by John Creasey
Tensely, Brutus said: “And how are you going to find out?”
Very slowly, very deliberately, Mannering said: “Will you let my wife be judge?”
“Your wife
“Lorna.”
For a few seconds it seemed as if Brutus would ask ‘Why’, and try to avoid the issue simply because he didn’t comprehend. Instead, he said very softly: “Right, sport. Lorna’s the judge.”
“John. . .” Lorna began.
“Nathaniel,” Mannering said, “just tell us why you bought that Picasso. Lorna will know whether you’ve the eye and the heart of an artist, or whether to you it’s just an outsize in cheques.”
17: THE PICASSO
As Mannering finished speaking, Venella moved from the drinks and stood in front of the painting, her head slightly on one side. Lorna moved very slowly away from the men and stood looking out of the window. Mannering was aware of this, yet did not look away from Brutus. He had a strange impression that Brutus was growing in physical stature; perhaps it was because he was standing against the pale land beyond the patio, so spare and clean-limbed and in a curious way powerful. Certainly nothing suggested any sense of guilt over his possession of the Picasso.
“So you want to know why I bought that picture,” Brutus said.
“Yes.”
“Because of its title.”
Mannering was startled. “Black Day.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s an admission,” Brutus said sardonically. “Here’s a thing you don’t understand. I’ll tell you. It’s not.”
“Not what?”
“Black.”
“Then what is it?”
“Listen,” said Brutus. “Listen.” He raised his hands, the fingers spread, and then repeated: “Listen, won’t you?” Mannering hadn’t said a word. Lorna turned from the window and Mannering could see her behind the man, and the expression on her face was tense and strained. Her lips actually moved, and he had the impression that she was trying to put words into Brutus’s mind, willing him to say the right thing. Suddenly, he burst out: “Listen, Mannering! I hear a lot of bull about abstract, I’ve listened to the bunkum some of your high-fluting artist pals with hoity-toity English voices talk. God, what crap! Psychological power-message-emotional urge, all of that and a lot I don’t begin to understand. Do you know what abstract painting is to me? I’ll tell you. It’s crazy. It’s the excrescence of sick minds. It’s a kind of corruption. It’s decadence. It’s plain bloody laziness, too-daub here, daub there, slap paint here, put it on with your feet, ride a bicycle over the canvas, swing over it, stand at the kerb and throw the paint anywhere on a board-art? That’s about as artistic as my merino sheep. I want to know what I’m looking at. I want a picture I can recognize. I don’t want to know what the artist has got to say, I want to know what he’s showing me, what he’s seeing.”
Brutus broke off sweating.
Venella turned from the painting, and Lorna stood on one side, much calmer now, her face in repose.
Venella said: “Wow!”
It was like a sound from a long way off, heard clearly and yet carrying no significance.
“So there was this Picasso,” Brutus said, half-turning from Mannering. “It was on exhibition at Angus and Watson in Sydney. In a window, how about that? It didn’t have a price tag. I stood and looked at it, and then I walked across the road and looked at it from there. I went one way up Pitt Street and walked past it, then I went the other way and walked past it again. I got on top of a bus at rush hour, you can be sure of stopping along there, and I looked down on it. Then I went to my hotel, the Wentworth. They hadn’t pulled it down at that time. I dreamt about that bloody picture, and I went back next morning and asked the price. Twenty-five thousand Australian, they said, and I said I would take it away with me.”
“Wheeeel” breathed Venella. “Now I know.”
Brutus ignored that, passed Mannering and drew up in front of the picture.
“It did something to me,” he said. “It took something out of my guts. Don’t ask me what. I didn’t know why the hell I liked it. Black Day-Black Day my ass! I stuck it on that wall, and went to bed, and didn’t think about it until next morning. It was a morning in ten thousand. We had rain. Did we want rain! We hadn’t seen a drop for three years, and we were losing sheep by the hundred each day. We had three families living here because their wells didn’t go deep enough. That morning, the clouds came over from the northwest. I’ve lived in this part of the outback for twenty-five years but I’ve never seen a sky like it. Black? Black’s not the word. There was a rainbow. I stood and watched that rainbow when every other man on the station was rushing about, battening things down, closing windows and doors, making sure the horses were in-because we were going to have one hell of a wind. I ought to have been running around with the rest, whereas I was looking at rainbows. Crazy? Everyone thought I had gone mad, including me.
“But I hadn’t gone mad,” Brutus went on, more slowly, and he approached the painting very closely. “No, I hadn’t gone mad. I was seeing something I hadn’t ever seen before. That sky was black. It was so black it was blacker than night. But there was some colour in it, as if the rainbow had left the colour behind. There was purple, there was blue, there was red, there was orange, there was yellow. Black? It had every bloody colour in the world somewhere. Everyone was there when I looked for it, and. . .” Brutus raised his right hand and pointed dramatically at the picture. “It’s on there, too. You know what Picasso did with that painting? He captured the sky on one day in ten thousand. He just grabbed himself a square of the thunder in the sky and slapped it on canvas. That’s why I bought it. Abstract? Abstract my foot. It was real, it was so real I didn’t want to let it go. Every time I look at that picture, I think: One day it’s going to rain again. It just has to rain again.”
