A Family Affair

by Michael Innes

  ‘I see all that. In fact, I keep on seeing something very like it in connection with one or two other affairs. But be honest, Mr Meatyard. You were had for a proper Charlie – and in solid LSD.’

  ‘£8,000, Sir John.’ Mr Meatyard – whom Appleby was beginning to take to – suddenly smiled cheerfully. ‘A stiff bill for the start of an education in art, you might say. And I’ll show you what I got for it. Painted by hand, sure enough. But you couldn’t say much more than that.’

  ‘£8,000?’ There was the most innocent surprise in Appleby’s voice. ‘Not peanuts, of course. But not far off it. You have been a minor victim, Mr Meatyard.’

  ‘A minor victim?’ Perhaps for the first time, Mr Meatyard glanced at Appleby with unflawed respect. ‘Eight thousand quid for “Autumn Woods”, and you talk about peanuts?’

  ‘It was called that?’

  ‘ “Autumn Woods” – and signed “Jos Reynolds”, bottom right.’ Unexpectedly, Mr Meatyard roared with laughter. ‘I don’t deny, mark you, that eight thousand quid hurt a little. And that being had for a sucker hurt a good deal more. But you’re not going to leave this house believing that I don’t see the joke. Would you say, now, that we might have a drink on it?’

  Appleby, although not very anxious for another drink before dinner, would have been churlish to decline this proposal. Mr Meatyard rose and toddled – physically, he had a slight resemblance to Mr Hildebert Braunkopf – to what appeared to be an impeccable piece of eighteenth-century cabinet work in the Chinese taste. He pushed something – perhaps the head or tail of a curly golden dragon – and an impressive array of bottles and glasses was instantly revealed, bathed in a tasteful pinkish light. Appleby almost expected his host to roar with laughter again, since this contraption appeared so clearly to date from the pre-aesthetic period of the Meatyard life-style. Mr Meatyard, however, merely poured gin and vermouth with an anxious and precise attention to the proportions in which his guest signified that his pleasure lay.

  ‘ “Minor victim”,’ Mr Meatyard said, returning to his chair. ‘Could we get that clear?’

  ‘The set-up that took you in, Mr Meatyard, involved a certain outlay, as you can see. What might be called research, to begin with, in order to find a gull.’

  ‘A what, Sir John?’

  ‘A gull – old-fashioned word for a dupe. Then there was the studio, or supposed studio, and the stuff exhibited in it. There was the getting in and out of it in a way that would leave the fewest possible traces if you cut up really rough, and the police pitched in their resources in a big way. All that would take time, wouldn’t you agree? And time is money.’

  ‘That’s a true word.’ Mr Meatyard had nodded appreciatively. ‘Many’s the time I tell it to my younger men. “Lads,” I say, “time’s brass”. You have something there, Sir John.’

  ‘So a mere £8,000 gross was not all that large a figure. Or not for the class of criminal we’re dealing with. I don’t want to sound disparaging, Mr Meatyard. But in the series of frauds I’m investigating, yours must be regarded as comparatively small beer.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Not unnaturally, there was some indignation distinguishable in Mr Meatyard’s tone. ‘Not really rating, perhaps, for the top-level attention of you folks?’

  ‘Come, sir – you can’t quite say that. Not after saying yourself that you’d parted with no more than a few five-pound notes. But there’s something I must make clear. I’m not inquiring into this matter in any official way. My days as a policeman are behind me.’

  ‘Do you mean that somebody has hired you as a private detective?’

  ‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to anybody to do that.’

  ‘Then you’re acting out of pure curiosity?’ A slight impatience had come into Mr Meatyard’s voice. ‘Of course, it’s a great pleasure to meet you, Sir John. But, all the same–’

  ‘I’d rather call it a sporting interest. A match at long odds, you might say.’

  ‘Well, of course, that’s another matter.’ Mr Meatyard spoke with revived interest. ‘I’m always ready for a bit of sport. Or a bit of a flutter, as you might say. Martha and I usually look in on the tables when we go to the Riviera. And why not? A little of it never did any harm to those that can afford it. Are you saying that those crooks might be uncommonly hard to catch?’

