The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (6 page)

“And I met somebody else,” Isabel said. “Martha Drummond.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “That rather odd woman? The one who lives round the corner?”

“Yes, her.”

He shrugged. “And?”

“We had coffee at Cat’s. She said that there was somebody who wanted to speak to me
about something.”

Jamie said nothing.

“Do you remember reading about the theft of a painting from a house in Stirlingshire?
A painting by Poussin?”

Jamie said that he had a vague recollection of it. “It was quite valuable, wasn’t
it?”

“Yes. Not as valuable as that da Vinci that was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle—the
one they eventually found in the safe of a Glasgow firm of lawyers. But it was still
worth a few million.”

Jamie began to lift himself out of his deckchair. The flimsy contraption started to
wobble and then, with a sudden loud ripping sound, the canvas gave way. This had the
effect of making him fall, causing the restraining bar on the chair to slip from its
home and the whole chair to fold in upon itself.

Jamie gave a howl of pain. His left hand had been unfortunately placed and had become
trapped in the collapsing frame.

“Jamie!” She struggled to get out of her chair. There was
another ripping sound, but the canvas held and Isabel was on her feet. Jamie had extricated
himself from the chair mechanism and was nursing his hand.

“Painful,” he said.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded. “I knew that would happen.”

They both laughed. “Why does anyone sit in dangerous chairs?” Isabel asked.

“Why does anybody do anything dangerous?” Jamie asked, examining his hand for signs
of damage.

“I don’t know,” said Isabel. “Boredom, perhaps. Danger gives a bit of spice to our
lives.”

He turned to her, resuming the conversation that had been interrupted by the failure
of the deckchair. “You were saying, this person—whoever it is—wants to speak to you.
It’s going to be about the theft of the Poussin, isn’t it?”

She looked down at the ground. “Yes.”

He sighed. “You’ve done something like this before. That artist you traced. When we
went to Jura. Remember?”

“Yes. But this is different.”

He reached out to take her hand. “Do you think it’s a good idea? Do you really think
so?”

She began to lead him back to the house. “Yes, I know. I know what you mean. It’s
vaguely ridiculous that here am I, the editor of a philosophical review of all things,
and I keep getting involved in the messes that people get themselves into.”

Jamie agreed. “Yes, it is ridiculous. And yet it seems to go on happening.”

Isabel sighed. “I don’t exactly advertise.”

“Well, you know my views,” said Jamie. “I don’t think it’s a terribly good idea.”

“No, it may not be a good idea, but some of the things we have to do are not particularly
good ideas—but we have to do them anyway.”

“You don’t have to do this. Nobody says you have to do this.”

“No. But this poor man, this Munrowe man—apparently he’s pretty cut up about it. And
all he wants to do is talk. I can’t really refuse to talk to him.”

They made their way into the house. Isabel slipped an arm around his shoulder and
asked him if he was cross with her.

He hesitated. “No, I’m not cross. If anything, I suppose I should be proud of you—which
I am. I’m very proud of you.” He paused. “But please be careful over this one. This
isn’t just some minor issue you’re helping with—this is really serious.”

Isabel sought to reassure him. “I’m only going to be speaking to him. That’s all.”

It was as if he had not heard. “And the point about serious matters like this is that
people get hurt.”

“I shall be very careful. I promise you.”

They went inside. She bathed Jamie’s hand, as the clash with the deckchair had broken
the skin slightly. She patted it dry with a clean towel and then kissed it. He looked
at the clock; Charlie would have to be fetched in half an hour or so. He put his arms
about Isabel and embraced her, pulling her to him. Her hands were on his shoulder
blades. It was warm in the house and the sound of a mower drifted in from over the
road through an open window, bringing with it the smell of cut grass.

