Death of an Old Master

9

The rats. They would have to do something about the rats. They had become quite shameless, no longer bothering to scuttle away into the wainscoting or disappear through the holes in the floorboards. Soon they would be sitting up in rows and demanding food, or eating away at the paintings. Orlando Blane walked up the length of the Long Gallery, hoping against hope that the sound of his footsteps would drive them away.

As he reached the end of the room he stared sadly out of one of the five great windows. Outside it was a blustery autumn day. Chaos was continuing its relentless advance across the gardens. The roses had run wild, threatening to strangle the other flowers that had once lain beside them in neat ordered beds. The fountain in the centre of the garden had long ceased to flow. The cheeky statue of Eros on the top was turning a dark metallic green. Way over to his left he could still see the edge of the lake, the water dark and forbidding. In the summer evenings Orlando had been allowed to wander round its rim, the watchful guard the regulation twenty steps behind.

Orlando Blane was a prisoner. He was still not absolutely sure where he was. Occasionally he thought he could smell the sea. The vast house, unoccupied now except for himself and his jailers, sat alone in its thousands of acres, the long drive to the nearest road blocked by a rough barricade of trees. There were four of them, watching round the clock to make sure he did not escape. He was forbidden alcohol, even weak or watered beer, for alcohol had played its part in his downfall. His function was to paint to order, for Orlando Blane was a very talented artist. In better times, with a less chequered past, he might have had a prosperous career in London or Paris.

He stared down the Long Gallery at his work for the day. On his stretcher a painting was beginning to take shape, a painting that bore a remarkable similarity to a Gainsborough.

Orlando looked out at the dark clouds swirling across a stormy sky. He thought about Imogen, the great love of his life, now hundreds of miles away. No, he would not think about Imogen. His mind went off, entirely of its own accord, to the French Riviera five months before. He saw again the mesmerizing turn of the roulette wheel, he heard the tiny click as the ball dropped into its slot. He heard again the measured voice of the croupier, rien ne va plus, no more bets, the gamblers waiting, watching for the little ball to fall into its slot once more. He remembered five days of triumph at the tables. Even now, he still shook slightly as he thought of the sixth day when everything went wrong and his world changed for ever.

The colours. Maybe it was his training that made him remember things so vividly, the dark grey, almost black, of the sea as he walked the mile and a half from the casino in Monte Carlo back to his cheap lodgings along the coast at three or four o’clock in the morning. The first faint lines of yellow on the horizon as the sun came up to bring in a new dawn, the pale blue water that had deepened to azure by the time he woke up, the delicate pinks of the setting sun as he set out once more for the gambling tables. The green of the roulette table. The bright red on which he staked so much. The shiny polished black that eventually claimed his fortune.

Orlando remembered the private language of the roulette wheel, spoken in the soft but authoritative voice of the croupier. Pair meant betting on an even number, impair on an odd one. Passe for a winning number between nineteen and thirty-six, impasse for one between nought and eighteen. Rouge for red, noir for black, le rouge et le noir that had dominated all his thoughts during his sojourn at the wheel. Nought for the casino, the one factor that gave the proprietors a slight mathematical edge over the gamblers who had come to break the bank.

He had been playing on a system all his own. On his very first visit to the casino, Orlando had merely watched. A very fat Frenchman had won a great deal of money. A slim blond Englishman had lost a great deal. A beautifully dressed Italian had made a small amount. For three nights Orlando watched one table. He placed the odd bet to pay his rent at the casino. He noted the fall of every ball in a red notebook. He saw one of the supervisors whispering something to one of his companions – here was a man developing a system all his own. The casinos loved people with systems. They welcomed them with open arms and vintage champagne once they were established players. Generous credit was offered to those with the right connections. For the casinos knew that all systems were doomed to fail. Even with the one European zero as against the American two or even three, Orlando had heard, in the wilder gambling saloons of the Midwest, the odds were always stacked in favour of the bank.

Orlando Blane had gone to Monte Carlo to seek financial salvation, to make a fortune. He had no money of his own, only debts. He was wildly, hopelessly in love with Imogen Jeffries, only daughter of a rich London lawyer. Orlando would see her in his daytime dreams in his little cot in the back room of his auberge, looking out over the train tracks and the wild countryside behind the sea. She was tall and dark, with teasing grey-blue eyes. She moved with a sinuous grace that took his breath away and she held him very close in her arms when she kissed him goodbye at the railway station on his journey to the south of France. Imogen’s father, a man obsessed with his property, its size, its prospects, its ability to support generations of unborn Jeffries far into the future, absolutely refused to agree to his daughter marrying a penniless man. Most girls, Orlando thought, would have tried to deter their beloved from staking their joint futures on the spin of a small wheel in Monte Carlo. Imogen had been entranced. Danger called her like a drug.

