The Decayed Gentlewoman

by E. X. Ferrars

  Colin agreed. Only money could keep the place as perfectly, lifelessly trim and only a man who valued privacy above almost everything else would choose to live in a house that had such a bleak air of detachment from its surroundings.

  Ginny rang the bell and after a moment the door was opened by an elderly man-servant in a white jacket. He had white hair, thick, white eyebrows, and suspicious eyes. He looked as if he had to battle with a powerful impulse to tell them to go away instead of letting them in. For why should anyone come to that door, his tight mouth implied, but someone who was selling vacuum cleaners or collecting for charity? However, he had apparently been told to expect them and not to turn them away. Taking them up a wide, carved staircase, he showed them into a room on the first floor.

  It was a long room, with three tall windows overlooking the garden. It had a high moulded ceiling, a big fire burning in a marble fireplace like an ancestral tomb, curtains of yellow velvet, and walls covered in a dark-red embossed paper. There were a great many pictures on the walls in gilded frames. Colin had only to go two steps into the room to recognize the portrait of Ginny’s Decayed Gentlewoman hanging among them.

  At the same time he saw a man get up from one of the armchairs by the fire. He was of medium height and solidly built, with a hint of muscle under the well-cut dark suit and the layer of middle-aged plumpness. His face was not actually green, as Ginny had described it, but it was faintly shiny and had a waxen pallor and smoothness.

  He came to meet Ginny and Colin, holding his hand out. He leant slightly backwards as he walked, which made him look as if he were doing his best to hold back from the human contact which his hand had been schooled to endure. He did not attempt a smile.

  “I can’t pretend I understand why you want to see me,” he said, “but I’ll be glad to give you any help I can. I hope you’ll take a glass of sherrry with me. I generally take a glass of sherry at this hour.”

  His tone was high and flat. The vowels were thinly fluted, the consonants sharp as knives. It sounded a strangely old voice, far older than the man to whom it belonged, which made it seem unnatural. It must have been deliberately cultivated, Colin thought, to satisfy a vanity of some strange kind. He agreed with Ginny that it was not a nice voice.

  “It’s good of you to see us,” he said. “It’s about the picture you bought at Lake’s saleroom on Thursday. I believe Mr. Lake told you that.”

  “He did, he did. The lady yonder.” Still leaning slightly backwards, resting one hand in the small of his back, Edmund Greer turned to where the picture hung. “She’s very charming. A sweet creature. And I shan’t be at all surprised, when we get her cleaned up, if she turns out to be even nicer than we think.” He glanced at Ginny. “So I forgive you, young lady, for pushing me up when I thought I was going to get her for next to nothing. I even enjoyed our little contest. What I don’t understand, however, is what Lake’s up to now. He got a far bigger price for her than he’d any reason to expect. What’s he worried about?”

  “There’s a question,” Colin said, embarrassment making his speech more abrupt than he intended, “if he’d actually any right to sell her. Miss Winter’s convinced the picture is one that belongs to some relations of mine. That’s why she was bidding for it. Like you, she expected it to fetch next to nothing and she was trying to get it back for us without starting a hue and cry about stolen property.”

  Mr. Greer went on gazing at the painting. “Stolen property. Well, well,” he said softly.

  “If it’s the same picture,” Colin said.

  “I see, I see. And here am I, quite in love with her… Take a good look at her, however, Mr. Lockie. Make up your mind about her. Then come and have a drink and let us discuss the situation in an atmosphere of calm and reason.”

  He waved Colin towards the picture and still sloping backwards, walked off to the fire, before which the man-servant was setting out a decanter and glasses.

  Such good humour made Colin feel more embarrassed than ever. To give himself a little time to think, he went close to the picture and made a show of studying it. But there was really no need for him to do so. What he had expected before coming into the room he was not sure—probably that the picture would have very real true resemblance to the one that had hung at Ardachoil—yet after only one look he had known that it was the same one. Like Ginny, he had recognized it as he would have recognized a friend. The very dirt on the canvas and the pattern of the cracks in the varnish were part of a personality that he had known since childhood.

