Gideon's Art Read online

  Girl of...

  He must not forget, she was twenty-five! He knew it well. Strange that he could forget; could even forget that his chief aide, Alec Hobbs, seemed deeply in love with her. One tended to shut certain facts out of one’s mind instinctively.

  Once again, then, he had been thinking of Penny as a girl. Twenty-five! His other daughters had married at that age; he had a grandchild - two grandchildren - on the way. And he still thought of them all as girls.

  He sat back, more than a little rueful, then, making a conscious effort, forced his mind back to Leslie Jenkins. He recalled that Jenkins had a daughter of about the same age as Penelope; actually a young girl at the time of her father’s arrest and trial! Her mother had died - or had she deserted Jenkins? She certainly hadn’t been in evidence at the time of the sentence. Gideon could remember talking to the officers in charge of the case about the girl. There had been some suggestion of sending her to a home, but in the end she had been taken in by an aunt. What was her name, now? He made an effort to recollect it but could not do so.

  The ring of a telephone bell made him start, and took his mind off the girl. The call was a trifle: would he be available in three weeks’ time to give away some prizes at the Sports Club, on the evening of the Metropolitan Police Force Table Tennis Championships?

  “Glad to,” Gideon said. He jotted a note on a pad for transfer later to his diary, then sat back and said aloud: “Lucy, that was her name. Lucy Jenkins.”

  2: Lucy

  Lucy Jenkins brushed her fair hair back from her forehead and stood away from the picture she was about to clean. It was astonishing how much dirt had accumulated in a few years and stuck to the varnish. This picture, according to the slip on the back, had been restored only twelve years before. Where on earth had it been to become so dirty?

  She frowned, wrinkling her forehead, as she took the picture out of the old gilt frame. It was a modern painting and not a very good one, but she had a feeling that there was another painting beneath it.

  Very soon she knew that she was right. Nervously but skilfully she cleaned off first the dirt at one corner, then the top layers of paint; she went on doing this until at last she could see most of the original picture - a country scene with three figures in the foreground - but as soon as the water she was washing it with dried, the picture faded.

  She had bought the painting with a load of frames and prints from a man who had just cleared out an attic. Most of the pictures and prints were now tidied away, and entered in the Purchase Book. She had paid only five pounds for the lot.

  Some of the paint of this particular picture had been rubbed away, showing not canvas but cracked varnish beneath, so she had been intrigued by it. Now she had proved that a hidden picture existed, and she knew it was in very fine perspective. She dusted it over carefully, planning to check whether it had ever been relined. The varnish over the old painting was very cracked. You could often judge a picture from the condition of the craquelure. She stood back, then picked up a big bottle of turpentine substitute, dipped in a swab of cotton wool, and slowly covered the whole picture. The colours and the design, of two women and a man, came up beautifully, but soon faded. She studied the corners, then cleaned a tiny patch of sky and the branch of a tree with two birds on it - that portion was one to test for relining.

  She dipped a sponge in soapy water, and cleaned the corner again; then she took up a smaller bottle, labelled “dictate,” dipped in a little swab at the end of a pencil-sized stick, and spread the mixture carefully over the corner, left it for a moment, then dabbed it off with the turps substitute and put on the mixture again. She mustn’t leave it on too long; in restoring it was on, off, on, off, on, off, until at last the varnish was really off and the original paint was revealed.

  That blue!

  Those birds - hawks, they looked like.

  The green of the leaves - it looked almost as if she could pick them!

  Lucy Jenkins was very thin; her flaxen hair and blue eyes made her look Scandinavian, but in fact she was an Angle from a long way back, which accounted for her fair skin and the pink tinge to her cheeks. Unlike her father, she had well-shaped lips, and her chin was square, not thin and narrow like his. She had short but very thick eyelashes; had they been dark, they would have looked false.

  Aloud, she said, “It’s lovely.”

