Much Ado About Lewrie

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Hmm, I’m told the painters will be done tomorrow,” Lewrie said, cocking his head in speculation, “say a day t’let it dry, then deliver on Thursday? It’s to go to the coach house out back, so your waggon can use the back gate to the garden and stables.”

  “I think I remember it well, from when we furnished the house,” Clotworthy said with a knowing nod.

  “Let me ask you, Clotworthy,” Lewrie said with a sly grin, leaning his head close. “Just how much of all this stuff is the genuine article?”

  “Alan,” Chute pretended to be scandalised, “I am a respectable businessman these days!”

  “Whatever that means,” Lewrie scoffed. “No one even heard the word ‘respectable’ ten years ago.”

  “Quite right, my old,” Chute responded with a laugh. “It is the new way of doing things, all prim, prudish, and pucker-arsed, haw haw. I expect Harrow, our dear old alma mater, has gone so far as to expel young sprogs for even thinking about topping a barmaid, much less putting a hand up their skirts. One must be sobre and righteous … or, do a good job of pretending.

  “Confidentially?” Chute said, laying a hand on Lewrie’s shoulder. “There may be some treasures brought back from some rich fool’s Grand Tour of the Continent that may not be, ah, all that old, but for the most part, what I display for sale is real, these days. God, I adore the people who can’t keep from gambling deep, and have to sell up to pay their debts. Done on the sly, so Society doesn’t know how skint they’ve become.”

  “Good Christ, you really have been redeemed!” Lewrie laughed out loud.

  “Well, not completely,” Clotworthy qualified, almost crossing his fingers against complete Redemption. “Take these paintings, for instance. This ’un’s The Toilet of Venus by François Boucher. Over there, The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba by Claude Lorrain, done round Sixteen Fourty-eight.”

  “I rather like that one,” Lewrie said.

  “Of course you do,” Chute sniggered, “it has ships in it.”

  “Well, I do,” Lewrie insisted. “That old, is it? And it costs…” he peered at the dangling price tag. “Three thousand pounds?”

  “On consignment for a French émigré who had the good sense to get his arse out of France before The Terror began,” Clotworthy said, hands behind his back and rocking on his heels, “a fellow who brought off his most valuable treasures, hoping to live the same life he led before the Revolution … a Baron, Count, a Marquis or something other, who is now reduced to renting a dingy set of rooms. Threadbare suitings, frayed stockings … you’ve seen them, but still with the airs of an aristocrat.”

  “It isn’t real, is it?” Lewrie asked with a wink.

  “Of course it ain’t,” Chute happily confessed. “Somebody very good at doing them from memory, as far as I know. A real down-at-the-heels Frog brought it in for sale, and God only knows where he got it.”

  “What’s consignment?” Lewrie asked.

  “I don’t pay him ha’pence ’til it’s sold is what it is,” Chute explained, “If some dunderhead buys it for three thousand pounds. I pay the fallen Frog twelve hundred and pocket the rest. He gets to eat and drink, buy new clothes … and frankly, so do I haw haw!”

  “You keep sixty percent?” Lewrie marvelled.

  “You can still do sums, I see, good for you Alan old son,” the cagey conniver congratulated, “I have my expenses, my overhead to care for, and he don’t, so … sixty percent commission is my usual. That goes for most of my stock, except for the few items that I have, ah … made,” Chute grinned, laying a finger to his lips. “Somewhere in the world, in the Louvre in Paris most-like, the real painting is hanging. I’ve never seen it, so it may be big enough to cover an entire wall, or it’s as small as a tea tray.”

  “Ehm, can’t you get in trouble with them?” Lewrie wondered, waving a hand down the wall where the pictures were hung. “Forgery, or something?”

  “Ah, but that’s the grandest part of it, Alan,” Clotworthy insisted, most gleefully, “I take things on consignment, I don’t buy, so I’m taking the seller’s word for authenticity, so who’s to know? If the whole Royal Academy came charging in the door, I can just shrug my shoulders and say that I was diddled, hah hah!

  “Now, as to your note of hand,” Chute mentioned, getting back to business, “I’ve pen and paper at that desk yonder. Because it’s you, I threw in a pair of slightly used Turkey carpets, gratis. We can’t let your people start wedded life on splintery, cold floors.”

