The Modigliani Scandal (1976)

II

THE GLAMOUR HAD GONE out of life, Charles Lampeth reflected as he relaxed in his Queen Anne dining chair. This place, the house of his friend, had once seen the kind of parties and balls which now happened only in high-budget historical movies. At least two Prime Ministers had dined in this very room, with its long oak table and matching paneled walls. But the room, the house, and their owner, Lord Cardwell, belonged to a dying race.

Lampeth selected a cigar from the box proffered by the butler, and allowed the servant to light it. A sip of remarkably old brandy completed his sense of well-being. The food had been splendid, the wives of the two men had retired in the old-fashioned way, and now they would talk.

The butler lit Cardwell′s cigar and glided out. The two men puffed contentedly for a while. They had been friends for too long for silence to be an embarrassment between them. Eventually Cardwell spoke.

″How is the art market?″ he said.

Lampeth gave a satisfied smile. ″Booming, as it has been for years,″ he said.

″I′ve never understood the economics of it,″ Cardwell replied. ″Why is it so buoyant?″

″It′s complex, as you would expect,″ Lampeth replied. ″I suppose it started when the Americans became art-conscious, just before the Second World War. It′s the old supply-and-demand mechanism: the prices of the Old Masters went through the roof.

″There weren′t enough Old Masters to go around, so people started turning to the moderns.″

Cardwell interrupted: ″And that′s where you came in.″

Lampeth nodded, and sipped appreciatively at his brandy. ″When I opened my first gallery, just after the war, it was a struggle to sell anything painted after 1900. But we persisted. A few people liked them, prices rose gradually, and then the investors moved in. That was when the Impressionists went through the roof.″

″A lot of people made a pile,″ Cardwell commented.

″Fewer than you think,″ said Lampeth. He loosened his bow tie under his double chin. ″It′s rather like buying shares or backing horses. Bet on a near-certainty, and you find everyone else has backed it, so the odds are low. If you want a blue-chip share, you pay a high price for it, so your gain when you sell is marginal.

″So with paintings: buy a Velazquez, and you are bound to make money. But you pay so much for it, that you have to wait several years for a fifty percent gain. The only people who have made fortunes are the ones who bought the pictures they liked, and found that they had good taste when the value of their collections rocketed. People like yourself.″

Cardwell nodded, and the few strands of white hair on his head waved in the slight breeze caused by the movement. He pulled at the end of his long nose. ″What do you think my collection is worth now?″

″Lord.″ Lampeth frowned, drawing his black brows together at the bridge of his nose. ″It would depend on how it was sold, for one thing. For another, an accurate valuation would be a week′s work for an expert.″

″I′ll settle for an inaccurate one. You know the pictures—you bought most of them yourself for me.″

″Yes.″ Lampeth pictured in his mind the twenty or thirty paintings in the house, and assigned rough values to them. He closed his eyes and added up ̋̋the sums.

″It must be a million pounds,″ he said eventually. Cardwell nodded again. ″That′s the figure I arrived at,″ he said. ″Charlie, I need a million pounds.″

″Good Lord!″ Lampeth sat upright in his chair. ″You can′t think of selling your collection.″

″I′m afraid it has come to that,″ Cardwell said sadly. ″I had hoped to leave it to the nation, but the realities of business life come first. The company is overstretched; there must be a big capital injection within twelve months or it goes to the wall. You know I′ve been selling off bits of the estate for years, to keep me in this stuff.″ He raised his brandy balloon and drank.

