Death of a Ghost (4 page)

‘Lisa, you look deliriously macabre this evening. When Hecate opens the door of Hell to me she will look like you. Ah, Belle, darling! Are we prepared? And Donna Beatrice? And the sleuth! My salutations, all of you.'

He came up out of the shadow to lay one very white hand affectionately on Belle's arm, while the other, outstretched, suggested an embrace which included Mr Campion, Donna Beatrice, and the stealthily retreating Lisa.

When one considered Max Fustian's appearance it was all the more extraordinary that his personality, exotic and fantastic as it was, should never have overstepped the verge into the ridiculous. He was small, dark, pale, with a blue jowl and a big nose. His eyes, which were bright and simian, peered out from cavernous sockets, so dark as to appear painted. His black hair was ungreased and cut into a conventional shock which had just sufficient length to look like a wig. He was dressed, too, with the same mixture of care and unconventionality. His double-breasted black coat was slightly loose and his soft black tie flowed from beneath his white silk collar.

He had thrown his wide black hat and black raincoat on to the hall chest as he passed and now stood beaming at them, holding the gesture of welcome as one who realizes he has made an entrance.

He was forty, but looked younger and appreciated his good fortune.

‘Is everything ready?' The indolent weariness of his voice had a soporific quality and he swept them down to the studio again before they had realized it.

Potter had gone and the place was in darkness. Max switched on the lights and looked round with the quick, all-seeing glance of a conjuror surveying his paraphernalia.

A frown spread over his forehead and he returned to his hostess.

‘Dear Belle, why do you insist on those nauseating lithographs? It degrades the occasion into a church bazaar.' He pointed contemptuously to the unfortunate Mr Potter's display. ‘The fancywork stall.'

‘Really, Belle, I think he's right.' Donna Beatrice's low sing-song voice was plaintive. ‘There'll be my little table over here with the Guild's jewellery upon it, and really I think that's enough. I mean – other people's pictures in his studio – it's sacrilege, isn't it? The vibrations won't be right.'

Looking back upon that evening in the light of after events, Mr Campion frequently cursed himself for his lack of detachment. Seen in retrospect, after the tragedy, it seemed to him impossible that he could have spent so long in the very heart of the dormant volcano without hearing the rumblings of the eruption to come. But on that evening he noticed nothing save that which passed upon the surface.

Max had disregarded his ally's efforts and continued to look interrogatively at Mrs Lafcadio.

Belle shook her head at him as though he had been a naughty dog, and glanced round the studio.

‘The floor looks very nice, don't you think?' she said. ‘Fred Rennie scrubbed it and Lisa polished it.'

Max shrugged his shoulders, a gesture almost contortionate, but having made his protest he gave way gracefully. Next instant he was himself again, and Campion, watching him, realized how he had managed to insinuate himself into the position of Lafcadio's
entrepreneur.

He strode down the room, flipped the shawl from the painting, and stood back enraptured.

‘Sometimes Beauty's like the Gorgon's head. One's spirit turns to stone, beholding it,' he said. His voice was startlingly unaffected, and the contrast lent the extravagant phrase a passionate sincerity which startled everyone, including, it would seem, Max Fustian. To Mr Campion's amazement the little dark eyes suddenly suffused with tears.

‘We must all vibrate to green when we think of the picture,' said Donna Beatrice with paralysing idiocy. ‘Beautiful apple green, the colour of the earth. That shawl is so helpful, I think.'

Max Fustian laughed softly. ‘Green is the colour for money, isn't it?' he murmured. ‘Suffuse the picture with a green light and it'll sell. Well, I have done my part. Tomorrow everyone will be here. Soldiers, poets, fat mayors buying for their cities, the intelligentsia, diplomats – the ambassadors are coming, I heard tonight – and of course the Church.' He flung out his hand. ‘The Church big-bellied, purple-gowned.'

‘The Bishop always comes,' ventured Belle mildly. ‘Dear man, he used to come before there were any pictures.'

‘The Press,' Max Fustian swept on, ‘and the critics, my colleagues.'

‘Leashed in like hounds, no doubt,' said Belle, who was growing restive. ‘Don't let me forget to put a shilling in the meter or the whole place will be in darkness after six. I wish we'd never had it put in for that wretched dancing class during the war.'

