Money from Holme
Money From Holme
First published in 1964
© Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1964-2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 075512104X EAN: 9780755121045
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
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Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.
After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of
Florio’s
translation of
Montaigne’s Essays
and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.
By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel,
Death at the President’s Lodging
. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.
After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the
Oxford History of English Literature
.
Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.
His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.
The Sebastian Holme Memorial Exhibition was being held in the Da Vinci Gallery, just off Bond Street. The Da Vinci, the proprietor of which was a certain Mr Hildebert Braunkopf, had never been understood in the trade to enjoy more than a modest prosperity. Until, you might say, today – the day of the Holme private view.
There could be no doubt of what was happening today. Certainly Mervyn Cheel hadn’t been in the Da Vinci five minutes before he realized that this was the artistic event of the season. He didn’t have to look at the pictures to grasp the fact. (For that matter, there was such a crush that the pictures would be hard to fight one’s way to.) He had only to look at the people who had given themselves the trouble to turn up.
At many affairs of this kind members of the public were inclined, he supposed, to nudge each other, point at
him
, and murmur ‘the distinguished critic and pointillist painter, Mervyn Cheel. (Just at the moment, he was covering Art in a provincial paper for a financially nugatory consideration: a disadvantageous circumstance which he would explain as arising solely from his exceptional professional integrity.) But at
this
affair, Cheel had soberly to admit, the nudging (if there had been elbow-room for it) would have been mainly prompted by others. Several sorts of big people were here. And they hadn’t turned up because the absurd Braunkopf, in an Edwardian frock-coat and a gardenia probably intended to suggest the late Lord Duveen, was dispensing champagne somewhere at the back of his rather poky premises. They had come because they believed – whether on the strength of informed judgement or of fashionable tattle – that Sebastian Holme’s paintings were eminently worth buying.
But the champagne wasn’t to be despised. Cheel began to edge in its direction. A couple of glasses would carry him on nicely till luncheon. And then, with luck, he might find among the sillier part of the crush some art-struck woman who would offer him a meal. His northern newspaper was unsympathetic to his representations about an expense account. Most impertinently, it had offered instead some species of voucher which he could exchange for a snack in a milk-bar. He doubted whether it fobbed off its financial correspondent (or even its parliamentary correspondent) in
that
fashion. Which just showed how, when you were dedicated to Art, you had to play your own hand in a pretty ruthless way. Yes, a free feed would be convenient.
He continued a crabwise progress through the room. Every now and then the crowd would part for a moment and he would catch a glimpse of a picture. Many had little red labels attached to them already, and some bore cards which he knew must announce their acquisition for some national collection. Between this room and the next he paused to inspect, pinned to the wall, a list of the prices which Braunkopf was thinking proper to ask for his current masterpieces. He stared as he read – for the figures seemed unbelievable. You could imagine them attached to Cézannes and Renoirs, or to some absolute top craze of the moment, like Jackson Pollock. Yet the Holmes were undoubtedly selling, and the actual sums must be at least in some relation to those thus announced. How had Braunkopf done it? There was only one explanation. He must have begun by getting a couple of rival American collectors into the market, and thus established a yardstick at the start. Once you managed that, it seemed, there was every chance of the most inflated prices holding up and hanging on.
‘Hullo, old boy, hullo!’ A corpulent man in City clothes was shouting at Cheel across a sea of women’s silly hats and jostling bosoms. ‘Not seen you since St Tropez, eh? How’s dear old Meg?’
Cheel scowled. He was unencumbered by a dear old Meg; he had never been to St Tropez, which was doubtless the most vulgar of plushy resorts; and the corpulent man was totally unknown to him. Observing, however, that the corpulent man was holding high above his head two perilously brimming glasses, and conjecturing that he was prepared to bestow one of these upon anyone acknowledging his acquaintance, Cheel let his scowl melt into a glance of gay recognition. ‘How are you, my dear chap?’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll be delighted.’ He edged forward a further two feet, and the glass was in his hand.
‘Cheers,’ the corpulent man said, and drank.
‘Cheers,’ Cheel said with distaste, and drank too. The effect was almost instantly invigorating. ‘Big crowd,’ he added with civility.
‘And the stock selling like hot cakes, eh? But I got one, all the same. Rang Braunkopf before market hours. This fellow Holme, it seems, was knocked out while still among the young entry. By niggers, too, somebody said. Poor show, eh? But as soon as Debby told me the story I got on the blower. When a
great
painter dies at that age – well, you damned well can’t go wrong. Eh?’
Cheel was on the point of saying something rather rude (he disliked a coarse and mercantile approach to Art) when he observed that the corpulent man, who had long arms like a baboon, was actually within reach of one of Braunkopf’s magnums. He contented himself therefore with holding out his glass.
‘Cheers,’ the corpulent man said, when he had done what was required of him. ‘Mind you, my own interest is naturally in growth yields. So I have them do me a lot of security analysis. “Guestimates”, as those chaps like to say. Ha-ha.’
‘Ha-ha,’ Cheel said. He had taken half the second glass at a gulp.
‘Mind you,’ the corpulent man said, ‘although you fix it on the blower it’s always wise to come along and check up. Even if it lands you in a bloody long-haired crowd.’ The corpulent man stared broodingly at Cheel for a moment, as if measuring the length of his locks. He appeared to arrive at some favourable – or at least charitable – decision. ‘Old boy,’ he said, ‘–care to come out and have a bite on Debby and me? L’Aiglon, perhaps. Or the Caprice. Or Pipistrello, if you’ve a fancy for it. And, of course, dear old Meg too.’
For a moment Cheel hesitated. The proposal held its substantial temptation. But the hazards were obvious. Debby might not be so vague about her St Tropez acquaintance as her husband was. And Cheel might find himself, when questioned, improvising a totally implausible Meg. ‘Thanks a lot, old boy,’ he said. ‘But I have a luncheon date, worse luck. Love to Debby, though.’ He proceeded to edge his way on in the crush. ‘At the Mansion House,’ he added over his shoulder, and for good luck. The corpulent man, he was gratified to glimpse, seemed sobered and impressed.
There was, of course, some sort of Sebastian Holme legend. Holme had died in circumstances which could be represented as romantic or at least picturesque. Cheel had been slack on his homework of late, and he didn’t know much about it. But the corpulent man had been referring to it in his crude talk about being knocked out by niggers. Cheel had known Holme at one time. Indeed he had enjoyed, or suffered, what must be called an encounter with him. But the fellow had gone abroad and been forgotten about. Perhaps he had sent work to be exhibited in London in a small way now and then. Perhaps he had contrived the beginnings of a reputation as an exotic painter, a sort of latter-day Gauguin.