‘Come back rich, my darling,’ she had said to him. ‘Then I can hold you in my arms all night long. Come back ever so rich.’

As he studied his red book Orlando came to an interesting conclusion. The table he had watched showed a very slight tendency to produce reds rather than blacks. Many people, he remembered, played a variety of a system called Martingale, made famous by Sir Francis Clavering in Thackeray’s Pendennis, who lost enormous sums through his blind belief in its efficiency. The system depended on waiting for a run of five successive blacks. Then, on the sixth spin, a bet was placed on red. If the winning number was black again, the bet was doubled. And so on through a vast variety of permutations. But Orlando knew there was a fault at the heart of the Martingale system. Its adherents believed that after five blacks in a row the odds must be in favour of a red next time. They were not. They were exactly the same each time. The wheel has no memory of where the ball landed last time round. Each time there was a fifty-fifty chance of red or black turning up. He resolved to bet in moderate amounts on red. Red after all was Imogen’s favourite colour. Nothing else. No almighty chance on a single number with odds of thirty-six to one against. No combinations of numbers, no pair, no impair, no passe. Just red. Mesdames et messieurs, je vous en prie. Faites vos jeux.

Orlando remembered being very nervous the first night he gambled seriously. The minimum stake was one thousand francs, just under ten pounds in English money. Orlando had one thousand pounds working capital, handed over to him out of Imogen’s bank accounts. He gambled the minimum stake which paid out the same amount if you won. One thousand francs would bring you another thousand. He brought a sketchbook with him. Sometimes while he watched he would dash off lightning drawings, character sketches of the croupiers or his fellow gamblers. He backed red eighteen times in all. If the law of averages had been perfect he would have won nine and lost nine. The law of averages was not perfect that first night. He won twelve times and lost six. The croupiers smiled at him as he left to collect his winnings. Gambling with such small stakes was never going to be a problem for the Societe des Jeux de Monte Carlo. On his trial run Orlando had made sixty pounds.

On the following two nights he increased his stakes very gradually. By day three he was five thousand pounds ahead. Five thousand pounds, he said sadly to himself, would never satisfy Imogen’s father. Twenty-five would do. Better thirty. Forty would be perfect.

On days four and five the casino had increased the size of the maximum permitted bet to one hundred thousand francs, roughly one thousand pounds in English money. Orlando’s system held. Behind his chair each night a small clean-shaven Frenchman with black eyes was watching. He was not watching the progress of the game. He watched the lightning sketches that Orlando threw off in his notebook.

‘Forgive me. Your drawings, monsieur,’ the Frenchman had said, ‘tonight they are in the style of Toulouse Lautrec, so good they could pass for the real thing. Can you draw in anybody else’s style, monsieur?’

Orlando Blane hardly heard him. He was counting his winnings. ‘Tomorrow night, monsieur,’ Orlando said very quietly, ‘I shall draw in the style of Degas.’

Now he was eighteen thousand pounds ahead. Was that enough? Would eighteen thousand be enough to marry his Imogen? Should he pay his bill, check out of his miserable auberge, head for the railway station and take the train home to London? Orlando did not. He did check out of his auberge. He booked himself into the grandest hotel in Monte Carlo and prepared himself for one final apocalyptic night of glory.

The doors of the casino closed at four o’clock that morning. At five minutes past the manager convened an emergency meeting in his room.

‘We cannot go on like this,’ he said. ‘Soon we may be in severe financial difficulties. This Englishman is winning too much. The other players too, they are putting their money on the red. They are winning too. What, in God’s name, is happening?’

The senior croupier shook his head. ‘I do not know, sir,’ he said. ‘He is not cheating. He is not interfering with the play in any way. It’s just red, red, red.’

‘Where is that damned Professor?’ said the manager angrily. The casino had summoned a Professor of Mathematics from the University of Nice, an expert in chance and probability, in the theory of patterns and numbers.

‘He was wandering round the gaming rooms the last time I saw him,’ said the casino security manager. ‘In fact he wasn’t actually upright, he was lying on the floor, checking that the table was perfectly level. Which it is, apparently.’

