Bohemian Girl, The (26 page)

‘Are they giving you a testimonial?’ he said.

‘If the worst thing people do, Denton, is mean well, I shan’t be too unhappy. What I’ve done for the last ten years didn’t accomplish much, but the Society at least tries. Better to try than not.’

He shrugged. ‘Anyway, Wenzli looks like a dead end. He was really frightened, maybe of himself. Like a man who finds he likes drink - suddenly understands he’s got it in him to destroy himself.’

‘He didn’t call it love? Most men would.’

‘Once she was gone and he’d had a few days to think it over, he knew he was well out of it. I must have come like the ghost at the banquet. He’ll be shaking in his boots for weeks.’

‘But it rounds off Mary Thomason. You know now why she wrote the letter, and you’ve done what you could.’

‘I’d still like to talk to Himple, RA. So far as we know, Mary Thomason is still missing, and Himple knew her.’

‘I still don’t entirely trust Wenzli.’

He shook his head. ‘I believed him. Let’s see what Himple, RA, has to say. I haven’t heard from him - maybe RAs don’t answer letters from mere authors - so let’s see what happens if I simply call on him.’

Erasmus Himple, RA, lived in Chelsea, not particularly at that moment an artist’s neighbourhood - but then, as Augustus John might have said, Himple wasn’t particularly an artist. Denton liked Chelsea without wanting to live there, liked to walk its small streets and its embankment, although the place was, he was told, very different from the village of ‘little houses surrounded with roses’ that Stendhal and others had found. One of the art magazines reported that Himple had said that ‘he liked to live where my great namesake, Erasmus, visited, and where great painters have painted’ - presumably Holbein and Turner, if ‘great’ was to be taken literally, perhaps less so Rossetti and Whistler. At any rate, it was to Chelsea that Himple had come, leaving Melbury Road and the farther reaches of Kensington to other RAs.

The house was a fairly small one around the corner from All Saints Church. Denton approached it along the Embankment, pausing to look at the river - he still had thoughts of rowing on it, never seemed to turn them to reality - and the suspension bridge. He tried to picture it without the Embankment, a muddy tidal shore, here and there some steps to the water, but the idea of a distinct village where now this accessible part of London stood wouldn’t come clear. His mind was fuzzed by his book, anyway, now nearly done. There was a familiar sense of the sprint to the finish, already an anticipation of the mental slump after.

He had no eagerness to see Erasmus Himple. It was late on a sombre, cold day, although he was cheered by a flight of duck that came winging down the river to land splashily almost in front of him. The sky was iron overhead, the sun a slightly brassy brightness far down to the west; the bare plane trees rose against it in hard, black silhouette. The air smelled of the river and of soot; his breath steamed in it before drifting and dissipating.

‘Mr Denton to see Mr Himple, if he may,’ he said, handing in his card. He had expected, after the experience with Wenzli, some sort of potted grandeur, the same air of arty
nouveau riche-
ness
,
but the house was little more than a double cottage, the middle-aged woman at the door a housekeeper rather than a butler. She had an air of austerity, could have been housekeeper to some Irish priest, dedicated more to preservation of his celibacy than even her own; she wore black, some sort of white headgear like a mob cap, but in lace. She had bristling, hairy eyebrows and a nose almost as formidable as Denton’s own, the nostrils more hirsute than his.

Without looking at the card, she said, ‘Mr Himple is away.’

‘Oh.’ That didn’t surprise him, after what James had said. It did trouble him that Himple had been away so long. ‘Will he be back soon?’

Now she used a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles that hung on a ribbon to read his card. ‘Is this about having your picture painted, Mr Denton?’ She had a deep voice, almost mannish.

‘I wrote a letter. There’s a young woman who seems to have disappeared. I think she was a model for Mr Himple - the painting of Lazarus.’ He stood uncertainly, found he was speaking in jerks. ‘I’ve reported it to the police. I just learned about Mr Himple. Her modelling for him. I thought—’ He didn’t say what he thought.

‘Oh, yes.’ She looked him up and down. It was as well that Atkins had insisted he look like a gentleman that day. ‘Come in, please.’ No hospitality was implied by the tone.

