The Mysterious Commission Read Free Page B

and absurd as this proviso was being advanced with a seriousness.
    ‘Just that.’
    ‘Very well. I will undertake the commission, Mr Peach. But, until I have familiarized myself with the circumstances, and can be assured that there is nothing scandalously irregular about so strange an arrangement, I shall require to be accompanied by a friend.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘No? Mr Peach, did I hear you aright?’
    ‘Certainly you did. We are trusting you’ – Peach pointed uncompromisingly at the banknotes – ‘and it’s fair that you should trust us.’
    Honeybath was baffled. Peach undeniably had a point. Moreover Honeybath doubted whether he himself had a friend in the world to whom he would care to confide the undignified and indeed demeaning bargain he seemed about to accept. But probably – he told himself – he was exaggerating that side of the thing. Sensitive natures such as his were inclined to be touchy. Peach had stated frankly that the prospective sitter was off his head. Perhaps those around him were a bit off their heads too, and it was a dotty sensitiveness of their own which had resulted in the thinking up of all this nonsense. At least he could go and see. And even before he did that, he could perhaps extract at least a modicum of further information from his visitor.
    ‘Provisionally, then,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘the affair is settled. We can relax a little, my dear Mr Peach. May I offer you another glass of sherry?’
    Peach made no bones about embracing this further modest entertainment. He even raised his glass towards Honeybath and said ‘Cheers’ before drinking from it. Honeybath, although he might have resented so unwarranted a familiarity, decided to accept the ritual as signalling the establishment of a full measure of confidence between the contracting parties. It seemed the right moment to gather in and lock up the banknotes; and this he now briskly achieved. Peach watched him unconcernedly, even with a distinguishable air of benevolence.
    ‘Would you care to have a receipt, Mr Peach?’
    ‘Dear me, no. Nothing of the kind is at all necessary, sir. But there are one or two questions, if they may be allowed me. Sittings, for example. Would you say that fourteen are likely to be enough?’
    ‘I very much doubt it. My usual procedure–’
    ‘A pity, Mr Honeybath. Really a great pity. It is, you see, for no more than a fortnight that Mr X can be – well, put at your disposal. So it looks as if it won’t do, after all.’
    ‘My dear Mr Peach, do you really suppose that I can paint this thing in fourteen days – and work on it every day of the week? You must–’
    ‘Well, yes, Mr Honeybath. I do. It has to be regarded as part of the bargain, I’m afraid.’
    ‘I see.’ Honeybath stared at his visitor in what was – far more than at any previous stage of the interview – a sadly divided mind. Could he conceivably regard himself as retaining any shred of professional integrity if he were to allow this staring nonsense to go a single step further? But, of course, there was another way of looking at it. Peach and his principals (whoever they might be) were plainly persons so vastly ignorant of all aesthetic decorum that it was surely admissible to allow oneself a little licence in dealing with them. Between a finished portrait and what might be virtually a sketch in oils they would not have the slightest ability to discriminate. And he could easily lend to his likeness of Mr X the appearance of being little more than a brilliant improvisation. There would be nothing that wasn’t entirely respectable about such a frankly bravura affair – particularly as nobody was ever likely to know that he had pocketed two thousand guineas for the thing. And, as there didn’t seem to be much prospect of rational pleasure in painting a lunatic (even a harmless lunatic), the sooner the macabre but profitable episode was over the better it would be.
    ‘Very well,’ Honeybath said resignedly.