Donna Beatrice caught her breath noisily. ‘Belle, you promised never to mention that again. That was almost blasphemy.'

Belle sniffed quite definitely. ‘Johnnie's stock was down, we were very short, and the money was useful,' she said. ‘And if I hadn't had the meter put in we should never have been able to pay the electric light bills so soon. And now –' she broke off abruptly. ‘Oh, Linda! My dear, how pale you look!'

They turned round immediately as John Lafcadio's granddaughter strode down the room towards them. The daughter of Belle's only son, killed at Gallipoli in 1916, was, according to Donna Beatrice, ‘definitely Aries'.

Upon expansion this term proved to mean something uncomplimentary, a daughter of Mars, a young soul and pertaining to some lowly plane in the astrological cosmos. To the unenlightened eye she was a strongly made, tempestuous young woman of twenty-five, who bore a notable resemblance to her grandfather.

She had the same coarse tawny hair, the same wide mouth and high cheek-bones. She was beautiful only by the most modern standards and her restless violent personality was apparent in every movement. She and Belle understood one another, and a tremendous affection existed between the two. The others were a little afraid of her, save perhaps Mr Campion, who had many strange friends.

At the moment her pallor was almost startling and her eyes beneath her thick brows were burning with nothing less than ferocity. She nodded to Campion and shot a frosty, barely civil glance at Max and Donna Beatrice.

‘Tom is in the hall,' she said. ‘He's just coming. He's brought some photographs of his stuff for the Puccini library. They're very fine. I suppose you did't think so, Max?'

The challenge was gratuitous, and Belle's old eyes flickered anxiously as they had done on private view days long ago.

Max smiled. ‘Dacre has all the elements of a great man,' he said. ‘But he should stick to his medium. In tempera he can express himself. There are times when he reminds me of Angelica Kaufmann.'

‘The panels for the library are in tempera.'

‘Oh? Really? I saw a photograph of a figure piece. I thought it was a poster for a mineral water.' Max's tone had a leisurely spitefulness that was masterly. ‘I saw the model, too. He brought her back from Italy with him. In imitation of Lafcadio, I suppose.'

The girl swung round on him, unconsciously adopting the odd angular posture with one hip thrown out, so beloved by the moderns. Her pallor had increased. It was evident that an explosion was imminent, and Belle interposed.

‘Where is the man, anyway?' she demanded. ‘I haven't seen him for three years, and he's a very old friend of mine. I remember when he came in here as a little boy, so prim, so solemn. He told Johnnie just what he thought of one of his pictures, and Johnnie put him across his knee and spanked him for his impudence – his mother was so angry. But Johnnie altered the picture afterwards.'

Donna Beatrice tittered politely at this reminiscence of John Lafcadio's disgraceful behaviour, as the victim of it came into the room.

Thomas Dacre, a man of great ability, thirty-seven years old, unrecognized and obsessed by his own shortcomings, resembled a battered, careworn edition of the Apollo Belvedere in horn-rimmed spectacles. He was one of that vast army of young men who had had five all important years cut out of their lives by the war, and who bitterly resented the fact without altogether realizing it. Dacre's natural disbelief in himself had been enhanced by severe shell-shock, which had left him capable of making any sacrifice to the furtherance of his creature comforts. His engagement to the tempestuous Linda had surprised everyone at its announcement just before his departure for Italy, but it was supposed that these two unhappy spirits had found mutual solace in each other's charity.

He came up to Belle, who greeted him with that delight which was half her charm.

‘My dear, I am glad to see you. I hear you've done so well. Have you brought the photographs? Johnnie always predicted you'd be a great man.'

He flushed: Belle was irresistible. But, immediately ashamed of his pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders and spoke ungraciously.

‘I'm a cinema house decorator,' he said. ‘Ask Max. He knows good commercial work when he sees it.'

But Belle was indefatigable. She slipped her arm through the newcomer's.

‘Tell me all about it,' she said. ‘Did you stay at the old studio in San Gimignano? And is poor old Theodora still alive? Isn't her cooking atrocious? Do you know, Johnnie made one of her children eat up every bit of the omelette she sent up for our supper. And of course the wicked old thing had to nurse the poor little mite all the next day.'

