The Ruffian on the Stair

by Gary Newman

  Sunday was a lot more restful than Saturday had been; in fact, things were almost back to post-convalescent normal. I’d had my looked-forward-to fish lunch with Leah in West Mersea, then we’d come back to the lighthouse and had a lovely, lazy day together, watching telly, listening to music, not saying anything when we hadn’t anything to say – just being contentedly around each other. I began to think I was completely out of the woods . . .

  On the chilly, overcast Easter Monday morning, Leah drove back to her flat to do some work, and not long after a delivery van drove up with a package of shallots I’d ordered for spring planting. A silly mishap occurred around this episode, for, forgetting that my front gate was off the latch, I leant on it with one hand while taking the package from the delivery man with the other. Of course, the unlatched gate gave way under my grasp, and I fell forward with it. Luckily, the delivery man had the presence of mind to grab both of my arms and steady me, saving me from falling on my face.

  After I’d gone indoors again, I felt an odd sensation of déjà vu, as if all of this had somehow happened before. It was as if I’d had some sort of familiar prompt, but I was damned if I knew to what action. I quickly shook this mood off and went upstairs to my computer to get on with my next gardening article for the Dumfries Herald, knocking off for coffee at around eleven.

  The next thing I can remember clearly was standing in the vegetable garden, looking down at a plump, purple shallot which I was holding in the palm of my outstretched hand. I looked in a very detached way at the ground, to see a row and a half of planted shallots, with the mostly emptied packaging the delivery man had brought them in that morning lying at my grimy-booted feet. I remembered my almost falling through the unlatched gate, and his grabbing me by the arms to stop me falling, then I’d gone upstairs to work, had stopped for coffee at eleven, and . . .

  I looked at my wristwatch: five forty-six. Where had the day gone? The computer would tell me, I thought, then, stooping briefly to firm the shallot clove in its row, I dashed indoors and upstairs to my workroom. The computer screen was dead, and the display and printer lights out. I sat down and switched the computer on, then opened the document I’d been working on that morning – ‘dumf126’ – and there it was, my week’s gardening article for the Dumfries Herald. I read it through, and it seemed crisp, cogent and readable, and unmistakably in my style. The work must have been duly saved, then, and, yes, the word count was 600 up on the last effort. I must have just done it all on automatic pilot! So no harm done there – ah! The kitchen . . .

  Hurrying back downstairs, I found the morning’s breakfast things still in the sink. I’d evidently not cooked lunch, and, no, when I pedalled open the little waste bin, there wasn’t a pizza delivery box or any other takeaway packaging in it. Had I eaten out? I ducked through the back door and got into the car outside, then checked the fuel gauge: I’d filled the tank at a station in West Mersea on the previous day, the last time I remembered using the car, and now the gauge registered near-empty . . . Where had I been?

  I rang Leah, and explained things.

  ‘You certainly haven’t been near me today,’ she replied. ‘I put it down to the after-effects of all the medication you’ve been taking lately; that and the obsessive way you tend to work at times. You haven’t been hitting the vino, have you?’

  ‘No, just my usual couple of glasses with dinner.’

  ‘Mmm . . . when’s your next appointment with your doctor?’

  ‘Friday, as a matter of fact: at two o’clock.’

  ‘He seems pretty good – see what he says – but, in the meantime, as you say, no harm seems to have been done, so I should just carry on as usual, but gently . . .’

  So I did. Next day, Tuesday, I rang the Hackney Local History people about my quest for the pub with the magic window, then, on driving out to the shops, just made it to the nearest filling station on the few drops of petrol left in my tank after my unlogged, forgotten drive the day before. It’d come back, I reassured myself – something’ll trigger it off, and it’ll all come back to me – then I just got on with my life.

  The Hackney findings arrived in Thursday morning’s post. The Home in the East was long gone, and the only late Victorian crime of any notoriety that could be connected to a local public house had taken place near the Christmas of 1893, six years before Rawbeck’s disappearance. This had been the murder of Mrs Bella Nye, landlady of the Ring of Bells in Lefevre Road, just down from the Old Ford Road station. Mrs Nye had been bludgeoned to death, apparently in the course of a disturbed burglary. The assistant at the local history centre in Hackney had kindly enclosed a photocopy of the relevant column of the East London Advertiser of the day, and had added in her letter that no one had ever been brought to book for the crime. I rang up Leah, and told her the news.