  She was alone, not only in the room at the back of the shop in King’s Road, Chelsea, but in the shop as well. She worked for an elderly man named Jacob Fisk and his semi-invalid wife, minding the shop, cleaning pictures and frames, putting on new cords or wires. She had been doing this for several years now; it paid her all she needed and she was as nearly happy as she had ever been.

  She had a single room at the back of the first floor of the premises, and cooked and cleaned for herself, as well as helping out when Mrs. Fisk wasn’t well.

  When she had first come here, she had not known much about the work, although she had some familiarity with it, for her father had once been a runner for small picture dealers and galleries in London. She had known even as a child that under the double bed in her parents’ room stolen pictures had been stored, and she had often seen her father doing what she was doing now - cleaning the corner of a picture to find out what really was under the varnish. She could half remember the smell of oil paints, thinners, wood, and canvas which there had been in a tiny shed in the back yard of her parents’ home.

  In a way, that was why she had taken this job: because of the sharp, penetrating odours.

  She was careful, indeed painstaking, and she had an instinctive liking for old pictures, old prints - in fact, for anything old. When she had first come, she had had no idea of values, but she could now distinguish between a Chelsea and a Worcester figurine, could tell a genuine Hepplewhite or Chippendale from an imitation, could judge the value of repaired pieces, and particularly could distinguish a genuinely old painting from a new one, and a good one from a bad.

  Only once had Old Fisky found a truly valuable picture, and after buying it for five pounds he had sold it for nearly four thousand. She could recall the excitement on his face when he had realized what he had bought, how newspaper reporters and photographers had flocked to the tiny shop, and ever since that day she had been on the lookout for something similar. It was not that she expected it, simply that she accepted the possibility and never forgot to check. Several times she had put a picture aside, hopefully, for Fisk, but each time she had discovered only a copy or a painting in the same school as one of the Old Masters.

  “It’s very funny,” she repeated to the empty room. “Why would anyone paint this over old varnish without giving it a proper cleaning? Talk about craquelure, I’ll bet my life that paint is real old. Those colours!”

  She felt a tremor of excitement as she cleaned off a little more. Mixture on, pause, off with turps, pause, on - off - on - off. There was blue and grey in the corner, and then a touch of brown and green; it was an outdoor scene, trees and sky and clouds, and the people certainly didn’t have much on in the way of clothes. She drew back and studied it again, almost touching the wall behind her. The room was little more than a passage, but it had one big north window and the light was perfect. On the bench which ran from wall to wall were other pictures, bottles of turpentine, rags, old canvases, frames, wood for framing and repairs; she was oblivious of everything but the picture now propped up against the wall.

  She turned it over and read the tag; there was no doubt about the date of cleaning of the picture which had been on top: twelve years ago. The back of the canvas wasn’t really dirty. Her heart gave a sudden lurch as she admitted the obvious possibility to herself: that the canvas had been painted over and relined so as to make the one underneath a kind of sandwich. Of course some artists painted over old pictures because they couldn’t afford a new canvas, but usually it was to hide the one underneath.

  She was confused, but very alert and very curious as she put the picture face downward on the be
nch.

  She picked up a glazier’s knife and prised the canvas loose; and when she first touched it with her fingers she felt another twinge of excitement, for it was very thick - thick and stiff as a board. She carried the picture closer to the window, and studied it.

  Now she was sure. There were two linings, a new one to conceal the old one. No one covered both back and front because they couldn’t afford canvas!

  Everything she had learned about such a situation as this crowded into her mind. There were several ways of sticking canvases together, but the great danger was that if the picture was of any value, it could be damaged. One needed special solvents to separate the layers of varnish without causing damage, and she was not in any way an expert. It was exasperating, because Old Fisky would not be back for at least twenty-four hours, perhaps not until after the weekend. Not often impatient, she was edgy and disappointed; was there a picture of great value, even of modest value there? Had she made a real discovery?

