by M. J. Trow
‘No, I …’ Was it suddenly hot in the parlour that James Batchelor was loosening his collar?
‘Dorcas,’ Mrs Arbuthnot clicked her fingers. ‘A bit of rough, eh? Not exactly a choirgirl, our Dorcas. She assures me she often had three farmhands at once back in her Dorset village. I have no reason to disbelieve her.’
‘I am an enquiry agent, madam,’ he thought he ought to remind her.
‘And I am a madam, enquiry agent,’ she replied. ‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is that I have no interest in your girls.’
‘Really?’ She widened her eyes. Alice Arbuthnot had been devastatingly beautiful in her day; she was no slouch now. ‘Not as other enquiry agents, eh?’
‘No, I … Yes. Look,’ Batchelor put down his tea cup and made sure he knew where the exit was. ‘I am pursuing a murder enquiry,’ he said, ‘or, rather, two to be precise.’
‘Ah,’ Mrs Arbuthnot was suddenly serious. ‘Clara Jenkins. Yes, dreadful business. Dreadful. The police have been here already – in pursuit of their enquiries, of course, not as regulars. I told them I hadn’t seen the girl for months, which is true.’
‘And Mabel Glossop?’
‘Mabel?’ Mrs Arbuthnot frowned. ‘That must have been … what? Two years ago?’
‘Eighteen months,’ Batchelor told her. ‘Can you have forgotten?’
Mrs Arbuthnot put her cup down. ‘No,’ she said, solemnly. ‘No, of course not. While they are under this roof, these girls are mine. I am their Aunt Alice and I am responsible for them. If they leave, as Clara did, I am powerless; I’m sure you understand.’
‘And Mabel?’
Mrs Arbuthnot got up and swept towards the fireplace, looking down at the phallic symbols painted on the screen. ‘Mabel was different. She was only seventeen and still, I have to admit, in my employ. I don’t know what happened.’
‘The police enquired about her too?’ Batchelor asked.
‘They did. A pig of a man named Meiklejohn. He made me an offer for another of my gels before he left. I turned him down.’
‘Did Mabel have any regulars?’ Batchelor asked.
She turned to face him. ‘Mr Batchelor, my profession has certain similarities to a priest or a doctor.’
‘If you say so,’ he said.
‘In the confessional and in the surgery, conversations take place that are between a man and his God and a man and his physician. It is like that here. What goes on under this roof stays under this roof. It must be so.’
‘But two women are dead, Mrs Arbuthnot.’
She chewed her lip for a while. Then she crossed the room and refreshed his tea cup before refilling hers. ‘You’re right, of course. Clara and I had words, I regret to say. I am a businesswoman, Mr Batchelor. I give my gels smart clothes, good food and an education of sorts. In return, I expect them to work, mostly horizontally, and to give me two thirds of their takings. I found that Clara was conning me.’ She stood impressively. ‘And I will not be short-changed.’
‘So she had to go?’
‘She did. As it turned out, to the parks.’ Mrs Arbuthnot sighed. ‘These are hard times, Mr Batchelor, as I’m sure you know. I read in the Pink ’Un only the other day that a Great Depression is on the horizon. There are few enough trades for women and these newfangled gadgets – what are they, typewriting machines? – they’ll never catch on. A girl must find work where she can. And if that has to be with her legs open, so be it.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Mabel did have her regulars, yes. Three of them, as I recall.’
‘Do you have the names?’ he asked her.
She laughed. ‘If you mean, do I have a little black book full of addresses of the great and good that I can make a little money out of on the other side, the answer is no.’ She tapped a finger to her temple, ‘It’s all in here.’
Batchelor waited, his notepad still in his pocket.
‘As to the others, one was a Mr Keen, of Keen, Griswold in the Inner Temple.’
‘A lawyer?’ Batchelor wanted to make sure he understood.
‘Of the worst sort,’ she bridled. ‘A Queen’s Counsel, no less.’
‘And the other?’
‘Lieutenant Anstruther Peebles, Twenty-First Hussars. Rather peculiar, that one.’
‘Oh, in what way?’
