Much Ado About Lewrie

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Well, if there’s two of them, as alike as two peas in a pod … which they are … one of them’s sure to be a fake,” Rushton declared.

  “Where did ‘Rajah’ Blakeley get his?” Lewrie asked Peter.

  “Ehm … I think he said he found it at Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, in Pall Mall,” Rushton told him, squinting to recall. “A very reliable place, or so I’ve been told.”

  “Well, why don’t we go there and ask where they got it?” Lewrie suggested.

  “Alan, we can’t just barge in and accuse Boydell’s of foisting fake art on people!” Clotworthy objected.

  “We can be more subtle than that, old man,” Rushton rejoined with a tap of a finger alongside his nose. “Can’t we? Mean t’say, we coach over, in my coach with my coat of arms on the doors, stroll in as if my wallet is about to burst if I don’t find something that, ah…”

  “Matches your carpets, or your settees,” Lewrie snidely stuck in.

  “Yes, thank you, Alan,” Rushton said, nodding. “We have always been able to count on your quick wit.”

  “We’re not going to eat, are we?” Chute despaired. “And here, I made sure to fill my wallet with five pound notes this morning.”

  “Say this, then,” Lewrie suggested, “You were at ‘Rajah’s’ supper party, and were quite taken with his Sheba, and wished to have a look round. The owner, or one of his sales clerks’ll tour you about. When he thinks you would buy something, ask him who brought it into the gallery. Private sale, private collection, the last of the family treasures? Might that person have more squirrelled away, and be so in need to maintain life in London that you might be able to buy one for a song, like ‘Rajah’ did? Only five thousand pounds for an old master? Really?”

  “Hmm, that might work,” Rushton said, trying to gnaw the lining of his mouth in thought. “Yes, let’s go.”

  “And we’ll eat after?” Clotworthy said with a sigh.

  * * *

  Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, 52 Pall Mall, quite put Chute’s emporium to shame. For one, it was hushed; boots and shoes didn’t clop on hardwood floors, they faintly swished on half an acre of Axminster or Turkey carpets, and with the more expensive versions hung vertically on some of the walls so they wouldn’t get even a speck of soil before they sold. In several areas there were ancient Greco-Roman columns, or segments of them, the upper plinths with their ornate carvings, along with newer, shorter columns upon which ancient busts and torsos sat. If one wished to create a decorative villa garden from scratch, then Boydell’s was the place to go. If fountains were your pleasure, then look no further, for half-dressed maids stood ready to endlessly pour water from their jugs, ewers, claret, and amphorae whilst angels and chubby cherubs waited to pee for you, once the plumbing was installed.

  And there were paintings galore, small ones, middling ones, and large portraits done by famous artists. One could have a Round-Head general or cavalier, a dandy à la Charles II or King James in armour to hang on one’s wall and hint that he was a distant relation, if the ceiling was high enough. There were landscapes, portraits, religious themed artwork, Greco-Roman classical scenes that could have arrived at the end of some rich and titled man’s Grand Tour of the Continent, then brought here to be sold when he went smash over some investment.

  Did one prefer Dutch painters, German, Spanish, or Italians, or did one specialise in French or British? There they hung, grouped by national origin. Paintings covered almost every inch of wall space.

  “My word, your shop’s miserly, compared t’this,” Lewrie muttered.

  “Don’t remind me,” Chute said with another sigh. “I wonder what consignment fees he charges.”

  “May I help you gentlemen?” a tall clerk asked, gliding up with a grim and haughty look on his phyz, garbed head to toe in the best of Beau Brummel fashion.

  “Peter, Viscount Draywick,” Rushton said, introducing himself with a grin and a tilt of his head. “Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, and an old school chum, Clotworthy Chute, sir. I was at a supper party some nights ago where another Harrow man showed us his art collection, and a new acquisition, and wished to look round to see what you have.”

  Oh, play the titled fool, Peter! Lewrie thought, hiding a smirk; He can work his walking stick like a royal rod and scepter!

  “Any particular country, or era, milord?” the clerk suggested, extending one arm to sweep them towards the row-upon-row of artworks.

  “He had just discovered a Lorrain, The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba, and it opened my eyes. The composition, the vividness, and the ah … overall, uhm, you know?”

