The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

  Sighing, he picked up the radio handset and clicked it on, a crackling voice coming over the line. “Hello?”

  “This is cab 459. I’ve dropped the Park Street passenger off at the Hilton and picked up some guy who wants to be driven home. Up north. I’ve taken the job, so I’ll be off for the rest of the night.” He flicked off the switch, watching Liza in the mirror. “All right?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  She hunkered down into her coat, flicking on the heating switch and ignoring the question.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Four hours if we’re lucky.” He took another look at her. “If you’re in trouble, I don’t want to get involved; you hear me?”

  “I’m not in trouble,” she lied, her voice steady. “I’ve just had enough of being on the game. I want to go home.”

  Unconvinced, he looked at her for another moment, then slid the partition glass closed and headed for the motorway going north.

  Thirty-One

  VICTOR WAS WAITING AT THE CAROUSEL IN TERMINAL FOUR AT Heathrow for his suitcase to come out with the other luggage from the New York flight. Although he had slept on the flight, he was stiff from being cramped, and his head ached. Gingerly he touched the back of his skull, feeling the swelling and a crust of dry blood. He looked around at the other waiting passengers, and his eyes lit on somebody just entering the arrivals area. It was the Chinese man, this time talking to another couple and appearing irritatingly jovial.

  Victor turned back to the ramp where the suitcases were sliding down onto the moving belt. There seemed to be a flurry of luggage, then a lull, and then finally his case came into sight. Moving close to the conveyor belt, he grabbed the suitcase and made for customs, walking calmly through the green light. Within minutes, he would be out of Heathrow and home free.

  But a voice stopped him. “Excuse me, sir.”

  Tensing, Victor turned. The customs officer beckoned for him to approach a desk that was segregated off to one side. Hesitating, he stared at the man and then moved across to join a few other travelers who had also been stopped: the middle-aged couple he had first noticed in New York and an irritable young woman chewing gum. She was listening to her iPod and tapping her foot as her suitcase was opened; the customs officer started rifling through it.

  So this is going to be the end, Victor thought bitterly. Almost within sight of home. His case would be opened, and the officer would find a woman’s clothes—and a baseball bat. He would find a woman’s underwear and stare at Victor, and even before he asked it, he would be wondering what the hell was going on. The middle-aged couple looked on as their bags were searched; Victor would be next. He would say the suitcase belonged to his wife, he thought suddenly. Of course—they were her things. He was picking up her case.

  There was only one flaw in the plan. Where was his case? And if he didn’t have a case, why were there were none of his belongings among his wife’s? Dry-mouthed, Victor watched the customs officer, a burly man with a buzz haircut. Of course he might not have time to explain his apparent cross-dressing because the officer might already have been informed of Annette Dvorski’s murder. Victor Ballam’s description might have been circulated already, with the London police awaiting his return from New York.

  Oh, Jesus, he thought desperately. Should I make a run for it? If they did know about Annette’s death, how guilty would he seem, taking her bag? Who but her killer would have stolen it? And why? How long would it take customs to wonder about the baseball bat? Victor felt a sudden disabling wave of frustration coupled with fear. He had been so close, had had the painting in his possession. Had held history in his hands. His revenge, his triumph had been within reach if he could have just gotten through customs.

  “Sir,” the officer said politely, “can you please open your case.”

  Victor paused.

  “Sir, can you open your bag, please.”

  Unfastening the securing straps, he could feel the officer watching him. Although only inches from exposure, Victor was amazed to find that his hands didn’t shake, and when he clicked open the locks, he stood back calmly as the officer leaned forward. From where Victor was standing, his view of the interior was blocked by the raised lid. The officer looked at him curiously.

  “Is this your case, sir?”

  Victor was about to lie, to say it was his wife’s. Then he was about to run. He did neither. Just stayed silent, staring as the officer dropped the lid back, exposing the inside of the case.

  Victor stared in astonishment. There were no women’s clothes; there was no baseball bat. Instead, a couple of freshly laundered shirts were lying on top of a pair of jeans; a copy of Apollo magazine lay over a laundry bag.