″The young blades have caught up with me at last,″ he went on. ″New brooms sweeping through the financial world. Our methods are outdated. I shall get out as soon as the company is strong enough to hand over. Let a young blade take it on.″

The note of weary despair in his friend′s voice angered Lampeth. ″Young blades,″ he said contemptuously. ″Their time of reckoning will come.″

Cardwell laughed lightly. ″Now, now, Charlie. My father was horrified when I announced my intention of going into the City. I remember him telling me: ′But you′re going to inherit the title!′ as if that precluded any notion of my touching real money. And you—what did your father say when you opened an art gallery?″

Lampeth acknowledged the point with a reluctant smile. ″He thought it was a namby-pamby occupation for a soldier′s son.″

″So, you see, the world belongs to the young blades. So, sell my pictures, Charlie.″

″The collection will have to be broken up, to get the best price.″

″You′re the expert. No point in my being sentimental about it.″

″Still, some of it ought to be kept together for an exhibition. Let′s see: a Renoir, two Degas, some Pissarro, three Modiglianis ... I′ll have to think about it. The Cézanne will have to go to auction, of course.″

Cardwell stood up, revealing himself to be very tall, an inch or two over six feet. ″Well, let′s not linger over the corpse. Shall we join the ladies?″

The Belgrave Art Gallery had the air of a rather superior provincial museum. The hush was almost tangible as Lampeth entered, his black toecapped shoes treading silently on the plain, olive-green carpet. At ten o′clock the gallery had only just opened, and there were no customers. Nevertheless, three assistants in black-and-stripes hovered attentively around the reception area.

Lampeth nodded to them and walked through the ground-floor gallery, his expert eye surveying the pictures on the walls as he passed. Someone had hung a modern abstract incongruously next to a primitive, and he made a mental note to get it moved. There were no prices on the works: a deliberate policy. People had the feeling that any mention of cash would be greeted with a disapproving frown from one of the elegantly dressed assistants. In order to maintain their self-esteem, patrons would tell themselves that they, too, were part of this world where money was a mere detail, as insignificant as the date on the check. So they spent more. Charles Lampeth was a businessman first, and an art lover second.

He walked up the broad staircase to the first floor, and caught sight of his reflection in the glass of a frame. His tie-knot was small, his collar crisp, his Savile Row suit a perfect fit. It was a pity he was overweight, but he still cut an attractive figure for his age. He straightened his shoulders reflectively.

He made another mental note: the glass in that frame ought to be nonreflective. There was a pen drawing underneath it—whoever hung it had made a mistake.

He walked to his office, where he hooked his umbrella on the coat-stand. He walked to the window and looked out onto Regent Street while he lit his first cigar of the day. He watched the traffic, making a list in his mind of the things he would have to attend to between now and the first gin and tonic at five o′clock.

He turned around as his junior partner, Stephen Willow, walked in. ″Morning, Willow,″ he said, and sat down at his desk.

Willow said: ″Morning, Lampeth.″ They stuck to the habit of surnames, despite the six or seven years they had been together. Lampeth had brought Willow in to extend the Belgrave′s range: Willow had built up a small gallery of his own by nurturing relationships with half-a-dozen young artists who had turned out to be winners. Lampeth had seen the Belgrave lagging slightly behind the market at the time, and Willow had offered a quick way to catch up with the contemporary scene. The partnership worked well: although there was a good ten or fifteen years between the two men, Willow had the same basic qualities of artistic taste and business sense as Lampeth.

The younger man laid a folder on the table and refused a cigar. ″We must talk about Peter Usher,″ he said.

″Ah, yes. There′s something wrong there, and I don′t know what it is.″

″We took him over when the Sixty-Nine Gallery went broke,″ Willow began. ″He had done well there for a year—one canvas went for a thousand. Most of them were selling for upwards of five hundred. Since he came to us, he′s only sold a couple.″

″How are we pricing?″

″The same range as the Sixty-Nine.ʺ

″They may have been doing naughty things, mind,″ said Lampeth.

″I think they were. A suspicious number of highly priced pictures reappeared shortly after they had been sold.″

Lampeth nodded. It was the art world′s worst-kept secret that dealers sometimes bought their own pictures in order to stimulate demand for a young artist.

