The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

  “How old is he?”

  “Must be early twenties now.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows rose. “So he’ll inherit his father’s fortune?”

  “I doubt that. Louis will have an allowance and be more than comfortable, but he’s not exactly a businessman,” Duncan went on, thinking back. “He’s very handsome, very striking to look at, but Mr. Freeland always kept his son’s existence very quiet.”

  “Why?”

  “Louis has problems,” Duncan replied, suddenly wondering who would inherit the Freeland fortune.

  “What a shame,” Rachel said, reopening the oven door and sliding the casserole onto the top shelf. “All the money and success in the world can’t prevent things like that from happening. First his son and then that terrible accident … I suppose you’ll miss Mr. Freeland; you liked him so much.”

  I loathed him, the boorish, oversexed bastard, Duncan thought but, keeping his voice light, replied, “Yes, I’ll miss him. But I’m going to be working full time for Ahmed Fatida from now on. He has dealings all over the Middle East. He’s twice as rich as Mr. Freeland. Bigger jet too. Triple seven,” he bragged.

  “That’s nice,” Rachel replied absently, taking off her oven gloves and moving over to the sofa. Sitting beside him, she laid her head against her husband’s shoulder. “I love you, sweetheart.”

  “Love you, darling.”

  “You think you want all those wonderful things in life—luxury, money, and power—but in the end they don’t count for anything, do they?” She snuggled closer to him. “Mr. Freeland and his poor son would envy us now. We’re the lucky ones, you know. We have each other and a calm, untroubled life.”

  “Yes, we’re the lucky ones,” Duncan agreed. “We just have to make sure we stay lucky.”

  Fifty

  “WELL, AT LEAST VICTOR SENT ME A TEXT,” INGOLA SAID, SITTING ON the window seat in Tully’s apartment, her thick blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. “I said I’d be in London today and wondered if we could meet up, but he said no. Said he’d call me later. He won’t see me, Tully.”

  “What d’you expect? Sleeping with his brother’s wife is hardly going to make him feel good, is it?”

  “That’s harsh.”

  He shrugged.

  “I said before that you should leave him alone, and I meant it. Victor’s been through a lot. Jail, then coming out into a world that thinks the worst of him and trying to fit back in. That isn’t easy for anyone. And now he’s involved in this case, and it’s gotten out of control.” He sighed. “It’s too much for him, Ingola. If you really cared about him, you’d back off.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk!” Her tone was edgy. “You ever wonder why everyone was so ready to believe that Victor was guilty? No one forgot that he’d been investigated before.”

  “I’d be careful what you say.”

  She stood up, facing Tully, not in the least intimidated. “You were responsible for that.”

  “What I did—”

  “Was unforgivable,” she snapped. “It’s a bit rich all this coming from you, Tully—like you’re above reproach! You’re hardly the one to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “You were careless with Victor,” she retorted, white-faced. “You risked him. You wanted his help.”

  “We were friends. I would have done anything for him.”

  “Only Victor never asked anything of you, did he? You did all the asking. I remember it all very well. You were in the mire then, Tully, so deep in debt with your bloody gambling that it didn’t matter how you paid the debtors off, just that you did. If you ever suspected that bloody painting wasn’t genuine, I doubt you allowed yourself to think about it for too long.”

  “I never suspected it was a fake!”

  “Maybe you didn’t. But you knew that by getting Victor Ballam to organize a sale, no one would question it. He was that important, that influential. That vulnerable.”

  “I didn’t destroy Victor, Ingola.”

  She clenched her hands to calm herself.

  “No, you didn’t destroy him; you didn’t frame him for the later forgeries—but you planted the seed that corrupted his reputation and first opened him to suspicion. You did that, Tully, and I’ll never forgive you.”

  He was enraged, his face red with anger. “I didn’t mean it! Victor knew that. He understood.”

  “Well, he might have, but I never did.”

  Tully turned away from her, poured two glasses of wine, and held one out to her. She hesitated before taking it but did, then regained her seat by the window.

