Forty-Six

I was secretly pleased that Daphne insisted on driving me to Brighton. I would get a break from public transportation. Bob had insisted, too. “I’m self-sufficient,” he murmured behind his hand, “even though I don’t let on.”

Daphne drove slower than I might have liked, but we proceeded without rest stops and traffic was flowing. We arrived in Brighton half an hour before my one o’clock meeting with Thomas Munk, just as planned. Having spent some time gazing at the coastline from the car, we rolled into the little parking lot of his office.

I’d made it obvious, or so I thought, that I was meeting Thomas on my own. Daphne exited the car when I did, hurrying after me. “I’ll step away after the introductions,” she promised. “I need to know you’ll be safe. This way,” she whispered, for we were inside the building by now, “he knows that I know that he’s alone with you.”

Since I’d told the Plewetts I would be traveling to Malaysia with Barnaby Munk, they were more protective than ever. “He’s seventy-one,” I’d said to them, of Barnaby. “We’re not having an affair!” Somehow, saying that had just made the situation seem weirder.

Outside Munk, Misener, & Wallenstein, I told Daphne, “I doubt that I’ll be ‘alone with him.’ It’s a busy office building.”

Indeed, the reception was filled with couples and singletons, all checking their phones. The receptionist, encircled by a high desk veneered in faux birch wood, rang Thomas for me, who came out without much delay. As promised, Daphne introduced herself, begging off right after to sit down with a Conde Nast magazine. Tommy was slim, short-haired, and, as Barnaby had predicted, extremely well-tailored. His dark almond-shaped eyes were Celia’s. I guessed that he’d inherited a great deal from his mother, because he looked nothing like his uncle Barnaby.

Walking me to the elevator, Thomas explained he was full partner, practically a managing partner. With a glance at my attire—I’d worn my one pantsuit—he remarked that at various times he’d put in his own fair share of pro bono at “rough spots” in the city. He pressed the button for the penthouse. Yes, he’d always liked the south, he said; really, he couldn’t get away from London fast enough.

His L-shaped office had a charming view of a verdant park with an old-fashioned bandstand, a view I forgot the moment I turned my back to it. For hanging on the wall opposite the large windows was The Parasol Flower.

I nearly toppled headfirst onto the boardroom table as I walked toward it.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” I heard him say.

Recovering myself as best as possible, I answered, “Very.”

“So I understand you’re something of an expert? When it comes to pioneering women artists?”

I didn’t reply. I wanted to not talk to this man. To not talk at all. I needed to be alone with the painting, and I was soon seized with a horrible feeling of frustration that I would never be alone with it. I would never be able to return to it, even. To sip it in slowly. To look up from my armchair, from my table, from my lover, to find something new and peculiar in each viewing. Because I was not Thomas Munk, this man who was bothering me while I tried to drink of this flower, just sip a little of its shifting palette of oranges, pinks, and yellows. They were all the more surprising to me, having held on so long to a black and white etching, a pale simulacrum. Yet it was the richness of the texture of the work that struck me first and foremost. The sumptuousness of the glossy leaves and razor-sharp spikes of palm. Filamentous tendrils curling over themselves. The blossom’s paper-thin petals, almost transparent at their edges and shimmering slightly. I had to pull myself back before I was drawn too far into the center of the whorl, of that whole incredible world—a place, a moment, an abundantly lush moment, that could not possibly have been so intense. Could it?

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ve not seen it before.”

“Of course.”

Silence for a while.

“I understand you saw the etching of it in The Descent, is that right?” he asked.

I nodded. “White does a…magnificent job, but…of course it’s not the same.” I judged that I’d better bring myself to talk properly to my host. I closed my eyes and turned to smile at Thomas Munk. “How did you happen to inherit this particular painting?”

“Oh, well, I wanted it. I asked Mummy for it, I suppose. I was on hand when she and my father were sorting through Nan’s estate.”

You wanted it, and so you took it. If only life were so simple. Without realizing it, I’d turned again toward the painting, again felt its spiraling contours reaching into me and pulling me closer. “Nobody else wanted it?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think my grandmother much cared about collecting, from what I could tell. Old Barnaby took the one of the Sikh man. A few went to the Trust…”

I forced myself to turn away from the painting in a renewed effort to get my wits about me. I only had so much time with Thomas Munk; I ought to be using it effectively.

