The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Jamie returned her look. “Oh,” he said, and then was silent. Paul Hogg looked at him, and then looked at Isabel. Isabel, noticing this, thought: He’s wondering what the relationship is. Toy boy, probably; or so he thinks. But even if that were the case, why should he be surprised? It was common enough these days.

  Paul Hogg left the room briefly to fetch his own drink, and Isabel smiled at Jamie, raising a finger to her lip in a quick conspiratorial gesture.

  “But I haven’t said anything yet,” said Jamie. “All I said was ‘Oh.’”

  “Quite enough,” said Isabel. “An eloquent monosyllable.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know why I agreed to come with you,” he whispered. “You’re half crazy.”

  “Thank you, Jamie,” she said quietly. “But here’s our host.”

  Paul Hogg returned and they raised their glasses to one another.

  “I bought that painting at auction a couple of years ago,” he said. “It was with my first bonus from the company. I bought it to celebrate.”

  “A good thing to do,” said Isabel. “One reads about brokers, financial people, celebrating with those awful lunches that set them back ten thousand pounds for the wine. That doesn’t happen in Edinburgh, I hope.”

  “Certainly not,” said Paul Hogg. “New York and London maybe. Places like that.”

  Isabel turned towards the fireplace. A large gilt-framed picture was hung above it, and she had recognised it immediately.

  “That’s a fine Peploe,” she said. “Marvellous.”

  “Yes,” said Paul Hogg. “It’s very nice. West coast of Mull, I think.”

  “Or Iona?” asked Isabel.

  “Could be,” said Paul Hogg vaguely. “Somewhere there.”

  Isabel took a few steps towards the painting and looked up at it. “That business with all those forgeries some years back,” she said. “You weren’t worried about that? Did you check?”

  Paul Hogg looked surprised. “There were forgeries?”

  “So it was said,” said Isabel. “Peploes, Cadells. Quite a few. There was a trial. It caused some anxiety. I knew somebody who had one on his hands—a lovely painting, but it had been painted the week before, more or less. Very skilled—as these people often are.”

  Paul Hogg shrugged. “That’s always a danger, I suppose.”

  Isabel looked up at the painting again. “When did Peploe paint this?” she asked.

  Paul Hogg made a gesture of ignorance. “No idea. When he was over on Mull, perhaps.”

  Isabel watched him. It was an answer of staggering lameness, but at least it fitted with an impression that she was rapidly forming. Paul Hogg knew very little about art, and, moreover, was not particularly interested. How otherwise could one have a Peploe like that—and she was sure that it was genuine—how could one have a Peploe and not know the basic facts about it?

  There were at least ten other pictures in the room, all of them interesting even if none was as dramatic as the Peploe. There was a Gillies landscape, for example, a very small McTaggart, and there, at the end of the room, a characteristic Bellamy. Whoever had collected these either knew a great deal about Scottish art or had stumbled upon a perfectly representative ready-made collection.

  Isabel moved over to another picture. He had invited her to view his Blackadder and so it was quite acceptable to be nosy, about paintings at least.

  “This is a Cowie, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Paul Hogg looked at the picture. “I think so.”

  It was not. It was a Crosbie, as anybody could have told. These paintings did not belong to Paul Hogg, which meant that they were the property of Minty Auchterlonie, who was, she presumed, his fiancée, and who had been named separatim on two of the invitations. And those two invitations, significantly, were both from gallery owners. George Maxtone owned the Lothian Gallery and was just the sort of person to whom one would go if one wanted to buy a painting by a major Scottish painter of the early twentieth century. Peter Thom and Jeremy Lambert ran a small gallery in a village outside Edinburgh but were also frequently commissioned by people who were looking for particular paintings. They had an uncanny knack of locating people who were prepared to sell paintings but who wished to do so discreetly. The two functions would probably be a mixture of friends and clients, or of people who were both.

  “Minty—” Isabel began, meaning to ask Paul Hogg about his fiancée, but she was interrupted.