Lampeth said: ″And then again, you know, we′re not the right gallery for Usher.″ He saw his partner′s raised eyebrows and added: ″No criticism intended, Willow—at the time he appeared to be a scoop. But he is very avant-garde, and it probably did him a little damage to become associated with such a respectable gallery as ours. However, that′s all in the past. I still think he′s a remarkably good young painter, and we owe him our best efforts.″

Willow changed his mind about the cigar, and took one from the box in Lampeth′s inlaid desk. ″Yes, that was my thinking. I′ve sounded him out about a show: he says he has enough new work to justify it.″

″Good. The New Room, perhaps?″ The gallery was too big for it all to be devoted to the work of a single living artist, so one-man exhibitions were held in smaller galleries or in part of the Regent Street premises.

″Ideal.″

Lampeth mused: ″I still wonder whether we wouldn′t be doing him a favor by letting him go elsewhere.″

″Perhaps, but the outside world wouldn′t see it like that.″

″You′re quite right.″

″Shall I tell him it′s on, then?″

″No, not yet. There may be something bigger in the pipeline. Lord Cardwell gave me dinner last night. He wants to sell his collection.″

″Ye Gods—the poor chap. That′s a tall order for us.″

″Yes, and we shall have to do it carefully. I′m still thinking about it. Leave that slot open for a while.″

Willow looked toward the window out of a comer of his eye—a sign, Lampeth knew, that he was straining his memory. ″Hasn′t Cardwell got two or three Modiglianis?″ he said eventually.

″That′s right.″ It was no surprise to Lampeth that Willow knew it: part of a top art dealer′s job was to know where hundreds of paintings were, who they belonged to, and how much they were worth.

ʺInteresting,ʺ Willow continued. ″I had word from Bonn yesterday, after you had left. A collection of Modigliani′s sketches is on the market.″

″What sort?″

″Pencil sketches, for sculptures. They aren′t on the open market yet, of course. We can have them if we want them.″

″Good. We′ll buy them anyway—I think Modigliani is due for a rise in value. He′s been underrated for a while, you know, because he doesn′t fit into a neat category.″

Willow stood up. ″I′ll get on to my contact and tell him to buy. And if Usher inquires, I′ll stall him.″

″Yes. Be nice to him.″

Willow went out, and Lampeth pulled toward him a wire tray containing the morning′s post. He picked up an envelope, its top slit ready for him—then his eye fell on a postcard underneath. He dropped the envelope and picked up the postcard. He looked at the picture on the front, and guessed it to be of a street in Paris. Then he turned it over and read the message. He smiled at first, amused by the breathless prose and the forest of exclamation marks.

Then he sat back and thought. His niece had a way of giving the impression she was a feminine, scatty young thing; but she had a very sharp brain and a certain cool determination. She usually meant what she said, even if she sounded like a flapper of the 1920s.

Lampeth left the rest of his post in the tray, slipped the postcard into his inside jacket pocket, picked up his umbrella, and went out.

Everything about the agency was discreet—even its entrance. It was cleverly designed so that when a taxi drew up in its forecourt, the visitor could not be seen from the street as he got out, paid his fare, and entered by the door in the side of the portico.

The staff, with their mannered subservience, was rather like those at the gallery—although for different reasons. If forced to say exactly what the agency′s business was, they would murmur that it made inquiries on behalf of its clients. Just as the assistants at the Belgrave never mentioned money, so those at the agency never mentioned detectives.

Indeed, Lampeth had never to his knowledge seen a detective there. The detectives at Lipsey′s did not reveal who their clients were for the simple reason that they frequently did not know. Discretion mattered even more than a successful conclusion to an operation.

Lampeth was recognized, although he had only been there two or three times. His umbrella was taken, and he was shown into the office of Mr. Lipsey: a short, dapper man, with straight black hair, and the slightly mournful, tactfully persistent approach of a coroner at an inquest.

He shook hands with Lampeth and mótioned him to a chair. His office looked more like a solicitor′s than a detective′s, with dark wood, drawers instead of filing cabinets, and a safe in a wall. His desk was full, but neat, with pencils arranged in a row, papers piled tidily, and a pocket electronic calculator.