  “Of course, milord,” the clerk said with a sage nod, as if this new customer was particularly ripe and ready.

  Lewrie’s eyes were caught by a large painting filled with nude women, titled The Bath of Diana; he’d always favoured the titillating, and still rued that the harem scene he’d bought in 1784 had been sent away when his first wife, Caroline, had laid eyes on it.

  “Too bad Blakeley beat me to it,” Peter tossed out to see what the sales clerk might say. “He said it came from a private collection?”

  “I remember it well, milord,” the clerk replied as they slowly strolled down one row. “From a private collection, indeed. The owner has brought us several pieces over the last year or so. The high cost of London life, sadly. To go to such lengths to save her family valuables from the savage, ignorant mobs when the French Revolution turned so bloody and beastly, then have to sell them at the last, is quite sad. But,” the clerk perked up and donned a wolfish smile, “hopefully, she gained a sustaining windfall, and someone else gained the pleasure of possessing such a magnificent piece.”

  “On consignment, I’d suppose,” Clotworthy idly commented.

  “That is the usual practice, sir, yes,” the clerk agreed.

  “Brought several in, did she?” Lewrie asked. “I wonder what else this lady might have for a hard turn in future?”

  “I could not say, Sir Alan,” the clerk smarmed.

  “Aha!” Peter exclaimed as he got to the English section and took a closer look at a painting of a group of horses. “I like this’un!”

  “Mares And Foals In A Landscape, milord, by George Stubbs,” the clerk announced, “done in Seventeen Sixty-Two.”

  “How much is it?” Peter enthused.

  “Ehm, it is five thousand pounds, milord,” the clerk said.

  “Egad, too rich for my blood,” Peter said with a fake shiver.

  “I do believe that piece is also available as a reproduction, engraved from the original, milord,” the sales clerk imparted, with a faint hint of distaste.

  “No no, an original, or nothing,” Peter said, sighing. “We are late to dinner arrangements. I’ll just have to keep looking round the galleries ’til I see what takes my breath away. Sir Alan, Mister Chute? Shall we go?”

  “Yes, I’m famished,” Chute declared.

  * * *

  “So, what have we learned?” Rushton asked once they were back in his carriage and on their way to the restaurant by the Foreign Office.

  “’Twas a woman, brought it in,” Lewrie said. “And, I begin to suspect it’s a woman we both know, hey, Clotworthy?”

  “That Frog mare, Madame … oh, what’s her name?” Chute struggled to recall.

  “Madame Berenice Pellatan,” Lewrie supplied.

  “Why her?” Chute carped.

  “She sold one at Boydell’s for five thousand, claiming it was from her family collection,” Lewrie told him, “and then one of her compatriots put an identical painting at your place. She never came out and said it was real, only that it could be, so you priced it at three thousand pounds. What’s Boydell’s consignment fee, do you imagine?”

  “Probably not much above thirty percent,” Clotworthy grumbled. “That would’ve netted her thirty five hundred pounds or so. And if I sold the other, she’d get twelve hundred.”

  “And God knows how many other fake paintings are on the London market, this in
stant,” Rushton added. “Chute, who’s the bugger that brought your version in? How’s your elegant Frog to know to come and collect once you’ve sold it?”

  “Well, I’ve his address, of course,” Clotworthy said. “When the time comes, I write him, tell him no one’d pay the asking price, then say it went for two thousand pounds, not three, so he gets only eight hundred, and I pocket the rest.

  “What?” Chute barked as they stared at him “No need to gawp at me. Fine art’s a fickle market, and one takes one’s chances!”

  “I think we need to go to that Frenchman’s address to see if he has any other paintings in the works,” Lewrie told them.

  “We’d have to go back to my emporium to get the address, first,” Chute complained, “else, I wouldn’t know him from Adam, or where he lives. And, d’ye think there might be a pieman on the way? I really need a meat pasty about now. I’m not at my best when hungry. A pasty and a beer, perhaps?”

  “Oh, alright then,” Peter said, flinging himself back into his upholstered bench seat with a sigh. “We’ll go eat, then back to your shop. There’s no real urgency. It’s only a painting.”

