By Death Possessed Read online

  I got up and walked round the room, just in order not to look into her eyes. She continued as though I was still sitting there. I doubt she could see.

  ‘There’d never been anything but art in my life, Tony. It was as though the world had cast me out. My father fetched me from Munich, where I’d drifted to, took me home, and treated me like a baby. He got me to understand in the end, hammered it into me, that it didn’t have to be a door that’d slammed in my face, it could be a door that had opened. He persuaded me to study art as an academic subject—the history, the techniques. And that was what I did.’

  There she stopped. I didn’t believe she had finished, only that she’d paused for some intimation that she had my interest. Standing in front of a Renoir, I said: ‘You certainly succeeded in that; you got a doctorate.’

  ‘Yes. You could say I succeeded. Because I had to, or there was nothing. For my doctorate, I specialized in forgeries and in the detection and exposure of forgeries. I became an expert on the composition of pigments used for the past few centuries, on techniques, brush strokes even, and the mediums used. And at that stage I realized something else. Can you guess what that was, Tony?’

  I had drawn back a curtain and was looking out into the darkness. It was after midnight, but a few lights still sparkled in the distance, below my level. I was staring over an invisible valley. She was a career woman. There’d been no time for emotional interruptions. Sexual incidents, perhaps, but nothing that might have diverted her from her purpose. She was now going to tell me about accomplishment and involvement, about fulfilment. I swept the curtain shut and turned, not knowing what I could say. I smiled.

  ‘I wouldn’t care to guess.’

  ‘I realized I was in an ideal situation and had all the abilities and knowledge to paint real forgeries, undetectable ones. Not quite copies of known works. Slight changes. A tree moved, or a colour change in a hat. That sort of thing. And d’you know what?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that, either. Just couldn’t. Not because I wasn’t capable of doing it. I knew I was. But because I knew I’d be degrading myself, and the original artist. Now wasn’t that ridiculous, Tony? I’d at last found something I could do ...’

  ‘You’d already done—’

  ‘... and I couldn’t put a brush to the canvas. The laugh was ...’ Her voice faltered, but she hadn’t tripped over laughter. ‘The joke was on me. All my learning and studying and ... and understanding, I suppose, stopped me. I knew how that artist had striven to develop his technique, how he’d starved to provide himself with materials, how he’d perfected his choice of colours ... and there I was, prepared to pick up his whole life of endeavour, and make some tawdry use of what had been his basic reason for living. And for what? Not for money.’ She waved an arm blindly. ‘I had what I needed. Not for fame or to fool the establishment. I was part of the establishment. So can you see why I couldn’t do it? Can you, Tony?’

  And there I was, caught, expected to produce a few words that in some way indicated an empathy with her point of view. She’d said she hadn’t told this before. Did it matter to her that a virtual stranger, a philistine in her art world, should express an opinion? Perhaps it was because I was a stranger, and yet enough of a friend for it to matter.

  ‘I can see that it had to be his hand holding the brush,’ I ventured. ‘Renoir’s, Degas’, Constable’s. His. The first stroke of the brush and your hand would wither.’

  ‘Superstition?’ She pouted her disappointment.

  ‘Not superstition. Sympathy and understanding.’

  I waited. She stared at me with moist eyes, swallowing. I watched the smooth line of her throat moving.

  ‘Didn’t you put something in the oven?’ I asked, and went to check.

  I was alone, peering into her oven. She had put in a lasagne, and it was ready. Crisply ready. I looked round for oven gloves, and somewhere to put it down, and she was at my shoulder.

  ‘Let me.’

  She put it on a plate, and we stared at it. Then she laughed.

  ‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘Let’s try it.’

  We sat facing each other across the kitchen table. She had put a bottle of hock in the fridge. The lasagne was too hot, the wine too cold. We ate, and between bites and swallows we chatted. Nothing important. My life, and my gradually escalating failure to achieve; hers and her growing prominence in the art world. World was the correct word. She travelled world-wide as an expert on forgeries. Her fees had bought this house and a small flat in London. She was already in sight of the culmination of a dream.

