Money from Holme Read online

  Cheel pulled up on the verge of mere indulgent musing. What he had to acknowledge was that he had failed to get out of Braunkopf any information which he couldn’t quite easily have picked up elsewhere. And he had been left entirely guessing as to whether or not Braunkopf knew that Holme was still alive. He rather hoped that Braunkopf didn’t know. The fewer people who did – it was obscurely coming to him – the more there might well prove to be in it for Mervyn Cheel.

  But just how? It was only with the eye of faith, so to speak, that be could as yet distinguish on the horizon of the affair the first warm glimmer and glow of likely material benefit. And between him and that comfortable dawn great tracts of darkness still lay. What, for instance – and here surely was the central riddle – had prompted Sebastian Holme to be dead?

  Sophocles, it was true (and here, as so frequently, Cheel’s generous classical education took a hand), had maintained that no man was to be counted happy until he was precisely that. But Sophocles’ ideas were often on the gloomy side, and he had lived in what were, one way and another, decidedly rugged times. Nowadays people did, on the whole, prefer to be alive. And to be dead even in the figurative sense in which Holme was dead must be attended with great inconveniences. It was – again if only figuratively – to have gone underground. And what was the fun of being an underground man?

  A man might, of course, do something of the sort for merely freakish reasons – like a prince or husband in an old play, giving himself out to be defunct, or on a journey, in order to potter round in disguise, spying on his principal ministers or his wife. But nothing quite of this sort seemed to fit the present situation. And something else – something a good deal more promising – did!

  Discerning this, Cheel was able to feel that real daybreak was in sight. One went under ground, in nine cases out often, because things had ceased to be healthy above it. To be dead was the simplest and most conclusive way of going into hiding that could be conceived. Sebastian Holme had done something so disgraceful that he just had to be dead. Probably he had put himself within reach of the criminal law. And it was up to Cheel to discover just how. It was up to him to unearth the facts, and then to make what he could of his knowledge – always keeping a wary eye, of course, on the criminal law himself.

  The crowd was thinning. It was easier to see the pictures – and also to see the little red labels on them. Those labels represented a small fortune for sharing out between Braunkopf and Holme’s widow. But – unless there was some sort of collusion going forward to which he as yet lacked the clue – the resuscitated Holme himself simply wasn’t in the gravy. For the first time in his life (or death), and contrary to all likelihood and calculation, Sebastian Holme’s productions were bang in the Top Ten. But Sebastian Holme himself was clean out of the deal. There were all those little red labels. But the man whose talents had, so to speak, sucked them onto their respective paintings could only shuffle in, wearing a false beard (or was it, so to speak, somebody else’s beard?), for the purpose of taking a furtive and fearful look at them.

  To Cheel, who was disposed to the persuasion that he himself had frequently been cheated of immortal things by a malign fate, there was something poignant and even solemn in this reflection. He felt for, he felt with Sebastian Holme – thus so near, and yet so far from, affluence. It also occurred to him that here was the nub of the matter. If you were dead you certainly couldn’t make a fortune. It must be doubtful whether you could even command a cheque book. Holme as he was at present mysteriously circumstanced might well be persuaded of the desirability of a little subsidizing an awkwardly knowledgeable old friend such as Cheel had now become. But Holme was quite conceivably in the same financial situation as Cheel himself: having sordidly to think twice about the cracking of a five-pound note.

  This was a discouraging thought – or would have been so but for a powerful start of mind by which it was immediately succeeded. If Holme couldn’t benefit from his success because he was dead, those who were benefiting from it would not be doing so if he were not dead. If Holme were (officially as well as in fact) alive, these pictures would still have been his property, and so they couldn’t have been his wife’s to dispose of. Now that most of the pictures had actually been sold the matter was, no doubt, a little complicated. Still, it seemed unlikely that either Mrs Holme or Hildebert Braunkopf would, at this stage, at all welcome any raising of Holme from the dead. There was surely scope for what might be called negotiation in that.

