Fakes

3

Fakes

    A tear ran down the little man’s cheek. “Sorry!” he gulped. “I hadda do it.” He looked at us miserably. “He was putting the squeeze on me, ya see.”

    Jim Hawkes and I exchanged glances. We did see, more or less.

    The little grey man in the crushed badly-cut grey suit—the jacket removed in the heat of Jim’s office—was the fellow identified as Tony Brownloe’s brother. Jim’s staff had made further investigations and concluded that though there was nothing definite, it’d be worthwhile getting him into the office and— They hadn’t gone so far as to mention the word “interrogation”, but that was what it amounted to.

    “Over the sweepstakes, was it, mate?” asked Jim casually.

    That did it and he burst into sobs, gasping: “I never meant— It was nothink! It was only twenny bucks and the boss’d never miss— And it was so easy— And then it all just—just—got on top of me! And—and Brodie knew! He got me pissed and— But he laughed! I never thought he’d—” More sobs.

    After that it all came out.

    The man whom I knew as Broderick Anson and who’d been known at Trethewin as Antony Brownloe was not, in fact, the brother of the Gary Brownloe who had worked for “the Department of Ag” for eighteen years. He was his cousin, Brodie Andrews.

    “B.A.,” said Jim neutrally at this point.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “The kid did say ’e had A.B. on ‘is fancy pyjamas—made the aunty wash ’em, of course.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Yours, too?”

    I nodded. “Red silk. Black initials—entwined. A.B. or B.A., take your pick. And on the damned cravats he wore when he was riding point-to-point. On my horses.”

    “Par for the course,” he acknowledged stolidly.

    Gary Brownloe blew his narrow pointed nose glumly. “He always did have fancy tastes.”

    “Yer don’t say, mate,” returned Jim. “Go on, then.”

    It emerged that there had been a brother, Tony. Presumed drowned in Thailand in the huge 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Jim at this point looked horrified and said he was Helluva sorry, mate. Lotta people lost rellies in that. Bloody.

    I didn’t know anybody, myself, who’d lost someone: there hadn’t been a very great number of British affected. I thought I could see where this was heading, but I just said nothing, let Jim get on with it.

    Brownloe seemed comforted by Jim’s sympathy, and poured out the lot. Tony’s body had never been recovered, there was no proof he’d been swept away, no-one knew just where he’d been that day, the girl he’d originally been with had gone north to see some elephant sanctuary, and they’d never had a death certificate for him. Well, he admitted, to tell the truth there had been some trouble with the cops back home, and he was the type to of taken the chance to just quietly disappear. But they’d certainly never heard a thing from him since.

    Gary Brownloe hadn’t known his cousin Brodie was even back in the country until he’d turned up unexpectedly and asked him out for a drink. We didn’t—apparently—know what he was like. He could charm the birds off the trees if he felt like it. Anyway, he insisted on taking Gary and the wife to dinner a few times—places they couldn’t afford, but he seemed to be really well off and he was driving a Merc! Some time during this period, at one of their cosy evenings at the pub, Andrews got the whole story of Gary’s peccadillos out of him.

    See, the boss—yeah, the top boss, he confirmed as Jim checked that he meant the man who headed up the Department; yes, in their building, that was right—he always put a twenny in the sweepstake, he was very nice, he hadn’t liked to ask him at first but they’d said go on, so he had, and he was always very decent about it. And then one time he’d accidentally given him two twennies. Well, he’d put one in the pot and hung on to the other, in case he asked for it back, and he never had, and he’d never miss it, and there was Kirstie’s teeth and— Mm. Gary had kept the money. Which had led to the thought, maybe if he didn’t put everything in the pot each time— It wouldn’t make any difference, really! It was a big department, the winners’d never miss a fiver here and there.

    Jim asked how many sweepstakes they had per year, and he was vague but thought apart from the big races there’d be about half a dozen, “everybody” reckoned it brightened the year up and the bosses didn’t mind so long as he didn’t spend too much office time on it. And he didn’t, honest! He did most of it in his lunch hour and he always made up the time! Yes, well. By this time Jim and I were both convinced that he was fiddling his times, too, but— Well. Eighteen years in a dull office job with no prospects?

