve been spending too much on that sort of thing. I shall go to a cinema.’

  ‘Come along.’ Appleby dropped a form on the plate before him and rose. ‘But I make one condition. We conduct this matter in a businesslike way. As soon as we’ve paid our shillings–’

  ‘But, John, there won’t be anything to pay…not to get in, I mean. It’s the private view, and I’ve had a card.’ Judith contrived to present this as a factor of considerable financial significance.

  ‘Very well. As soon as we are inside I shall send for Mr Da Vinci.

  ‘His name’s Brown.’

  ‘I shall send for Mr Brown and address him in this way. “My wife,” I shall say, “requires a good quality picture, about three feet by four, with strong diagonals, and in the new season’s acid greens. Will you be good enough to show us anything you have in stock?”’

  ‘Brown would find that very offensive. He has no sense of humour – or certainly not of English schoolboy humour. You’d better keep quiet until the bargaining. Then you can come in for all you’re worth.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Appleby fed his wife briskly through a revolving door and joined her on the pavement. ‘Are you sure you’ll find diagonals and things at this particular show?’

  ‘Pretty sure. It’s an exhibition of painting by–’ Judith checked herself. ‘Hadn’t we better take a taxi? Because of your appointment at three. But I’ll pay.’

  They climbed into a taxi in silence. Once settled in it, Appleby favoured his wife with a glance of frank domestic suspicion. ‘What sort of a private view?’ he asked. ‘One of the kind with an opening ceremony and a pretentious speech?’

  ‘Certainly – a speech by Mervyn Twist. But that will probably be over by the time we get there. We’ll just look round and come away. I don’t expect there will really be anything worth thinking of.’ Judith was soothing.

  ‘Very well.’ Her husband sank back in the taxi, resigned. ‘Where is this Da Vinci? We don’t seem to be going in the direction of the very grand places of that sort. Here’s Charing Cross Road.’

  ‘Brown – his real name is Hildebert Braunkopf – hasn’t been going very long. This show’s important to him.’

  Again mild suspicion rose in Appleby. ‘Will the painter be hanging round? Will he be some poor devil one feels one must in decency ask to a square meal? Remember the man who took your spoons last summer.’

  Judith shook her head. ‘Politic worms.’

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. It’s a memorial exhibition. This painter’s dead.’

  With a deplorable access of good humour, Appleby felt in his pocket for change. ‘But sometimes there’s a sister who does something herself. Or a sorrowing and inebriated father earning penurious bread as a drawing master
in Bootle.’

  ‘I don’t think there will be anybody of that sort either. It’s a memorial exhibition of the work of Gavin Limbert.’

  Appleby sat up with a jerk. ‘Really, Judith, this is too bad.’ Judith Appleby looked at her husband with the largest reasonableness and innocence. ‘I don’t see why we should have to keep away from the poor man’s pictures just because he was murdered.’

  ‘Found shot. It happened while I was abroad. But I gather it isn’t at all known that he was murdered.’

  They had come to a halt, and Appleby gloomily made the harassing calculations necessary before paying a London taxi driver in the year 1951. He peered out as he did so – whereupon an observant constable stepped smartly forward, opened the door, and saluted. An equally observant press photographer snapped this up in a flash. It was a gratifying moment for the small crowd gathered to gape at the undistinguished façade of the Da Vinci, and they now turned to gape at the Applebys instead. Appleby, who would have liked to scowl furiously at his wife, contented himself with scowling furiously at these idlers. This at once gave the impression of his representing the full severity of the law, hotfooted in pursuit of crime. A second constable, for whom the appearance of an Assistant Commissioner constituted an event of decisive professional importance, threw himself happily into the task of further dramatizing the occasion by clearing a path as if for the arrival of an archbishop or a Cabinet minister. From the window of the Da Vinci, which was handsomely draped in very new and very sombre purple velvet, a large stone Buddha surveyed this scene with detached and ironic satisfaction. Judith, who appeared unaware of anything out of the way in their arrival, paused to give this seemingly ancient object a critical glance. ‘Atelier Braunkopf,’ she said. ‘I expect he carves them in the basement, mostly out of old tombstones. Clever little man.’

  ‘But there’s a label on it saying “Fourth Century”. He should be put in gaol.’

  ‘He’d say that the statue was warranted only as illustrative of the art of that period, and not as representing it. By the way, if we do buy anything, remember he will want two cheques.’

  ‘Two cheques?’ Appleby paused with his hand on the door of the Da Vinci. ‘You mean he expects things paid for twice over?’

  ‘Of course not. Braunkopf just likes two cheques – each for one half of the amount. I can’t think why. Might it be something to do with income tax?’

  Appleby breathed rather hard. ‘I think it just conceivable that it might.’

  ‘Would it make it quite legal if I gave him the one cheque and you gave him the other?’

  ‘When you are in this mood, my dear, it is useless to talk to you… Was that Gavin Limbert?’

  On the inner side of the glass door before them was displayed a photograph of a youth perhaps twenty-three years old. He was untidily dressed in what could be distinguished as very good clothes; he sat on a soapbox amid a litter of painter’s materials; he looked extremely happy and wholesome and innocent. A thoroughly nice public schoolboy, Appleby thought, trying himself out in a role that had taken his fancy, and blessed with a father or an aunt willing to put up four or five hundred a year for the duration of the experiment. It was hard to imagine a sinister or even a shady side to the life of Gavin Limbert. But one never knew… Appleby let his eye travel from the photograph to an announcement displayed beneath it:

  GAVIN LIMBERT

  MEMORIAL EXHIBITION

  OILS

  GOUACHES

  COLLAGES

  TROUVAILLES

  ‘I know about gouaches and collages,’ he said. ‘But what are trouvailles?’

