The Mysterious Commission Read Free

no publicity and no cheques passing. This recollection now gave Honeybath pause. The flesh tones customary on the Niger, the Congo, or the Limpopo are undoubtedly very tricky indeed, and such as require much study in an artist accustomed to paint pallid provision-merchants, or pale-pink décolletée dowagers, or the refined but rosy progeny of the proprietary classes for the walls of the Royal Academy in Burlington House. Robes, orders or decorations are child’s play in the comparison. If this was the state of the case, the price could be pushed up quite a lot.
    ‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘whether your client is black?’ Having produced this question, Honeybath was conscious that it might have sounded a disparaging and even racialist note. ‘Of course black is beautiful,’ he added hastily. ‘Veronese is only one of those who did amazing things with negroes. And Carpaccio sometimes, too.’
    ‘A black?’ It was apparent that Mr Peach was uninterested in these aesthetic reflections. There was even a hint of indignation in his voice. ‘Nothing of the sort, Mr Honeybath. We have kept clear of anything of that kind, I am glad to say. Mr X is no blacker than you are, if it comes to that. Begging your pardon, that is.’ Peach had relapsed abruptly into his most distressingly plebeian idiom. ‘But I’ll tell you something at once. Quite straight, I will. He’s out of his mind.’
    This time, Honeybath was really astonished.
    ‘Do I understand,’ he asked dazedly, ‘that you are inviting me to execute the portrait of a lunatic?’
    ‘And why not, Mr Honeybath?’ This time, Peach spoke with spirit. ‘I don’t doubt that others have done it before you. Verynosey, Carpatchy, and all that lot.’
    ‘Possibly so.’ Honeybath dimly wondered whether his visitor was a student of Finnegans Wake . ‘But, if they were, they were undoubtedly constrained to it by tasteless patrons. It is a canon – an absolute canon of art, Mr Peach – that the sheerly pathological is unfit for the purposes of any sort of representative fiction.’ Honeybath spoke with dignity. He might have been Sir Joshua Reynolds pronouncing one of his celebrated Discourses. ‘The thought, sir, is abhorrent to me.’
    ‘But wouldn’t there be a good many mad folk, Mr Honeybath, in Shakespeare and the like? And even in the Bible, if I remember aright.’
    ‘The Bible isn’t art. It’s history.’ Honeybath would not have produced this imperfect reply had he not been a good deal staggered by all this cultural resource on Peach’s part. ‘And an anonymous zany! It’s out of the question. I have my reputation to consider.’
    ‘And very high that is, Mr Honeybath. Otherwise I shouldn’t be troubling you. And I assure you that Mr X is a very quiet gentleman – a very quiet and civilly behaved old gentleman indeed. Nothing in the nature of howls and grimaces; nothing of that sort at all. Conversable, in a manner of speaking, Mr X is. Advantages, he’s had.’ Lesson Six was fading out as Mr Peach strove to carry his point. ‘An Eton College boy in his time.’
    ‘Do I understand that he might be described as an Aristocratic Eccentric?’ Honeybath was weakening. If these people had money to burn, the sky could be pretty well the limit if one were to undertake so extraordinary a commission. ‘And is your Mr X at least sufficiently compos mentis himself to desire such a thing?’ Honeybath had a brilliant thought. ‘Would it be a comfort or consolation to him in his darkened state of mind?’
    ‘Precisely that; sir. Very much that, indeed. It is what is in the relatives’ mind. A Christian thought, Mr Honeybath.’
    ‘I see.’ Honeybath’s hand went out to the sherry decanter. ‘You had better tell me a little more about all this.’
    ‘Certainly, Mr Honeybath. Whatever my instructions allow. But confidentiality must be the keynote, if you follow me. And not only in the matter of the gentleman’s identity. His place of residence as