The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 16

Adding, as Marriott ordered another round of drinks, "I say, Fizzy. Given any further thought about swanning down the aisle with me?"

As a partner in the family firm of purveyors of quality pickles, Biff Kilgannon had no interest in art like the rest of the gang, in fact the nuances of Impressionism, gouache and the finer points of the Neue Sachlichkeit sailed completely over his head. He only tagged along because his sister, Lulu, was an artist and this way he got to mix with lots of Witty Young Things, something one tends not to do in the gherkin and piccallilli department. It wasn't that Biff wasn't a dish, Fizzy mused, especially since playing prop forward had endowed him with muscles of steel. It was just unfortunate that he had a brain to match.

"Sorry, Biff." Fizzy set to powdering the shiny spot on her nose. "The answer's still no.'

The mirror in her cloisonne compact reflected a heart-shaped face with a much-kissed snub nose and big eyes enlarged further by finely plucked brows and heaps of soot black mascara. It was only upon closer examination that one realized that one eye was brown, the other blue.

Fizzy's appointment diary rarely showed a blank spot.

Snapping the compact shut, she slotted a cigarette into its holder. Simultaneously, a battery of clicks produced enough light to power up half of Southern England and quite possibly a chunk of East Anglia, too. Thanking her gallant knights with an all-encompa.s.sing smile, Fizzy struck her own match and thought, funny how the entire male section of the Westlake Set was queuing to slip a diamond cl.u.s.ter on the third finger of her left hand yet every time she pictured the hatload of kids she so desperately wanted, all the little beezers sported the same ski-slope noses, lopsided smiles and floppy fringes of the only man who'd never once jumped forward in a bid to light her gasper.

d.a.m.n you, Squiffy Hardcastle. d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l.

" don't you think so, Fizzy?"

"Sorry, Kitty, didn't catch that."

"I was just saying, sweetheart, that his work's far too Gauginesque for my taste-"

Fizzy didn't bother asking whose work. "Absolutely," she replied, her mind elsewhere. On a certain painting, as it happened, in a gilt frame . . .

" Matisse is living in the south of France, I hear-"

" now does Lulu's stuff reflect Synthetic Cubism with a hint of Purist, d'you think, or pastoralism with a touch of a.n.a.lytic Cubism?"

Snippets drifted past like ducks on the Thames, while Fizzy contemplated portraits in gilt frames . . .

"Sorry we're late, everyone."

Her train was interrupted as Orville Templeton, Hon. Member for Knightsbridge & Chelsea, held out a chair for his wife.

"Traffic was an absolute stinker."

"You haven't missed much," Foxy told the newcomers. "Chilton and his protege haven't arrived yet."

"Traffic, probably," Orville said, shooting his cuffs.

Poor Orville. n.o.ble, worthy, gallant, dignified a hundred decent men packed into one and duller than a miner's bathwater. Fizzy exchanged smiles with his wife and thought the same couldn't be said of Gloria Templeton. Fizzy's best friend was five years older than her and a study in understatement, from the simple wedding band to the pale cream silk she always draped herself in. Not half as modish as Fizzy's white cloche, Gloria's broad-rimmed hats were perfect for hot summer evenings like this, flattering her chestnut bob and emphasizing her strong patrician features though nothing could disguise the permanent sadness in her lovely green eyes.

That was the problem, Fizzy sighed, when one's still in love with one's first husband.

A husband, moreoever, who was handsome and charming, gave one two gorgeous daughters, then betrayed all three of them by getting himself blown to pieces in the very last week of the War. Her blue-brown gaze rested on Orville, looking for all the world like a reject from a second-rate taxidermist's. Poor Orville. The Hon. Member for K&C worshipped his new family. Adored Gloria. Idolized his adopted girls. Would do anything for them, anything at all. Even to accepting that he would only ever come second best . . .

Second best, of course, was a concept far beyond the scope of Fizzy Potter and, along the banquette, Bubbles was slipping her Cartier-encrusted wrist through Teddy Hardcastle's arm.

"I say, were you really the youngest captain in the Great War, Squiffy?"

Any closer, dammit, and she'd be a tattoo.

"Too jolly right he was," Marriott boomed. "Gave him a gong for it, too."

Hardcastle spiked his rebellious fringe out of his eyes, but made no effort to prise the limpet away.

"Take no notice of Marriott," he told Bubbles, with a flash of lopsided grin. "By the time I joined up they were running out of men. Another six months and they'd have made a machine gun captain."

"Don't be so d.a.m.ned modest, man," Marriott snorted. "It's the same with his bookbinding commissions, y'know, Bubbs. All that inlaying of coloured leather, gold fillets, those woss-names in enamelled porcelain you mount on the covers-"

"Plaques."

"Plaques, thank you, and that's without him encrusting the whole b.l.o.o.d.y thing with mother-of-pearl and those other wotnots."

"Cabochons."

"Cabochons, thank you, so don't let him tell you different, Bubbs. They're works of art he churns out."

But Bubbles wasn't interested in Hardcastle's technical apt.i.tude. Rich bankers are dandy when it comes to footing bills at the likes of Chanel or Van Cleef & Arpels, but the trouble is, they will spend so much time at the bank. Having given one beau the old heave-ho tonight, she was looking to plug the vacancy fast.

