‘Not necessarily, I should have thought. The person who would be bound to know is an art-dealer. There would be such a man in a place like this, I suppose?’
‘We will try the market square.’
A double-fronted shop in the Rode Steen, once a place of public execution, displayed good reproductions of pictures by Rembrandt van Rijn, Franz Hals, Thomas de Keyser, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Pieter de Hooch and Jan Vermeer.
‘This is it,’ said Laura. ‘Will you do the asking or shall I?’
‘I will ask in Dutch,’ said Sweyn. He did this and apparently received a satisfactory reply, for he smiled, bowed his thanks and escorted Laura from the shop.
‘Can you walk a little?’ he asked. ‘He lives on a farm not far from here.’
‘I’d love to walk,’ said Laura, with enthusiasm. ‘Lives on a farm? That’s enterprising of him.’
‘I do not suppose the farm belongs to him. He lodges there, I think.’
Milking a Frisian cow was a fresh-faced girl in a checked apron and the small lace cap of the neighbourhood. She directed them to the farmhouse and an older woman wearing glasses invited them in and said that
‘An original Albion, no doubt,’ said Laura, getting up to obtain a closer look at it. ‘I don’t know a great deal about painting, but to my untutored eye it seems a pretty fair bit of brushwork. Do sculptors usually paint as well?’
She resumed her seat just before the woman returned with the artist. He was a tall, sturdy man of early middle age with the long mouth of a lawyer and the far-seeing eyes of a sailor. His hands were grimy, with broad, stumpy fingers, and he wore thick brown trousers and had on a pyjama jacket under a dirty grey sweater. His expression was good-tempered and cheerful.
‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘And what can I do for you? I’m full up with commissions for the next six months, but after that I might fit you in.’ He reduced his eyes to slits and summed up Laura. ‘Magnificent,’ he remarked. ‘You would make a splendid nude. Are you a virgin?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ exclaimed Laura, laughing at the naive question. ‘I’ve been married for years and I’ve got a son at prep. school. Anyway, I’m afraid we haven’t come to put another commission in your way. We wondered whether you could help us.’
‘Not with money. My charity begins at home and stays there. You may believe you’re collecting for a good cause, but begging is begging, whether it’s for yourself or a cats’ home.’
‘We are not collecting anything but a small item of information,’ said Sweyn. ‘I believe you have recently completed a portrait bust of a young relative of mine, Florian Colwyn-Welch.’
‘Oh, yes. A fellow too handsome to be interesting. I put the price up a bit when I saw him. It does my work no good to portray those sort of beautiful, mindless people.’
The trouble is that he’s disappeared. We thought it just possible that you might know where he is.’
‘Why should I?’
‘We thought it was worth trying,’ said Laura. ‘His grand-uncle has been ill and wants to see him, but he’s vanished, and we knew he came here to sit to you.’
‘I’ll show you the painting I’ve done of his hand holding a flower. It’s rather nice. I refer, of course to my painting, not to the hand, which is that of one type of killer.’
He left them and returned shortly with a framed canvas. It depicted a beautiful, rather girlish hand holding a hyacinth between thumb and first finger. The other fingers were extravagantly cocked. Laura and Sweyn admired the painting and the artist removed it. When he came back, Laura said:
‘If it’s finished, why hasn’t the family got it?
‘I’m waiting to hear from them. The bust I did in my studio in Amsterdam, and they have it in their apartment. The original order was for a bronze, but I think the price was prohibitive. Bronzes do come expensive, of course. The hand-and-flower picture was done here — the hand from nature, the hyacinth from memory, for the flowering season is over. I did a good many flower-studies at one time, so I know this is good. The hand itself looks rather silly. I gave him a pencil to hold and that’s how he held it.’
‘And you can’t give us any idea of where to look for Florian?’ asked Laura.
‘He said he wanted to get back to England. That is as much as I know. I asked him to pay me for the picture I showed you just now, but he said he had not commissioned it. That was true enough, so I shall dun his grandmother for the money and if she won’t cough up I shall sell it for what it will fetch.’
‘I’m sure she’ll cough up,’ said Laura.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Towards Kinderscout
‘Delay is kind,
And we too soon shall find
That which we seek, yet fear to know.’
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