The Hogarth Conspiracy Read online

  I had relished the immediate and popular success of the work when it was exhibited to the public. My reputation seemed established within one London day, and the series was proving to be exactly what I had hoped for—a triumphant popular success, vindicated by a flurry of early fakes. My spiteful paintbrush, coupled with my sardonic moral judgements, had led me to create works which were exciting, outrageous, and titillating.

  But I had gone too far, parodied the wrong person, and set in motion a series of events which I knew were only in their infancy. I could paint the villains, the whores, the debauched—but not the royal court.

  Anxious, I turned back to Nell.

  “Go to Chiswick tonight. Now. In the morning I’ll explain to everyone that you had a bereavement at home and will return soon.” I took some coins from my pocket and handed them to her. “Take a hackney cab all the way. Go now, Nell. Tell your daughter anything you want—but not the truth. Tell no one that. There was never a child brought into this house. If anyone asks you about it, you deny any knowledge. Remember this and remember it well—no child ever came here.”

  Seventeen

  AT FIRST UNAWARE THAT HE WAS BEING WATCHED, JAMES HOLDEN, MP, muffled a yawn and continued to listen to the protracted speech on arable farming that he had been forced to attend in Brussels. He would have to remember to congratulate the speaker afterward and buy him a drink even though his performance had been execrable. He would flatter and schmooze—what he did best. He would attend the dinner dance too, leaving his jacket open to disguise the filling out of his waist.

  His left hand moved to the top of his head, touching his thick layered hair. He smiled to himself: the best head of hair in Westminster, they had said in Private Eye. He had ignored the second part of the quote: “topping the dumbest brain.”

  It wasn’t true. He might not match the intellect of some his colleagues, but he was by no means dim, and his grasp of the minutiae of protocol and funding was impressive. The trouble was that such matters were considered dull, and those who dealt in them even duller. He would never get a place in the cabinet even with the Tories back in power, but he made a nifty backbencher and he was reliable. That counted for a lot. People might be attracted to the highfliers, but they needed the steady workhorses. And besides, his hard, dull, mind-grindingly boring work was not going to go unnoticed.

  James uncrossed his legs as he felt cramp starting in his right calf and reflected on how he had been in line for an honor for some time, indeed been promised one. A medal, a circle of beaten metal to make up for all the interminable meat quotas. A medal to say that the time spent with his head up the asses of his betters was worth it. Besides, he deserved it; it was owed to him, and before long everyone would know it.

  Suddenly aware that he was being watched, James turned to see a woman standing by the door of the chamber. He knew she was a journalist immediately; he’d seen so many of them over the years that he could recognize one in a multitude. And he knew why she was there: to get a quote about Kit Wilkes.

  The name acted like a hair shirt, running bristles along his nerve ends. His wife, Margaret, had long since forgiven his dalliance with his secretary, but his short-lived affair with Elizabeth Wilkes, which followed, had unfortunately resulted in a son. Even that had not been too much of a problem at first. In private, James had settled some money on Elizabeth and, after some acrimonious exchanges, had agreed that he would pay for the child’s schooling. But on one condition only: he would not acknowledge the boy publicly, never admit that he was Kit Wilkes’s father. And would not give him the Holden name. That was not for the bastard result of an ill-judged fling.

  But for all his detailed and meticulous planning, Holden had not allowed for Kit Wilkes’s character. How could he have? As the boy hit his late teens, he discovered the tabloid newspapers. Expelled from school and using drugs, Kit Wilkes turned his bitterness and spite onto his father through the media. There was easy money in selling his story to the Sunday papers, and after a while Kit didn’t have to approach them; they followed him. Soon Kit was universally known as the illegitimate son of James Holden, and his camp vindictiveness and longing for attention soon elevated him to the role of minor celebrity. A spell on a jungle reality show—where his hysterical outbursts and unexpected seduction of an aging female singer increased the ratings astronomically—was followed by a nervous breakdown and a spell in the Harley Street Clinic.

