A Family Affair

by Michael Innes

  Lady Canadine’s response to this was merely to give her distant kinswoman the ghost of a resigned glance. It seemed to combine an acknowledgement of the impropriety of her husband’s talk with an indication that she herself was much too well bred to take any open issue with it at the moment.

  ‘Of course, when we opened up the house and gardens on a straight commercial basis, with no nonsense about local charities and so forth, we ought to have got this confounded indecent statue out of the way. I see that clearly enough now. But the fact is, it was a bit of a draw. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, you might say. My father would stroll up here with two or three cronies after dinner, and the stupid thing would amuse them. And so with the trippers. Just the men, you know, as with those smutty little wall paintings at Pompeii. I blame myself for not having put a stop to it. After all, it was Julia’s duckweed that surrounded it, so permitting it wasn’t really at all the thing.’ Lord Canadine produced this sudden turn as a simple English gentleman without evincing any sign of self-consciousness. ‘So that’s the story of the statue, more or less. I think we ought to be getting back to the house for tea.’

  There was nothing for it but her best behaviour, Judith told herself as, fifteen minutes later, she accepted a sandwich from her attentive host. Her visit hadn’t been precisely an imposition, but she certainly wasn’t entitled to assume the slightest degree of familiarity with the Canadines. She couldn’t herself recur to the subject of the stolen statue in Lady Canadine’s presence – not after having been told it was a theme Lady Canadine didn’t care for. But Lord Canadine had seemed quite willing to be communicative, and this gave Judith an idea. Having continued to talk gardening over her first sandwich, she turned firmly to railways over her second. After all, it was no more than civil to show some awareness of this master interest of her host’s. The subject was not one to which Judith had addressed her mind for some time. Indeed, her only intimate acquaintance with it had been made in the schoolroom, or even the nursery, through the medium of a prized possession of her brother Mark called The Wonder Book of Trains. Her information, therefore, couldn’t remotely be called up-to-date. But then a glimpse of the park at Netherway told one that its owner’s interest in steam locomotion was organized on historical principles. Could Lord Canadine have possessed himself of George Stephenson’s celebrated ‘Rocket’ – or still better of that steam road-carriage in which Nicholas Cugnot achieved, in the year 1770, a speed of three miles an hour – he would undoubtedly have given it pride of place in his collection. Judith, whose memory harboured such normally useless pieces of information as that the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed in the same year that the Panama Canal was begun, felt that it was ground upon which, at least for a brief period, she could put up a reasonable show. And Lord Canadine, suitably impressed, would offer to conduct her round his collection before she departed. Just this happened. Lord Canadine produced for Lady Appleby’s acceptance a pictorial plan of his model railway system, and traced for her, with a well-manicured finger, the sundry gradients, embankments, and tunnels which he had constructed for it. Judith was so enchanted that, half an hour later, and after parting from Lady Canadine with sundry reciprocal undertakings as to the exchange of interesting roots and tubers, she found herself strolling through the park under convoy of her host. Scrambling in and out of the cabs of this vintage locomotive and that, she continued to keep her end up as well as she could. She ended by feeling far from certain that Lord Canadine wasn’t amused. And this prompted her to a change of plan.

  ‘How did you know,’ she asked suddenly, ‘that I was Lady Appleby?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The tone of Lord Canadine’s voice was politely uncomprehending.

  ‘Your wife was speaking of a kinswoman, and introduced me simply as Judith Appleby. But you said “Lady Appleby” almost at once.’

  ‘By Jove, so I did! I remember it perfectly. Julia must have mentioned you on some previous occasion.’

  ‘That isn’t possible, I’m afraid. Lady Canadine had never heard of me.’

  ‘You dropped in out of the blue?’ This time, Canadine was more frankly amused. ‘People do, of course. Men who are interested in locomotives, and women with a passion for duckweed. Perfectly natural. And one always welcomes a kinsman, of course.’

  ‘You still haven’t found an explanation.’

