44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [154]
“I was alerted by the shape of the umbrella,” he said. “I just had a feeling that it was our friend Mr Vettriano underneath. I don’t know why, but I had this feeling.”
“Never underestimate the power of intuitions,” said Domenica. “They are a very useful guide. They can show us the way to all sorts of things – including the way to being good.”
Angus Lordie raised an eyebrow. “How so?” he asked. “What have intuitions to do with goodness?”
“Intuitions help us to know what is right and wrong,” said Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love
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Domenica. “If your intuitions tell you that something is wrong, then it probably is. And once you start to use your moral faculties to work out why it’s wrong, you’ll see that the intuition was right in the first place.”
“Interesting,” said Angus Lordie. “But I suspect that the intuition is merely a form of existing knowledge. You know something already, and the intuition merely tells you that the knowledge is buried away in your mind.”
“But that’s exactly what an intuition is,” said Domenica. “That’s exactly why they’re so useful.”
Angus Lordie replaced the cap on the bottle of paint-stripper.
“Enough of all this,” he said. “I propose that we go through to the drawing room and open a bottle of champagne. Leave the painting here, Matthew. It needs to dry a little. I’ll come back in a moment and fetch it.”
They followed their host back down the corridor and into the large, formally furnished drawing room. Angus Lordie busied himself with the opening of a bottle of champagne, which he took from a concealed fridge in a walnut cabinet. Then he poured a glass for each of them and they stood in the middle of the room, under the Murano chandelier, and raised their glasses to each other.
“To the successful sale of the Vettriano,” said Angus Lordie, chinking his glass against Matthew’s. “That is assuming that you will be selling it. Vettriano, of course, is not to everybody’s taste. But the point is there’s a strong market for them and it seems to be getting stronger.”
Matthew looked into his glass. He did not like to talk about financial matters, but he was very curious to know what value Angus Lordie might put on his painting. “You wouldn’t have any idea,” he began.
“Of what it’s worth?” said Angus Lordie.
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Angus Lordie. “Let’s think. I think that this is a very early Vettriano, but it’s an important one in terms of his development as a popular painter. It’s his beach period, I would have thought – with touches of his umbrella period. So that 324
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makes it very interesting. And the value would be . . . Let’s think. Perhaps, a hundred thousand. Something like that?”
Pat glanced at Matthew and noticed that his hands were shaking. She reached across and touched him gently on the shoulder. “Well done!” she whispered. “Well done!”
Matthew smiled back at her. He liked this girl, and he wondered if there was still a chance that she might like him too. Perhaps she had overcome her ridiculous attachment to that ghastly Bruce. Perhaps she would want somebody more settled, like me. That is what he thought, but he knew, even as he thought it, that he was hoping for too much. Nobody liked him in that way; they just didn’t.
Angus Lordie put down his glass. “I’ll go and fetch it,” he said. “The light is slightly better through here at this time of the evening. We can take a close look at it.”
He left them, and a short time later he returned, holding the painting out before him. He cleared his throat and started to say something, but no words came and they knew immediately that something was wrong.
Angus Lordie held the painting out to Matthew. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “The paint-stripper appears to have continued to act. The Vettriano seems to have gone.”
Matthew looked at the painting in dismay. The beach, the umbrella, the butler, the dancing couple – all had merged into a set of curiously-coloured streaks and puddles of paint. Matthew looked at Angus Lordie, and then he laughed. It was a laugh