  * * *

  “… at Saint Anselm’s, of course,” Jessica was happily scheming as she took off her bonnet, sat on a settee in the drawing room, and slipped off her street shoes. “Ah, that’s better. Sunday will be the final reading of the banns, and then we can think of a place for the wedding breakfast. Or, should we have it here, and ask Yeovill to do the menu preparation? With enough warning, there’s nothing that he can do. Do you not think so, Alan?”

  “Hmm, how many will attend, though? A chop house’d be better,” Lewrie replied, “somewhere where they ain’t servants for a bit.”

  “I suppose you’re right, dear,” Jessica said, after a moment of thought. Then she got impish. “I saw you admiring some of the paintings at Chute’s today. Did one strike your fancy?”

  “A harbourscape called The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba, with high ramparts like Valletta Harbour at Malta,” Lewrie said with a sheepish grin as he threw himself down into an armchair, “with a pretty sunrise or sunset, and clouds all aglow. Admired it, aye, but three thousand pounds worth.”

  “Who did it?” Jessica asked.

  “Some Frog artist, Claude Lorrain or something,” Lewrie told her. “It’s supposed t’be old, the sixteen-hundreds. Clotworthy said an émigré in need o’ rent money brought it in, on consignment.”

  “Mister Chute should be careful, Alan,” Jessica said, turning sobre, and leaning over an arm of the settee closer to him, “Do you remember the day we went to Ackermann’s in the Strand, to look at all the paintings that didn’t suit the Royal Academy’s annual contest?”

  “Aye, it was damned crowded,” Lewrie sniggered, “and you got propositioned by a cad I had to threaten.”

  “Yes, Madame Pellatan got all excited when she saw what she took for a painting by one of her old friends in Paris, Jacques-Louis David, except it wasn’t the real thing, but a smaller forgery. If someone buys that one you liked … Heavens, three thousand pounds?… then discovers it’s a fraud, Mister Chute could end up in gaol, and his business ruined! Does he know much about art, or…?”

  “He took the seller’s word for its authenticity,” Lewrie said, “and on consignment, which means he isn’t out a penny ’til it sells, so he didn’t seem too concerned.”

  “Well, he should be,” Jessica firmly stated, “or have someone on call who could advise him. Perhaps an older member of the Royal Academy? A painting that old will have tiny cracks in the surface, from drying out over the years. The expert could judge by the brushstrokes, the authenticity of the signature. By the very size of the work!”

  “Like I said, he didn’t seem too concerned,” Lewrie repeated, “I’d imagine he sells things ‘as-is,’ or whatever, perhaps gets the seller t’come in and speak with the buyer, first.”

  “But, even so, Alan,” Jessica insisted, “if it turns out to be a forgery, he’d have to return the buyer’s money, and be out what he gave the owner who brought it in, who would most-like be long gone. He is in a most vulnerable position. I should warn him.”

  “Well, if you think that best,” Lewrie said, wondering what his old school friend would make of that. And, would Clotworthy’s weaseling explanation convince Jessica that he was not a sharp criminal?

  “I should take Madame Pellatan with me,” Jessica said, leaning back into the settee, “she’s an educated eye.”

  Oh Christ, now I’ll have to warn Chute that the sky’s about to fall on him! Lewrie thought in dread of that duty; And if she thinks my friends are shifty, what w
ill she think of me?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  In lieu of making a second trip to Chute’s emporium, Lewrie penned a quick warning letter and sent it off instanter, a day before Jessica collected Madame Berenice Pellatan from the manse at Saint Anselm’s and set off on another of her “missions,” with the same infectious drive that she put into learning how to groom her new horse, or the zeal she put into her artwork. Was she imagining that she set off to expose chicanery, Lewrie feared.

  That woman can be ruthless, when she’s got the bitts in her teeth! Lewrie thought. No shrinking violet, was Jessica, and no wonder her father, Reverend Chenery, despaired of her interests that were so not womanlike, ladylike, or silently, obediently “miss-ish.”

  Does she ever discover Good Works and Poor Relief, she’ll turn into another Hannah More, ready t’mount the orator’s corner in Hyde Park, he silently feared. All Lewrie could do was sit at home, play with the kitten and the dogs, read the newspapers, and await a final judgement from his wife and Madame Pellatan.