CHAPTER FOUR
 

T
HE ARRANGEMENT
, made by Martha Drummond, and relayed to Isabel later that afternoon in a telephone
call from Martha, was that Duncan Munrowe would come, as Isabel had suggested, to
the German bakery in Bruntsfield at one o’clock the following day. Isabel’s housekeeper
Grace had been on holiday but would be back in the morning and would be able to collect
Charlie from nursery school in place of Jamie, who was recording in Glasgow.

Grace had been in Stranraer, where she had a cousin who was married to a farmer. Each
year she went to visit this cousin for a week, and inevitably came back sleep-deprived
and vaguely grumpy as a result. “He snores something terrible,” she explained to Isabel.
“I’m short of a week’s sleep. He goes to bed at ten every night—regular as clockwork.
By ten-fifteen the snoring starts, and it goes on all night. You hear it throughout
the house and it makes the walls shake. I’m not exaggerating—all night. Snoring and
snorting.”

“Poor man,” said Isabel.

“Poor man? Poor us. My cousin hardly sleeps, she says, and
no sooner do I drop off than I’m woken up by the sound of his snoring down the corridor.”

“It sounds as if he might have sleep apnoea,” suggested Isabel. “My father had it.
You stop breathing every so often and wake up. People who have sleep apnoea are usually
chronically sleep-deprived.” She thought of the cumbersome mask her father had sometimes
used to deal with the problem. “He could be helped.”

“Not him,” said Grace. “He’s stubborn. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong.”

This discussion of sleep led to the matter of Charlie’s afternoon nap. In Grace’s
absence, Charlie had taken to resisting this period of rest, and yet he was clearly
tired.

“His mind seems very active,” said Isabel. “He wants to keep going.”

She paused, remembering her conversation with Jamie about Charlie’s mathematical ability.
“He seems to be very keen on counting things at the moment,” she went on. “Have you
noticed that?”

Grace did not seem surprised. “Yes, of course I have. I’ve been teaching him, you
see.”

Isabel frowned. “Teaching him mathematics?”

Grace nodded. “Yes. I’d noticed that he was quite good at counting and so I’ve been
giving him lessons. I’ve taught him how to divide things, and some basic multiplication.
I found a book in the library that tells you how to do this. It’s by a Korean woman
who’s had two of her children win prizes in the Maths Olympiad. She explains how it’s
done.”

Isabel was not sure what to say. So that was how Charlie had been able to come up
with what seemed to be naturally
brilliant answers: he had been taught. For a few moments she was silent. She trusted
Grace with so much of Charlie’s life, and she was not sure why she should feel concerned
about her teaching him mathematics. At the back of her mind was a feeling that one
had to be careful with method when it came to mathematics: she seemed to remember
being told that if you developed the wrong way of doing mathematics when you were
young, you could be lumbered with it for the rest of your life. It was the same with
many activities—from typing to playing the violin: it was sometimes far harder to
unlearn bad habits than to learn them in the first place. But the issue would have
to be handled delicately; Grace was touchy and could take offence at the slightest
reproach, even if unintended.

“I suppose he must have natural ability,” said Isabel mildly.

Grace looked thoughtful. “Probably no more than any other child of his age. It’s the
teaching, I think. The book is really good. It says any child can be really good at
calculating if you follow their method.”

Isabel looked doubtful. “Surely not every single child. Genes must play some sort
of role,” she said. “Mathematical ability and musicality often go together. Jamie’s
a musician, after all, and maybe Charlie gets it from him.”

Grace shook her head. “It’s the book, I think.”

Isabel decided not to argue. This was not the time to voice her reservations—especially
when Grace was feeling sleep-deprived as a result of the snoring Ayrshire farmer.
“Oh, well,” she said.

“Yes,” said Grace. “I’m going to teach him to count money next. There’s a chapter
on that in the book. It’s called ‘The Baby Accountant.’ ”

Isabel bit her lip. She was grateful to Grace for all she did for Charlie, but did
she really want him to be a baby accountant? Charlie should develop at his own pace,
she thought. He should get every help, naturally, but Isabel was definite that she
did not want to be a pushy parent who made her child jump through all sorts of hoops.
Surely Grace did not want that for Charlie either. Surely not.

