Slaves of Obsession (6 page)

“Any idea who it was that beat him?” Monk asked, hearing the edge in his own voice. “Privately, even if you couldn’t prove it?”

“Ideas,” Walters said darkly. “Not much more. Clients in places like that don’t leave their names on a list. Some of them have some pretty sordid tastes that they can’t exercise at home and aren’t keen to have known.”

“Think it was a client?”

“Sure of it. Why? Your friend one of them?” The sneer in Walters’s voice was too bitter to hide.

“He says not. If you tell me when Gilmer died, exactly, I may be able to ascertain where my friend was.”

Walters took out his notebook and rifled through it.

“Between eight and midnight on September twenty-eighth last year. Is your friend being blackmailed over Gilmer’s death?”

“No, over having given him some money, which is open to misinterpretation.”

“Nobody gave him much, poor devil.” Walters shrugged. “Got himself into debt pretty badly. Thought it might have been one of his creditors beat him to teach him to pay up more promptly. We went and interviewed the man we suspected.” He smiled, showing his teeth. It was more of a snarl, although there was definitely pleasure in it. “Somewhat vigorously,” he added. “But he said Gilmer had paid everything he owed. Didn’t believe that for a moment, but the bastard could unarguably prove where he was all that night. He spent it in jail! Only time I was sorry to see him there.”

“Do you know how much it was?” Monk enquired. He knew exactly how much Alberton had said he gave Gilmer.

“No. Why?” Walters said quickly. “Do you know something about it?”

Monk smiled at him. “I might. How much was it?”

“Told you, I don’t know. But it was over fifty pounds.”

Alberton had paid sixty-five. Monk was unreasonably pleased. He realized only now how profoundly he had wanted to find Alberton honest.

“That answer you?” Walters was staring at him.

“No,” Monk said quickly. “It confirms what I thought. My friend claimed to have paid it. It looks as if he did.”

“Why?”

“Compassion,” Monk said immediately. “Are you thinking it was for services rendered? I’d like to meet the boy that commands that much!”

Walters grinned. His eyes opened wide. “Looks like a good man caught in an unpleasant situation.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” Monk agreed. “Thank you for your help.”

Walters straightened up. “Hope it turns out to be true,” he said pleasantly. “I’d like to think someone helped him … whatever he was.”

“Did you know of him when he was alive?” Monk rose slowly also.

“No. Learned the rest when we were looking into his death. Got too much to do to investigate prostitution, if they aren’t causing a public nuisance.” He shrugged. “Anyway, most of the time the ‘powers that be’ would rather we didn’t draw attention to it, and they’d certainly rather we didn’t take names and addresses.” He did not need to explain what he meant. “But let me know if you find out who did that to him, will you?”

“I will,” Monk promised, picking his way through the piles of papers to the door. “Because I’d like you to meet up with him … and because I owe it to you.”

It was early afternoon, and far too hot to be comfortable, when Monk reached the large house in Kensington which was Lawrence FitzAlan’s studio. The midsummer sun beat on the pavements, shimmering back in waves that made the
vision dance. The gutters were dry and the unswept manure was pungent in the air.

The maid who answered the door was remarkably pretty, and Monk wondered if FitzAlan painted her as well. He had already decided how he would approach the artist, and had no compunction whatever in lying. Perhaps based quite unfairly on Walters’s anger, he had formed a dislike of FitzAlan.

“Good afternoon,” he said as charmingly as he could, and he knew that was very effective indeed; he had used it often enough. “I should very much like to have a portrait painted of my wife, and so I have naturally come to the finest artist I know of. May I make an appointment to see Mr. FitzAlan at his earliest convenience? Unfortunately, I am in London only a short while before returning to Rome for a month or two.”

She looked at him with interest. With his dark hair and lean face he filled her idea of a mysterious Italian very well. She invited him into an ornate hall in which were several expensive pieces of statuary, and went to tell her master of the visitor.

FitzAlan was a flamboyant man with a high sense of his own talent, which Monk could see, having glanced at the canvases in his studio, was very real. Five were turned face out in various places, hung or stacked so they were well displayed, although to the casual eye they appeared to be placed with no regard. The draftsmanship was excellent, the play of light and shade dramatic, the faces arresting. In spite of himself Monk found his eye going to them instead of to FitzAlan.

