Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  “Thank you, Maria,” she said to the girl. Of course her name would be Maria. “That will be all.”

  “Gracias, señora,” Maria said, with a bright, dimpled smile. Was she one of Mrs. Moffat’s Children in Peril? I wondered.

  “Mr. McCall,” Mrs. Moffat said to me as I watched the lovely Maria walk back down the long hall toward the stairs. “Thank you for coming. Come in, please. My husband will be with you shortly.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  If the big downstairs foyer and the drab upstairs hallway looked like something out of a Gothic horror movie, the rooms into which Mrs. Moffat led me were decorated like a 1960s movie set, with chunky upholstered sofas, loveseats, and matching easy chairs, a leather La-Z-Boy recliner, vaguely Swedish/Danish casual tables and chairs. There were frilly table lamps and stately floor lamps, Oriental carpets over wall-to-wall broadloom, a blond wood console TV and hi-fi in one corner, and a beige brick fireplace in which a log fire burned behind a chain curtain spark screen. A painting hung over the fireplace, an English countryside scene with thatched-roof cottages and fat black-and-white cows. There were other paintings on the walls, too, some old, some less so, all figurative landscapes or still lifes, none even remotely impressionistic or abstract or modern.

  “Let me say how pleased we were to hear of your partner’s improvement,” Mrs. Moffat said.

  “She isn’t out of the woods quite yet,” I said. “But thank you.”

  “Has she been able to provide the police with any information about her attacker?”

  “Not so far.”

  “I’ll remember her in my prayers.”

  I wondered if she’d heard about Anna Waverley’s death. Probably not. I’d heard a report on the radio on my way there, but the police hadn’t released Anna’s name, pending notification, et cetera, so the only way Mrs. Moffat could have known was if someone had told her — assuming, of course, that she hadn’t killed Anna herself, which I considered improbable in the extreme.

  “Uh, Mrs. Moffat, the other night at my sister’s house you said that you knew Anna Waverley.”

  “Did I?” Mrs. Moffat said, a little nonplussed. “I am acquainted with her, of course. She’s a generous contributor to the Children in Peril Network. She and her husband both. Why do you ask?”

  So she hadn’t heard. She would soon enough, though, either from the police, an acquaintance, or the news.

  “What is it, Mr. McCall? Why did you ask me if I know Anna? Has — has something happened to her?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. Oh, hell. “She’s dead.”

  She went pale and wobbled slightly on her feet. “Dead?” she whispered, clutching at the heavy silver crucifix on her breast.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “How?” she asked, steadier on her feet, voice firmer, but still shaky.

  “She was murdered,” I said.

  “Oh, dear Jesus.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said.

  “Pardon me, Mr. McCall,” she said, collecting herself. “I am not normally so faint-hearted. Anna — Mrs. Waverley — was a good person, much closer to God than she was prepared to admit. It’s a horrible shock to have someone you know … Well, of course, you understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  She clutched her big silver crucifix, rubbing it rapidly between her thumb and index finger. She glanced down, seemed surprised to catch herself in the act, and dropped her arm to her side.

  “You must excuse me now,” she said. “My husband will be along momentarily, I’m sure.”

  And she fled, leaving me there, waiting amid the ordinary furniture and conventional paintings. I didn’t have to wait long, though, before another door opened and the ex-Honourable Walter P. Moffat strode into the room.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. McCall,” he said. We shook hands.

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ve been admiring the decor.”

  He smiled. “Most of the house is occupied by my wife’s foundation,” he explained. “These apartments were my father-in-law’s when he was alive. A bit drab, aren’t they? They are much the way they were when he died. Except for the paintings, of course. Like his father, my father-in-law did not believe in art. Fortunately, my wife does not share her father’s attitude, although her taste is somewhat, shall we say, conservative. Come though to my office.”

  I followed him into the other room, a very utilitarian office — for 1960. There was even an old Royal manual typewriter on the credenza behind the desk, although there was a laptop computer on the desk itself.

  “Can I offer you something to drink, Mr. McCall? I have some excellent Scotch.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure I really wanted a drink so early in the day, but I didn’t want to appear unsociable.

  He went to a tall cabinet that looked as though it was made from veneered plywood and opened a door to reveal a meagre collection of liquor bottles. “If you want ice, we’ll have to get some from the kitchen.”

  “Straight up is fine,” I said.

  “Straight up it is, then.” He uncorked a bottle of Chivas Regal and poured a centimetre or two into each of a pair of mismatched cut-glass tumblers. He handed one to me. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” I replied. His idea of excellent Scotch wasn’t mine, but as blended Scotches went, Chivas wasn’t bad.

  He tossed back half of his drink in a single gulp. I sipped mine.

  “Please,” he said. “Sit down.”

  I sat in an easy chair. It was like sitting on an upholstered rock. He lowered his elegant frame onto a sofa, which didn’t look much more comfortable. We stared at each other for a few seconds.

  “By the way,” he said, “how is your partner? Bobbi?”

  “Yes. Much better,” I said. “She regained consciousness on Saturday. She doesn’t remember anything about the attack, though.”

