The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “Then you must have passed the cart-shed. Isn’t it rather remarkable that you should not have noticed the body, or, at any rate, the umbrella?”

  “Not at all. There is an old hayrick between the path and the cart-shed. I never saw more than a corner of the shed, and it was the wrong corner. Whiffin, you remember, was coming from the farmyard.”

  “Yes,” said the inspector. “I had forgotten the ’rick; but I suspect the lady found it useful for stalking purposes. Well,” he added, once more taking up his hat, “I think that is all; excepting that it remains for me to offer my most humble and hearty thanks for your invaluable help. It has been a great privilege for me to listen to your very illuminating observations and to be made the beneficiary of your remarkable technical knowledge and skill.”

  With this final flourish he made his way to the door escorted by Tom, who conducted him to the gate and launched him into the outer world.

  “Rather an oily customer, that, for a police officer,” Tom remarked when he returned to the studio, to find Polton still gloating over the sketch. “Don’t you think so?”

  Polton crinkled knowingly, as he replied:

  “Mr. Blandy is an exceedingly polite gentleman. But he is a very able detective officer; as sharp as a needle and as slippery as an eel. You’ve got to be very careful with Mr. Blandy. I hope, sir, that you didn’t mind my offering to do the photograph. You see, sir, I thought it best that a valuable thing like that should not go out of your possession.”

  “That was very good of you, Polton. But, bless you, it isn’t a valuable thing. It is practically a throw-out.”

  “Oh, don’t say that, sir. I have been admiring it and thinking what a charming little picture it is and how wonderfully full of interest. When will it be convenient for me to come and take the photograph?”

  “You needn’t trouble to bring the camera here. Take the canvas with you and do the job in your own place; and, as it seems to have taken your fancy, you had better keep it and let me have a photograph, in case I should decide to paint the subject. The photograph will do just as well for me.”

  Polton was disposed to protest, but Tom stolidly wrapped the canvas in paper and handed it to him, and a few minutes later he departed, crinkling with pleasure and gratitude, with the little parcel under his arm.

  CHAPTER III

  Mrs. Schiller

  IN all the busy town that seethed around him, there can have been but few persons whose lives were as untroubled as was that of Thomas Pedley. He had, in fact, not a care in the world. His work yielded a modest income which was more than enough to supply his modest needs, and the doing of that work was a pleasure that time could not stale. He never tired of painting. If he had come into a fortune, he would still have gone on painting for the mere joy of the occupation, and might then have missed the added satisfaction of living by his industry. At any rate, he craved no fortune and envied no one, except, perhaps, those artists whose work he considered better than his own.

  Thus, through the uneventful years, Tom pursued “the noiseless tenor’ of his way” in quiet happiness and perfect contentment, up to the period at which this history now arrives, when we have to record the appearance of a cloud upon his usually serene horizon. It was only a small cloud; but its little shadow was enough to cause a sensible disturbance of his habitually placid state of mind.

  The trouble was not connected with the Gravel-pit Wood incident. That had never occasioned him any anxiety, even though he had been aware—with a slightly amused interest—that the police had by no means forgotten his existence. But as the weeks had passed and the “Unsolved Mystery” had gradually faded from the pages of the daily papers, so had it faded from his own memory and ceased to be of any concern to him.

  The cloud was, in fact, a feminine cloud. His troubles, like those of Milton Perkins, were connected with the female of his species. For Tom, as the reader has probably inferred, was a bachelor; and it was his considered intention to remain a bachelor. Wherefore, though he liked women well enough, he avoided all feminine intimacies and kept a wary eye on any unattached spinsters who came his way, and as for widows, he viewed them with positive alarm.

  Now it happened that, on a certain afternoon, Tom was working with great enjoyment at a subject picture which his dealer had commissioned when the jangling of the studio bell announced a visitor. With a snort of annoyance he laid down his palette and brushes and went forth to confront the disturber of his peace; when he discovered on the threshold a rather tall woman, dressed—and painted—in the height of fashion, who turned at the sound of the opening gate, and greeted him with a smile that made his flesh creep.