  She sighed and took the picture to a rack against a wall and placed it with half a dozen others, all of which needed attention from Old Fisky. Then she picked up a small Scottish Highland scene, quite dirty but not unusual. Cleaning it, she estimated the price the old man would ask for it. This wasn’t one of her buys. The old man had bought the whole of the contents of a cottage for a song, sold off the large furniture and the modern pieces to second hand dealers, and had already made a profit. This little picture would fetch fifteen or twenty pounds. She wondered what he did with his money; he must be worth a small fortune.

  And if she had made a discovery, he would see that she got her share. He wasn’t mean, she could say that for him. She had quite a nice little balance in the Post Office Savings Bank, already put aside for a rainy day.

  She had been in the back of the building for at least an hour when the shop doorbell rang, and she went out to see who it was. It was a man she recognized - Red Thomas, a middle-aged man with a red shirt and grizzled hair, a runner for the West End galleries who was always looking for snips.

  “Hallo, Lucy,” he said. “Anything for me today?”

  “There’s a copy of a Vermeer,” she began quickly; customers often made her feel nervous.

  “I don’t want any copies,” he interrupted. “Is the old man in?”

  “No, he won’t be back until later.” Lucy never told anyone how long she could be alone and in charge, or that the place would be empty, but for her, at night.

  The runner was going through some pictures stacked against the wall, obviously looking for something specific, but he didn’t say what. His clothes were threadbare and yet well-brushed and pressed. Lucy straightened some oddments of porcelain and china on the shelves. Though the shop was small and in need of painting, she kept it meticulously tidy.

  At last, the runner stopped his searching and asked, “Anything in the back?”

  “You know Mr. Fisk never keeps anything in the back if it’s priced and ready for sale,” she answered.

  “There might be just the thing I’m looking for,” he persisted. “Let me have a look through the back room and I’ll see there’s a fiver in it for you.”

  “Mr. Thomas,” Lucy replied firmly, “everything we’ve got is in the shop. Please don’t make difficulties.”

  “Oh, all right.” The man stood very still, facing her. His expression hardened. “You’re as stubborn as your old man,” he said, with an edge of cruelty in his voice. “I hope it doesn’t land you in the same place.”

  He spun on his heel and strode out, while Lucy stood white-faced, staring at the window but not really seeing him. She hated being reminded that her father was an ex-convict. She tried desperately to forget it but somehow never could. Often it was the shop which reminded her, the fact that her father had at one time done a lot of business with Old Fisky.

  On the other side of the road, two policemen passed, one of them speaking into his little walkie-talkie radio. The other one looked across at her. She hadn’t any doubt, he was looking at her: was it with suspicion?

  She went back to the workroom. It was no use telling herself that she was being ridiculous, that there was nothing to suspect her for. She was always conscious of policemen and uneasy in their presence. And she was so upset by Red Thomas’s remark she did not give the mystery picture a thought until, half an hour later, she locked both back and front doors and went upstairs.

  Then she thought, It might have been stolen. And the possibility troubled her very much indeed.

  The two policemen who had been in King’s Road, Chelsea, walked together into the Chelsea Divisional Station, the Headquarters of the CD Division, about quarter to eight that night, and filed their reports. There was nothing much in any of them, but the younger of the two, Police Constable Wilfred Chivers, made a routine comment.

  “Red Thomas was in Jake Fisk’s shop in N.K.R. this afternoon - 4.40 until 5.00 P.M. approx.”

  After leaving Lucy, Red Thomas walked for ten minutes, looked into another shop, and then caught a bus back to the West End. He sat on top, smoking, watching the streets and the crowds perfunctorily, thinking of the shops and the pictures he had seen, wondering what he could offer to West End buyers who might give him an advance on commission. He had been in the art business most of his life. He knew a great deal about paintings, especially of the main English and Dutch schools, but he was only on the fringe of the trade. He had no heart for paintings, no feel or love for them. To him they were simply coloured canvasses or panels, and he saw no intrinsic beauty in them.