“I enjoy jungle scapes,” he said rather shyly. “You know, palms in the garden, tropical motifs. I don’t know, I always have.”

“And you took one other Inglis, right? Nude House Girl.”

It wasn’t my imagination that the man flinched when I spoke the name of the work. Really, I thought, men could be such children.

“That one I have at home.” He fiddled with his lapels. “Oh dear. I thought you were only interested in seeing the flower painting.”

“Oh, I—I’m very glad to have seen The Parasol Flower.” My mind raced. How had I possibly given that impression? Our correspondence quite clearly referred to both works; I was meant to be seeing both works. Now he was backing out? I decided to fib as necessary. “It’s absolutely no trouble for me to make a second stop, Mr. Munk. We’re staying the night in Brighton. Such a nice city to visit, too.”

He and I batted questions of time and convenience back and forth and ultimately agreed that we would stop by his house early the next morning before he left for work. I spent a few more minutes savoring The Parasol Flower and recording some notes and images—Tommy even helped me remove the painting from the wall to see if there were any markings on the back of the frame or canvas—before steeling myself to leave. It was a good thing I had Daphne waiting for me in the lobby.

His home was in Hove, a ten-minute drive from his office and about the same distance from the bed and breakfast we’d found, though it took us thirty minutes to locate it and find a parking spot. Daphne and I had given ourselves extra time. Nonetheless, we arrived ten minutes late and flustered.

“Thank you again for allowing us to see Nude House Girl,” I said to him, having apologized at least twice for our tardiness.

“We’re only fashionably late!” Daphne had been hissing as we came up the steps.

“It isn’t a dinner party!” I’d been hissing back. “He’s a busy man.”

“Not a problem,” Tommy replied, pulling out his phone to check the screen. “Well. I’ll show you up to it.”

The bright, semi-detached home had a tidy playroom in place of a dining area. He led us upstairs as Daphne and I took turns complimenting him on the stone flooring, the natural light, the sturdy banister. The upper hallway featured a gallery of white-framed family photos. A woman with long wavy hair and large dark eyes, smiling professionally into the camera. Tommy and the woman alternately romping with a poppet of a child in various ages and stages. A Scottie dog made frequent appearances.

“And it’s so nice and quiet, this neighborhood,” Daphne said, giving me a look.

As we walked past an upstairs bathroom, I glimpsed an alligator toothbrush in a holder. Where had he mounted this painting? I was beginning to wonder.

“It’s an unusual work,” Tommy said over his shoulder, as we entered the master bedroom. Cardboard boxes lined one side of the room, most of them full and taped. An enormous mirror above the bed’s headboard gave me my first view of Nude House Girl. The painting itself was hanging at the opposite end of the room, in an alcove that led onward to a balcony.

“Oh, are you moving house?” I heard Daphne say behind me. “That’s such an ordeal, isn’t it, packing everything up.”

Thomas Munk didn’t respond. He’d arrived at the painting and was clearly more interesting in explaining that. The work, to my surprise, was double-sided. That is to say, two paintings had been created on one loosely rectangular strip of canvas. It was mounted, quite ingeniously, to stretch between a floating frame, sandwiched by glass so that one could view both sides of the canvas. And, in order to facilitate this dual viewing, Thomas, or someone in the family, had suspended Nude House Girl from the ceiling. I walked around the hanging artwork as he spoke, marveling first at this engineering of perspectives. The mirror over the bed, as well as a second upright mirror, positioned against one angled wall of the alcove, meant that almost wherever you walked in the room, her large dark eyes were watching.

The paintings themselves might have been called portraits, though they were non- representational in style. They were, I thought, vaguely cubist-looking, with many angles and curves and sharp corners. The color work was muted, in a palette of ochres, dark purples, and the occasional dart of red or spidery fringe of black. Although there were differences between the two portraits, they seemed, in my opinion, to be versions of the same subject. She was naked, and the naked parts of her body did not fit together. Her face looked as if bruised, her mouth, broken. A cleft palate? Fireworks were exploding in my brain.