  ‘Just that. I have a line on several of their jobs – but they stretch over quite a term of years, and fresh clues will be difficult to find. But something might be done, it seems to me, if we put our heads together. A man of your well-known abilities, Mr Meatyard, would be a formidable opponent.’

  ‘But we’d need Martha too.’ Mr Meatyard had spoken suddenly and incisively. ‘And here she is.’

  9

  Sir John Appleby was presented to Mrs Meatyard in form, and the lady provided by her husband with a rum and blackcurrant. She was a comfortable woman, whom one would not have supposed given to the ready expression of emotion. Nevertheless her expression kindled promisingly – Appleby thought – as soon as the purpose of his visit was made clear to her.

  ‘I never did want the thing dropped,’ she said, ‘but Albert is always too considerate. He couldn’t bear the thought of our friends poking Charlie at me. I don’t deny but what they would have. You know what friends are.’

  ‘At both of us,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘But I tell Martha it was business instinct, Sir John – and it’s business instinct that has made me what I am. Very bad for business indeed, is being laughed at. I’ve seen it time and again.’

  ‘But Albert shouldn’t have concealed that he lost all that money. Has he shown you “Autumn Woods”?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Albert, and not me, will have to do the showing of it to you. We keep it in the chauffeur’s lavatory at the back of the house. I had it valued, Sir John, just to make quite sure. It was before Albert and I had taken our fancy to pictures, and of course we were that ignorant you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Your first response to “Autumn Woods”, Mrs Meatyard, was one of admiration and pleasure?’

  ‘I dare say I thought it very pretty.’ Mrs Meatyard glanced at Appleby with faint amusement, and it was clear that she was far from being a stupid woman. ‘But when we found out about 1792–’

  ‘1792?’

  ‘About Sir Joshua having died then. It’s been a joke between Albert and me ever since. “1792”, we say to each other. Well, when we knew just how badly we’d been cheated, I had a dealer to come and look at the thing. He said nothing. Very much the gentleman, he was, and so the situation embarrassed him. Then, point-blank, I asked him what he’d give me for “Autumn Woods”, frame and all. At that he caught my eye, you might say, and that seemed to cheer him up.’

  ‘Martha has a way with people,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘She learned to get along with the highest in the land a tidy time before I did.’

  ‘“Fifteen shillings, Mrs Meatyard,” he said to me. So I gave him a stiff tot of Albert’s best whisky, and we had a good laugh together. Not that it was all that of a joke, if you ask me – seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds five shillings wasn’t. Of course, to this day Albert makes light of it. “Plenty more where that came from,” he says. Not that Albert doesn’t know the value of money, Sir John. He was a fine upstanding lad, as you can guess. But I made sure his head was screwed on the right way before I married him.’

  ‘It was very prudent of you.’ The Meatyards were north-country folk, and Appleby was coming to feel much at home with them. ‘You’d still like to see the thief – for he was a thief, and nothing else – be caught up with and meet his deserts?’

  ‘Maybe, Sir John – although I think I’d hardly call myself a vindictive woman. Mostly, it’s just that I’d like the thing explained to me – made a bit of sense of. I don’t like unsolved mysteries.’

  ‘No more do I.’ Appleby, like the gentleman who had come to value ‘Autumn Woods’, found Mrs Meatyard cheering him up. ‘But just where do you think the chief myster
y in the thing lies?’

  ‘In all that about Sir Joshua.’ Mrs Meatyard’s reply was convinced and immediate. ‘It was no joke, as I’ve said. A plan to go after £8,000 isn’t a joke. But the part about Sir Joshua was. You see what I mean?’

  ‘I think I do.’ Appleby looked seriously at this admirable woman. ‘But will you explain?’

  ‘It’s something I can hear, Sir John. On an inner ear, as you might say. And I can see it, too. In one of those clubs in Pall Mall. Two or three idle upper-class men – the kind Albert and I meet at the banquets of the livery companies – with half a skinful of liquor in them. And one of them says to the others: “I’ll wager you I can find a well-heeled character in the City of London so damned ignorant that he can be persuaded to have his wife’s portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds”. And another of them says: “Done! But deuced hard times, old boy. Shall we make it a dozen of Moët et Chandon ’59” Sir John, can you hear that?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Meatyard, I can.’

