The Modigliani Scandal (1976)

IV

DUNSFORD LIPSEY WAS ALREADY awake when the stout black telephone beside his bed rang. He picked it up, listened to the night porter′s hasty good morning, and put it down again. Then he got up and opened the window.

It looked out onto a yard, a few lockup garages, and a brick wall. Lipsey turned away and looked around his hotel room. The carpet was slightly worn, the furniture a little shabby; but the place was clean. The hotel was inexpensive. Charles Lampeth, who was paying for the investigation, would not have quibbled if Lipsey had stayed at the best hotel in Paris: but that was not Lipsey′s style.

He took off his pajama jacket, folded it on the pillow, and went to the bathroom. He thought about Charles Lampeth as he washed and shaved. Like all the clients, he was under the impression that a small army of detectives worked for the agency. In fact there were only half-a-dozen; and none of them could have done this job. That was part of the reason Lipsey was doing it himself.

But only part. The rest of the reason had something to do with Lipsey′s own interest in art, and something to do with the smell of the case. It was going to turn out to be interesting, he knew. There was an excitable girl, a lost masterpiece, and a secretive art dealer—and there would be more, much more. Lipsey would enjoy untangling the whole thing. The people in the case: their ambitions, their greed, their little personal betrayals—Lipsey would know of them all before too long. He would do nothing with the knowledge, except find the picture; but he had long ago abandoned the straightforwardly utilitarian approach to investigation. His way made it fun.

He wiped his face, rinsed his razor, and packed it away in his shaving kit. He rubbed a spot of Brylcreem into his short black hair, and combed it back, with a neat parting.

He put on a plain white shirt, a navy blue tie, and a very old, beautifully made Savile Row suit—double-breasfied, with wide lapels and a narrow waist. He had had two pairs of trousers made with the jacket, so that the suit would last a lifetime; and it showed every sign of meeting his expectations. He knew very well that it was hopelessly out of fashion, and he was utterly indifferent to the fact.

At 7:45 he went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. The solitary waiter brought him a wide cup of thick black coffee. He decided his diet would stand bread for breakfast, but he drew the line at jam.

″Vous avez du ̗fromage̗ s′il vous plâit?″ he said.

″Oui̗ monsieur.″ The waiter went away to get the cheese. Lipsey′s French was slow, and badly accented ; but it was clearly comprehensible.

He broke a roll and buttered it sparingly. As he ate, he allowed himself to plan the day. He had only three things: a postcard, an address, and a photograph of Dee Sleign. He took the photograph out of his wallet and laid it on the white tablecloth beside his plate.

It was an amateur picture, taken apparently at some kind of family gathering—buffet tables on a lawn in the background suggested a summer wedding. The style of the girl′s dress indicated that it had been taken four or five years ago. She was laughing, and seemed to be tossing her hair back over her right shoulder. Her teeth were not well-shaped, and her open mouth was unbecoming; but a personality of gaiety and—perhaps—intelligence came through. The eyes had a turned-down look in the outer corners—the reverse of Oriental slantedness.

Lipsey took out the postcard and laid it on top of the photograph. It showed a narrow street of high, shuttered buildings. The ground floors of about half the houses had been turned into shops. It was an undistinguished street—presumably, postcard pictures of it could only be sold in the street itself. He turned it over. The girl′s handwriting told him much the same story as her photograph had. In the top left-hand corner of the reverse side of the postcard was the name of the street.

Finally, Lipsey took out his small orange-covered notebook. The sheets were blank except for the first, which had written on it, in his own small handwriting, the address the girl was staying at in Paris.

He would not confront her immediately, he decided. He finished his coffee and lit a small cigar. He would pursue the other line of inquiry first.

He permitted himself an inaudible sigh. This was the tiresome part of his work. He would have to knock on every door in the street of the postcard, and hope to come across whatever had put Dee on the trail of the painting. He would have to try the side streets, too. His assessment of the girl led him to believe she probably could not wait more than about five minutes before telling someone of her discovery.

Even if he was right, it was a long shot. Her clue might have been something she saw in a newspaper; someone she met walking along the street; or something which happened to occur to her as she was passing through. The fact that her address was in a different part of Paris, and there seemed to be little in this area to attract her, was in Lipsey′s favor. Still, the probability was that he would spend a full day or more and get sore feet making a fruitless search.

He would make it all the same. He was a thorough man.

He gave another little sigh. Well, he would finish his cigar first.

Lipsey wrinkled his nostrils to exclude the smell as he walked into the old-fashioned fish shop. The cold black eyes of the fish gazed malevolently at him from the slab, appearing alive because, paradoxically, they seemed so dead in life.

The fishmonger smiled at him. ″M′sieu?″

Lipsey showed the photograph of Dee Sleign and enunciated, in his precise French: ″Have you seen this girl?″

The man narrowed his eyes, and his smile froze to a ritual grimace. His face said that he smelled cops. He wiped his hands on his apron and took the picture, turning his back to Lipsey and holding it up to let the light hit it.

