A Private View Read online

  ‘I thought we’d better have one of these.’ Judith had disappeared into the crowd and now returned carrying a catalogue.

  ‘Was it free?’

  ‘Free to me. But it means that Braunkopf spotted me and is coming over to be introduced to you. I expect he’ll want to show us round himself.’

  Appleby took the catalogue in deepening gloom. The outside bore the inscription: ‘G L: 1928–1951.’ Below this was an engraving of a pair of compasses, with one foot broken off short in the act of describing an incomplete circle. ‘In excellent taste,’ Judith said. ‘And finely allusive. “On earth the broken arc, in heaven the perfect round.” And there’s another nice Braunkopf touch over there where Twist was speaking from.’

  It occurred to Appleby that he was coming to find Judith in this particular vein of ironic connoisseurship increasingly baffling. He must be ageing more rapidly than she was. He looked across the room and saw that Twist had been posed before a painting larger than the rest and somewhat different in character. Above this the presiding genius of the Da Vinci had caused to be suspended a palette surrounded by a laurel wreath and enriched with a big black crêpe bow.

  ‘Dash it all, Judith, the man was alive, you know – and an artist just like yourself. Not ten days ago he was waking up, and cooking his breakfast, and planning the day’s work. Now he has this beastly little dealer, and that emasculated Yahoo Twist, prancing on his grave–’

  Judith looked at her husband with interest – as she always did when his responses to a situation were what she called ethical and literary. ‘And the police too,’ she said. ‘Haven’t they been busy putting slices of Limbert under a microscope?’

  ‘Absolute rubbish. And now we’d better be–’ Appleby broke off short. He had received the momentary – and altogether surprising – impression that a somewhat enlarged replica of the Buddha from the Da Vinci’s window had been transformed into a self-guided missile and was about to make its kill in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘John – this is Mr Brown, who has organized the exhibition.’

  The missile was now bobbing up and down with great rapidity, as if finally thrown off its course by an ingenious electronic device beneath Appleby’s waistcoat. The proprietor of the Da Vinci was making a series of bows. Their elaboration suggested powerfully to Appleby that here was a world in which Judith was coming decidedly to count. Perhaps it had been her name that the young reporter had been noting down, and not his at all.

  ‘How do you do – yes?’ Mr Braunkopf, who was bland, spherical, and boneless, contrived to put such genuine solicitude into this conventional inquiry that it might well have been taken as referring to Appleby’s bank balance. ‘Lady Appleby is here our very goot freunt. Her advises are always goot advises – no?’ Mr Braunkopf’s eye darted swiftly round his gallery, as if to make quite sure that no even better and sager friend had a preferential claim on his attention. ‘And this is a most puttikler voonderble day – a birthday, Sir John and Lady Abbleby – yes?’

  ‘A birthday?’ Appleby, who had been working out that Mr Braunkopf must have enjoyed his nativity in the recesses of the continent and come thence to England by way of New York, was a little at sea with this reference, and disposed to wonder if he should say something about happy returns.

  ‘A leg-end.’ Mr Braunkopf lowered his voice and tapped the topmost of the pile of catalogues he was carrying. ‘The birth of a leg-end, Sir John. Natchly I done few several big art deals my lonk career. But not never before the birth of a leg-end. The Limbert leg-end – that sounds goot, no? And now I have liddle time show you round. No – no inconveniences!’ And Mr Braunkopf raised a soft white hand as if to discount the protestations of his gratified clients. ‘No inconveniences in the worlt. All these very important patrons and art people.’ The hand gestured in a manner that decidedly patronized the patrons indicated. ‘No doubt you much recognize other nobles gentry your goot freunts. The rests is from the continent. Collectors, Kunsthistoriker, directors some the biggest galleries, aircrafts of them come over due this great new leg-end.’ Mr Braunkopf’s face lit up. It was plain that he was a man of imagination as well as commerce. He produced a gold watch. ‘Only now I wait Sir Kenneth, Sir Gerald, Dr Rothenstein. Till then I take you round.’