For the moment, Mrs Arbuthnot opened her mouth to say something, then she thought better of it and stooped to whisper in Batchelor’s ear. The enquiry agent’s eyes widened as he heard of Lieutenant Peebles’s peculiarities and the room grew hotter still.
‘Have you told all this to the police?’ he asked her.
‘Lord, no,’ she said, ‘I hardly ever talk to them.’
Matthew Grand had woken up with a start. Lady Caroline Wentworth usually got her own way and could charm the birds from the trees, but this time, she had pushed Grand perhaps a tad too far.
They travelled in silence, until, ‘Don’t sulk, Matthew, please,’ she said, smoothing her gloves as she stepped down from the growler.
‘I’m not sulking, Caroline,’ he said, sulkily, checking his watch. ‘But two and a half hours. Two and a half hours! Really, it’s not much like ten minutes, is it?’
Lady Caroline snorted and marched across the pavement towards the doors of the Grosvenor Gallery. ‘How long have you known me, Matthew?’ she asked, knowing he didn’t know the answer.
He didn’t know that answer, but he knew what came next, so answered that one instead. ‘Long enough to know you can’t get dressed in ten minutes.’
‘Correct,’ she said, shutting her parasol with a snap. She stood by the door and a flunkey, seeing her waiting, rushed to open it. ‘Why are we here again?’
Grand had to work quickly. ‘Our latest client is James Whistler. He’s suing John Ruskin.’
Lady Caroline’s eyes popped open on stalks. ‘Suing? Ruskin? But why?’
‘He was rude about one of his paintings, apparently.’ Even as he said it, Grand knew it sounded weak.
‘Well, really, Matthew,’ she said, flapping her hand at a scurrying assistant to keep their distance. ‘That’s hardly a case, is it?’ She swept off down the left-hand wall of the gallery. ‘Look at some of this stuff. I know that the models often have faces only a mother could love, but even given that, is this art, as such?’ She stood in front of a particularly gloomy daub. ‘What is that, even?’
‘That, madam,’ a slender floorwalker had appeared at her elbow, ‘is an allegory on …’
Lady Caroline turned her head as though on ball bearings, and looked down her nose at the assistant. ‘An allegory?’ she asked in tones that could etch steel.
‘It’s the fash—’
‘I do understand,’ she said, ‘that there must be fashions in art, but when it looks like this, one can only hope that it isn’t one that lasts long. Actually, you may be able to help. My fiancé Mr Grand – that is, Mr Grand of the Massachusetts Grands – and I are particularly interested in any works you may have by Mr Whistler.’
Grand loved Caroline when she was imperious. To other people, that was. He could see that she might need watching, down the line. But for now, he let her have her head. There was nothing art gallery staff liked better than a British aristocrat with a rich American in tow. The way she said he was one of the Grands of Massachusetts even convinced him, and he had no idea who they were. He knew his father, for one, would be flummoxed.
The assistant led them down the room and through a door at the end. He turned to speak over his shoulder. ‘Since the’ – he cleared his throat – ‘the hoo-ha, as you might say, we have moved the painting into the second gallery. Not that it isn’t simply wonderful, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘but it was attracting adverse attention, you see. Terence Saunders,’ he introduced himself belatedly and Grand shook his hand.
He crossed the room and let up a blind which was covering a large window. Sunlight flooded in and picked out the picture opposite. Grand, whose art tas
te usually ran to military themes or some of Frederic Leighton’s more esoteric works, depending on mood, had to admit he rather liked it. Shadowy figures in the foreground to the left were clearly looking up into the sky, despite being mere sketches against the dark grass. They led the viewer to look up too and there, against the London night over the Cremorne, fireworks sparkled and spat their magic and reflected in the lake. You could almost hear the bangs and whistles as they shot up and exploded above the city.
‘I really like that,’ Grand said, stepping back to look from a distance.
‘You didn’t like it when we were here before,’ his fiancée pointed out.
‘That might be because it was crowded with people when we were here before,’ Grand said. ‘I couldn’t step back and watch it.’
Saunders drew closer. ‘Do you see that too, sir?’ he asked, in an awed whisper. ‘The fireworks seem to be going off, don’t they? Do you see them change?’
Grand nodded, turning his head this way and that.