  “My fiancée,” he said. “Yes, she’s coming any moment. She was working a bit late, though not late by her standards. Sometimes she’s not back until eleven or twelve.”

  “Oh,” said Isabel. “Let me guess. She’s a … a surgeon, yes, that’s what she is. She’s a surgeon or a … a fireman?”

  Paul Hogg laughed. “Very unlikely. She probably lights more fires than she puts out.”

  “What a nice thing to say about one’s fiancée!” said Isabel. “How passionate! I hope that you’d say that about your fiancée, Jamie.”

  Paul Hogg shot a glance at Jamie, who scowled at Isabel, and then, as if reminded of duty, changed the scowl to a smile.

  “Hah!” he said.

  Isabel turned to Paul Hogg. “What does she do, then, that keeps her out so late at night?” She knew the answer to the question even as she asked it.

  “Corporate finance,” said Paul Hogg. Isabel detected a note of resignation, almost a sigh, and she concluded that there was tension here. Minty Auchterlonie, whom they were shortly to meet, would not be a clinging-vine fiancée. She would not be a comfortable homemaker. She would be tough, and hard. She was the one with the money, who was busy buying these expensive paintings. And what is more, Isabel was convinced that these paintings were not being acquired for the love of art; they were a strategy.

  They were standing near one of the two large front windows, next to the Cowie that was a Crosbie. Paul looked out and tapped the glass gently. “That’s her,” he said, pointing out into the street. “That’s Minty arriving now.” There was pride in his voice.

  Isabel and Jamie looked out the window. Below them, directly outside the entrance to the flat, a small, raffish sports car was being manoeuvred into a parking space. It was painted in British racing green and had a distinctive chrome front grille. But it was not a make which Isabel, who took a mild interest in cars, could recognise; Italian perhaps, an unusual Alfa Romeo, an older Spider? The only good car to come out of Italy, ever, in Isabel’s opinion.

  A few minutes later the door into the drawing room opened and Minty came in. Isabel noticed that Paul Hogg snapped to, like a soldier on the arrival of a senior officer. But he was smiling, and obviously delighted to see her. That always showed, she thought; people brightened when they were truly pleased to see somebody. It was unmistakeable.

  She looked at Minty, whom Paul Hogg had crossed the room to embrace. She was a tall, rather angular woman in her late twenties; late enough twenties to require attention to makeup, which was heavily but skilfully applied. Attention had been paid to her clothes, too, which were clearly expensive and carefully structured. She kissed Paul Hogg perfunctorily on both cheeks, and then walked over towards them. She shook hands, her glance moving quickly from Isabel (dismissed, thought Isabel) to Jamie (interested, she noted). Isabel distrusted her immediately.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  YOU ASKED HIM nothing about Mark,” said Jamie heatedly as they closed the door at the bottom of the stair and stepped out into the evening street. “Not a single thing! What was the point of going there?”

  Isabel linked her arm with Jamie’s and led him towards the Dundas Street intersection. “Now,” she said, “keep calm. It’s only eight o’clock and we have plenty of time for dinner. It’s on me tonight. There’s a very good Italian restaurant just round the corner and we can talk there. I’ll explain everything to you.”

  “But I just don’t see the point,” said Jamie. “We sat there talking to Paul Hogg and that ghastly fiancée of his and the subject, from start to
finish, was art. And it was mostly you and that Minty person. Paul Hogg sat there looking up at the ceiling. He was bored. I could see it.”

  “She was bored too,” said Isabel. “I could see that.”

  Jamie was silent, and Isabel gave his arm a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell you over dinner. I would like a few moments to think just now.”

  They walked up Dundas Street, crossing Queen Street, and along towards Thistle Street, where Isabel said they would find the restaurant. The town was not busy, and there was no traffic in Thistle Street. So they walked a short distance in the road itself, their footsteps echoing against the walls on either side. Then, on the right, the discreet door of the restaurant.