    Then—inevitably—the smiling Brodie had turned up and suggested that he might like to vouch for him as Tony. For this job he was applying for. All he had to do was come with him to the races, just be himself, and be introduced as his brother. Um, yeah, Mr Hawkes, to Mr Ralph Crozier.

    So Gary Brownloe had gone to the races in fear and trembling, been overawed by the Croziers’ private box, and let his bloody cousin introduce him as his brother and encourage him to tell Ralph Crozier that he worked for the Department of Ag and of their sweepstake for the Adelaide Cup. With fond remembrances of Ralph’s father’s great wins—words to that effect. The shit had thanked him effusively and shouted him and the wife to a champagne dinner.

    Time passed and poor little Brownloe thought Brodie would leave him alone, having got what he wanted—his usual pattern, all his life, he revealed bitterly—and then he turned up again and “put the squeeze on” again. No, not papers in Tony’s name: actually he’d done that before and he, Gary, hadn’t thought anythink of it because of course he’d of had to have some ID for the job—etcetera. Um, what, Mr Hawkes? Yes, he’d had Tony’s Tax File Number and Medicare number: they (Gary and Mrs) had still had all Tony’s stuff. Just in case he came back. More tears threatened and Jim got up and fetched him a Scotch.

    He sipped, shuddered, and said: “He nicked the car.”

    “Eh?” croaked Jim.

    “Mm,” he said, sniffing. “I didn’t realise at first. I never used it that much—well, the price of petrol—and we’re practically on the tram line, ya see. And Janice doesn’t like driving. There’s just the two of us now Kirstie’s living in Sydney, so we’d just pop over to the supermarket in the weekends. But Alysse from work, she told me about Banana Blue, ya see, so I said to Janice why not try it, dear, and they’re very good, very prompt, and the man carries everything inside for her and it’s very nice, they pack the veggies and stuff in eskies with chiller bags, so, um, she hasn’t missed the car.”

    Jim and I were rendered speechless.

    He finally managed to say: “It’s an online grocery delivery service, Alex, started by a couple of local dames, I think. They only source their stuff from the local supermarkets, but it’s handy if ya can’t get out yourself.”

    “Yes, I see.”

    A short silence.

    “The cops musta missed that, one too,” Jim concluded numbly.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Geeze, I’m sorry, Alex!”

    “Don’t apologise, Jim, it’s so mad no-one would have thought of it.”

    “Thanks,” he said weakly, trying to smile. “Anythink else ya might just of overlooked that ya ruddy cousin made off with?” he asked the unfortunate Gary.

    He sniffled. “He borrowed fifty bucks and my good umbrella.”

    Jim muttered something under his breath.

    “Um, and somethink from the bathroom…” he said vaguely.

    “Hair-dye?” demanded Jim tightly.

    “It could of been… It’s not dye! She just tints it a bit to brighten the shade, she says.”

    “What colour is it?” he sighed.

    “Um… Tawny Somethink?”

    Grimly Jim wrote it down. “Drink that whisky, mate, and then you can tell us the number, make and colour of your car.”

    This intel having been forthcoming, Jim concluded, having got Lorrae to ring for a taxi to send Mr Brownloe home, with the kindly advice to tell Janice about the car pronto: “I’ll get onto the cops right away, but there’s millions of pale grey Mitsubishis in Australia, never mind the buggers closed the factory down.”

    That was about what I’d thought.

    … “Well,” he said thoughtfully after we’d both recruited our forces with the aid of Johnnie Walker, “he won’t get far as Tony Brownloe, ID or not. Thing is, has ’e got ID as ’imself? Brodie Andrews, I mean.”

    “He’s almost undoubtedly got some as Broderick Anson,” I said tightly.

    “Good point, mate. Not wanted over there, is ’e?” he asked hopefully.

    “Not in Britain, as far as I know: he cheated me grossly over the house, but there were no hitches with the sale. We could try Spain… Incidentally, I don’t actually know that he did buy a villa there,” I admitted, grimacing. “He certainly told us he was going to.”

    “Well, yeah, if you wanna spend your dough, Alex, it’d be worth checking out.”