  Cheel, who might in so many ways have answered to the type of the Prudent Man commended by moral philosophers, paused on this. He was aware of deep waters ahead of him; he well knew that hidden currents might sweep him unawares far off even the most cunningly plotted course. Moreover there was one circumstance – a sufficiently obvious one – which might transmute to the merest cobweb even the most subtle design (to vary the metaphor) that he could think to weave. The revenant Sebastian Holme, after all, had vanished. He might have vanished for good.

  It would be idle to claim that a dead man was alive, it would be useless to engineer the most brilliant coup turning upon this, if you couldn’t, in a crisis, lay your hands on him. A moment’s reflection, however, suggested to Cheel that he need have no serious misgiving on this score. For Holme, hazardously disguised behind that black beard, had been unable to resist an impulse to attend his own exhibition on the very most dangerous occasion he could have chosen. He must even have gate-crashed it, since admittance today was more or less strictly by ticket, and it occurs to nobody to send a ticket to a dead man. Having thus attended once, Holme would attend again. It wouldn’t be in nature not to.

  Cheel got to his feet and prowled once more. So far so good, he thought. He had only to be sufficiently assiduous in his own attendance and he was bound to find his man once more. Yet here again there was a difficulty. It would be reasonable to make three or four further visits to the Da Vinci, but after that his haunting the place would begin to look a little queer. Braunkopf – a suspicious type, as little crooks of his sort commonly were – might smell a rat. Frowning over this new problem, Cheel walked to the front of the gallery. There was a big window, partly draped in velvets holding the same moth-eaten suggestion as the settees. But one could peer over these into the street. Cheel did so, with some thought that his quarry might be lurking nearby after all. This seemed not to be the case. But, over the way, he saw something which cleared up his latest difficulty at once. It was a bar of the superior cocktail and champagne-by-the-glass variety, and its dispositions were such that one could drink while comfortably seated and with an excellent view of the Da Vinci itself. In order to secure such a vantage point, he reflected with satisfaction, quite a substantial daily expenditure on quiet drinking would be justifiable.

  So far, so good. Cheel turned back to the main room of the gallery, and sat down again. He had not yet read the two or three pages of biographical information about Holme provided in the catalogue. It was very likely that, after the fashion of such things, they were both inaccurate and less than candid. He had better go carefully over them, nevertheless. What was here recorded of the obscure but picturesque final phase of the painter’s life would at least serve as a basis for independent investigation. Cheel opened the catalogue. The first page was unrewarding. But his interest quickened as he read on.

  5

  At the beginning of 1956 Holme spent about a term at the Slade School, and he is recorded there for the Summer Term of the following year. A few months later, however, he was in Africa. Thereafter, until the end of his tragically short life, he was never in England for more than a few weeks at a time.

  Sebastian Holme’s interest in the Dark Continent had doubtless been nourished for some years by the exploits of his elder brother Gregory Holme, the distinguished explorer. Mr Gregory Holme – whose good offices have in part made possible the present Exhibition – was only two years older than the painter, but already a legendary if elusive figure.

  There can be no doubt that hi
s powerful personality was primarily responsible for decisions which were to be crucial in his brilliant brother’s career. Sebastian was still very young; his character held all the plasticity associated with the artistic temperament at such an age; moreover his entire aesthetic vision as it had yet formed itself was utterly native, so that it might have been reasonable to look forward to his becoming the painter of a new English Romanticism, of

  cool trees, and night,

  And the sweet, tranquil Thames,

  And moonshine, and the dew…

  (Moonshine, indeed – Cheel thought. But he continued reading.)

  The die, however, was cast. Sebastian Holme became his brother’s travelling companion – fellow-adventurer, indeed – and his imagination was thus abruptly thrown open to a vast new range of experience:

  The wind, the tempest roaring high,

  The tumult of a tropic sky,

  Might well be dangerous food

  For him, a Youth to whom was given

  So much of earth – so much of heaven

  And such impetuous blood.

