Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  There was a sound of music from inside, the Brahms Violin Concerto. Ben rang the bell again. The music stopped, but no one opened the door. ‘He’s in there, but he’s not coming out.’ Ben tore a page out of a notebook, wrote on it and pushed it under the door. Then he said they’d go and find some jazz, the older the better.

  There was only a pianist in Vintage Village, greyhaired, black, with a voice which poured out as slowly as treacle, and with dancing fingers. Ben forgot to be irritated by the afternoon’s squash game and talked about Italy and Berenson, and some long-gone art deals, as they listened to variations on ‘A Slowboat to China’. At last his patience was rewarded and he looked up and saw a red baseball cap in the doorway. He raised his hand and rose to greet their guest. ‘You’ve come to join us. That’s good. You must be Mr Pollack.’

  ‘Sure, I’m Peter. You said you were Don’s friend.’ Peter pulled Ben’s note out of the back pocket of his jeans.

  ‘Years ago, many, many years. We were in Italy together.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea Don mentioned your name. He said you were OK.’

  ‘That was good of him.’ Ben ordered white wine and a Michelob and a Tab for Peter Pollack.

  ‘This your girlfriend?’ Peter Pollack looked at Maggie.

  ‘No. She’s my boss, as a matter of fact. Maggie Perowne. Head of Old Master Paintings.’

  Pollack was unconvinced. He said, ‘Your girlfriend looks a good deal younger than you.’

  ‘In certain lights, I’d have to admit it.’

  Maggie explained, ‘We work together, that’s all. We were so sorry about your friend.’

  Pollack looked from one to the other and then the words poured out of him, as though he had found no one to understand his grief. ‘I was a lot younger than Don. Maybe over thirty years younger. People used to laugh about it, but he was the child in a way. It was like having a child about the place. Money! He didn’t know the first thing about money. He’d write an article for some obscure magazine: “Erotic Influences on Mannerist Paintings of the Sixteenth Century”. Stuff like that. And as soon as he got paid, which was peanuts, he’d rush out and buy me presents: paints, canvases, music. All stuff like that. Couldn’t look after himself, of course. I don’t think Don had ever learned how to boil water. He just lived for art. No wonder Klinsky’s hated him. I have to tell you guys, Klinsky’s is strictly for cash. Klinsky’s hates art. My art they would certainly hate.’

  ‘You’re a painter?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I make images, sure. Images for our time. Of course no one wants to buy them. If you’re worth anything, you don’t sell. Look, I’ve got him on my shirt here. Vincent van Gogh. One of the greatest. And he only sold a single picture.’

  ‘I think that’s one of the tragedies in the history of art,’ Maggie felt herself driven to say.

  ‘Oh, sure. I bet your heart bleeds for him.’

  ‘... Because most great painters made quite a good living: Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, Rembrandt. But just because Van Gogh never sold, everyone thinks you’re a genius just if no one wants to buy your stuff.’

  ‘Maggie!’ She could be impossible at times, Ben thought. ‘Mr Pollack’s here because I think he’s got something to tell us.’

  ‘Peter. I guess you can call me Peter.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t think Klinsky’s is all that bad.’ Maggie, Ben thought, suffered from occasional loyalty.

  ‘Then you don’t know what Klinsky’s in New York City is doing. Or what they did.’

  ‘Which was?’ Ben’s voice was gentle.

  ‘I should never have let him go. After he left the apartment, I decided to go after him. To stop him doing anything stupid. I went to your glitzy art shop on the bike. When I got there, Klinsky’s had done it!’

  ‘Done what exactly?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Murdered him!’ Peter Pollack almost shouted. Then he got up suddenly and left before they could say anything or ask another question.

  The nymphs and shepherds dancing in the dark glade were still on the easel in Chuck’s office. Ben was examining the picture with his magnifying glass. On the desk behind him, books and transparencies were piled in no sort of order. Chuck was out to lunch at his club. Ben was engrossed in the picture and Maggie was thinking about something entirely different when she said, ‘It’s the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve ever heard!’

  ‘Titian and his pupils, Titian and the Titiani,’ Ben said, and asked her. ‘You know them all, of course.’