  “You are Mr. Pedley, I think,” said she.

  Tom was of the same opinion, and said so.

  “I hope you won’t consider me troublesome,” she said in a wheedling tone, “but I should be so grateful if you would lend me a sheet of Whatman. I have a piece of work to do, and I want to start on it at once, but I have run out of paper.”

  Now, if the smile had made Tom’s flesh creep, the request positively made it crawl. For he knew—and so must she if she were a painter—that there was an excellent artists’ colourman’s shop within five minutes’ walk of the place where they were standing, from whence, indeed, Tom got most of his supplies. It looked suspiciously like a pretext for making his acquaintance.

  “Perhaps I should explain,” she continued, “that I am your next-door neighbour—Mrs. Schiller.”

  Tom bowed. He had observed the recent appearance of a brass plate bearing this name, and was now slightly reassured. At least, she was a married woman—unless she was a widow! In any case, he couldn’t keep her waiting on the doorstep.

  “I’ll let you have a sheet with pleasure,” said he. “Won’t you come in?”

  She complied with alacrity, and, as he conducted her along the passage, he asked: “What sort of surface would you like? I generally use 140, Net.”

  “That will do perfectly, if you can spare me a sheet. I will let you have it back; at least, not the same sheet, you know, but an equivalent.”

  “You needn’t,” said Tom, with a view to heading her off from another visit. “I have a good stock. Just laid in a fresh quire, and I don’t use a lot as I work mostly in oil. This is my show.”

  He indicated the open door, and, as she stepped into the studio, his visitor looked around with a little squeak of surprise.

  “But how enormous!” she exclaimed. “And how magnificent! I do envy you. My studio isn’t really a studio at all. It is just my sitting-room, though it is quite a good room, with a nice big window. You must let me show it to you, sometime.”

  Tom groaned inwardly. A very pushing young person, this. He began to suspect that she must be a widow, and decided that he must “mind his eye.”

  “Well,” he replied, “you don’t really need a place of this size to paint in, though, of course, it’s a convenience to have plenty of elbow-room.”

  He went to a set of wide shelves and, drawing out the imperial size portfolio in which he kept his stock of paper, opened it on the table and selected a sheet, which he rolled slightly and secured with a turn of string.

  Meanwhile, his visitor had taken her stand before the easel and was inspecting the nearly finished picture; a simple, open-air subject such as Tom liked to paint, showing a group of gipsies on a heathy common, tending their fire, with a couple of vans in the background.

  “But how wonderful!” she exclaimed. “And how curious and interesting.”

  Tom paused in the act of tying the knot and looked round suspiciously.

  “Why curious?” he asked.

  “I mean,” she explained, “the extraordinary representationalism. It might almost be a photograph. Do you always paint like this?”

  Now Tom held privately the opinion that the comparison of a finished, realistic painting to a photograph was the hallmark of the perfect ignoramus. But he did not say so. He merely answered the question.

  “I try
to get as near as I can to the appearances of nature; but, of course, the best of us fall a long way short.”

  “Exactly,” said she. “Imitative painting must be very difficult, and after all, you can’t compete with the photographer. That is the advantage of abstract art. You are not trying to imitate anything in particular; you just let your personality express itself in terms of abstract form and colour. Have you ever experimented in the new progressive art?”

  “No,” replied Tom. “This is the way I paint, and it seems to me to be the right way; and I suppose my dealers and private clients take the same, view, as they are willing to buy my pictures at a fair price. At any rate, such as it is, I had better get on with it.”

  By way of enforcing this blunt refusal of the attempted discussion, he held out the roll of paper and glanced wistfully at his palette.

  “Yes,” she agreed, taking the paper from him with an engaging smile, “I mustn’t waste your time now, though I should like to talk this question over with you some day. But now I will take myself off, and thank you so much for the loan of the paper. I promise faithfully to repay it.”

