course, she had become disinhibited.
Age brought that sometimes, with the result that all sorts of tactless things might be said.
But Mrs. Buie had nothing more to add and made her way out of the room to make the tea.
Walter Buie gestured to a sofa near the window.
“The painting?” he said as they sat down. “You said you had some information for me.”
Isabel looked past him to a picture on the wall above his head. It was, she thought, a McTaggart. He caught her eye.
“McTaggart,” he said. “My mother’s.” He gestured around the room. “These are all hers. She’s the one with the collection.”
“But you bought the McInnes?”
He nodded. “I did.”
She decided that she should wait no longer. “I don’t think it’s a McInnes,” she said.
She watched him very closely. At first it seemed that he had 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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not heard her, or had mistaken what she had said. He had been smiling when their conversation had started, and he was still smiling. But then it was as if a shadow had passed over his face.
The face has a hundred muscles, she thought; even more. It has such a subtle surface—like that of water, sensitive to changes of light, to the movement of wind—and as indicative, every bit as indicative, of the weather.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You don’t know that it’s a forgery?” She felt her heart beating within her; she was accusing him now, and she was suddenly aware that it was the wrong thing to do. But the accusation had slipped out.
“Are you suggesting—” He broke off. He was looking down at the carpet, unable to meet her eyes. But it was not guilt, she decided; it was pain.
“Please,” she said, impulsively reaching out to lay a hand upon his sleeve. “Please. That came out all wrong. I’m not suggesting that you tried to sell me a forgery.”
He seemed to be puzzling something out. Now he looked up at her. “I suppose you thought that because I wanted to sell it quickly.”
“I was surprised,” she said. “But I thought that there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation.” That was a lie, she knew.
I am lying as a result of having made an unfair assumption. And I lied, too, when I paid a compliment to that unpleasant dog of his. But I have to lie. And what would life be like if we paid one another no compliments?
Isabel thought now that he was debating with himself whether to say something. When he spoke, it was with hesitation, and his voice was lowered. “I have to sell it,” he said. “Or, rather, had to. If what you say is true, then . . .”
“You need the money?” It seemed unlikely to her. This was 2 2 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h an expensive house and the furniture, the paintings, the rugs on the floor—none of these suggested financial need.
He stared at her. He had the look of one who has said enough and is reluctant to say more. But there was more.
“I need to raise slightly more than one hundred thousand pounds,” he said. “I didn’t need to when I bought the painting.
Then I did.”
Isabel waited, and he continued. “It’s my own fault,” he said quietly. “I gave a personal guarantee for a friend who was involved in a management buyout of the company he worked for.
It all seemed very solid when I agreed to back him, but an accountant somewhere along the line had deliberately misrepresented the liabilities. My friend goes under if I don’t come up with the money. He loses his house—everything. And I’m god-father to his son.”
She was silent. It was utterly convincing, and it was while she was thinking of how unjust she had been in her assump-tions that she heard Mrs. Buie behind her. She was standing in the doorway, holding a tray. She took a step forward and put the tray down on a side table. She looked at Isabel.
“That painting is not a forgery,” she said.
“Mother . . .”
Mrs. Buie raised a hand. Her eyes flashed angrily at her son, who was silenced in the face of her disapproval. “Do you imagine that we would attempt to sell a forgery? Is that what you think, Miss Dalhousie?”
Isabel felt the power of the older woman’s disapproval. Her reply was conciliatory. “No. I’m sorry—I didn’t suggest that. But it’s quite possible, isn’t it, that one might in good faith sell something which is not genuine? I could imagine that happening to me. I might sell something which I thought . . .”
Mrs. Buie shook her head vigorously. “With all due respect, 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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Miss Dalhousie, that would happen only when one didn’t know much about the artist. I’ve known Andrew
