The Careful Use of Compliments

Then a poor man walked past. Isabel knew that he was a poor man because he had a regular beat, selling a magazine that homeless people sold in the streets. From time to time she bought a copy from him, not because there was anything in it that she wanted to read, but in order to support him.

“Lazarus,” she muttered.

She had intended to think the word rather than utter it, but it had slipped out. She froze. Had he heard? If he had, he would wonder, surely, why she should call him Lazarus.

He had. He stopped and stared at Isabel, separated only by the low stone wall between the forecourt of the theatre and the pavement on which he had been walking.

“Lazarus?” he said in a thick, nasal voice. “I’m not Lazarus.”

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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Isabel felt flustered. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was thinking aloud.”

The man frowned. “Well, I’m not him,” he reiterated. “I’m not Lazarus.”

“Of course not.”

He swore, not quite silently, under his breath. Isabel began to edge away, imperceptibly, but it was unnecessary, as he had turned and started to walk away. Isabel thought: What does he think of me? And all I was doing was thinking of Lazarus at the end of the Faure: et cum Lazaro quondam paupere / Aeternam habeas requiem. (And with Lazarus, once poor, may you have eternal rest.) Lazarus once poor, led off to Paradise by angels, as in the parable.

Somebody tapped her on the shoulder. Peter and Susie Stevenson had come out to join her. Susie was holding a small glass of iced water in which a twist of lemon was submerged.

She passed this to Isabel. “I saw you from down below,” she said. “I thought you might like this.”

Isabel thanked them. “Why are concerts so hot?”

“All those people,” said Peter. “And a general lack of air-conditioning. Which is maybe no bad thing. The more we air-condition, the hotter the world gets—or so we’re told.”

They discussed the Faure and the pieces that were to come; Isabel only half followed the conversation because she was thinking of the embarrassing encounter with the homeless man.

Don’t think aloud, she muttered to herself.

“What was that?” asked Peter.

She said, quickly, “I was going to come to see you. There’s been something on my mind.” She took a sip of the water. “It’s about that painting.”

“Ah,” said Peter. “You’re still tempted? You know, I think that you’re going to buy it. And why not? It won’t break the bank, I imagine.”

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

“I’m not going to buy it,” said Isabel, “because it’s a fake.”

“Hold on!” said Peter. “Have you any evidence?”

He had not expected her to reply so firmly, but she did.

“I have,” she said. “And what’s more, I know who did it. A man called Frank Anderson.”

She had spoken with some conviction, and, as she uttered the forger’s name, with some anger. The strangeness of that struck her; why should she feel that way about something which, as Jamie would be quick to point out, had very little to do with her? But it is to do with me, she told herself; I was almost a victim, in that I would have bought it had it not been for Walter Buie. He is the victim and . . . and he sought, in turn, to make me his victim.

Susie broke her train of thought. “Frank Anderson?”

Isabel looked at her keenly. “Do you know him? An artist?”

In the distance, the sound of a wailing ambulance siren seemed to be drawing closer. Peter looked at his watch anxiously; the intermission had five minutes to run.

Isabel had to raise her voice now against the sound of the ambulance. “Do you?” she pressed. “Do you know that name?”

Susie looked at the passersby. The light from the door was behind her, and her shadow fell upon the low wall. Somewhere in her mind there was a memory of Frank Anderson. But she could not say who he was or why she should remember the name. The ambulance went past, dodging a car which had stopped awkwardly in the middle of the junction, its driver paralysed by the emergency of the moment.

“It’s not an uncommon name,” said Peter. “There must be lots of Frank Andersons in Scotland.” He looked again at his watch. “But the point is this, Isabel: How do you know?”

She wondered how convincing her explanation would 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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sound; probably not very, she decided. “We’ve been on Jura,”

she said. “You know that these two paintings are of Jura? Well, a man called Frank Anderson stayed in a house there and left behind a painting that he’d done. It was pure McInnes. I saw it, Peter. I’m absolutely certain. It’s the same scene as that painting which Walter Buie has.” She shrugged. She had made her case.

Peter was watching her, but she could not tell whether he believed her.