  Photographed supposedly crying for his father, Kit Wilkes then declared that he was going to take over the running of his mother’s art gallery. As before, he surprised everyone. The gallery had been privately settled on Elizabeth by James Holden, but for years she had left its running to a manager. However, Kit had other ideas. Possessing a keen intellect and an entrenched desire to succeed, he collected English portraiture when Britart was at its peak. Choosing a genre that was not popular, Kit was soon able to attain a small but impressive collection. A success by default, he sold his works at the end of the 1990s and made a killing.

  Accompanied sometimes by a man, sometimes by a woman, his androgynous, Sphinx-like face appeared as regularly in the papers as a car ad, effortlessly pulling in the kind of publicity his father had always longed for. Setting Holden up as his personal whipping boy, Kit taunted him at every opportunity, mocking his fleshy figure, his sea lion jowls, his flamboyant bouffant hair. He took swipes at his father’s work too, ridiculing the cereal crops, the beet and grain quotas, and James’s endless sycophantic flattery of the aristocracy.

  As the permanent Iago to his father’s ambitious Othello, Kit Wilkes had been a vicious, vocal tyrant. But he wasn’t talking now, James thought with relief. No, Kit was quiet now, mercifully silent in his coma, his Cupid’s bow mouth uncharacteristically shut. There will be no quotes from my bastard son—he nodded at the journalist politely—and none from me.

  Back to looking at the speaker, James appeared to concentrate, but he was thinking about a new jibe he’d heard his son had been preparing. Another exposure to fire a crippling dart into his father’s bloated backside. James Holden’s eyes remained on the speaker, his expression encouraging, but his thoughts were in London, and he was wishing with fervent intensity that his son’s coma would become permanent and that Kit Wilkes would never talk again.

  Eighteen

  SMOOTHING HIS HANDS OVER THE NEW LEATHER TOP OF HIS DESK, DR. Eli Fountain smiled, his cheeks dimpling and his capped teeth revealed. The furniture restorer had done a good job, the doctor thought admiringly; it was a very competent piece of work. But then money bought the best, Fountain told himself. The best furniture, the best workman. The best kind of life. He didn’t dwell on all the whores he had to examine for venereal disease or the grubby running around he had done for Charlene Fleet over the years; such unpleasantness was forgotten at the sight of a perfectly restored piece of furniture or a dinner at Le Gavroche.

  All those years earlier, back in Texas, he had been a figure of fun. Short and unprepossessing with a slow drawl and a pudgy body, Eli Fountain had made few friends and courted no lovers. Realizing early on that his bedside manner was more likely to cause a relapse than a recovery, he had changed focus, and when the local whorehouse needed a clap doctor, he had obliged. Whores were used to ugly men and required no wooing. In return for a favor, a drug prescription, or an abortion, Fountain had managed to get all the sex his body craved.

  He discovered that he could buy respect too. At least to his face. But then, after a botched abortion, he left Texas for good. Holding on to his doctor’s license, he came to London. The whorehouse in Texas had given him some contacts, and top of the list had been Park Street. Of course Eli Fountain had known that Chelsea was for the elite and that he had to assume a persona that would slide effortlessly into this new milieu. But then, no one had ever accused Eli of being a slow learner.

  So he kept his drawl because it was considered amusing in London, gotten himself a Savile Row tailor, and bought himself an apartment in a respectable, tree-flecked pa
rt of Kensington. It took two weeks to pamper, buff, and shine his image to get it ready for his interview with Mrs. Fleet, and as he walked up the stairs to her private rooms, Eli Fountain felt like a man about to undergo an epiphany.

  On his third knock, Mrs. Fleet had opened the door and stood back to let him in, and his life had changed in that instant. Of course she loathed him—Eli knew that; he wasn’t a fool—but alongside the loathing was real admiration. Eli had known from the first moment he set eyes on her that Mrs. Fleet was a born whore. Her tasteful, expensive clothes couldn’t hide her large peasant’s hands. And her cool control couldn’t camouflage her unfeeling venal nature. She was as well suited to her profession as he was to treating whores.