  ‘1893?’ she’d responded. ‘Six years before Rawbeck’s disappearance, and of course the pub will have gone with the wind by now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, referring to the Hackney letter, ‘apparently there’s a Lefevre Walk, now, but it’s modern, and it isn’t aligned on the same plan as the former Lefevre Road.’

  ‘Mrs Bella Nye . . .’ Leah said. ‘Does the name suggest anything to you?’

  ‘No, but let’s file it for future reference.’

  ‘Will you be going to this auction sale in Walberswick tomorrow?’ Leah changed tack.

  ‘Oh, yes – Brogan the antiques man from Jersey’s clearly going to offer Rawbeck objects there because he believes The Ruffian on the Stair’s being held somewhere in the district.’

  ‘Julian Rawbeck’s so-called lost masterpiece?’

  ‘Right: Brogan wants to use the sale to smoke out the owner. I can’t think of any other reason why a flash dealer like him should be footling about in the sticks like that.

  I want to be there to see who it might draw out of the woodwork.’

  ‘Don’t they have viewings before sales?’ Leah suggested. ‘That may draw even more bods out of the woodwork.’

  ‘Dammit, yes! Thanks for telling me – I’ll keep you posted!’

  I reached for the Yellow Pages for the number of the auction room, to confirm that the viewing would be on that day, then, having done so, got into my car and hit the A12, arriving in the little Suffolk seaport an hour and a half later.

  The salerooms were in a converted Methodist chapel, and Brogan’s ticketed lot was a framed print of a head-and-naked-torso sketch of two young men, in the style of Leonardo. The youths in the drawing were sitting back-to-back – there was no perspective background detail at all – and their eyes were half closed, their faces relaxed in a dreamy, satiated sort of a trance. The words on the label said: Morte Moriantur, attributed to Julian Rawbeck RA, 1852 –, the artist’s death-date being left significantly blank.

  But I scarcely had eyes for all that, my gaze being riveted on the features of one of the young men in the print. Shade his hair more lightly, add some wrinkles to the small, fine features and a neat imperial to the chin, and the face was that of my grandfather in the framed photograph on my sitting-room mantelpiece!

  ‘Remarkable resemblance, isn’t there, Mr Rolvenden?’ cooed a now familiar voice behind me.

  I turned to face Liam Brogan, resplendent in an orange Irish tweed three-piece and huge yellow butterfly bow tie.

  ‘With this expression,’ he went on, waving a blunt-fingered, pink hand at the figure on the print, ‘you miss the haunted look in the eyes in the photograph of your grandfather in your lighthouse, but it’s a fascinating study. Looking at it, they seem half asleep, but what if they suddenly woke up to full life! Or if someone broke in on them? What would their expressions change to then? Didn’t you tell me you were a linguist, Mr Rolvenden?’

  I hadn’t, but decided to play his game for now.

  ‘More or less – why?’

  ‘What does the title mean?’

  ‘Roughly: Let them die the death . . .’

  ‘Does it, now, but that’s Rawbeck all ov
er: always a bizarre twist somewhere along the line.’

  ‘It must be valuable, then.’

  ‘Mmm . . . depends. Normally, a print of a sketch of a fairly dodgy attribution to a minor master wouldn’t fetch all that much, but since the prints are so rare and the original lost – this is the only print that’s ever come my way – and considering Rawbeck’s notoriety . . .’

  ‘Things might get quite interesting on the day . . .’

  ‘As you say. May we look forward to seeing you here tomorrow, Mr Rolvenden?’

  I glanced again at the printed sketch of my youthful grandfather and his nameless companion, and nodded at the little bullet-headed man in the big yellow bow tie. He nodded too, with a rather smug smile, then moved off to talk to someone else in the crowd. There was a little knot of about half a dozen people round the Rawbeck study, but I scanned their features in vain for any family resemblance. I strolled through the rest of the exhibits for ten minutes or so, then went outside to ring Leah on my mobile and put her in the picture.