  “Perhaps that’s a good thing,” he said.

  We stared at each other for a few more seconds. I wondered if he’d heard about Anna Waverley’s death.

  “I’m afraid I upset your wife,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “Perhaps you’ve heard. Anna Waverley is dead.”

  “Yes, I had heard,” he said, shaking his big head mournfully. I wondered how, and why he hadn’t told his wife, but he didn’t give me time to ask. “Shocking,” he went on. “Simply shocking. Murdered in her own home. Her husband will be devastated. I didn’t know her well, of course — my wife knew her better than I — but she was a charming person.”

  “Yes, she was,” I said.

  He speared me with a look of suspicion. “Pardon me, but when we spoke at your sister’s home, I had the impression that you did not know her. Was I mistaken?”

  “I just recently made her acquaintance,” I said. If I spent too much time with Moffat, I would end up talking like him. “I found her body.”

  “You did? My heavens, how horrible.”

  “It wasn’t pleasant,” I agreed.

  “No, I’m sure not.” He drank the rest of his Scotch and stared at me some more.

  “How did you hear about Mrs. Waverley’s murder?” I asked.

  “My manager, Mr. Getz, told me,” he said.

  “How did he learn about it?”

  “I’ve no idea. He has numerous contacts in the media. Perhaps one of them. It’s his job to keep abreast of anything that might adversely affect my campaign, directly or indirectly.” He got up and poured himself another two centimetres of Chivas. I shook my head when he held the bottle in my direction. He put the bottle back and resumed his seat. “Shall we get down to business?” he said.

  Why not? I thought. “Mary-Alice tells me you’ve decided to go ahead with the exhibition.”

  “Not precisely,” he said. “I would, however, like to document my collection onto a CD-ROM, which I may make available for sale. I haven’t decided yet. CD-ROM? Is that the correct term?”

  “It is,” I said. “
Generally, just referred to as a CD.”

  “You could do this?”

  “Certainly. How many pieces are we talking about?”

  “Not quite a hundred. Ninety-seven, to be precise.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In my private gallery downstairs. Why don’t I give you a quick tour? That way you can get a better idea of what you will be working with.”

  He tossed back his drink, and I did likewise, then we left the apartment by another door from his office and went down the back stairs, probably once used by servants, perhaps still. Emerging into the main hall, I followed him toward the rear of the house. He stopped before a sturdy door, took a card out of his wallet, and inserted it into a slot above a keypad beside the door. When he removed it, a green light glowed beneath the slot and the door locks thudded. It must be some collection, I thought, as he pulled the door open. Inside, as the door swung shut, he punched a code into a keypad in an alarm panel.

  The room was about thirty feet long and twenty feet wide. It could have been in any gallery in the city, with fifteen-foot ceilings, track lighting running the length of the room, plain flat-white walls. The walls were lined with framed oils, watercolours, and drawings of varying sizes, few larger than about thirty inches square, most smaller. Down the centre of the room stood a row of pedestals upon which were displayed a number of bronze sculptures, figures ranging in size and shape from just a few inches to a couple of feet. The one closest to me was a small standing nude, about the size of a wine bottle, a sturdy little thing that made me think of Maria. Two of the pedestals held painted vases or urns.

  Moffat beamed at me as I slowly walked the length of the room. I wasn’t really looking at the subjects of the sculptures or the paintings and drawings. I was thinking about lighting, glare off the polished surfaces of the bronzes, the varnished surfaces of the oils, whether I would shoot them in situ or set up a seamless backdrop and lights at the end of the room and shoot them all there. The paintings and drawings were all small enough to remove from their frames, place on a low table, and shoot from above using a camera suspended beneath the big tripod, which was equipped with a levelling bubble that would ensure the paintings were absolutely parallel to the focal plane of the camera.

  Then it hit me, everything suddenly jumping into focus, as if I’d been looking at one of those weird computer-generated squiggly abstracts popular in the 1990s called autostereograms, out of which another image would magically appear if you stared at it long enough with your eyes crossed or unfocused. My jaw literally dropped.

  The ex-Honourable Walter P. Moffat had a thing for tits. Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian tits. Every one of the oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, and bronzes in Moffat’s collection depicted women with bared breasts. Even the painted vases. Naked nymphs in limpid pools or cavorting topless in wooded glens. Women climbing into or out of old-fashioned bathtubs or sitting at dressing tables. Ethereal figures draped in diaphanous veils. There was a woman on horseback brandishing a long spear, naked but for a plumed helmet and a short skirt of leathery armour. There was a painting that looked like an early Maxfield Parrish, before the Golden Age of Illustration, but it wasn’t labelled or signed. Nor was the one that resembled a Vargas Playboy pinup. And none of the figures was naked below the waist. Just tits. Hundreds of tits. The whole thing was so astonishingly cheesy it took my breath away.

  Except for the Maxfield Parrish and the Vargas, I didn’t recognize any of the paintings, or the artists’ names or styles, although some seemed vaguely familiar. Many of the oil paintings reminded me of the paint-by-numbers kits my mother had given Mary-Alice and me for Christmas when we were kids, except that none of them had featured nudes. I might have been more interested if they had.