  It was not large—about eight tables in all, and there were only two other diners. Isabel recognised the couple and nodded. They smiled, and then looked down at the tablecloth, with discretion, of course, but they were interested.

  “Well,” said Jamie, as they sat down. “Tell me.”

  Isabel arranged her table napkin on her lap and picked up the menu. “You can take the credit,” she began. “Or part of it.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You said to me in the Vincent that I should be prepared to find out that Paul Hogg was the person we were after. That’s what you said. And that made me think.”

  “So you decided that it was him,” said Jamie.

  “No,” said Isabel. “It’s her. Minty Auchterlonie.”

  “Hard-faced cow,” muttered Jamie.

  Isabel smiled. “You could say that. I might not use those exact words, but I wouldn’t disagree with you.”

  “I disliked her the moment she came into the room,” said Jamie.

  “Which is odd, because I think that she liked you. In fact, I’m pretty sure that she … how shall I put it? She noticed you.”

  Her remark seemed to embarrass Jamie, who looked down at the menu which the waiter had placed before him. “I didn’t see—” he began.

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Isabel. “Only another woman would pick it up. But she took an interest in you. Not that it stopped her getting bored with both of us after a while.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jamie. “Anyway, she’s a type that I just can’t stand. I really can’t.”

  Isabel looked thoughtful. “I wonder what it is that made us—both of us—take a bizz against her.” The old Scots word “bizz,” like so many Scots terms, could only be roughly translated. A bizz was a feeling of antipathy, but it had subtle nuances. A bizz was often irrational or unjustified.

  “It’s what she represents,” Jamie offered. “It’s a sort of mixture, isn’t it, of ambition and ruthlessness and materialism and—”

  “Yes,” Isabel interrupted him. “Quite. It may be difficult to define, but I think we both know exactly what it is. And the interesting thing is that she had it and he didn’t. Would you agree with that?”

  Jamie nodded. “I quite liked him. I wouldn’t choose him as a particularly close friend, but he seemed friendly enough.”

  “Exactly,” said Isabel. “Unexceptionable, and unexceptional.”

  “And not somebody who would ruthlessly remove somebody who threatened to expose him.”

  Isabel shook her head. “Definitely not.”

  “Whereas she …”

  “Lady Macbeth,” Isabel said firmly. “There should be a syndrome named after her. Perhaps there is. Like the Othello syndrome.”

  “What’s that?” asked Jamie.

  Isabel took up a bread roll and broke it on her side plate. She would not use a knife on a roll, of course, although Jamie did. In Germany it once was considered inappropriate to use a knife on a potato, a curious custom which she had never understood. An enquiry she had made of a German friend had received a strange explanation, which she could only assume had not been serious. “A nineteenth-century custom,” he had explained. “Perhaps the emperor had a face like a potato and it was considered disrespectful.” She had laughed, but when she later saw a portrait of the emperor, she thought it might just be true. He did look like a potato, just as Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, had looked slightly porcine. She imagined him at breakfast, being served bacon, and laying down his knife and fork and sighing, regretfully, “I just can’t …”

  “The Othello syndrome is pathological jealousy,” said Isabel, reaching for the glass of gassy mineral water which the attentive waiter had now poured her. “It afflicts men, usually, and it makes them believe that their wife or partner is being unfaithful to them. They become obsessed with the thought, and nothing, nothing can persuade them otherwise. They may eventually end up being violent.”

  Jamie, she noticed, was listening very carefully to her as she spoke, and the thought occurred to her: He sees something there. Was he jealous of Cat? Of course he was. But then Cat was having an affair with somebody else, in his view at least.

  “Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “You’re not the sort to be pathologically jealous.”

  “Of course not,” he said, too hurriedly, she thought. Then he added, “Where can one read about it? Have you read something about it?”

  “There’s a book in my library,” said Isabel. “It’s called Unusual Psychiatric Syndromes and it has some wonderful ones in it. For example, cargo cults. That’s where whole groups of people believe that somebody is going to come and drop supplies to them. Cargo. Manna. The same thing. There have been remarkable cases in the South Seas. Islands where people believed that eventually the Americans would come and drop boxes of food, if only they waited long enough.”