‘He was what?’ shouted the manager. ‘We are in danger of losing everything and this fool is crawling about on the floor! Is he drunk?’

‘No, I am not drunk,’ said the Professor of Mathematics. The Professor was in his middle fifties, with receding hair and thick glasses and a worried air. His hobby was collecting notes on the weather. He believed that if he kept his records long enough the day would come when he could predict with almost total certainty, ninety-three per cent probability in his private estimation, what the weather would be the following day. So far he had thirty years of weather records, originally kept in the back room of his house, now stored in a very large shed in his garden.

‘It is a most interesting phenomenon,’ the Professor began, looking at the casino staff as if they were a particularly dense collection of first year mathematics students, ‘this run of numbers should not have happened. But it has. For a student of probabilities, it could become a classic case. It will feature in the textbooks for years.’

‘Never mind your bloody textbooks, Professor,’ said the casino manager angrily. ‘This run has been going on for five days. Will it continue? Or will it stop?’

The Professor of Mathematics looked back in the notebook where the numbers were stored. He filled three pages with calculations written in a small spidery hand.

‘I am seventy-five per cent sure that the run on red will stop tomorrow. But it might not. It could, logically, carry on for ever, but I do not think it will.’ He smiled at the casino staff.

The manager stared at the Professor of Mathematics. He was used to these probabilities by now. He had yet to hear the man from the University of Nice get as far as a hundred per cent sure. Ninety-eight per cent was as good as it got.

‘But what do we do?’ said the manager. ‘We can’t close the casino down. They are a very superstitious lot, these winning gamblers. If we moved the table with a different wheel to a different room, what would you say the chances were of the Englishman continuing to play?’

The Professor leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. The three other men watched while the calculations whizzed round in his head.

‘Based on the studies of Professor Kuntzbuhl in Vienna, and Professor Spinetti of Rome, on the psychology of gamblers, based admittedly on work with prisoners in jail for non-payment of gambling debts in their respective cities, I should say the chances are between twenty-five and thirty per cent. They are very superstitious, these gamblers. Change the table, change anything at all and they feel their luck has gone. They stop playing.’

‘No more bets? None at all?’ said the manager sadly.

‘No more bets,’ said the Professor, firmly.

‘What else do you suggest, Professor?’ the casino manager felt sure the balding academic would have some suggestion. The casino didn’t pay him five thousand a year as a consultant for nothing.

‘For the moment, I regret to say, I have nothing to suggest. Chance follows its own logic, however irrational it may seem to the uninitiated. Chance’s logic says the table must return to normal.’

‘There is one other question,’ said the croupier. ‘I have been watching this young man very carefully. I think he has a figure in his mind for his winnings. I suspect he may be quite close to it. He may, of course, keep on gambling after he has passed it and throw it all away. Gamblers on a run tend to think they are immortal. Should we increase the size of the maximum stake? It is the most likely way to recoup the money, is it not, Professor?’

‘Seventy-eight per cent probability, I should say,’ the Professor replied. ‘Probably Assuming he comes, that is. I cannot put a figure on that though I should say it is over sixty-three per cent.’

‘He’ll come,’ said the manager firmly. ‘I feel it in my bones. Ninety-nine per cent probability. And when he comes, the table, gentlemen, will carry double the size of the maximum stake. On reflection, don’t double it. Make it two hundred and fifty thousand francs, two thousand five hundred pounds. The largest stakes ever seen in this casino, maybe in the whole of France. Come, Englishman, come, we shall be ready for you. Mesdames et messieurs, je vous en prie. Faites vos jeux.’

The hotel had cleaned Orlando’s clothes. As he made his way to the casino shortly after eleven o’clock he wondered if that would bring him bad luck. The sea was very calm, a crescent moon shining on the water. Carriages were bringing the night’s gamblers to the tables. Orlando changed all his money at the caisse. He considered playing with only half of his winnings until he reflected that his system depended on a long run of play. He slid quietly into his normal place at the table, to the left of the croupier. Two of the other players were known by sight. They had followed him on his last two visits to the roulette wheel, copying his bets, although with smaller stakes. One was a little old lady with white hair who Orlando privately referred to as Grandma. The other was dressed in military uniform. He had a very long face with a deep scar running down his cheek and a black eye patch over his left eye. He was Pirate. On the other side of the table was an erect old gentleman, accompanied by a remarkably pretty girl. Orlando suspected that the casino employed a cluster of female beauties to make friends with the male customers and ensure that they spent the maximum amount on the cards or at the wheel. She became Grandad’s Little Friend. The final player was an officious-looking middle-aged man, permanently checking his watch, as if time gave clues to the final destination of the roulette ball. He became Bank Manager. Behind him his artistic friend whispered into his ear as he sat down. ‘Good evening, my friend. You still have the sketchbook, I see. Degas tonight, did you say?’

