Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Good God,’ Saunders said. ‘So we have got a secret passageway.’

  Martin stood back. ‘So that’s why everything seemed lopsided,’ he said, half to himself.

  Grand dropped Saunders, who sagged against the substantial bulk of Lady Blanche, who shook him off as if he were contagious. Staff just didn’t know how to keep to their place, these days.

  ‘Lopsided?’ he asked.

  Martin was looking around the enormous space of the gallery. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When I was here before, I felt uncomfortable. There was something in the proportions, but I put it down to how the pictures were hung.’

  Saunders gave an offended grunt.

  ‘But now I realize it is because there are hidden rooms. This one, obviously, but not only that. There’s something wrong with …’ He looked up into the rafters. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing, ‘there is a bit up there where the ceiling stops short.’

  Everyone looked up, shielding their eyes against the candlelight.

  ‘He’s right,’ Inverarity said. ‘I see it.’

  And that wasn’t all there was to see. On the walkway above their heads, the spirit of Evangeline French was being dragged by an artist in full fig to a door which those with keener sight could now see clearly.

  ‘Why did I never see that before?’ Whistler said. ‘I’ve spent hours in this gallery.’

  ‘Because you can’t see beyond your nose,’ Ruskin muttered, and Perceval Keen smothered a laugh then turned it into a cough; he wasn’t proud of being Whistler’s brief, but it was money in the bank and there was no such thing as bad publicity.

  ‘How the hell do we get up there?’ Grand shouted at the crowd in general.

  ‘Up those stairs, I would imagine,’ Inverarity said, disentangling himself from the elderly titled ladies with pleasure. Heedless of his best mess dress, he dashed into the dark void and was soon back. ‘There’s no possible way up there for men of our build,’ he said to Grand. ‘Far too narrow.’

  ‘How, then?’ Grand shouted at Saunders. By now the artist and his captive had disappeared.

  ‘Joe would know,’ Saunders said.

  ‘Fetch him, then,’ Batchelor yelled. The man must be an idiot not to know his own building. Sir Coutts Lindsay was thinking the same and planning the advertisement for his replacement while he waited for developments.

  ‘I gave him the evening off,’ Saunders said. ‘It seemed the perfect time, with all of us here.’

  Grand felt ready to kill someone, and it might as well be Saunders. He wound his arm back for a killer right to the jaw, but Martin stopped him.

  ‘No, Mr Grand, don’t. You’ll be sorry later. Look.’ He pointed to a corner of the studio, the one where Caroline had seen her ghost and the phantom painting of a dead woman. ‘That wall is shorter than it should be, look. It doesn’t go in again after the door architrave. I bet there’s a stair behind there. Hopefully, not as narrow.’

  The crowd parted as Grand and Batchelor, with Inverarity, Barnes and Martin in hot pursuit, ran for the corner of the room. Barnes was not keen on small spaces, but when he thought of explaining to Metcalfe in the morning, squeezing up a narrow staircase seemed the sensible choice. Martin shouldered to the front and, after a little scuffling, a panel swung outward, revealing a perfectly normal-size flight of steps. The men disappeared into the cavity and, within moments, there was a cry from Florence, who was looking up at the gallery.

  ‘There he is!’

  And indeed, Grand had appeared on the balcony and was already shoulder-barging the door through which the artist and model had disappeared.

  FOURTEEN

  The room beyond the door was in almost total darkness beyond the distant candlelight filtering in, but within the dark, something moved. It wasn’t silent, though. Caroline’s whimpers could be heard, begging the artist not to hurt her.

  ‘Be quiet,’ a low voice answered her. ‘I won’t hurt you. Models are too hard to come by.’

  Caroline, her voice steadying now she could see that help might be at hand, replied. ‘You did hurt some though, didn’t you? The girls in the Cremorne.’

  ‘You’re alive, though,’ the voice argued.

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ she said. ‘You threw me in the lake.’ She sounded as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and Grand’s heart almost burst with love and pride.

  ‘Only because I thought you were dead,’ he said, also very reasonably. They could have been two friends chatting over the teacups.

  ‘And you were right,’ Caroline said, calmly. ‘I’m here to find out why.’

  Barnes whispered into Grand’s ear. ‘When all this is over, I think we should have that young lady in the police.’

  ‘I saw her first,’ Grand said, which was only the truth.

  The scrape of a match made everyone jump and the room was suddenly filled with the golden light of an oil lamp. The canvases, stacked to the far end of the attic, looked almost like spectators, watching this battle of wits. Women’s faces – for only women had been put down in paint – seemed to follow every nuance, the throbbing light giving them life which their indifferent painter had been unable to provide. Inverarity, though no judge of art, could tell that the execution was not of the first water. Possibly, their artist could have made a living making portraits of tradesmen wanting to go up in the world. But even Whistler looked accurate and meticulous by comparison.