  “It’s one of the finest collections of its kind in the country,” Moffat said proudly.

  “I can believe it,” I said.

  “It’s taken me years to put it together,” he said.

  “I’m sure it has,” I agreed.

  “You might find these interesting,” Moffat said, directing my attention to a small grouping of photographs in the corner by the door.

  I moved closer. There were half a dozen small monochrome prints, all late nineteenth and early twentieth century, nothing more recent — by the 1920s women were baring their breasts at the drop of a camisole, I supposed. Not surprisingly, I recognized some of the photographers’ names, if not the photographs themselves. There was a small sepia-toned print of a nude standing in a pool or stream, which was labelled as being by Julian Mandel, circa 1920. It wasn’t bad, I conceded. Next to it was a photograph from the same period by Arundel Holmes Nicholls of a half-naked girl sitting demurely on a beach. She wasn’t bad, either. But the remaining four were of the anonymous “Dirty French Postcard” school of erotica, better than average, perhaps, but typical.

  “It’s not erotica for the sake of erotica, you understand,” Moffat said. “Although many people mistake it as such. It’s a celebration of the female form, that which makes a female, well, female.”

  “It’s quite, um, remarkable.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  It was all I could do to keep from choking. Was he serious? Of course he was. It was written all over his face as he gazed upon the works on display in his little gallery. I couldn’t wait to tell Bobbi about it. I wondered, too, how Mrs. Moffat felt about her husband’s obsession. I couldn’t imagine her approving. Perhaps she was behind Moffat’s decision not to exhibit the collection to raise money for her foundation.

  “Will you be able to work here?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  We discussed the details of the job. We would set up once and photograph each object on the same display stand, which would be faster than moving the lights and setting up for each object. I told him I wasn’t comfortable about handling such valuable objects, though.

  “Of course,” he said. “Caroline will assist you.”

  “Caroline?”

  “She’s interning, so to speak. She’s a major in art history and conservation at UBC. I don’t know where she’s got to. She was supposed to join us today. No matter. She will be available to assist.”

  We discussed cost. Ninety-seven items, at fifteen minutes to half an hour for each, it wouldn’t be cheap. He didn’t bat an eye when I gave him a ballpark estimate of three to five days work, me and an assistant, which would run about eight hundred a day. I wondered how much his collection was worth, but thought it would be rude to ask.

  “Have you seen enough?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  As we left the gallery, he entered a code into the alarm system. The door locks thunked behind us.

  “Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr. McCall. And who knows, perhaps my wife’s foundation might also have a need for your services from time to time. Let me walk you to the door.”

  “Sir,” I said, as we walked down the long wide hall toward the front of the house. “You’re the only person I know, besides your wife and my brother-in-law, who knew Mrs. Waverley.” I hesitated.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “Do you know anything about her personal life?”

  “No, I can’t say that I do. The only times I ever saw her and her husband socially was at my wife’s fundraising events. They do not share my political views.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if she was having an affair or with whom.”

  “I would not, sir,” he said stiffly.

  “You know how Anna and her husband met, don’t you?”

  “I believe she once worked for him,” Moffat said.

  “That’s right. She was his assistant twenty-five years ago. She had an affair with him. He evidently has affairs with all his assistants.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said. “And if I may offer some free legal advice, sir, I’d be careful about to whom I made such allegations, if I were you.”

  “I meant no disrespect to Mr. Waver
ley or his wife. It was Mrs. Waverley who told me about it.”

  We’d reached the foot of the main staircase, where the scrumptious Maria was waiting.

  “As I said, Mr. McCall,” Moffat said. “I know nothing of the Waverleys’ private life.” He held out his hand. “Thank you again for coming so promptly. We’ll speak soon.”

  He went up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, while Maria showed me the rest of the way to the door.

  As I reached for the door handle of the Liberty, someone called out to me, “One moment, Mr. McCall, please.” I turned to see Moffat’s campaign manager, Woody Getz, striding toward me across the weedy parking apron. He did not look happy. I wondered if I’d somehow violated protocol. Perhaps I’d used his parking space.

  “How are you, Mr. McCall?” he said, holding out his hand, his lacquered comb-over immobile despite the stiffening breeze off the sound.

  “I’m fine,” I replied, gripping his hand briefly. “How are you?” He was flushed and slightly out of breath.

  “Oh, you know how it goes,” he said.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” I asked.

  “I was just wondering how your meeting with Walter went,” he said.

  “Quite well,” I said.

  “What do you think of Walter’s collection?”

  “It’s very interesting,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said, without cracking a smile. “What else did you talk about?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m not asking to be nosy,” he said. “Just doing my job. And part of that is to control — or at least try to control — the flow of information. To avoid unpleasant surprises. You understand.”

  “We didn’t talk politics,” I said.

  “It’s not politics that concerns me,” he said. “Do you follow politics at all?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Well, if you did, you’d know that as often as not the success of a campaign doesn’t come down to the issues but to the personalities. Walter can hold his own on the issues, but I’d like to keep his private life out of it. You understand.”