She led him to the back of the house down a central hall, paintings on the walls, not Himple’s own, he thought (they seemed to him ‘older’, whatever that meant), and stood by an open door with her left arm extended as if to say, ‘If you must be here, go in this room.’ Inside was what he took to be her own sitting room, as austere as she, black-and-white engravings on the walls instead of paintings, an open Bible on a shawl-draped table.

She didn’t ask him to take off his overcoat. She told him she was Mrs Evans. When she sat, so did he; the chair was merciless. He told her the well-worn tale of Mary Thomason, abbreviated, trying to keep his voice from falling into the sing-song of a guide detailing some third-rate wonder for the thousandth time. He produced one of the copies of the Mary Thomason drawing. ‘I believe that Mr Himple did this drawing. Do you recognize it?’

She had as sharp an eye as Augustus John’s. ‘The little one in the corner looks like his Lazarus.’

‘Yes.’ He waited. ‘Do you know the woman’s face?’

‘Mr Himple’s studio is over the road.’

It took him an instant to guess what that meant. ‘You don’t see his models?’

‘I hardly pry into my employer’s business.’

‘I didn’t mean to suggest that. You might have seen her, I meant.’

She handed the drawing back. Denton waited; nothing came. He said, ‘When will Mr Himple be back?’

‘Mr Himple has gone abroad.’

‘Ah. For how long?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. He made arrangements that would allow him to make an extended journey. You would do best to write to him, perhaps. Or not.’

‘I did. May I ask when he left?’

‘Some time ago.’

‘When?’

She enjoyed being a dog in the manger of information. No amount of niceness was going to get it out of her. Denton bore down, gave as good as he got, showed in a changed voice that he could be just as stern as she. Reluctantly, she admitted that Himple had gone some time ago, then that he had gone in August, then that he had left on 9 August.

One day after Mary Thomason had written to ask for help. Denton felt himself coming out of his end-of-book daze. ‘Did he go alone?’

She got her back up at that: what did he mean? What was he suggesting? She would have to ask him to leave if he was going to make insinuations.

Denton produced the drawing again. She said, ‘He would hardly travel with a young lady!’

‘Did he travel with anybody at all?’

‘His man, of course.’ She glanced down at the drawing, looked out of a window, said in a different voice, one for the first time suggesting - was it disapproval? Or some personal hurt? ‘A man. A servant, I mean.’

Denton had to figure this through - his man but apparently not his man,
a
man - and he said, ‘Not his regular man?’

Again, she didn’t look at him, spoke in the same aggrieved voice. ‘He wanted someone who could speak French.’

‘His regular man didn’t speak French?’

‘Brown does not speak French.’

‘Brown is his regular man? Can I speak with Brown?’

‘Brown lives in Strand-on-the Green. He comes in once a week to tend to the studio and do the pictures.’ Denton had no idea what this meant; it didn’t matter. She said, ‘Mr Himple made an arrangement with Brown for his absence - until he returns.’ She looked again at the drawing. Her expression was even more severe.

‘You didn’t approve of the man he took with him.’

‘It’s hardly my business to approve of my employer’s judgement.’

‘I thought perhaps you didn’t like the new man.’

‘I hardly knew him.’ She looked yet again at the drawing.

‘You recognize the drawing, don’t you.’

She handed it back. The edge of the paper vibrated; her hand was trembling. Looking at her again, Denton felt a sudden sympathy, had a glimpse into her life and its isolation, probably its loneliness. He said, ‘Did the new man look like the woman’s face in the drawing? ’

She sat very straight. ‘I believe he resembles the face in the corner, at least.’

‘Lazarus.’

She was silent. Her head may have trembled; maybe he was wrong. He said, ‘Have you seen the painting?’

‘Mr Himple kindly invited me to the studio to see it before it went to the Academy.’

‘Do you think the “new man” who went abroad with him was the model for Lazarus?’

‘I - thought that might be so when I saw the painting. It was not my business.’ She looked at him. ‘Nor yours, sir.’

‘I think the man who modelled Lazarus may be the brother of the missing girl. He may know where she is. Mrs Evans, this is quite important. I want to get in touch with the young man.’

‘You may write a letter, I’m sure.’