  “Well, my darling,” he began quietly. “You must feel a whole lot better now to have gotten all that off your chest. Nothing like pointing out someone else’s shortcomings to make a person feel righteous. ‘Your sin was bigger than mine.’” He sneered, uncharacteristically savage. “Yes, it bloody was, but I didn’t intend to get Victor into trouble. You do.”

  “What the hell!”

  “What I did was out of ignorance, stupidity. Not malice.”

  “You think I wish Victor ill?”

  “You don’t wish him well,” Tully replied. “You can’t face up to facts, Ingola; you never could. You were always ready to let someone else sort out your life for you. You’re lazy and too quick to change sides. You came to England and needed to stay. How convenient to fall for a British citizen.”

  “I loved Victor!”

  “I’m sure you did, my dear, but perhaps you fell in love more readily because it suited you.”

  Her face was waxen. “You bastard!”

  “I see you for what you are, Ingola. Victor fell in love with you, and that blinded him. But me? No; I know what you’re like—you come first. Always have and always will. It was all planned out, wasn’t it? You two were going to have it all. You’d be a respected lawyer and Victor a revered art dealer. What a couple; what a lovely, pretty, witty couple to dazzle the dining tables of London.” He lifted his glass to her in a fake salutation. “But then Victor was framed by the world he’d conquered. Silenced, shunted out of the limelight, and made into a criminal.” He took a sip of his wine, his mouth dry. “It was not because of my bloody pseudo-Stubbs.”

  “People remembered that Victor had championed that painting.”

  “Dealers champion paintings every day that turn out to be fakes! If Victor hadn’t been so bloody successful, no one would have remembered. Or if they had, they would have put it down to a mistake. But they remembered because they didn’t want to believe that Victor Ballam had been an innocent party. No, it suited them to see it as a precursor to the monumental fraud which followed.” He paused, looking at Ingola with unconcealed contempt. “You sit there and you judge me. Well, look in the mirror, my dear, and see yourself for what you really are.”

  “I have a clear conscience.”

  “Well, if you do, then you’ve got a bloody short memory.”

  Her head snapped up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You chose not to stand by Victor because your career was more important. That’s how much he really meant to you. Nothing could be allowed to tarnish the stardust. Easier to marry and fuck the brother than risk failure.”

  Immediately she was on her feet, hands on hips, angry and shrill. “Now look here—”

  “No, you look here,” Tully replied, cutting her off. “You might have fooled Victor, and you certainly fool Christian—the poor sap—but not me. I’ve watched your machinations, perhaps even admired them at times. I could understand your desire to secure yourself. But now you come back and you tell me you love Victor Ballam. No. You’re lying.”

  “How do you know what I feel?”

  “Because I know you! I’ve known you for many years now. I’ve watched you, listened to you, seen how you work. And now you’ve decided that your life isn’t quite how you want it, but you want what you can’t have.”

  “Tully, listen—”

  “No, I�
�ve heard enough lies. You listen now, Ingola. You want Victor because it’s a challenge. Bugger Christian and what he’s done for you. Sod everyone else. You’re quite prepared to take advantage of someone on their uppers just to give you a thrill, to see if you can win him back. And worse, you think you can manipulate me.” He laughed, the sound musical. “Well, think again, darling.”

  “I don’t expect anything from you.”

  “So why are you here? I’ll tell you why: because I’m close to Victor. You want me to collude with you, my dear. Want me to encourage you, smooth your path, make your life pretty again.” His tone hardened. “I imagine you thought that you could get me to intercede with Victor on your behalf.” He paused. “And you know what I say to that? Fuck you. Fuck you, Ingola.”

  She slapped him hard, and Tully lost his grip on the wineglass. It crashed to the floor, and without comment he bent down and picked up the pieces, taking them over to the wastebasket and dropping them in.

  “What a shame. I had a set of six of those glasses, inherited from my parents.”

  “Along with the fake Stubbs, I suppose.”

