Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11)
Page 9
“No. No, I haven’t. What do I care about deadly feuds, man? I’m an artist—I don’t scramble my brains with this village junk.” All the time he was speaking, he edged cautiously nearer. “So, introduce me to your friends,” he said at last.
Juliana motioned to Dickie, who climbed out of the car and held open the rear door for Miss Seeton. In silence Mentley Collier watched them pick their way over the rubble and litter of the disused farmyard to stand at Juliana’s side. Introductions were made. Mentley stared a little longer, then said:
“Better come into the pad,” and turned away from his unexpected visitors without another word. Juliana, silently indicating surprise and apology to her companions, led them towards the windowed building made of dark oak, in which it appeared Mentley Collier had made his home.
Inside the old barn it was as untidy as anyone might have expected from the state of the outside yard. Mentley Collier’s talents, whatever they might be, clearly lay in other directions than those of domesticity. There were no internal walls: different areas were indicated by mounds of belongings, set as their owner pleased, spilling carelessly from one “room” to another. The sink was full of unwashed dishes, and the pipes underneath were clearly visible; the tap seemed to be fastened to the wall with string. In what might have been the dining room, tea chests served as table and chairs. Canvases were stacked against the walls, tubes of paint were scattered on the floor, brushes stood in jars of turpentine; the air smelled oily, despite the enormous north-facing window in the studio section, which was wide open. Across the sill were draped a selection of loose garments, possibly bedclothes (if bedclothes came in rainbow colours), damp but drying in the summer sun.
“Mentley, I’m so sorry—we do seem to have come at an awkward time,” said Juliana. “But isn’t it a little late in the year for spring cleaning?”
He shrugged and pushed his hands into the folds of his caftan. “Spring, summer, what’s to worry? The weather’s better now, for one thing. Come to help, have you?” The glare he directed towards Miss Seeton, who was studying his studio with an appreciative eye, suggested that he didn’t believe the help offered by this little old lady would be anything more than a nuisance.
“Only in a manner of speaking.” Juliana smiled at their host. “Rather, we were hoping you could help us—a mutual arrangement, in fact. Might we sit down? This could take a little time to explain.”
Mentley Collier, his sandalled feet shuffling, threw a mocking glance in the direction of the tea chests. “Not what you comfort-loving cats are used to, is it? Like, I don’t reckon on too many visitors, man—I’ve no time to sit around talking. But at least you aren’t . . . well, who I thought you were when you arrived—and I guess I’m not too busy right now . . . You sit down, if you like, and tell me about this . . . this arrangement of yours. Oh”—as Juliana, leading the way, hesitated by the first of the overloaded tea chests—“chuck it all on the floor. You won’t hurt anything, man.” He laughed. “You couldn’t. I don’t dig the valuables scene. Possessions tie you down, right?”
A frown creased the elegant brows of the still-hesitant Miss Popjoy, but Miss Seeton, who had followed close upon Juliana’s heels as Dickie ushered them politely before him, was untroubled by this manifestation of the artistic temperament. Mentley Collier had rekindled memories she thought she’d long forgotten: dusty, ill-furnished attics with roofs that leaked and rats in the rafters and the only redeeming feature their strong, northern light; midnight meals cooked on gas-rings and eked out among too many other hopefuls; people painting, drawing, working from sunrise to sunset without a pause, then tumbling fully clothed into bed after swallowing a mouthful of bread and a mug of watery cocoa . . .
Scarcely realising what she did, Miss Seeton moved to one of the few uncluttered areas on the carpetless floor, neatly crossed her feet at the ankles, and subsided, effortlessly and with some grace, into one of her favourite yoga postures, the lotus. And, as she did so, she smiled.
chapter
~12~
FOR THE FIRST time Mentley Collier paid Miss Seeton proper attention. He stared at her as she composed herself upon the floor, her umbrella laid carefully across her lap, her handbag beside her on the ground, her eyes bright. “Hey, are you ever an adept, man,” he breathed with sudden admiration. “That is about the most impressive . . . Miss Seeton, I’ve just got to ask how far you’ve progressed. Man, you must be so far on your way to enlightenment . . .”