  The woman in the picture was no great beauty. Her face was broad-featured, middle-aged, and weary. It was turned half aside, with the eyelids lowered and the lips pursed in an expression of worried sadness. She was wearing a plumed black hat that shaded one side of her face, pearl drops in her ears, and an enormous ring on the first finger of one of the hands that were limply crossed at her waist. There was something about her, an air of well-meaning, suffering earnestness that had always reminded Colin of the eldest of his aunts— only Aunt Clara would never have worn such a low-cut dress or such an ostentatious ring. Other days, other ways, however. What colour the hair or the dress in the portrait had once been could hardly be guessed at, for along with the face and bosom of the unknown woman they had taken on a tone of discouraged brownish yellow, and whatever there might be in the background, behind her head and sloping shoulders, had quite disappeared into dingy darkness.

  “Well?” Behind Colin there was a clink of glass as Mr. Greer put the stopper back into the decanter. “Have you made up your mind about her?”

  Colin turned away from the picture and went towards the fireplace. Ginny followed him. It struck him that she was deliberately staying in the background, leaving all initiative to him.

  “It’s extraordinarily difficult to answer,” he said as Greer handed them glasses of sherry. “I think it’s the same picture. I’m almost completely certain of it. But I’m not an expert.”

  “Ah well,” Mr. Greer murmured mildly, as if commiserating with him.

  “And if Lake’s story is true of how he got hold of it, I don’t see how it can be the same picture.”

  “Lake looks a pretty average scoundrel,” Mr. Greer said. He leant backwards over the fire, resting his shoulders against the black marble mantelshelf. “I imagine you needn’t take any story of his too seriously. What is it, by the way?”

  “He says he bought up the contents of a house in Oldersfield that had belonged to a Mrs. Sibbald. She was an old woman who’d been living in about two rooms of the house and letting everything else go to pieces. The picture was in the attic, along with a lot of junk.”

  “Sibbald?” Mr. Greer shook his head. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me. But I don’t go into Oldersfield very often. I’ve only recently discovered the Lakes and their Thursday sales. It’s worth watching the place, I’ve found, for the oddment that’s escaped the eye of the dealers. When was your picture stolen?”

  “About two years ago.”

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  “I had it in my car,” Colin said. “I was held up and the car was stolen.”

  “How extremely unpleasant. I hope you weren’t injured. It was somewhere in this neighbourhood, was it?”

  “No, that’s just it—it was on the west coast of Argyll.”

  Mr. Greer gave a sharp laugh. “Ah, then I quite see your difficulty, Mr. Lockie. To have travelled from there to Mrs. Sibbald’s attic would be a very remarkable adventure for the lady. Such a pointless adventure too, it would seem. What about the police? What effort did they make to trace her?”

  “I think they took all the usual steps, whatever they are. They never found any trace of my car, and when they caught up with the two men they thought had taken it—they’d escaped from Barlinnie a day or two before—they denied having had anything to do with it. The police were still convinced they had, but they never proved anything.”

  “I see. May I ask what the lady was doing in your car?” />
  In spite of Mr. Greer’s good humour, Colin was beginning to feel irritated by his coy-sounding way of referring to the painting as if it were human.

  “I was taking her—the picture—to Edinburgh for cleaning,” he said.

  “For some relations of yours, did you say?”

  “Yes. I don’t know much about its history, but I think it had been in the family for a fair time.”

  “Were they very distressed at the loss?”

  “Not excessively.” They had in fact been very much more concerned at the damage to Colin, than at the theft.

  “That sounds as if they didn’t consider her particularly valuable,” Mr. Greer said.

  “I don’t think they did.”

  “Yet sending her away to be cleaned—that almost sounds as if they thought she might have a certain value.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Colin. “The mere fact that it had come down to them from their parents and grandparents would have made them treasure it.”

