by Heron Carvic
With unconscious volition she crossed the room to study a picture on the wall. So many pictures. And most of them so very modern. And not all of them quite easy to understand. She had identified a Braque, which she did not care for—part of a violin, peeping through mostly angular shapes in rather depressing grays and greens and browns, that might mean anything. But this . . . Surely a Marquet. Boats at a quayside. Quite lovely. In the foreground, water: the delicacy of the coloring blending and shadowing till one could see the movement; feel the ripple.
The banker watched her with amusement; snapped his fingers. “Mais voyons,” he began; corrected himself. “You must forgive me, I had almost forgotten that I was entertaining an expert.” He showed her his collection of paintings; expatiating on line, form, color, brushwork and the balance of composition, though he lost Miss Seeton when he delved into the overlap of unrelated objects in their relation to the subject as a whole, and the perspective of nonperspective in flattened surfaces and horizontal planes.
Explaining that he was a director of the art museum, he insisted that in two days’ time she should attend the vernissage—for a moment this word stopped them both and they had recourse to a dictionary. The word vernissage, they learned, meant private view, or, alternatively, varnishing day. Miss Seeton also discovered that the art museum was not a museum as she understood the term but more in the nature of a cross between the Tate Gallery and Burlington House. It had a permanent collection of pictures on display but also acted as a gallery for exhibitions and sold the artists’ efforts on commission.
“Perhaps,” observed M. Telmark, “you will be able to explain to me the popularity of a painter in whose work I can see no merit—but it sells. He is an Italian and, like many small men, full of his own importance and of an exaggerated temperament. I will be interested in your opinion of his work.” He went to the telephone and ordered a taxi to take Miss Seeton back to her hotel.
They stood on the doorstep to await the car’s arrival. At once, under the trees some way down to their left, an engine started up and a car slid forward. The lights, including the word TAXI on its roof, were switched on and it pulled up in front of them. Its driver, a dark-skinned man, remained at the wheel while M. Telmark opened the door for Miss Seeton, at the same time paying the fare. The taxi drove off down the Promenade Saint Antoine in the direction opposite that from which Miss Seeton had arrived.
No sooner were they under way than another engine, already idling, was revved high, sidelights were switched on and a small blue Peugeot shot from under the trees ahead of them straight across the road, forcing the taxi to a halt with a scream of brakes and a stream of bad language. Both drivers jumped out and Miss Seeton recognized the driver of the small car as Miss Galam—Vee. Vee and her opponent engaged in furious French argument and Miss Seeton decided that it was time to intervene. Hearing the taxi door open, the man broke off, swung round and rapped:
“Get back in, madam. I’ll take you on when this fool has moved her idiot car.”
Vanda Galam turned, saw Miss Seeton and exclaimed, “My, you of all people. What a break.” She opened her passenger door. “Come on, I’ll take you back.” She leaned into her car, picked up her purse and addressed the taxi driver. “Fair enough, you speak English, so you’ve guessed we’re friends. I’ll take the lady back with me.” She opened her bag. “Just tell me your fare to the Richesse and you can cut along.”
The man protested. He’d been called from the rank and had instructions to take the lady to the hotel. He would prefer to carry out those instructions rather than trust her to a madwoman who hadn’t learned to drive.
“That will be all right,” Miss Seeton assured him. “You see, my friend is staying in the same hotel. And,” she added to Vee, “you don’t have to worry about the fare. He has already been paid.” She got into the Peugeot.
The dark-skinned man cast a quick glance up and down the promenade. His hand went to his pocket. Vee’s hand shifted in her purse.
“Don’t try it, sonny,” she muttered. “Just be on your way.” He saw the snub barrel of the pistol protruding from her bag. Suddenly they were spotlit in the headlights of another car parked beneath the trees behind them. Xerxes Tolla slowly withdrew his hand, empty. He jumped into his taxi, banged the door, slammed his gears and stamped on the accelerator.
Vee shut her bag and gave the sad rictus that served her for a smile as she got back into her car. “You know, I somehow got the impression there he didn’t like me.”