  It came hours later. A bustle at the front door, hats, gloves, and parasols collected in the entry hall, then footsteps on the stairs. Lewrie pretended to be reading a paper as they entered the drawing room, looking up at their presence, smiling and giving out an enthusiastic “Aha!” and offering to ring for tea.

  “And how was Clotworthy?” Lewrie asked, still smiling.

  “His usual charming self, Alan,” Jessica told him, smoothing her gown as she sat down on the settee beside him.

  Is that good or bad? Lewrie wondered.

  No judgement was rendered … yet.

  “Oui, the gentleman is most amusant, Sir Alan,” Madame Berenice Pellatan said as she sat down in an armchair and smoothed the skirts of her gown, then primped with her extravagantly styled hairdo. “I find his emporium a fascinating place, so filled with such intriguing items. The Greco-Roman things, the decorative urns, oh la! Unfortunately, he is not so knowledgeable when it comes to paintings.”

  “Oh?” Lewrie asked, trying for innocent surprise. “Chute sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.”

  “The man knows what others tell him,” Madame Pellatan said with a raised brow, and a hint of superior amusement, “but a connoisseur of art? Non. Only a superior and glib tradesman.”

  “Well, he always was a quick study,” Lewrie said, shrugging.

  “He has, however,” Madame Pellatan went on, “managed to collect some interesting paintings, and has priced them below what I would think a real gallery would. It is to say, some valuable paintings on the bon marché, hah hah.”

  “A florin to the pound, d’ye mean?” Lewrie interpreted.

  Jessica had to translate for Madame Pellatan that a florin was a two-shilling coin, a tenth of a pound, which made the arch older French émigré simper with laughter.

  “So, they’re real?” Lewrie asked, much relieved.

  “I cannot dispute their authenticity, Sir Alan,” Mm. Pellatan said as the tea arrived, “for the good reason that, for the most instances, I have never seen them. My late husband and I, and all of our artistic friends, haunted the Louvre, attended almost every artist’s showing, and regularly visited every sales gallery in Paris, but we never saw the ones your friend has on display.”

  “Madame Berenice told me that the ones Chute has for sale came from private collections, Alan,” Jessica said as she poured for all.

  “Where only family and guests could admire them, alas,” Madame Pellatan said with an exaggerated sigh as she spooned in lots of sugar and cream to her tea. “As people of wealth, who could afford to own such fine art, they would have been the first victims of The Terror. It is possible that they fled France, and the guillotine, with them, as I and my husband did, trying to save a bit of their wealth as they went into exile.”

  “Paintings are a bit large t’smuggle out, aren’t they?” Lewrie asked.

  “We could not hope to take all of our favourites with us,” the old girl said with a moue, “but, the ones we could not part with, we removed from the frames, pulled the little nails that held the canvas to the back frame, and rolled them up carefully, the smallest inside the bigger, and hid at the bottoms of chests and luggage.

  “Unfortunately,” Madame Pellatan explained with another deep sigh, “we had to sell them off, bit by bit, to support ourselves here in England, and when Jean-Claude got sick … alas … the physicians were so expensive, and so, I have but two small pieces left, hanging in my room at Saint Anselm’s manse.”

  “They are exquisite, Madame,” Jessica commiserated.

  “So many of us, our old lives lost forever, drudging by at any work we could find,” Madame Pellatan told them, looking as if she’d openly weep, “aristocrats with no skills but being elegant, wealthy landowners without land, and no money to buy land here in England … I can see why the people who own those paintings at M’sieur Chute’s sell them at any price they can get to keep body and soul together.

  “Is it Shute, or Chute?” she asked suddenly.

  “It’s Chute, as in ‘Chew,’” Lewrie told her.

  “Ah, merci, Sir Alan,” Madame Pellatan said, nodding. “Mayhap, some waiter or wine steward, a chef to a great house, a store clerk has to part with his last remembrance of better times … so he can pay the rent on his meagre set of rooms, non? Clothing, shoes, and the school fees for his poor children?”

  “I still can’t afford The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba,” Lewrie japed, pulling a comic face, “even if it’s the genuine article.”

  “Clotworthy does have some forgeries, though, Alan,” Jessica stated.

  “Ah, mais oui,” Madame Pellatan brightened. “There are two that are more contemporary that I have seen in Paris before we left. Those are copies, and I told M’sieur Chute so. Marvellously well-forged by a talented man, but forgeries. He said he would return them to the fellow who brought them in.”