Juliana and Dickie did not regard Miss Seeton’s smile of happy reminiscence in the same way that the awestruck artist seemed to do. They remembered the Eurydice, and the little band of yoga enthusiasts their friend had assembled about her during the early days of that momentous cruise; they did not believe, as Mentley obviously did, that Miss Seeton had some deep psychological insight into the problems of life that had somehow escaped his own studies, whatever they might be. She had made it very plain, on the cruise, that there had been only one good reason for her having begun the practice of yoga . . .
“Oh, my knees, of course,” came Miss Seeton’s prompt and prosaic reply to Mentley’s question. “They have made remarkable progress over the years—indeed, I cannot praise the book too highly, and one can feel confident, I think, that the improvement will be long-lasting—but I would hardly consider myself to have taken more than the very shortest of steps along any spiritual path. My understanding has always been that it is necessary to be most disciplined from a very early age, and without a skilled teacher . . . one has to be so careful, you see, not to grow cranky or unbalanced as the book warns may happen without wise guidance, and this point is stressed most carefully. I have always taken note of the warnings—although I did once venture to try . . . but without success, I fear. And it was only the merest attempt at trataka, nothing too demanding, I assure you.”
She was still sitting on the floor, still smiling as she spoke, looking up at her three companions without any sense of incongruity. She was in an artist’s studio; she had been a student of art herself, in those far-off casual days when, should there have been insufficient chairs to go round, some of the party would happily do without them. What could now be more logical, in the absence of adequate seating—poor Miss Popjoy had looked so startled at being asked to throw Mr. Collier’s belongings on the floor—than to dispose oneself in a manner to which one had long ago—so very long ago—become accustomed?
As Miss Seeton nodded and smiled, the others came to their senses and began to make room for themselves on the tea chest chairs. At least, Dickie and Juliana did; Mentley Collier had drifted first near to, then away from, that part of the floor on which Miss Seeton sat in her lotus posture. Something about her seemed to unnerve him: he could hardly take his eyes off her.
“Mentley,” said Juliana, having briskly dumped a heap of miscellaneous articles in what passed for a corner of the imaginary room, “do stop hovering. We shall start to feel unwelcome.” She examined the edge of the tea chest for protruding nails or rough edges, then warily sat down. “Dickie—never mind your trousers, there’s a dear. We have business to discuss, remember?”
“Business? With me?” Mentley Collier looked decidedly startled. “Like, what sort of business?”
“If you will excuse me,” murmured Miss Seeton, beginning to unfold herself from her lotus pose. A lady should never intrude, however unwittingly, into the affairs of others, and particularly when these affairs wear a financial aspect.
“Oh, no, Miss Seeton, we didn’t mean you to go.” Juliana looked mildly distressed. “How ungrateful and rude it would be of us to chase you away, when if it hadn’t been for you, we might still be wandering around Kent looking for this place—Mentley, you certainly do pick out-of-the-way spots to live in, don’t you?”
“Privacy, man,” he said, his tone flat, his eyes never leaving Miss Seeton as, with a polite murmur, she subsided again. “And it’s peaceful here—plenty of personal space, that’s what I need. Cool. Like, no interruptions.”
“Does she?” Mentley favoured Miss Seeton with a look of nervous respect while she sat smiling upon him in friendly fashion. He blinked. “Like, what problem in particular did you have it in mind to help me with, Juliana?” He managed to drag his eyes from Miss Seeton, and with one expansive gesture indicated the whole of the huge barn-studio. “Man, what more could anyone need than this? Room to breathe, to grow, to develop—to find yourself both as an artist and as a spirit—space and privacy simply to be, man . . .” And he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, hitched up his caftan, and folded himself, with a tremendous clicking of his joints, into a poor imitation of the lotus posture adopted with far greater ease by Miss Seeton. “Far out!” he exclaimed, sighing. “Out of sight, man, just utterly out of sight . . .”