“I expect,” opined Miss Seeton, “that it was nerves. Or rather, one should say, reaction to them. After all, he did have to stop very quickly.”
“True enough.” Vee laughed, remembering the blaze of light. “Took off quickly too.”
She took off in her turn and in contrast to her catapulting start now drove with sedate control.
Well, well. Thrudd Banner huddled low in his seat. He couldn’t have chosen a better parking place—front row, but nicely shadowed by the trees; front row stall seat for all the action. So MissEss was just a schoolteacher on holiday, never been abroad, knew nobody, but sets out after dark to visit bankers in their homes with, looked like, half Geneva following. Too true when he’d been told that where she was the action was, and she’d repay watching. And she’d almost had him fooled this morning over coffee till he’d been in half a mind to apologize for the MISSTAKE article. Well, it was the last time she’d give the runaround to Mrs. Banner’s little boy. And what gave with the Galam blonde? Falling about the terrace with MissEss while somebody did target practice. Which, he wondered, had been saving which? And from whom? And afterward the Seeton, with her hat off center, sitting there mild as milk and twice as natural. Shooting? Good gracious. She’d thought that somebody’d dropped a tray. But shooting . . . Were they sure? How very odd. It must’ve been an accident. Or perhaps a demonstration. Too right it’d been a demonstration, but against which of them? At her? Oh, dear me no and goodness. What an idea! And did she know Miss Galam? Were they friends? Wide-eyed at once. Oh, no, they’d only just met that moment, down there on the floor. And dealing with that fool Tomfool’s questions like a schoolmarm keeping a tiresome child in place. Then the police putting her through it. MissEss as bland as butter. No, she’d seen nothing; heard nothing. And by and large had said nothing—all three monkeys in one.
Yet off she goes to spend half the afternoon at police headquarters—with the blonde tagging along. Up here this evening to Telmark’s house. Telmark? Thrudd debated. Was something up at the Banque du Lac he hadn’t heard about? Soon as she appears a taxi pops out from along here where no taxi should be, and the moment they were under way the Galam jet-propels out and nearly crashes them—nice bit of driving, that. A colored taxi driver? Could be, he supposed, but it was the first time he’d seen one in Geneva. And then the Galam trundles off with MissEss as if she’d never driven over 20 mph. And now . . .
Thrudd watched as the headlights to his left, which had interrupted Vee Galam’s discussion with the taxi driver, were switched off and a car with sidelights only, two men on the front seat, drove out and took the same direction as the Peugeot. He turned his ignition key. Better tag along and see everybody safely home. As he pressed the starter, lights to his right caught his eye and a taxi crossed the bridge at the Rue Théodore de Bèze to draw up at Karl Telmark’s house. Too late, chum—Thrudd grinned as he departed—you’ve missed all the fun of your fare.
• • •
Miss Seeton was worried. She was sure that Vee must know where she was going. She seemed so very capable. But . . .
“Are you sure,” she ventured, “that this is the right . . .”
She stopped. On their left a short bridge crossed the road below. Perhaps . . . No. She was sure, quite sure, that this was not the other bridge because that, the other one, so very like it, was at the other end. Besides, although there was a grass slope with trees beyond, before some buildings, it was on the wrong side. Of the bridge, that was. And, in any case, t
here was no statuary.
“Right—in what way?” asked Vee.
“Because—” Miss Seeton watched the promenade narrow to become the Rue Beauregard and curve down a gentle slope with a drinking fountain set into the wall on their left, a wall which gave way to railings as the street forked down to join a wider road. “Because,” repeated Miss Seeton—really the topography here was very difficult to follow—“because, although I realize that we’re going down, it was the other end. When I came up, I mean. And steeper,” she explained.
“Don’t let it fret you; we’ll get there just as quick this way and the roads are better.” And better lit, she reflected.
Miss Seeton relaxed. Vee did not. What was the car behind them? They’d doused their headlights now but she’d had no chance so far to gather who was driving. Friend of the taximan? And who’d that black chap be anyway? Could be this Tolla she’d been briefed on, though why was he doing his own dirty work? Didn’t sound the type. What the hell had MissEss stumbled on that made her so damn dangerous? If only the old girl knew, or they could find out, they could spread the load a bit and take the pressure off.