  He earned a reasonable living but seldom made big money, because he had a curious characteristic: while he had a very good eye for the artist or school a particular dealer was interested in, he had no eye at all for a find.

  He was, within his own limits, honest, and he had never been in prison, though he knew of a great number of men, like Leslie Jenkins, who had been inside severed times but, when out in the everyday world, had made fortunes, only to waste them on gambling or drinking. And he envied these men as he envied anyone who made more money than he.

  He got off the bus, turned in to a narrow lane off Bond Street, and went into the Oriole Gallery, where a silver-haired woman sat at a small desk. The Oriole Gallery specialized in paintings of birds and animals; its walls were crowded with oil paintings, watercolours, and prints.

  “Hallo, Mrs. Bessell,” Red said. “I’m back.”

  “So I see,” Mrs. Bessell said dryly. “Did you find anything?”

  “There’s a fine pair of pheasants at Old Fisky’s, King’s Road,” he said. “Real beauties, they are. I could get them for thirty if you like; you’d get fifty for them at least - a hundred, knowing you.”

  “I’d want to see them,” Mrs. Bessell said. She wore pebble-lensed glasses, which diminished her attractiveness.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. They might not let me have them on approval, and if they know who wants them the price will go up. You know what these Chelsea dealers are like, Mrs. Bessell.”

  “I know they would want a deposit,” the woman admitted. “I’ll think about it, Red.”

  “I could get out there tonight,” the man persisted. “Fisk lives over the shop, so there wouldn’t be any difficulty. And I could have them here first thing in the morning.” When the woman made no answer, he went on doggedly: “I might get them for twenty-five. I happen to know Fisk’s a bit short of ready cash. He bought a big load a couple of weeks ago and—”

  “I’ll decide in the morning,” Mrs. Bessell said; then, seeing the defeated expression on his face, her tone softened and she asked, “Short of a pound, Red?”

  “You never said a truer word,” he replied miserably.

  Mrs. Bessell opened a drawer in her desk and took out a black metal cashbox.

  “I’ll give you an advance on the next job you do for me,” she told him. “But I want preferential treatment. Do you understand?”

  “Mrs. Bessell, you always get it. I swear you always get it.”


  Eagerly he took the two rather soiled pound notes she held out to him, looked nervously about the shop, then backed out. He disappeared, walking very fast toward Piccadilly. Traffic built up outside, and an impatient driver put a finger on his horn and kept it there.

  When Red had gone, a door leading from a passage at the side of the gallery opened and a man stepped toward Flora Bessell, skin dark against hers as he bent to kiss her cheek.

  “You’ve got the biggest heart in the business,” he said.

  Flora Bessell flushed with pleasure and tilted her head to look into the smiling eyes of her lover.

  “Keep telling me that, Oily,” she said, almost pleading.

  Frederick Oliphant smiled again and squeezed her arm.

  3: Gideon

  George Gideon left his office at Scotland Yard late that evening, a little after seven o’clock. He walked, massive and almost forbidding, along the passage toward the main doors and the long flight of steps leading into the forecourt. There was something about the depth and breadth of his shoulders, his rather short neck, his broad, rugged, not unhandsome face, which could strike a kind of fear into those who saw him and served under him. He was aware of this, and disliked and almost resented it with one part of his mind, yet accepted and took advantage of it with another part. It was very good for discipline and it kept men on their toes. Often, he knew, he looked more forbidding when in fact there was no great worry or problem on his mind. This evening there was nothing to cause him particular concern; none of the investigations going through the Yard needed undue concentration.

  His car was at the foot of the steps, and a detective officer stood by the door.

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  “Lovely evening.”

  “Just right.”

  “Shouldn’t go round Parliament Square if I were you,” the man volunteered. He was middle-aged, old for a detective officer, only a few years younger than Gideon.