The Hogarth Conspiracy Page 32

  Many times at night Mrs. Sheldon would wake and go to Louis’s room. She would stand outside and listen to her charge talking. There was no one there; there never was. But to Louis, his nighttime visitor was paying him the attention for which he had longed all his life. Finally Louis had all of Bernie Freeland’s attention. The ghost might exist only in his mind, but to Louis his father was there, more real than he had ever been. Permanently fixed in Connecticut, listening to his son, watching what he did, a presence that would never leave him again.

  It was a sweet madness.

  Fifty-Nine

  UNBLINKING, CHARLENE FLEET WATCHED VICTOR BALLAM ENTER HER office and sit down. She had to admit that he was a handsome man. The rigors of the last two weeks had toughened him, hardened his expression. He now seemed very different from the person she had first met. Then there had been a naïveté about him even after three years in prison. Now there was no element of innocence left. She knew as she looked at him that Victor Ballam wasn’t going to back off and was now prepared to play dirty.

  “I know who killed your dog.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Who?”

  “The triads. They double-crossed Lim Chang and took the Hogarth.”

  “Chang had the Hogarth?”

  “For a little while, yes.”

  “So the Chinese have it now?”

  Victor ignored the question and carried on. “They killed Chang but lost the painting.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “I know who has the Hogarth, but then, that doesn’t matter to you, does it? You were never interested in the painting, or so you said. But that made me wonder why Marian Miller would be so eager to tell you all about it.”

  “The girls always tell me interesting pieces of gossip. Most of our clients are art dealers. Marian was just passing on information.”

  “But you weren’t interested in the painting?”

  “My business is my only concern.”

  He nodded briskly. “And that’s why I’m here. You’ve lost two girls already, which must have cost you dear. And you certainly wanted Liza Frith back.”

  “Get on with it! Don’t play around with me.”

  “The triads have Liza. They want to swap the painting for her. If they don’t get the Hogarth, they’ll kill her—and kill me too.”

  “Oh, dear, Mr. Ballam,” she said with mock sympathy. “You are in a mess.”

  She could see that she was getting to him, but this time he didn’t react. He was getting clever, she realized, learning to bargain, to deal. She admired him for that, but what did he want? Pouring two glasses of wine, she passed one to Victor, noticing that he had changed his way of dressing; his jacket was dark, and his jeans were finished off with a pair of old brogues. Clothes than didn’t get a man noticed. Clever, that.

  “You put me in the mess,” Victor said smoothly. “And I want your help to get out of it. I want to buy Liza Frith back.”

  “You know where the Hogarth is. Get it and buy her with that,” she said briskly. “That’s your deal with the Chinese, isn’t it?”

  “I need more than that. I need half a million pounds.”

  “Good luck,” she said coldly.

  “Give me the half a million or I’ll ruin you.”

  Unused to threats, Mrs. Fleet blinked. If Victor had said it only a couple of days earlier, she would have laughed in his face. The death threat had obviously turned him, brought out his cruel streak. But was he as tough as she was?

  “You’ll ruin me?” she repeated, feigning amusement. “Are you serious?”

  “I know about you.”

  “Really? What do you know?”

  “I’ve been talking to your sister.”

  She felt her throat tighten, and a breath caught in her lungs. “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Yes, you do,” Victor replied. “Elizabeth Wilkes. Mother of Kit Wilkes. The same Kit Wilkes who’s spent his life tormenting his father, James Holden, MP. Only he isn’t his father, is he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I have to admit, Mrs. Fleet, that I’ve been a bit of a bastard,” Victor said simply. “Having my life threatened brought out the worst in me. I wasn’t expecting any of this when I started, but now? Now it’s dog eat dog if you’ll forgive the expression.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s quite simple. When I talked to your sister again—after she’d had time to consider the situation from all angles—she told me that she was now scared for her son’s life. Elizabeth didn’t know what had happened to Kit Wilkes—I’m still not sure myself—but she was very keen to make sure I had something on you. Bargaining power, she called it. You’ve built a business on that, haven’t you?”

