Thirteen Guests (5 page)

Chapter VII

Whitewash and Paint

A narrow passage led from the back of the lounge-hall into the grounds, and as Leicester Pratt passed out into a sheltered lawn, its dark surface streaked with slits of light from upper windows—one window being that of his bedroom—he noticed a thin coil of smoke spiralling upwards. Then Nadine Leveridge gleamed at him out of a shadow.

She was a creature of dazzling white, softened by the deep green of her dress. Her shoulders were perfectly formed and perfectly revealed. One was tempted to envy the narrow green strips curving with such apparent insecurity over them. A double rope of pearls made a loop in front of the simple green bodice. A silk wrap, also of green, but deeper and more brilliant in hue, partially covered one shoulder.

“Nadine Leveridge is Life's relentless weapon,” thought Pratt. “A woman for fools to fear.”

Pratt did not fear her. He could even stand and regard her, deliberately studying her subtle challenges with the impertinent privilege of an artist.

“You've dressed early,” he said. She nodded. “Not afraid of the cold?”

“Not a bit.”

He felt for his cigarette-case, and found he had left it in his room.

“I'm sorry I can't oblige,” remarked Nadine. “Mr. Taverley gave me this.”

She held up her cigarette. Pratt noticed that it was a State Express 555.

“Don't move for a moment,” he said. She stood motionless, her eyebrows raised a little. Only the cigarette smoke continued its movement. “The lady with the cigarette. The lady in green. Modern Eve. Woman. Anything you damn like. When do I paint her?”

“She'd have to pawn her pearls to pay your price,” smiled Nadine, puffing the cigarette again.

“That's terribly material.”

“Goes against the grain?”

Now Pratt smiled.

“You must hate meeting pieces of wood like Bultin and me,” he observed.

“Nonsense—nobody's wood!” retorted Nadine. “Some people build wooden walls around themselves, that's all. Bultin does, certainly.”

“Yes, I agree. He's chained himself inside in case he should get out and collapse. But—me?”

“Something could move you.”

“What?”

“I've no idea. But
I
couldn't. That's why I don't think I'll pawn my pearls, thank you. Any one who paints me must be an out-and-out idealist.”

“An idealist is merely another sort of man who builds a wall round his passions.”

“And whose passions are the most ardent when the wall goes?” replied Nadine. “Yes, I know all about that! But he begins with a kind heart, and I only allow artists with kind hearts to paint me. I've seen your Twentieth-Century Madonna!”

“I should never have thought
you
feared the truth, Nadine,” reproved Pratt.

“I don't. But no artist can paint the whole truth. He just paints his half—and the other half can't answer back from the canvas. The half I fear is your half—all by its little lonesome!”

“Touché,” murmured Pratt, “although I am not admitting there is any other half.”

“Didn't you paint the other half when you were twenty? I remember a picture called ‘Song of Youth.'''

“My God, spare me!” he winced. “Must that ghastly song follow me to the grave? And anyway,” he added, “how on earth do
you
remember that ancient atrocity? From your appearance, your memory shouldn't take you back so far.”

“I'm in shadow.”

“Kindly step out of it.”

She hesitated, then did so.

“I repeat my astonishment,” said Pratt, staring at her. “You look twenty yourself! And now, I suppose, you will charge me with gallantry? No, I couldn't stand that! Not immediately after the resuscitation of my ‘Song of Youth!' Excuse me, before I become utterly whitewashed!”

“I'll excuse you,” answered Nadine, throwing her cigarette away, “but I don't think I'm exactly the kind of person to whitewash anybody.”

“Thank God!” said Pratt devoutly.

He watched her pass back to the house, then stepped on to the dark lawn. It was thirty strides across. Beyond, a flagged path led between bushes to the studio.

As he reached the building he felt in his pocket for the key. There had been no afternoon sitting that day, for horses had supplanted canvas; and there was not much chance of a sitting on the morrow, either. A stag was to be routed out of Flensham Forest, to perform its entertaining death-run. Well, he could add a few touches to the picture by himself, and finish the thing on Sunday. He'd have to get it out of the way by then, if Ruth Rowe's was to follow.

