The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

And with that he strode away.

  Eight

  THE HOTEL CHAMBERMAID KNOCKED ON THE DOOR, PAUSED, KNOCKED again, waited, then opened it with her passkey. The room was in darkness, so she flicked on the light and walked in, laying some fresh towels on the dressing table. Singing softly under her breath, she turned down the bed and smoothed the sheet, placing a mint on the pillowcase. She picked up the towels and moved toward the bathroom.

  Still singing, she reached for the pull cord and blinked as the light came on, together with the rush of the exhaust fan. Pulling back the shower curtain, she replaced the used soap and then turned to the sink. She let out a strangled yelp and almost lost her footing as she saw, wedged between the sink and the toilet, the naked corpse of a young woman.

  Nobody would have recognized Marian Miller. Her face had been bludgeoned to a pulp, her nose crushed, and her top lip driven into her teeth, giving her a rictus grin. Blood had matted her hair and dried on her breasts, and her left hand dangled in the toilet bowl, the fingers wrinkled from immersion in the water.

  Terrified, the chambermaid backed away, trying to skirt the body without touching it, but as she rushed past, she caught Marian Miller’s foot and tripped, sending her flying and the corpse sliding forward and falling across the entry of the bathroom door. It was as she picked herself up that the maid saw them—the silver coins. Coins that fell out of Marian Miller’s gaping mouth.

  The maid had not waited to count them, but later the coroner did. There were thirty coins. Thirty pieces of silver. All of them Russian rubles. And there was some hair under Marian Miller’s fingernails. At first it was believed to be the hair of her killer, but under examination it turned out to be not human hair but fur.

  Dog fur.

  Nine

  AS MARIAN MILLER’S BODY WAS BEING DISCOVERED, BERNIE FREELAND was in New York City, turning the corner into Times Square, where he paused to look up at the poster of a seminaked girl advertising underwear. He felt a momentary frisson of sexual excitement but found it immediately dampened by the memory of the call girls on his last flight. Why did they have to go and ruin everything? he thought irritably. Of course he knew he would never be able to find out which one had spiked his flaming drink, but as soon as he had recovered, he’d phoned Mrs. Fleet. Any other practical jokes, he told her, and he’d never use her service again. Of course, she calmed him down in seconds, promising that she would admonish her girls and reminding Bernie that if he could find better whores anywhere, he was welcome to try.

  But the spiked drink wasn’t what most worried Bernie. He was nagged by a faint memory of confiding in Sir Oliver Peters about the Hogarth. He wondered if the memory had been merely a dream and prayed it had. Surely, even drugged, he wouldn’t have confessed to having the painting. And yet … Bernie had always reacted very adversely to alcohol. He remembered the potency of the drink, the burning sensation as it hit his gut, the dizzying confusion of the brain that followed. He even remembered with embarrassment having thought that he was dying. That one of his rivals had heard of his coup and was murdering him.

  The crushing sensation of panic had been very real. But had it been real enough to make him talk? Bernie stopped walking, trying to reassure himself. He was an astute businessman, used to keeping secrets, knowing when to keep his mouth shut. For all his outward bonhomie, he had always been professionally circumspect. Would he—even out of control—make such a stupid, reckless slip? He thought of the painting. The Hogarth could make him one of the most respected dealers in the world. Surely he wouldn’t have told anyone about it. Surely, even drugged, he wouldn’t have let that secret out—and to three whores and three rival dealers. Bernie shook his head. No, never.

  But how could he know for sure?

  Perhaps his half-remembered confession to Oliver Peters had been overheard. Perhaps Kit Wilkes was already spreading the news to the Russian dealers, trying to steal a march on Bernie’s triumph. Wilkes was sly, clever with his acquisitions, only laziness keeping him out of the top rank. And then there was Lim Chang, the company man. The perfect, ruthless face of Chinese collecting. What wouldn’t he do for the Hogarth?

