Left to himself, Appleby let his mind continue to dwell for a few minutes on Nanna and Pippa, or rather on the problem of which they were the centre. He knew more about this affair than about any of the others, but he still didn’t know very much. It was clearly desirable that he should meet Mr Praxiteles, now the owner of these ladies only in what might be termed the shadow of a shadow. For an erotic painting, one had to assume, must be rather a frustrating object in itself. A mere replica of it must appear yet more remote from the real thing.
Mr Praxiteles might not be easy to meet. Appleby had a notion that persons of his kidney put in a good deal of their time cruising in the Mediterranean on board rather notably well-appointed private yachts. No doubt they kept an eye on their mercantile interests that way.
On the other hand Mr Praxiteles, if encountered, might be persuaded to converse. There was something about that quite small fragment of his history now known to Appleby which suggested that his fibre might not be all that tough. He seemed not to have put up much of a show against the unblushing blackmail of Hildebert Braunkopf. For Braunkopf had got away with exactly that. He had threatened Praxiteles with highly inconvenient publicity if he refused to exchange an extremely valuable object for a worthless one. Braunkopf must have known that Praxiteles could be intimidated.
But meeting Mr Praxiteles – even if he were on terra firma and in England – required a little thinking out. Appleby had no standing in his affair whatever. It was only with Lord Cockayne that he had anything of the kind. Or rather – he was visited by a sudden thought – with Lord Cockayne by invitation, and with Sir Thomas Carrington (the Stubbs man) and Mr Meatyard(the Sir Joshua Reynolds man) by a species of indirect association. When their misfortunes had come the way of Scotland Yard Appleby had, after all, been running the place. He hadn’t, of course, himself seen either of the defrauded gentlemen, or taken any part in investigating their not very pertinaciously preferred complaints. But at least he had heard about them. Some capital could be made out of that.
Appleby looked at his watch. At a pinch they could not merely find him a room in the club but produce the customary adjuncts of civilized slumber as well. And he could simply ring through to Judith. But first he had better check on whether anything could in fact be done that evening. Carrington was almost certainly a totally rural character, coming up to town once a year for a house dinner or the Eton and Harrow Match. Meatyard, on the other hand, sounded a metropolitan type. He would live surprisingly close to the West End in a surprisingly suburban sort of villa of the more commodious – or indeed imposing – type. Appleby made his way to the telephone directories. There wouldn’t be all that number of Meatyards in London. It was the sort of surname a lawyer would strongly advise you against dropping into a novel or a play.
But what was a meatyard? Flicking through the pages, Appleby found time to ask himself this question. Had he ever found himself in a meatyard? No. Had he ever heard such a place mentioned? No. It was probably fallacious to equate Mr Meatyard with, say, Mr Cowmeadow or Mr Swineherd. ‘Meatyard’ was a corruption of something highly Anglo-Norman. This Mr Meatyard (the Sir Joshua one) was not in fact a simple citizen who had been practised upon as a consequence of defective education. He was simple because effete. He would prove to be like Lord Cockayne, only very much more so.
Appleby found his man, and dialled his number.
‘I went into it,’ Mr Meatyard said. ‘I went into it thoroughly. I couldn’t have Reynolds. So I saw to it I had him.’
‘It’s a superb portrait,’ Appleby said – and reflected that it was a good beginning not to have to tell a fib. The picture dominating the lounge – it was certainly a lounge, for the vision of Mr Meatyard as of Norman blood had not fulfilled itself – was of a comfortable lady in middle life. She was distinguishably dressed for her occasion, but was not in the least swayed by any uneasy consciousness of the fact. She had sat to the greatest of living European painters, and been entirely equal to it.
‘I owed it to Martha,’ Mr Meatyard said, with quiet satisfaction. ‘I’d been had for a proper Charlie – eh, Sir John? But give me time, and I do find my way about.’ Mr Meatyard pointed firmly at the portrait of Mrs Meatyard. ‘Would you exchange that for one of their Reynoldses? Just answer me straight.’
‘I can’t be certain that I should.’ Appleby smiled. ‘Is that straight enough?’
‘I’ll make do with it.’ Mr Meatyard (who, oddly enough, turned out to deal in meat in a very big way) gave Appleby a shrewd look. One wouldn’t have supposed Mr Meatyard at all easily taken in – but then even very capable men can be curiously at a loss in fields remote from their own. ‘I looked into Reynolds, you know. I followed him up at that place down on the Embankment – the one named after the fellow who made money in sugar. Lyle, is it?’