    “Yes,” I said grimly, “it certainly would. –The bloody local grocer reduced poor little Cassie to near-tears!” I burst out, not having intended to say any such thing.

    “Yeah, I can see it. Struck me as a bully. The bloke at the servo’s ’is brother, didja know? A clone, far’s I could see.”

    “Oh, shit!”

    “Yeah. Have another, mate. Or is it tonight you’ve accepted the gracious hospitality of Madayme Zeff and Megabucks Call-Me-Andrew-While-I-Count-Up-Me-Billable-Hours Zeff?”

    “No: tomorrow,” I admitted gloomily.

    “Better drown ’em, then.”

    We did that.

    I was back at the Hyatt, partly in order to be on the spot to make sure something was being done about Anson/Brownloe/Andrews, and partly, I have to admit it, because I felt that if I saw very much more of the delightfully natural Cassie I’d be in danger of losing my head, and it wouldn’t do: she was far too young for me. And, as a minor consideration, partly because, although the big house at Trethewin was perfectly comfortable, and more than provided with mod cons, its décor was somewhat overwhelming, the more so as two diametrically opposed tastes seemed to have been at work.

    It was two-storeyed, which I’d now begun to understand was not the norm in Australia, where bungalows dominated the sprawling garden suburbs which characterised all of their cities. True, there were pockets of Adelaide and environs with charming early twentieth-century two-storeyed houses of the stockbroker-Tudor era, the affluent early years of the century before the Depression struck. And in the newer suburbs, which mercifully I’d only caught glimpses of, some two-storeyed monstrosities from the ’80s and ’90s, rendered to horrible smoothness in cream or terracotta tending to peach, with giant unshaded windows that couldn’t have been more wrong for the climate. Somewhere around in Adelaide, though I’d now grasped that the State of South Australia pleaded poverty, there was money to chuck away: what those houseowners must have had to spend on air conditioning I shuddered to think. Double-glazing? I had at one point asked Jim. Nah, mate, really uncommon out here.

    Trethewin’s two storeys, then, marked it as belonging to the affluent classes, but its size alone would have done that. And the creamy stone of which it was built. Very handsome, really, looking more like Australia’s few remaining old late Georgian structures, relics of the first affluent generation of English settlers, than a building dating from circa 1970. Inside, however, this influence stopped, apart from the proportions of the main rooms. The fell hand of the interior decorator—make that two interior decorators—had struck. The master bedroom, which Cassie had kindly allotted me, was style number one. Coolly elegant. Er, make that coldly elegant. Pale oatmeal predominated. The wallpaper had very possibly been designed for the room. The palest of oatmeal backgrounds with a delicate, widely scattered design, perhaps showing a Chinese influence, of a long-tailed bird against a shadowy piece of hill: a watercolour effect, accomplished with a few soft strokes of fawn and palest turquoise. The faint streaks of colour were not picked up elsewhere. The carpet was a plain oatmeal and the bedspread and duvet were faintly brocaded oatmeal silk. The sheen of the silk did serve as a sort of highlight, true. The heavy curtains were a plain silk, but in the same shade. Behind them narrow white Venetians veiled the view of the garden. Perhaps just as well: it was an English-style garden, bursting with flowers and shrubs, but the tall trees which ringed it were unmistakably Australian gums. I found the effect incredibly incongruous but given that the place was in their Open Gardens scheme—or had been in Cassie’s dad’s day—presumably the locals admired it.

    The room’s furniture was all so plain as to be excruciatingly restrained. In some blond wood—European ash, perhaps. No expense had been spared, this was clear enough, but the result was little short of soul-chilling.

    The ensuite bathroom, unsurprisingly, was all palest cream. Hideous bathroom furniture, but doubtless there had been little choice: these would be the available styles. In fact, looking again at the lines of the giant free-standing bath (younger sister to the QM2), very probably the plainest of the available styles.

    Mrs Crozier (Senior) had chosen it all, had she? Mm.