  ‘This is why,’ he murmured. ‘Every one of these women are my models. Some are dead. Some are living. But none of them brought me fame.’ Still holding Caroline tightly to him, he marched her down the rows. ‘This one, see, she came to me to have her portrait painted. She is no beauty, but I tried my best. She laughed when she saw it, said she couldn’t give a thing like that to the man she loved. She asked for her money back.’

  ‘What … what happened to her?’ Caroline hardly dared ask.

  ‘It’s many years ago,’ he said quietly. ‘I think she died.’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Yes. It was sad, I suppose. She … ate something that disagreed with her.’

  Caroline was silent. ‘I see.’ She was dragged a little further along the row and another painting was pulled out into the light so she could see it better. ‘And her?’

  ‘She may be alive. She may be not. I … loved her, for a while.’

  And on the danse macabre went. Some faces stared out without arousing a flicker of recognition. Others were brought out into the light, displayed for Caroline to look into their eyes. Was it her imagination, or was there fear in those dark pupils; did the lips look as if they were begging for their lives?

  Inch by inch, the men in the doorway came closer, Grand at their head. Soon, they were all inside the low room, Inverarity and Grand having to stoop to accommodate the ceiling height.

  The artist seemed stuck in a reverie looking at the next portrait.

  ‘I know that face,’ Barnes whispered. ‘It’s Ellen Terry.’

  ‘I didn’t have you down as a theatre-goer,’ Batchelor said quietly.

  ‘Just now and then,’ Barnes said, and blushed. ‘I quite like amateur dramatics.’

  Grand turned, surprised. ‘Don’t you get enough in the police?’ he asked. ‘Drama, I mean, not amateurism.’

  ‘I do just lately.’

  While they had been speaking, the artist had dragged Caroline to a chaise longue, set up in front of an easel. He threw the painting propped there to the ground and replaced it with a fresh canvas. Caroline rolled her eyes at Grand, silhouetted in the doorway. The discarded painting was of a woman, clearly dead.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do a lounging study,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried everything to get those stupid girls to relax. I’ve provided them with reading matter. I used to take pillows and rugs, but they misunderstood. One-track minds, those Cremorne girls, that’s their trouble.’

  ‘That’s not exactly a surprise,’ Inverarity murmured, and Grand looked at him. The soldier shrugged. ‘Needs must,’
he said, with a disarming smile.

  ‘Watts, he does lounging studies,’ he was saying as he tied Caroline down with silken ropes. ‘They all lounge for him, oh, yes. And he’d let us paint them too, sometimes. Then suddenly, it’s “Giuseppe. You have the artistic insight of a camel. Get out.” And that was it. I was twice the artist of all of them put together, Watts, Prinsep and Stanhope. But it’s out I go.’

  ‘Watts said he had three students,’ Batchelor said in Grand’s ear. ‘This must be the third one.’

  Grand nodded and crept an inch or two nearer.

  The knots were tied to Giuseppe’s satisfaction and he walked round to face the canvas. He turned it landscape and with an almost dry brush, began to sketch the basic shape.

  ‘Was Watts in on this?’ Barnes asked. ‘I thought he was a bit dodgy.’

  Grand shook his head. That seemed unlikely.

  ‘And since then,’ Giuseppe went on, ‘I’ve lived hand to mouth, painting ugly women and trying to make them beautiful. And when I succeed, as often as not they don’t recognize themselves. Or they laugh. And so here I am, caretaker at an art gallery – know what I mean, darlin’? – that only hangs the rubbish no one else will take.’

  The changed voice helped the penny drop for Grand and Batchelor. Giuseppe. Joe the caretaker. The caretaker who didn’t wake up when paintings were defaced because he was awake and doing the damage himself.

  ‘I had a few close calls.’ He was mixing flesh tint in a small jar. ‘That mad soldier, the one who liked dressing up, he saw me one night. I can’t remember which one I was doing; they’ve all run together in my mind, to be honest.’

  Barnes’s eyes nearly dropped out of his head. There were more?

  ‘I thought it would be all right. After all, he had almost as much to lose as me if he came forward. But that idiot Whistler put him in the foreground of his daub and I had to paint him out. So then, I had to change other pictures as well, so no one would get suspicious. And so on and on and round and round I go. Murdering and painting, painting and murdering …’ He suddenly put his brush down. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit peckish. Do you fancy a slice of cake?’

  Martin leaned forward and pulled at Grand’s sleeve. ‘Cake,’ he muttered urgently. ‘Don’t let her eat the cake. Almonds in the marzipan. Cyanide.’

  Giuseppe heard the last word and spun round, leaving a gash of crimson lake across his embryonic painting.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, aghast. ‘My oeuvre is by no means ready for viewing yet. I am still working on my masterpiece.’

  ‘And what a masterpiece it is,’ Batchelor said, stepping forward and reaching towards Caroline. ‘But I think she needs to stretch her legs, don’t you, Evangeline?’ He popped the knots with ease. ‘Can’t overwork your model, you know.’