  He paused, waiting for a response that didn’t come. “Your sister’s not like you, not as tough. She’s afraid of you, and so she talked to me. Wanted an ally, I suppose, or perhaps she was just giving me ammunition. Who knows? Anyway, she told me that she’d passed Kit Wilkes off as James Holden’s son and that you’d helped her.”

  “Liar.”

  “I have their blood groups. Elizabeth is A negative, Kit is O, and James Holden is type B, which is fairly rare.” He paused. “I found that out because he gave blood for a political campaign. It’s strange what stays on file, but he’d made a point of it. You know, ‘Give blood—especially if you’re a rare type.’ Not bad for a man who made his name with beef quotas. I have to say it was a good publicity stunt, and at least he gave blood, didn’t spill it.” Victor paused. “Your sister also let slip that Kit’s real father was Bernie Freeland. Which made me start thinking.”

  “Really.”

  “Kit was on that ill-fated flight on Freeland’s jet, so was there a connection?” He paused again, watching her carefully. “Your sister says not. She says that Freeland never knew Kit was his son. I suppose James Holden was an easier target. I’m just surprised that Holden never had DNA tests done.”

  Mrs. Fleet flinched. Victor caught the reaction.

  “You know, don’t you? I checked up on that too. Holden did do a DNA test. But what a strange thing: the test confirmed that Kit was Holden’s son. How could that be possible?” Victor stared at her coldly. “Well, it couldn’t unless there was someone who could make sure the results were tampered with. A tame doctor. Like Eli Fountain, for instance.”

  “You have been busy. And thorough,” Mrs. Fleet said, her rage hardly contained as she studied the man in front of her. “Let’s cut to the chase. This is blackmail. You’re blackmailing me. So what d’you want?”

  “Half a million pounds.”

  “Hah!”

  “You can raise it. You’ve got money stashed abroad, God knows how much. Half a million won’t cripple you, and anyway, you can easily make it up. Hire some more girls, expand your business. Pay me, Mrs. Fleet, or I go to James Holden and expose you. He’ll make sure the press gets to hear about it. All those years he was duped, made a laughingstock; you think he won’t want his pound of flesh? You’ll be done for, Mrs. Fleet. Your business will be exposed too, and the jackals will tear you to pieces. You’ll get jail, and you won’t like it. I didn’t.”

  Standing up, Mrs. Fleet walked over to the window and looked down into the street, drumming her nails on the window ledge, rage boiling inside her. How dare this bastard threaten her? How dare this criminal try to bring her down? And yet she knew she couldn’t risk exposure, couldn’t risk the loss of her business and her money. Neither could she risk letting her sister talk. What pleasure Elizabeth would get from hauling out the bales of Charlene O’Dywer’s stinking laundry. Then the police would start looking into her past and other matters. Like the fourteen-year-old girl who had left the north so many years before. Or the madam who had once run Park Street.

  Her eyes fixed on the road below, Mrs. Fleet felt a damp sensation of fear. All her old sins were seeping out from the graves in which she had thought them so well
buried. Events she had suppressed and forgotten formed a layer of scum in her mind. She could see herself in her teens, vicious and feral, walking down Scotland Road and cursing her luck. She remembered her father, halfblinded by the boiling coffee, and how her mother had ordered her, “Say nothing; I’ll say it were me. The fucker had it coming.”

  Escaping punishment, Charlene O’Dywer had been rewarded for her brutality. And had gone on to make a career out of it. But now she was seeing it all put at risk by the one man she had never suspected would be capable of threatening her. The one man she now hated.

  “You said you want half a million pounds.” She turned from the window to face him. “And you really think I’ll give it to you?”

  “I think you’ve got no choice.”

  “You won’t get away with this, Ballam. I’ll get my own back,” she said, a warning in her tone. “It might take me a while, but I will. One day. One day when you’re least expecting it.”

  “Don’t bother threatening me.”