  ‘What’s Klinsky’s meant to have done?’ Maggie couldn’t be bothered with the Titiani. ‘Launched poison darts at him through a blowpipe from the rest-room? Smeared the handle of his paddle with some rare Mexican tincture that produces immediate death? Your friend with the pigtail, the producer of unsaleable works, who probably has absolutely nothing else in common with Van Gogh, must have read far too much Agatha Christie.’

  ‘Oh, I thought what he had to say about murder was the least interesting part of the conversation.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Come and look at the painting of the hair over the neck, Maggie. Tell me what you think, quite honestly.’ Maggie joined him in front of the picture. Then the door opened and, elegant and cheerful as ever, Chuck came back from lunch. ‘Hi, boys and girls.’ He saw Maggie, stooping, intent on her view of hair through a glass, and said ‘My God! You’re looking beautiful.’

  Ben said, ‘Thank you very much!’

  Chuck, filling his pipe with tobacco from the jar on his desk, was delighted to tell them, ‘I’ve got a great invitation.’

  ‘Please. Don’t ask me to play squash,’ said Ben.

  ‘John T. Flecknow’s hosting a party for us in Sutton Place. We can drink champagne and look out over the East River, and for God’s sake, Ben, let’s hope you’ll have made up your mind about the Titian by dinner time.’

  ‘Don’t rush me!’

  ‘OK. That’s OK. Save the good news for the Flecknow dinner.’ Chuck blew out expensive and perfumed smoke. ‘Oh, his wife’s just longing to meet you.’

  ‘I find that extremely alarming.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some eager trout anxious to get her foot into the art world.’ And Ben prayed, ‘Please God, I don’t have to sit next to her.’

  The Flecknow’s house in Sutton Place was filled like a small museum, with paintings and antique furniture. Big windows opened on to a balcony with views of the Queensborough Bridge and the East River. John T. Flecknow was a large, grizzled man with one of those deep rumbling American voices which can make every word audible across the most crowded restaurant. He sat at the head of the table at which a dozen of his close personal friends, together with Ben and Maggie, were dining. Behind him was a huge painting of a Scottish glen, and the chair backs and place mats were in what might have been the Flecknow tartan. He had gripped Ben by the arm on his arrival and explained that they were countrymen, although he had no trace of a Scottish accent.

  Ben found himself sitting next to Barbara Flecknow, who, in spite of his fears, turned out to be a beautifully produced blonde of about Maggie’s age. She was treating Ben with the most flattering attention, sitting very close to him and frequently laying a friendly hand on his arm. Owing to this and the proximity of her revealed shoulders and mostly revealed breasts, Ben had become noticeably more cheerful.

  ‘I’m the fourth wife of John T. Flecknow III,’ she told him. ‘We go in for numbers in our family. As the years went by, John became more interested in youth. Do you find that yourself, Mr Glazier?’

  ‘Perhaps so. In a way.’ He was looking across the table to Maggie who was laughing, he hoped only politely, at some joke of Chuck’s.

  ‘I sure hope you like younger women! Then we can become really good friends. I’m going to have to keep coming to you for advice. When I’m on the Board of the Lemberg Museum.’

  ‘Sadly, I’ll be back in London.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll hop over. I just adore London. So
quaint. There’s a little hotel in St James’s which is kind of quiet and, you know, tremendously discreet. Maybe you’ll let me take you out to dinner and, well, next day I’d fly right back to New York and impress them with my marvellous knowledge of art.’

  ‘You getting on the Board of the Lemberg doesn’t really depend on the Titian, does it?’ Ben never felt he fully understood American museums.

  ‘Oh, yes! That’s what’s going to get me in, when Johnny buys it. You see Susie Elphberg over there? Her husband bought them a genuine Corot, I guess it was, and she didn’t get on the Board. So she’ll be sick as a cat, which won’t cause me any real pain, I can tell you. Chuck told me that with a Titian, I’m a shoe-in. Go on, Ben. Tell me honestly. What do you think of it?’ Her hand, with sparkling fingers was on his, her eyes were appealing.

  ‘I think it’s very skilfully painted,’ he told her.