The calculator reminded Lampeth that most of the agency′s business involved investigating possible fraud: hence its location in the City. But they also traced individuals and—for Lampeth—pictures. Their fees were high, which gave Lampeth comfort.

″A glass of sherry?″ Lipsey offered.

″Thank you.″ Lampeth took the postcard from his pocket while the other man poured from a decanter. He took the proffered glass and gave the postcard in exchange. Lipsey sat down, set his sherry untouched on the desk and studied the card.

A minute later he said: ″I take it you want us to find the picture.″

″Yes.″

″Hmm. Do you have your niece′s address in Paris?″

″No, but my sister—her mother—will know. I′ll get it for you. However, if I know Delia, she will probably have left Paris by now—in search of the Modiglianis. Unless it′s in Paris.″

″So—we are left with her friends there. And this picture. Is it possible that she got the scent, so to speak, of this great find somewhere near the café?″

″That′s very likely,″ said Lampeth. ″Good guessing. She′s an impulsive girl.″

″I imagined so from me—ah—style of the correspondence. Now, what are the chances that this will turn out to be a wild-goose chase?″

Lampeth shrugged. ″There is always that possibility with searches for lost pictures. But don′t be misled by Delia′s style—sheʹs just won a First in Art History, and she is a shrewd twenty-five-year-old. If she would work for me I′d employ her, if only to keep her out of the hands of my competitors.″

″And the chances?ʺ

″Fifty-fifty. No, better—seventy-thirty. In her favor.″

″Good. Well, I have the right man for the job available at the moment. We can get on to it immediately.″

Lampeth stood up, hesitated, and frowned, as if he did not quite know how to put what he was about to say. Lipsey waited patiently.

″Ah—it′s important that the girl should not know that I have initiated the inquiry, you realize?″

″Of course,″ Lipsey said smoothly. ″It goes without saying.ʺ

The gallery was full of people chatting, clinking glasses, and dropping cigar ash on the carpet. The reception was to publicize a small collection of various German Expressionists which Lampeth had acquired in Denmark: he disliked the paintings, but they were a good buy. The people were clients, artists, critics, and art historians. Some had come simply to be seen at the Belgrave, to tell the world that this was the kind of circle they moved in; but they would buy, eventually, to prove that they did not come merely to be seen there. Most of the critics would write about the show, for they could not afford to ignore anything the Belgrave did. The artists came for the canapes and the wine—free food and drink, and some of them needed it. Perhaps the only people who were genuinely interested in the paintings were the art historians and a few serious collectors.

Lampeth sighed, and looked furtively at his watch. It would be another hour before he could respectabiv leave. His wife had long ago given up attending gallery receptions. She said they were a bore, and she was right. Lampeth would like to be at home now, with a glass of port in one hand and a book in the other; sitting on his favorite chair—the old learner one, with the hard horsehair upholstery and the burn mark on the arm where he always put his pipe—with his wife opposite him and Siddons coming in to make up the fire for the last time.

″Wishing you were home, Charlie?″ The voice came from beside him and broke his daydream. ″Rather be sitting in front of the telly watching Barlow?″

Lampeth forced a smile. He rarely watched television, and he resented being called Charlie by any but his oldest friends. The man he smiled at was not even a friend: he was the art critic of a weekly journal, perceptive enough about art, especially sculpture, but a terrible bore. ″Hello, Jack, glad you could come,″ Lampeth said. ″Actually, I am a bit tired for this sort of bash.″

″Know how you feel,″ the critic said. ″Hard day? Tough time knocking some poor painter′s price down a couple of hundred?″

Lampeth forced another smile, but deigned to reply to the jocular insult. The journal was a left-wing one, he remembered, and it felt the need to be disapproving of anyone who actually made money out of culture.

He saw Willow easing through the crowd toward him, and felt gratitude toward his junior partner. The journalist seemed to sense this, and excused himself.

″Thank you for rescuing me,″ Lampeth said to Willow in a low voice.

