The Doctor paused and Douglas distinctly heard Mr. Carr give way to a low but piercing “Coo, lumme, what’s he talking about?” This interpolation might not have existed so far as Dr. Cornelius Bellamy was concerned. He shook himself like a retriever which has just left the water.
“As I was saying,” he said, “we can now count ourselves among the really fortunate. We do not need to rely on our friends when we wish to see a painting by, let us say, Réne Magritte or Piet Mondrian. No, Miss Wallenstein has made the sight of these things the common property of us all. We can see them when we want to see them. We do not need to hang expectantly on a telephone receiver for the voice that informs us that its owner will be away this week-end. No, we can come when we like and see what we like, when we want to see it.”
Douglas thought that the Doctor had finished. He took out a clean handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He looked slowly around the room. But he started again.
“It is depressing,” he said, “to look around a room like this, and to ask oneself how many of the people here are interested in the works which hang around them, and how many, desiring to be as they say in the swim, came to see their friends and not the pictures. Look around you,” his startled audience looked around it, “do you not find something that stirs you in these pictures? Can you look at that Picasso,” he waved towards one of the paintings of the Guernica period, “and go home quite the same people? Before you you can see fragments of what it takes to make men, pieces wrung by torture from the lives of men. Is it nothing to you? Can you go on living your unimportant lives full of absolutely unimportant things and still have the hearts to look paintings in the face? Can you, however inflated your sad egos may be, face these works unashamed—unashamed of your triviality, your worthlessness?”
Douglas looked at the audience. They seemed to be pleased by the way the Doctor addressed them. Vaguely, Douglas had a memory of a nineteenth-century divine who had condemned his congregations to hell, much to their enjoyment. He realised suddenly that the people in the gallery were, in spite of their mental pictures of themselves, no more sophisticated than the divine’s congregations.
“It only remains for me,” Dr. Bellamy looked at the crowd with a face that displayed deep disgust, “to thank Miss Wallenstein on behalf of us all for her unprecedented generosity—yes, and enterprise. But for Miss Wallenstein we would still be in an aesthetic dark age.”
Mrs. Carr, who had managed somehow to get up close under the Doctor, looked up at him. She let go a loud and rather offensive belch. “That’s the stuff, cock,” she said noisily but unsteadily, “don’t you let ’em tell you otherwise. She’s a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us.”
She looked pugnaciously round the gallery as if asking for a challenge. From the folds of her garment she took a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry. She waved this hopefully. Douglas realised that she had stolen it from the table of drinks.
“Tally ho,” said Mrs. Carr, “it gives me much pleasure to propose the health of Miss Wallstone, Miss Wallysteen—oh, cut it. Here’s to you, hen.”
She pointed ferociously at Emily with the neck of the bottle and then put it in her own mouth in case she lost it.
Emily looked rather startled, as if someone had just stuck a pin into her, but Dr. Cornelius Bellamy was unabashed. One felt that not once or twice in his career as an educator had he encountered worse hecklers than Mrs. Carr. He looked at her severely and dismissed her from his mind.
“Without thought of personal glory,” he said, “and at, I may say, more than considerable personal cost, Miss Wallenstein has seen fit to prepare and erect this Museum to teach people to appreciate the art of their own epoch. It is only too easy for a man to say that he likes such-and-such a picture in the National Gallery when all the time he is only repeating judgments adopted from the accepted ideas of others. Here the spectator has to form his own judgments—he is the new man faced with new things and he has no handy—ah—cribs to help him. His aesthetic is entirely his own.”
Douglas, standing beside the toy rat was getting restive. He wished the Doctor had learned that brevity was the soul of wit. He fastened his eyes on the back of the speaker and concentrated on wishing that he was telepathic. He might as well have fastened his eyes on the brick wall in the painting by René Magritte beside him.
“In preparing this gallery,” Dr. Bellamy went on gracefully, “we have had the assistance of many workers who have not stinted their time nor their energies in the efforts to make everything as perfect as it can possibly be made. At Miss Wallenstein’s request I will name these people.”
Ha, said Douglas to himself, that’ll hurt you, you old windbag. I’ll bet you wanted to take all the credit to yourself. Dr. Bellamy looked at a scrap of paper hidden in the palm of his hand.
“Firstly, for the organisation of this very pleasant meeting, we have to thank Mr. and Mrs. Flint whose unflagging enthusiasm overcame all sorts of difficulties. Then there is Mr. Julian Ambleside, who may be known to many of you as a most enlightened dealer and who has collected a great many of the pictures which you see before you.”
Douglas wondered where Ambleside was. He had not seen him all day and it did not seem like him to miss the opening of an exhibition, particularly one where he might make promising business contacts.
“Then we have Mr. Francis Varley who, in addition to much else, has compiled the catalogue of the Museum, aided by our librarian, Mr. Newsome, the poet. Miss Wallenstein’s assistant, Miss Rampion, should come in for a special meed of praise, for she has been a veritable tower of strength when we felt our hearts grow weary and our limbs grow tired. But for these people the Museum would not be ready. I would like to thank them myself.”
