The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [7]
″Lord.″ Lampeth frowned, drawing his black brows together at the bridge of his nose. ″It would depend on how it was sold, for one thing. For another, an accurate valuation would be a week′s work for an expert.″
″I′ll settle for an inaccurate one. You know the pictures—you bought most of them yourself for me.″
″Yes.″ Lampeth pictured in his mind the twenty or thirty paintings in the house, and assigned rough values to them. He closed his eyes and added up ̋̋the sums.
″It must be a million pounds,″ he said eventually. Cardwell nodded again. ″That′s the figure I arrived at,″ he said. ″Charlie, I need a million pounds.″
″Good Lord!″ Lampeth sat upright in his chair. ″You can′t think of selling your collection.″
″I′m afraid it has come to that,″ Cardwell said sadly. ″I had hoped to leave it to the nation, but the realities of business life come first. The company is overstretched; there must be a big capital injection within twelve months or it goes to the wall. You know I′ve been selling off bits of the estate for years, to keep me in this stuff.″ He raised his brandy balloon and drank.
″The young blades have caught up with me at last,″ he went on. ″New brooms sweeping through the financial world. Our methods are outdated. I shall get out as soon as the company is strong enough to hand over. Let a young blade take it on.″
The note of weary despair in his friend′s voice angered Lampeth. ″Young blades,″ he said contemptuously. ″Their time of reckoning will come.″
Cardwell laughed lightly. ″Now, now, Charlie. My father was horrified when I announced my intention of going into the City. I remember him telling me: ′But you′re going to inherit the title!′ as if that precluded any notion of my touching real money. And you—what did your father say when you opened an art gallery?″
Lampeth acknowledged the point with a reluctant smile. ″He thought it was a namby-pamby occupation for a soldier′s son.″
″So, you see, the world belongs to the young blades. So, sell my pictures, Charlie.″
″The collection will have to be broken up, to get the best price.″
″You′re the expert. No point in my being sentimental about it.″
″Still, some of it ought to be kept together for an exhibition. Let′s see: a Renoir, two Degas, some Pissarro, three Modiglianis ... I′ll have to think about it. The Cézanne will have to go to auction, of course.″
Cardwell stood up, revealing himself to be very tall, an inch or two over six feet. ″Well, let′s not linger over the corpse. Shall we join the ladies?″
The Belgrave Art Gallery had the air of a rather superior provincial museum. The hush was almost tangible as Lampeth entered, his black toecapped shoes treading silently on the plain, olive-green carpet. At ten o′clock the gallery had only just opened, and there were no customers. Nevertheless, three assistants in black-and-stripes hovered attentively around the reception area.
Lampeth nodded to them and walked through the ground-floor gallery, his expert eye surveying the pictures on the walls as he passed. Someone had hung a modern abstract incongruously next to a primitive, and he made a mental note to get it moved. There were no prices on the works: a deliberate policy. People had the feeling that any mention of cash would be greeted with a disapproving frown from one of the elegantly dressed assistants. In order to maintain their self-esteem, patrons would tell themselves that they, too, were part of this world where money was a mere detail, as insignificant as the date on the check. So they spent more. Charles Lampeth was a businessman first, and an art lover second.
He walked up the broad staircase to the first floor, and caught sight of his reflection in the glass of a frame. His tie-knot was small, his collar crisp, his Savile Row suit a perfect fit. It was a pity he was overweight, but he still cut an attractive figure for his age. He straightened his shoulders reflectively.
He made another mental note: the glass in that frame ought to be nonreflective. There was a pen drawing underneath it—whoever hung