‘Tate.’
‘That’s right – Tate. Well, I looked at Reynolds there, and in a good many other places as well. It seemed to me he painted invalids mostly. Nasty green tinge in their complexions, wouldn’t you say? I don’t think I’d care to have Martha looking like that.’
‘You felt you were well clear of Reynolds?’
‘Now you’re having your laugh at me, Sir John. And plenty of other people, back when this happened, looked like having their laugh too. I didn’t like the idea, I don’t mind telling you. Still, I look back to it now in what you might call a kindly way. It’s brought me a lot of pleasure, and that’s a fact.’
‘Being fooled, Mr Meatyard?’
‘No, no. This business of painting and painters. I’d never given it much thought before – although, mark you, we had all the proper things in the house. Everything hand-done – except for etchings and the like, which are no more, you might say, than half-and-half. But then I took to this looking into it – starting with your Reynolds, who I tell you I don’t think much of. But do you know Gainsborough, now? Lived at very much the same time, it seems. I took to Gainsborough. I’ve got a couple by him in the next room. Then Cézanne.’
‘Cézanne?’
‘Not in Gainsborough’s class, of course, since he comes in a hundred years later. Pricey, all the same. I wouldn’t like to tell you what I had to pay for my Cézanne. I just wouldn’t have signed the cheque, Sir John, except for the feeling he gives me. As if I was inside that canvas, and moving around. You know what I mean? I’ve worked it out it has something to do with how all those flat slabby bits lean this way and that. Orderly, too. Like good bookkeeping, you might say. A pleasure to look at.’ Mr Meatyard paused. ‘Yes,’ he said contentedly. ‘I find I’m very fond of pictures. Would you ever have been in Florence, by any chance?’
‘Florence?’ Appleby contrived to be perfectly solemn. ‘Yes, I have been there.’
‘There’s a very good golf course.’
‘A golf course?’ This time, Appleby was pretty well caught off his guard. ‘What an extraordinary thing!’
‘Very creditable it is, considering the climate. But I just don’t take my clubs there now. Too many pictures. Martha and I go round and round the Uffizi. A nice place. Clean toilets, and a very tolerable snack to be had, looking down over the city. But the pictures are the thing. Painted to absolutely top specifications, and more of them than you’d believe.’
‘They are certainly very notable.’ Appleby found he was failing to take a proper pleasure in this unexpected sequel to Mr Meatyard’s encounter with the spurious Sir Joshua. That his mild misadventure should have brought into the worthy man’s life hitherto unknown satisfactions in the field of aesthetic experience was no doubt a wholly gratifying circumstance. But it didn’t look like being of much use to Appleby in his self-imposed quest. A more forthright approach seemed required. ‘At least,’ Appleby went on, ‘you’ve got wise to a good deal by now. You wouldn’t be taken in after the same fashion again.’
‘I’d like them to have another go at me, Sir John. I’d show them a thing or two, mark my words.’
‘I’m afraid they’re not likely to single out the same victim twice. But they are in business still – or that’s my guess. And it’s why I’ve called on you. You must admit that, once you’d recovered from your first annoyance at being defrauded by this bogus Sir Joshua–’
‘It wasn’t so much that. It was their making a fool of Martha, you know. That, and disappointing her so. Ringing the bell at this great painter’s studio, and nobody there. That was what took me to the police.’
‘The impulse did you credit, Mr Meatyard. But then you backed out. Wouldn’t that be a fair way of putting it? I ask because I can see that you’re a fair-minded man.’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. I saw that we’d have all the papers laughing at us. Martha wouldn’t have liked that.’
‘So you minimized the whole affair by naming a totally inaccurate sum as what you’d been cheated of.’
‘And just how would you substantiate that, Sir John?’
‘My dear sir, it is quite self-evident. An elaborate imposture of that sort isn’t mounted for the sake of peanuts.’
‘Well, now, Sir John – that would depend, wouldn’t it? An imposture may be a fraud, or it may be a hoax. And doesn’t this sound more like a hoax – a practical joke – than a fraud? Here is a self-made man – Albert Meatyard, with no education to speak of – believing that he can have Mrs Meatyard’s portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It’s a regular scream, wouldn’t you say? And if they top off their bit of fun by getting twenty pounds out of him for some worthless painting, that’s as great a lark as if they got twenty thousand. And is modest enough to keep them out of gaol, likely enough, if they’re found out. The fellow on the bench – one of your public school and varsity men – is amused by the whole thing.’