Brutus’s voice fell away.
Venella was staring at him with a strange, almost a marvelling expression in her eyes. Lorna slid her arm into Mannering’s, and led him to the big window, where the sunlight took all the colour out of the earth.
It seemed a long time before Brutus turned round, and when he did his expression was very much like Venella’s; it was almost enraptured.
“John,” he said, “I don’t know why I bought that picture. I only know I had to. And I began to want to buy other things. I got the message from that picture, and I came to London to talk to you. If I liked the look of you, if you seemed the kind of man who would give me a square deal, I was going to invite you to Australia-all expenses paid. I was going to ask you to buy some of the things at Melbury House for me. I wanted to know why you would think they were worth buying, I wanted to find out if anything there had a message for me, too.”
He grinned.
“How do you like being a messenger boy, Mannering?”
Mannering felt as if he had been through a hurricane. There was a kind of breathlessness about him, almost of exhaustion. He was almost sure that, despite that last flippant question, Brutus felt the same; his look of exhaustion was very marked. Venella, the least affected and yet very much aware of what had happened, let out a long slow breath. As if it were sacrilege to speak aloud, she said: “After that, do I need a drink!” She went and poured one out, standing quite still watching the others. To Mannering she was apart from the three of them-a visible presence which was not felt.
Lorna, her eyes on Brutus, moved very slowly to a chair and sat down.
Brutus looked back at her.
He said: “Well? How did I do?”
He seemed to say: That was for you, that was everything I’ve got. Tell me it was enough for you.
Mannering felt absolutely sure of a bond between this man and Lorna, and for the first time in his life, he felt afraid. His heart beat with a sickening sense of dread.
Brutus said sharply: “Do I pass?”
Mannering answered: “You pass.”
He doubted wheth
er Brutus heard him, for above everything else, the man was listening for Lorna; and Lorna had not spoken.
Brutus caught his breath.
“To hell with you. Where did I go wrong?”
Lorna moistened her lips.
“You didn’t go wrong,” she said.
“You mean I made sense?”
“You certainly made sense.”
“You’re not-” he caught his breath again.
“I am not saying this just to please you,” Lorna told him, and as if she were suddenly aware of the construction Mannering could put on that, she added quickly: “Why should I?” At last she looked away, her glance avoiding Mannering, resting on the pallid blue sky, the yellow land. “Don’t you agree that he made sense, John?”
Mannering made himself say: “If there’s any way I can help you to feel for other things what you feel for Black Day, just say so.”
Brutus swung round on him.
“Do you mean that?”
“I mean it.”
“Of course he means it,” Lorna said.
Into a long silence Venella Melbury spoke.
“Have you three ever heard of the earth?”
“What’s that?” asked Brutus.
“Earth?” echoed Lorna.
“The place I live on. The place I would like you to come down to, if it won’t hurt too much.”
Mannering laughed.
“I’m back,” he said. “I’m back with a bump.”
“Perhaps you didn’t go so far away from it,” Venella said drily. “I always knew there were hidden depths in Nathaniel. I wish I knew the way to dig down into them. What’s the secret, Lorna?”
Secret.
Lorna said: “He has to let you dig, first.”
“Let me dig, Nat,” Venella pleaded. “Not very deep-just three and a half million pounds deep. John. . .” there was pleading in her voice. “John, help me dig into him. A man who can talk about a picture like that is ready-made for Melbury House and everything in it. Make him buy everything-the house and all the things in it. You can make him.”
“No one can make him,” Mannering said.
“Someone made him talk like that.”
“What am I?” Brutus asked, and now he sounded less breathless, less tired. “Some anatomical specimen? Some machine you work by putting in a coin?” He laughed. “Melbury House-what’s that but a pile of stone filled with old junk?”
Venella poured herself another drink.
“It was a spell someone cast on him,” she said. “Just a spell. Tell him it’s not just a pile of stone, John.”
Mannering said: “There’s one trouble with. Melbury House.”
“So now we’re being told the truth,” Brutus said.
“Spoil my chances and I’ll find a way to cutting your throat,” said Venella.
“What trouble?” asked Lorna.
“It’s in the wrong place,” said Mannering.
Venella frowned. “It’s where it always has been. Don’t blame me.”
“It’s too far away from Canberra.”
“What’s on your mind now?” demanded Brutus.
“John,” Lorna said. “Don’t tantalize us.”
She meant, “Don’t tantalize him.”
“Darling,” Mannering said very softly, “sooner or later he has to think for himself.”
Lorna seemed to flinch.
“John,” Brutus said, “why Canberra? Why not Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide, or if it comes to that, why not Perth or Brisbane?”
“You’re getting warm,” said Mannering.
“I wish I had even the beginning of an idea,” said Venella.
“Because it’s the capital,” Mannering told them quietly. “Because it’s the best place in Australia to house the treasures in Melbury House.”
“Hey!” cried Venella.
“So they are treasures,” Brutus said.
“They are treasures. Do you really want my opinion?”