Behind an enormous mirror across the Salon Vert from Orlando’s position the manager of the casino and the Professor of Mathematics were seated at a little table, opera glasses in their hands. The mirror was two-way. The casino men had a perfect view.

‘Well,’ said the manager to the Professor. ‘Are you confident?’

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But we shouldn’t expect it to become apparent immediately.’

The manager worried about the lack of a percentage. He worried if he had been right to raise the stakes to this incredibly high level. He took a deep pull on his cigar and settled down to wait.

Orlando did not place any bets for twenty minutes. He watched the play. Pirate had lit a foul-smelling cigar, the smoke rising in planes towards the ceiling. He opened his sketchbook and did a rapid drawing of Grandad’s Little Friend. She turned into a Degas ballerina, very scantily clad. Orlando stared in astonishment at the ceiling. He hadn’t looked closely at it before. Up there, gazing happily at the gamblers below were three naked women, who might have been the Three Graces. All were smoking cigars.

Bank Manager had been placing a series of small bets, mostly on the odd numbers. His pile of chips was diminishing rapidly. At seven minutes to twelve Orlando made his first move. He placed his largest chip, a bright pink one, on red. He was betting two and a half thousand pounds. Grandma and Pirate followed suit. The croupier spun the wheel and flipped the ball around the bowl. Rien ne va plus, no more bets. The wheel slowed down, the ball hovered agonizingly between the black 33 and the red 16. Orlando held his breath. Pirate, he noticed, had closed his one good eye. Grandma was clutching at a crucifix round her neck.

‘Seize,’ said the croupier impassively. ‘Rouge.’

Orlando now had a fortune of just over twenty thousand pounds, the minimum he thought necessary to marry his Imogen. Damn it, they might become poor after a while. He resolved to press on.

‘Merde!’ said the manager in his hidden box. ‘Merde!’

‘Do not upset yourself,’ said the Professor. ‘The night is yet young.’

From outside came the faint rumble of the last train to Nice. The moon had gone in and the sea front was dark, some rich men’s yachts bobbing rhythmically up and down in the harbour.

Orlando was unruffled. He backed red for the next four spins of the wheel. Each time it was black. Grandma looked at him sadly as if she thought his magic powers had deserted him. Pirate had pulled out after three losses. A crowd had gathered round the table to watch the handsome young Englishman lose a fortune.

‘I believe he has ten thousand pounds left,’ said the manager to the Professor. ‘What will he do?’

‘Continue,’ said the Professor, who had grown rather fond of Orlando. ‘I am eighty-five per cent certain he will continue. I fear he may go on even when he has lost all his money.’

The great clock in the main hall of the casino struck one. Three times in succession the noir triumphed over the rouge. Orlando was down to his last two and a half thousand pounds. He couldn’t work out what had happened. The tendency to red seemed to have been replaced by a tendency to a malignant black.

He placed his last chip on the red. ‘Faites vos jeux,’ said the croupier, preparing to spin the wheel. Grandma suddenly decided to re-enter the fray. But this time she was betting against Orlando. She put her money on black. ‘Rien ne va plus, no more bets,’ said the croupier, as the ball slowed down. It settled noisily in its compartment.

‘Vingt-quatre. Noir,’ said the voice of doom.

‘Congratulations, Professor,’ said the manager, clapping him on the back. ‘Some champagne for you, perhaps? A cognac?’

‘No, thank you,’ said the Professor. ‘Are you going to give the young man any credit at the caisse? I do hope not.’

‘We have to live, Professor,’ said the manager cheerfully. ‘I told them to let him have another ten thousand English pounds. No more.’

Orlando waited. He took out his sketchbook and turned Pirate into an El Greco face, the eyepatch replaced. He did another Degas impersonation of Little Friend. He walked slowly through the crowd to the cashier’s. The crowd dissolved before him as if Moses was repeating the parting of the Red Sea in the casino at Monte Carlo. He is the young milord, they whispered to one another. He has lost everything. He is a professional gambler. He has come from America to break the bank. He will win again. Never have I seen such skill at the table. Such nerve.