  ‘My dear Lady Appleby, it’s perfectly simple. As simple as my dear old friend, Archie Lyward. Lord Cockayne, that is. He tells me he’s been trying to interest Sir John Appleby in a vanished picture. Clearly you were Lady Appleby, and interested in a vanished statue. There you were, questioning my wife about it.’ Judith climbed out of what she had been assured was a four-coupled express passenger engine designed by J Holden for the Great Eastern Railway Company in 1904 (that inexhaustibly significant year: Trans-Siberian Railway, Panama Canal – and, for that matter, the publication by Mr Henry James of The Golden Bowl). At least she needn’t climb into another of the things. For with Lord Canadine the moment of truth had arrived – a very fleeting moment of very minor truth, no doubt; but something, all the same.

  ‘Yes,’ Judith said. ‘It’s perfectly true. We’re hot on a scent.’

  ‘For a long time I’ve suspected it, in my dim and rural way.’ Lord Canadine – who was a little mad, Judith fleetingly thought – laughed unaffectedly. ‘I mean that, in this statue affair, there was a shade more than met the eye. That, incidentally, went for the beastly thing itself. More met the eye than was decent. Or – shall we say? – than was grown-up. What’s called a lavatory or prep-school humour, but done in stone. We needn’t labour that.’

  ‘Certainly we needn’t, Lord Canadine. I know about it.’

  ‘Well, I’ve wondered – or since I gathered the thing was valuable, I’ve wondered – whether that wasn’t the nub of the matter. Pinch something its owner is reluctant to make a song about. Or pinch something in circumstances its owner doesn’t feel quite free to ventilate. That’s what applies to Archie’s picture – although it was ever so long ago.’

  ‘Archie?’

  ‘Lord Cockayne.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I forgot.’ Judith was developing a considerable respect for the intelligence of Lord Cockayne’s friend Lord Canadine. ‘You mean you’ve wondered whether there may have been a series of such affairs?’

  ‘Just that. And with Sir John and Lady Appleby both taking an interest in the matter, it does rather look as if my conjecture was confirmed. Would you care to look at any more of these toys of mine?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I thought not. Has it occurred to you, by the way, that I must be very much my father’s son? Boilers and bladders – the same sort of infantile interest in–’

  ‘Quite. It’s not a theme you need elaborate. Would you be upset, Lord Canadine, if the affair of your statue had to be publicized in the course of clearing up a series of such frauds and thefts?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ Canadine paused, as if surprised by what he had said. ‘Odd, really – but one’s feelings do change with the years, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps it’s simply that I feel Julia wouldn’t be much upset now. Her mind is very much with the duckweed, just as mine is with these wretched steam contraptions.’ Lord Canadine, whose speech normally contrived a certain lightness of air, seemed for the moment to have struck a sombre note. ‘We’ve both missed out on life, rather – Julia and I. No children, you know. And my business ought to have been with the public life of the country. What else is one a peer for – educated at those privileged places, and connected with all sorts of people more powerful than oneself? But I’ve done damn all, and it’s too late now.’

  Judith said nothing. Perhaps Lord Canadine was hard up for rational society – but he still ought not to have embarked on this sort of talk with a total stranger. He was a percipient character, all the same. And this emerged strikingly in what he said next.

  ‘Lady Appleby – may I say that I greatly admire your work as a sculpt
or? And of course that’s the real reason why I knew who you were! But doesn’t it put you in a special relationship to what we’re concerned with?’

  ‘It certainly does. Your father’s prank revolts me. But I didn’t think I’d ever confess so much to anybody.’

  ‘So we are friends, are we not?’ Canadine’s gaiety – for it was almost that – had returned. ‘Can we be allies, too? Is there any way in which I can help this hunt?’

  ‘You can tell me whether you have any idea how a thief came to know that the statue was valuable. You speak of the people who come to look at Netherway as trippers. Even if some of them got around to wandering up to that pool, it seems unlikely that among them would be somebody with an eye for valuable works of art in unexpected places.’

  ‘Perfectly true. Or perfectly true, so far as the half a crown crowd is concerned.’

  ‘The half a crown crowd?’

  ‘That’s our usual charge for both house and grounds. It’s rather a moderate one – but, of course, Netherway isn’t one of the major attractions in that line.’

  ‘No elephants and camels.’