“You are an art lover!” FitzAlan said with satisfaction.

Monk could imagine him playing this scene with every visitor, always the slight surprise in his voice, as though the world were peopled with Philistines.

Monk forced himself to meet FitzAlan’s gaze. The artist was not tall, but he was a big man, broad-shouldered, in his fifties and now running to paunch. His gingerish hair had faded but there was still plenty of it, and he wore it affectedly long. It was a proud face, strong-featured, self-indulgent.

It galled Monk to flatter him, but it was necessary if he were to remain long enough to learn what he wanted to.

“Yes. I apologize for my discourtesy, but your paintings took my eye, regardless of my intention to be civil. Forgive me.”

FitzAlan was pleased. “You are forgiven, my dear sir,” he said expansively. “You wish for a portrait of your wife?”

“Rather more than that, actually. A friend of mine saw a very remarkable painting of a young man, done by you,” Monk replied, making himself smile disarmingly. “But he was unable to purchase it because the owner, very naturally, would not sell. I wondered if you had any others of the same subject I might tell him of. He is very anxious to possess one. In fact, it is something of an obsession with him.”

FitzAlan appeared suitably flattered. He tried to hide it, but Monk had assumed that his hunger for praise was far from filled even by the fame he already enjoyed.

“Ah!” he said, standing still as if thinking hard, only the brilliance of his eyes and the slight smile giving him away. “Let me see. Not certain which young man that might be. I paint anyone whose face intrigues me, regardless of who they are.” He was watching Monk’s reaction. “Can’t be bothered to paint pretty pictures to make famous men look better than they do.” He said it with pride. “Art, that is the master … not fame or money, or being liked. Posterity won’t give a damn who the subject was, only how they were on canvas, how they spoke to the soul of the man who looked at them decades later—centuries, maybe.”

Monk agreed with him. It was an acute and honest perception—but it galled him to say so.

“Of course. That is what divides the artist from the journeyman.”

“Can you describe the subject?” FitzAlan asked, basking in the praise.

“Fair-haired, thin-faced, with a spiritual air, almost haunted,” Monk replied, trying to visualize how Gilmer must have looked in the earliest days of his modeling, before his health deteriorated.

“Ah!” FitzAlan said quickly. “Think I know who you mean. I’ve got a couple upstairs. Been keeping those against the day when they’d be appreciated for what they are.”

Monk controlled his anger with difficulty. He coughed, raising his hand to his face to conceal the revulsion he felt for a man who could speak so casually about a youth he had known and used, and whom he must have heard was dead.

“Excuse me,” he apologized, then continued. “I should like very much to see them.”

FitzAlan was already going to the door, leading the way back into the hall, past a naked marble Adonis and up the stairs to a larger room obviously used for storage. He went without hesitation to two canvases, concealed by other, later ones, and turned them so Monk could see and admire.

And much as it cut him, he did admire them. They were brilliant. The face that stared out from the colored oils was passionate, sensitive, already shadowed by some vision beyond the pedestrian needs of life. Perhaps even at this time he had known he was consumptive and would not have long to savor the joys or the grief he then knew. Had they been the sweeter for that, the more poignant? FitzAlan had caught all that was precious and swift to pass in the eyes, the lips, the almost translucent pallor of the skin. It was a disturbing painting. It flashed through Monk’s mind to ask Alberton for the price of it as his reward. It hurt him to think he would never see it again after these few moments. It was a reminder of the sweetness of life, never to waste or disregard a moment of its gift.

“You like it,” FitzAlan said unnecessarily. Monk could not have denied it. Whatever sins lay in the soul of the painter, the picture was superb. He recalled his purpose. “Who is he?” It was not difficult to ask. It seemed the only natural thing to do.

“Just a vagrant,” FitzAlan replied. “A young man I saw in the street and took in, for a while. Wonderful face, isn’t it?”

Monk turned away from FitzAlan in order to hide his own emotion. He could not afford to have his loathing show.

“Yes. What happened to him?”

“No idea,” FitzAlan said with slight surprise. “Nobody else will paint him like that, I assure you. He was consumptive. That look won’t be there anymore. That’s what is so valuable, the moment! The knowledge of mortality. It’s universal, the perception of life and death. It’s a hundred and fifty guineas. Tell your friend.”