  “I’m not threatening you,” she said, cold as ice. “I’m telling you. You might have the upper hand now, but not forever. I’ll get my revenge. So watch your back, Ballam; no one takes what’s mine and gets away with it.”

  “I want the money.”

  Beaten, Mrs. Fleet nodded. Once. “Don’t return at a later date and ask for more.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Just one thing I need to know. Did Eli Fountain give me away?”

  “No” Victor admitted. “It was just a guess.” She smiled, almost in admiration. “I knew he’d been working for you for years and that he knew your sister. Elizabeth told me that. I bet he knew a hell of a lot about what was going on here. He’s a greedy man, likes money, and I imagine Eli Fountain would do pretty much anything for it. That avarice would make him a good accomplice and buy you a trusted servant, but only so far.” Victor paused, his expression unreadable. “Fountain didn’t mention that he was after the Hogarth, did he?”

  All the color drained from Mrs. Fleet’s face. “What?”

  “Oh, dear,” Victor said with mock sympathy. “Did you really think you had him completely under control? Fountain told me he might have a buyer for the painting.”

  “Arnold Fletcher?”

  That surprised him. “No, although his name keeps cropping up. Obviously the buyer wasn’t you, was it?”

  She felt as though a fist had been pushed into her heart.

  “Fountain was after the Hogarth? The little bastard never mentioned it.”

  “Kit Wilkes told him about the painting when he got back to London. Wilkes is his patient, after all. Apparently he told Doctor Fountain that someone was picking the Hogarth up in New York.”

  Fire was in her throat and belly and was stinging her eyes because of the duplicity of the man she had trusted for so long. Eli Fountain had never spoken a word about the Hogarth, never intimated by look or gesture that he knew anything about the painting. After all they had shared, he had kept it from her. Double-crossed her for greed.

  “Does Fountain know who the man is?”

  “No. And I don’t know who the killer is either. I’m unraveling the mess, but I haven’t got that far.”

  Mrs. Fleet sat down heavily, afraid that she might fall, her legs betraying her shock. She hadn’t been lying; she hadn’t been after the painting. She had just wanted to protect her business, her investment. But to find out that Eli Fountain was going behind her back and that her sister had turned on her…. Her composure was melting, her instincts unaccountably sluggish. And when she looked up and saw Victor Ballam, her hatred focused on him.

  “Fuck you, Ballam.”

  “I want the money. Tomorrow.” He stood up to go, glancing at the space by her feet where her dog had once been. “You were right; your dog’s death was a warning to you.”

  “A warning of what? Of my sister? Doctor Fountain? You? As for Liza Frith, frankly, if I were you, I wouldn’t bother swapping her for the Hogarth. It would be a poor deal. No one’s that good a whore.”

  “Not even you, Mrs. Fleet?” he asked coldly. “Not even you?”

  I despair of this business of which I am a part.

  It is 1751, and I have just published The Four Stages of Cruelty to disappointing reviews and indifferent sales. Am I the only man repelled by the cruelties inflicted on the children and animals of this city? Indeed, this country? Is no one to talk of what is ungodly, vile? Are such matters of no purpose? Are they to have no place on public walls?

  To my rivals’ glee, the prints were not as popular as my previous works, or so I was so joyfully informed. Has Master Hogarth lost his conjurer’s skill, they ask, and say the public grows weary of the “brutal effects” employed. Do they thus grow weary of me?

  The images I draw are too real, too like life, people complain. Too like our own steaming, stinking streets, with their threatening alleyways, dead infants, and starving, rabid dogs. Too like life to bear to look upon. Why spend money when to glance out of the window is to see it all for nothing, without the expense of a penny print?

  Never learning to curtail my feelings, I retaliated, making up in temper what I lack in height. I parodied a Rembrandt, titled it Paul before Felix, and put it before the cock-a-doodle connoisseurs and public who are fascinated by the Dutchman, by his soup shadows and high themes. Down every promenade in the West End, windows parade a thousand Takings of Christ; everywhere one looks, a Jesus looms up in London streets. The talk is of Rembrandt Van Rijn, as though he, and only he, can depict the reality of man.