He turned back, handed over the photograph, and shrugged. ″Sorry, I don′t recognize her,″ he said.

Lipsey thanked him and left the shop. He entered a narrow, dark doorway beside the fishmonger′s and climbed the stairs. The ache in the the small of his back intensified with the effort: he had been on his feet for several hours. Soon he would stop for lunch, he thought. But he would drink no wine with his meal—it would make the afternoon′s trudging insupportable.

The man who answered his knock on the door at the head of the stairs was very old, and completely bald. He appeared with a smile on his face as if he would be glad to see the person who knocked, no matter who it was.

Lipsey caught a glimpse, over the man′s shoulder, of a group of paintings on a wall. His heart jumped: the paintings were valuable originals. This could be his man.

He said: ″I am sorry to trouble you, m′sieu. Have you seen this girl?″ He showed the photograph.

The old man took the photograph and went inside the flat, to look at it in the light, like the fishmonger. He said over his shoulder: ″Come in, if you will.″

Lipsey entered, and shut the door behind him. The room was very small, untidy, and smelly.

″Sit down, if you want,″ the old man said. Lipsey did so, and the Frenchman sat opposite him. He laid the photograph on the rough wooden table between them. ″I am not sure,″ he said. ″why do you want to know?″

The wrinkled yellow face was completely expressionless, but Lipsey was now sure that this man had put Dee on the track of the picture. ″Does the reason matter?″ he asked.

The old man laughed easily. ″You are too old to be a wronged lover, I suppose,″ he said. ″And you are very unlike her, so it is improbable that you are her father. I think you are a policeman.″

Lipsey recognized a mind as sharply analytical as his own. ″Why, has she done something wrong?″

″I have no idea. If she has, I am not going to put the police on her trail. And if she has not, then there is no reason for you to pursue her.″

″I am a private detective,″ Lipsey replied. ″The girl′s mother has died, and the girl has disappeared. I have been hired by the family to find her and break the news to her.″

The black eyes twinkled. ″I suppose you might be telling the truth,″ he said.

Lipsey made a mental note. The man had given away the fact that he was not in constant touch with the girl: for if he had been, he would have known that she had not disappeared.

Unless she really had disappeared, Lipsey thought with a shock. Lord, the walking had tired him—he was not thinking clearly.

″When did you see her?″

″I have decided not to tell you.″

″This is very important.″

″I thought so.″

Lipsey sighed. He would have to be a little rough. In the few minutes he had been in the room, he had detected the smell of cannabis. ″Very well, old man. If you will not tell me, I shall have to inform the police that this room is being used for drug-taking.″

The man laughed with genuine amusement. ″Do you think they do not know that already?″ he said. His papery chuckle ran its course, and he coughed. The twinkle had gone from his eyes when he spoke again. ″To be trickled into giving information to a policeman, that would be foolish. But to be blackmailed into it would be dishonorable. Please get out now.″

Lipsey saw that he had lost. He felt disappointed, and a little ashamed. He went out and closed the door on the old man′s papery cough.

At least there was no trudging to be done, Lipsey thought. He sat in a small restaurant, after a superb 12-franc lunch, smoking his second small cigar of the day. The steak, and the glass of red wine he had drunk with it, had made the world seem a little less depressing. Looking back, he realized that the moming had ruffled him, and he wondered again if he were too old for fieldwork.

He ought to be philosophical about such setbacks now, he told himself. The break always came, if you waited long enough for it. Still, he had run into a dead end. He now had only one line of inquiry, instead of two. His hand was forced.

He had to chase the girl, rather than the picture. He dropped his cigar in the ashtray, paid his bill, and left the restaurant.

A taxi pulled up at the curb outside, and a young man got out. Lipsey grabbed the cab while the man was paying. He looked a second time at the young face, and realized he had seen it before.

He gave the driver the address at which Miss Sleign had been staying since June. As the car pulled away, he puzzled over the familiar face of the young man. Putting names to faces was an obsession with Lipsey. If he could not match them, he felt a distinct professional unease, as if his ability was thrown into doubt.

He racked his brains for a few moments, then came up with a name: Peter Usher. He was a successful young artist, and had some connection with Charles Lampeth. Ah yes, Lampeth′s gallery showed his pictures. It was of no consequence. Feeling easier, Lipsey dismissed the young man from his mind.

The taxi dropped him outside a small apartment block, about ten years old, and not very impressive. Lipsey went in and bent his head to the concierge′s window.

″Is there anyone at home in number nine?″ he asked with a smile.

″They are away,″ the woman said, giving the information begrudgingly.

″Oh, good,″ Lipsey said. ″I am an interior decorator from England, and they asked me to give them an estimate for the place. They said I was to ask you for the key, and look over the place while they were away. I was not sure if they would be gone yet.″

″I cannot give you the key. Besides, they have no right to redecorate without permission.″

″Of course!″ Lipsey gave her his smile again, and turned on a certain middle-aged charm which he knew he was capable of. ″Miss Sleign was most emphatic that I should consult you, to get your advice and opinions.″ As he spoke, he fumbled some notes out of his wallet and into an envelope. ″She asked me to pass this to you, for your trouble.″ He handed the envelope through the window, bending it slightly in his hand to make the money crackle.