  “Is this your case, sir?”

  Confused, Victor wanted to laugh, to say no, it’s not my fucking case. It’s the wrong case. It’s a switched case with my luggage straps and my label on it. It’s no longer full of a dead girl’s clothes, and there’s no baseball bat. Putting Annette Dvorski’s suitcase in the hold had been a gamble that had backfired badly. No, he wanted to shout; it’s not my bloody case.

  But instead he nodded. “Yes; yes, it’s my case.”

  “Have you anything to declare?”

  Only a murdered woman in a New York apartment and a hidden stolen painting.

  “No, I’ve nothing to declare.”

  The man stared at him. “Do you mind if I search your luggage further?”

  Victor shrugged. Go ahead, he thought. Have a good look. God knows what’s inside. Help yourself.

  As he watched the officer’s meaty hands go through the innocuous, carefully packed contents, he wondered how the case had been switched. Was it the Chinese man? Victor thought back to his attempt at conversation, then the unexpected nod. Had he exchanged the cases? Had he also known about Annette Dvorski’s murder?

  Had he killed her?

  “Thank you, sir; you can go.”

  Dumbly, Victor nodded and picked up the suitcase. Around him the noises of the airport buzzed in his ears as he stared blankly ahead, but relief gave way to frustration and despair. He had lost the Hogarth. He had been duped. Not only that: someone knew he had been in the apartment where Annette Dvorski died. Otherwise how would they know what was in the case and want to steal it back?

  Victor kept moving. Was he going to be stopped again? Was he going to be arrested when he left Heathrow? Stiff-backed, he walked toward the taxi stand outside. No one man could have pulled off such a clever switch with the luggage, he thought. It was too organized, too planned. The airport’s exit doors slid open noiselessly in front of him as he approached, the London air coming hard and cold against his skin as he slid into the backseat of the first waiting cab.

  His confusion was compounded by his sense of being outnumbered. Obviously he was just one man against many, and the longer he spent on the case, the less he understood. Fear for his safety should have made Victor back off, but he had held the Hogarth in his hands, had—if only briefly—savored the frisson of revenge that had been long coming. The very people who had betrayed and cheated him before, the denizens of the art world, were not about to triumph again. Nor were their cohorts, the Chinese, the Russians, or the likes of Charlene Fleet. Whoever wanted the Hogarth and was prepared to kill for it was up against an unexpectedly formidable ally.

  Victor Ballam would be a scapegoat only once.

  Part Three

  “… I am doing this for you. You are not fourteen years old yet, I think, but you will be twenty-four, and this portrait will then be like you. ’Tis the lady’s last stake; see how she hesitates between her money and her honour? Take you care…. I shall give you this picture as a warning….”

  —WILLIAM HOGARTH ADVISING HESTER THRALE, A YOUNG FRIEND, TO WHOM HE GAVE THE LADY’S LAST STAKE, A MORALITY PAINTING

  On the 5th of March, 1733, clutching my artist’s materials, I was shown into a damp room off the condemned cell of Newgate Prison to mee
t with Sarah Malcolm.

  In truth, I had no compunction in profiting from her crime and was ready to risk the danger of catching jail fever by visiting Newgate. But there was to be no invention or moral in this portrait: no pretty Polly Gunnell playing the whore. This time the likeness was to be exact, a replica of a woman who had titillated and terrified the populace in equal measure.

  Sitting down and fingering a rosary, Sarah Malcolm turned her light eyes onto me, the deft application of rouge on her cheeks adding an unexpected, callous, touch. I noticed that her arms were surprisingly powerful. But then they had had to be. On Sunday, 4th February, 1733, Mrs Lydia Dunscombe, aged 80, and her companion, Elizabeth Harrison, aged 60, were discovered strangled in their beds.

  Although pleading guilty to theft, Sarah Malcolm denied the murders but was found guilty and sentenced to hang at Newgate Prison. She ordered a pair of drawers for herself for her execution to prevent the crowd from looking up her skirts as she swung from the gibbet. Oddly, as I looked at this infamous criminal, another woman came to mind. Another fascinator. But whereas Polly Gunnell had been innocent, Sarah Malcolm was a convicted murderess.

