Jeffrey Archer - A Twist in the Tale

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.’

‘Quite right, too,’ I said. ‘Sorry to hear about Diana,’ I added as Percy moved on. When I turned back to continue my conversation with Patrick Travers he was nowhere to be seen. I searched around the room and spotted him standing in the far corner of the gallery chatting to my wife, a glass of champagne in his hand. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder green dress that I considered a little too modern. Travers’ eyes seemed to be glued to a spot a few inches below the shoulders. I would have thought nothing of it had he spoken to anyone else that evening.

The next occasion on which I saw Travers was about a week later on returning from the bank with some petty cash. Once again he was standing in front of the Vuillard oil of mother and daughter at the piano.

‘Good morning, Patrick,’ I said as I joined him.

‘I can’t seem to get that picture out of my mind,’ he declared, as he continued to stare at the two figures.

‘Understandably.’

‘I don’t suppose you would allow me to live with them for a week or two until I can finally make up my mind? Naturally I would be quite happy to leave a deposit.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I would require a bank reference as well and the deposit would be twenty-five thousand pounds.’

He agreed to both requests without hesitation so I asked him where he would like the picture delivered. He handed me a card which revealed his address in Eaton Square. The following morning his bankers confirmed that three hundred and seventy thousand pounds would not be a problem for their client.

Within twenty-four hours the Vuillard had been taken round to his home and hung in the dining room on the ground floor. He phoned back in the afternoon to thank me and asked if Caroline and I would care to join him for dinner; he wanted, he said, a second opinion on how the painting looked.

With three hundred and seventy thousand pounds at stake I didn’t feel it was an invitation I could reasonably turn down, and in any case Caroline seemed eager to accept, explaining that she was interested to see what the inside of his flat looked like.

We dined with Travers the following Thursday. It turned out that we were the only guests, and I remember being surprised that there wasn’t a Mrs. Travers or at least a resident girlfriend. He was a thoughtful host and the meal he had arranged was superb. However, I considered at the time that he seemed a little too solicitous with Caroline, although she certainly gave the impression of enjoying his undivided attention. At one point I began to wonder if either of them would have noticed if I had disappeared into thin air.

When we left Eaton Square that night Travers told me that he had almost come to a decision about the picture, which made me feel the evening had served at least some purpose.

Six days later the painting was returned to the gallery with a note attached explaining that he no longer cared for it. Travers did not elaborate on his reasons, but simply ended by saying that he hoped to drop by sometime and reconsider the other Vuillards. Disappointed, I returned his deposit, but realized that customers often do come back, sometimes months, even years later.

But Travers never did.

It was about a month later that I learned why he would never return. I was lunching at the large center table at my club, as in most all-male establishments the table reserved for members who drift in on their own. Percy Fellows was the next to enter the dining room so he took a seat opposite me. I hadn’t seen him to talk to since the private view of the Vuillard exhibition and we hadn’t really had much of a conversation then. Percy was one of the most respected antique dealers in England and I had once even done a successful barter with him, a Charles II writing desk in exchange for a Dutch landscape by Utrillo.