  Walking on, Bernie bent his head down against the wind. He felt a snuffle of panic coming on but stifled it. Tomorrow he would see Annette Dvorski again. She was to come to New York for the weekend. He had a present for her. His thoughts moved back to Hogarth. Never a fool, Bernie had had the painting authenticated by a discreet expert from Tokyo, a man he often used. Duly reassured, he returned to the seller, Guy Manners, who had a pressing need for money and a jumpy eagerness to off-load the picture. Manners had known that Bernie Freeland was greedy, ambitious, and keen to buy. The original series of The Harlot’s Progress had been destroyed, Manners explained; only one scandalous picture had survived. The picture Bernie now owned.

  His good temper restored, Bernie moved on. He could hardly believe his luck. Lucky Bernie Freeland. Serendipity had always been on his shoulder. Fate was good to him. Liked him. Even picked him out. Except that this time he wasn’t quite as fortunate as he seemed. He had seen in the Hogarth painting an opportunity to own something rare and valuable, something any dealer would want. But he hadn’t known the full history of the work.

  Based in New York, Bernie Freeland dealt in European and American paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the past he had traded some Hogarth etchings but never a painting. His knowledge of and liking for the English painter’s work were limited, so he didn’t know why the painting had been hidden or why it could be so controversial. He didn’t know why so many people, from the highest to the lowest in the land, would be after it. And he didn’t know how ruthless they would be. He certainly didn’t realize that what he had just bought was deadly and that his greed—greater than his learning—had made him vulnerable.

  Deep in thought, Bernie made for the crossing and waited for the walk sign to come on. He was thrilled that he had managed to get the painting back to New York without declaring it. Smuggling was against the law, but he had chosen a clever hiding place. The don’t walk light changed to walk, and Bernie stepped off the sidewalk. A woman brushed past him, and he muttered impatiently under his breath, feeling himself pushed along with the rest of the people crossing the road.

  The lights changed, the traffic moved again, and Bernie—halfway across the street and looking out for a cab—felt a sudden and unexpected jab at the base of his solar plexus. The blow was so intense that it winded him and knocked him off balance, sending him spinning backward—right into the path of an oncoming cab. His arms flailing uselessly, Bernie saw the vehicle coming toward him and knew in a flash that it could neither swerve to avoid him nor stop in time.

  The cab smashed into Bernie Freeland, sending him over the hood and into the path of an oncoming truck. Thrown under the massive vehicle, Bernie felt the first tires grind over his stomach, bursting his guts, and then roll over his legs. Screaming, he felt himself caught up and dragged along; the scream died in his throat as his chest was crushed, filling his mouth and throat with blood as his hands clawed feebly at the underside of the truck.

  When the vehicle finally stopped, Bernie heard the low, guttural screaming of an animal and realized it was his own; he dimly saw feet gathering around the truck, a blur of horrified faces bending down to look at him….

  The skin of his chest had been stripped away, his top ribs were exposed, his twisted, partially severed right leg jerked uncontrollably. Blood poured from his burst eardrums and spurted from his jugular vein. The last thing Bernie Freeland was aware of as he left the world was the smell of burned rubber and the ominous drip of gasoline from the burst tank over his head.

  Ten

  I’m not sleeping….

  Victor Ballam turned over restlessly and reached out with his arm. He jerked his eyes open: his hand didn’t touch the wall. Where was the wall? Where was it? Of course! There was no wall! He wasn’t in a prison cell anymore; he was free. Yet for a moment longer his hand groped in
the empty air, his glance moving urgently around the bedroom of his London apartment, searching for familiarity, reassurance.

  But the early hours and the early light were making humped ghouls out of benign furniture. Which wasn’t his anymore. It was signed over, given to Christian. Like the apartment. Like Ingola. Not his. Christian’s.

  He would ask for it back, all of it, Victor decided. He sat up and flicked on the lamp.

  I’m not sleeping.

  Who would he tell?

  There was no one.

  In the past, before disgrace, before jail, he would have turned to Ingola. He would have felt her warmth and rested his head on her thigh and said, I’m not sleeping.