That was half the price of a good house! FitzAlan certainly did not underestimate his own worth. Even so, Monk found ideas racing through his mind as to how he might acquire the picture. He would never have that sort of money to spend in such a way. He would probably never have it at all. He might be able to bargain down a good deal, but still not into his financial possibilities. Was there some trade? He would profoundly have liked to force FitzAlan into it, twist him until something hurt enough for him to be glad to give up the picture in exchange for relief.

“I’ll tell him,” he said between his teeth. “Thank you.”

Monk spent the rest of that day, and the next two as well, tracing Gilmer’s fairly rapid decline from one artist to another, each of lesser skill than the last, until finally he was destitute and on the street. In each case he had seemingly quarreled and left in some anger. No one had wished him well or given him any assistance. In the end, roughly the middle of the previous summer, he had been taken in by the master of a male brothel.

“Yeah, poor devil,” he said to Monk. “On ’is last legs, ’e were. Thin as a rake an’ pale as death. I could see as ’e were dyin’.” His scarred face was pinched with pity as he sat in the overstuffed chair in his crowded parlor. He was an extraordinarily ugly man with a humpbacked, misshapen body, but with beautiful hands. Who or what he might have been in other circumstances Monk would never know, but it crossed his mind to wonder. Had he been drawn to this, or taken it up out of greed? He chose to think it was the former.

“Did he tell you anything about himself?” Monk enquired.

The man looked at him narrowly. Monk had not asked his name. “A bit,” he answered. “What’s it to you?”

“Did he work for you?”

“When ’e was well enough … which weren’t often.”

Monk could understand it, but he was still disappointed.

“ ’E did the laundry,” the man said wryly. “Wot was you thinking?”

To his amazement Monk was blushing.

The man laughed. “ ’E weren’t o’ that nature,” he said firmly. “Yer can turn boys, but ’is age it’s ’arder, an’ beside that, the way ’e looked like death, an’ coughed blood, no one’d fancy ’im anyway. Whether you believe it or not, I took ’im in because I was sorry for ’im. I could see it wouldn’t be for long. ’E’d bin ’ard enough used as it was.”

“Any idea who knocked him around?” Monk tried to keep the anger out of his voice, and failed.

The man looked at him with a slight squint. “Why? Wot yer goin’ ter do about it?”

There was no point in being less than honest. The man had already seen his feelings. “Depends upon who it is,” he replied. “There are several people who would be happy to make life very difficult for whoever it was.”

“Startin’ wi’ you, eh?”

“No, I’m not the first. I’m several steps along the line. He quarreled with many of the artists he worked for. Was it one of them?”

“I reckon so.” The man nodded slowly. “But ’e didn’t rightly quarrel with them. The first one just got bored and threw him out. Found it more profitable ter paint women for a while. The second couldn’t afford to keep him. The third and fourth both asked favors of him like wot I sell—at an ’igh price. ’E weren’t willing—that’s why they threw ’im out. an’ by then ’e were losing ’is looks an ’e got iller an’ iller.”

“Was it one of them?”

The man sized up Monk carefully, the dark face, the lean bones, broad-bridged nose, unblinking eyes.

“Why? Yer gonna kill ’im?”

“Nothing so quick,” Monk replied. “There’s a police
sergeant who would like to exact a slow vengeance … through the law.”

“An’ you’d tell ’im so ’e could?”

“I would. If I were sure it was the right one.”

“Customer o’ mine took a fancy to ’im an’ weren’t minded ter take no fer an answer. I’d ’ave ’ad ’im beat ter within an inch of ’is life, meself, but I can’t afford ter. Get a name fer that, an’ I’ll be out o’ business, an’ all me boys wi’ me.”

“Name?”

“Garson Dalgetty. A gent, but a right sod underneath it. Told me ’e’d ruin me if I laid an ’and on ’im. And ’e could!”

“Thank you. I’ll not say where I got this information. But I want a favor in return.”

“Yeah? Why don’t that surprise me none?”

“Because you’re not a fool.”

“Wot’s yer favor?”

Monk grinned. “Not your trade! I want to know if Gilmer told you of anyone giving him money to pay his debts, and I mean giving, not paying.”

The man was surprised. “So you know about that, do yer?”