‘Whenever I come in here in the morning and check things, adjust the blind and so on, I would swear they are different from the day before. Mr Whistler is a genius, no more, no less.’
The two men stood side by side, gazing in admiration at the painting. Lady Caroline, on the other hand, had other views. She glanced at the picture and then leaned in close to examine the figures in the foreground.
‘Shoddy,’ she said, standing back again. ‘Shoddy work. These figures here,’ she twirled her finger round in a vague circle, ‘aren’t even painted properly. I mean, Matthew, look …’ She looked around to see the men still gazing deep into the picture, lost in firework displays of their youth, when every spark was a thing of magic, owing nothing to sulphur or charcoal; when they didn’t even know that aluminium, titanium and tin existed. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again with a smile. Perhaps it was a man thing. She allowed herself a little giggle. Perhaps that was why Mr Ruskin didn’t like the painting much. She looked at it again. There was something about it, as long as you let your eyes wander about and not concentrate on one spot or another.
Leaving the men to their memories, she wandered away, through another door in the corner. More paintings stretched away, lining the walls. These were less challenging, still lifes of roses, dropped petals artfully reflected on shiny table tops. This was more like art, to her mind, though at her mother’s soirées, she would rather die than admit it. She settled herself in front of a rather winsome child, holding a puppy. She made a face – even for her, this was just too sugary for words.
‘Surely, you don’t like this, do you?’ a voice said, from behind her.
She spun round. An artist, in full rig, stood behind her, a brush behind his ear and a palette on one thumb.
‘Umm … not, this one,’ she said, hastily. ‘Some of them, though. That one with the petals. It’s very’ – she was stuck for a suitably artsy word – ‘realistic, isn’t it?’
The artist tutted and strode off down the room and stood in front of a painting in a dark corner.
‘What about this one?’ He raised his voice, so she knew he was talking to her and she went to join him. ‘Is this realistic enough for you?’
Lady Caroline looked at the picture as she approached it and couldn’t really make it out. It looked like … well, she really wasn’t sure. She went closer and closer and then suddenly recoiled. ‘Is … Is that woman … dead?’
The artist was silent and she turned round to check he had heard. He had looked a little elderly. Perhaps he was deaf.
But he wasn’t deaf – or, if he was, she might never know. He had gone. Lady Caroline was not given to unladylike movements. Numerous governesses and a couple of finishing schools in elegant locations had taught her that. But nevertheless, she found herself spinning round on the spot. Wherever could the man have gone?
Back in the middle room, Grand and the assistant were no longer lost in the Cremorne fireworks but were looking for her, in an aimless kind of way.
‘Oh, there you are, darling,’ Grand said, then looked again. He was not used to seeing his fiancée out of countenance, but she clearly was now. ‘Are you well?’
‘I’ve had a bit of a shock,’ she said. ‘A man …’
‘A man?’ Grand was ready to punch the man’s lights out, whoever he might be. ‘What man?’
‘Average build,’ she waved a hand around the top of her own head, allowing for the hat. ‘Average height. Not sure how old … oldish. Not really old, but not young. Dressed’ – she let go of a nervous laugh – ‘well, dressed as an artist, as it happens. The full fig, you know, like that self-portrait of Rembrandt, you know the one. The hat. The floppy clothes. Like someone in fancy dress as an artist.’ She looked at Saunders. ‘You know these things.’ A little more of the imperious Lady Caroline was coming to the surface. ‘Artists don’t dress like that, do they?’
The man shook his head. ‘Mostly they wear tweeds,’ he said. ‘Except Frederic Leighton … but I don’t think you should believe all you hear on that score.’
Caroline gave him a withering glance. ‘And another thing,’ she said, before she forgot. ‘That rather nasty picture. The one in the corner of the next room. I think you should remove it. It’s very disturbing.’
Saunders looked crestfallen. ‘Is it that one with the puppy? I don’t know why we even have that on the wall. But the artist is … titled, and you know how they can be.’
‘I most certainly do,’ snapped Lady Caroline and the man blenched. ‘But I don’t mean that one. I mean the one in the corner.’
Saunders looked puzzled. ‘Would you show it to me?’ he said, and led the way through the door at the end of the room.
