Masterclass

by Morris West

  ‘You don’t have to take it.’

  ‘What can I do? You don’t know him, Max. He’s an overpowering character. He takes control of every situation. Obviously that’s what he did with his wife. That’s what she expresses in her paintings – the sense of entrapment, of yearning for release.’

  ‘What you should do is cut loose from him now.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that, Max. We’ve signed contracts. I’ve based all my plans on the venture.’

  ‘So here’s what you do. You’re angry and embarrassed because your private ground has been invaded and violated. So you write and tell him that. You tell him that you need to conduct your future relationship with businesslike formality. In short, you put up the no-go barriers. Write the note now while I’m here. I’ll have it delivered to Bayard’s office first thing in the morning. Meantime I’m going to call the son-of-a-bitch myself. Give me his home number.’

  As she dictated the number, he punched out the digits and waited until he heard Bayard’s harsh response.

  ‘Who the hell is this? Don’t you know what time it is?’

  ‘This is Max Mather. I’m in Miss Loredon’s apartment. You’ve had a man watching her. His name is Lou Kernsak of the KNK Investigative Agency. He’s been parked outside her apartment for several nights. She is frightened and distressed. She called me. I spoke to Kernsak; I told him I had a message from you. He gave me his name and his card; I sent him off. He’ll call you in the morning for fresh instructions. You pull him off the job, Mr Bayard, or you’re in deep trouble.’

  ‘Mr Mather, I cannot tell you how much I regret this incident but there is a perfectly simple explanation…’

  ‘Save it. Just listen. What Miss Loredon decides to do about this is her own business. My advice to her would be to sever all connection with you and sue you on every bloody count she could dig up. And just to close out your record for the evening’s surveillance, I arrived here at 11.20 in response to Miss Loredon’s summons and I’ll be spending the night here to make sure there is no further harassment. Good night, Mr Bayard.’

  He put down the receiver and turned to Anne-Marie. ‘Have you got a drink in the house? I think we’re both going to need one.’

  Over the drinks he told her of his conversation with Hugh Loredon. She shook her head sadly.

  ‘I’m not surprised. My father’s been chasing women all his life; that’s what broke up his marriage to my mother.…But why he couldn’t tell me is something I don’t understand. He’s never been reticent about his other affairs – one of which was with a girl-friend of mine.’

  ‘This time,’ Mather told her firmly, ‘there’s murder involved – and a jealous husband who is quite powerful in the art world. Also Hugh was questioned by the police in connection with the murder. That’s quite a complicated confession to make to your own daughter. Besides, after tonight’s episode I’m beginning to believe he could be right about Bayard.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think about that. I agree that I should put the barriers up. I can’t lose the studio because the lease is already signed. However, if he wants to withdraw the exhibition, it wouldn’t be worth my fighting him.’

  ‘You won’t lose the exhibition’ – Mather was emphatic – ‘because Ed Bayard can’t lose face. He has to come up with an excuse that will placate both of us – you because he has a big yen for you and me because I’m an eyewitness to the folly he’s just committed.’

  ‘But what excuse can he possibly give?’

  ‘Don’t try to guess. Let’s wait and see. Now settle down and write that note. Make it short, hurt and angry.’

  As she began to write, he reminded himself that he too was practising a deception upon her. He had not said anything about the briefcase or Hugh Loredon’s sudden flight to Europe. The truth was that he needed time and privacy to see exactly what Hugh Loredon had dumped in his lap – plus the freedom to deny, if need be, that he had ever set eyes on it. The murder of Madeleine Bayard was still an open case on the books and the moment the exhibition was announced the inquiry would be revived. The press would ask questions; the public would respond with a flurry of activity and the old fear of copycat crime would be in everyone’s mind – including his own and Anne-Marie’s.

  That was one side of the argument. The other was that every concealment and half-truth eroded another fragment of their relationship, left her that mite more isolated in a hostile world. So by the time she had finished her letter, he had decided to give her the latest facts.

  ‘Just before you called, a messenger arrived from your father who apparently left for Europe tonight. The messenger brought a note and a briefcase. The note simply gave me permission to tell you what you’ve just heard. I don’t know what’s in the briefcase and you mustn’t know, in case you’re ever questioned by the police. I’m in a different position. I have no direct connection in time or in relationship with the event. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

  ‘I do…and I’m grateful and I’ve had more than I can take for one day.’

  ‘Let me read what you’ve written to Bayard.’

  He was surprised at the vehemence of her protest:

  I am shocked beyond words that you, a respectable lawyer, could commit such a gross invasion of privacy. I am not your wife, I am not your mistress; I am a tenant in a building which you own. I have contracted to exhibit your deceased wife’s pictures.

  I cannot imagine by what right or what fiction you dare to have a paid spy report on my movements. As soon as possible I shall take legal advice to protect myself from further invasion. Meantime I reserve all my rights to redress for this present intolerable violation.

  Anne-Marie Loredon

  ‘That’ll do nicely,’ Mather told her. ‘Now go to bed. I’ll hang around for half an hour or so, then stroll home.’

  ‘But I thought you said you were staying?’

  ‘Pure propaganda to deceive the enemy.’