  ‘Quite so. And nothing in the way of Titians and Velazquezes. But we do have a certain amount of fine furniture, which repays inspecting at leisure. So we run one Connoisseurs’ Day a month – it’s a common dodge – at ten bob. That does mean an occasional well-informed person prowling round.’

  ‘I see. But there’s another thing. You seem not to have known about the value of the statue yourself, and presumably your father didn’t either. But somebody put you wise after the event, so to speak. That strikes me as rather odd. How did it come about?’

  ‘I can certainly tell you about that. But it was an irritating business. I’d just as soon not have known the stolen statue had been of any value. I’d thought, you understand, that it had been lifted much as somebody might lift a china gnome or rabbit or toadstool from a suburban garden. Souveniring, as they say.’

  ‘It would have been rather an unwieldy souvenir.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But it seemed reasonable to suppose that it had been a theft motivated, at the most, by very petty gain, if not by mere whimsy. And then this fellow from Cambridge wrote to me. He’d heard of the disappearance, he said, from some common acquaintance of ours, and gathered I didn’t know the thing was antique. So he’d felt I ought to be let know. Decent of him, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘No doubt. But how did he come by any knowledge of the statue in the first place?’

  ‘He was a Professor of Art, or something of the sort, and he’d been round Netherway with a group of distinguished foreigners. On a Connoisseurs’ Day, I hope. He’d spotted the character of the statue at once, and been surprised to see such a thing simply standing about a garden, but he’d hesitated to make himself known to me and mention the matter – no doubt because of my father’s treatment of the thing.’

  ‘That seems reasonable enough. Who was this man?’

  ‘He was called Sansbury. I remember the name, because I’ve come across it from time to time since. Quite a chap in his own line, I imagine. I never met him, you know. But I came to take his interest in my small misfortune quite kindly.’

  ‘You mean you heard from Professor Sansbury more than once?’

  ‘Oh, decidedly. We had quite a correspondence.’

  ‘I find this a very strange business altogether.’ Judith glanced curiously at her host. They were now approaching her car, and it was clear that in a few minutes she must depart. She wanted to leave as little as possible that was merely foggy behind her. ‘What exactly was there to correspond about?’ Judith paused. ‘Perhaps he offered you an estimate of just how small your misfortune had been?’

  ‘An estimate?’ For the first time, Lord Canadine appeared a little put out. ‘Well, yes. And, if he was right, it wasn’t small, at all. The statue was quite surprisingly valuable. Indeed, as a poor man, I’d be inclined to say “fabulously”. So it was all very irritating, as I’ve said. Still, it was amiable of this chap to go on being interested.’

  ‘Just how did he go on?’

  ‘Well, he thought it might be a good idea to find out about the statue’s provenance. My father could have known no more about it than I did, but there might be a record of it somewhere in the family papers. Sansbury urged me to make a hunt. He’d be awfully interested, he said, to hear of anything. Odd, you think? It hasn’t struck me that way before, but perhaps you’re right. Learned chap, no doubt. That sort often likes collecting knowledge just for the hell of it. Scholarship, and so forth.’

  For a moment, Judith said nothing. In his simpler vein, she somehow didn’t find Lord Canadine altogether convincing. But she mustn’t, she told herself, get imagining things. This sober resolution, however, was not very well answered by her next words.

  ‘Did it occur to you,’ she asked, ‘that it might have been this Professor Sansbury who stole the statue?’

  ‘My dear Lady Appleby, what an extraordinary idea!’ Lord Canadine had paused by the door of Judith’s car, and was staring at her in astonishment. ‘If he was the thief, why in heaven’s name should he deliberately bring himself to my notice? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It might make sense. It might be some kind of bluff. And he was seeking information, wasn’t he? If he was going to dispose of the thing on some sort of black market, it might be to his advantage to know something about its history. Suppose you had in fact hunted around, and found a record of a Canadine acquiring such a statue in, say, the mid-eighteenth century. You’d have let him know. And he’d have replied that the fact was extremely interesting from the point of view of a historian of art, and he’d be grateful if you’d lend him the document, or let him have a photographic copy of it. It would have enabled him to sell the statue to some clandestine collector, since he’d be holding virtual proof that it wasn’t any sort of modern forgery.’