This unconventional sidelight on the character of a great man was suitably received, but Max was not willing to lose command of the stage for long. With his little dark eyes flickering mischievously he glanced at the girl, who had lit a cigarette and was surveying her grandfather's picture with the critical but unbiased gaze of a fellow-craftsman, and turned again to Dacre.

‘How does the lovely Rosa-Rosa take to London?' he enquired. ‘Such a romantic name, madame. Rosa-Rosa.'

‘Your new model?' said Belle, still concentrating on the younger man.

He nodded. ‘One of the Rosinis. Do you remember them? She's a bastard, I think, by a German. Extremely modern in shape. The Teutonic streak gives her an extraordinary flatness. I've used her for nearly a year now. Her feet are ugly.'

Belle, who had listened to this somewhat technical description with complete understanding, nodded her white headdress sagely.

‘All the Rosinis have little stubby feet. You don't remember Lucrezia? There was a great fuss about her thirty years ago. She claimed to be descended from Del Sarto's model, but she grew tired very easily and wouldn't work.'

‘You must have found the girl very useful,' drawled Max with another glance at Linda. ‘Since you bring her home despite the official business of permits and so on.'

Dacre looked at him with lazy surprise. ‘Of course the girl's very useful,' he said stiffly. ‘A reliable model who isn't hideous or temperamental is the most difficult thing in the world to get hold of. This girl sits like a rock.'

‘What an extraordinary addition to the
ménage
in Drury Lane. How does the estimable D'Urfey respond to the lady's charms?' Max seemed to be deliberately offensive and again he shot that sidelong glance at Linda.

Suddenly, she seemed to become aware of it.

‘Rosa-Rosa is the most beautiful creature I ever saw,' she said with dangerous quietness. ‘She's got the figure of a John Gipsy and the face of a fiend. Both Matt and Tom are hysterical about the things she says.
And you're a nasty little sneaking trouble-mongering mongrel
.'

She strode over to him and caught him a savage blow with the back of her hand which brought out a red mark on his sallow cheek. The attack was so sudden and unwarranted, and betrayed her so utterly, that the shocked silence in the great room lasted until she had disappeared through the doorway.

It was then, and only then, that Mr Campion caught a glimpse of something dangerous beneath the surface of this odd pantomime rehearsal performed in such solemn deference to the fancy of a dead man.

Max laughed sulkily, and pulled the cover over the painting so that his back was turned to the company. Dacre looked after the girl, his forehead knotted with fury. Donna Beatrice remarked: ‘Aries, Aries', with that sublime complacency known only to those who have the happy conviction that they are not as other men, and Belle, her lips pursed into a little grimace of pity and her faded brown eyes shiny with tears, murmured deprecatingly: ‘My dear – oh, my
dear.
'

–

I
N THE
great days of the nineties when Art and the Academy were synonymous in the public mind, the Sunday before sending-in day was a festival. In every studio in the kingdom was held a solemn exhibition of those works intended for the selection committee's delectation. Since it was so often the first and last time that the pictures were ever exhibited anywhere, the gatherings served a useful purpose, and while much tea and sherry were consumed many technical mysteries were discussed.

The death of this pleasant custom marked the end of an era, and it says much for Max Fustian's powers of showmanship that he managed to turn the annual affair at Lafcadio's studio into a minor social event and to create in it one of the little ceremonies which mark the very beginning of the Season.

To the Press it was a yearly blessing, provoking the first fanfare before that hardy set-piece, the opening of the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Lafcadio, always in advance of his time, was still a good deal too modern for ‘Constant Reader' and ‘Paterfamilias', and the element of surprise connected with the yearly picture and its subsequent purchase by the inevitable public body or philanthropist made it one of those sure-fire news-page column headings comparable with the arrival of the Cambridge crew at Putney or the Birthday Honours list.

On a Sunday in March, 1930, therefore, the dusty windows of the dusty yellow houses of Swallow Crescent reflected some of the glories of their past in the parade of automobiles parked against the plump stone balustrade of the canal.