A Twist in the Tale (20 page)

“Your last
chance to avoid complete humiliation,” said Hamilton.

A cheese board,
displaying several varieties, was brought round and each guest selected his
choice, I stuck to
a Cheddar
that I could have told
Hamilton had not been made in Somerset. Meanwhile the port was poured by the
butler, who was now as white as a sheet. I began to wonder if he was going to
faint, but somehow he managed to fill all four glasses before returning to
stand a pace behind his master’s chair. Hamilton noticed nothing untoward.

Barker drank
the port, not bothering with any of his previous preliminaries.

“Taylors,” he
began.

“Agreed,” said
Hamilton. “But as there are only three decent suppliers of port in the world,
the year can be all that matters – as you, in your exalted position, must be
well aware,
Mr
Barker.”

Freddie nodded
his agreement. “Nineteen seventy-five,” he said firmly,
then
quickly flicked the card over.

“Taylors 1927”,
I read upside-down.

Once again
Barker turned sharply towards his host, who was rocking with laughter. The
butler stared back at his master’s guest with haunted eyes. Barker hesitated
only for a moment before removing a
cheque
book from
his inside pocket. He filled in the name “
Sefton
Hamilton” and the figure of œ200.

He signed it
and wordlessly passed the
cheque
along the table to
his host.

“That was only
half the bargain,” said Hamilton, enjoying every moment of his triumph.

Barker rose,
paused and said, “I am a humbug.”

“You are
indeed, sir,” said Hamilton.

After spending
three of the most unpleasant hours of my life, I managed to escape with Henry
and Freddie Barker a little after four o’clock. As Henry drove away from
Sefton
Hall neither of us uttered a word. Perhaps we both
felt that Barker should be allowed the first comment.

“I fear,
gentlemen,” he said eventually, “I shall not be good company for the next few
hours, and so I will, with your permission, take a brisk walk and join you both
for dinner at the Hamilton Arms around seven thirty. I have booked a table for
eight o’clock.” Without another word, Barker sig-
nalled
that Henry should bring the car to a halt and we watched as he climbed out and
headed off clown a country lane. Henry did not drive on until his friend was
well out of sight.

My sympathies
were entirely with Barker, although I remained puzzled by the whole affair. How
could the President of the Wine Society make such basic mistakes? After all, I
could read one page of Dickens and know it wasn’t Graham Greene.

Like Dr Watson,
I felt I required a fuller explanation.

Barker found us
sitting round the fire in the private bar at the Hamilton Arms a little after
seven thirty that night. Following his exercise, he appeared in far better
spirits. He chatted about nothing consequential and didn’t once mention what
had taken place at lunchtime.

It must have
been a few minutes later, when I turned to check the old clock above the door,
that I saw Hamilton’s butler seated at the bar in earnest conversation with the
innkeeper. I would have thought nothing of it had I not noticed the same
terrified look that I had witnessed earlier in the afternoon as he pointed in
our direction. The innkeeper appeared equally anxious, as if he had been found
guilty of serving half-measures by a customs and excise officer.

He picked up
some menus and walked over to our table.

“We’ve no need
for those,” said Barker.

“Your
reputation goes before you. We are in your hands.
Whatever
you suggest we will happily consume.”

“Thank you,
sir,” he said and passed our host the wine list.

Barker studied
the contents inside the
leatherbound
covers for some
time before a large smile appeared on his face. “I think you had better select
the wines as well,” he said, “as I have a feeling you know the sort of thing I
would expect.”

“Of course,
sir,” said the innkeeper as Freddie passed back the wine list leaving me
totally mystified, remembering that this was Barker’s first visit to the inn.

The innkeeper left
for the kitchens while we chatted away and didn’t reappear for some fifteen
minutes.

“Your table is
ready, gentlemen,” he said, and we followed him into an adjoining dining room.
There were only a dozen tables but as ours was the last to be filled there
was no doubting
the inn’s popularity.

The innkeeper
had selected a light supper of consommé, followed by thin slices of duck,
almost as if he had known that we would be unable to handle another heavy meal
after our lunch at the Hall.

I was also
surprised to find that all the wines he had chosen were served in decanters and
I assumed that the innkeeper must therefore have selected the house wines. As
each was poured and consumed I admit that, to my untutored palate, they seemed
far superior to those which I had drunk at
Sefton
Hall earlier that day. Barker certainly seemed to linger over every mouthful
and on one occasion said appreciatively, “This is the real McCoy.”

At the end of
the evening when our table had been cleared we sat back and enjoyed a magnificent
port and smoked cigars.

It was at this
point that Henry mentioned Hamilton for the first time.

“Are you going
to let us into the mystery of what really happened at lunch today?” he asked.

“I’m still not
altogether sure myself,” came back Barker’s reply, “but I am certain of one
thing:
Mr
Hamilton’s father was a man who knew his
wines, while his son doesn’t.”

I would have
pressed Barker further on the subject if the innkeeper had not arrived by his
side at that moment.

“An excellent
meal,” Barker declared.
“And as for the wine – quite
exceptional.”

“You are kind,
sir,” said the innkeeper, as he handed him the bill.

My curiosity
got the better of me, I’m sorry to admit, and I glanced at the bottom of the
slim strip of paper. I couldn’t believe my eyes - the bill came to two hundred
pounds.

To my surprise,
Barker only commented, “Very reasonable, considering.” He wrote out a
cheque
and passed it over to the innkeeper.

“I have only
tasted Chateau
d’Yquem
1980 once before today;” he
added, “and Taylors 1927 never.”

The innkeeper
smiled. “I hope you enjoyed them both, sir. I feel sure you wouldn’t have
wanted to see them wasted on a humbug.”

Barker nodded
his agreement.