"Why 'Squiffy', darling?"

With a gla.s.s of champagne permanently welded to one hand, even Biff could work out how she'd acquired her nickname.

"Not what you think, Bubbles," Foxy laughed. "It's from the way Teddy wore his cap at school, and damme if he don't still wear his hat at that angle."

On anyone else, Fizzy thought, it would come over rakish. On Teddy Hardcastle, the pitched brim lent a certain equanimity and she quietly d.a.m.ned ski-slope noses to eternal h.e.l.lfire and sent lopsided smiles down the piste after them.

" so this exhibition tomorrow," Orville said. "Is everyone going?"

"Are frogs waterproof?" Foxy Fairfax retorted.

And as though a light had been switched on, the whole group became animated about Chilton Westlake's new prodigy.

"What's the verdict on this, then?" Kitty asked, unrolling one of the posters she'd designed to publicise the exhibition at their friend's gallery. "Have I captured The Great Man, do you think?"

When Doc Frankenstein shot the first electrical bolt through his monster, it couldn't have made so much of a jolt.

"By Jove, Kitty." Biff was the first of the group to recover. "You've got the blighter off to a tee."

And how, Fizzy thought. Lank black hair, olive skin, stubbled chin, the slight sneer to his lips . . . dammit, this WAS Louis Boucard.

"Just as well one can't get scent off a poster," Biff added, wrinkling his prop forward's nose.

"He's French, darling!" Bubbles protested. "And an artiste, to boot. Parisians don't think the way we do."

What she meant, Fizzy reflected, was that soap and Louis Boucard were strangers, whereas booze and cocaine were blood brothers. She considered all the other attributes of this artistic genius his gambling, his womanizing, his debauching of young girls and wondered exactly how well Kitty Gardener had known Louis Boucard to be able to produce such an intimate representation.

Indeed, how well every other member of the Set had known him, to recognise what they were seeing . . .

"Can't stand the fellow, as y'know, but I do feel his work has an affinity with Chevaillier," Catspaw Gordon remarked, emerging from his doldrums at last.

The Boucard effect, of course, Fizzy mused. The uncombed Parisian touched a nerve with everyone sooner or later, and her thoughts flashed back to that portrait in its gilt frame . . .

" p.r.o.nounced Symbolist influence, certainly," Marriott was saying, "with a touch of the new Cla.s.sicism overlaid with subtle early Cubist House elements and, hmm, maybe the merest smidgen of the draughtsmanship one sees in Migliorini-"

"Tosh!" Foxy Fairfax interjected. 'Boucard's a bounder and a cad who corrupts everything he touches! He's a liar, a con-man, a thief and a cheat, and by his own admission, he trawls the gutters to paint " he adopted an exaggerated French whine " prozzitutes et felons."

"Yes, darling, but there's something so utterly exciting about the demi-monde, don't you think?" Bubbles shuddered delightedly. "I mean, all that naked flesh and loucheness? I find his work riveting. How about you, Squiffy?'

But before Teddy Hardcastle had a chance to venture his opinion on this blight on the moral and artistic landscape, Chilton Westlake, the gallery owner whose name the Set had adopted for their Friday night get-togethers, arrived wearing a mustard check suit, straw boater and a face like absolute thunder. He was also alone.

"Have you seen these?" His chubby fist pounded the newspapers in his hand. "Have you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "The Westlake Gallery is holding an exhibition of exciting new Parisian artist, Louis Boucard," he read.

"Sounds just about top-hole to me," Orville exclaimed. "You wanted a plug for the old show."

"Plug? PLUG?"

Chilton was in danger of testing medical science's latest advances in cardiac technology.

"I was supposed to be one doing the plugging here, matey. Instead, what happens? Boucard only gives me some c.o.c.k-and-bull story about needing to borrow the key to the gallery to make a couple of last minute alterations, don't he?"

"Inviting the press for a sneak preview instead, I suppose?'

Trust Gloria to get there before anybody else.

"Boucard's bold style pushes the boundaries of art deco to a new dimension, says the London Bulletin."

Chilton tossed the paper on the floor and ground it with his spatted heel.

"A greater whiff of decadence than a hundred Tamara de Lempickas, according to the Evening ruddy Witness, and I wouldn't have minded him stealing a march on my show," he said, gulping down Marriott's martini. "But get this."

He hurled the paper at Foxy, who read aloud.

" Boucard has promised a work ent.i.tled 'Revelation' in addition to the paintings listed in the catalogue. A portrait, the likes of which, he claims, has never before been on public display in this country a portrait so daring, so scandalous that he's keeping it under velvet until the official opening. Even the gallery owner . . . Oh, I say, Chilton, is that right?" Foxy goggled. "That even you have no idea of this picture's content?"

Westlake glugged down Kitty's drink and even managed to prise Bubble's bubbles out her grasp.

"Couldn't be righter, old man. First I knew about this so-called 'Revelation' was when I read about it in the b.l.o.o.d.y papers."