The cashier advanced him ten thousand pounds without a question. The manager’s compliments, monsieur. Bonne chance, monsieur.

The croupier was sweating slightly as Orlando returned. He wiped his brow with a white handkerchief. The smoke was very thick. The crowd around the table had increased. From the ceiling the Three Graces with their cigars looked down. Their faces said they had seen it all before. The manager and the Professor leant forward in their seats. The smoke was obscuring the view.

Rouge, said Orlando. Noir, said the croupier. Rouge, said Orlando. Noir, said the croupier. Five thousand pounds down. This incredible run of blacks could not continue. It was mathematically impossible.

Rouge, said Orlando.

Noir, said the croupier as the ball came to rest.

Seven and a half thousand pounds down. One last throw would begin the revival of his fortunes. Rouge, said Orlando. The ball clattered round the bowl. Pirate was staring intently at the wheel. ‘Courage,’ murmured his French friend behind him. The little old lady made the sign of the cross. She had placed her last chips on the red along with Orlando.

The ball was slowing now. ‘Which colour, Professor?’ whispered the manager. The Professor looked at pages and pages of equations beside him. ‘Black,’ he said sorrowfully.

There was a murmur in the crowd as the ball hovered over the wheel. The Englishman is broken. He is finished. Can he pay? It seemed to be a choice between a black 2 and a red 25. Orlando looked at his last chip, sitting on the table. Grandad’s Little Friend had her two hands on the old man’s shoulders, straining for a better view.

The last rattle. The ball settled into its compartment.

‘Deux,’ said the croupier. ‘Noir.’

Orlando waited for half an hour at the table. He noticed bitterly that the next four rotations all ended in reds. He wondered about Imogen, their dreams of happiness lost in the spin of a wheel. He wondered what he was going to say to the cashier. He wondered if he would be sent to prison, left to rot like the Count of Monte Cristo in a miserable cell deep inside the Chateau d’If. He wondered how he could tell Imogen. He knew she wouldn’t be angry, only sad that their plan had failed.

At a quarter past two he left the table. His French friend followed him. The little old lady embraced him. ‘My poor boy, ’ she said, ‘my poor boy.’ The Pirate saluted him. ‘What courage,’ he said. ‘What bravery.’ The croupier shook his hand. ‘Au revolt, monsieur. I hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again.’

Orlando’s friend led him to a quiet alcove off the main reception. Three Greek philosophers seemed to be having an argument on the walls behind them.

‘Mr Blane,’ said the Frenchman, ‘my name is Arnaud, Raymond Arnaud. Before we come to the business, let me ask you one question. Can you paint as well as you can draw?’

Orlando stared at the man. Paint? Paint? What on earth was he talking about? ‘Of course I can paint,’ he said, ‘I paint better than I can draw. I was trained at the Royal Academy and in Rome. But what of it? It does not matter now. I owe this casino ten thousand pounds. I do not have ten thousand pounds.’

Raymond Arnaud put his arm across his shoulders. ‘Mr Blane, my friends and I, we have been looking for a man like you. We will pay your debt. It does not go well with those who do not pay here. In France they are more lenient. But in Monte Carlo the authorities feel they have to make examples of those who gamble and cannot pay. Otherwise their casino would sink under a mountain of unpaid debts.’

Orlando could hardly believe his ears. Escape was being offered by this improbable Frenchman. ‘What do I have to do in return?’ he said.

‘You paint,’ said the Frenchman ‘you come and work for us in the world of painting. When you have earned enough to pay off your debt, we let you go!’

Raymond Arnaud did not say that he was the French associate of a firm of London art dealers, based in Old Bond Street. He did not say that they had been looking for somebody like Orlando Blane for eighteen months.

Orlando came back from his reverie. A flock of starlings was flying past the house, heading for the lake. He walked back down the Long Gallery to his stretcher and looked at his Gainsborough. He took the illustration from the American magazine out of its folder. Just the children, his instructions said. Don’t worry about a likeness for the parents, it might seem too much of a coincidence. Just the children, not too perfect a likeness. He reached for his brushes and began to work.

Orlando had never discovered where the instructions came from, or who sent them. He presumed they came from London. All he had to do was to work every day in the Long Gallery. In the evening he played cards with his jailers.

They played for matchsticks.