‘I see all that. In fact, I keep on seeing something very like it in connection with one or two other affairs. But be honest, Mr Meatyard. You were had for a proper Charlie – and in solid LSD.’
‘£8,000, Sir John.’ Mr Meatyard – whom Appleby was beginning to take to – suddenly smiled cheerfully. ‘A stiff bill for the start of an education in art, you might say. And I’ll show you what I got for it. Painted by hand, sure enough. But you couldn’t say much more than that.’
‘£8,000?’ There was the most innocent surprise in Appleby’s voice. ‘Not peanuts, of course. But not far off it. You have been a minor victim, Mr Meatyard.’
‘A minor victim?’ Perhaps for the first time, Mr Meatyard glanced at Appleby with unflawed respect. ‘Eight thousand quid for “Autumn Woods”, and you talk about peanuts?’
‘It was called that?’
‘ “Autumn Woods” – and signed “Jos Reynolds”, bottom right.’ Unexpectedly, Mr Meatyard roared with laughter. ‘I don’t deny, mark you, that eight thousand quid hurt a little. And that being had for a sucker hurt a good deal more. But you’re not going to leave this house believing that I don’t see the joke. Would you say, now, that we might have a drink on it?’
Appleby, although not very anxious for another drink before dinner, would have been churlish to decline this proposal. Mr Meatyard rose and toddled – physically, he had a slight resemblance to Mr Hildebert Braunkopf – to what appeared to be an impeccable piece of eighteenth-century cabinet work in the Chinese taste. He pushed something – perhaps the head or tail of a curly golden dragon – and an impressive array of bottles and glasses was instantly revealed, bathed in a tasteful pinkish light. Appleby almost expected his host to roar with laughter again, since this contraption appeared so clearly to date from the pre-aesthetic period of the Meatyard life-style. Mr Meatyard, however, merely poured gin and vermouth with an anxious and precise attention to the proportions in which his guest signified that his pleasure lay.
‘ “Minor victim”,’ Mr Meatyard said, returning to his chair. ‘Could we get that clear?’
‘The set-up that took you in, Mr Meatyard, involved a certain outlay, as you can see. What might be called research, to begin with, in order to find a gull.’
‘A what, Sir John?’
‘A gull – old-fashioned word for a dupe. Then there was the studio, or supposed studio, and the stuff exhibited in it. There was the getting in and out of it in a way that would leave the fewest possible traces if you cut up really rough, and the police pitched in their resources in a big way. All that would take time, wouldn’t you agree? And time is money.’
‘That’s a true word.’ Mr Meatyard had nodded appreciatively. ‘Many’s the time I tell it to my younger men. “Lads,” I say, “time’s brass”. You have something there, Sir John.’
‘So a mere £8,000 gross was not all that large a figure. Or not for the class of criminal we’re dealing with. I don’t want to sound disparaging, Mr Meatyard. But in the series of frauds I’m investigating, yours must be regarded as comparatively small beer.’
‘Is that so?’ Not unnaturally, there was some indignation distinguishable in Mr Meatyard’s tone. ‘Not really rating, perhaps, for the top-level attention of you folks?’
‘Come, sir – you can’t quite say that. Not after saying yourself that you’d parted with no more than a few five-pound notes. But there’s something I must make clear. I’m not inquiring into this matter in any official way. My days as a policeman are behind me.’
‘Do you mean that somebody has hired you as a private detective?’
‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to anybody to do that.’
‘Then you’re acting out of pure curiosity?’ A slight impatience had come into Mr Meatyard’s voice. ‘Of course, it’s a great pleasure to meet you, Sir John. But, all the same–’
‘I’d rather call it a sporting interest. A match at long odds, you might say.’
‘Well, of course, that’s another matter.’ Mr Meatyard spoke with revived interest. ‘I’m always ready for a bit of sport. Or a bit of a flutter, as you might say. Martha and I usually look in on the tables when we go to the Riviera. And why not? A little of it never did any harm to those that can afford it. Are you saying that those crooks might be uncommonly hard to catch?’
‘Just that. I have a line on several of their jobs – but they stretch over quite a term of years, and fresh clues will be difficult to find. But something might be done, it seems to me, if we put our heads together. A man of your well-known abilities, Mr Meatyard, would be a formidable opponent.’
‘But we’d need Martha too.’ Mr Meatyard had spoken suddenly and incisively. ‘And here she is.’