  But to all this Sebastian’s genius was to rise superbly. In a few short years he had established himself as the supreme master of an entirely new territory: a jungle-world swallowing and dissolving in its violent chiaroscuro such human beings as have momentarily hacked themselves out breathing-space and elbow-room amid its savage proliferations…

  (Blush-making twaddle, Cheel told himself. But some approximation to hard fact seemed to be coming.)

  The mighty spectacle of Resurgent Africa was never, to either of the Holme brothers, a spectacle and nothing more. Keenly concerned for the ordered progress of the entire Continent, they took part in numerous enterprises designed to further the economic, and even political, development of more than one territory lately come to independence. In particular, they were the moving spirits in a small but highly significant import business operating mainly on the seaboard of Wamba and among its offshore islands. When, in January 1963, the reactionary régime of ‘Field-Marshal’ Mbulu and the RIP (the so-called Republican Independent Progressives) was overthrown by what is now the recognized government of Professor Ushirombo and his MADS (Moderate Advanced Democrats and Syndicalists) both the Holmes were present as keenly interested observers in Wamba-Wamba (the capital of Wamba, two hundred miles in the interior). Unfortunately, as is well known, the revolution, while peacefully achieved and enthusiastically received throughout Wamba as a whole, was attended by sporadic violence in Wamba-Wamba itself. Indeed, for some days Professor Ushfrombo and his Cabinet were unable to leave the precincts of the Old Colonial Gaol, and the city was in the hands of Terrorists, Students, and Criminal Elements. It was during this unfortunate phase in the political evolution of the Wambian people that the tragedy occurred.

  On the night of 18 January the small European community had thought it well to take shelter in the Wamba Palace Hotel – in which, incidentally, Sebastian Holme had arranged a display of a large number of his paintings by way of welcome to Professor Ushirombo, who was to attend a state banquet in the building immediately upon his taking over. To hold such an Exhibition in a mere hostelry or place of public refreshment was surely ill-judged and unbecoming. It was certainly calamitous. There is every reason to believe that ‘Field-Marshal’ Mbulu (already in exile on the farther bank of the Upper Wam) caused rumours to be circulated in the disturbed city to the effect that Holme’s paintings were in fact a collection of propaganda posters commissioned by the universally execrated ‘Emperor’ Mkaka, leader of the proscribed JUMBO (a terrorist organization the full title of which is totally unknown). The result was a fanatical attack upon the Wamba Palace, culminating in large-scale massacre and arson. As the hotel was a commodious structure fabricated in the main out of platted straw and bituminous mud the conflagration is said to have been spectacular.

  Almost the only survivor of this incident – regrettable in point of the loss of life involved, and vastly tragic because of the destruction of more than a score of irreplaceable works of art – was Mr Gregory Holme. Seizing a prog (a kind of native sword with a serrated blade) he cut his way to the bank of the Wam, boarded a krimp (a species of native light craft, graceful in construction and probably of Arab origin) and constrained the indigenous Wambians forming its crew to set sail down stream at once. After a two-day passage of the dangerous rapids of the Upper Wam (during which, most unfortunately, his crew was without exception eaten by crocodiles) Mr Holme had the good fortune to contact a small but effectively armed mobile column commanded by Colonel Uk, which had been placed at the disposal of UNO by the Lapland army, and which was hastening to Wamba-Wamba to support the legally constituted Government of Professor Ushirombo.

  Returning to the capital thus effectively accompanied, Mr Gregory Holme found that a large measure of order had already been achieved. The charred bodies of those who had perished in the hotel were waiting, gracefully garlanded, to be claimed by anybody who wanted to claim them. The remains of Sebastian Holme, which had escaped the worst effects of the fire, had already been identified. Professor Ushirombo (a close personal friend of both brothers) is said to have broken down when revealing to the survivor one circumstance attending the discovery of Sebastian Holme’s body. The painter’s current sketchbook was in his pocket, and he had actually recorded in it several brilliant impressions of the fatal attack upon the Wamba Palace. Sebastian Holme was an artist to the end…