  ‘Please…I’d like you to stay. It’s lonely in Manhattan when you’re scared.’

  SIX

  Next morning when he left Anne-Marie’s apartment, Max Mather called at a pharmacy and bought two pairs of rubber gloves.

  Arrived at his apartment he switched on the answer-phone, put on the rubber gloves, took Hugh Loredon’s briefcase out of the closet and laid out the contents piece by piece on the dining table.

  There were three diaries, each bound in leather and closed with a metal clasp. There were half a dozen octavo-size sketchbooks, two children’s exercise books filled with notes, studies and diagrams, and three bundles of letters tied with rose-red ribbon.

  The handwriting in the diaries and notebooks was a small, beautifully clear calligrapher’s script. Mather, who had spent a large part of his life poring over historic manuscripts, was instantly entranced by the simple beauty of the scripted pages. The sketches – in pen and ink, pencil or brush, some coloured, some not – had the same cursive fluency, the same sureness and economy of line as the script itself. He was so taken with the first rhythmic impact of the pages that for a few moments their subject matter escaped him.

  Then it hit him. He was looking at a whole series of erotic narratives, meticulously yet joyously executed in line and wash. Mather was familiar with pornography, ancient and modern; familiar too with all the colourations of the sexual act – triumphant, violent, tender, perverse, destructive…but here the overriding tone was joy, orgiac and exultant.

  Then he noticed something else. The figures, the faces and the physical attributes were closely observed – images of real characters in a continuing story. One Bacchic figure, regularly repeated, was clearly recognisable as Hugh Loredon. Another was a startling likeness of Danny Danziger. Nowhere was there a personage who remotely resembled Edmund Bayard, but the woman at the centre of every event had to be Madeleine herself.

  The notebooks were professional documents in every sense of the word: jottings about the work of other artists, quick reminders of unusual compositions
or colour harmonies, a sentence or two on a scene glimpsed in a subway, illustrated by a thumbnail sketch made with an eyebrow pencil. There were erotic themes here too, but they were moments only. This was a craftsman’s vademecum in which the object as seen, the vision as extrapolated from the object, the means to attain and record the vision, were the prime matters of record.

  Mather himself had been too well trained not to admire the strict grammatical discipline which Madeleine Bayard had imposed on herself. The fluent grace of her sketches was a hard-won triumph. He could not but think how valuable this material would be as an introduction to and an interpretation of the exhibition pieces. He wondered idly what Bayard would do if it suddenly showed up in the catalogue.

  Then a new and grimmer thought struck him. If Bayard knew of the existence of this material, he had a clear motive for murder. If he only guessed at it, there was good reason why he had handed over so clean a building – floors sanded, walls undercoated. He had first gutted the place to find where the material was hidden. Mather closed the sketchbooks and turned his attention to the diaries.

  They were not chronicles of events but the record of an inward life set down without calculation or restraint. The directness and intensity of their emotion were quite stunning. Poignant phrases leaped from the page:

  I am given a talent to show wonders; but I live in a city of the blind.

  What Edmund has learned from the law is not justice but tyranny, and the measure of his tyranny is that in spite of all he has done to me, I am still constrained to love him.

  None of the other men who say they love me are strong enough to liberate me. Or do they want me captive because the slave girl is better trained and plays more freely than the free?

  There is a streak of madness in my husband. The terror is that he recognises it, he nurtures it and calls it up at will like a familiar demon. I suppose one could say that I am mad too – but mine is a happy madness, a meeting of willing bodies, a sleep full of bright dreams.

  When I show my canvases to Hugh or Louis or René, they are bored. They see only my body and think only of the pleasure it will give them.

  As his eye was carried along by the beautiful calligraphy – without a single blot or erasure – Mather felt himself tossed like a cockleshell boat in a seaway between troughs and surges of conflicting emotions: pity, indignation, sexual yearning, wonder at the mystery of this woman pleading from beyond the grave. And yet she was not pleading. She was simply telling – as though the acts of writing and drawing and painting were in themselves a healing sacrament.

  He was too disturbed to address himself to the letters. They could wait until he had identified the writers from either the diaries, the notes or the sketchbooks – or all three. He put the material back in the briefcase and locked it again in the hall closet. This done, he stripped off the rubber gloves, made himself coffee and a cheese sandwich and sat down to think through the situation.

  First he gave full marks to Hugh Loredon. The man was a perfect scam artist. In one brief morning he had endowed Mather with the care of his daughter, dumped on him an embarrassing and dangerous piece of murder evidence and then slipped out of the country. Now, quite literally, Max Mather was left holding the bag. Loredon would let him hold it until it suited him to reclaim it. On the other hand, he could deny all knowledge of it. Mather, whose designs needed an immaculate record, would be hard put to prove otherwise.

  However there was always a counterplay – a trick to pay back the trickster – and this one appealed mightily to Mather.

  Anne-Marie was about to present to the world a new and hitherto unknown talent. Given a successful exhibition, the price of Madeleine Bayard’s works would skyrocket. Biographers and researchers would compete for material on her life. Dealers would pay high prices for autographs, letters and especially for sketches and graphic studies.