  “Well, they’d have treasured her more, very much more, if they’d had a certain idea about the dear creature that I’ve got at the back of my mind. No—” Mr. Greer held up a hand as Ginny started to speak. “No, I won’t say anything about my little idea, because I could be so very wrong. And besides, we’re almost certain, aren’t we, that it isn’t the same picture? So it really doesn’t concern Mr. Lockie’s aunts at all.”

  “What I was going to say, Mr. Greer,” Ginny said, “is that Joe Lake’s ready to pay you back the hundred and ten pounds you paid if you’ll let Mr. Lockie have the picture back.”

  “That’s very kind of Mr. Lake, Miss Winter,” Mr. Greer said drily. “He’s begun to have ideas too, has he? He thinks perhaps he can get rather more than a hundred and ten pounds if he has another chance.”

  Colin saw a change come over Ginny’s face. It was one that he had noticed once or twice before. All of a sudden it ceased to be the ingenuous face of a rather immature girl and became the knowledgeable face of a woman who was accustomed to taking blows from life and was ready to hit back with all her strength and cunning.

  “Joe merely wants to keep out of trouble,” she said. “That’s the only idea he’s had. He’ll return you what you gave for the picture, and then I’m sure Mr. Lockie will pay Joe what he gave for the picture. Then Mr. Lockie will return it to its rightful owners and that will be the end of the matter. The police needn’t be brought in at all.”

  “But my dear young lady, who’s talking about the police?” Greer asked. “I’m the rightful owner of that picture.”

  “Not if it can be proved that it’s the picture that belonged to Mr. Lockie’s aunts,” she said.

  “Even then, I’m afraid.” Mr. Greer gave another tolerant smile. He looked up at the picture. “There she is and there she stays,” he said gently. “I love her far too much to part with her.”

  “If you want more than the hundred and ten pounds—” Ginny began.

  He cut in, “I want much more. Much, much more. Far more than you or Mr. Lockie or Joe Lake can offer. And I really think it’s time to drop the subject. May I offer you a little more sherry?”

  “No, thank you.” Ginny put her glass down on the tray. “Mr. Greer, have you thought that if that’s the picture we think it is, you may have to give it up without getting anything back for it at all?”

  “Oh, no. No, not at all.” He refilled his own glass. “People have such confused ideas about the law. I bought that picture in perfectly good faith on the open market. The open market—that’s the point.” He gave a chuckle, the kind that a man gives when he is unexpectedly charmed by the perfection of some purely intellectual discovery. “It’s most amusing really. I might so easily have bought her in some hole-and-corner junk shop and then of course you’d have been right and I’d have been delighted to get my hundred and ten pounds back. But my amazing good fortune is that I really and truly bought her in the open market. So she’s mine, whatever her shady past may have been, poor sweet.”

  Ginny turned to Colin with a puzzled look.

  He said, “I don’t understand, Mr. Greer.”

  “Then consult your lawyer, Mr. Lockie. Ask him about market overt. I’m sure he’ll support what I’ve been telling you.”

  “You mean that if you buy something that’s been stolen in what you call the open market, the original owner can’t get it back?”

  “Just so.”

  “Even,” said Ginny sharply, “if he can prove it’s been stolen?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not certain of the details,” Mr. Greer replied. “I’ve known of this odd quirk in the law for some time—it’s something very ancient, I believe—but I’ve never imagined I might one day be glad to take advantage of it.”

  “Glad!” Ginny’s eyes blazed. “Yes, you are glad. I see that. Thank you for making your attitude so plain, Mr. Greer. We now know where we are.”

  “But don’t just take my word for it,” he said. “Consult your lawyer. Please do.”

  “Oh, you may be quite sure we’ll do that.” She turned abruptly to the door.

  Mr. Greer hurried ahead to open it for her.

  “Miss Winter, don’t take this too badly,” he said. “I know that bidding at auctions always rouses the worst passions and it’s very painful indeed to have to admit defeat—particularly when one begins to realize that one didn’t quite know what one was bidding for. But I’m sure you’ll be lucky another time.”