  This particular wait, Appleby suspected, would be a substantial one. But Judith appeared to like Mr Braunkopf, and he was not himself certain that he was prepared to disapprove of him. They therefore began a circuit of the room. It was still extremely crowded. In places like the Da Vinci the private views are by far the most public occasions of the year, and this particular private view held the additional attraction of being implicated with circumstances of some notoriety. Perhaps there would really grow up just such a Limbert legend as the resourceful Braunkopf was striving to create. Today was certainly a good start. Braunkopf had mounted his exhibition with triumphant, if mildly indecent, speed. Gavin Limbert’s funeral baked meats, had there been any, might well have furnished forth the discreet little buffet to which particularly favoured patrons might doubtless repair in an inner room.

  Judith was looking at each picture with grave attention. A moment before, she had been much enjoying Mr Braunkopf; now she was entirely unaware of him. He appeared to be far from resenting this. Presumably he knew Judith as a person who sometimes bought pictures, but to whom pictures were never sold. Judith’s husband, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity in this regard, and Mr Braunkopf felt that with him he was breaking new ground. Appleby, on his part, suspected that he would make little of Gavin Limbert’s technique, but might obtain quite a lot of instruction from Braunkopf’s. Artistic fashions change, and for what was displayed on the walls around him Appleby was too old by a full generation. But human nature remains constant, and successful sales talk must exploit the identical weaknesses today that the Serpent first hit upon in the Garden. Appleby knew that he must be offered the very same apple that diverted Eve. Braunkopf could do no more than serve it up with some garnish of his own.

  ‘It is not so goot.’ The proprietor of the Da Vinci had paused before a picture on a corner of which – whether veraciously or not – one of his assistants had just affixed a small red star. ‘It has the genius, yes. It has the promises, yes.’ Mr Braunkopf looked hastily round about him, as if fearful that his next remark might be overheard by that one of his patrons whose faulty taste had prompted him to choose this particular Limbert for purchase. ‘But the performances, no.’

  ‘Doesn’t really quite come off,’ Appleby said.

  Mr Braunkopf replied only with a meaningful glance, such as passes in public between two persons tacitly cognizant that between them there has been forged a bond of superior understanding. Then he moved on, tapping his catalogue as he did so. ‘Limbert was yunk,’ he murmured discreetly. ‘Limbert was very yunk. And was he Raphael Sanzio, Sir John?’ Mr Braunkopf made a full pause upon this question, as if to give Appleby time to come to a mature decision upon the point. ‘No – Limbert was not Raphael Sanzio.’

  ‘Not really dazzlingly precocious,’ Appleby hazarded. ‘Except, perhaps, now and then.’

  Mr Braunkopf’s eyelids flickered. The effect was of a man betraying despite himself some surprise at a suddenly revealed extreme perceptiveness in another. He paced on past a couple of pictures without inviting any attention to them. Then he paused before a third. With a stubby finger he pointed at one patch of it – an ellipse of pure vermilion. The finger moved across the canvas and paused on a cylindrical form in ultramarine, and from this it passed to an oblong in chrome yellow.

  ‘Colour,’ Appleby offered.

  The flicker presented itself more violently than before. And again Mr Braunkopf looked cautiously about him. ‘Colour,’ he said softly. ‘You are right, Sir John. It was when he gave himself to colour. In these first enthusiasticals’ – and he gestured warily at the crowd now rather languidly circling the gallery – ‘there is not yet recognitions of it. But it is the truth. In colour there is Titian, and
there is Gavin Limbert.’ For a moment Mr Braunkopf sank into what seemed a reverent aesthetic trance. And then he roused himself for an afterthought – the afterthought of a careful and fair-minded man. ‘And also there is Renoir – Renoir and our goot Mr Matthew Smith.’

  ‘And Giorgione?’ Appleby was diffident.

  ‘Ah – Giorgione.’ Mr Braunkopf frowned thoughtfully, as if here was a new idea, heterodox but perhaps significant – and certainly worthy of the most serious consideration in virtue of the high authority who had thought fit to propound it. Then his concentration relaxed, and his face lit up in recognition of a new intellectual truth. ‘But yes! It is goot, that, Sir John. It is very goot. Giorgione – he too was a colourist.’