“I want it.”
“Melbury House is the nearest I’ve seen out of England to a period castle-an Elizabethan castle. The outside is a bit rococo, but inside it has everything-someone who built that place had the same vision as you had with Black Day. Probably the founder didn’t quite know what he was doing or why he was doing it, but that doesn’t matter. And he and everyone who followed him did a remarkable job. I didn’t see a single fake. Every picture there is as real as your Picasso-which was once part of the Collection.”
“What?” Brutus cried.
“Please. . .” began Venella.
“He must be told,” Mannering said gruffly. “The picture was on loan from Melbury House, just after your uncle died, but someone authorized the sale. Ralph Melbury. He knew it was not his to sell, but he wanted the money, and the dealers had no reason to doubt his authority. Venella knew you’d been deceived, and weren’t a party to the stealing, so she never reported it stolen-thus saving both you and her brother from scandal and unpleasantness.”
“My God!” breathed Brutus, but before he could go on, Mannering said in a loud, clear voice: “Worry about that later. The Melbury Collection is a gem. There aren’t fifty men in the world who could afford to do what ought to be done with that place.”
Brutus asked in a rough voice: “What ought to be done?”
“It ought to be moved to Canberra. The outside ought to be modernized or else reconstructed to look exactly like Melbury Castle in England. The interior ought to remain exactly as it is. In Canberra, you would draw the crowds. Where it stands now, you can’t hope to. And that kind of collection shouldn’t be broken up and sent all over the world, or belong to an individual-it should belong to a nation.”
Venella said huskily: “The best of the old in the best of the new.”
After a long pause, Brutus spoke more naturally.
“That’s very interesting, John. That would make me a public benefactor, wouldn’t it?”
“There are a hundred ways you can be a public benefactor,” Mannering said. “There’s only one way you can be one and at the same time satisfy yourself.”
Brutus began to smile; and he looked at Lorna.
“You agree?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen Melbury House, but if that’s what John says, it is probably what I would say, too,” Lorna said.
“The perfect wife,” Brutus mocked. “You don’t know how lucky you are, John.” There was no half-sneer with ‘John’ this time. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll sleep on it. The money that would cost would be half of my lot, and when you’re playing with half of what you possess you need a little time to think.” After a pause, he said: “That Picasso. . .”
“Nat,” interrupted Venella.
“Yep?”
She was looking pale, and demandingly beautiful, and something in her expression told Mannering that her very heart was in what she was going to say.
“I go with Melbury House,” she said. “You don’t have to keep me. You can give me away or throw me away, but I go with the house.”
“Venella,” Brutus said, “I can’t see Melbury House without you. If I play, I’ll play for keeps.” After a long pause, he asked: “Did you know I had your Picasso?”
Slowly, Venella nodded, and then, as if forcing herself to do so, said: “Ralph doesn’t go with the house, though. You need to know that.”
18: MIRACLE
Mannering moved across the bedroom and looked out into the starlit night. He heard Lorna in the bathroom. She would be with him in a few minutes. They had been on their own only at odd moments during the afternoon and early evening, and now they were together for half-an-hour before dinner. The low-ceilinged room was well proportioned and comfortably furnished; it might have been a room in any modern luxury hotel. There were rich carpets on the polished boards of the floor, good but not outstanding pictures on the wall.
Except for Lorna’s movements, there was no sound.
They could have talked together before this but Lor
na had shown no desire to do so and Mannering wondered with a sickening sense of apprehension whether he had indeed lost her. At moments he told himself that the very idea was ludicrous; at others-well, she was so deeply preoccupied and withdrawn that he hardly seemed to know her.
She came out of the bathroom, her wrap, usually draped so negligently, pulled tightly round her. She was half-frowning, as she went to the dressing-table.
Mannering said with assumed lightness: “Hi.”
“John,” Lorna said. “I shouldn’t ask this, but I’m going to. You did mean every word, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think I might not have?”
“You’ve tormented yourself and I’ve tormented you because of what happened at Catesby’s. You could be trying to make it up to Brutus.”
“Oh,” said Mannering. “Balm to his wound.”
“Yes.”
“You know,” Mannering said, judicially, “you’re not thinking straight over this.”
Lorna stiffened: “Aren’t I?”
“The place or the man has cast a spell over you,” Mannering said, and added with lightness which concealed his furious anxiety. “In the same way Anthony cast a spell over Cleopatra.”
“That was the other way round.”
“He had something she desperately wanted,” said Mannering.
“And you’re suggesting that Nat Brutus has something I want?” She was looking at Mannering intently but her cheeks were slightly flushed.
“Yes,” said Mannering.
“What on earth. . .” Lorna began, almost angrily.
“Sweetheart,” Mannering said, “you saw something special in Nat Brutus when you first set eyes on him. There couldn’t be any other explanation of the way you reacted. He had a quality I didn’t see at first but you did. I’ve seen it now.” Slowly, painfully, he went on: “He’s about the most vital, virile man I know. He’s got the Midas touch, and nothing can ever take that away. He’s got something else, too-something you were incredibly quick to recognize.”