I watched as
the innkeeper left the dining room and returned to his place behind the bar.

He passed the
cheque
over to Adams the butler, who studied it for a
moment, smiled and then tore it into little pieces.

W
E first met Patrick Travers on our annual winter holiday to
Verbier
. We were waiting at the ski lift that first
Saturday morning when a man who must have been in his early forties stood aside
to allow Caroline to take his place, so that we could travel up together. He
explained that he had already completed two runs that morning and didn’t mind
waiting. I thanked him and thought nothing more of it.

As soon as we
reach the top my wife and I always go our separate ways, she to the A-slope to
join Marcel, who only instructs advanced skiers- she has been skiing since the
age of seven – I to the B-slope and any instructor who is available- I took up
skiing at the age of forty-one – and frankly the B-slope is still too advanced
for me though I don’t dare admit as much, especially to Caroline.

We always meet
up again at the ski lift after completing our different runs.

That evening we
bumped into Travers at the hotel bar. Since he seemed to be on his own we
invited him to join us for dinner. He proved to be an amusing companion and we
passed a pleasant enough evening together.

He flirted
politely with my wife without ever overstepping the mark and she appeared to be
flattered by his attentions. Over the years I have become used to men being
attracted to Caroline and I never need reminding how lucky I am. During dinner
we learned that Travers was a merchant banker with an of lice in the City and a
flat in
Eaton
Square
.
He had come to
Verbier
every year since he had been taken on a school trip
in the late Fifties, he told us. He still prided himself on being the first on
the ski lift every morning, almost always beating the local blades up and down.

Travers
appeared to be genuinely interested in the fact that I ran a small West End art
gallery; as it turned out, he was something of a collector himself,
specialising
in minor Impressionists. He promised he would
drop by and see my next exhibition when he was back in London.

I assured him
that he would be most welcome but never gave it a second thought. In fact I
only saw Travers a couple of times over the rest of the holiday, once talking
to the wife of a friend of mine who owned a gallery that
specialises
in oriental rugs, and later I noticed him following Caroline expertly down the
treacherous A-slope.

It was six
weeks later, and some minutes before I could place him that night at my
gallery. I had to rack that part of one’s memory which recalls names, a skill
politicians rely on every day.

“Good to see
you, Edward,” he said. “I saw the write-up you got in the Independent and
remembered your kind invitation to the private view.”

“Glad you could
make it, Patrick,” I replied, remembering just in time.

“I’m not a
champagne man myself,” he told me, “but I’ll travel a long way to see a
Vuillard.”

“You think
highly of him?”

“Oh yes. I
would compare him
favourably
with Pissarro and
Bonnard, and he still remains one of the most underrated of the
Impressionists.”

“I agree,” I
replied. “But my gallery has felt that way about Vuillard for some considerable
time.”

“How much is
‘The Lady at the Window’?” he asked.

“Eighty thousand
pounds,” I said quietly.

“It reminds me
of a picture of his in the Metropolitan,” he said, as he studied the
re-production in the catalogue.

I was
impressed, and told Travers that the Vuillard in New York had been painted
within a month of the one he so admired.

He nodded.
“And the small nude?”

“Forty-seven
thousand,” I told him.

“
Mrs
Hensell
, the wife of his
dealer and Vuillard’s second mistress, if I’m not mistaken. The French are
always so much more
civilised
about these things than
we are. But my
favourite
painting in this
exhibition,” he continued, “compares surely with the finest of his work.” He
turned to face the large oil of a young girl playing a piano, her mother
bending to turn a page of the score.

“Magnificent,”
he said. “Dare I ask how much?”

“Three hundred
and seventy thousand pounds,” I said, wondering if such a price tag put it out
of Travers’s bracket.

“What a super
party, Edward,” said a voice from behind my shoulder.

“Percy!” I cried,
turning round. “I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

“Yes I did, old
fellow, but I decided I couldn’t sit at home alone all the time, so I’ve come
to drown my sorrows in champagne.”

“Quite right
too,” I said. “Sorry to hear about Diana,” I added as Percy moved on.

When I turned
back to continue my conversation with Patrick Travers he was nowhere to be
seen. I searched around the room and spotted him standing in the far corner of
the gallery chatting to my wife, a glass of champagne in his hand. She was
wearing an
offthe
-shoulder green dress that I
considered a little too modern. Travers’s eyes seemed to be glued to a spot a
few inches below the shoulders. I would have thought nothing of it had he
spoken to anyone else that evening.

The next
occasion on which I saw Travers was about a week later on returning from the
bank with some petty cash. Once again he was standing in front of the Vuillard
oil of mother and daughter at the piano.

“Good morning,
Patrick,” I said as I joined him.

“I can’t seem
to get that picture out of my mind,” he declared, as he continued to stare at
the two figures.

“Understandably. “

“I don’t
suppose you would allow me to live with them for a week or two until I can
finally make up my mind? Naturally I would be quite happy to leave a deposit.”

“Of course,” I
said. “I would require a bank reference as well and the deposit would be
twenty-five thousand pounds.”

He agreed to
both requests without hesitation so I asked him where he would like the picture
delivered. He handed me a card which revealed his address in
Eaton
Square
.
The following morning his bankers
confirmed that three hundred and seventy thousand pounds would not be a problem
for their client.

Within
twenty-four hours the Vuillard had been taken round to his home and hung in the
dining room on the ground floor. He phoned back in the afternoon to thank me
and asked if Caroline and I would care to join him for dinner; he wanted, he
said, a second opinion on how the painting looked.

With three
hundred and seventy thousand pounds at stake I didn’t feel it was an invitation
I could reasonably turn
down,
and in any case Caroline
seemed eager to accept, explaining that she was interested to see what his
house was like.