Juliana frowned. “Mentley, please don’t start drifting away into your own little world like that—I told you, this isn’t just a social call. I—we—came to talk business with you, and you aren’t making it especially easy.”
Slowly the artist on the floor uncircled his fingers, exhaled, and opened his eyes to direct them, with obvious reluctance, towards the statuesque Miss Popjoy. “Juliana, you’re trying to hassle me, man, and that’s not right, when all I want is the peace and quiet to do my own thing—you ask Miss Seeton if that isn’t what an artist needs more than anything else in the world.” And, closing his eyes, he took a defiant breath and began to drift away again.
Miss Seeton, startled at having been cited as an authority, had no time to reply before Juliana retorted: “I fail to see how you can make a living from what you call peace and quiet and doing your own thing, Mentley. Even out here in the wilds of the country, you need more than that—you need money. Which I was hoping to be able to put your way, if we came to a suitable arrangement—not vast amounts”—as he opened his eyes again and regarded her with some surprise—“but enough to help pay the odd bill, every time you deliver—assuming that you do deliver, of course.”
“Deliver?” Mentley’s eyes narrowed. He stared, first at Juliana and then, more warily, at Miss Seeton. “Like, what do you mean, man? Why did you really come here?”
“To ask you if you’d consider putting your best efforts into painting me some of your Old Master copies, for display in the antique shop I own with Dickie down in Bath—and not necessarily just for display, if you could promise to keep producing them when I sold one to a customer.” Mentley sat up with a jerk. His mouth dropped open. Juliana flushed and uttered a little laugh.
“Don’t be silly, Mentley, of course I’m not asking you to paint fakes! I’d want copies—really good copies—which I know perfectly well you can do. Or at least, you used to be able to, when we first knew each other, and I don’t see any reason why you should have lost the knack. Copying, surely, can’t be anywhere near as demanding as pure creative art,” at which Miss Seeton nodded sagely, sighing. Mentley looked from Juliana to Miss Seeton and back again.
Juliana said, “There’d be no need to worry about a thing—I’d choose the paintings and provide you with really good reproductions to work from. All you’d have to do would be to make sure you signed them After Constable, or whatever would be legally, well, safe—I wouldn’t want either of us to be run in for forgery and fraud!” She smiled, but Mentley did not chuckle. She went on, “You might do rather well out of the scheme, you know. The shop has a nice little turnover, lots of visitors—Bath’s a regular tourist centre, and our location could hardly be better. And people who bought one of your copies might start to commission other work from you—original paintings, I hope. You could make your name, at the same time as helping me, of course. And I’d be helping you, too, because naturally I’d expect to pay you a fair price for your work. I’m not asking you for any favours for old times’ sake: this is strictly business.”
She paused expectantly, but he said nothing, and she was conscious of feeling a little annoyed. Somehow, she’d been expecting a different reaction from this long, uneasy silence. Almost as if he was weighing up every aspect of her proposal, looking for a catch.
“Well, Mentley? What do you say?”
Juliana fixed him with a stern and irritated gaze, and Mentley began to fidget. Evidently the floor was growing too hard for him: or was it that the lotus posture bothered him more than it bothered Miss Seeton? She was sitting as comfortably as ever, cross-legged and calm; but Mentley Collier, his own legs tying and untying themselves in nervous knots, was unable to meet Juliana’s eyes. He cleared his throat twice, then coughed and creaked himself upright.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said at last.
“He is a rum sort of chap,” remarked Dickie as the car bounced its way back down the potholes of the drive from Filkins Farm. “Looked to me as if he was more or less on the breadline—I suppose that’s why he didn’t care to offer us a cup of coffee. But I’d have expected him to jump at the chance of making some money.”