On the upper torso, one nipple and one breast were clearly visible, the rest of her chest being skeins of color. As if she had twisted out of her skin to turn toward the painter. On both versions, the woman’s legs were small and crossed and crowded into the bottom of the page, like a child’s drawing when she has suddenly run out of space. Between the legs, in both works, and which you have might have first taken for background, sat an upturned black-brown oval surrounding a slash of clitoris. Once I understood this feature as the woman’s genitals, the curved legs transformed into fleshy mounds of mons veneris. And the woman’s eyes became portals of defiance. You will not own me.

I searched but did not see a signature. Had I not known the provenance, I might have wondered if they’d been accomplished by the artist who had painted Murdo and Jane and The Parasol Flower. I said this to Thomas, who readily agreed. He told me he preferred Nude House Girl, though it was obviously unfinished and “too raw for most people to enjoy it,” as he put it.

“There is something very tender about them,” he said.

“And fierce.” I glanced at Daphne, who had a politely disturbed expression on her face. I asked, “Did you always have the canvas framed like this? It’s ingenious.”

“No. Until…fairly recently, as a matter of fact, I didn’t have the painting up at all. Gemma always thought it hideous.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how different peoples’ tastes can be,” Daphne commented.

There was a long silence.

“So…um…why did the artist paint on both sides?” asked Daphne.

Thomas Munk appeared to be deferring to me. I replied, “It’s not uncommon, actually. Lots of artists have done it. Or even painted right over other paintings. Van Gogh, for instance. Usually it’s to make use of the canvas. For instance, if you’ve run out and don’t have more handy. Or can’t afford more.”

“Oh,” said Daphne. “So she must have been shorthanded.”

“Presumably. An artist typically wouldn’t prefer to paint on the back of the canvas. It’s rougher and doesn’t take the paint as easily, and it won’t hold up as well over time.”

“Oh,” Daphne said again, keeping her expression neutral. I smiled to myself. She was trying to imagine being quite so desperate as to need to paint that.

I considered the situation in which Hannah Inglis had come to the end of her stock of canvas. By the dates on her letters, I knew that Nude House Girl was not her last work. Whatever the problem, she’d surmounted it and managed to obtain more canvas.

Tommy’s phone buzzed, and he left us alone in his bedroom to complete our viewing of the two nude house girls. Daphne nosed around the room while I tried to swim through the layers of consciousness surrounding the art before me; I shifted my focus from the artist to her muse, who might well have been the same woman who’d posed for the photograph I’d stolen. Who was she, this one looking back at me with quiet defiance? And her twin—slightly more elongated, slightly more melancholic in aura. How were we all related? I agreed with Tommy, there was something very tender in the portraits.

He reentered the room, apologizing. So-and-So had called, and Tommy needed to leave for the office.

“Of course!” Daphne exclaimed. She pulled me away and we followed him downstairs.

He chatted to us as we put our shoes back on—now that we were leaving, he was very chatty—asking me about my investigation and where it was leading me. Word had gotten to him that I was heading to Malaysia with his uncle. I told him I was excited to see what we could find in and around Kuala Kangsa. There were still so many unanswered questions.

“If I have any follow-up questions, may I contact you?” I asked him.

“Of course,” he said unenthusiastically. He threw on his coat.

“Yes, actually, there are a number of things I’m still trying to piece together. How your great-grandmother wound up with these two paintings, for instance.”

He looked startled. “Didn’t she purchase them?” he asked, ushering us on to the porch. We descended and waited while he set the alarm then locked up carefully.

“How the other half live,” Daphne mouthed to me.

“Follow the money,” Thomas said, coming down the stairs after us. “I would think the art executor has a record of payments. Perhaps the family accountant may even have a ledger from that era or some records he can share.”

Yes, follow the money! And who were these people, I wanted to ask him. The art executor. The family accountant. “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Thank you!”

He pointed toward his garage to signal his path. Then he leaned in to shake Daphne’s hand, my hand. I expected him to bolt for his car. Instead he sucked his bottom lip for a moment, squinting in the morning sun. “This is a bit awkward. If you wouldn’t mind doing me a favor?”

We agreed readily and he said, “Don’t mention anything to my mother about Gemma and Blake. You know, the fact that they’ve moved out.”

“Right,” I said with authority. “Of course not.”