  She said, ‘Go on. I love your accent.’

  ‘I’m sure it was painted in the right period. Say, 1570 to 1576.’

  ‘I just love it,’ she said. ‘It’s genuine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well ...’ he hesitated.

  ‘I mean your Scottish accent. That’s genuine?’

  ‘It’s certainly mine,’ he was happy to tell her.

  At which, John T. Flecknow III tapped his glass with his knife, a well-known New York sound which produces instant and respectful silence to go with the dessert. He rose majestically to speak. ‘Tonight I feel kind of at home, because our guest of honour is a man from my own country! Our families come from those same misty Highlands. We once wore the sporran and hunted the deer. Since my grandfather’s time we McFlecknows have given our loyal services to the retail food industry of America.’

  There was a solo clap from a man called Louis Elphberg, James T. Flecknow’s business partner. ‘Thank you, Louis. Otherwise, my time is devoted to the great cause, ‘The People versus Narcotics’.’ More general applause greeted this worthy organization, and when it had died away, the speaker continued, ‘However, as I’m sure is the case with our guest, my heart’s in the Highlands!’

  ‘Glasgow, in fact,’ Ben said quite audibly, but the Flecknow oratory rumbled on. ‘Now, I have done business with all sorts and conditions of men. With the people of Cleveland. And the people of England. And some citizens of Israel and Ireland and even of Canada – But I have to tell you folks. There is no one you can trust as you can trust a Scot. As Robbie Burns put it, “Princes and lords are but the names of kings”.’

  ‘“The breath of kings”.’ Ben’s correction was unnoticed and Flecknow completed the quotation, ‘ “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” Now, when I wanted an art expert of complete honesty to pass judgement on a certain picture, I rang another great name in retail food outlets, my old friend and aristocrat, the noble Lord Holloway, Chairman of Klinsky’s, London. And I asked him for a brilliant art expert who happened to be an honest Scot. “I have the very man for you”, the noble lord told me. And, of course, he mentioned our guest of honour, who not only, the Lord Holloway told me, identified a most valuable ... Bonze– ?’

  ‘Bronzino,’ Chuck came discreetly to the rescue.

  ‘Thanks, Chuck ... but has some of Scotia’s old grandeur about him. The point of these remarks is, if our guest of honour, as an art expert and a Scot, gives his opinion that a certain picture is not up to standard, then, as my grandfather used to say, “The jig’s off”. But if he gives it his seal of approval, then I don’t care what price I pay. My lovely wife, Barbara, will carry the Titian into her first meeting of the Lemberg Board and hand it over with a skirl of the bagpipes. So, folks, will ye tak a cup of kindness to our guest of honour, Ben Glazier!’

  Glasses were raised, the toast was drunk, and when the inner was over, and the guests found places and coffee on the living-room sofas, Chuck invited Maggie out on to the plant-filled, glass roofed balcony to look at the lights on the bridge, the lights on the water and said, ‘Wonderful glittering, glamorous – and I don’t mean the view.’

  ‘You’re looking particularly gorgeous yourself,’ Maggie had to say.

  ‘It’s Savile Row tailoring. You can’t beat it.’ And then he stopped smiling. ‘What do you think Ben’s up to exactly?’

  ‘Taking his time.’

  ‘No, not that. Why was he talking about the old guy that passed out in the Sale Room? Someone I swear I can’t remember.’

  ‘He’s been listening to some absurd story about Klinsky’s,’ Maggie told him.

  ‘What story?’

  ‘It’s so ridiculous it’s not even worth repeating.’ She decided not to tell him. ‘Maybe we ought to go back to the party?’ She turned to go, but he held her wrist.

  ‘Stay a minute.’

  ‘Why?’

  He kissed her suddenly and seriously. She responded only for seconds and then moved away from him. ‘When the party’s over,’ he promised, ‘I’ll show you the view from my apartment.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘It might be fun.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘What’s the matter? You got a serious boyfriend in England?’

  ‘I suppose I’ve got a boyfriend. Nobody could possibly call Nick serious.’

  ‘You don’t fancy me?’ Chuck said it as though he didn’t believe it were possible.