  Outside, I could hear a clock chiming the quarter and a prison bell ringing. From within came the clatter of metal dishes, the sound at odds with the careful, muted scratching of my pen. At that moment I could see Polly Gunnell as clearly as I saw Sarah Malcolm—but a Polly still flickering with energy, poking out her tongue at the world and all of London’s hidden nastiness. Even pregnant, she had laughed at her situation, never expecting the route which would take her from a prince’s bed to a stone slab under a public house.

  Breathing in, I dismissed the memory of Polly and turned back to Sarah Malcolm. In two days she would swing from a rope to the hiss of the crowd, would kick her legs as she slowly lost consciousness—unless the drop killed her quickly by breaking her neck. I kept drawing, allowing myself—for the briefest of instants—to remember another death. And a life. A secret life. A child’s life. And I thought of the grave that child had so narrowly escaped.

  I knew only too well how the people of London would relish such a revelation. How they would bray and fight to see the Prince’s bastard. How quickly the dead Polly Gunnell would become the penitent Magdalene for their times, another victim of the rich and influential. It took no effort to picture how the rabble would gather for a child who could upturn a throne.

  Swayed by the popularity of Frederick, Prince of Wales, how easily they might swing their support behind his heir, the London mob challenging the power of the unpopular George III. After all, they would argue, was it not a fact that the King and Queen disliked their own son? Had the King not referred to Frederick as a “wechselbalg,” a changeling? Well, here is the changeling’s son. The mob’s saviour.

  At times my courage had wavered. For several months after I had saved the infant I was troubled by nightmares and imagined men following my progress on every street; imagined brutal hands knocking on the studio door, heard eerie tapping on the windows at night. I started at noises, avoided alleyways, and lit the candles as soon as the light began to fail. The men of my dreams were always the same: doctors and priests, like the two men who had been with Polly’s body in that dank cellar. Yet as time passed, I had grown calm, my increasing success occupying more and more of my attention. Once or twice I had considered confiding in Jane but had stayed silent.

  Knowledge was danger. In this case only ignorance ensured safety.

  I quickly finished my drawings, collected them together, and slid them into my portfolio. I gathered my tools and signalled the guard that I was ready to leave. The governor showed me out of Newgate Prison into the feeble city sunlight.

  I looked ahead, watching the gibbet being erected from which Sarah Malcolm would hang. And as I hurried from that terrible place I thought, for some unaccountable reason, of the villain Overton. I thought of the Royal court and was suddenly sick to my stomach.

  Above my head a grey cloud slowly shifted. A portentous sensation of doom crossed my heart, and the London air was wicked with malice as the clock struck ten.

  Thirty-Two

  “I HAD IT,” VICTOR SAID SIMPLY AS TULLY OPENED THE DOOR. “I HAD the Hogarth, and I lost it!” In silence, Tully passed him a whiskey as Victor, caught between confusion and rage, went on. “I’ve been set up. I was on my way to see Annette Dvorski—I was even talking to her on the cell phone, for God’s sake—but when I got there, someone knocked me out.”

  “What!”

  “When I came to—which I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been as cold as hell in Bernie Freeland’s apartment—Annette Dvorski had been murdered.” He could see the image of her body and quickly shook it away. “I was supposed to be found there, Tully. I was supposed to be taken for her killer. Jesus, I only just got away.”

  “So you think someone set you up?”

  Victor’s expression was hostile.

  “Of course. Everything’s been set up. Everything. The only thing they didn’t expect was that I’d recover in time to get away. Or that I’d take Annette Dvorski’s case with me.”