Vee kept glancing in the mirror as the car behind crept down the Rue Beauregard, followed by—good for him—another car she recognized; that beat-up yellow Volvo belonging to Banner, the press man. Well, between them they’d got the other car nicely sandwiched. Vee too relaxed. Admitted, in this game take nothing—take nobody—for granted, but she’d still take a bet that Thrudd Banner was clean. Just doing his job and would help out if things got out of hand. She hesitated. Should she whip the car round to the right here at the Rue Daniel Colladon, narrow, dark and tricky? But it would get her back to the Bourg de Four and from there she could cut through the Old Town down the Rue Verdaine and take the Mont Blanc bridge instead of one of the earlier ones. It would soon prove if the car behind was really after them, and with Banner doing a followup, between them they should be able to deal . . .
Vee abruptly right-angled the Peugeot off the brightly lit width of the rue de la Croix Rouge into the narrow gloom of the Rue Daniel Colladon. Miss Seeton, thrown against the door, saw for a moment a precipitous cobbled slope to a lower road before the car was hedged by a narrow street. The car behind them turned in turn and the light fell so that Vee could see the two men on the front seat. For God’s sake, she chuckled to herself, identical felt hats and raincoats—it must be the boys from the Sûreté, and MissEss was traveling home in motorcade as per always. Fair enough, but what went with the opposition? Had the black taxi driver given up? And where was the little Italian runt?
Elio Mantoni was in his element. With the edge of his brush he slashed a streak of vermilion between a chocolate brown square and a lime green ovoid, then stood back to admire the effect and to obtain a true perspective of his work; though whether Karl Telmark would have recognized any perspective in the flattened planes of the daubs or even admitted a relation in the unrelated colored spludges was doubtful.
No such consideration bothered the artist: all that was lacking to complete his happiness was a studio with a north light instead of a small bedroom on the top floor of a third-rate hotel. He had delivered two canvases to the art museum that morning.
With a palette knife he smeared more chrome onto the canvas which, together with the one drying over against the bed, was due shortly for exhibition in Paris. How, Mantoni wondered as he superimposed his effusion over the last folds of the robe which draped Tintoretto’s Madonna of the Seven Rivers, could anyone with artistic sensibility prefer such carefully executed compositions by dead artists to his own living, immediate, breathing inspirations. He had reported yesterday the success of his mission to eliminate Miss Seeton and today he had scanned the newspapers, at first with trepidation and then with mounting indignation, at finding no mention of his exploit. And then this afternoon he had received a terse message asking why he had failed in his assignment.
Mantoni was dumbfounded. Failed in his assignment? How could he have failed? Had he not, with his own eyes, seen her fall? Or had she, like other cats, many lives? If so they could rest assured that he had taken one of them. Shrugging off the mystery, he had concentrated on, and lost himself in, painting. In this, at least, he found satisfaction. And tomorrow, at the private view, he would find further satisfaction in watching people admire his work, with no danger of interference from old women.
“How d’you do. How d’you do . . . No, to me it’s all quite new. I find it charming.”
In such a crowd the term “private view” struck Miss Seeton as a misnomer.
“How d’you do. How d’you do . . . No, I hadn’t heard. . . . Did you? But how alarming.”
Miss Seeton was beginning to feel that she had strayed into some well-practiced social minuet.
She was disappointed. She had looked forward to this occasion thinking that for the first time since she had left England she would be on firm ground, meeting people who understood and appreciated art. Possibly even meeting the artists themselves and, although she might not necessarily understand or even like their work—if it was very advanced, that was—it would still have been interesting to learn something of their aims and their techniques. But no one in this gathering appeared to be interested in, or even to look at the pictures. It was more like some fashionable cocktail party: they were actually serving drinks and little snacks. Fortunately she did know one or two of the company. Vee was there, looking more startling than usual in a dress with a skirt slit right up to the hip. And that newspaperman, Mr. Banner. And that rather tiresome Mr. ffoley. And Mr. Telmark, of course, who kept introducing her to people whose names she failed to catch. And, although everyone was talking, rather shrilly, and for the most part with their backs to the paintings, no one had even mentioned the dreadful news in today’s papers.