  ‘Martha,’ Mr Meatyard said, ‘has uncommon power of mind. If she’d gone into cost accountancy, there would have been no stopping her.’

  ‘But it doesn’t seem to connect up with the £8,000.’ Mrs Meatyard, with a certain air of homely connoisseurship, took a sip at her rum and blackcurrant. ‘You see what I mean? Going after £8,000 is sensible enough, whether criminally or otherwise. But relying on Albert and Martha Meatyard’s not knowing that Sir Joshua Reynolds is dead belongs to what you might call a world of pure fun. Why shouldn’t they have said Kokoschka or Coldstream or Sutherland? Supposing they put through the whole fraud quick enough, there would have been far less risk in that. So we have a hard-bottomed fraud–’

  ‘Martha,’ Mr Meatyard said, ‘never minces her words.’

  ‘We have a hard-bottomed fraud and a typical old-fashioned gentlemanly practical joke queerly mixed up. It annoys me, Sir John. I’d gladly find another £8,000 myself just for the explanation of it.’ Mrs Meatyard checked herself. For the first time, she seemed momentarily confused. ‘I always say things wrong,’ she said. ‘But Albert has taught me my way around. You won’t think, Sir John, that I’m offering you a cheque.’

  ‘I’ve already assured your husband that I haven’t turned private detective.’ Appleby found himself taking yet further satisfaction in the Meatyards. ‘But, Mrs Meatyard, what about that dozen of Moët et Chandon? I get it if I clear up this affair, and you get it if I don’t?’

  ‘Not that at all. We’ll simply have one of those large bottles – a magnum, isn’t it called? – between us if you succeed. But only, of course, if Lady Appleby sometimes comes to town.’

  ‘Nous,’ Mr Meatyard said happily. ‘What the classical Greeks and Romans called nous. Martha has it.’

  ‘But there is one idea that has occurred to me,’ Mrs Meatyard went on. ‘There’s no great harm in a joke. So until the moment that what you’re up to can be proved not a joke, there’s not all that trouble coming to you if you’re found out. It’s not criminal to shake hands with Albert and call yourself Sir Joshua Reynolds. It’s not even criminal to lead Albert round a lot of worthless pictures and assure him they’re masterpieces. So you’ve done nothing criminal until the very last phase of your plot.’

  ‘Collecting,’ Mr Meatyard said, ‘£8,000 for “Autumn Woods”, signed “Jos Reynolds”, bottom right.’

  ‘There’s a great deal in what you say.’ Appleby looked thoughtfully at Mrs Meatyard. A woman with so sound a head was likely to have an accurate memory as well. ‘But about one thing I’m not very clear. Precisely how did the whole thing begin? Wasn’t there something about an advertisement?’

  ‘It began with that, all right. “Eminent portrait painter accepts commissions under conditions of confidence”.’ Mrs Meatyard finished her rum and blackcurrant. ‘We didn’t realize that it sounded a bit off. In such a high class of newspaper too, it was.’

  ‘It has rather a curious ring. You or your husband just happened to notice it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. And there, Sir John, is the one point at which I criticize Albert. He was at the golf club, and it seems they got talking about having their wives painted. Boasting about it, I shouldn’t be surprised. And somebody thrust this advert under Albert’s nose. Only he couldn’t afterwards at all remember who.’

  ‘That’s certainly a very great pity indeed.’ Appleby found himself regarding Mr Meatyard with sober reproach. ‘You’re sure it was like that? You didn’t simply decide not to be able to remember – because you didn’t want the joke going the rounds at the club?’

  ‘Honest to God, Sir John.’ Mr Meatyard had actually blushed. ‘We’d all had a couple, if the truth be told.’

  ‘Albert is very temperate,’ Mrs Meatyard said. ‘Very temperate indeed. But you know what gentlemen are after golf. He brought the advert home with him, and we answered it that evening.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, this young man called, explaining he was acting as an agent. Very well spoken, he was.’

  ‘Could you say just how well spoken?’

  ‘It struck me he was a cut above what you might call that kind of errand. And trying to hide the fact.’