‘Where are they?’

She licked her thin, dark lips. ‘Brown - Mr Himple’s regular valet - is in touch with him. If I have anything to report about the house, I do it through Brown.’ She smoothed her dress; her fingers plucked at a square inch of fabric as if she saw something on it. ‘I had an address for him at the beginning, but it was only a poste restante. They’re long gone from there, so Brown says.’ Through tone alone, she made it clear that a housekeeper should not have to communicate with her employer through a valet.

‘Where?’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t know!’ As if she regretted her sharpness, she said, ‘They spent the first month painting in France, a village, Hinon. In Normandy. They were supposed to spend the summer there, but he changed his mind. Quite an unspoiled spot, Mr Himple said. That’s why he wanted a French speaker. But he moved on.’ Her expression changed, suggested malicious pleasure. ‘Perhaps it was too unspoiled.’

‘The “new man”, too?’

‘I assume so. Although—’ The expression, malicious, almost a smile, touched her mouth. ‘Brown said Mr Himple has discharged him.’

‘Why?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t remember. The end of summer, perhaps.’

‘Then writing to him care of Mr Himple wouldn’t reach him.’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t.’

Denton was angry with her, made himself see her side of it. She had tried to fob him off at first with the idea of writing to the ‘new man’. She had wanted to get rid of him - Mary Thomason was nothing to her; why should she bother helping him? She wanted him to go, to leave her to her isolation and her loneliness. ‘But you’re sure you haven’t seen the young woman in the drawing.’

‘Quite sure, of course.’

‘But Mr Himple drew her.’

‘I don’t know that he did. Perhaps he did.’ She was looking towards the door, towards a black stone clock on the mantel.

‘Was the “new man” English?’

‘Certainly he was.’

‘You heard him talk, then.’

She compressed her lips. ‘Once or twice.’

‘What did he sound like - educated? Rough?’

‘He sounded like his class.’

‘But he spoke French.’

‘So Mr Himple said. I wouldn’t have known if he had. I don’t bother myself with foreign things.’

She didn’t know the new man’s name - he’d have to ask Brown. He asked if he could see the studio and was told he’d have to apply to Brown. She was eager for him to go now; she had said too much, he thought, not because she had anything to hide but because information was all she did have. Perhaps she got pleasure from treating as secrets things that were merely ordinary. He got Brown’s address from her and went away, glad to get into the gathering dusk and the cold.

The ducks were gone. The sun was gone, too, the dwindling light throwing everything into shades of lavender and dark grey-blue, the last light on the water like much-rubbed metal. On the Albert Bridge, the traffic rumbled and growled. A steam launch came down the river, its lights like tantalizing hints of certainty in the gloom.

Next day, he visited Brown in a tidy little house on the river almost as far as Kew. The valet was not yet forty, heavy-set, unintelligent. Yes, Mr Himple sent him regular letters. Yes, Himple and the ‘new man’ had stayed at Hinon for a month; yes, they had left there early and gone on to Paris and then ‘the South’; yes, Mr Himple had written that he had discharged the new man and was taking a villa with its own staff. No, he wasn’t sure of the villa’s location; he had been told only a poste restante address. But Mr Himple had moved again, heading for Italy incognito because of the crowds of English tourists, he said. He planned to winter in Florence, where he had a large acquaintance. He had sent back four paintings - ‘What artists call sketches in oil, sir.’ Mr Himple was ‘renewing his style’. It sounded like something Brown was quoting from one of Himple’s letters.

When would Himple be back? Brown didn’t know, didn’t know, sir, it was all a little puzzling - but Mr Himple was an artist, after all.

And the new man?

Gone. (Brown seemed relieved.) Never meant to be a permanent addition to the household, after all. (Brown hid his satisfaction at this pretty well.) His name was Arthur Crum. Yes, he was young. Thin, sir. Yes, the face in the drawing without a beard could be his. Yes, he believed the man Crum had modelled Lazarus. Brown knew nothing of a sister, however, either of the new man or of Lazarus. He was seldom at the studio when Mr Himple was painting, seldom saw the models. No, he was deeply sorry, but it wasn’t possible to see the studio in Mr Himple’s absence. Art was sacrosanct.