“Where the devil—?” he murmured.

Then he saw the key in the door, and recalled that he must have left it there after his visit with Mr. Rowe before tea. It was then that the picture of Ruth had been decided on.

He turned the key and entered the large room. Ruth's picture would be dull compared with Anne's. There was little to paint about Ruth. There were fathomless depths to reveal in Anne. He knew them. He could pierce through right down to the bed. Yes, he liked this picture—there was something definitely challenging in it. “No whitewashing, my child—we'll show 'em—a bit of real collaboration. As a rule, I'm the only one that understands, but you understand, too. That's what makes it!”

And Earnshaw's presence here this week-end added its touch of ironic justification. Anne could sell her soul, like the rest of them—or the mythical thing that was called a soul!

He switched on the light, and turned to the picture of the Honourable Anne Aveling.

It was almost obliterated by a long, broad smudge of paint. The smudge, crimson lake, began at Anne's right ear, and descended diagonally across the dark-green riding habit.

“Something could move you!” Nadine's words screamed through his ears, as though repeated by an invisible loud speaker turned full on. He found himself trembling. He fought against vulnerable emotion.

“Somebody's gone mad here,” he thought. “All in a moment.”

He recalled the moment when
he
had seen red in the passage outside his bedroom. Yes…it could happen.

He turned away from the canvas, to control himself. He stared round the studio. On another easel was a large painting of a stag, done by Anne herself. It was not good, saving for the terrible, dull fear she had somehow planted in the stag's eyes—a fear she should not have known about, since she hunted. He concentrated on the stag's eyes for a few seconds, then turned his own eyes back to the ruined canvas. The fit of trembling had passed.

“Queer game,” he said aloud. “I wonder whether I shall ever have the pleasure of painting the person who did this?”

He glanced at his watch. Five minute to seven. He left the studio abruptly, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. A spent cigarette-end loomed dully from the ground. He picked it up.

Some one was moving in the path. He dashed forward and grabbed. Sheer instinct had caused the sudden action. A hand banged him in the chest, and he staggered. When he had recovered, he was alone.

As he came to the end of the flagged path a figure met him off the edge of the lawn.

“Good-evening,” said the figure.

Pratt regarded the face that rose abruptly before his, and smiled.

“Good-evening, Mr. Chater,” he answered.

“That's a good guess,” replied Chater. “We've not met.”

“No, that's how I guessed,” responded Pratt. “Process of elimination. You came on the 5.56, didn't you?”

“That's right.”

“You've not been here before?”

“No, my first visit. Rather a nice place, isn't it? I'm just having a stroll round.”

“I'm afraid you won't see much in this darkness.”

“Enough to get one's bearings. Where does this lead? Is that building over there the stables?”

He was gazing along the flagged path.

“No, that's a studio,” answered Pratt.

“Oh, yes, there's an artist here, isn't there?”

“Well—he calls himself an artist. Are you interested in art, by any chance?”

“Me? Not particularly. Who's the fellow?”

“What fellow?”

“The artist?”

“Leicester Pratt.”

“Oh, Leicester Pratt! He's rather the craze just now, isn't he?”

“Some people like his work.”

“And some don't?”

“They all pay big prices for it.”

“Then I don't suppose
he
worries! Is he painting anybody here?”

Pratt paused for a second before replying.

“I have just been looking at a picture he is painting of somebody here.”

“Good?”

“He thinks so.”

“Who's it of?”

“Lord Aveling's daughter.”

“Oh, not his wife.”

The remark was made carelessly, but Pratt realised that his face was being watched, and he took great pains that it should convey nothing as he answered dryly:

“I said his daughter.”

“So you did,” smiled Chater. “Rather an attractive girl, though I've only seen her for a moment. Isn't she just going to be engaged or something?”

“Do I follow you?”

“Eh?”

“The ‘something?'''

Chater's smile augmented to a laugh, and his teeth gleamed in the dusk.