  He’ll flog ’em on another dealer, more-like, Lewrie thought.

  “And, on consignment, he isn’t out a penny,” Jessica happily said, “the same way Ackermann’s and other galleries sell my paintings.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Lewrie commented over the rim of his tea cup. “I wonder … perhaps the man who did those two forgeries at Chute’s is the same man who did that Belisarius by David that we saw at Ackermann’s. Do you know any of your fellow artists who fled to London, Madame?”

  “I know very few, Sir Alan,” Madame Pellatan told him, looking a bit redder in the face, “the émigrés that gather once a week that I know are not artistic. Nostalgic, perhaps, but I cannot remember any of our group even mentioning paintings or statuary. Petit-fours and crème brûlées, Parisian café coffee, and our old lives is what we recall, hawn hawn.”

  “Oh, Yeovill made us some ginger snaps,” Lewrie said, lifting a napkin from a plate on the tea table. “Have some, Madame? Quickly, for I’m a dear lover of them, and stand likely t’gobble ’em all up!”

  “You are too kind, Sir Alan,” the older lady said with a laugh, scooping four off the plate at once.

  Good, Chute’s in the clear, Lewrie told himself; and I’m not associated with criminals, hah!

  * * *

  Before Jessica could complete her plans for Pettus and Lucy to wed in at least a modicum of style, there was the pesky matter of a trial for the dog buffers to deal with. Lewrie escorted Jessica and Lucy to the Old Bailey early one morning where they would all testify, with Dasher and Turnbow fetched along in case their part in the affair would be necessary.

  The lads were dressed in their Sunday best, fresh-blacked shoes with shiny pewter buckles, white cotton stockings and un-accustomed tan breeches, white shirts with black neck-stocks, at which they continually tugged, tan waist-coats, and dark blue coats. When Jessica commented that they looked like cherubs, it was almost too much for Dasher.

  “A bath in th’ middle o’ th’ week, I asks ya!” he carped to his mate, Turnbow, “Breeches cleavin’ my ‘nutmegs’ like an
axe, trussed up like a rib roast, an’ stranglin’ on this bloody neck-stock. I can’t wait t’get home an’ get back inta my slops! Don’t see how anybody can stand bein’ dressed this way all th’ time, I don’t!”

  “But Tom,” Turnbow sniggered, “if th’ breeches squeeze yer crutch so bad, ya can sing like a cherub angel!”

  “Ah, geroutofit!” Dasher shot back with a pout.

  “Behave, you two,” Lewrie ordered. “You might have to testify, so you want t’make a good impression.”

  “Lord, I hope they don’t need us,” Turnbow sulked.

  “Then all this is for nothin’? Ceehrist!” Dasher spat.

  As Lewrie and his party entered the court room, he spotted the gang of dog buffers being led in and shoved into the box together, the wee girl, the cart driver, the stringier fellow, and the side of beef who had struck Jessica. They all had been cleaned up and given new clothes by their attorney for the occasion. The bigger fellow glared at everybody, Lewrie most of all, and mouthed a silent curse. He no longer had a right arm, so his borrowed coat was a bad fit and threatened to slip off the stub of shoulder that the surgeon had left him, after Lewrie’s pistol ball had shattered the joint. The rest of them looked scared.

  The barrister who would prosecute was a silk-robed King’s Bencher with a starched and pressed white stock at his throat, and a natty sprigged peruke atop his gingery hair. He spoke with Lewrie, Jessica, and Lucy and made some notes, but didn’t seem too concerned, barely paying any attention to Dasher and Turnbow, or what they had to say of the attack, before the cry of “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!” as the Justice came in and took his seat above everyone, gavelling the court to silence.

  The charges, and the names of the accused were read out, and the felons declared their innocence by turns, the big fellow snarling that everyone present could go to the Devil, for he was not guilty!

  The jury was already seated, so Jessica was called to the witness box and sworn on the Bible.

  Were you and your maid in Green Park on such and such a date? Near the North verge and Piccadilly St.? Your were walking your dogs? And you both were accosted by two men who demanded that you give up your dogs? Aha. Do you recognise the men who did it? Were they armed? And Jessica pointed to the accused, pointing out the bigger man who struck her and dragged her by her wrist in the leash. Do you recognise the second man who showed you his knife? Yes, she did, and pointed him out, too. She had not seen the man who drove the cart, or the urchin girl.