Free The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes

great house in which he was all but immured was soundless to a point of inducing nervous distress. Now it seemed alive and breathing. He heard, or imagined he heard, purposive footfalls in long corridors, doors briskly opening and closing, voices, now and then a telephone bell, even the muted clatter of a typewriter. His solitary lunch turned up as usual, and at about the same time there was a distinguishable change in the bruit and rumour from below. The voices were louder for a time, as if among a large group of people animated talk was going on. There was a clink and rattle of cutlery and glass. The volume of sound increased. It hinted jollity, as if the wine had been going round at some informal buffet occasion. Then it ceased almost abruptly. The board – it came suddenly to Honeybath – had renewed its deliberations. Once more, there were only occasional footsteps, an opening or closing door.
    Half an hour later, he returned to his painting-room. He doubted whether Mr X would indeed be trundled in again that day, but there was still plenty he could do. In the background to the figure several small areas remained to be animated without being rendered too busy, or irritating the aerial perspective. He addressed himself to one of these, but was unable quite to trust his touch. He had developed, in fact, the ghost of an intention tremor, which is a disability not comfortable for an artist to contemplate. So he gave over, and prowled the room. He peered through the window. One of the parked cars was backing out; it swung clear and drove away.
    There were voices in the open air below. The party was breaking up. First one and then another figure appeared on the sweep; soon there were half a dozen or more, talking rather loudly to each other, or shouting hearty farewells. They appeared, on the whole, a burly but rather out-of-condition crowd; their heads were visible, bobbing above large circumferences of foreshortened bellies and buttocks. Honeybath could distinguish nothing of what was being said, but gained a sharp impression of the tones and accents employed. There were voices, among which he thought he distinguished Arbuthnot’s, luxuriating in the purities of the Queen’s English; but there were rather more voices in one degree or another unrefined. Vulgar voices, to put it broadly.
    What sort of people of that kind drove around in large cars and attended mysterious conclaves in congruously large country mansions? People who managed the affairs of important football clubs? Or who promoted prize-fights at world championship level? Or who ran gaming-houses, or revivalist religious rackets, or clip-joints (whatever clip-joints were), or call-girl services? Of any one of these numberless goings-on of human life Honeybath knew, if possible, less than of another. But he did know that these men were not Royal Academicians holding a soirée, or Professors of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture in conference. It didn’t even seem likely that they were the Confederation of British Industry or the Trades Union Congress intent upon marvellously mending the world. Fleetingly he wondered whether they were just plain crooks.
     
    That evening, life returned to normal. With his dinner Honeybath was sent up a bottle of Moët et Chandon, Dom Perignon , 1964, and Arbuthnot came in and took a glass of it with him towards the end of the meal. Mr X, Arbuthnot said, was now quite himself again; there had been a small family gathering in the middle of the day, and the sight of all his relations had quite set the old boy up. They were a very united family, Arbuthnot said. There was nothing of which they were more aware than that dissention simply doesn’t pay.

 
     
7
     
    The portrait was completed. The brief moment had arrived – it always does – in which Honeybath saw his work for exactly what it was. The canvas by no means embodied that irradiated conception which had visited him halfway through. He was far – oh, so far! – from