  ‘That will be things he picked up on the sea-shore – old bits of cork, and nicely eroded stones.’ Judith was fishing from her bag the card that was to admit them to a view of these interesting objects. ‘A sort of aesthetic beachcombing.’

  ‘And people will buy them?’ Appleby pushed open the door.

  ‘Yes. They pay for the artist’s eye… It’s terribly respectable.’

  The outer room of the Da Vinci Gallery was certainly making a bold bid to suggest older-established institutions of its own kind off Bond Street. The walls were hung with dim and darkened pictures, bearing labels which for the most part took the form of honest doubts and frank disclaimers. Mr Brown, indeed, had so far improved upon the accepted convention in these matters as to indicate the degree of his establishment’s dubiety over its treasures by a system of multiple question marks. ‘Studio of Rubens?’ Appleby read. ‘Possibly by a pupil of Dirck Hals??’ ‘Formerly attributed to Rembrandt: rejected by Borenius.’ ‘El Greco????’ ‘Perhaps Alessio Baldovinetti: not accepted by Berenson.’ One or two of the pictures were simply labelled ‘?’ or ‘???’ Anyone wishing to linger amid this orgy of scepticism could do so upon settees massively upholstered in red plush.

  But Judith Appleby pressed on. ‘Brown’s not hoping to sell this stuff,’ she explained. ‘He’s just borrowed it from some of his pals. It reminds the customers that Gavin Limbert may be an Alessio Baldovinetti one day.’

  ‘I suspect Alessio did it without going to the trouble of being found mysteriously dead… Look out.’ Appleby drew his wife aside just in time to prevent her being bowled over by a complex object being propelled on wheels from a farther room. ‘Whatever is that?’

  ‘Television, I think. And I saw a van with newsreel people outside. Glory for Brown.’

  ‘And for Limbert, I suppose. Shall we really push in? There’s a terrific crush. And I think the beastly opening is still happening.’

  Judith nodded. ‘It certainly is. I can hear Mervyn Twist’s voice. Come on.’

  She insinuated herself through a narrow gap between two massive women. With rather more difficulty, and with much less enthusiasm, Appleby followed. He frowned as he saw a young man from an evening paper making a quick note of his name, and then took a glance round the crowded room. The only pictures available to his inspection were those along the wall by which he stood, and his position was such that they appeared in a drastic foreshortening. But if their proportions were thus obscured, their general character was plain, and it was evident that Limbert had been an abstract painter. Or, more strictly, it was evident that he had given himself to producing abstract paintings.

  For Appleby doubted whether this amiable and unfortunate young man had possessed a temperament very congruous with any convinced turning away from the natural world. Most of the paintings were conscientiously flat and two-dimensional; and where they admitted of a third dimension they did so only in the rarefied spirit of Sixth Form geometry. But lurking in them were things known outside either the studio or the classroom. The pure ellipses could be felt as yearning after the condition of Rugby footballs; and slanting across several of the canvases was a diminishing series of white rectangles from which Appleby was disposed to infer that at one time a principal ambition of young Limbert’s had been winning the under-fifteen hurdles.

  Moreover the paintings were obstinately atmospheric. The light which played upon them came from a real world – from one in which sunshine sifts through green boughs or strikes up from clear water. They hinted at a more catholic enjoyment of created things than they were prepared openly to admit. Appleby felt obscurely that here had been a promising young man, although not perhaps a promising young painter. And it was not at all clear why he should be dead – unless, indeed, he had been butchered to make Mr Hildebert Brown or Braunkopf this highly remunerative holiday. Appleby promised himself to send for the officer dealing with the Limbert affair and discover what progress had been made with it.

  The gallery was crowded – presumably with persons interested in the progress of the arts. Half of them were seated on several rows of chairs facing the farther wall; a few had been accommodated, after the fashion of a platform party, with rather grander chairs facing the other way; the remainder were standing in a huddle about the room. Appleby, whose business had for long been the observation of human behaviour, saw that while all had the appearance of
following Mervyn Twist, a large majority was in fact exclusively concerned with disposing and maintaining the facial muscles in lines suggestive of superior critical discrimination. Some put their faith in raised eyebrows, thereby indicating that while they approved of the speaker’s line as a whole, they were nevertheless obliged, in consequence of their own fuller knowledge, to deprecate aspects of it. Others had perfected a hovering smile, indicative of discreet participation in some hidden significance of the words. Yet others contented themselves with looking extremely wooden, as if conscious that the preserving of a poker-face was the only safe and civil way of receiving observations which their uninhibited judgement would be obliged to greet with ridicule.

  Appleby found the spectacle depressing. Gavin Limbert had perhaps been lucky, after all. He had died young and untouched by disillusion – ignorant or careless of the oceans of twaddle and humbug which constitute the main response of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to any form of artistic expression.

  But now Mervyn Twist appeared to be approaching his peroration. He was a youngish man, with an indeterminate face suggestive of an under-exposed photographic plate, and a high, screaming voice. If one listened for long enough, Appleby supposed, some semblance of intelligible utterance, some rough approximation to the divine gift of discursive speech, might piece itself together amid these horrible noises. As it was, nothing reached him but a mush of arbitrarily associated words. The heroic era of the first papiers collés…golden sunset of the fruit dish, the bottle and the guitar…his second and third ego wrestling with the demon…magnificent proportions of Teotihuacan…correspondence to a sublime internal necessity… With sudden marked discomfort Appleby realized that he had himself assumed a very wooden expression indeed. He was just wondering what he could possibly substitute instead – self-consciousness is extremely infectious – when Twist suddenly stopped speaking and sat down. There was a polite ripple of applause. Somebody whom it was impossible to see got up and moved a vote of thanks. But nobody paid much attention to this. The company began milling round the pictures.