  And fetch such high prices for the dealers.

  More news came yesterday. News more than grief. Frederick, Prince of Wales, has left this mortal plain. Polly Gunnell’s lover, gone to earth with every other man, his body buried, rotting like every other body in every other grave. In whispers, Thomas and I talked of the dead Prince, of his rival court, of his hatred for his father. His death should not have happened. He will not sit upon the throne when his father dies. He will not take up the spectre and orb nor feel the crown upon his head.

  Together we looked out of the window and watched Hal—the Prince’s son—talking to a group of other young men in the courtyard, throwing dice on the gravel and laughing under the waxy sun. His appearance speaks of his mother, denies his father. For that I am grateful. Frederick, Prince of Wales, should have inherited the throne, but now when the old King dies, his grandson will inherit and govern England.

  No one will ever know of the child Polly Gunnell bore. No one will know that in London, in the courtyard of the Foundling Hospital, a boy called Hal is playing dice. That a boy called Hal—the bastard child supposed long murdered—is the unknown heir to the English throne.

  The hidden, protected successor to nothing. Except life.

  In a while I returned home, then took a carriage out of London to a place I visited seldom. And always alone. Here, long ago, risking my own safety I had secreted the ring the Prince of Wales had given me for safekeeping, together with my original painting: the version depicting the Prince and Polly Gunnell. As though visiting a friend, long loved, but feared, I studied the canvas I had created so many years before. He is still there, a pinch to the heart, his image smiling behind Polly, their secret hardly discernible in the swell of her belly.

  He is still smiling, this man now dead. And she is still smiling, this woman so badly used, so brutally butchered. And as I gaze upon them, I bow my head, then nod a reassurance to the dead.

  Sixty

  WAITING UNTIL SHE SAW HER SISTER LEAVE KIT’S ROOM, CHARLENE Fleet counted to three and then walked toward it. It was past ten at night, and having seen Elizabeth wearing her overcoat, she had assumed that her sister was leaving and would not return that night. The only person in the room apart from the unconscious Kit Wilkes was the unctuous Dr. Fountain.

  Pushing open the door, Mrs. Fleet slid behind a nearby screen and watched as the little doctor opened his medicine bag and began rummaging through it. A moment later h
e took out a vial and a syringe, carefully filled the latter from the former, and then expelled the air bubbles. At Kit’s bedside, he began pushing up his patient’s left pajama sleeve.

  Mrs. Fleet pounced. “You little bastard,” she hissed, putting her arm around Fountain’s throat and snatching the syringe out of his hand. “You little shit.”

  He struggled in the headlock, then stiffened, listening to her.

  “All these years I’ve trusted you, and now I’ve found out that you’ve been cheating me. After the Hogarth, are you? But you didn’t tell me, didn’t mention anything about it. But you knew about the painting from the start, didn’t you? You’d been talking to Kit Wilkes about it.” Her grip tightened; Fountain made a gurgling sound. “Wanted all the money for yourself, did you?”

  “I can explain,” he croaked in a strangled whisper.

  “You’ll have to explain and make it good.” Her arm still around his throat, she squeezed cruelly. “No one cheats me, Eli. You of all people should know that. You’ve been with me for years, decades. We’ve made a lot of money together, had some real success, but you still thought you could put one over on me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I trusted you; I thought you were the only person I could rely on. D’you know how it feels to find out that you’ve been betrayed? Do you know how that hurts?” She jerked her arm against his Adam’s apple. “I could kill you.”

  “Don’t, please don’t,” he begged, hardly audible. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You’re right there, Eli. You will do whatever I want.” She loosened her stranglehold. “Victor Ballam’s just told me that you wanted the Hogarth for yourself, to sell it.”

  “I only said that. I didn’t mean it!” he blustered. “I was trying to keep him off track.”

  “Really?” She glanced at the needle. “What track is that, you little fucker? What’s this you were about to give your patient?” She waved the syringe in front of the doctor’s eyes and tightened her grip again. “A vitamin shot?”