There was a polite ripple of half-hearted clapping. Douglas felt rather surprised that the Doctor had mentioned his name, but reflected that, after all, he had done a great deal of work.
“It only remains for me,” the suave voice went on, “to unveil our latest purchase.”
He turned to Douglas who bent down and under cover of the cloth, pressed the trigger that was to start the mechanism.
The mechanical rat started to scamper across the room. There was a sudden diversion.
“Rats,” screamed Mrs. Carr and threw herself full length on the toy rodent. It was a minute or two before order was restored and before people looked up at the Max Ernst.
There, dangling in front of the picture, was the missing Julian Ambleside. He looked very dead indeed.
It was doubtful for a moment or so whether people did not accept the hanging figure as a part of the exhibition, but the fact that it was a dead man gradually filtered through their minds, which had been attuned to accept any absurdity except this.
“Cover it up,” the Doctor turned smartly to Douglas, “cover it up.”
Douglas rescued the cloth which had been attached to the rat and tried to reach up to hang it over Julian Ambleside. He was not tall enough and had to fetch a chair. He draped it clumsily enough and then climbed down again.
There was a deep silence in the room, deeper even than that which had welcomed the Doctor. Douglas looked around and wondered what he was supposed to do next.
“My dear fellow,” it was Francis Varley coming to help him and speaking in a quiet voice, “I suppose we’d better have a policeman, don’t you?”
Douglas turned to Emily. “Shall I get a copper?” he asked nervously, and she stopped biting the lipstick off her lips and nodded.
Douglas left the room and went into Emily’s office. He rang Whitehall 1212.
“Look here,” he said when he was connected, “I’m speaking from the new Museum of Modern Art in Iron Street. We have just been unveiling a picture and there was a dead man, a Mr. Julian Ambleside, hanging in front of it. Would you come along and deal with him. My name? Oh, I’m the librarian. My name’s Douglas Newsome. Thank you.”
He went back into the gallery and approached Emily who seemed to be on the point of having hysteri
cs. Dr. Cornelius Bellamy, looking surprisingly indecisive, stood beside her.
“I’ve rung the police,” said Douglas, “and they’ll be along in a few minutes. Have a drink, Emily?”
“What did you ring the police for?” the Doctor demanded in a tone which shewed that he considered that he should have been consulted first.
“I asked her if I should,” said Douglas, gesturing at Emily. He went and collected a drink for her.
Having delivered his drink he thought he could do with one himself. Beside the table of drinks stood Mrs. Carr, holding the mechanical rat in her hands as if it had been the one toy she had spent her hundred-and-two years hoping to find. Mr. Ben Carr stood beside her.
“Hullo, Douglas cock,” he said in a cheerful and piercing undertone, “some interior decorating, what? Better than meat, eh?”
Douglas poured back his drink quickly and served himself another. He noticed that people, having got over the initial shock of seeing Julian Ambleside dangling from a picture hook, were now trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were moving around the drinks and the attendants were pouring them out, and the conversation ran on everything except the late Mr. Ambleside.
That there was something wrong was filtering through Douglas’s brain. It would have been all right if he had found Ambleside hanging. He would have assumed that he had committed suicide, but to find him hanging behind a veil was going a bit far. He could not have put it back in place after killing himself. Therefore it seemed unlikely that Julian had, in fact, committed suicide. Of course, there had been that question as to whether his pictures were genuine, but, Douglas was forced to confess to himself, Julian had seemed as anxious to find out the facts of the matter as anyone else. And there was always the possibility that the whole subject was a sort of hare started by Francis Varley. Francis had a habit of starting such hares. There was nothing he liked half so much as a really acrimonious controversy. The ruder people became the more he seemed to enjoy it. He whetted his pen on the steel of their tongues.
Ho, said Douglas to himself, it looks as if it was murder. I wonder what’ll happen next. One murder case is enough in a lifetime, and I’ve had that. I don’t want to bullied about by the coppers. I will take steps to protect myself.
He reached out and grabbed a half-pint glass which he filled with whisky. That, he thought, should support him through the coming ordeal. He left the gallery and made his way up to the library. It looked very deserted after the crush downstairs. He sat down at his desk and pulled the red telephone towards him.
Part 2—Chapter 1
The Joy of Return
WHEN I got back from my holiday I found, as I had expected, that the old man had had a series of field-days in the creation of chaos. Anything that I had anticipated or feared was nothing to the reality. There were books all over the place. I don’t believe that one book in the house was in its rightful place. It seemed to me that Professor Stubbs had quite deliberately set to work to destroy my systems.
The only good thing was that I had taken the key of the filing cabinet, where I keep the Professor’s notes for his History of Botany, away with me. Even here I found that he had tried to break in to undo my work, but the good solid steel, bless it, had withstood his assaults with the poker.
I spent at least a month restoring something like order into the house. It was difficult to do this as the old man raised a howl of protest whenever he saw me at it. He claimed that he would never be able to find anything again so long as he lived.