  “And others?”

  “The syndrome where you imagine that you recognise people. You think you know them, but you don’t. It’s neurological. That couple over there, for example, I’m sure I know them, but I probably don’t. Maybe I’ve got it.” She laughed.

  “Paul Hogg’s got that too,” said Jamie. “He said he’d seen me. It was the first thing he said.”

  “But he probably had. People notice you.”

  “I don’t think they do. Why would they?”

  Isabel looked at him. How charming it was that he did not know. And perhaps it was best that he should not. That might spoil him. So she said nothing, but smiled. Misguided Cat!

  “So what has Lady Macbeth got to do with it?” asked Jamie.

  Isabel leaned forward in her chair.

  “Murderess,” she whispered. “A cunning, manipulative murderess.”

  Jamie sat quite still. The light, bantering tone of the conversation had come to an abrupt end. He felt cold. “Her?”

  Isabel did not smile. Her tone was serious. “I realised pretty quickly that the paintings in that room were not his, but hers. The invitations from the galleries were for her. He knew nothing about the paintings. She was the one who was buying all those expensive daubs.”

  “So? She may have money.”

  “Yes, she has money, all right. But don’t you see, if you have large amounts of money which you may not want to leave lying about the place in bank accounts, then buying pictures is a very good way of investing. You can pay cash, if you like, and then you have an appreciating, very portable asset. As long as you know what you’re doing, which she does.”

  “But I don’t see what this has got to do with Mark Fraser. Paul Hogg is the one who worked with him, not Minty.”

  “Minty Auchterlonie is a hard-faced cow—as you so perceptively call her—who works in corporate finance in a merchant bank. Paul Hogg comes home from work and she says: ‘What are you doing at the office today, Paul?’ Paul says this and that, and tells her, because she’s in the same line as he is. Some of this information is pretty sensitive, but pillow talk, you know, has to be frank if it’s to be at all interesting, and she picks it all up. She goes off and buys the shares in her name—or possibly using some sort of front—and lo and behold the large profit is made, all on the basis of inside information. She takes the profit and puts it into pictures, which leave less of a trail. Or a
lternatively, she has an arrangement with an art dealer. He gets the information from her and makes the purchase. There’s no way of linking him to her. He pays her in paintings, taking his cut, one assumes, and the paintings are simply not officially sold, so there’s no record in his books of a taxable profit being made.”

  Jamie sat openmouthed. “You worked all this out this evening? On the way up here?”

  Isabel laughed. “It’s nothing elaborate. Once I realised it was not him, and once we had actually met her, then it all fell into place. Of course it’s only a hypothesis, but I think it might be true.”

  It may have been clear thus far to Jamie, but it was not clear to him why Minty should have tried to get rid of Mark. Isabel now explained this. Minty was ambitious. Marriage to Paul Hogg, who was clearly going somewhere in McDowell’s, would suit her well. He was a pleasant, compliant man, and she probably felt lucky to have him as her fiancé. Stronger, more dominating men would have found Minty too difficult to take, too much competition. So Paul Hogg suited her very well. But if it came out that Paul Hogg had passed on information to her—even if innocently—then that would cost him his job. He would not have been the insider trader, but she would. And if it came out that she had done this, then not only would she lose her own job, but she would be unemployable in corporate finance. It would be the end of her world, and if such an outcome could be averted only by arranging for something tragic to happen, then so be it. People like Minty Auchterlonie had no particular conscience. They had no idea of a life beyond this one, of any assessment, and without that, the only thing that stood between her and murder was an internal sense of right and wrong. And in that respect, Isabel said, one did not have to look particularly closely to realise that Minty Auchterlonie was deficient.

  “Our friend Minty,” said Isabel at length, “has a personality disorder. Most people would not recognise it, but it’s very definitely there.”