  “You took her case? Why?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was an impulse; I just grabbed it.” He looked at his friend. “And you know what? The Hogarth was in it, smuggled into New York inside a baseball bat. It was a present from Bernie Freeland to Annette Dvorski. He was supposed to give it to Annette at their next meeting, but he was killed before he had the chance.” Victor finished his drink, surprised that he still felt jumpy—and sober—and that the wound on the back of his scalp was still aching. “I don’t suppose they realized what was in the suitcase or they would have taken it earlier. Maybe they only realized afterward, when they saw me with it.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Whoever set me up. I took the case and went to JFK, got the first flight I could. But before I checked the bag in—”

  An incredulous Tully interrupted, staring at him. “You checked the bag in the hold?”

  Victor threw up his hands.

  “I know, I know! But at the time I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought that if anyone was following me, they’d assume I had the painting on me, so before I checked the case in, I put new straps around it and a label with my name on it.” He leaned back in his seat, feeling the first pull of the alcohol. “When I got back to Heathrow, I was stopped at customs. They opened the bag, and it wasn’t mine! It had been switched. Someone put my strap and label on another case. Annette Dvorski’s bag—and the Hogarth—have disappeared.” Victor paused, looking intently at Tully. “You didn’t tell Mrs. Fleet I was back in London, did you?”

  “Of course not!” Tully replied, refilling both of their glasses. “Look, Victor, you have to go to the police now.”

  “Oh, yes; they’re going to listen to me,” he said bitterly. “Think about it, Tully. I was in Bernie Freeland’s apartment. Annette Dvorski was murdered there. I haven’t a leg to stand on.”

  “Do the police know you were there?”

  “I doubt it. There’s no connection between me and Annette Dvorski. I dumped all her identification papers. No one in New York should be able to tie me to Annette unless they find out what I’m investigating. She only had a pay-as-you-go phone.” He held Tully’s gaze. “Which is why I can’t go to the police.”

  “But you had no reason to kill the woman.”

  “I took the Hogarth. How’s that for a motive?” Victor said coldly. “They would assume that I killed her to get the painting. I’m a disgraced art dealer. A criminal with a record for fraud, remember? The perfect person to set up.”

  Tully was thoughtful for a moment. “Who else knew you were in New York?”

  “Only Charlene Fleet.”

  “But why would she set you up?”

  “To get me to find the Hogarth. As soon as I had the painting, I was no further use to her. Remember what I said on the phone, Tully? She didn’t hire me to succeed; she hired me to fail.”

/>   “But you didn’t fail. You found the Hogarth.”

  “Which was then taken from me.” Victor stared into the glass of whiskey, finally feeling the effect on his empty stomach. “She said she didn’t give a damn about the painting, that she only wanted her girls safe to protect her business. She was obviously lying.”

  “If it was she who set you up.”

  “There’s no one else it could have been. Apart from you.”

  Tully’s expression was bland.

  “Victor, dear boy, don’t even think about it. I’m on your side. I didn’t tell anyone—either deliberately or accidentally—where you were or what you were doing.”

  “So it has to be Fleet,” Victor concluded. “I haven’t returned any of her messages; she doesn’t even know I’m back in London. She might be thinking that I’m languishing in some New York jail at this very minute. Then she’d have the painting and I’d be blamed for Annette Dvorski’s murder. It would be clever to hire me and pretend to have no interest in the painting, but one by one the passengers on that plane, the people who knew about the Hogarth, are being killed or silenced. Of course, she can’t be doing it on her own, but Charlene Fleet has contacts everywhere and a lot of money. I know for a fact that her clients include Russian and Chinese dealers as well as Americans, not to mention the English. Think of Arnold Fletcher for a start. I suppose it’s no coincidence that he brought me in on this case.”

  “Arnold’s not a criminal,” Tully replied firmly. “He’s not the type. Too careful, too private, too cagey. Everyone wants to know where his money came from, where he came from, but no one ever finds out. A very dark horse is Arnold.”

  “He’s not like Fleet’s usual clients.”

  “He probably gets lonely, like we all do.” Tully said, changing the subject. “Can you imagine how much that woman knows?”

  “And how many people owe her, how many secrets she’s hogging. Fleet could buy any amount of help.” Victor paused, thoughtful. “There was a peculiar Chinese man at the airport; I think he might have switched the suitcases.”