Isabel watched him. “You’re asking me,” he said at last. “You’re asking me to distrust my own judgement on a painting’s authenticity. On what grounds? What are these complicated grounds?”
She told him, describing the moment when she stood before the fake McInnes in Barnhill, and of how certain she was 2 1 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h that it was by the same hand that did the larger painting he had just sold. “You say that you can tell just by looking,” she ended.
“Well so can I. In this case, at least.”
Neither said anything for a full minute. Then Guy sighed.
“What do I do now?” He was thinking aloud, rather than asking Isabel. “I suppose I contact the purchaser and tell him that we have some doubts about the painting. And then?” He looked at Isabel, waiting for a suggestion.
“It’s not just me,” she said. “If I thought I was the only one with reservations about these paintings, then I would feel a little less convinced. But I think that the person who bought the McInnes at auction thinks the same.”
Guy looked sceptical. “So you’re suggesting that that’s a fake too?”
“Walter Buie offered to sell it to me more or less immediately after he got hold of it,” said Isabel flatly. “I think he did that because he’d tumbled to the truth and wanted to get rid of it.”
Guy shook his head. “Walter Buie? Nonsense, Isabel. Walter is . . . well, he’s just not that type. He simply wouldn’t . . .”
“Why would he try to sell it, then?”
Guy laughed. “I could tell you of numerous occasions when people have changed their minds—more or less immediately.
They take the painting home and discover that it’s not right for the room. Somebody makes a remark about it and they decide that it’s not to their taste after all. There are a hundred and one reasons why people change their minds.”
She listened to this. Of course people could change their minds, but in this case there were just too many factors suggesting otherwise. And Walter Buie might be a paragon of respectability in the eyes of the public, but such people often had a dark, private side which was very different. There were so 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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many cases of that, and this was, after all, Edinburgh, which had spawned the creator of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“Anyway,” said Guy, “I’ll do what’s necessary. I suspect you’re wrong about all this, but I’ll do my best to find out more—if there’s any more to find out. I’ll tell the purchaser. And I’ll make enquiries about this Frank Anderson.”
“The name means nothing to you?” asked Isabel.
Guy looked thoughtful. “It rang a distant bell,” he said. “But I can’t bring anything to mind. I’ll ask about, though, and I’ll let you know.” He paused. “Do you want me to speak to Walter Buie?”
It was tempting. If Guy did that, then there would be no need for her to do anything further; she would have handed the whole matter over. But Isabel was not one to abandon responsibilities quickly, and so her answer was no; she would do that herself. She had become involved in this business, and she would see it through. It was a question of principle. And it was also, she decided, slightly exciting. Not very exciting; just slightly exciting, which, as she started to walk back up Dundas Street, past the elegant gardens that lay along the north side of Queen Street, was just right for Edinburgh. One did not want too much excitement in a place like Edinburgh. One could go to Glasgow for that, or even London, if one had the urge.
W H E N S H E R E T U R N E D to the house, Grace whisked Charlie away. She wanted to take him out into the garden, she said, as the weather, which had been fine, could change at any moment.
“That fox,” said Grace, “has dug up half the small rose bed.
You know the one near the garden shed?”
“The summerhouse?”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“Whatever you call it. Yes, there. He’s dug a great big hole and put the soil all over the lawn.”
Isabel peered out the window. The grass near the summerhouse certainly looked darker. “He must be thinking of a new burrow,” she said. “Even foxes must have their plans for the future. Presumably they face the same sort of dilemmas that we do: renovate, or dig a new burrow.”
Grace stared at Isabel with a look that was half disbelief, half scorn. “They don’t think that way,” she said after a while.
Isabel returned the stare, but did not say anything. The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind—one which enjoyed dry wit and understood the absurd—left one in a shrinking minority. Isabel remembered being at a conference at Christ Church in Oxford and sitting next to a Japanese woman over breakfast in the Great Hall. The Japanese woman, who was accompanying her husband, a philosopher, to the conference—
The heartfelt comment had been triggered by the hall and its table lights, by its paintings of past masters and benefactors of the college, by the presence of what seemed like a quieter past, and Isabel had felt a surge of sympathy for the other woman.
“I am sure that there must be a club for dodos,” she said.