  They were made for each other. And without ever exchanging one kind word or a single endearment, without expressing gratitude, compassion, or consideration, they built up a bond of mutual greed. Mrs. Fleet clicked her fingers; he did the running. For a fee. She called him in the early hours to patch up some whore who had taken a beating, and he sat with the girl until she was calm again. For a fee. Mrs. Fleet could demand drugs for some of her clients and expect them to be ready and waiting on the pillow, and Eli would oblige. For a fee.

  Two depraved individuals who kept each other’s secrets, with Mrs. Fleet always making sure she had the upper hand. And Eli Fountain kept his secret copious notes and listened to the call girls moan as he commiserated and slipped them prescriptions. He also obliged several well-known clients who needed treatment for an STD, not, of course, caught from Mrs. Fleet’s girls but on trips abroad. They confided in Eli Fountain, and he kept their confidences. Along with all the other sticky, dirty secrets that came his way. There was always plenty of room to hide a scandal or cover up a disgrace. Always plenty of people needing a slick reptile of a man to bury their detritus. And Doctor Eli Fountain swore undying loyalty to all of them.

  For a fee.

  Hunkering down in his coat as it began to rain, Victor Ballam walked down Cork Street toward Piccadilly. He crossed at the lights and passed under the haughty sheltering colonnade of the Ritz, pausing to buy a copy of the Evening Standard from a street vendor. Reading the newspaper headlines, Victor was so preoccupied that when someone bumped into him, he automatically mumbled an apology.

  “Sorry.”

  “Be careful.”

  Surprised by the man’s tone, Victor stared at him. “I said sorry.”

  “You will be, Mr. Ballam, if you don’t back off now.”

  “Back off? What are you talking about?”

  “Mrs. Fleet, her girls. The Hogarth.” The man paused, his well-modulated voice low. “I see you understand me.” Slowly he glanced at the paper in Victor’s hands. “You don’t want to end up as a headline on the front page, do you? A murder victim?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “That’s not important. I’m just a little cog in a giant wheel that can crush anyone in its way. Like you, Mr. Ballam. So please keep your nose out of this matter or at best you’ll find yourself back in jail and at worst you’ll find yourself dead.”

  With that, the man moved off, past the main entrance of the Ritz, and disappeared around the corner.

  Shaken, Victor glanced around him, wondering if anyone else might have overheard the exchange. But they had been alone with no convenient witnesses to what he realized was an unmistakable threat.

  The man was hardly a thug. Clean shaven and well spoken, he was around fifty and had worn glasses; he could have been any one of a million similar men crossing London Bridge every morning. Victor doubted he could even pick him out in a lineup, but then, there wasn’t going to be a lineup, was there? Victor wasn’t going to the police. He couldn’t. Unless matters got out of hand.

  But hadn’t they just done exactly that? Hadn’t his life just been threatened? The shrill ring of his cell phone broke into his thoughts, and he moved into a doorway to take the call. It was Mrs. Fleet.

  Simply, without preamble, she said, “Bernie Freeland’s dead. And in light of what else has been going on, I don’t believe it was an accident.”

  “Neither do I.” Victor looked around to see if anyone was watching him, if the man who had threatened him was waiting for him.

  His unease was obvious even over the phone.

  “Are you up to this?” Mrs. Fleet demanded, her tone imperious.

  “I really don’t know.”

  She laughed hoarsely. “An honest answer from an honest man. No wonder you were in jail. There’s something else I should tell you. Liza Frith is safe here, but Annette Dvorski’s missing. I think she went to New York to meet up with Bernie Freeland. Obviously she didn’t know she’s going to end up visiting him in the morgue.”

  “Couldn’t you stop her?”

  “Obviously not.”

  Victor was curt. “Is Liza Frith there with you?”

  “Why?”

  “Put her on the line, will you?”

  “All right, but just one thing before you talk to Liza: I don’t want her to know about Bernie Freeland. The less she knows, the better. I don’t need her to panic.”

