‘None the less, I spoke no more than the truth. I shall take tea with the “great man”, as you choose to call him.’
‘You will be lucky to exchange more than a greeting and a farewell with him.’ Adam looked across at his friend, noting the self-satisfied smile that had appeared on his face. ‘Besides, I do believe that you go to see Mrs Millais rather than her husband.’
‘And why not? She is a beautiful woman, Carver. Who would not want to feast his eyes upon her?’
‘She is married and she is fifteen years your senior, Jardine. I think perhaps your chances of a romance are limited.’
‘Ah, but she is a stunner none the less.’
‘I am pleased to hear that Mrs Millais is as lovely as rumour paints her,’ Adam said, taking a cigarette case from his pocket, then extracting a cigarette and lighting it. Smoke drifted upwards, obscuring the image of King Pellinore on the canvas. ‘So many of these famous beauties are fabulous in the report but disappointing in person.’
‘Not necessarily the case, old man. I saw Skittles once riding in the park,’ Jardine said. ‘Several years ago now. She was quite as handsome as even her most besotted admirer might claim.’
‘Ah, the legendary Miss Walters. The most practised of the capital’s courtesans. Or so I am told.’
‘I have often wondered about the origin of her sobriquet. Why Skittles? I have asked myself.’
‘She once worked in a bowling alley off Park Lane, I understand.’
‘The explanation is as simple as that, is it? Well, like Effie Millais, she was a stunner.’
Jardine moved suddenly away from his failed likeness of King Pellinore and began to pace around the small studio, as if measuring its dimensions.
‘By the by,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘while we are on the subject of feminine beauty, you must tell me more of the enigmatic charmer you mentioned the other day. The lady who came calling upon you. The lady who vanished.’
‘There is no more to tell. She arrived unheralded and she departed as mysteriously as she arrived. I was away but a few moments to deal with Quint and his attempts to destroy my dark room. When I returned, she was gone.’
‘You must have driven her away, Carver. A remark out of place. A breach of etiquette. You were ever a blunderer where the more ornamental sex is concerned.’
‘Thus speaks the Lothario of Old Church Street, I suppose. You would no doubt have me believe that you would have won her heart in a matter of moments.’ Adam was smiling at his friend’s words as Jardine continued to walk restlessly around the room. ‘I had no chance to exercise any charms I may possess. She was gone before I could attempt it. However, I can assure you that none of my remarks was out of place. And any breach of etiquette was entirely hers.’
The painter had returned once more to his canvas and was staring closely at it.
‘It is no good,’ he said, taking a step back from it. ‘It looks more like the carte de visite of a provincial solicitor than it does the portrait of a medieval knight.’ The young artist made a gesture as if he was about wipe his canvas clean immediately. ‘Photography has caused much damage to the fine arts. Even I am not insusceptible to its malign influence.’
‘You should be careful of remarks like that, Jardine. It is bad artists who belittle photography. They do so in the same way that stagecoach proprietors used to decry the dangers and inconveniences of travelling by the railway.’
Jardine, his head cocked to one side, was examining his painting from a different angle.
‘Aha, we are embarking on that old argument again, are we?’ he said. ‘It threatens to become stale, Carver.’
‘I tell you, Jardine, photography is the art of the future. The easel and the palette belong to the past’
‘My dear fellow, we shall have to agree to disagree. As for me, I shall stick with my brushes and my oils.’
Adam turned his back on the painting of King Pellinore and made his way towards the small rosewood table in the corner of the studio where the painter kept a cut glass decanter of whisky.
‘Actually, I have no wish to argue with you. I have enough to puzzle my poor head at present. The lady who disappeared is not the only mystery I have encountered. I seem to have stumbled into another of late.’
‘Well, waste no time in setting it before me, Carver. I have a devilish liking for mysteries. Especially those which involve beautiful young damsels in possible distress.’
‘Unfortunately, this one does not. Do you mind if I pour myself a drink?’
Jardine made a gesture to indicate that his friend should help himself to the contents of the decanter. Adam, splashing a generous measure of spirits into the glass, first raised it towards the artist in a mock toast and then drank from it.
‘The circumstances surrounding it have been plaguing my mind for the last few days. It began with a gentleman, unknown to me, calling at my club more than a week ago.’
As Jardine nodded and made small noises of surprise or encouragement, Adam unfolded events at the Speke dinner and the story his odd neighbour at the table had told him. When he had finished, the painter remained silent, stroking his beard like an actor playing the part of a man in deep thought.
‘I do believe I know this fellow Creech,’ he said at last.
Adam looked across at his friend in surprise.
‘Yes, I am almost certain it must be he who came calling upon me the other day in search of a painting to buy. He said he had been recommended to visit my humble studios by Burne-Jones. This surprised me since I don’t suppose I have exchanged ten words with Burne-Jones in my entire life. It pains me to admit this but the name of Cosmo Jardine probably means as little to him as the name of, let us say, Adam Carver.’
‘Your days of anonymity are doubtless numbered, Jardine. Your fame will soon spread beyond the boundaries of Chelsea.’
The artist bowed his head in ironic acknowledgement of the compliment.
‘However, I am about to deepen your little mystery rather than solve it. The man who came to me was exactly as you describe him. The telling detail of the crescent moon scar on the brow surely proves it was he. And yet he was not calling himself Creech.’
‘He was not?’
‘No,’ Jardine said, ‘he introduced himself to me as a Dr Sinclair, recently returned to London after a long period spent healing the expatriate sick in Florence. I had no reason to doubt him. Of course, he knew nothing of art. Even though he had lived in Florence, it was clear that he could not tell a Whistler from a Watteau. But then, few of my few patrons could. In the event, he failed to join the select list of those who have acknowledged the genius of Cosmo Jardine with pounds, shillings and pence. He bought nothing.’
‘But why was he calling upon you at all?’
‘There is, I suppose, the smallest of possibilities that he was doing what he claimed to be doing. Looking to purchase a painting from one of London’s most promising artists.’
‘While calling himself Dr Sinclair, the physician returned from Italian exile?’
‘Perhaps he really is Sinclair. Perhaps it is Creech that is the assumed name.’
‘No,’ Adam said, ‘there is not the slightest of chances that he could become a member of the Marco Polo under a false name. It is difficult enough for a man to gain admittance under his real one.’
‘Well, the problem has me floored.’ Jardine was losing interest in the question of his caller’s identity, his eyes returning to the picture propped on his easel. ‘I would not have minded him calling himself the Earl of Derby or Giuseppe Garibaldi or even the Daring Young Man on his Flying Trapeze if only he had bought one of my paintings.’
‘Things are bad?’