  ‘The other young man in the print didn’t ring any bells with me,’ I said, ‘but his companion was definitely my grandfather. They were both nude, too – don’t you see the tie-in?’

  ‘Frankly, no.’

  ‘In his notebook, Grandfather describes how he wakes up in the sleazy room above the pub naked – Rawbeck could’ve given him the magic mushroom potion in order to use him for unwitting nude poses and more decadent subjects.’

  ‘Far-fetched, Seb: there’s another humdrum conclusion you could draw from the study, as you’ve just described it. After all, your grandfather’s not alone in the sketch, and there’s the title: “Let them die the death . . .”’

  ‘Mmm . . . forbidden love, you mean?’

  ‘A clear implication of it.’

  Something occurred to me, and I fairly whooped into the mobile.

  ‘Leah! Could this be the sketch – or rather a print of it – my grandfather got so worked up about in his notebook?’

  ‘The one the Vickybird was supposed to have pinched from him in Paris in 1899, you mean, and to have sold on to the Paris art dealer – whatsisname?’

  ‘Carbonero! Grandfather writes about how disastrous it’d be for him if the sketch and its subject got abroad . . .’

  I heard Leah’s deep chuckle from the other end.

  ‘Mmm . . .’ she murmured. ‘What if your grandmother’s folk had got wind of it in England? Can you imagine them up from Malvern on a staid Sunday outing to the National Gallery, squinting at it through their lorgnettes, then recognizing who the second male nude was! Bang would have gone young Sebastian’s marriage prospects with his Cecily, whether she’d been of age or not. And there’s another aspect to it . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the obvious one! Didn’t you say Brogan’s just told you that no one’s ever seen the original sketch?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, then, maybe Rawbeck just sat on it to keep his power over your grandfather – play along with me, or I’ll put it on display, sort of thing – what a great motive that would’ve given your grandad for doing him in!’

  I don’t mind admitting that for a moment Leah’s logic shook my conviction of my grandfather’s innocence.

  ‘If he’d murdered Rawbeck just to get the sketch back,’ I conceded glumly, ‘it’s no wonder he was frantic when he realized the Vickybird had done a runner with it. But wait a bit: it’s a print of the sketch on display here in the saleroom, so the original must’ve gone public at some time or other, or presumably there wouldn’t have been any prints in existence. And in 1899 Grandfather would have had no way of knowing whether Rawbeck had had lithos engraved of the sketch, so there’d have been no point in his doing Rawbeck in to get it away from him.’

  ‘Or prints could’ve been made from the original after it had been stolen from your grandfather’s vicarage in Jersey in 1940.’

  ‘It’s the timing of the thing, Leah, we don’t know enough yet about the timing . . . And as for Rawbeck’s disappearance – probable murder – my grandfather’s scribbled account runs absolutely true. He’s clearly horrified when he finds Rawbeck’s body, and is determined to find out the truth about the incident – the pencilled crosses on the London street plan tell us that.’

  ‘But he was drugged to the eyeballs: in that state he might’ve done anything –’

  ‘No, he couldn’t have murdered Rawbeck in a fit of absent . . .’

  The words died from my lips when I remembered my long fit of forgetfulness on the Monday before.

  ‘What was that you were saying?’ Leah asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I was saying I didn’t believe Grandfather could’ve murdered Rawbeck in a fit of absentmindedness. Anyway, I’m sure I’m on the track of something here, and I’ll certainly be at the auction tomorrow.’

  And so next morning, I found myself again among the crowd in the bleak, iron-raftered auction hall. I was ready for anything, and had equipped myself at the office with a numbered bidder’s label on a stick. I worked my way near the front of the hall, and scanned the crowd. Brogan was there, smiling and bow-tied, and so was Pat Hague – I instinctively tried to make myself small – and, to my great disconcertment, my ex-wife, Reet. Now what had brought her here, of all people I knew the least interested in art or antiques?