“
MISS DALHOUSIE
?”

He was already sitting at a table when Isabel arrived at Falko’s Konditorei, the German
bakery and coffee shop along the street from Cat’s delicatessen. There were only a
few other people in the café, but even had there been a much larger crowd Isabel would
have had no difficulty in picking out Duncan Munrowe. It was largely a matter of dress—a
jacket in a quiet browny-green; a dark-blue tie, discreetly checked; brown brogues:
the uniform of the moneyed countryman—nothing ostentatious, nothing loud. And that
was just the clothing; the physiognomy, too, revealed his origins: regular features,
chiselled, showing a certain intelligence, even if not the face of an intellectual
or aesthete. It was a handsome face, she thought, and the man’s overall bearing was
impressive.

“Isabel, please.”

“Of course. And I’m Duncan: Duncan Munrowe.”

They shook hands. The handshake, too, conformed to type.

Duncan Munrowe thanked her for agreeing to see him. “It’s an awful cheek on my part,”
he said. “We haven’t met, and here I am inviting you to listen to my problems.”

Isabel laughed. “I don’t mind.” And she decided that she did
not; her immediate impression of him was positive. This man, she decided, was exactly
what he purported to be: a country gentleman, for want of a better term; nothing more,
nor less, than that. He was at the opposite end of the spectrum from … She hesitated:
Who
was
at the other end of the spectrum? It came to her: Professor Lettuce and Christopher
Dove. Scheming philosophers. Waspish backbiters.

“Well, you’re very kind,” Duncan said. “But I must admit I feel a trifle embarrassed.”

She assured him that this was unnecessary. As she did so, she considered his voice.
There was a hint of a Scottish burr, but only a hint. That would have been taken out
of the Munrowe voice two or three generations ago through being educated at schools
that modelled themselves on the English public-school system, even if they were in
Scotland. Or they would have been sent off to the South, to Harrow or Eton, or the
like, where the conditioning of the English upper class would have been all-encompassing
and where young Scots became indistinguishable in voice and outlook from their English
contemporaries. That practice was changing, but there were still many people who lived
in its shadow.

They placed their order with the waitress. Isabel glanced about her; it was not crowded,
and the nearest table, from which their conversation might easily be heard, was empty.

“I suppose it would help,” Duncan began, “if I told you a little bit about our collection.
I’ve heard, by the way, that you’re interested in art.”

“Oh?” She wondered how he knew this. It would be Martha, of course, who had seen her
mother’s painting and had perhaps noticed some of the other pictures. And Martha would
probably
have overstated Isabel’s knowledge of the subject, which was, by her own admission,
modest.

“Yes,” he said. “Guy’s mentioned you—I know him too. I’ve bought the odd thing from
his gallery, but I must admit I haven’t really added very much to the family collection.”

That explained it. Isabel regularly discussed art with Guy Peploe who ran the Scottish
Gallery in Dundas Street.

“As you may know,” Duncan continued, “quite a bit of our collection is in the Scottish
National Gallery on the Mound. Which is where it should be, in my view. Private collectors
are just custodians, I think. They look after works of art but they don’t really own
them. Not in any absolute sense.”

It was an admirable sentiment, and Isabel found herself warming all the more to Duncan.
This was not one of those well-heeled people who are smug about their possessions.
“Do you think that many others share your view? Other collectors, that is.”

Duncan shrugged. “Some do, as you’ll see if you look at any of the big collections.
Look at the Burrell in Glasgow—Burrell gave everything he had to the city—the whole
shooting match. And there are lots of other examples. The Met in New York is full
of collections that have been given or bequeathed. The Wallace Collection in London.
That odd place outside Philadelphia that used to let you look at it only when there
was a full moon or whatever. The name escapes me, but he handed over the lot, didn’t
he? Or sort of handed it over.”