A Twist in the Tale

Barker nodded his agreement.

I watched the innkeeper leave the dining room and return to his place behind the bar.

He passed the check over to Adams the butler, who studied it for a moment, smiled and then tore it into little pieces.

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS

WE FIRST MET Patrick Travers on our annual winter holiday to Verbier. We were waiting at the ski lift that first Saturday morning when a man who must have been in his early forties stood aside to allow Caroline to take his place, so that we could travel up together. He explained that he had already completed two runs that morning and didn’t mind waiting. I thanked him and thought nothing more of it.

As soon as we reach the top my wife and I always go our separate ways, she to the A-slope to join Marcel, who only instructs advanced skiers—she has been skiing since the age of seven—I to the B-slope and any instructor who is available—I took up skiing at the age of forty-one—and frankly the B-slope was still too advanced for me though I didn’t dare admit as much, especially to Caroline. We always met up again at the ski lift after completing our different runs.

That evening we bumped into Travers at the hotel bar. Since he seemed to be on his own we invited him to join us for dinner. He proved to be an amusing companion and we passed a pleasant enough evening together. He flirted politely with my wife without ever overstepping the mark and she appeared to be flattered by his attentions. Over the years I have become used to men being attracted to Caroline and I never need reminding how lucky I am. During dinner we learned that Travers was a merchant banker with an office in the City and a flat in Eaton Square. He had come to Verbier every year since he had been taken on a school trip in the late Fifties, he told us. He still prided himself on being the first on the ski lift every morning, almost always beating the local blades up and down.

Travers appeared to be genuinely interested in the fact that I ran a small West End art gallery; as it turned out, he was something of a collector himself, specializing in minor Impressionists. He promised he would drop by and see my next exhibition when he was back in London.

I assured him that he would be most welcome but never gave it a second thought. In fact I only saw Travers a couple of times over the rest of the holiday, once talking to the wife of a friend of mine who owned a gallery that specialized in oriental rugs, and later I noticed him following Caroline expertly down the treacherous A-slope.

* * *

It was six weeks later, and some minutes before I could place him that night at my gallery. I had to rack that part of one’s memory which recalls names, a skill politicians rely on every day.

“Good to see you, Edward,” he said. “I saw the write-up you got in the Independent and remembered your kind invitation to the private view.”

“Glad you could make it, Patrick,” I replied, remembering just in time.

“I’m not a champagne man myself,” he told me, “but I’ll travel a long way to see a Vuillard.”

“You think highly of him?”

“Oh yes. I would

compare him favorably with Pissarro and Bonnard, and I believe he still remains one of the most underrated of the Impressionists.”

“I agree,” I replied. “But my gallery has felt that way about Vuillard for some considerable time.”

“How much is ‘The Lady at the Window?’” he asked.

“Eighty thousand pounds,” I said quietly.

“It reminds me of a picture of his in the Metropolitan,” he said, as he studied the reproduction in the catalogue.

I was impressed, and told Travers that the Vuillard in New York had been painted within a month of the one he so admired.

He nodded. “And the small nude?”

“Forty-seven thousand,” I told him.

“Mrs. Hensell, the wife of his dealer and Vuillard’s second mistress, if I’m not mistaken. The French are always so much more civilized about these things than we are. But my favorite painting in this exhibition,” he continued, “compares surely with the finest of his work.” He turned to face the large oil of a young girl playing a piano, her mother bending to turn a page of the score.

“Magnificent,” he said. “Dare I ask how much?”

“Three hundred and seventy thousand pounds,” I said, wondering if such a price tag put it out of Travers’ bracket.

“What a super party, Edward,” said a voice from behind my shoulder.

“Percy!” I cried, turning around. “I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

“Yes I did, old fellow, but I decided I couldn’t sit at home alone all the time, so I’ve come to drown my sorrows in champagne.”