She took the bribe. ″You must not take very long, because I will have to stay there with you all the time,″ she said.

″Of course,″ he smiled.

She hobbled out of her cubbyhole and led him up the stairs, with a good deal of puffing and blowing, holding her back, and pausing for breath.

The apartment was not very large, and some of the furniture looked secondhand. Lipsey looked around the living room. ″They were talking about emulsion paint for the walls,″ he said.

The concierge shuddered.

″Yes, I think you′re right ″Lipsey said. ″A pleasant flowered wallpaper, perhaps, and a plain dark green carpet.″ He paused in front of a ghastly sideboard. He rapped it with his knuckles. ″Good quality;″ he said. ″Not like this modem rubbish.″ He took out a notebook and scribbled a few meaningless lines in it.

″They didn′t tell me where they were going,″ he said conversationally. ″The South, I expect.″

″Italy.″ The woman′s face was still stem, but she enjoyed displaying her knowledge.

″Ah. Rome, I expect.″

The woman did not take that bait, and Lipsey assumed she did not know. He looked around the rest of the flat, his sharp eyes taking everything in while he made inane remarks to the concierge.

In the bedroom there was a telephone on a low bedside table. Lipsey looked closely at the scratch pad beside it. A ballpoint pen lay across the blank sheet. The impression of the words which had been scribbled on the sheet above lay deep in the pad. Lipsey put his body between the table and the concierge, and palmed the notebook.

He made a few more empty comments about the decor, then said: ″You have been most kind, madame. I will not keep you from your work any longer.″

She showed him to the door of the block. Outside, he hurried to a stationer′s and bought a very soft pencil. He sat at a sidewalk café, ordered coffee, and got out the stolen pad.

He rubbed the pencil gently over the impression in the paper. When he had finished, the words were clear. It was the address of a hotel in Livorno, Italy.

Lipsey arrived at the hotel in the evening of the following day. It was a small, cheap place of about a dozen bedrooms. It had once been the house of a large middle-class family, Lipsey guessed: now that the area was going down, it had been converted into a guesthouse for commercial travelers.

He waited in the living room of the family′s quarters while the wife went to fetch her husband from the upper regions of the house. He was weary from traveling: his head ached slightly, and he looked forward to dinner and a soft bed. He thought about smoking a cigar, but refrained for the sake of politeness. He glanced at the television from time to time. It was showing a very old English film which he had seen one evening in Chippenham. The sound was turned down.

The woman returned with the proprietor. He had a cigarette in the comer of his mouth. The handle of a hammer stuck out of one pocket, and there was a bag of nails in his hand.

He looked annoyed at having been disturbed at his carpentry. Lipsey gave him a fat bribe and began to speak in stumbling, fractured Italian.

″I am trying to find a young lady who stayed here recently,″ he said. He took out the picture of Dee Sleign, and gave it to the proprietor. ″This is the woman. Do you remember her?″

The man looked briefly at the photograph and nodded assent. ″She was alone,″ he said, the inflection in his voice showing the disapproval of a good Catholic father for young girls who stay in hotels alone.

″Alone?″ said Lipsey, surprised. The concierge in Paris had given the impression the couple had gone away together. He went on: ″I am an English detective, hired by her father to find her and persuade her to come home. She is younger than she looks,″ he added by way of explanation.

The proprietor nodded. ″The man did not stay here,″ he said with righteousness oozing from him. ″He came along, paid her bill, and took her away.″

″Did she tell you what she was doing here?″

″She wanted to look at paintings. I told her that many of our art treasures were lost in the bombings.″ He paused, and frowned in the effort to remember. ″She bought a tourist guide—she wanted to know where was the birthplace of Modigliani.″

″Ah!″ It was a small gasp of satisfaction from Lipsey.

″She booked a phone call to Paris when she was here. I think that is all I can tell you.″

″You don′t know just where in the city she went?″

″No.″

″How many days was she here?″

″Only one.″

″Did she say anything about where she was going next?″

″Ah! Of course,″ the man said. He paused to puff life into the dying cigarette in his mouth and grimaced at the taste of the smoke. ″They came in and asked for a map.″

Lipsey leaned forward. Another lucky break, so soon, was almost too much to hope for. ″Go on.″

″Let me see. They were going to take the autostrada to Firenze, then go across country to the Adriatic coast—somewhere near Rimini. They mentioned the name of a village—Oh! Now I remember. It was Poglio.″

Lipsey took out his notebook. ″Spell it?″

The proprietor obliged.

Lipsey got up. ″I am most grateful to you,″ he said.

Outside, he stopped at the curb to breathe in the warm evening air. So soon! he thought. He lit a small cigar to celebrate.