With considerable restraint I pointed out that he employed me, at a very reasonable salary, just to find things for him and to see that he did not live in a kind of regal pig-sty. I might as well have presented myself with a tinsel halo. He paid no attention to my claims for an early beatification.
“Max, dam’ ’ee,” he said, “I got on very well wi’out ye, an’ I know me way around among me own thin’s. I’ll ask ye to let me ha’ just a little muddle so’s I can find what I want to find.”
In my turn I was adamant. I ignored the pathos he put into his voice and cleaned up sternly.
At last it seemed to me that I was getting on top of the primæval chaos. I copied a piece out of William Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth, 1696, and left it lying on his desk. It read: “The Chaos was a mixed Compound of all sorts of Corpuscles, in a most uncertain confus’d and disorderly State; heavy and light, dense and rare, fluid and solid Particles were in a great measure, as it were at a venture, mingled and jumbled together.”
This got him. He apologised and I accepted his apology. We set to work on several papers which, in my absence, Professor Stubbs had rather rashly undertaken to prepare. When the old man works he works harder than anyone I know. We kept our noses to our work for nearly a fortnight, never going further than to inspect the various plants which rioted in a botanist’s dream of plenty in the garden.
This afternoon we seemed to have finished the last of the papers. I had just typed it out and the old man was engaged in reading it and making corrections. Thank God, he has a very neat small handwriting so that I do not need to retype after he does his revision.
He laid down the last page and hoisted himself heavily to his feet. He lumbered over to the barrel of beer in a corner of the room and drew a pint for me and a quart for himself.
He lowered himself into his capacious chair and sucked back about half his mug. Then he dug through his pockets for his beastly little black pipe which he proceeded to fill with appalling brown plug and to light with a petrol lighter the size of a portable typewriter. When the vile fumes were climbing visibly and odorously around his head he sighed.
“We finished then, Max?” he asked and I nodded my head, “ah well, then we got nothin’ to do. Let’s go out an’ find a murder. It’s about time I had a bit o’ holiday meself, don’t you think?”
“Look here,” I said, “I do not wish to get mixed up in murder again as long as I live. So far as murder is concerned I’ve had the matter. I want a quiet life with nothing going faster than the germination of a seed. I want to avoid all disturbances and emotional upsets for the rest of my life. I want peace.”
He chortled quietly. “What ye want an’ what ye’ll get are likely to be two different things,” he said.
I agreed rather bitterly, knowing that I had as much chance of standing up to the Professor as a gazelle has of opposing a charging buffalo.
“Well,” I said cheerfully, “that being the case, we might as well get on with the History. There are no interesting murders in the papers at the moment—only burglaries with violence and such like. Even if there were any good murders, do you for one moment believe that the Bishop would let you in on them. His opinion is that you are as disruptive as a cyclone and rather less predictable.”
The Professor winked heavily and drained the rest of his beer. He stamped heavily over to the barrel. I am not allowed to fill mugs at this holy place. Once, by accident, I jerked the barrel and the beer was undrinkable for the rest of the morning. Anything else might have been forgiven me, but not that.
“Max son,” he said deeply, “there’s always a good murder around if ye know where to look for it. It may be masqueradin’ as accidental death or suicide, but once ye start rootin’ around ye’ll find that it’s murder.”
“God forbid,” I said with all the piousness of which I am capable in my voice. The last case we had, had resulted in my falling heavily for the murderer, who had done her best to poison me off with the rest of the company. And I could not forget that but for the Professor’s interference the case would have passed into history as one more accident from mixing up the Death Cap, amanita phalloides, with the common field mushroom. I had to admit to myself that Mary, that was the girl’s name, might have murdered me if she’d got tired of seeing me around. It might not have been a perfect match. There was a lot of this in my mind, but all the same I could not say that I felt grateful to the old man for saving me from my fate.
; I must admit too, that the Professor had been extraordinarily nice about things. He had somehow wangled it so that I was not called at the trial and he had given me a holiday. The holiday was the trouble. It had resulted in the chaos which I have just been describing.
He glowered at me across the room and picked up The Times which lay rumpled on the floor beside his chair. He retired behind it and I looked over some notes dealing with a piece of work I was doing on my own.
“Oi, Max,” he grumbled suddenly, “did ye realise that that Museum o’ Modern Art was openin’ to-day? Ye got an invitation, didn’t ye, an’ now I come to think o’ it, so did I, didn’t I?”
This was a fact. Douglas Newsome, who had been mixed up in the murder to which I have referred, had sent us both invitations to the private-view. I had done my best to forget all about it, as I felt that, although I liked Douglas, I had better keep away from anyone who had been connected with the Death Cap case. There was no point in scrabbling at my wounds.
Not so Professor Stubbs. He is a great believer in the idea that things that are past are past. He forgets all about them. This enables him to assume an attitude of infallability. He always manages to forget his mistakes as soon as he realises them. The fact that other people do not forget he looks upon as a dirty trick played upon him by fate, and he will protest that it was a very small mistake, rather on the principle of the girl who had the illegitimate baby and told the parson that, after all, it was only a very small baby.
Swing Low, Swing Death Page 10