  “Go back to Worcestershire, darling,” Tully said, his tone bored. “Go home and forget the past.”

  “I’m not giving up. I love Victor, and Victor loves me.”

  “I warn you, Ingola; go home. I promise I’ll personally do everything I can to keep you away from Victor and out of his life forever.” He smiled his wide theatrical smile. “Back off or I’ll tell him what he already suspects—that you and I had an affair.”

  She flinched.

  “You see, Victor knows about the Stubbs, knows I used him there. He knows that. But he doesn’t know, he only suspects, that there was once something between us.”

  “It was a mistake!”

  “You can say that again,” Tully replied drily. “You wanted a safe father figure when you came to London, Ingola, and I was the perfect choice, a handy stopgap until you found someone your own age. I don’t blame myself for the affair, I blame myself that I let it continue after you’d met Victor. I blame myself for being an old fool. For being flattered and letting my ego get in the way of my loyalty. You’re right that I owe Victor Ballam. I do. But the difference between us is that I know I owe him, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to him.”

  Something troubles me so much that I am writing it down to try to clarify my own thoughts. Maybe my imagination is moving from the canvas to real life to such an extent that I can no longer tell the difference. I pray it is so.

  It is 1750 now, and Hal thrives at the Foundling Hospital. He grows very tall and has become a favourite of Thomas Coram’s. I warn him not to make too much of Hal, but I know he does in secret. Discreetly spoiling a special child. For he is that, a special child. Thank God, Thomas has never been a foolish man. Not like me. I have been foolish many times. Privately and publicly. Outspoken, too quick with my opinions, criticisms, and dislikes. I would have gone further had I tempered my tongue.

  But lately I had a fancy I could not resist. A whimsy, if you please. In my studio now is a portrait, newly finished. It goes until the title of Hogarth’s Servants, supposedly painted as a reward for their loyalty and as a permanent remembrance of them. It is an image of good and honest people who have served me and my family well. What could be more normal for a painter than to depict the people around him?

  But the sitters will never see the work, because seeing it would provoke curiosity and questions. The painting is only a reminder to me, a judicious homage to someone absent, as close as my servants but closer to my heart.

  We do have a stable boy, but this lad in the painting is not he. I have not been so reckless as before. No direct depiction, as of the Prince of Wales which cost me so dear and caused poor Polly’s death. No, this stable boy’s image is not accurate. In reality, he is now older. No more the child that gazes out of the painting but a young man of eighteen. A farrier. Thomas Coram’s favourite. The child I saved. Polly Gunnell’s infant. The hidden heir.

  I look at the picture—how often I forget, but many times—and see him how he was almost ten years ago. I look at the image and know that no one will recognise him because he is grown. Only I know him. Because I was present throughout his past.

  And yet. And yet.

  There was a storm last Tuesday night. Hailstones big as mushrooms came down and broke some windows in the Mall. Looking out, you could see the hail bouncing off the cobbles under a clamouring, portentous sky. As the storm continued a servant came to my studio and said I had a visitor.

  “In such inclement weather?”

  “He’s waiting to see you, sir.”

  “His name?”

  “Sir Nathaniel Overton.”

  He came into the studio with his coat marked from the hailstones. Taking it from him, I hung it over the back of one of the chairs and turned it to the fire to dry. My hands were shaking. As I moved back to this most unholy of men, I caught sight of the painting on the wall behind him. The painting of the stable boy who never was.

  We had some little talk of the villain, Kent, my rival who had undermined me so effectively at Court. But as he spoke, Overton’s sloe eyes examined my room. They rested infinitesimally on the half-finished portrait of Paul before Felix, and I fancied a stoat’s smile crossed his mouth at the likeness of the dog, Vulcan.

  Outside the hailstones still drummed their devil’s fingers on the gutters and, no doubt, were making many a whore run for cover. I could imagine only too easily how the torch bearers would duck into the doorways or under the archways of the mews houses, their fire smoky from the damp air. And along the dark run of the Thames, the water would shudder with the impact of a million hailstones, their imprint making bubbles on an unsuspecting tide.