  Even in prison he might have said the words to his cell mate, but the apartment was empty. His apartment but not his apartment. His furniture but not his furniture.

  Confused, his mind fuzzy from insomnia, Victor got to his feet and walked over to the closet. Pulling open the doors, he looked at the immaculate suits ranked in front of him. He stroked the fine wool and let his fingers run over the rows of silk ties and then closed his eyes, trying to remember how it felt to wear those expensive clothes. Tried but couldn’t remember, because the man who had last worn them was no more. Gone with the headlines and the gossip and the fingers pointing. He had gone in the prison van. Gone. And he would never come back.

  Frowning, Victor smelled the skin of his arm, convinced there was still the odor of jail about him.

  I’m not sleeping.

  Embarrassed, he felt the sting of tears begin at the back of his eyes and bit down on his lip. He thought about having a drink, then thought again. He searched for an old pack of cigarettes, then threw them away, unopened. Cartier, pearl-tipped, brought back from Paris.

  Jesus, who was I?

  Was that me?

  Victor fought to control himself. He would talk to his probation officer, tell him that he couldn’t sleep, that he felt disoriented, out of place. Tell them that he had been punished for something he hadn’t done, that they had broken him, taken away Victor Ballam and left some alien in his place—a man who couldn’t feel the walls around him and was afraid of space. A man making a prison out of his freedom.

  I’m innocent, Victor told himself. I didn’t do anything.

  Perhaps he would do better talking to a shrink. But that would cost money, and he had precious little of that now.

  His movements jerky, Victor returned to the closet. He picked out his most expensive suit and dressed himself, going through motions and rituals that required no thought, trying to put himself back into life through force of habit. When he had finished, he put on a little cologne and then turned to study his reflection in the mirror.

  Who was this man? he wondered, staring at himself and seeing not the person who had stood there three and a half years earlier but some spirit brother. Some diminished, hollowed fraction of his whole.

  Slowly Victor walked closer to the glass and touched it, tracing the line of his face on the mirror’s surface.

  I’m not sleeping.

  The man in the mirror gazed back at him, sympathetic but bewildered. You were me. … Mesmerized, Victor kept looking at his reflection, then took off his suit and curled up on the bed, his knees touching his chest, his eyes closed against the waking light.

  Eleven

  SUNDAY. CITY BELLS WERE RINGING IN CHURCHES ALL OVER LONDON. Opulent bells on the Brompton Oratory, middle-class bells in middle-class postal codes, cheaper bells in the East End. Bells cracked by centuries, bells replaced, bells with clangers that had sounded every Sunday through outbreaks of war and coronations, Royal births and—every weekend—vicars’ romps reported in the People newspaper. Rocking echoes of the call to worship clipped past the closed bars and clubs, the parked cars, and the Landseer lions in Trafalgar Square. Worn irritable by the asses of countless tourists, the lions remained fixed as ever, staring at the entrance doors of the National Gallery and the shuttlecock flippancy of the Sainsbury Wing.

  Having spent the early morning walking around the center of London, Victor finally returned to his car and drove to the address he had been given in Mayfair. After coming within a hair’s breadth of a nervous breakdown, Victor had slowly climbed back, and two weeks later he was unexpectedly approached by an old colleague, Arnold Fletcher. A historian and dealer with a paranoid desire for privacy, Fletcher was regarded as an oddity; his overweight and shambolic appearance disguised an impressive intellect, but no one really knew Arnold Fletcher or where and how he had accrued his erudition and contacts. He had simply appeared twenty years earlier, apparently having been living abroad, sliding into the art world like a plump gray eel.

  And it was this unlikely savior who, having heard that Victor was out of prison and needing work, pointed him toward 96 Park Street.

  “It’s a job that might be up your alley.”

  “Thanks. I need to make some money.”

  “Look, Ballam, it’s a whorehouse,” Arnold had said, obviously on edge, “so you have to be very discreet. The madam wants someone to do some asking around for her.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Yes, well, I wish you luck—and not a word about me, hey?”

