Money from Holme by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

been some notion of simple bribery in her head. Having formed – more or less at the drop of a handkerchief – the fantastic idea that he was in league with Braunkopf, she had capped it by supposing that he could be detached from a lucrative swindle by a mingling of opprobrious speech with cakes and ale. This mis-estimate of his quality, if comical, was annoying. Nevertheless Cheel now found himself in a mood of considerable post-prandial contentment. He had lunched without spending a penny after all. And meanwhile – what was far more important – his vision had come to him. He thought of the poet Keats, on tiptoe to explore the vastness of his first long poem. He thought of Mrs Holme’s compatriot Henry James at the moment of its dawning on him that The Golden Bowl , say, was to be a work of some complexity. Yes, he felt rather like that.
    So now he must get away and think. He watched with satisfaction as Hedda Holme paid quite a large bill. She wasn’t, in a sense, getting any change out of it, either. She was gathering up her bag and those damned gloves. Cheel glanced round the little restaurant. It was better appointed than one would expect, simply glancing in from the bar which had represented his first interest in the place. You had to go through the bar to reach the exit – and then, of course, immediately opposite, was the Da Vinci Gallery. He was still interested in the bar. If he were to succeed in contacting Sebastian Holme again (and this was now imperative) he would have to put into execution the plan he had already formed. He would have to put in time in a chair by a window, with his eye on the entrance to Braunkopf’s establishment.
    Mervyn Cheel had just reminded himself of this when he suddenly became aware that events had, so to speak, got ahead of him. In the bar, so far as he could command it from his present position, there was no longer any sort of lunch-hour crush. In fact there were only three customers to be seen. Two of them, confabulating together while perched on stools and drinking gin-and-tonics, might be motor-salesmen, or persons of that rank of life. This, indeed, was only a conjecture. But the identity of the third man, who was sitting hard by the door, admitted no doubt whatever. He was – once more, beard and all – the late Sebastian Holme.

 
     
7
    Strictly speaking, there ought not to have been anything unexpected in this turn of events. It was as natural (or unnatural) that the late Holme should hover in the vicinity of his pictures as that the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father should perambulate the battlements of Elsinore. And as the Da Vinci must be a place of hazard to one in Holme’s peculiar position it was equally natural that, before essaying a further foray there, he should pause to fortify himself in this conveniently located hostelry.
    Cheel was taken unawares, all the same. It is therefore to his credit that he saw at once the need for decisive action. Whether Sebastian Holme had spotted his wife in the Da Vinci earlier that morning was something Cheel couldn’t be sure of. It seemed probable that he had, since he must certainly have reckoned on her being present there. Presuming that he was anxious to continue unrecognised, as surely he must, then his turning up at all on such an occasion seemed to argue a rashness in temperament that Cheel felt it might be useful to register. However all this might be, it did seem certain that Hedda Holme hadn’t, in her turn, spotted her husband. Perhaps her glance hadn’t fallen upon him at all. Perhaps it had, and she had taken him for her brother-in-law Gregory Holme, whom for some reason she had chosen to ignore. Perhaps the bearded figure had conveyed nothing at all to her. It would be odd, of course, if she had failed to penetrate a disguise which had been instantly patent to Cheel. But then she was a singularly stupid woman – whereas he, Cheel, was a quite exceptionally intelligent man.
    It was intelligence that was