The Careful Use of Compliments

presumably the T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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auction house people must think it genuine—they would never offer anything for sale if they had any doubts about it. So why do you think . . .” He was going to say, “when you really don’t know anything much about art,” but decided not to. It was implied, though, and he did not need to say it.

“I know it may sound odd to you,” said Isabel. “But I just have a feeling that something’s not quite right about that painting.”

Jamie sighed. “But why? You have to have grounds for thinking something like that. It’s not enough to have a feeling. ” He paused, watching Isabel. She had spoken to him before about intuition, and about how it worked; inarticulate knowledge, she had called it. But he had been unable to understand how it was possible to know something but not know how you knew it.

That just did not make sense to him. Even with music, he had said, you know why you like something; you can analyse it in terms of musical structure and see why things sound good or not; you know, and you can always work out why you know.

Isabel had decided that there were reasons for her suspicions. “Why would Walter Buie want to pass the painting on so quickly?” she asked. “Would you do that? Would you buy a painting and then the next moment try to sell it?” She waited for Jamie to answer, but he was silent, and so she answered for him.

“You wouldn’t. Unless you had found out something about the painting—something that you didn’t know when you bought it.”

“Or you had acted on impulse,” said Jamie. “Look at how many people take things back to shops after a day or so. Women, mostly. They buy an outfit and then decide that they don’t like it. So it goes back.”

Isabel looked at him wryly. “And you’re saying that men don’t do that?”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h

“They don’t,” said Jamie. “I worked in Jenners once when I was a student. Everybody knew that men didn’t bring things back. In fact, we were taught that in a training course. Somebody from the store had the figures. Men never brought clothes back.”

Isabel thought that he was probably right. “So what you’re saying is that Walter Buie, as a man, would never take it back to the auction house, but he might try to sell it on?”

“Yes,” said Jamie. “But you can’t take things back to an auction house anyway. It’s not like a clothes store.”

“I don’t know where this is leading,” said Isabel.

“All I’m suggesting is that there could be other reasons he offered it to you. You can’t conclude that it’s a fake, just because he wants to get rid of it.”

She had to admit that this was true. But there was something else. “Guy was surprised that the painting wasn’t varnished,” she said. “He said that McInnes usually varnished his paintings.”

“But he still didn’t think it was a fake, did he? So he can’t have thought that the fact that it wasn’t varnished was all that important.”

She had to admit this too. And now, with the two elements of her case reduced by Jamie’s scrutiny, she was thrown back on her conviction that something about the painting just did not feel right. She had no idea why coming to Jura should strengthen that conviction, but on her walk today, when she had looked at the very view which appeared in the painting, she had felt it strongly. The painting was faithful to the view from the beach; there was nothing more, nor less, in it than there was in the real scene. But for some reason she was sure that it just did not add up; how she would prove that, she had no idea, and T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S

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she did not want to talk about it anymore. She picked up her wineglass. “Enough of all that,” she said. “I shall keep my suspicions to myself. Let’s just enjoy this place.”

Jamie raised his glass to hers. “To the next three days,” he said. He looked at her, almost reproachfully. “And, Isabel . . .

don’t. Just don’t.”

“I’ll try not to.” She meant it, but somehow she knew at the same time that she did not. Can one want to do something and yet not want to do it? Of course you can, she told herself. Of course.

C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N

E

TELL ME ABOUT LIZZIE,” said Jamie.

They were driving up the island, on the narrow road that hugged the coast. Off to their left, now shrouded by cloud, now exposed to shafts of late-morning sunlight, the Paps of Jura tow-ered, crouching lions guarding Scotland against the Atlantic. To their right, across the Sound of Jura, was the Scottish mainland with its mountains in layers, blue beyond blue. The sea was calm, glassy flat, silver in the sun.

“Lizzie?” said Isabel. “Well, I got to know her when I came up here four years ago. I stayed with friends who had rented Ardlussa, where we’re going. Her parents were away but she stayed behind to cook. She was in her very early twenties then.

She’s a genius when it comes to lobsters and crayfish. She caught them herself; she had her own pots. And she knew some men who dived for scallops.

“Then we met again when I was a weekend guest in Glen Lyon. Lizzie had been hired as cook—that’s what she does. I’ve seen her a few times in Edinburgh too. She’s great company.

Good sense of humour. She’ll tackle anything.”