  Once more Tom assured her that no repayment was necessary, though he now realized, hopelessly, that the promise would certainly be kept. Nevertheless, as he bade her adieu on the doorstep and watched her trip round to her own door, he resolved afresh to “mind his eye” and ward off any attempt to establish more definitely intimate relations; an admirable resolution but one which, to a scrupulously polite gentleman such as Tom Pedley, presented certain difficulties in practice, as he was very soon to discover. For, of course, the loan of the paper was repaid promptly; on the following day, in fact; and Tom’s efforts, as he received the rolled sheet, to “close the incident” failed ignominiously. He did not on this occasion invite his fair visitor to come in. But though he conducted the transaction on the doorstep, the closure of the incident was but the prelude to the opening of another.

  “I won’t detain you now,” said she with a smile that displayed between her scarlet lips a fine set of teeth, “but I do want you to see my studio, and especially I want you to tell me what you think of my work. A few words of criticism from an experienced artist like you would be so helpful. Now, you will come, won’t you? Any time that suits you. This afternoon if you like, say about four o’clock. How would that do?”

  Of course, it wouldn’t do at all if there were any possibility of escape. But there was not. Tom looked at her helplessly, mumbling polite acknowledgments and thinking hard. But what could he say? Obviously he could not refuse; and this being clear to him, he decided to get the visit over at once and take precautions against its repetition.

  “Very well,” said she, “then we will say four o’clock; and if you are very good and don’t slate my pictures too much, I will give you a nice cup of tea.”

  With a friendly nod and a further display of teeth she tripped away briskly in the direction of Hampstead Road, and Tom, muttering objurgations, retired to bestow the sheet of paper in the portfolio.

  It need hardly be said that the afternoon’s visit did nothing towards “closing the incident.” As she opened the street door in response to his ring at the bell, removing a cigarette to execute a smile of welcome, his hostess received him as though he had been “the companion of her childhood and the playmate of her youth.” She shook his hand with affectionate warmth, and, still holding it, led him into a large front room where a brand new easel, flanked by a small table, stood close to the window. Tom cast a comprehensive glance around and rapidly assessed the occupant in professional terms. Apart from the easel and the colour-box, brushes and water-pot on the table, it was just a typical woman’s sitting-room, in which the tea-table with its furnishings seemed more at home than the easel.

  “This is my humble workshop,” said his hostess; “a poor affair compared with your noble studio, but still—”

  “It would probably have been good enough for Turner or DeWint,” said Tom. “It’s the painter that matters, not the studio. Shall we have a look at some of your work?”

  “Yes, let’s,” she replied brightly, leading him towards the easel. “This is my latest. I am not quite satisfied with it but I don’t think I will carry it any further for fear of spoiling it. What do you think?”

  Tom stared at the object on the easel and gibbered inarticulately. A half-sheet of Whatman had been pinned untidily on a board and covered with curved streaks of bright colour, evidently laid, very wet, on damped paper, producing an effect like that of an artist’s colourman’s sheet of samples.

  “Well,” he stammered, recovering himself slightly, “I don’t see what more you could do to it. Perhaps the—er—the subject is—er—just a little obscure. Not perfectly obvious, you know. Possibly—er—”

  “Oh, there isn’t any subject,” she explained; “not in an imitative sense, that is. It is just an essay in abstract colour. I propose to call it ‘A Symphony in Green and Blue.’ Do you think it sounds pretentious to call it a symphony?”

  “I wouldn’t say pretentious,” he replied, “but I don’t much like calling things by wrong names. It isn’t a symphony, you know. A symphony is a combination of sounds, whereas this work is a—is a—well, it’s a painting.”

  Mrs. Schiller laughed softly. “You were going to say ‘it’s a picture,’ and then you thought better of it. Now didn’t you?”