BIG ART THEFT
RAID ON STATELY HOME
The Duke of Belton, returning with the Duchess from a holiday in Turkey for the reopening of Belton Abbey to the public, found that thieves had stolen four canvases from his well-known collection of paintings. Among them were Gainsborough’s portrait of the 4th Duke with Duchess and the famous Madonna of the Seven Rivers by Tintoretto, valued at over £30,000.
She’d seen the Tintoretto once, on loan at Burlington House, and that it should now be in the hands of thieves was really quite, quite dreadful.
Miss Seeton eased her way out of the chattering throng and, catalogue in hand, set about a serious study of the exhibits.
Yes, really, she decided, “exhibits” was the only suitable word. Many of them were not paintings at all, but consisted of pieces of scrap metal and the sort of things that one threw into the dustbin, all glued or nailed higgledy-piggledy onto a sheet of cardboard or a wooden panel. One of these latter had an old-fashioned lavatory chain with a china handle inscribed with the word PULL. She trusted that no one would obey this injunction since the chain was attached to a jam jar, half full of water, in which one small goldfish circled endlessly round its cramped quarters. More a matter, she felt for the RSPCA than for an exhibition. No. 59. She found it in the catalogue, entitled Puss-and-Pull. No. 60 was a board on which, among assorted ironmongery, a broken rusted bedspring jutted out with a large glass eye impaled upon its prong. She found it faintly distasteful and did not bother further. Beyond were three oil paintings on canvas and Miss Seeton grew more hopeful, but the first of them somewhat dashed her hopes—distortion without draftsmanship. The next was a collection of rough geometrical shapes in violent colors: surely rather old-fashioned in style; reminiscent of Delaunay’s Window, or Léger’s Woman in Blue, both, if she remembered rightly, executed before the 1914 war. Only, of course, nothing like so well done. This present one, she meant.
She was preparing to pass on when something about the design recaptured her attention and she stopped. Oh, now she saw . . . That was very interesting. She moved back, moved forward, then from side to side, studying the work from various angles. Yes. Really very interesting indeed.<
br />
Beside her M. Telmark spoke. “So you have found one of Alberti’s masterpieces of which I told you. Now, can you explain to me where the attraction lies and why they sell?”
For the first time Miss Seeton noted that both this and the canvas beyond it had a red spot pasted in one corner.
“Say,” Vee’s low voice came from Miss Seeton’s other side, “don’t tell me you go for that godawful daub. You’ve been circling round it like a tigress scenting meat.”
Miss Seeton performed the introductions and Karl Telmark appealed to Vee.
“Perhaps you, Miss Galam, can persuade our expert to diagnose the reason for this man’s popularity.”
“Come on,” Vee encouraged her, “give.”
“It’s so difficult to describe.” Miss Seeton’s hands began to flutter as she sought for words to formulate her feelings. “It lies, I suppose,” she said finally, “in the technique—no, perhaps one should say method. It’s something that I’ve not seen before. To compare it with Sickert’s later work, or with Cézanne, would be wrong. No spots, you see.” Faced with Vee’s blank expression, she elucidated. “Paintings that at first sight seem just colored spots, but then, as you gaze at them, the form beneath emerges until the form becomes all. And they disappear. The spots, I mean. Except, of course, here,” she admitted, “there are no spots.”
Vee was about to protest when the banker forestalled her. “Continue. You see some design below this colored mess?”
“Why, yes indeed. Don’t you? It’s”—Miss Seeton’s hands strayed again—“so difficult. It catches one at certain angles and then goes again. In a way it’s like a mockery of—more accurately perhaps a satirical comment on—the style so popular in the early nineteen hundreds. I—I . . .” A comparison at last occurred to her. “You know Picasso’s portrait of Ambroise Vollard”—Vee did not but Telmark did—“where the face looms at one pinkly through squares and rectangles, mostly grayish? The squares and rectangles, that is.” Vainly her fingers tried to delineate the portrait in the air.