Caroline pushed past him and swept down the room, talking over her shoulder to explain what had gone on. She reached the end of the room and turned, with a theatrical gesture which would have made Lillie Langtry proud. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it appalling? The woman is clearly dead!’
Neither man spoke and she looked to where she had pointed. The wall was now host to a picture of a reclining nude, but clearly perkily alive if her stare was anything to go by, piercing its way out of the canvas and into any man’s libido.
‘As I said,’ Saunders gushed, ‘you really shouldn’t believe all you hear about Frederic Leighton …’
‘But this isn’t it!’ Lady Caroline’s voice was rising into hysteria. ‘This isn’t it! It was dark, the painting, with a woman sprawled across it, clearly dead.’ She rushed up to Grand and grabbed his lapels and shook him like a dog shakes a rabbit. ‘There was blood, Matthew. Blood.’ And she burst into a storm of tears, half angry, half frightened.
Grand gathered her into his arms and spoke over her head to Saunders. ‘I’ll take her home,’ he said, half mouthing the words. ‘She’s a bit overwrought.’
The assistant nodded and followed them to the door, where he stood until they had been taken away in a passing growler. Only then did he turn away, shrugging to the doorman.
‘A bit overwrought,’ he said, with a smile and a toss of the head.
‘Overwrought,’ the man replied, ‘or’ – and he mimed tossing off a glass – ‘overwrought?’
‘No, just a bit overwrought,’ Saunders said, and laughed. ‘I was about to tell her about the ghost as well. But I didn’t get around to it.’ And he went off chuckling, to change the price tag on the Leighton. He reckoned that American would be back as soon as he could ditch Miss Hysteria there.
The firelight shone on Mrs Rackstraw’s well-polished brass and threw rainbows off the cut glass of the decanter. Grand and Batchelor, Enquiry Agents of the Strand, stretched their legs across the hearthrug and took their ease. One way and another, the day had been a little unusual for them both.
‘So,’ Batchelor said, drawing on his cigar, ‘Caroline thought she saw a ghost.’
‘No, Caroline did see a ghost. She never thinks she saw or heard anything – life for her is a series of blacks and whites.’
‘A little like Mr Whistler, then,’ Batchelor chuckled.
‘Indeed. Actually, I rather liked what I suppose we should call The Painting in Question. It’s very atmospheric.’
‘This case isn’t going anywhere,’ Batchelor observed, ‘but it pays its way while we look into this other thing. The Cremorne Case, I’ve called it in the ledger. Although, once Mr Martin starts, we won’t need a ledger as such. The man has the most phenomenal memory. Never forgets anything, or so I’m told.’
‘He must forget some things, though,’ Grand said, dubiously. ‘Wouldn’t he go mad, otherwise?’
‘Well, he could well be stark staring as far as we know. I only have John Lawson’s word that he’s sound. But he seems quite pleasant, has his own rooms, so we don’t have to find him lodgings, and he can make tea, I suppose. He’s only a dogsbody, when all is said and done.’
‘We’re paying him, though?’ Grand didn’t like to take advantage.
‘Of course. But he is of private means, as far as I could tell. He’s just working for the experience.’
Grand chuckled. ‘Well, we can certainly give him plenty of that. It’s a shame you didn’t have him with you when you went to the brothel …’
‘I’m not sure Mrs Arbuthnot uses that term,’ Batchelor corrected him. ‘She even has her own letterhead – Alice’s Academy, if I remember rightly.’
‘Wherever it was. But you found out some good information, so worth a little embarrassment.’
‘I wasn’t embarrassed.’
‘You’re blushing now.’
Batchelor loosened his collar and sipped his drink. ‘Good leads, though, from Aunt Alice. I’m going round to the Temple tomorrow.’
‘I don’t remember deciding that.’ Sometimes, Grand liked to remind Batchelor whose name came first on their letterhead.
‘Well, naturally, Matthew, I thought you’d go for the soldier.’
‘Did that once,’ Grand nodded, blowing his cigar smoke to the ceiling. ‘Not sure I liked it.’
‘Don’t give me that.’ Batchelor topped up the brandy. ‘The Civil War made you the man you are today.’