His little fat hand lashed out to tip Catspaw's, Biff's and Teddy's drinks down the hatch, his expression brightening only slightly when he noticed a stupendous pair of knees crossed elegantly on the soft leather banquette.

"But the really galling thing," he wailed, "was that Boucard had the cheek to tap me for the fare back to the gallery, and that's not the first time he's tapped for a tenner, either!"

Fizzy's martini was the last remaining casualty and Chilton Westlake was in no mood for taking prisoners.

"I'll kill the little bashtard," he said, his boater rolling under the table as he slid down the table. "Sho help me, I'll shlit his dirty French throat and then I'll pull his b.l.o.o.d.y gizzards through the hole."

At that stage, of course, no-one actually believed him.

3 p.m. on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon and the Westlake Gallery resembled more tin of sardines than a preview of an exhibition by a hitherto unknown artist. No invitation had been refused, placing something of a strain on the nosebags and drink trays, since Chilton invariably considered himself lucky if one third of his invites turned up to these dos, most often only a quarter (and those usually only relatives and friends). Today the place was packed to the gunwales and, despite bloodshot eyes and an aversion to bright lights, he wasn't looking half as bad as Fizzy expected. That, she supposed, was because the gallery stood to make a mint from the sensational publicity and give Boucard his due. The Frenchman knew how to play the press.

"Not drinking, sweetheart? Splendid!" Kitty swapped her empty gla.s.s for Fizzy's full one. "Stuffs in perilously short supply. Well, chin-chin."

Straightening his purple bow tie, Chilton Westlake mounted the podium and launched into a speech about his exciting new protege and Fizzy noted the care he took to plug the other artists he'd sponsored, clearly intent on shifting as much stock as possible today. Sadly, though, her little plump friend was better at evaluating works of art than talking about them and her attention wandered in the direction of certain portait in a gilt frame. Ent.i.tled "Woman in a Mask", it was typical of Boucard's style in that "I'm not convinced Bubbles finds the demi-monde half as riveting as she'd supposed," a wry baritone murmured in Fizzy's cloche-covered ear.

She followed Teddy's gaze to where the banker's wife was sandwiched between a brace of hard-eyed villains and a group of women in red heels and even redder lips. In another surprise for Chilton, Boucard had mischievously invited several of his "prozzitutes et felons", who were swigging champagne and helping themselves to cigars on an industrial scale. Bubbles's high colour showed she was finding it hard to reconcile the fact that, any minute, she'd be seeing these same people sprawled naked across the gallery walls.

Chilton cleared his throat.

" I now call upon Louis to join us and declare this exhibition open!"

Nothing.

"I said," he repeated, raising his voice, "that I now call upon Louis Boucard to come out from the back room and open the exhibition held in his honour."

Knowing glances rippled round the crowd, as well as one or two giggles. Drink, drugs, you name it, only a relentless optimist like Chilton could seriously have expected the artist to be sober during the daytime. Louis Boucard was a creature of the night. In every respect.

"Haw, haw." Chilton tried to cover the gaffe with humour. "Not sure I'll ever understand you temperamental artistes-"

Bubbles seized the opportunity to detach herself from her underworld sandwich to fetch him, but she wasn't alone for very long. The shrill scream and the accompanying crash of crystal said it all.

Louis Boucard was dead.

"And you are, miss?'

"Phyllis Potter, 62 Northwell Mansions, Bayswater." Fizzy's smile was directed straight at the constable, but her glance was slanted at the man standing beside her. "Right between the museum and a gentleman's club, if you must know."

"Thank you, miss. And you, sir?"

"Edward James Hardcastle, 17b Elton Square, Chelsea." He kept his eyes straight. "Too many stuffed shirts and old fossils for my taste."

"Oh, dear. Elderly residents are they, sir?"

"Not exactly, constable. Is that all?"

"For the moment, yes, thank you. But we're asking people not to venture far from the scene, as there will doubtless be other questions we wish to ask. In fact, I understand there's a bar down the road-"

"Jo-Jo's," Fizzy said. "We know it well, constable. Regular watering hole," she added, tossing her boa over her shoulder, but instead of following Kitty and Marriott out into the afternoon sunshine, she took advantage of the milling confusion to slip into the anteroom.

Ugh. Louis Boucard wasn't what one would call cla.s.sically handsome in life. Grey and waxy in death, he was even more unprepossessing! She took care not to tread in the broken gla.s.s from Bubbles's champagne as she approached the desk where he was slumped. Someone, it appeared, had caved the prodigy's head in with a rather sleek black marble panther. The bloodied statuette lay on the desk among enough cocaine she tasted the powder with a tentative finger yes, with enough cocaine to supply a small continent for a decade, possibly two.

So then. Not content to take it himself. Louis had been pushing the stuff.

"You realize he was dead before he was beaned?"

Fizzy yelped, half of her livid that she hadn't noticed him leaning against the wall with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. While the other half was too busy picturing her hatful of kids made in this man's wretched image . . .

"If you're telling me someone frightened him to death," she said coolly, "I'm not remotely surprised."

A muscle twitched at the side of Teddy Hardcastle's mouth. "Boucard, I fear, was more tormenter than tormented."