  ‘I see. As it happens, that interests me quite a lot. It chimes with a rather similar occasion I’ve been hearing about. And he explained this business of confidential commissions?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And it seemed to turn out quite respectable and above board.’ Mrs Meatyard considered. ‘Or almost above board.’

  ‘You had come to think there might be something disreputable about it?’

  ‘I had,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘It wasn’t what would occur to a woman with a refined mind like Martha. But I thought this fellow might paint a man’s fancy girls – see?’ For a moment Mr Meatyard was unashamedly vulgar. ‘And in the altogether, perhaps – or something even rather less nice than that.’

  ‘No doubt it was a reasonable supposition.’ Appleby thought fleetingly of Nanna and Pippa. ‘But this apprehension proved unfounded?’

  ‘It was a straight business matter.’ Mr Meatyard had recovered his poise as a pillar of commercial society. ‘It seemed that this eminent portrait painter had gone on contract on exclusive terms. Mark you, I found out later – when I took up the whole subject, as I said – that something of the kind might be true enough. Some pretty big names among the painters do just that: undertake to work full-time over a period of years for one dealer only. Well, that was what we were told this chap had done. But he was looking round for an outside job or two on the quiet. And he was willing to offer attractive terms.’

  ‘Of course we pricked up our ears at that,’ Mrs Meatyard said. ‘After all, brass is brass.’

  ‘Most certainly it is.’ Appleby, who had brought up a fair-sized family on a professional income, found no difficulty in agreeing with this. ‘But there were other conditions?’

  ‘It would have to be kept quiet about for two or three years. In particular, we mustn’t mention the artist’s name.’

  ‘Which turned out,’ Mr Meatyard said cheerfully, ‘to be Sir Joshua Reynolds. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” the young man said to us. It must have been his big moment.’

  ‘It must, indeed. He might have found himself being kicked out of your house there and then. But he saw that he’d got away with it, and he advised you to ring up some picture dealer in Bond Street?’

  ‘Yes – a classy place I’d noticed in passing often enough. He told me just what to ask. What might I expect to have to give for a first-class portrait by Reynolds. Just that. And the answer I got didn’t half stagger me, I must say. But, of course, there was to be this cut-price element because of its being done on the QT. So I agreed to explore the matter further. And this young man and I went off in a taxi together to call on Sir Joshua. Rich – eh, Sir John? Enough to make a man laugh till his sides ache.’

  ‘I admit that it has its funny aspect.’ Making this discreet reply, Appleby found himself in fact overtak
en by laughter of a quite immoderate sort. And this proved to be infectious. Whether or not the Meatyards had at one time been liable to wake up in the night and blush all over at the thought of their folly, they commanded a wholly agreeable attitude to it now.

  ‘1792’, Mrs Meatyard said, recovering.

  ‘1792’, Mr Meatyard echoed. ‘And when I came home, it was with –’ Less controlled than his wife, Mr Meatyard found himself unable to go on.

  ‘It was with “Autumn Woods” under your arm,’ Appleby said. ‘And signed by Jos. Reynolds, bottom right.’

  ‘And now we come to the atelier of the artist.’ Mr Meatyard, who had sunk back in his chair after failing to persuade Appleby to another drink, chuckled reminiscently. ‘Not what the French call an atelier libre, although I’ve no doubt I expected that. A nude girl holding a tambourine, and long-haired fellows strolling in and out with sketch-books, in what they call a haze of tobacco smoke.’

  ‘I see that you had already read,’ Appleby said, ‘about la vie de Bohême.’

  ‘Trilby, eh?’ Mr Meatyard was delighted. ‘And the quartier latin. Of course, I’ve run over all that since taking up pictures. But this place was a surprise, I don’t mind telling you. In Mayfair, and done up regardless. Mind you, some things were as you would expect. Sir Joshua had uncommonly long hair, and a velvet jacket covered with dabs of paint. Very old-world, he was – very old-world and courteous. But affable as well. And courtesy and affability don’t always go together, let me tell you.’

  ‘I’ve often noticed it,’ Appleby said. ‘But, of course, he’d be affable as well as courteous – wouldn’t he? – when he was after £8,000. By the way, how old would you say Sir Joshua was? Another youngish man, like his emissary?’