The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

  The man, Ronan Levy, was already known to her as one of a succession of young men Kit had promenaded around London like a prize Pomeranian at a dog show. He looked distraught and had obviously been crying. Even in winter Ronan Levy was tanned, but the tan didn’t disguise the pallor beneath and seemed only to accentuate the makeup on his face. Eyebrows, arched and tattooed into shape, stood out over his watery eyes like two black tadpoles fighting to return to the water.

  “I tell you, it wasn’t an accident,” he said, his tone edgy as he looked at Kit’s mother.

  He had said it before, but again his words brought no response. Wondering if Elizabeth Wilkes had heard, Ronan then realized that she was simply ignoring him and slumped farther down in his chair. His eyes scanned her: the Prada suit, the sable coat hanging over the edge of the chair and brushing the side of her Blahnik suede boot. Faultlessly groomed, Elizabeth Wilkes had all the appearance of wealth without the confidence of someone born to it. Clothes that should have acted as a background to her good looks seemed to overwhelm her; even her hairstyle was too fashionable to be comfortable. Fit and well honed, she attracted admiration in most circles, but on closer inspection it was obvious how urgently her looks were fighting the aging process. So far it was a draw.

  Ronan tried again. “The overdose wasn’t an accident.”

  She hissed him quiet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Kit said—”

  “Kit says a lot of things,” Elizabeth cut in. “Most are lies. He’s my son; I should know.”

  “Something happened to him.”

  She snorted softly.

  “It did!” Ronan turned to the girl next to him. “I told you, didn’t I? We talked when he got back to London, and then this happened.” He held Elizabeth’s brittle look. “He never overdosed; he never used enough to overdose. He was in control of it.”

  “That’s what every addict says.”

  “Kit isn’t an addict.”

  “No, but you are,” she said smartly, seeing him for what he was and challenging him. “How do I know it wasn’t you who introduced him to drugs?”

  “Kit was on drugs long before I met him,” Ronan replied defensively. “He talked about it, let on like he used at lot more drugs than he did. But he was actually careful.”

  “Kit’s never careful about anything,” Elizabeth said, secretly proud of her son’s infamous reputation. “He can’t control himself.” She picked up a card nestling among some flowers and read out the inscription: “‘From all your friends at the Daily Star.’ How tasteful. I suppose he’ll sell his near-death experience when he comes around.”

  “He’s your son!”

  “And your lover!” she countered. “But I daresay I get top billing.”

  Falling silent, Ronan began chewing the inside of his lip; the girl drummed her fingers on the bed rail. Silenced by a look from Elizabeth, she left the room, and Ronan took his chance. Leaning over the bed, his tone urgent, he said, “Mrs. Wilkes, listen to me. Please. I really think something’s going on. I don’t think this was an accident.”

  Wearily, Elizabeth stared into the tanned face. “It’s a publicity stunt.”

  “Kit’s dying.”

  In an instant her expression shifted from cold hauteur to crumbling unease. “Dying?”

  Ronan nodded. “I overheard one of the doctors talking.”

  “Dying? My son?” She sounded dazed as she leaned forward, the sable falling unnoticed onto the floor.

  Frantically she took hold of Kit’s hand, staring into the sphinx face, the child’s mouth. Confusion and panic were scrambling her thoughts. How could she live without her beloved son? He was everything to her. They had always been so close; he had told her everything. And they had planned every step as soon as he was old enough to understand. Elizabeth remembered how she had coached him about his father, fueling Kit’s resentment, encouraging his feeling of betrayal.

  Although she manipulated him to believe it was his idea, it was actually Elizabeth who had put the tabloids to work. It was she who had first filtered through information about James Holden. It was she who had set in motion the beginnings of the publicity hunger that had served them both so well. She was not driven by any feelings of lost love or rejection but by a determination to be rich. And to use any means at her disposal to accomplish that.