  For the moment, Mervyn Cheel read no further. Instead, he consulted the body of the catalogue and found what he sought: the presence in the Da Vinci Exhibition of a fairly late self-portrait of the artist. He hunted down this on the wall, and studied it. The painting, he had to admit, was a finely objective performance. The clean-shaven features of the young artist were attractive, their suggestions of aesthetic sensibility being set off by a complexion which seemed whipped by wind and bronzed by sun. At the same time there was something in the expression that hinted an inner uncertainty or confusion. There had probably been a good deal that was genuinely wild and bold about Sebastian Holme. There had probably been a good deal that was simply muddled or chaotic.

  Cheel frowned. In these reflections he had got his tenses wrong. Sebastian Holme was alive. It was odd how this one essential fact kept slipping away from him.

  He moved along the line until he came to the portrait of the bearded man in front of which he had first spotted the (bearded and living) painter. Yes – shave this portrait and you would pretty well have the other portrait. But not quite. No – not quite. Cheel consulted his catalogue as to the painting now in front of him. It read:

  Portrait of the Artist’s Brother Gregory.

  Lent by Gregory Holme Esq.

  It was precisely what one might expect. Nevertheless for a moment Cheel’s faith faltered. There was such plausibility in the supposition that Gregory Holme would reasonably come to the private view of his dead brother’s surviving work. There was such plausibility, too, in the supposition that he would pause before the portrait his brother had painted of him, and which he had himself loaned to the show. But no! For there had been that scar. It HAD been Sebastian Holme, studying the portrait he had once painted of Gregory.

  ‘I think I’ll have a word with you.’

  Cheel turned round in alarm – for this announcement had been made by a female voice he dimly identified, and had been spoken, moreover, in a kind of threatening hiss in his ear. Now he took one look, and his alarm turned to panic. He had been addressed by the young woman whose posterior charms had led him into that mild impropriety half an hour ago. And she was still carrying those dangerous gloves. Observing these, Cheel backed away. This horrible person had either continued to lurk around the exhibition, nursing the pleasure of a further sadistic assault upon him, or her pathological condition was such that she had actually obeyed an overwhelming impulse to return for the same purpose. To Cheel, to whom the thought of any species of physical violence was peculiarly abhorrent, this was a quite revoltin
g circumstance.

  ‘Isn’t your name Cheel?’ the young woman asked. She made the name sound as if it were an objectively displeasing one.

  ‘I am Mervyn Cheel,’ Cheel managed to say. Commonly he would have contrived to lend these words the effect of a modest but firm claim, so that the further words ‘the distinguished critic and painter’ would be present in a species of invisible parenthesis. On this occasion, however, he was conscious that his tone carried only the suggestion of a small-time crook making a dispirited admission to a policeman. It was not merely that his first exchange (if it could be called that) with this person had been such as to put him at a certain permanent disadvantage with her; it was also that there was something inherently alarming in the woman. This was hard to explain, but Cheel felt it acutely. ‘Mervyn Cheel,’ he heard himself repeating – feebly and to no purpose.

  ‘What do you know!’

  This rejoinder, which Cheel understood to be an idiom expressive of admiring surprise, was clearly being ironically used on the present occasion. It conveyed, too, the further displeasing inference that this nasty person must be of transatlantic origin. You were never really safe, Cheel reflected, with an American woman – particularly after you had pinched her bottom. He must extricate himself from this outrageously impertinent intrusion upon his privacy at once.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, taking a kind of bold scramble in the direction of dignity, ‘I hardly think our acquaintance–’

  ‘Cut it out, Cheel.’ The woman was gently swinging her gloves in front of what might, in other circumstances, have been pleasing contours on the upper part of her person. ‘I’ve figured this out – see? I’ve heard about you. And right now I’ve seen you muttering with that smart cookie Braunkopf. And don’t I know there’s been something phoney about the whole thing? Hell I do, Mr Mervyn Cheel.’