  “When we do, though,” Lewrie speculated, “what if the forger has others with him? If we catch him red-handed, he may put up a fight. Maybe we should be armed.”

  “Is this going to turn out like your raid on the dog buffers’ lair all over again?” Chute seemed to quail. “I’m a businessman, not a soldier. I don’t do heroics.”

  “Any weapons at your shop, Clotworthy?” Rushton asked.

  “Well, I’ve a brace of ‘barkers’ should anyone rush in and rob us of the day’s take, but…” Chute explained, or tried to.

  “Topping!” Lewrie cheered. “Once we’ve eat, Peter and I can arm ourselves, just in case. And you can use your walking stick.”

  “On what?” Clotworthy gawped. “Alan, does all this derring-do, neck-or-nothing stuff ever wear thin with you?”

  “Not since we burned down the school governor’s coach house!” Lewrie happily told him. “I’m just a simple sailor, me.”

  “And a lunatic!” Chute grumped, slumping on his seat.

  * * *

  The address of the purported owner of the Claude Lorrain painting, Didier Chalmont, was in Old Compton St., a far better neighbourhood than they would have expected. In Lewrie’s mind, a shady Frog forger would hole up in the East End, or cross the Thames in Southwark, where anonymity, and cheap rents, abounded.

  The house looked rather average, built to rent out sets of rooms, with a well-painted door, good white Portland stonework, and un-broken windows at the front, all showing drapes or curtains.

  “He’s in Number Four,” Peter Rushton said in an exaggerated whisper. “That must place his rooms on the upper storey.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Chute asked.

  “Aye, what’s that about?” Lewrie added.

  “I don’t know,” Rushton shot back. “I thought it proper for this sort of work. And Clotworthy, where did you buy these pistols? From a scrap ironmonger? There’s something rattling in mine,” he complained, rotating his wrist to turn the pistol from side to side.

  “Probably the rammer’s loose,” Lewrie told him.

  “So sorry, Peter, that they’re not a matched set of dueling pistols from Manton’s,” Chute grumbled. “It’s a single-barrel, so it only has to go off once. And when’s the last time you shot anything?”

  “I was a Captain in the Seventeenth Dragoons, you will recall,” Rushton said archly. “I know my way about firelocks.”

  In point of fact, the Honourable Peter Rushton’s military career had been rather short; only a few years after expulsion from Harrow, before his elder brother had died of food poisoning by a foreign kickshaw, a “made dish” that his fiancée had prepared on her own, using too much sauce Mayonnaise, and left out far too long at a sunlit garden party dinner, making Peter a Baron and the eldest, no longer to be put at risk.

  “Let’s just go and get it done,” Lewrie all but ordered.

  “And do what?” Chute insisted on knowing. “Do we just put our shoulders to his door and bash it open, then rush in with guns drawn?”

  “Hmm … this Chalmont’s expecting t’hear from your shop that the forgery’s been sold,” Lewrie extemporised, frowning. “Just knock on the door and announce yourself.”

  “Well, alright then,” Chute glumly agreed, “but if there’s more than him in there, you two will do the barging.”

  They left the carriage and crossed the street, pistols and hands in their overcoat pockets.

  “Saunter, for Christ’s sake,” Lewrie hissed at them. “We look as if we’re a team o’ housebreakers sneakin’ in the dead of night!”

  As was Lewrie’s wont, he took the lead, went up the steps of the stoop, tried the shiny painted door and found it open for all tenants to use, looked at a signboard above a side table in the entry hall, and found that Mr. D. Chalmont was on the first storey abovestairs.

  Rushton gave Chute a wee shove when they got to the door, urging him to knock and announce himself.

  “Mister Chalmont? Are you in? Chute here, from the emporium?” Clotworthy called out, rapping a second time.

  “Ah, oui?” came a voice from within. “M’sieur Chute? Une moment.”

  There were other voices behind that door, and Lewrie and Peter stiffened and griped their pistols more tightly.

  “Sounds like an argument,” Peter said, whispering again.

  “I hear a woman,” Lewrie said, pressing an ear to the door.

  It was a long moment before a key clacked in the door lock, and a bolt was withdrawn. The door opened a mere crack, revealing an eye and a bushy Gallic moustachio.

