‘Look out for the Druids.’
‘What the devil did he mean by that?’ asked Gascoigne, when Laura had gone to get ready to bathe.
‘Time will show,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I think his guardian ill-treats him.’
When Laura came out from behind her rock, the boy went up to her and said :
‘I say, are you going in again?’
‘I am,’ she replied. ‘What about it?’
‘Why, only… so am I, if you’ll take me on,’ he said, quickly and awkwardly. ‘I’m very good at everything when I want to be. I don’t know how it is. I suppose it’s just natural.’
‘What do you say, Gerry?’ asked Laura of Gascoigne, who looked handsomer than ever in a tiny pair of bathing trunks. ‘Shall we see how good he is at everything?’ Already she was regretting her kindly impulse.
‘He can get his things if he likes,’ answered Gascoigne, coldly surveying the boy. The boy wilted before this god-like scrutiny, muttered, and walked away. Gascoigne shrugged, and soon he and Laura were in the water. Mrs. Bradley sat down on a flat rock and watched them for ten minutes. After this interval, the grey-haired man came down to the beach and trained a pair of binoculars on a yacht which was tacking across the mouth of the bay. Mrs. Bradley waited until she felt the man was fully absorbed, and then she went back to the hotel. It had not surprised her to discover that the name of the person to whom the woman at Newcombe Soulbury had addressed the letter which Mrs. Bradley had posted was also in the hotel register. It was the interesting and sinister name of Cassius, and Mrs. Bradley had already discovered that this was the name of the grey-haired, courteous, cold-eyed guardian of the oafish and thug-like boy.
‘Come here to watch us,’ she wrote in a note she left for Laura. ‘I knew that there would be repercussions from Newcombe Soulbury. The plot thickens, child.’
She left this note with the chambermaid, with instructions to hand it to no one but Laura herself, ordered the car, and drove to the ancient city of Cuchester.
Chapter Ten
—«♦»—
‘ Heaven have mercy upon us! 0 if our poor mother knew how we are used!’
Ibid. (Hansel and Grettel)
« ^ »
The woman at Newcombe Soulbury had been correct, Mrs. Bradley was willing to admit, in describing Cuchester as not a very large town, but it was large enough to render unacceptable the notion of going from door to door enquiring for David Battle.
Mrs. Bradley parked her car, therefore, near the cattle market, and walked into the post office to make some enquiries. She obtained nothing there, however, which was of the smallest use to her, except a dozen twopenny-halfpenny stamps, which she put into her handbag before going northwards towards the main road.
She walked until she discovered a shop which had pictures for sale. She went in and asked whether they had any paintings by local artists. She was taken to the first floor of the shop and invited to inspect the canvasses.
It appeared that there were quite a number of local artists. Bold and obscure pictures confronted Mrs. Bradley on every hand. Bright, hard modern greens muscled stubbornly in on both dim and imperial purples; kaleidoscopic variations of sunsets, still, windy, cloudy, clear, were streaked against hills, reflected in water, splashed over levels and indiscreetly displayed behind buildings of historic interest. Water-meadows in the style of the Cromes, and moorland in the style of the Cornish school attempted to distract attention from ladies with flowers in their months and horses with ribbons in their forelocks. Here was a touch of Matisse and there a pale shade of Stephen Spurrier. On the left was a still-life displaying a rose and a beer-bottle; to the right a bold attempt at a battle of stags. Cubism was represented by a bull seen on three sides at once, and surrealism by a harp suspended over a pat of butter and a toadstool. In a dark corner hung a canvas which Mrs. Bradley thought at first was a genuine Old Crome.
‘I am looking,’ said she, ‘for a Battle.’
The picture-dealer looked at her with a certain degree of defensiveness, and begged her pardon.
‘Battle—a local artist,’ Mrs. Bradley explained, waving a yellow claw. ‘Among so many examples, you must surely possess a Battle. I came especially to get one.’
The man continued to look dubiously at her.
‘We have nothing in stock,’ he said, ‘but… may I ask whether you are acquainted with Mr. Battle?’
‘Friends of mine are interested in him,’ said Mrs. Bradley vaguely, ‘and I should have liked to make them a present of one of his pictures. I wonder whether there is anyone else in Cuchester…’
‘I don’t stock his pictures,’ said the dealer suddenly, ‘because I don’t think they would sell. Not in this place, anyhow. They might sell in London. I don’t know. I’ve only got one of his things—an early work and of no great interest except that, if I were a dishonest man, I could easily pass it off as an Old Crome. I saw you looking at it just now. I took it in payment of a debt.’
‘And you don’t want to sell it?’
‘I couldn’t sell it. It isn’t a copy of an Old Crome, you see. It’s a fake. Old Crome never painted that subject, so far as we know. I believe Battle painted it for a bet, but he tried to pass it off as genuine. His later work is, shall I say, French?’
‘You shall say French by all means,’ Mrs. Bradley cordially replied. ‘Chacun à son gout, no doubt. And as I happen to recognize that the subject of the picture under discussion is part of the Isle of Wight— ’
‘San fairy Ann,’ said the dealer, entering into the spirit of the discussion, and suddenly grinning. ‘But Battle is certainly a bit too hot for Cuchester.’
‘That being the case,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘if you will oblige me by writing down Mr. Battle’s address…’ she produced notebook and pencil in a flash… ‘I shall attempt to assuage the natural disappointment of my friends with…’ She looked around her. ‘Ah, yes! With…’ She picked out a very large canvas priced modestly (considering the amount of paint on it) at twenty-two pounds ten ‘… with this!’ The picture-dealer, looking at her for a moment with a degree of incredulity which, but for the practice she had had in the art of converting unbelievers, she would have found disconcerting, said, on a high note of pleasure:
‘But I congratulate you! You have selected a masterpiece. That, madam, is the only Toro in my establishment.’
Mrs. Bradley was more interested in this information than the art dealer could possibly know, but she did not betray her feelings. It might well be the only Toro, if he hoped to sell pictures, she thought.
The painting was wrapped up for her and taken to the ground floor of the shop. Armed with the address for which she had sought, she went in search of David Battle. A single enquiry was enough to set her upon the right road, and she found him on the second floor of an old and dilapidated house. He was a tall, myopic, rather handsome young man. Three minutes’ conversation and the sight of two dilapidated but genuine seventeenth-century picture-frames each containing a boldly-splashed and obviously freshly-painted picture, led Mrs. Bradley to decide to tell him frankly why she had come. She felt that only by taking him into her confidence could she obtain from him any assistance.
He listened carefully, and without attempting to speak, until she had reached the end of her story. Then he said, blinking through his spectacles:
‘I can’t do anything to help you, you know, and if I could I wouldn’t. I hated my father. I have no intention of trying to find out why he disappeared, or what happened to him after he left me. I believe he might have been murdered. I’ve thought so for the past ten years, and, if he was murdered, rather than attempt to track down the murderer and get him punished, I’d like to shake him by the hand. He is the best friend, except my mother, I ever had.’