  She was not a tidy person. She dumped the crockery and glassware in the sink for future attention, and said: ‘Let’s get our stuff out of the car, and I’ll show you where you can sleep.’

  This we did. As we returned from the garage and moved along the landing, she flung open a door. ‘This is my room.’ Flung open the next door. ‘You can sleep here. Or in the other room, as you wish.’

  I made no comment, simply walked into the second room, dumped my floppy bag and the camera holdall, and looked round. It was luxurious. She stood just inside the door. ‘Bathroom over there. You can take a shower if you like, while I get to work on your canvas.’

  It was under my left arm. I turned and looked at her. She raised her eyebrows delicately.

  ‘Get to work?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t think I could sleep until I’ve at least cleaned it and taken some colour readings? Come on, Tony, I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to do it any harm.’

  I handed it over. ‘Where shall I find you?’

  ‘Through the kitchen, the far door. Come down when you’re ready.’

  I had my shower, and felt much fresher, but my brain refused to respond. I couldn’t take in the events of the day, analyse them, and produce a clear decision about my attitude. If it turned out that I was a fairly wealthy man, I still wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of parting with my painting. So I’d gained nothing, except perhaps a cleaner canvas. Certainly, I thought, as I dug out a nearly-clean shirt and a clean pair of Y-fronts, and covered them with my disreputable working clothes, it would be pleasant to buy a couple of new outfits, in order not to soil the seats of a new car. What I couldn’t balance in my mind was the loss of the painting against a transient gain in affluence.

  Her workroom was a brightly illuminated and windowless laboratory, all shadow-free light, as near white as I’ve ever seen produced artificially. She had microscopes and magnifiers, a chemical bench, spectroscopes and viewers. On the side bench lay my painting. It was clean. I couldn’t remember it like that. It glowed. Colours I had never realized as being there were now revealed in their naked glory, and new detail set my eyes roving across it.

  She straightened. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘I’d intended to do it up with a toothbrush and washing-up liquid.’

  She flinched. ‘I was certain before. Now I’m dead certain. It’s a Frederick Ashe, painted before he left this country. It could even be a painting of his own cottage. He was late to be using this style, you know. The French Impressionist movement lasted until the end of the century, but there he was, using the same fragmented colour techniques, the pure colours, the use of light, just as they’d done. He sold only six in his life. He must have painted many more, and this is one of them. It’ll cause great excitement ...’

  She stopped, probably aware of my reaction. Her implication had been that I would let it out of my hands to be gloated over by the pundits.

  ‘I’ve never seen it looking so wonderful,’ I compromised.

  ‘I’ve analysed the yellow—’

  ‘If what you say is true,’ I cut in, ‘that the Impressionists over there had had their day, then there must have been no end of painters, over in Britain too, who were picking up on the style. Hundreds. So apart from the initials, which I still say could be A.F. for my gran, there’s nothing to tie it down to Frederick Ashe.’

  This thought,
more or less, had been tracking through my mind for some time, and I was determined to get it out. It seemed I’d insulted her.

  ‘Nothing!’ she cried. ‘There’s a dozen points. His impasto—that’s the thickness and build-up of the paint. I’ve seen it, Tony, on his other known works. His use of the palette knife. Here and there, his use of a finger. The choice of colour. The yellow—I’ve had time to analyse that, not chemically, but with the spectroscope. It’s cobalt yellow. Hardly known in England in 1910, but the French were using it. He was known to have corresponded with Monet, who could have sent him pigment. When he went to Paris, Maurice Bellarmé was a close friend. He could have sent him pigment. And there’s viridian green. Another pointer—’

  Clearly, she was going to take some stopping. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Pax. You know your job. Other works, you said. Six, you’ve mentioned. Where’re those?’