  Judith had moved away. Perhaps Braunkopf was one of her established protégés of the moment, and she disapproved of making fun of him. But they caught up with her before the large painting which had provided a background for the esoteric eloquence of Mervyn Twist. Twist was still there. Probably he was waiting for a cheque. Possibly he hoped for no more than a drink. Meanwhile he was favouring Judith with a species of technical appendix to his late address. ‘A definite advance, Lady Appleby. A big step forward. A substantial break with everything that he had been doing hitherto.’ Twist paused, evidently dissatisfied with the deplorable lucidity of these remarks. ‘A determined effort to disintegrate reality in the interest of the syncretic principle.’

  ‘Limbert’s last picture.’ Braunkopf nudged Appleby in the ribs and whispered this information. ‘And his chef-d’oeuvre. What pities, Sir John, if it shall go to America. Few several puttikler important persons want it for the Tate.’

  ‘Soaring,’ said Twist. ‘One sees the influence of the new transcendentalism, of Paul Klee, of the baroque interior, of aerial photography, of the schizophrenic dream.’

  ‘But the American galleries are hot on the stink.’ The guardian of the Limbert treasures managed to import much patriotic fervour into this confidence. At the same time he took a covert glance at Appleby’s umbrella – always a good index of a man’s financial standing. ‘An undisclosed sum,’ he murmured. ‘Some big public-spirituous person could buy this chef-d’oeuvre by Limbert for an undisclosed sum to present it to the Tate. It would be in The Times, Sir John. Meritorious services to the worlt of art. Everyone would be pleased – and puttikler the kink and the queen.’

  Appleby, although one eminently well-affected towards the Throne, was not particularly drawn to this proposal. Perhaps this picture was really worthy to go to the Tate. He just wouldn’t know. But he saw that it did represent some sort of departure from Limbert’s usual manner; it was more crowded with intricate forms, and at the same time painted in a freer technique, than the others. When a wholly new idea came to an artist and excited him perhaps this was the sort of thing that happened. He glanced back at the pictures he had already seen, with the object of confirming his impression that in this last one Gavin Limbert had indeed been at something new. This action Mr Braunkopf chose to interpret after his own fashion. He took Appleby’s arm with a sudden urgency which it was momentarily impossible to resist. ‘We go back,’ he said. ‘We go back that puttikler rich feast of colour you picked out for yourself, Sir John. Suppose you donate it as birthday present to the Da Vinci’s goot freunt Lady Abbleby, then the Da Vinci show its gratitude to two goot freunts by meeting you at a most surprising low figure.’

  They were now back before the picture that had prompted Mr Braunkopf to institute his comparison between the late Gavin Limbert and Titian. Appleby looked at it doubtfully. ‘What’s it called?’ he demanded.

  Mr Braunkopf’s eye lit up, and his clutch tightened on Appleby’s arm. This, it seemed, was a stage in the selling of his wares that he was well-accustomed to and knew to be propitious. ‘Seagulls and Fish,’ he said confidently. ‘This rich meal of colour is called Seagulls and Fish. An oil on burlap.’

  ‘Burlap – what’s that?’ Appleby now sounded positively suspicious.

  ‘Very hard wearing.’ Mr Braunkopf met him instantly on his own ground. ‘All this wonderful rich indigestible banquet of colour last you a long time. One hundred guineas. And Lady Abbleby would think you gave two, three hundred.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby, who had been feeling with some compunction that he ought not for his own entertainment to detain Braunkopf from more likely prey, hardened a little at this suggestion. ‘And the big one – what’s that called?’

  ‘The chef-d’oeuvre?’ Braunkopf’s eye kindled further. At the same time he hedged, having evidently neglected the crucial matter of nomenclature in this particular instance. ‘It is an abstraction, Sir John – an abstraction in a voonderble new artistic manner.’

  ‘I think a picture should have a name.’ Appleby appeared to lose interest.

  ‘But certainly it has a name.’ And Braunkopf smiled reassuringly, while his eye simultaneously sought inspiration from the ceiling. ‘The Fifth Day of Creation. This puttikler voonderble last great picture by Limbert is called that. The Sixth Day of Creation.’

  ‘I thought you said the Fifth.’