  Then, as quick as it had begun, the storm ended. Nathaniel Overton turned his courtier’s eyes on me, and—I admit it—I felt a chill go through me. Slowly he moved over to the painting of my servants, then paused. His coat was steaming in front of the grate, the brass buttons fireflies in the evening light, the pockets gaping like the mouths of martyrs.

  And then he left.

  Do you see why I am so troubled?

  Why would a man as powerful as he come by, in such inclement weather, to pass the time of day about the scoundrel Kent? Was there more to the visit? Or was Overton perhaps just taking cover? Finding himself near to my door, was it merely sanctuary he sought? Or was there something else? As he stood in front of the painting of my servants, could he see in the stable boy’s features a shadow of an old and dreadful crime? Did something prompt him, remind him of a murder many years before?

  Did he see a living child surviving what he had hoped was a corpse’s end? God, I pray not.

  When I helped him back on with his coat, its wool was warmed from the fire, but a terrible coldness came off Overton himself. He had, as I always suspected, something of the charnel house about him. His aura spoke of ill-done deeds, of vengeance, plots, and questionable loyalties. And as I reached to put the coat around his shoulders, I felt—I tremble as I write it—that I was dresser to a devil.

  Pray God he will not come again.

  Fifty-One

  BACK IN HIS APARTMENT, VICTOR CHECKED HIS MAIL AND HIS answering machine. Without realizing he wanted it, he was hoping for a message from Ingola, and for a long moment his hand paused over the “Play Message” button. But he didn’t press it, didn’t want to hear her voice. Or, worse, not hear it…. Confused, he sat down, switching on the table lamp next to him, bringing the apartment into focus. He no longer liked the place, not because he had signed it over to Christian—he knew he could get it back at any time—but because the man who once had lived there no longer existed. And he missed him the way he would have missed a brother, a friend, a companion. He missed himself.

  Victor had tried to prepare for the difficulty of returning to everyday life, but he hadn’t allowed for the fact that his life had never been everyday. He had been a master in h
is world. Top-billed, not a member of the chorus. His life had consisted of solos, virtuoso performances; his opinion was sought, his criticism feared. After his public disgrace, Victor Ballam could never slide back into the opera box of his life. Even the stalls were now too good for him; he would be lucky to get a peek in at the stage door.

  His innocence no longer mattered, because no one believed it. The art world—except for Sir Oliver Peters—had deemed him a fraud, and the people he now mixed with, the likes of Charlene Fleet and Dr. Eli Fountain—wouldn’t care whether he was a criminal. Perhaps, Victor thought bitterly, he might have greater currency in their eyes if he was a crook. Caught between the cherished world that had crucified him and the demimonde he hardly understood, Victor found himself disembodied, flying at half mast.

  Finally pressing the answering machine, he found two earlier messages from Liza Frith, who sounded unnerved and jumpy, and one from Malcolm Jenner asking Victor to call. Apparently he had remembered something that might have been important and wanted to talk about it.

  Jenner’s admission that Annette Dvorski was his niece had thrown Victor. Was it true? If so, perhaps that fact cleared him as a suspect. But now Victor wasn’t so sure. Perhaps, for all his apparent grief, Jenner had been merely acting. Maybe he had double-crossed his own niece, killed Annette to get the painting. After all, he knew Mrs. Fleet and had colluded with her in duping the police. Perhaps they had been working together for a while. But the more he thought about it, the more Victor doubted that Malcolm Jenner was lying. He was a hard case, certainly on the make, but no killer. That made Victor very curious to hear what he had to say now.

  He dialed the number Jenner had left on the answering machine.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Jenner, it’s Victor Ballam. You left a message for me.”

  “Yeah, I did. I remembered something. It might be important.”

  “Go on.”

  “No, not over the phone. Can you meet me later?”

  “Where?”