  When Elizabeth became pregnant with James Holden’s child, she swung into action with the speed and force of a juggernaut. No intellectual, she had the guile of a hedonist and the will not to relinquish any of her power. So she battled, playing the child card with Holden and begging for support for his son. When pleading didn’t work, she resorted to threats: She would inform his wife. She would inform the papers. She would make sure that his well-placed society friends deserted him, that the esteem he had courted so assiduously would sink without trace in the mire of scandal.

  Her threats took a while to register but effected the desired result. In private, Elizabeth had an income settled on her and her son, together with a small gallery in Chelsea. And as Kit grew up, he surpassed all of Elizabeth’s hopes. The chip on his shoulder, the personal affront he felt for himself and his mother, steadily grew under her poisonous guidance. Acting as a wronged and helpless woman, Elizabeth succeeded in turning her teenage son into her private avenger. By the time Kit Wilkes was fifteen, he was hopelessly in thrall to his mother and as bitter as a disillusioned old man. His main aim in life was to please Elizabeth, and in doing so he indulged his own hatred of his father.

  And now her snake-clever son was dying? Elizabeth stared in anguish at Kit lying there. Without him, what would she do? Without him there would be no income, no gallery. If he died, what hold would she have over his MP father? The papers wouldn’t care about her story; she was just one more middle-aged jilted woman. Without the persona and glitter of Kit Wilkes, she was nothing. Dear God, Elizabeth thought to herself, was this her reward? After her endless devotion, was she going to be left alone?

  “He can’t die,” she said helplessly. “You heard the doctor wrongly.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ronan insisted, his distress intensifying. “They said that it wasn’t just the drugs Kit had used but the quantity. They said it was too much.”

  “Too much for what?”

  “Too much for him—and that’s what doesn’t make sense. Kit knows his limitations. Oh, he acts like a madman, but he’s not stupid; he’s always in control. He looks after himself.”

  Elizabeth thought of her son’s obsession with having every one of his lovers medically checked out by the unctuous Dr. Eli Fountain. And his own regular health checks, his attention to hygiene. She didn’t want to admit it, but Ronan was right; Kit was too careful to risk himself. So if her son hadn’t accidentally overdosed and it wasn’t a publicity stunt, who was responsible?

  “Someone did this to him?” she asked, her voice so low that Ronan strained to hear her.

  “Someone must have done it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Ronan admitted, suddenly wondering if he should have told her, if Elizabeth Wilkes might do something stupid and endanger all of them. “But Kit was a different person when he came back to London. To be honest, I thought it was because of Guy Manners—”

  Her head shot up at the notorious name. “Guy Manners? What’s he got to do with Kit?”

  “Kit said he was going to do some business with him. I didn’t like it. Everyone knows what a bastard Manners is, but Kit wouldn’t listen to me. He said they were going to meet up after he came back from China.”

  “What business could he have had with Guy Manners?”

  “I don’t know, but Kit said something that’s stuck in my mind, and I keep thinking about it. He said, ‘Don’t worry about me if I’m unavailable for a while.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Ronan shrugged. “It was just something he said when he got back to London. He’d been going to catch an earlier flight,
but it was canceled, and he came back on a private plane after someone offered him a lift. Thing is, one of the passengers on the private flight was murdered the night they got back.”

  “What?”

  “A call girl.” Ronan’s voice was just above a whisper as he went on. “And a strange coincidence happened only the day afterward. The owner of the plane was killed.”

  Having let Kit take charge for years, Elizabeth found that her mental processes took a little longer to kick into gear.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man who owned the plane died in a road accident in New York.”

  “So?”

  “He was an important art dealer.”

  “So?”

  “He was powerful, really powerful.”

  She shrugged. “Who was he?”

  “Bernie Freeland.”

  As Elizabeth heard the name, she paled. Her whole body tensed as she rose to her feet, her glamour gone, her age suddenly showing.

  And worse, she looked afraid.