  ‘Both.’ Braunkopf was firm. ‘The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation. This voonderble picture is an abstraction. And time is an abstraction too.’

  ‘But not the price?’

  ‘I beg your pardons?’ Braunkopf looked at Appleby with what was perhaps a first gleam of suspicion.

  ‘What would it cost – to buy and give to the Tate?’

  Braunkopf took a deep breath. He had the air of a man whose faith in the ultimate goodness of human nature, heroically preserved through much disillusion, was about to be justified. ‘We go back,’ he said. ‘This all very fine.’ He waved a dismissive hand at Seagulls and Fish. ‘But nothing but colour, Sir John. No form. And form is the soul of art. We go back to look at this great chef-d’oeuvre where Limbert at last masters form.’

  ‘I don’t think we do.’

  They had taken a couple of paces across the gallery. Braunkopf was startled. ‘What you say, Sir John?’

  ‘I don’t think we do go back to it. It’s not there.’

  This was true. There was still a considerable crowd in the room, but a momentary parting in it allowed them a clear view of the opposite wall. The palette, wreath, and big black bow were still in evidence. But the space beneath them was empty.

  Braunkopf gave a howl of rage and darted across the room. Judith, who had just shaken off Mervyn Twist, rejoined her husband. ‘John – whatever have you done to Braunkopf? Driven him mad?’

  ‘The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation has vanished. And it disturbs him. I had just asked the price. It must be mortifying to have a large painting evaporate when you think you’ve had a nibble after it. But here he comes again.’

  ‘Gone – stolen!’ A doting parent, who returns home to find his only child absconded with a ruffian, could not have put more pathos into these words than did Mr Hildebert Braunkopf or Brown. ‘Sir John, Lady Abbleby, this chef-d’oeuvre of Limbert has been departed with by thieves!’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ Appleby did not seem disposed to any very marked professional curiosity. ‘Perhaps the people at the Tate were so impatient that they just sent along for it?’

  ‘You make a joking, Sir John.’ Braunkopf was deeply reproachful.

  ‘And you, Mr Brown, perhaps make a sensation? Limbert is really having a wonderful time. First he gets killed, and then his chief picture disappears at this private view. Get busy with the reporters, my dear sir, in time for the final extra.’

  ‘It is publicities, yes – this great disaster to art?’ Whether ingenuously or not, Braunkopf appeared to be catching at a suddenly perceived crumb of comfort.

  ‘It certainly is.’ Appleby’s voice had gone a shade grim. ‘You might suggest to the newspaper people that they headline it as the mystery of the abstracted abstraction… Judith, we’ll be getting along.’

  2

  Some three hours later Appleby initialled the last of a pile of reports, picked
up a pipe, filled it, and thrust the tobacco jar across his broad desk to Detective-Inspector Cadover. ‘Anything turned up?’ he asked. It was the formula ushering in the day’s final, and unofficial, review of the work of the department.

  ‘Some security people worried about the Waterbath Research Station. They say small boys have been getting in and taking photographs.’

  Appleby smiled. ‘If the government must publicize the making of those things it’s not to be expected that small boys won’t show a healthy curiosity.’

  ‘I pointed that out, and asked whether they were supposing the existence of a juvenile spy ring. They said one of the boys had been caught, and had seemed to have a foreign accent. They said it was thought to be Polish. I asked if it might have been Welsh. They said it might have been. I suggested that they find out. They said they couldn’t, because the boy had run away. A pretty confession.’

  Appleby struck a match. ‘It certainly seems a bit feeble.’

  ‘I asked how he had managed to run away. They hedged a bit. But I saw how it had happened. Lord Buffery himself had strayed in on their nonsense and connived at the boy’s going peaceably home to his mother. But of course those people are as nervous as cats, and they think that the Director made an error of judgement. I said that it was their duty to tell him so. At that, they went away.’ Cadover gave a gloomy sigh. The fatuity of what he called security people was a constant occasion of real sorrow to him. He regarded it as one prominent expression of a general decay of intelligence characteristic of the age. Since the departure of the apocalyptically minded Hudspith from Scotland Yard this mantle had largely descended to him.

  ‘Anything else?’