  “Not a word, Arnold.”

  “It could be difficult.”

  Victor had hurried to reassure him, grateful for the work. “I won’t say a word. Trust me.”

  Ninety-six Park Street was an unobtrusive white-painted townhouse on four floors, its walls morose with ivy and creeper, its windows shuttered. Ringing the anonymous doorbell, he waited, surprised when he was buzzed in without having to identify himself.

  “Third floor,” said a woman’s voice, and the intercom clicked off.

  In the silence, Victor climbed the stairs. A shadow fell from above as the figure of a woman moved out onto the landing to greet him.

  “You’re very punctual,” she said, putting out her hand and shaking his. “I’m Charlene Fleet.”

  If Victor had seen her at a traffic light, he would have imagined her to be an attractive mother in her midthirties, driving her offspring to school. Well groomed but not flashy or obvious. A doctor’s wife, maybe, or herself a lawyer in her well-cut pantsuit. Her hair was blond but not highlighted, her makeup faultless, her lipstick muted. A professional woman certainly. But a professional madam?

  Mrs. Fleet showed him into her office, where a bull mastiff lay asleep beside her desk. She sat down and crossed her legs, and, seeing her face in the light from the window, Victor now judged her nearer forty than thirty. But nothing about her or her surroundings betrayed her profession.

  “You were recommended to me,” she said easily, her voice soft and accentless. “I have a problem that concerns my girls, and I believe you can help me. As you know, it was Arnold Fletcher who recommended you.”

  Victor nodded.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Fleet went on, “everything said between us is in strictest confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “Mr. Fletcher is a client of mine, and when I confided a little of my problem, he said you’d be the person to talk to.”

  Victor was surprised but didn’t show it. “Did he tell you anything about me?”

  “He told me that you’ve served a prison term for fraud and your reputation’s all but gone. He said no one would give you the time of day now, not in the respectable world, anyway.”

  “Did he say anything bad?”

  She smiled, apparently amused.

  “I’m afraid you’re now in my moral postal code, Mr. Ballam. Life can be very comfortable here—if you make the most of it. Mr. Fletcher said that having been an art dealer, you—”

  “I’m still an art dealer.”

  “But not trading.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “I apologize if I’ve hit a nerve, Mr. Ballam. I understand that a change in circumstances takes some getting used to for anyone.”

  Her manner was sympathetic. Everything was there—the tone of
voice, the right expression, the implied shared experience—but instinctively he was on his guard with her and responded cautiously.

  “How can I help you, Mrs. Fleet?”

  “Bernie Freeland hired three of my best girls. They went to Hong Kong with him for a conference and returned to London with him in his private plane. One of the girls—Marian Miller—was murdered later that evening in her hotel room at Heathrow.” Her voice never wavered. “I’m giving you just the bare bones of the story, Mr. Ballam; I can fill in any details later. Because of a canceled flight, Mr. Freeland had kindly given a lift to three other art dealers: Lim Chang, Kit Wilkes, and Sir Oliver Peters.”

  “Mixed bunch.”

  “You know them?”

  “I know of them, and I’ve done business with Sir Oliver Peters in the past. He’s an honorable man.”

  She nodded, then continued. “I want to know who killed Marian Miller. Murder is bad for my business. For the clients, for the girls, and of course for me. I need to know who killed my employee.”

  Victor raised an eyebrow. “What do the police think?”

  “That it was probably a client.”

  “Did she have a client that evening?”

  “Yes, Sergei Ivanovitch.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No. He was a new client.”

  “He just rang you out of the blue?”

  “He was recommended to me,” Mrs. Fleet said evenly. “By another dealer.”

  “So this Ivanovitch was a dealer?”

  “So he said.”

  “Where?”

  “Russia. In Moscow. He said he deals in nineteenth-century European art.”

  “Who recommended him?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” she said, almost amused. “Client confidentiality is everything in this business.”

  “Even if someone recommends a murderer?”

  “The person who recommended Mr. Ivanovitch is a respectable—”