  “Well,” Tom admitted with an apologetic grin, “it isn’t quite what I should call a picture, but then I really don’t know anything about this new form of art. I suppose it is an abstract picture.”

  “That is just what it is; an entirely non-representational abstraction of colour. Rather an extreme example, perhaps, so we will change it for something more representational.”

  She fished out a portfolio from under a sette and took from it a small mounted drawing which she stood up on the easel.

  “The first one,” she explained, “is a study of abstract colour. Now this one is an essay in abstract form. But it has a subject. I have called it ‘Adam and Eve.’ How do you like it?”

  Tom considered this new masterpiece with knitted brows and a feeling of growing bewilderment. It represented two human figures such as might have been drawn by an average child of nine or ten with no natural aptitude for art, in a heavy, clumsy pencil outline filled in with daubs of colour; As the serious production of a sane adult, the thing was incredible.

  “They are a good deal alike,” Tom remarked, by way of saying something.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “but of course they would be, as they haven’t any clothes, poor things. The bigger one would naturally be Adam, though it really doesn’t matter. The title is only a convention. The picture is really a study in essential form.”

  “I see,” said Tom, though he didn’t; but he continued to gaze at the work with bulging eyeballs while the lady looked over his shoulder with a curious cryptic smile—which vanished instantly when he turned towards her. After a prolonged inspection with no further comment, he cast a furtive glance at the portfolio, whereupon his hostess removed the figure subject and replaced it by another painting, apparently representing a human head and shoulders, and, in character, very much like those “portraits” with which untalented schoolchildren adorn blank spaces in their copybooks. Such, in fact, Tom at first assumed it to be, but the artist hastily corrected him.

  “Oh, no,” said she. “It is not imitative. I have called it ‘Madonna,’ but it is just a study in simplification based on the architectural structure of the human head, with all the irrelevant details eliminated.”

  “Yes,” Tom commented, “I noticed that there had been a good deal of elimination. Those brown patches, I suppose, represent the hair?”

  “They don’t represent it,” she replied. “They merely acknowledge and connote its existence. Perhaps, in a non-representational work, they are really superfluous, but they are useful in elucidating the pattern.”

  This explanation left Tom speechless as did the other selections from
the portfolio. They were all much of the same kind; either meaningless streaks of colour or childish drawings of men and animals. Some of them he judged to be landscapes from the appearance in them of green, mop-like shapes, which might have “connoted” trees, and in one the simplified landscape was inhabited by abstract animals suggesting the cruder productions of a toy-shop.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Schiller as she returned the last of them to the portfolio, “that is my repertoire; and now that you have seen them all, I want you to tell me frankly what you think of them. You need not mind being outspoken. Candid criticism is what I want from you.”

  “But my dear Mrs. Schiller,” Tom exclaimed despairingly, “I am quite incompetent to criticize your work. I know nothing whatever about this modernist art excepting that it is a totally different thing from the art which I have always known and practised. And we can’t discuss it because we are not speaking the same language. When I paint a picture I aim at beauty and interest; and since there is nothing so beautiful as nature, I keep as close to natural appearances as I can. And as a picture is a work of imagination and not a mere representation like an illustration in a scientific textbook, I try to arrange my objects in a pleasing composition and to make them convey some interesting ideas. But, apparently, modernist art avoids truth to nature and any kind of intellectual or emotional interest. I don’t understand it at all.”

  “But,” she objected, “don’t you find beauty in abstract form?”

  “I have always supposed,” he replied, “that abstract form appertains to mathematics, whereas painting and sculpture are concerned with visible and tangible things. But really, Mrs. Schiller, it’s of no use for me to argue the question. We are talking and thinking on different planes.”

  “I suppose we really are,” she agreed, “but it’s rather disappointing. I had hoped to profit by your experience, but I see now that it has no bearing on modern art. But never mind, we will drown our disagreements in the teapot. Will you take this chair while I boil the kettle, or would you prefer a softer one?”