  She did not answer. Her slight body was stiff with anger as she went down the stairs. Colin followed her. The manservant was waiting at the bottom, holding the door open already as if he could not hustle them out fast enough.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  « ^ »

  Out in the road, Ginny burst out, “I’m sorry, Colin—I’m terribly sorry!”

  There was a shake in her voice which made Colin afraid she was near tears.

  “Whatever for?” He put an arm round her shoulders. “You did all you could.”

  “But to have led you into that! To make you go and see that horrible man, when you didn’t even want to! I knew from the sale I was going to hate him, but that he’d be quite so loathesome…” She seemed to feel a dreadful responsibility for having inflicted on Colin the horror of meeting Mr. Greer. “I do so hate hating people. And losing my temper. It always makes me feel ill. I’m feeling just a bit sick now.”

  “Then it sounds as if we ought to go to that nice pub you talked about and have a stiff drink of something,” said Colin.

  As they walked on and he let his arm drop, she put her own through it.

  “I don’t understand how you can stay so calm,” she said. “You don’t seem angry at all. Yet that was our Decayed Gentlewoman, and what’s more, he knew it was.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Colin said thoughtfully, “I’m probably as angry as you are, even if it doesn’t show.” He was, as it happened, rather surprised at the strength of his own anger. It wasn’t a habit of his to lose his temper easily. Normally it happened only once or twice a year, and then it was generally with himself, for some such thing as spoiling a month’s work by the simple act of forgetting to turn some switch or other. “I agree with you he believed that picture was stolen property; or anyway, he wanted to. He liked the idea.”

  “He loved it, he’s sitting there revelling in it,” Ginny said. “He loved the thought of this market overt business, whatever it is. He loved the thought of using the law to get round the law.”

  “I wonder if he can possibly be right about that,” Colin said. “I’ve always thought that if you accidentally bought something that had been stolen and the real owner turned up and wanted it back, it was just your bad luck. I thought you had to give it up for nothing.”

  “I know—so did I. So the Lakes’ offer to buy the picture back struck me as pretty generous.”

  “About that,” Colin said, “why did you mention it, Ginny? I thought you’d decided it wouldn’t be fair to Joe.”
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  “Well, I felt fairly certain Greer would refuse it, and I had a sort of idea it might make him come into the open about what he thought the picture was—which it did, up to a point. He showed us he thought it was something really valuable.”

  They had just reached the pub. Its bulging walls were as half-timbered as Colin had imagined them. Its roof was thatched and its small leaded windows were filled with bowls of daffodils and pussy willow. As they went in, Ginny said that the best thing for settling her stomach when her nerves were upset was always whisky and Colin suddenly decided he felt like following her example. Ordering the drinks and a plate of sandwiches, they sat down at a table by one of the windows, and Ginny at once picked up the thread that she had dropped.

  “But what could it be, Colin? Don’t you know anything about its history?”

  “Very little,” he said. “I was always told it’s one of the things my grandfather managed to hang on to when they had to sell the house in Edinburgh—it’s a nursing home now —to pay his father’s gambling debts. But I’ve always had a feeling the whole story was a bit of a legend. I’ve never quite believed in the gambling, or the debts, or the splendour of the Edinburgh house. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the aunts really picked up the picture in some antique shop and made up the family history to go with it.”

  “Well, I wonder… Ginny looked towards the window and her eyes grew dreamy. ”Her clothes are Charles I, you know. And if Greer’s right that the picture’s valuable, and not just a copy of something, d’you think—d’you think just possibly… ? No, I know it couldn’t be.“ She sighed and drank some whisky. After a moment it seemed to give her the courage to continue her dream. ”I was thinking about Van Dyke. Don’t laugh.”

  Colin couldn’t help it.

  After frowning at first, she joined in. “All the same, why not? Things like that do happen sometimes.”

  “She’s much too meaty for a Van Dyke,” Colin said. “No, let’s not go quite crazy about this. Let’s think out what we’re going to do about this market overt business.”