  Twenty-Seven

  BREATHING IN, OLIVER PETERS CLUTCHED HIS STOMACH AND FELT FOR the pill bottle in his jacket pocket. Hastily he swallowed two painkillers and slumped onto one of the Tate Gallery’s hard wooden benches, his thoughts turning to his brother-in-law, Ambrose Wilton. Oliver wondered fleetingly if Ambrose would help Sonia after his death but dismissed the idea immediately. Almost a recluse, Ambrose had no interest in family. Living in Ireland, he spent his days breeding wolfhounds and treated everyone like a lackey. The family money ensured that Ambrose could run his estate, but Oliver had had to bail his brother-in-law out on a number of occasions because of ill-timed or ruinous gambles. Ambrose had never offered Oliver any thanks for his pains; almost since birth he had felt entitled. Entitled to money, status, power. Unlike his gracious sister, he kept himself distant from a world he treated with complete disdain. No, Oliver thought, Ambrose Wilton would not be of any use at all.

  Oliver fixed his gaze on the famous painting Hogarth’s Servants, but the pain was ripping into him and he felt sweat dampen the back of his shirt. His hands shaking, his body trembling at the effort to remain upright in his chair, he stared at the young boy in the painting—the secret image of the Prince of Wales’s bastard son.

  Hal … Only Oliver and a handful of others knew the true identity of the youth. Hogarth, obviously fond of the child and guilty at being unable to prevent the terrible death of Polly Gunnell, had secretly incorporated the boy’s image in the painting of his staff. Of course, Hal had never really worked in Hogarth’s home—that would have been too much of a risk—but the artist had kept a constant eye on the boy and had wanted, notoriously sentimental as he was, to have a keepsake for himself. So the tender image of his staff and their precious cuckoo had remained with Hogarth for many years until finally taking its place on a wall in the Tate Gallery, where it was enjoyed by hundreds of unsuspecting visitors every day.

  Many commented on the kindness of Hogarth’s depiction of his staff in an era in which people seldom gave thought to the lower orders. But no one knew that the boy in the painting was the bastard heir to the English throne. Not even the few members of the royal circle who knew of Hal’s existence realized that this was his portrait. The secret of Hogarth’s Servants had remained just that—a secret—privy only to the royal family and Sir Nathaniel Overton and his descendants.

  Maintaining the long silence, Oliver had made many pilgrimages with his grandfather, his father, and then alone. Now dying, he knew that before long he would have to pass on the secret to his own son, but not yet. When he had regained the painting, then, and only then, he would confide in Simeon about the painting and the ring. The covert inheritance would be passed down whole, not in part.

  He gave a jagged sigh. The medication was taking longer to have an effect. At first he had been out of pain within fifteen minutes; now he knew he had at least twenty-five minutes of agony to live through. And during that agony, as his innards burned and contracted with the cancer, he wondered if he could give up, give in—if, morally, there was a way to let go and keep his honor. And then he would think of his wife and three children and know that however bad it became, he would never kill himself. Never leave his family the legacy of the stigma. A body could be removed, cleaned up, but dishonor was indelible.

  Pushing a clenched fist into his stomach and gulping another breath, he continued to stare at the painting. It had never occurred to him that having a young family later in life could turn out to be such a gamble. He had been in excellent health, his parents still alive; who would have predicted a terminal illness coming so quickly and cruelly? He thought of his home, his garden, summer sun in the trees, the house in the distance. Closing his eyes, Oliver then thought of the stone wall with the little memorial tablets to the dead family pets. Perhaps he should leave something in his will to say that he would like to have a stone put next to the dogs. The thought amused him despite the searing pain.

  If anyone had told him he could endure such agony, he would not have believed him. He would have argued that no one could live with such suffering. But the days, weeks, and months had passed, and his tolerance for pain had increased, much as an alcoholic can tolerate more and more drink before getting drunk. Pain that once would have felled him became normal, and he’d learned to time his medication to cheat the worst of the onslaughts.

