Money from Holme by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

paintings–’
    ‘The bastard?’ For the moment Cheel was simply unable to decide at what point of the woman’s raving he was most flabbergasted.
    ‘Sure, Cheel. The low hound I married. And there you and Braunkopf were, conspiring together. I mean to get to the bottom of it.’
    The woman must be in some advanced stage of paranoia. Cheel felt extremely annoyed. He resented the suggestion that he was in the habit of bringing off successful swindles in the picture-broking world. It was something that he had just never got in on. The melancholy de Staël affair was an instance of his total failure, to date, in anything of the sort. He didn’t even believe that Braunkopf was really in any notable degree a rogue. Hedda Holme was one hundred per cent crazy.
    ‘Forty per cent,’ Hedda Holme said – so that Cheel positively jumped. ‘Shall I tell you how Braunkopf tricked me into agreeing to a commission like that? Swearing the slob’s daubs were the next thing to junk, and that it would cost the earth to start a legend about him.’
    ‘A legend?’
    ‘All that hocum about Wamba-Wamba. A cover story, if ever there was one.’
    ‘You mean that all that never happened? You mean that your husband’s still alive?’ This last question escaped Cheel’s lips simply because he was by now thoroughly dazed. As it turned out, he could scarcely have asked a better one.
    ‘Alive? You’re crazy. Sebastian’s dead, all right. That’s the one bright spot in the affair. Why–’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Cheel interrupted. For Sebastian Holme’s supposed widow had spoken with spontaneous and complete conviction. Whatever her suspicions were, he, Cheel, was one ahead of her in a crucial piece of knowledge. ‘But what do you mean,’ he demanded, ‘by hocum at Wamba-Wamba?’
    ‘That’s what you know. You and your fellow-crook Braunkopf. So where are all those paintings? That’s what I want to discover.’
    ‘You mean the paintings destroyed by the mob, or whatever it was, in this outlandish Wamba place? Dust and ashes, I suppose, blowing through the jungle.’
    ‘Are you kidding?’ Mrs Holme put her heaviest irony into this question. ‘Braunkopf has them. And you’re in on it.’
    ‘Don’t I damned well wish I was.’ Cheel was about to add ‘you silly bitch’ (or perhaps merely ‘you stupid cow’) to this avowal. But he desisted, perhaps feeling that he had produced sufficient candour for one mouthful. Instead, he decided to try sounding a rational note. ‘Have some sense,’ he said. ‘Braunkopf may have shot you a line about the cost of building up the Wamba affair. But he couldn’t have intended it, you know – whether to grab a lot of pictures, as you seem to suggest, or simply to create a legend. Mind you, he has created a legend. The success of this exhibition has a silly side which is certainly bound up with that. By the way, I suppose you realize that, legend or no legend, your husband – your late husband – could paint?’
    ‘Of course he could paint. Somebody must have taught him, I suppose. He produced acres of the stuff.’
    ‘You imbecile bitch! Sebastian Holme could paint .’ Cheel was heartily glad that he had saved up his imprecation for this point. For the first time, Hedda Holme seemed a trifle shaken. ‘Do you know what that means? Of course you don’t. But what you do know is that you’re sitting bloody pretty on this whole business. Even at sixty per cent, it means tens of thousands for you. So lay off your crackpot suspicions. All that stuff in the catalogue – their stupid revolution, and the burning of some rotten hotel – must be on the record, you know. The notion that this little Braunkopf creature somehow rigged it in order to steal the pictures of a painter who still wasn’t worth twopence just won’t wash. my girl. It’s as potty as your notion that I was in on it too. How’s your salad? Useful for keeping down the embonpoint , I suppose. They’re not too bad with