  ‘It’s not that either. You’re very acceptable, Chuck. You wear nice clothes and you’ve got a great tan and your hair’s survived. I bet you’ve picked up all sorts of tricks and I’m sure you’d make a girl feel very spoiled and popular. But ...’

  ‘What’s “but” about it?’

  ‘But you’re the same age as Ben,’ she said, as though that settled it.

  ‘He’s a year older. At least! Anyway, what’s age got to do with it?’

  ‘Well, Nick ...’

  ‘Your not serious boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes, Nick. He’s young. Younger than me, in fact. He’s young and rather disgustingly attractive.’

  ‘Oh, he is?’

  ‘But Ben minds enough about him. If it was you – well, almost his age – I don’t think Ben could take it.’

  ‘That’s distinctly unfair.’ Chuck felt that, in some way he didn’t quite understand, he’d been cheated.

  ‘Terribly,’ Maggie agreed. ‘We’d better go back or they’ll think we’ve jumped in the river together.’ She slid back the glass door into the living-room, and he followed her reluctantly. John T. Flecknow was advancing on him in a purposeful manner. ‘You said our guest of honour might give us his decision tonight.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Chuck called out to Ben who was on a sofa beside Barbara Flecknow. ‘You must have made your mind up by now? On the Titian.’

  ‘You mean you want to know the truth? Do you, Chuck?’ Ben had seen them come in from the terrace together and wasn’t best pleased about it.

  ‘Of course, we do. Give it to us, fellow Scot!’ John T. Flecknow was prepared to look delighted as Ben stood and crossed the room to deliver judgement.

  ‘The truth is,’ he began carefully, ‘it’s a very well-painted picture. But it lacks the freedom of old age and the courage of an old man. The painting of the hair falling on the neck is hesitant, over-careful and without Titian’s perfect confidence. It’s the work of a talented pupil, perhaps Paris Bordone, who trained in Titian’s studio and learned about erotic painting in the court of the French king. Is it a Titian? No, I’d say it is a perfectly respectable contemporary repetition.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben.’ Chuck looked betrayed, disappointed and deeply angry. ‘Don’t make jokes about it.’

  Peter Pollack was painting strips of colour and playing, once again, the Brahms Violin Concerto. His doorbell rang and this time he opened it and let in Ben who looked round the room and said, ‘Your favourite music?’

  ‘It was Don’s.’ Peter switched it off. ‘You come from Klinsky’s?’

  ‘No. No, I came straight from the hotel. I haven’t been to the office this morning.
I’m afraid I’m not their favourite art expert any more. I passed judgement on an alleged Titian. I don’t think it was exactly what they wanted to hear.’ He looked round the room, at the abstract painting and the neat, scholarly desk, ‘What did Don do to annoy Klinsky’s exactly?’

  ‘He was angry at the way they attributed pictures. He told me they made false claims. Anyway, claims he didn’t believe in. He was going to speak out.’

  ‘That was asking for trouble.’

  ‘He was going to do it at the sale. He was going to tell everyone that wasn’t a Parmigianino. Old Don who was so quiet, so gentle. He was really angry. He was going to make a great scene in public.’

  ‘That was brave of him.’

  ‘And stupid.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid so. Would you mind very much if I used your bathroom?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  The bathroom was in chaos and had lost all traces of , Don’s sense of order. Socks were soaking in the basin, shirts hung up and dripping over the chipped and greying bath. The cupboard Ben opened contained twisted tubes of toothpaste, dental floss, various herbal remedies and a bottle of pills on which he was able to read the word, Digoxin. He went back into the living-room as the tape started again in the middle of the slow movement and asked, ‘How on earth do you think anyone at Klinsky’s killed Don?’, as though he’d just remembered Peter’s accusation.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what they did when he got there. I don’t know that. I only know ...’ Peter Pollack seemed on the verge of tears.

  ‘What do you know?’ Ben asked in a voice as sharply unexpected as a slap in the face.

  The young man shook himself and answered the question, ‘Someone from Klinsky’s came to see Don. A week before the sale. Came to warn him off, I guess. But Don didn’t heed the warning. I wish to God he had.’

  ‘Who came to see him? Did you meet this visitor?’