  Before Victor could reply, she’d left the phone. A lull was followed by muffled footsteps, and then a young woman’s childlike nervous voice said, “Hello?”

  “My name’s Victor Ballam, Liza. Mrs. Fleet’s hired me to look into what’s been happening, and I want to ask you something. Was Marian jumpy on the plane?”

  “No. She wasn’t the type. Didn’t get frightened of anything.”

  “So she was acting perfectly normally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long had she known Bernie Freeland?”

  “Four or five years, I think,” Liza replied, her tone soft. “Marian had done loads of those private jet flights with Bernie.”

  Pausing, Victor picked his words carefully. “Did you?”

  “Some; not as many as Marian or Annette.”

  “Did you know the pilots on the flight?”

  “I knew one of them: Duncan Fairfax. He always flies Bernie’s jet, but the other one was new; never seen him before. Tallish but a bit wimpy actually. Even a pilot’s uniform didn’t work for him.” She laughed, momentarily lighthearted. “But Duncan Fairfax was showing off as usual, lording it over him. Pompous ass.”

  “What was the copilot’s name?”

  “I dunno,” Liza admitted. “Sorry.”

  “What about the cabin crew? What can you remember about them?”

  “One young guy, one older one with glasses. I’d see him before; he was always on Bernie’s plane. His name’s Malcolm Jenner, but I hadn’t seen the younger one before. Bernie said he worked at his home in Sydney, but he wanted to travel.”

  “Did he make you feel uneasy?”

  Unexpectedly, she laughed again.

  “No; we made him feel uncomfortable when he walked into the cabin without knocking. Bernie teased him about it afterward. But he was nice enough, not more than twenty-five, twenty-six.”

  “You’re very observant.”

  “After Bernie passed out, there were hours when there was nothing to do. A plane’s got few amusements,” she added.

  “What about Lim Chang, the Chinese dealer? Did you talk to him?”

  “Annette talked to him, but not me. I liked Sir Oliver Peters. He was nice—but sad … like some men are, you know? Seemed a bit lost, which was strange, but Bernie admires him. He thinks Sir Oliver’s classy, told me he feels like an oaf when the Englishman’s around.”

  “What did you and Sir Oliver talk about?”

  “Something and nothing.”

  “Did you talk to Kit Wilkes?”

  “Oh, no! He was pretending to be asleep most of the flight, and we hadn’t been checked out by Doctor Fountain.” She explained. “Wilkes won’t sleep with anyone without a medical check from that weird little Yank before he performs—or we do. Mind you, I reckon that it’s his partners who have to worry.”

  “So nothing out of the ordinary happened
until Bernie Freeland’s drink was spiked?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Did you put something in his drink?”

  “No!” She laughed. “It was Annette. She loves her practical jokes. We were in Madrid once, and she sent a note over to the woman at the next table, pretending it was the waiter asking her out.”

  “After Bernie’s drink got spiked, what did he do?”

  “Got all sweaty and panicky and said something to Sir Oliver Peters. I was too far away to hear what it was. I just caught the word Hogarth and told Annette, but she wasn’t interested. She was reading.”

  “Could Kit Wilkes have overheard what was said?”

  Liza thought for a moment. “I reckon everyone on that plane could have heard if they were close enough and listening.”

  “Including the crew?”

  “Maybe.”

  Victor paused for a moment before continuing. “One other thing. Did Bernie Freeland give you anything on the flight? Did he give you—or any of the other girls—a package, some kind of parcel?”

  She frowned, baffled.

  “No, just a bracelet. Bernie’s always generous. Pays well and throws in gifts if you’ve pleased him. And he’d enjoyed himself; he told us that.”

  “Hang on,” Victor said, tucking himself farther into the stone doorway as the rain increased. “So Bernie gave you a bracelet each?”

  “No; he gave me a bracelet, from Cartier. And he gave Marian a ring, because that was what she’d asked for on the last trip.” Liza paused, thinking. “But Annette’s really into sports, so she asked for a set of golf clubs.”