  But now the attacks were getting beyond control and erratic, catching him unaware and rendering him all but useless until they passed. Breathing out, Oliver forced himself to think of something else, but the matter that came to mind didn’t relax him at all: Lim Chang. Why, he wondered, hadn’t the Chinese dealer been in contact for two days?

  Had he found out something about the Hogarth? The thought alarmed Oliver. Perhaps he never should have joined forces with Lim Chang, after all, never have trusted him. But then again, he had had no choice. Chang had come to him with what he knew and offered his help. Oliver had been in no position to refuse. But what if his rival had learned something to his own advantage and decided to ignore their arrangement? After many years as a dealer, Oliver well knew how the business worked; someone who uncovered something important was hardly likely to share that discovery with a competitor no matter what he previously might have agreed to.

  At last the pills were beginning to work, and with the lessening of the pain, Oliver felt his strength and his clarity of thought returning. He had to get hold of the Hogarth, had to secure the secret and his family’s future. And he had to do it before his death. If he had to fight for it, he would. He would deal with anybody and undertake anything to acquire it. All that mattered was that when Sir Oliver Peters let go of this world, he would leave his family provided for and his secret intact.

  Twenty-Eight

  Mrs. Fleet was trying to call Victor Ballam’s cell phone, but it was turned off. Irritated, she tossed her phone onto the couch in her office and went downstairs to a smaller office where a glossy woman was talking on another phone. She looked up as Mrs. Fleet entered, gesturing to an appointment book beside her. Picking it up, Mrs. Fleet looked down the list of bookings, her expression unreadable, her jubilation concealed. In among the usual clients, she saw the name of a Marylebone magistrate and made a mental note that he might well be of use if her premises were ever investigated.

  Business was as organized and profitable as ever; her decision to specialize was paying off, with her art-dealer clients recommending an increasing number of their colleagues and connections. Before long she would have her girls fucking someone in virtually every London gallery, Mrs. Fleet thought with pleasure, putting the book on the desk and returning to her rooms at the top of the building.

  As a self-educated woman who had come up the hard way, Mrs. Fleet might have been a sympathetic mentor, but she had no pretensions to maternal feelings. She had no truck with idleness either and expected her girls to be hardworking, reliable, and dedicated. Shortcomings were met with glacial disapproval. Relieved th
at her own brief whoring days were over, Mrs. Fleet chose to forget the drawbacks of the profession and had no compassion for its victims.

  She was, however, worried that she might be looking at a victim now: Liza Frith, sitting in front of the television watching a rerun of a talent show. Amused, Mrs. Fleet watched the judges walk onto the stage to the accompaniment of fireworks and triumphant music. How long, she wondered, before they had a show to pick the new Messiah? Not American Idol but God Idol? And why not start with the judges?

  “Did you want me?” Liza asked, getting to her feet.

  “I think you should be working again.”

  “Working?”

  “I can’t let you hang around indefinitely, Liza. You need to get your mind off things.”

  “Have you heard from Annette?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Mrs. Fleet lied.

  “But you haven’t heard from her?”

  “No.”

  “What about Mr. Ballam?”

  “No,” she said crisply. “I’ve been thinking very carefully about the whole matter. Perhaps we overreacted.”

  “Marian was killed!”

  “Which was very unfortunate, but why are we assuming that her death was connected with the Hogarth painting?”

  “The painting must be important. Bernie Freeland wouldn’t have been interested unless it was valuable.”

  Mrs. Fleet paused, surprised by the girl’s challenging tone.

  “I’ve known Mr. Freeland for a long time. He’s very good at his work, a very competent dealer, but he isn’t always right.” She tried a smile, watching Liza carefully. “Thinking back, I remember how he was once duped by a dealer in Africa. He bought some works by a supposedly important painter. He was fed information and background, but it didn’t check out. They call it seeding, laying down a false history of a painter who never even existed. Many museums and galleries have been caught out this way.”