  She stared blankly at me for a moment, then suddenly grinned. ‘The great disbeliever! No, you can’t very well go and see them, to compare. Two are in a private collection in this country. I haven’t seen those. I have seen, and examined, the other four. In detail. It’s my job, Tony. One in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, one in the Lecomte Collection in Paris, one in the Staatsgalerie in Munich, one in the Metropolitan in New York. Quite a round trip, that would be.’

  I grimaced. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I can understand your enthusiasm, but I’ve never been one for speculation. Tomorrow, if you’re still prepared to do it, we can go and ask my grandmother. She’ll know. She’d have been about seventeen when this was painted. She’ll certainly know where it came from.’

  ‘I can’t wait to meet her.’

  ‘So ... if you don’t mind ... I’m very tired and I’d like to get some sleep.’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said solemnly.

  I nodded, the lock of hair flopping forward. ‘Sorry—it is.’

  ‘No need to apologize.’

  ‘There might well have been.’

  She turned away. ‘I’ll be here for some time. Might as well do a chemical analysis on that yellow.’

  ‘And the green,’ I suggested. ‘Good night.’

  But she was already absorbed with the painting.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the back of my mind there was the vague recollection of a scandal involving my grandmother. My father told me about it, but at that time I was very young, and probably didn’t understand. There had been, now I came to probe my memory, never any mention of my grandfather, though I had the impression his father was the reason Dad had left home. Why else had my own family been living in the Midlands, when my father’s original home had been in Wiltshire?

  These memories were returning to me whilst we were on the journey there. Margaret was not the sort of driver who encouraged conversation when she was behind the wheel of a car, and I’d decided she needed all her concentration to keep us on the road. Perhaps she had her own thoughts. She seemed tense and expectant, eager to get there. Certainly, she wasn’t wasting any time.

  ‘The ring-road’s coming up,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do we take it, or straight on into town?’

  It had been twenty years. There hadn’t been a ring road last time. I had been hoping that my memory would pilot me to the house, but it was doing nothing. Too much had changed.

  ‘Surely you know an address,’ she said irritably, pulling into a lay-by. ‘The name of a street, even.’

  ‘It wasn’t a street. Nothing towny like that. My impression is of isolation. Countrified. A large house. She was living with a companion. Grace or Gloria.’

  ‘But the name was Hine?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of some importance?’

  ‘They were grocers.’ Not ‘we’ were. The ‘they’ had been automatic. ‘My father’s grandfather was the mayor.’

  ‘Oh ... lovely. Let’s find a post office.’

  She drove into town, parked with difficulty, found a post office, and we consulted a phone book. There it was: Hine A., Mandalay, Forster Grove.

  ‘Mandalay?’

  ‘Great grandfather was an officer in the Indian Army.’

  ‘What an artistic background you do have, Tony.’ Impatience was peeking the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Let’s go and find Forster Grove,’ I said with dignity.

  I recognized the Grove at once. The trees were thicker and taller than I recalled, and the roadway more narrow. The drive entrance-columns seemed closer together, and surely they had possessed gates. The drive was short, and the overhanging beeches dripped from morning rain, which we hadn’t encountered on the journey.

  ‘Looks a bit gloomy,’ she commented.

  ‘My memory’s of dark rooms and depression. Silence. The companion looming like a ghost in the background. It wasn’t a place I yearned to return to.’

  ‘You’re completely out of touch. Admit it. Your grandmother might have died, and you wouldn’t know.’

  So what did I say when the companion opened the door? ‘Is my grandmother still alive?’

  We were standing in the porch, staring at the stained-glass panel in the heavy front door. I had pressed the button in the frame, but we’d heard no sound. I pressed it again, and silently the door opened.

  I recognized her at once, and with the recognition there came the certainty of her name.

  ‘Hello, Grace,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘It’s me. Tony.’

  ‘No need to keep on ringing. I’m not deaf, you know.’

