and found what I’d found-this guy’s trademark, the broken glass in the kitchen.
‘I could have got in another way, gone out the back and done that just for show’, I said.
He grunted.
‘I’m surprised you’re not dashing about checking on your valuables.’
‘My dear fellow’, he said as he made himself and the woman a drink, ‘I don’t have any valuables. I’m one of those lease it people, rent’em and wreck’em, you know?’
‘Yeah. What business are you in?’
‘Tax consulting. I’m the expert, I pay no tax myself.’
‘Lucky you. Did Susannah Woods pay much?’
He smiled. ‘Only what she had to; shrewd woman, Susannah.’
The clothes horse in the armchair raised an eyebrow at that but decided to sip her drink rather than speak.
Porter looked at his slim, digital watch. ‘Just why are you here, Mr Hardy?’
One good question deserves another. ‘Is anything missing, Mr Porter?’
‘I told you, I simply don’t care, nothing here is mine.’
‘What about the painting?’
He spun around, nearly spilling his drink and looked through the arch into the living room. ‘Christ’, he said. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Tell me about it’, I said.
‘It was worthless. Who’d want to steal that?’ He walked through the arch and looked at the blank space. ‘I used to spend some time at Susannah’s place and she was often here. A civilized arrangement, you understand?’
‘Yeah’, I said.
‘Well, we each left things in one place or another, moved things back and forth. I took a liking to this painting; don’t know why, it was hardly finished really.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know, it just turned up in the house. She was always hanging around artists, I assumed it was just something one of them knocked up. I don’t know anything about art, but this had something I liked… call it spontaneity.’
‘Was it signed?’
‘Oh yes, something illegible, Castlemaine, something like that. Now what’s all this about? I suppose it connects with Susannah’s death?’
‘Yeah, what do you know about that?’
‘Nothing, except what I read and was told. I was upset of course, a horrible thing to happen. But I hadn’t seen her for over a month, we were finished.’
‘What finished you?’
He shrugged. His dark clothes were well cut and expensive; so were the shoes with lifts in them that brought him up to about five foot eight. The woman in the chair was taller, tall enough to see the bald spot near the crown of his head. He looked at his watch again, he seemed anxious to get into a position where bald spots wouldn’t show and didn’t matter. ‘Susannah wanted me to help finance an art gallery, a crazy idea.’ He opened his hands and spread them shoulder-high. ‘Besides, I don’t have any money.’
I nodded and got up. ‘Forgive the intrusion. You were lucky, the guy who busted in here took a swing at me earlier in the night.’ I touched my head.
‘Good God! Do you think he’ll be back here?’
‘Thanks for the sympathy. No, I think he’s got what he wants.’ I finished the drink and said goodnight to Porter whose colour wasn’t so good. He looked a bit unsure of himself for the first time. The tall woman in the chair held out her glass for a refill and I gave her one of my wicked smiles and left.
I cleaned up the head wound, took some aspirin and went to bed. In the morning the head was still tender, but I’d had worse, and was anxious to try to bring about a meeting with the guy who’d given it to me. I used the telephone, and at ten o’clock I was inside Dr Bruno Ernst’s study. He lived in a little sandstone cottage in Balmain down near the wharf. The house looked small because it was full of books and paintings, without them there would have been enough room in it for people, but apart from Ernst himself the only other thing that appeared to live there was a cat. There would probably have been some silverfish. Ernst was a short, squat guy with a fringe of white hair around a bald head, and a spade-shaped white beard. He pushed a typewriter aside on his desk and started to pack a curved pipe with tobacco. Outside a cold wind was rippling the water and flapping the ropes on boats tied up at the wharf. I sat and waited until he’d puffed enough smoke into the air.
‘I understand you’re an expert on Charles Castleton, Dr Ernst.’
‘Bruno’, he said. ‘Not strictly true, no-one is an expert on him, in a way there is nothing to be expert on. I have some knowledge and an interest, yes.’
‘You authenticated a Castleton belonging to a Miss Woods a few weeks back.’
‘That’s right.’ He puffed smoke and looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I was never happy about it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was unusual. There are lost Castletons, of course. He led an erratic life, gave pictures away, paid debts and liquor bills with them. In 1884 Castleton held an exhibition in Sydney, a little tin-pot affair, but it was reported in the papers of the time and some of the paintings were described. Do you know about this?’
‘Not in detail.’
‘The newspaper report only came to light fairly recently, and it is now taken as the best guide to Castleton’s later period. Most of the paintings mentioned can be accounted for, two cannot.’
‘And Miss Woods had one of them?’
‘Hmm, she had the painting which is called “Stockyards at Jerilderie”.’
‘Fences’, I said.
‘Indeed, a great many fences. This confers value on the work, a puzzling notion.’
‘You’re sure it was genuine?’
He shrugged. ‘I gave my opinion that it was, no-one could be sure. But the woman had another painting of the same subject which was obviously a fraud. The materials were modern, and the technique was crude. She said she had come upon the painting by accident and averted an attempt to produce a fake version. I found this commendable, you see?’
‘Yes, and this helped you to decide that the painting was genuine?’
He scratched at the squared-off beard, disturbing its symmetry. ‘It played a part in my judgement, yes.’
‘I see. Tell me, Dr Ernst, once you’ve inspected and okayed a painting is there any way for anyone to know that you’ve given it the thumbs up?’
‘Bruno. I’m sorry, I do not understand.’
‘Do you mark the painting in any way, Bruno?’
‘Yes, indeed, with a stamp which can only be seen under ultra-violet light. The stamp carried my initials inside an octagon-I marked the Castleton with it.’
I thanked him, and he insisted I have a glass of sherry with him while he showed me his paintings, books and the view. Too many paintings at once numb me, most of the books were in German, but I liked the view. The sherry was okay. As I moved towards the door, he gently suggested that he was due a consultation fee. I wrote him a cheque for fifty bucks and he waved me goodbye with it from his doorway.
I’d left my car in Darling Street, near the police station for safety, but I took a long walk through the Balmain streets trying to order the facts I had. The Woods woman’s story to Ernst sounded phoney, but could possibly be the truth. The only trouble was that there was a third painting in the works. ‘Stockyards at Jerilderie’ would have fitted the picture I’d seen in the Paddington house and I had to assume that Leo Porter’s lost painting was of the same scene. But which one carried Ernst’s mark? That seemed like the vital question, but was it? I worked up a sweat on the uphill stretch from the water and reached into my pocket for something to wipe my face with. I came up with the bit of paint-stained shirt. I looked at it and remembered what Porter had said about his former ladyfriend knocking around with artists. I also remembered the face of the man who’d hit me in the stomach. I hoofed it back to the car and drove through the ill-tempered traffic to the Cross.