  Grand wondered what Batchelor could possibly know about that.

  Caroline got up from the chaise longue. The ties on her wrists and ankles hadn’t hurt, but they had felt like chains of iron. Batchelor, keeping his body between her and Giuseppe, propelled her to the door, where she was caught expertly by Grand who held her to his heart with all his strength. Inverarity gently disentangled her and took her to safety.

  Giuseppe watched her go. ‘She’ll come back, though?’ he checked.

  ‘Of course.’ Batchelor sat down on the chaise longue and looked the artist in the eye. ‘We know what you’ve done, Joe,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to come with us.’

  ‘Come with you where?’ the man said, dragging off his floppy beret and mopping his brow. Although he kept himself in trim, it had been quite the evening, what with running about lighting candles, and manhandling strapping young women. Even using the room’s natural acoustic, making his voice boom out like that had been quite tiring. Being taken somewhere quiet for a while, where he could just get on with his painting, would be quite pleasant.

  ‘I have a nice studio,’ Grand began.

  ‘And I have an even better cell,’ Barnes said. It wasn’t that he was insensitive and he could see quite well what Grand was trying to do, but he had Inspector Metcalfe to deal with, and if this loony was carted off to some nice bin somewhere, then he could kiss his promotion goodbye.

  ‘Cell?’ Joe’s eyes were wide with shock and sorrow. ‘Cell?’ He looked at Batchelor. ‘Do they let you paint in prison?’

  The silence was the answer.

  Joe’s arms fell to his sides. ‘Can I just sign my last work?’ he asked and laughed, just a little. ‘It might make it worth some money, one day.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Barnes said. He had his man; he could afford to be magnanimous. Batchelor raised a hand to stop him, but Grand shook his head.

  Joe dipped his brush carefully into a pot of dark paint, then dipped it again. He looked at the end, which was splayed and useless for a signature. He put the brush to his lips and rolled it around, giving it a good, sharp point. Then, with a look in his eyes straight from his own, special circle of hell, he took one last gasp, and fell to the floor.

  Barnes looked frantically about and finally his whirling brain recognized Grand. ‘Is he … is he … dead?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ Grand said, kneeling beside the man and checking his pulse. ‘Never mind, Constable Barnes. We’ll make sure that Inspector Metcalfe knows you had your man, no matter how briefly.’

  The next morning, no one felt like going to the office, so Martin joined Grand and Batchelor for breakfast. To his amazement, Lady Caroline Wentworth was there too, in a rather fetching peignoir of peach silk. Batchelor was also amazed, but had decided to stay out of it. Mrs Rackstraw was too busy to be amazed because Maisie had been taken silly having found Lady Caroline déshabillé in Mr Matthew’s bedroom, so breakfast was a one-woman affair, though no one would have guessed it from the groaning table. But as she scuttled around, the housekeeper was hoping that Mr Juniper would soon step up and be counted; this was all too much for a woman of her years and sensibilities.

  For quite a while, everyone chewed, slurped or nibbled according to their lights, but eventually, someone had to speak.

  ‘So,’ Martin said, ‘all’s well that ends well, eh?’

  ‘That’s it, is it?’ Batchelor said, bitterly. ‘A private school and then an Oxford degree and that’s all you can come up with?’

  Martin was crestfallen. He had thought that a Shakespeare quote was good enough for anyone.

  ‘I don’t call it ending well, Alexander,’ Caroline said. Although she had, in the end, chosen brawn over beauty, she had a soft spot for the lad. ‘So many people died.’

  ‘People die all the time,’ Grand said. ‘But not usually so many for the sake of art, perhaps.’

  ‘I felt a bit sorry for him,’ Caroline said. ‘He didn’t really hurt me and he only did it at all last night because he was scared by the séance. He was muttering all the time as he dragged me upstairs. He could see all the women he had killed, in the air, he said. They were with him all the time, not just when he was in the attic with their paintings.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Martin said, ‘talking of those. I understand the Lindsays are going to have a retrospective of Giuseppe’s paintings.’

  The three others were open mouthed. ‘That’s horrible,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Business is business, I suppose,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Trade, Mama would call it,’ Caroline said, with the usual smell under her nose. ‘But it is still rather lacking in taste, James.’

  Grand caught her eye. They had had a long talk, well into the small hours, about her tendency to turn into her mother.

  ‘But of course, at the end of the day,’ she said, with a smile, ‘it is entirely up to them, dear.’

  Grand nodded and smiled, lowering his lids in acknowledgement.

  ‘So perhaps you won’t find this gratuitous either,’ Martin said. ‘Oscar was rather taken with the idea of portraits in the attic. He thinks there might be a story in it.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Batchelor sai
d, thinking of his Great British Novel lying unheeded upstairs. ‘I doubt it, Alexander. I really, really do.’