  “Oui, M’sieur? You come yourself?” a man they assumed to be Chalmont asked.

  “With your money, Mister Chalmont,” Chute lied, smiling sweetly.

  “Ah, oui, come in, come in? Alors, who are they?”

  Lewrie and Rushton pushed past Chute, shouldering the door wide open and sending Chalmont skittering to the far side of a four-place table, where he picked up a rickety-looking chair for a weapon raised over his shoulder.

  “We’re here about your forgery, sir!” Lewrie barked in his best quarterdeck voice. “The Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba? You’ve been exposed! The police are coming!”

  Someone in a bedchamber beyond wailed “Mon Dieu!” another cried “Emmerdement!,” forcing Lewrie to pull his pistol, point it at the quivering Chalmont, who dropped the chair and dashed to a corner of the parlour. Lewrie then kicked open the flimsy door to the next room to see who was wailing, and if they were armed.

  “Well, just God damn my eyes!” he roared.

  It wasn’t a bedchamber, it was a dining room, one with no more furniture than some tall stools and some easels, and a book case along the outer wall just piled with brushes, paints, and cleaning rags.

  There was a tall, lean fellow wearing a smock, interrupted in mid work on a painting just taking shape.

  “God Almighty, a third one?” Rushton cried as he looked into the room, for there on an easel was another Embarkation of The Queen of Sheba. On other easels there was a finished landscape scene that reminded Lewrie of Italy, and its twin, at that stage mostly charcoal or pencil sketches.

  “Oh, that is most un-appetising, I say!” Rushton exclaimed, making a face.

  There were two other people in that room, one a man hastily hauling his trousers up, and a woman clad in only a chemise.

  “Madame Pellatan?” Lewrie cried.

  She was most un-appetising at that moment, for her usual tall, decorated white wig was on the floor, leaving her head covered with a short, mannish mop of frizzy auburn hair, and in only a chemise, her breasts sagged almost to her waist, much like old crones Lewrie had seen in Calcutta, and there was no gown to hide wide hips, rounded belly, and stuffed sausage-like legs.

  “Stay in that corner, or I’ll cudgel you senseless!” Chute was warning Chalmont in the parlour be
hind them. “Parlez-vous cudgel?” The door was locked once more, and the bolt securely thrown to prevent any escape. “Cheat an honest fellow like me, will you, hey?”

  “Oh, cover yourself, Madame,” Lewrie ordered.

  “Oh yes, please!” Rushton agreed.

  “M’sieur chevalier, it is not what you think you see…” Madame Pellatan began to explain, returning to her arch and artful self.

  “It’s plain enough what I see, Madame,” Lewrie shot back, “and I think you’re a little long in the tooth t’be playin’ the innocent coquette. You and your amis here have been paintin’ fakes and sellin’ ’em to the galleries for thousands. And still livin’ on the good will of Saint Anselm’s church. The good Reverend, and Jessica, are going to be so angry and hurt when you’re exposed as a common criminal.”

  “Zere eez nozzing common in what ve do, M’sieur!” the man in the smock most arrogantly said, raising a paint brush on high as if it was the sword of truth. “Ve are artistes! Ze creativity moos be given its reward.”

  “Yes, ten years in prison, or transportation for life!” Rushton hooted. “You reside in England, you obey our laws, or we just might send you back to Bonaparte.”

  “I would adore returning to Paris, and serving the Emperor!” the half-dressed one cried, puffing out a rather thin chest.

  “Oh, put a shirt on, and a sock in it,” Rushton growled, waving his pistol about. “And buss my blind cheeks, you snail-eatin’ Frog.”

  Madame Pellatan and the half-dressed fellow opened the door to a bedchamber and Lewrie got a sight of a bed not only messy, but strewn with overturned wine glasses, plates still containing food, and several used cundums.

  “Well now, what shall we do with them?” Rushton boldly demanded.

  “Send for the police,” Lewrie suggested.

  “What do they know about art, and forgeries?” Clotworthy sneered, having need to thrust the brass tip of his walking stick at his prisoner still cowering in the corner.

  “They know about forged currency,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “so the people who deal with money fraud must be able to do something about paintings that go for thousands of pounds.”