“So would I, from what I remember of him.” Juliana gave an exasperated snort. “Goodness knows what crazy reason he has for playing hard-to-get. I refuse to believe that he’s developed any business sense since I first knew him—mind you, his sense of humour was pretty well developed, even if slightly on the warped side. No doubt he thinks it’s funny to keep me—I mean us—on the hop for a while, knowing that it’s a seller’s market and he’s the one who’ll be doing the selling—if he does, that is. Yet somehow I’d never really thought of him as being mercenary . . .”
“People change,” Dickie said. “For one thing, they grow up, in due course—most people, that is ‘Far out, man,’ ” he quoted in a disgusted tone. “ ‘Personal space’ indeed. Utter tosh and twaddle, if you’ll excuse my speaking in this way about your old flame, Juliana. Twitching and writhing all over the floor—oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Seeton.” His passenger in the backseat came suddenly to mind, and he turned red. “I wasn’t referring to you—very, ah, graceful, you might say. But the chap couldn’t even sit still, could he? I’m surprised he even bothered trying to compete with an expert like you.”
“Oh, hardly an expert, Mr. Nash,” she demurred. “And one would not care to think that a genuine enthusiast such as Mr. Collier, especially as he is a friend of dear Miss Popjoy’s, would so far forget the principles of yoga as to practise it—if one could call sitting upon the floor in the company of one’s friends practising, for the book is most emphatic upon the need to be utterly alone for the greatest benefit to be obtained—but to practise in a spirit of competition, you see, would, from what I have read, be utterly alien to the entire principle of yoga, where one is not even supposed to compete with oneself, although of course the temptation is always there to do just a little more every day—and then, perhaps Mr. Collier is sensitive to changes in the weather. One’s knees, you understand. Although, of course, in his case, he is rather young . . . but many people are conscious of climatic variations before they become generally apparent. My own dear Martha, who helps me so much around the house, often finds herself with a headache before a storm—and the birds, as you yourself observed, were wheeling in an agitated manner, which I understand can mean bad weather. Indeed,” concluded Miss Seeton, “there are clouds building up—such a dramatic horizon, I always feel. Romney Marsh is so wide and windswept . . .”
“It certainly looks rather dark over to the west, but I’d be prepared to bet on getting you safely home before it breaks,” Dickie assured her, then cleared his throat as he realised what he’d said. “I mean, it’s not far, is it, so you’ll be back indoors in no time. Mind you,” thinking it advisable to change tack, “I doubt if it was just the storm that was
upsetting the Collier chap, you know. The way he was almost hiding from us when we first arrived, and didn’t come out till he saw who we were, I’d have said he was more scared than sensitive to the barometer. He was positively relieved when he recognised Juliana, and most men would run a mile if any of their old girlfriends turned up out of the blue like that.”
“Dickie, I keep telling you—”
“Protesting too much, old girl,” Mr. Nash informed his lady with a chuckle. “But I can only say how much I think your taste has improved—preferring me to him, I mean. Not a very prepossessing type, to my mind, either physically or—well, perhaps I shouldn’t judge his mental state on such a short acquaintance. But the chap seemed to be a bundle of nerves as well as steeped in a load of”—he glanced sideways at Juliana, then amended what he’d been about to say—“hippie claptrap,” said Dickie, sounding scornful. “I see plenty of that with the students, but I’d have thought a man Collier’s age would be old enough to know better.”
Juliana, who was a near-contemporary of the maligned Mentley Collier, wasn’t sure how to take this remark and maintained a wary silence while she made up her mind. Miss Seeton, her eye on the approaching clouds, nodded to herself and commented from the backseat:
“No doubt it was indeed the impending storm which made poor Mr. Collier so uneasy—and, of course, the presence of a stranger such as myself . . .” She recalled that Mentley, though an old friend of Juliana, had never met Dickie Nash, either. “You told him you would return for his answer in a few days’ time,” she reminded them brightly. “I’m sure you will find him in a far more cheerful mood. Provided,” she added as the distant sky was lit by a flickering streak of vivid light, “that you take care to visit him on a day when there is no thunder in the air . . .”