″No trouble, Lampeth. What I actually came to say was, Peter Usher is here. Do you want to handle him yourself?″

″Yes. Listen, I′ve decided to do a Modigliani show. We′ve got Lord Cardwell′s three, the sketches, and another possibility came up this morning. That′s enough for a nucleus. Will you find out who′s got what?″

″Of course. That means Usher′s one-man has had it.″

″I′m afraid so. There isn′t another slot for that sort of thing for months. I′ll tell him. He won′t like it, but it won′t harm him all that much. His talent will tell in the long run, whatever we do.″

Willow nodded and moved away, and Lampeth went in search of Usher. He found him at the far end of the gallery, sitting in front of some of the new paintings. He was with a woman, and they had filled a tray with food from the buffet.

″May I join you?″ Lampeth said.

″Of course. The sandwiches are delicious,″ Usher said. ″I haven′t had caviar for days.″

Lampeth smiled at the sarcasm, and helped himself to a tiny square of white bread. The woman said: ″Peter tries to play the part of the angry young man, but he′s too old.″

″You haven′t met my mouthy wife, have you?″ Usher said.

Lampeth nodded. ″Delighted,″ he said. ″We′re used to Peter, Mrs. Usher. We tolerate his sense of humor because we like his work so much.″

Usher accepted the rebuke gracefully, and Lampeth knew he had put it in exactly the right way: disguised in good manners and larded with flattery.

Usher washed another sandwich down with the wine, and said: ″When are you going to put on my one-man show, then?″

″Now, that is really what I wanted to talk to you about,″ Lampeth began. ″I′m afraid we′re going to have to postpone it. You see—″

Usher interrupted him, his face reddening behind the long hair and Jesus beard. ″Don′t make phony excuses—you′ve found something better to fill the slot. Who is it?″

Lampeth sighed. He had wanted to avoid this. ″We′re doing a Modigliani exhibition. But that′s not the only—″

″How long?″ Usher demanded, his voice louder. His wife put a restraining hand on his arm. ″How long do you propose to postpone my show?″

Lampeth felt eyes boring into his back, and guessed that some of the crowd were now watching the scene. He smiled, and inclined his head conspiratorially, to try and make Usher talk quietly. ″Can′t say,″ he murmured. ″We have a very full schedule. Hopefully early next year—″

″Next year!″ Usher shouted. ″Jesus Christ, Modigliani can do without a show but I have to live! My family has to eat!″

″Please, Peter—″

″No! I won′t shut up!″ The whole gallery was quiet now, and Lampeth realized despairingly that everyone was watching the quarrel. Usher yelled: ″I′ve no doubt you′ll make more money out of Modigliani, because he′s dead. You won′t do any good to the human race, but you′ll make a bomb. There are too many fat profiteers like you running the business, Lampeth.

″Do you realize the prices I used to get before I joined this bloody stuffed-shirt gallery? I took out a bloody mortgage on the strength of it. All the Belgrave has done is to lower my prices and hide my pictures away so nobody buys them. I′ve had it with you, Lampeth! I′ll take my work elsewhere, so stuff your fucking gallery right up your arse!″

Lampeth cringed at the violent language. He was blushing bright red, he knew, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Usher turned theatrically and stormed out. The crowd made a gap for him, and he walked through it, his head held high. His wife followed behind, running to keep up with his long-legged stride, avoiding the eyes of the guests. Everyone looked at Lampeth for guidance.

″I apologize for ... this,″ he said. ″Everybody, please carry on enjoying yourselves, and forget about it, would you?″ He forced yet another smile. ″I′m going to have another glass of wine, and I hope you′ll all join me.″

Conversation broke out in scattered places, and gradually spread until it filled the room with a continuous buzz, and the crisis was over. It had been a bad mistake to tell Usher the news here in the gallery at a reception: there was no doubt of that. Lampeth had made the decision at the end of a long, exciting day. In future he would go home early, or start work late, he resolved. He was too old to push himself.

He found a glass of wine and drank it down quickly. It steadied his shaking knees, and he stopped sweating. God, how embarrassing. Bloody artists.