  My smile was difficult to hold, she’d changed so much. She had always been large and bulky, but now she was simply ungainly, distorting the shape of clothes that she’d probably possessed when I was last there. Her puckered face was coursed with lines, her cheeks sagging in wobbling dewlaps, her eyes sunken deeply into hollowed, dark sockets. All that was left was her resilience. She could be ... how old? She had been their maid—a young and pretty girl—when my grandfather, Arthur Hine, had died. Heavens, that had been all of fifty years ago. It would make Grace at least seventy-five. How the time marched on! But for her it would have crawled leadenly. For all those years she’d had no life except as a companion, and later almost a nurse, for my grandmother. Every bitter, lost year had carved its passing in her face.

  I risked a social disaster. ‘I wanted to see Grandmother.’

  She sniffed. Her red nose indicated it was habitual. ‘You’d better come in. A lot of good it’ll do you, though. If she’ll see you, she probably won’t recognize you, and they’ve pretty well stripped the house.’

  This last I didn’t understand. We moved into the hall, with its patterned quarry tiles and its ancient hallstand. No, no hallstand, and the black old chest wasn’t there either. The hall was wide and chilly, and smelt slightly damp. The staircase to the left was uncarpeted, though I couldn’t remember whether it had been before. There had been changes. Surely Grannie Angelina hadn’t had to resort to selling her antiques! The stair carpet had probably been priceless. I had always understood that Grandfather Arthur had died a wealthy man.

  ‘I’ll go and tell her,’ said Grace, flinging open a door into what I recalled as a drawing-room. ‘You’d better wait.’

  Then she closed the door on us, and we were left alone to stare at each other.

  ‘Stripped the place?’ asked Margaret. ‘She couldn’t mean the bailiffs, surely?’

  I shook my head. Certainly not. But this room, too, was more bare than I recalled it. I would have described it then as oppressively over-furnished, but now you could have played basketball in it.

  ‘It wasn’t so empty,’ I admitted. ‘And the ivy should have been cut back from the windows, that’s why it’s so dark. Grannie Angelina used to say it was better not to have direct sunlight on the furniture.’

  ‘No sunlight, and not much furniture now.’

  ‘True.’

  We waited. Eventually the door opened. Grace, still a heavy woman, moved with silence. She now radiated disapproval. ‘She will see you.’


  ‘What did you mean, Grace?’ I asked. ‘You said stripped.’

  ‘And you another of them!’ She tucked in her loose lips and nodded. Her hair was iron-grey and thin. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t come to pick up a choice bit you’d like.’

  ‘I’ve brought something. I’m not intending to take.’

  ‘Well, that’s a turn-up for the book, I must say. The relatives have been coming here in droves. Vultures over a carcass, but she keeps on living. I hope you realize she’s ninety-five now. Don’t expect too much of her. But at her age, everybody’s expecting her to go at any time. So it’s a good idea to get in while you can. “Dear Angelina, I’ve always fancied that little table in the parlour.”’ She mimicked the avaricious hypocrisy perfectly, and Angelina’s weak and inoffensive response. ‘“Then do take it, Flora—or Mary or Rose or whatever. It’s no use to me now.” No good to Angelina, no. But what about me?’

  With no one she could tell it to, she had bottled up this grievance for too long. It erupted like the bursting forth of a too-long kept champagne, the pressure of fermentation having built up as the wine grew more bitter and sour. Perhaps Grandmother’s will left everything to Grace. All of which I die possessed. Very soon she would die possessed of nothing.

  My smile was mechanical. ‘I told you, Grace, I’ve brought something.’ I produced the canvas, now without its frame, from under my arm. She hadn’t noticed it. I’d expected relief, but instead of relaxing she stiffened. Wrinkles smoothed along her jaw at the tension.

  ‘It’s one of those,’ she grumbled.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mustn’t ... no, not show her that ... please.’

  I was completely confused. Why should I not show it to Angelina? ‘She’ll be pleased to see it again, Grace. Come on now.’

  ‘You’ll remind her.’