“Don't mean to insinuate anything,” he said. “It's Earnshaw, isn't it?” As Pratt did not respond, he added, “Hope I'm not asking too many questions; but when you're a sort of stranger—well, it's helpful to know things. Often saves you from making a
faux pas
. Curiosity's not one of my natural vices.”

“That idea would never occur to me, Mr. Chater,” observed Pratt ironically.

The irony made no impression.

“I admit I would rather like to see that picture, though,” Chater went on. “Is one allowed in the studio?”

“I'm afraid it's locked,” replied Pratt.

“Locked? Then how did
you
get in?” inquired Chater.

“I have the key,” said Pratt, “and I locked it.”

“That sounds as if you're Leicester Pratt.”

“I am.”

“You might have warned me. Now I shall spend the rest of the evening trying to recall our conversation to see if I've put my foot in it! Or p'r'aps you'll save me the trouble?
Have
I?”

There was something cheap, almost insulting, in Chater's coolness, which appeared to have been deliberately acquired, whereas the
sang froid
of Pratt was a natural inheritance. The artist answered:

“You have not even put your foot in my studio. Or—have you?”

“What, put my foot in your studio?” exclaimed Chater. “How could I have, if it's locked?”

“It wasn't locked ten minutes ago.”

Chater's expression changed slightly. It was still cool, but a watchful quality entered into it.

“Ten minutes ago I was saying good-evening to a maid,” he said.

A clock struck seven as he spoke. It was a clock over the stables.

“I see,” murmured Pratt. “Then you have not been out here ten minutes?”

“I'd just come out when I met you.”

“Did you meet anybody else?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Pratt, but what's all this about?”

Pratt shrugged his shoulders.

“Nothing important,” he replied. “See you at dinner.”

Chater turned his head as Pratt began to resume his way.

“Do we like each other?” he asked.

“Not a bit,” answered Pratt.

That was also Chater's conviction as, after watching the artist disappear into the house, he himself turned back to the flagged path and walked towards the studio. If Pratt had not locked the studio door, he would not have seen the thirteenth guest at dinner.

Bultin was fixing an over-large white tie round his collar when Pratt rejoined him. Bultin liked large things. His soft felt hat was of Italian dimensions, although it came from a shop in Piccadilly.

“Enjoy your walk?” asked Bultin, without turning his head.

“Immensely,” answered Pratt, throwing off his coat, “though not quite as much as Edyth Fermoy-Jones would have enjoyed it in my place. ‘Why?' the famous journalist refused to inquire. Because, my dear Lionel, Edyth Fermoy-Jones would have made a most sensational discovery, and would have torn up the first chapter of that novel of hers.”

“The one thing I have never learned to do without an effort,” said Bultin, “is to tie a white tie.”

“And she would have started her story afresh, you vile pretender! Yes, Lionel, I made a mistake when I described her plot to you just now. It will certainly contain the marvellous necklace round the neck of the attractive widow—a double rope of pearls worth—you like to quote figures, don't you?—worth every penny of ten thousand pounds. You can make it twenty, if you like. Edyth Fermoy-Jones will make it fifty. But it won't be stolen! Not, at least, for several chapters—till her editor has put the wind up her by shouting for more drama. No, a picture will be mutilated, instead. Less hackneyed idea, isn't it? With first-rate possibilities for development, and an unimpeachable setting. Studio—model's screen—artist's lay figure—strange pictures on large easels—somebody hiding behind one of 'em—” He paused, arrested by a thought, then continued: “The mutilated picture in Miss Fermoy-Jones's studio will be of a baron's daughter. Value—no, price—one thousand guineas. Smeared over with paint, my boy. Smeared over with paint.”

“I thought that was the fate of all pictures,” remarked Bultin.

“The fate is bearable when there is only one artist,” answered Pratt. “But here there are two. The first artist's smear has been smeared out by the second. I wonder how Epstein feels when people daub his statues? Scornful? Callous? Cynical? Or just bloody angry? I must ask him.”