  ‘But this Sansbury is obviously a most respectable character!’ There was something like consternation in Lord Canadine’s voice – as if before such suspicions as this one must feel the very bastions of society to be crumbling. ‘Dash it all, Lady Appleby, Cambridge and all that, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m being fanciful. Such fantastic things used to come my husband’s way, that I have a kind of domestic inclination in that direction.’

  ‘Ah, yes – your husband. It would be a great pleasure to meet Sir John.’ Lord Canadine frowned, as if feeling that he had given this too conventional an inflexion. ‘I should like it very much. Might we make my unfortunate statue an excuse for a meeting? Or is he, by any chance, interested in railway engines? You really must both come over to lunch one day. Julia would be so pleased.’ Lord Canadine had now opened the door of Judith’s car. ‘And how kind of you to have dropped in.’

  ‘I did so enjoy seeing what Lady Canadine is doing.’

  ‘Did you? But of course. The best duckweed in England.’ Lord Canadine put out his hand. He was, after all, a peer of the realm, and accustomed to take such initiatives. ‘It’s best to turn right when you reach the village. Goodbye.’

  14

  The apartment in which Mr Praxiteles received Sir John Appleby had as its principal ornament a large El Greco of the most splendid sort. It was evident that to Mr Praxiteles the authenticity or otherwise of a lubricous painting by Giulio Romano would be a matter only of the most minor concern. The argosies of Mr Praxiteles sailed the seven seas; he was very well able to buy the Louvre or the Vatican if he took a fancy to it; his polite regard for his visitor alone seemed to prevent his declaring that the episode of Nanna and Pippa had been merely absurd and to be laughed at.

  ‘I would venture to emphasize,’ Appleby said, ‘that you are not alone in being victimized. Others have been defrauded in related ways.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it, Sir John.’ Mr Praxiteles extended in front of him two shapely and finely-tended hands. ‘You recall La Rochefoucauld? Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d’autrui. I have never conc
urred in so cynical a view. Every day, I am quite oppressed by the misfortunes I hear of as befalling total strangers. The philanthropic temper is a great misfortune, it seems to me. Reason, however, comes to one’s aid. One can do nothing whatever about such calamities. One sighs, one even drops a tear, but one passes on.’

  ‘I don’t drop a tear, and I don’t even sigh, Mr Praxiteles, over any of these frauds. There has been no robbing of widows and orphans–’

  ‘That indeed would be distressing.’

  ‘–and nobody is much worse off than he was before. But this has been going on for years – for a quite surprisingly long term of years – and it seems to me only common sense, and good citizenship too, to get rid of it. We owe some sort of duty to others who may be robbed in their turn.’

  ‘How much I admire your sentiments, Sir John. It quite pains me that I am unable to be of assistance to you. After all, it is the person Braunkopf who has been defrauded in this particular case.’

  ‘May I say that it is nothing of the kind? It was designed that it should be Braunkopf who was defrauded, and so in fact it was for a time. But financially speaking, Braunkopf has retrieved his position at your expense. He has the real Giulio, and will sell it for quite as much as he believed he gave for it. You have the virtually worthless copy.’

  ‘Yes, yes – of course.’ Mr Praxiteles was indulgent rather than impatient. ‘But what was this Giulio Romano? A not very proper picture, amusing to glance at now and then. And what is the copy? Just that. As I do not sell pictures, the matter of shillings and sixpences is quite indifferent to me. Have you a favourite charity, Sir John? I will give you a cheque for £12,000 for it this instant, and be wholly charmed. Such sums have no meaning for me. I hope I do not sound arrogant. It is the most detestable of vices, to my mind.’

  ‘You mayn’t sound arrogant, but you did look a fool. This fellow Braunkopf came along, had only to tell you that there might be humiliating publicity blowing up, and you obligingly handed over the real picture (which had been perfectly safely returned to you by whoever borrowed it for the purpose of swindling Braunkopf) in exchange for the worthless one. Doesn’t the whole thing annoy you? Haven’t you any impulse to fight back?’