  Brogan smiled and nodded at me across the hall, and I nodded slightly back. It was eleven o’clock, and, the Rawbeck print being Lot No. 51, I hadn’t seen the point of coming in earlier. The rap of the auctioneer’s gavel focused my attention on the proceedings up front – Lot No. 37 was going to someone in the doorway. As the auctioneer droned the introduction to Lot No. 38, I stood on tiptoe and continued my scanning of the crowd, praying all the while that neither Pat nor Reet had seen me come in. Turning my head back towards the entrance, I spotted a rather striking figure leaning against the side of the doorway: a tall, slim, youngish man, in a foreign suit and wearing dark glasses. An international bidder? There seemed something oddly familiar about him . . .

  ‘Now Lot 39,’ the auctioneer was droning on. ‘This fine Belleek butterdish – lot of interest in this, and I’m starting the bidding at eighty pounds . . .’

  My attention wandered, and – oh, no! – Pat Hague was making a beeline for me through the crowd, like the periscope of a hunter-killer submarine. She was in a buff trouser suit, with black blouse and shoes, and was wearing her most tigerish grin. She slipped her arm through mine – she must’ve known Reet was in the room – and cocked her head against mine in a conspiratorial sort of way.

  ‘Belleek’s always a good seller,’ she began, ‘especially when the lacework isn’t damaged.’

  ‘You talk like an old hand.’

  ‘Of course – didn’t you know? Frank’s got me into the inner circle.’

  ‘I half expected to see him here, too.’

  ‘Not disappointed, I hope – you’ve always got me . . .’

  Pat snuggled her coarse dark hair into my shoulder, and I wriggled in my embarrassment and annoyance.

  ‘Don’t you care about Frank?’ I hissed. ‘This place’ll be full of people who know him and do business with him.’

  ‘Love laughs at auctioneers! Ooh, look! There’s Reet . . .’

  My uninvited companion’s grin became even more ferocious as she twinkled her fingers over the heads of the other spectators in the direction of my ex-wife’s greying head. I gritted my teeth as Reet glanced sadly over in our direction: she looked tense and tired, and I thought I read a question in her eyes before I flinched mine away from hers. I felt a disconcerting jag of protectiveness towards her, which changed almost in the same moment to guilty rage as I tore my elbow from Pat’s grip.

  ‘Don’t worry, Seb,’ she said, all unconcerned. ‘She’ll always forgive you – she’ll always be there.’

  ‘I hate you, Pat!’ I growled, loudly enough to bring a disapproving glance from over the auctioneer’s half-track spe
ctacles. ‘I loathe you with all my being!’

  ‘Ooh! There’s passion for you! It means I’m still in with a chance – must be going – someone over there I want to talk to . . .’

  A last finger-twinkle, and she was off again, no doubt delighted at having created the effect she’d been aiming at. Embarrassed, I moved away from the clearly disapproving couple in front, who’d obviously heard every word of my nasty little exchange with Pat. Were they members of Frank Hague’s circle? I peered over the heads of the crowd again, but Reet must’ve shifted her position too, for I couldn’t see her. The tall, foreign-looking man in dark glasses was now standing up unsupported by the wall of the entrance, and was looking at his watch. Could he be a Rawbeck collector? I scanned another twenty degrees to the left, and caught Liam Brogan’s round, blue gaze: it was as if he’d never taken his eyes off me since I’d come into the place. What had he made then of my little performance with Pat Hague?

  ‘Lot No. 51 . . .’

  This was it! I swung my attention back to the auctioneer.

  ‘A rare print of a late sketch by Julian Rawbeck RA, of the English Impressionist School, circa 1895, and entitled Morte Moriantur. Wonderful draughtsmanship . . . We’ve had a great deal of interest expressed in this, and I have to start the bidding at eight hundred pounds.’

  A tension ran through the room, and I could hear people here and there muttering into mobile phones, a man with one to his ear kicking off the bidding with a nod towards the podium. The thousand-pound barrier was soon broken, and I glanced round briefly to see how the dark-spectacled Joe Cool in the doorway was taking it all, but he was leaning against the wall again, his arms refolded, just calmly watching the hall.

  The bidding mounted, and at eighteen hundred pounds most of the mobiles were switched off.

  ‘Going, then, at eighteen hundred pounds, I’m selling at eighteen hundred . . .’