Death of a Ghost

1 : Interior with FiguresThere are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder. The assassination of another by any person of reasonable caution must, in a civilized world, tend to be a private affair. Perhaps it is this particular which accounts for the remarkable public interest in the details of even the most sordid and unintellectual examples of this crime, suggesting that it is the secret rather than the deed which constitutes the appeal. If only in view of the extreme rarity of the experience, therefore, it seems a pity that Brigadier General Sir Walter Fyvie, a brilliant raconteur and a man who would have genuinely appreciated so odd a distinction, should have left the reception at Little Venice at twenty minutes past six, passing his old acquaintance Bernard, bishop of Mould, in the doorway, and thus missing the extraordinary murder which took place there by a little under seven minutes. As the general afterwards pointed out, it was all the more irritating since the bishop, a specialist upon the more subtle varieties of sin, did not appreciate his fortune in the least. At twenty minutes past six on the preceding day, that is to say exactly twenty-four hours before the general passed the bishop in the doorway, the lights in the drawing room on the first floor of Little Venice were up and Belle herself (the original “Belle Darling” of the picture in the Louvre) was seated by the fire talking to her old friend Mr. Campion, who had come to tea. The house of a famous man who has been dead for any length of time, if it is still preserved in the condition in which he left it, is almost certain to have a museum-like quality if it has not achieved the withered wreaths and ragged garlands of a deserted shrine. It is perhaps the principal key to Belle’s character that Little Venice in 1930 was as much John Lafcadio’s home as if he were still down in the studio in the garden fighting and swearing and sweating over his pigments until he had thrashed them into another of his tempestuous pictures, which had so fascinated and annoyed his gentle and gentlemanly contemporaries. If Belle Lafcadio was no longer the Belle of the pictures, she was still Belle Darling. She had, so she said, never had the disadvantage of being beautiful, and now, at two months off seventy, ample, creased, and startlingly reminiscent of Rembrandt’s portrait of his mother, she had the bright quick smile and the vivacity of one who never has been anything but at her best. At the moment she was wearing one of those crisp white muslin bonnets in which Normandy peasants delighted until fifty years ago. She wore it with the assurance that it was unfashionable, unconventional, and devastatingly becoming. Her black gown was finished with a little white filet round the neck, and her slippers were adorned with shameless marquisite buckles. The room in which she sat had the same lack of conformity to any period or scheme. It was a personal room, quite evidently a part of someone’s home, a place of strange curios but comfortable chairs. L-shaped, it took up the entire first floor of the old house on the canal, and although nothing in it had been renewed since the war, it had escaped the elegant banalities of Morris and the horrors of the Edwardian convention. It was Belle’s boast that she and Johnnie had never bought anything unless they had liked it, with the result that the deep Venetian red damask curtains, although faded, were still lovely, the Persian carpet had worn silky, and the immense overmantel which took up all one narrow end of the room and which was part of a reredos from a Flemish church had grown mellow and at one with the buff walls, as things do when accustomed to living together. What was odd was that the sketch of Réjane by Fantin-Latour, the casual plaster study of a foot by Rodin and the stuffed polar bear presented to Lafcadio by Jensen after the 1894 portrait should also live together in equal harmony, or for that matter the hundred and one other curios with which the room was littered: yet they did, and the effect was satisfying and curiously exciting. Mrs. Lafcadio’s visitor sat opposite her, an unexpected person to find in such a room or in such company. He was a lank, pale-faced young man with sleek fair hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. His lounge suit was a little masterpiece, and the general impression one received of him was that he was well bred and a trifle absent-minded. He sat blinking at his hostess, his elbows resting upon the arms of his chair and his long hands folded in his lap. The two were friends of long standing, and the conversation had waned into silence for some moments when Belle looked up. “Well,” she said with the chuckle which had been famous in the ’nineties, “here we are, my dear, two celebrities. Isn’t it fun?” He glanced at her. “I’m no celebrity,” he protested fervently. “Heaven forbid. I leave that to disgraceful old ladies who enjoy it.” Mrs. Lafcadio’s brown eyes, whose irises were beginning to fade a little, smiled at some huge inward joke. “Johnnie loved it,” she said. “At the time of Gladstone’s unpopularity after the Gordon business Johnnie was approached to make a portrait of him. He refused the commission, and he wrote to Salmon, his agent: ‘I see no reason to save Mr. Gladstone’s face for posterity.’ ” Campion eyed her contemplatively. “There’s always a new Lafcadio story about this time of year,” he said. “Do you invent them?” The old lady looked demurely at the handkerchief in her hand. “No,” she said. “But I sometimes improve on them—just a little.” She became suddenly alert. “Albert,” she said, “you haven’t come here on business, have you? You don’t think someone’s going to steal the picture?” “I sincerely hope not,” he said in some alarm. “Unless, of course, that supersalesman Max is planning a sensation.” “Max!” said Mrs. Lafcadio and laughed. “Oh, my dear, I’ve had a sweet thought about him. His first book about Johnnie, which came out after the Loan Collection in Moscow was lost, was called The Art of John Lafcadio, ‘by one who knew him.’ His eighth book on Johnnie came out yesterday. It’s called Max Fustian Looks at Art—‘a critical survey of the works of John Lafcadio by Europe’s foremost critic.’ ” “Do you mind?” said Mr. Campion. “Mind? Of course not. Johnnie would have loved it. It would have struck him as being so funny. Besides, think of the compliment. Max made himself quite famous by just writing about Johnnie. I’m quite famous, just being Johnnie’s wife. Poor dear Beatrice considers herself famous just being Johnnie’s ‘Inspiration,’ and my blessed Lisa, who cares less about it than any of us, really is famous as Clytemnestra and the Girl at the Pool.” She sighed. “I think that probably pleases Johnnie more than anything.” She looked at her visitor with a half-apologetic grimace. “I always feel he’s watching us from somewhere, you know.” Mr. Campion nodded gravely. “He had the quality of fame about him,” he said. “It’s amazing how persistent it is. If I may say so, regarded from the vulgar standpoint of publicity, this remarkable will of his was a stroke of genius. I mean, what other artist in the world ever produced twelve new pictures ten years after his death and persuaded half London to come and see them one after the other for twelve years?” Belle considered his remark gravely. “I suppose it was,” she agreed. “But you know, really, Johnnie didn’t think of it that way. I’m perfectly certain his one idea was to fire a Parthian shot at poor Charles Tanqueray. In a way,” she went on, “it was a sort of bet. Johnnie believed in his work, and he guessed that it would boom just after his death and then go completely out of favour—as of course it did. But he realized that as it was really good it would be bound to be recognized again eventually, and he guessed that ten years was about the time public opinion would take.” “It was a wonderful idea,” the young man repeated. “It wasn’t in his will, you know,” said the old woman. “It was a letter. Didn’t you ever see it? I’ve got it here in the desk.” She rose with surprising agility and hurried across the room to a big serpentine escritoire, and, after pulling out one untidy drawer after another, finally produced an envelope which she carried back in triumph to the fireplace. Mr. Campion took the curio reverently and spread out a sheet of flimsy paper scribbled over in Lafcadio’s beautiful hand. The old lady stood beside him and peered over his shoulder. “He wrote it some time before he died,” she said. “He was always writing letters. Read it aloud. It makes me laugh.” “Belle darling,” read Mr. Campion. “When you return a sorrowing widow from the Abbey, where ten thousand cretins will (I hope) be lamenting over some marble Valentine inscribed to their hero (don’t let old Ffolliot do it—I will not be commemorated by n****r-bellied putti or unibreasted angels)—when you return, I want you to read this and help me once again as you have ever done. The oaf Tanqueray, to whom I have just been talking, is, I discover, looking forward to my death—he has the advantage of me by ten years—to bask in a clear field, to vaunt his execrable taste and milk-pudding mind unhampered by comparison with me. Not that the man can’t paint; we Academicians are as good as beach photographers any day of the week. It’s the mind of the man, with his train of long-drawered village children, humanized dogs, and sailors lost at sea, that I deplore. I’ve told him that I’ll outlive him if I have to die to do it, and it has occurred to me that there is a way of making him see the point of my remark for once. “In the cellar I shall leave twelve canvases, boxed and sealed. In with them is a letter to old Salmon, with full particulars. You are not to let them out of your hands for five years after the date of my death. Then I want them sent to Salmon as they are. He will unpack them and frame them. One at a time. They are all numbered. And on Show Sunday in the eleventh year after my death I want you to open up the studio, send round invitations as usual, and show the first picture. And so on for twelve years. Salmon will do all the dirty work, i.e., selling, etc. My stuff will probably have gained in value by that time, so you’ll get the crowd out of mere curiosity. (Should I be forgotten, my dear, have the shows for my sake and attend them yourself.) “In any case old Tanqueray will have an extra twenty-two years of me hanging over his head, and if he outlives that, good luck to him. “Many people will try to persuade you to open the packages before the date appointed, urging that I was not of sound mind when I wrote this letter. You, who know that I have never been of sound mind in the accepted sense of the term, will know how to treat any such suggestion. “All my love, my dear. If you see a strange old lady not at all unlike the late Queen, God bless her, mingling with the guests on the first of these occasions—it will be my ghost in disguise. Treat it with the respect it will deserve. Your husband, Madame, John Lafcadio. “(Probably the greatest painter since Rembrandt.)” Mr. Campion refolded the letter. “Did you really see this for the first time when you returned from his funeral?” he demanded. “Oh, dear me, no,” said Mrs. Lafcadio, tucking the envelope back into the drawer. “I helped him write it. We sat up one night after Charles Tanqueray and the Meynells had been to dinner. He did all the rest, though. I mean, I never saw the pictures packed, and this letter was sent to me from the bank with the rest of his papers.” “And this is the eighth year a picture has been shown,” said Mr. Campion.