  And lo, here was Max Mather holding a briefcase full of scandalously precious autograph material and a splendid series of erotica for the underground carriage trade. So obvious ploy: take the stuff to Europe, lodge the originals in a safe-deposit with Artifax and make photostat copies as bait for the big-money buyers. As for Hugh Loredon, he could go dance a jig in Times Square while he figured out how to establish title to evidentiary material which he should not have concealed in the first place and should never have palmed off on Max Mather in the second.

  However, there were other characters in the drama and the role of each needed critical definition. First there was himself, Max Mather, home from exile and just beginning to wear respectability with comfort. Max Mather had two Raphael portraits and a set of cartoons that he needed to bring to market without scandal. He could not, dared not, jeopardise this high endeavour for man or woman, or even to indulge his own freakish humour.

  Then there was Anne-Marie Loredon, companion and friend of the good days in Florence. She was gutsy and ambitious, but she was learning the hard way that there were no free lunches and very few friends in the market-place.

  Which raised the problem of Bayard himself – the attorney whose wandering wife had been murdered by person or persons unknown but whose posthumous testimony, if ever it were brought to the notice of the police, might well put him in the dock. And yet, and yet.…How much weight would Madeleine’s testimony bear? How would a jury judge between the madness imputed to her husband and the madness confessed by the wife? But there was another question simpler and more immediate: what would Bayard do if he knew that Max Mather was the present holder of his wife’s papers? He would be hard put to lay legal claim to them. Would he be secure enough in his innocence to inform the police and force them to take possession? Would he perhaps be ready to kill for them?

  As if in answer to this question the telephone rang. Edmund Bayard was on the line; he came straight to the point.

  ‘Mr Mather, I was very upset by our conversation last night. On reflection I recognise that I did a very foolish thing; but it was not without reason. You yourself advised me that the wrong publicity about the exhibition could excite morbid interest and lead to copycat repetition of the crime. I wanted to protect Miss Loredon, not to intrude upon her, but I went the wrong way about it. My only excuse is that I still live in the shadow of my wife’s tragic end. I am writing to express my regrets to Miss Loredon and I am telephoning to express my thanks for your stout defence of her interests, also my own personal respect for your prompt action.’

  ‘That’s very civil of you, Mr Bayard. I appreciate it; I’m happy to forget the incident.’

  ‘Unfortunately it will not be easy for me to forget. Miss Loredon has written me a very strong note of protest. I understand her feelings. I accept them. However, I do feel it’s sad and I am calling to ask your help in restoring our previous friendly relationship.…’

  ‘I’d like to offer you some serious counsel.’

  ‘Please.’ Bayard was eagerness itself. ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘Do exactly as Anne-Marie asks. Leave matters be for a while. Put a little space between you. Let her go about the task of setting up the exhibition. It’s a big job, as you know. She’ll appreciate some quiet unemotional cooperation. I know this girl, believe me. The reason we’ve remained good friends is because I’ve learnt never to push her; I let her walk her own road up to a decision.’

  ‘Then I shall take your advice, Mr Mather, and trust that a change may not be too long in coming. Thank you very much. One other matter.…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Anne-Marie has great trust in your judgment.’

  ‘Not really, Mr Bayard. She’s sure of only one thing about me.’

  ‘Oh, and what is that?’

  ‘That I’m not about to ask her for anything.’

  ‘But you did ask her for a job.’

  ‘Correction: she asked me. Before ever we left Florence, she asked me whether I’d like to play Berenson to her Duveen. I declined. The position is that I represent her in Europe but maintain my own autonomy.’

  ‘I com
mend your wisdom, Mr Mather. I hope we may one day become friends. Thank you for your patience.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Mr Bayard.’

  Five minutes later he was on his way downtown to keep his appointment with Leonie Danziger. He found her tousle-haired and distracted with a pile of copy in front of her. She plunged straight into work.

  ‘Here…this is my commentary and your text hooked together. Sit down over there and read it carefully. Make your notes in the margin. Then I’ll give you a real surprise packet!’

  She pushed him into a chair and set him reading and proofing the text. He had to pick his way through a forest of printer’s marks and editorial symbols, but it was worth the effort. The document she had produced – selections from his primary text with her own annotations – was fast-moving, clear and authoritative, a world away from his first half-baked version. He pushed the pile of sheets back across the table.

  ‘You’ve done me proud. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. Now take a look at what our lord and master, the great Harmon Seldes, has done. You’ve got to hand it to him; when he’s good, he’s very, very good. Look at the photographic layout. That’s what I meant when I said he would exploit this story in ways you’ve never dreamed of. Read it carefully.’

  First there was an editorial, signed by Seldes. It announced eloquently:

  In this issue we are proud to publish extracts from a notable research work by Mr Max Mather, a young American scholar who has been working in comparative obscurity as archivist to a noble Florentine family. The work deals with the domestic economy of the Tuscan region at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Compiled from contemporary records – account books of the estate steward, family correspondence and commercial documents – it is authentic, informative and entertaining. Miss Leonie Danziger’s brilliant editing and illuminating commentary have reduced the original text to manageable size for readers of our magazine without any loss of continuity.