    In that case she’d undoubtedly been responsible for the formal drawing-room, too. It was similar. Very similar. The sofas were composed of oatmeal silk-covered oblongs, every edge neatly piped. The occasional tables were excruciatingly plain blond wood. The body-carpet was discontinued in favour of a polished wooden floor, a pale honey colour, not unpleasant in itself, surmounted by an excruciatingly plain rug in, unsurprisingly, palest oatmeal. The thought arose, had the woman been an icicle in bed? And why the Hell had the hearty, hail-fellow-well-met Crozier Senior ever married her? And apparently his son had followed in his footsteps and Mrs C. Junior was cut from the same cloth. God.

    Most of the rest of the place featured style number 2, which could only be described as cosy-cottagey crossed with Scottish. Er—make that ersatz Scottish. It was amazing the number of places where a cheerful tartan featuring a lot of blue could appear. Pelmets, even. Cushions, naturally. Sofas, of course. A couple of giant recliners, yes. “Lazy Boy”, were they, Cassie? Old Mr Crozier had liked them, eh? Mm. Her mum had said the bunches of dried flowers in the “lounge-room” that the family had usually used were awful dust-gatherers, had she? Then could she get rid of them, please? Permanently, yes.

    The kitchen, a roomy affair more than big enough to serve a house twice the size, was done out by the same hand. Smothered in terracotta floor tiles and colourful cottagey wall tiles, with all the sets of china dinnerware on three large wooden dressers offering different floral patterns: blue, blue-rimmed with largely pink flowers, and gold-rimmed with multicoloured bouquets in which pink, yellow and green predominated. Cassie liked the blue set, did she? I agreed that I’d use the blue set for breakfast, then. It had an all-over pattern of deep blue flowers, outside and—rather startling, this, in the cups—in. Cassie informed me happily that it was English china! Uh-huh. The decorator hadn’t gone quite so far as to supply an inglenook but had there been a fireplace instead of a modern stove, one felt that he would have. A set of dining chairs featuring a lot of turned wood in a warm honey shade, possibly varnished pine to match the dressers and big table, had floral seat cushions in pinks, blues and greens. Frilled seat cushions. They went well with the cheerful shades of blue in the frisky tartan curtains at the windows over the sink-bench. Not, as the kids say nowadays.

    The late Mr Crozier’s study featured another blue tartan “Lazy Boy” chair, a giant darkly polished and carved wooden desk, a fair number of brass-supported green-shaded lamps, a lot more of the cheerful blue tartan and, the finishing touch, also a great deal of Black Watch tartan. The “games room” matched, though the billiards table was, I saw, peeking under the huge dust sheet, just the normal green baize. Small mercies. The exercise machines were in the basement, were they, Cassie? And there was a wine cellar, of course. Leanne had made Ralph take the wines, had she? Uh-huh.

    The one bright spot, apart from the house’s outward appearance and the gracious lines of the main rooms, was the collection of “frightful daubs” on the walls. I looked at the one in the front hall of two chunky, rough-coated ponies for some time, the first night I spent at the house.

    Next day I said to Cassie: “I—er—don’t think that’s a Munnings.”

    “Um, no,” she said, pinkening and biting her lip. “It’s a fake, and, um, Mr Crozier said he ought to get rid of it, really. Evidently there was a big scandal ages ago, in the ’70s, I think: a couple of small galleries in Sydney and Melbourne were working a scam, selling fakes. The one in Melbourne used to put on big exhibitions when the Cup was on. Um, the thing is, realistic paintings like this were way out of fashion and I suppose the so-called art experts never bothered to look at exhibitions of horse paintings.”

    I was damn sure they hadn’t, no. More fools them! I shook silently and Cassie asked in bewilderment: “What’s the joke?”

    “Very recently—just on three years back, I think it was—a Munnings sold at Sotheby’s for nearly eight million American dollars. So much for the experts!”

    “Eight million!”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Um, yes,” she said uncertainly, “but this isn’t a real one.”

    “No.” It was blatantly based on one of his many early paintings of ponies, showing Soldier and Sailor. It was damn’ good but the brushwork didn’t quite cut it for an early Munnings and the whole thing seemed… a shade too careful.

    On the other hand, the one in the study was, I was pretty sure, genuine. A study for My Grey Mare, which I’d always thought one of his very best, the saddled but riderless horse striding out purposefully across a field, her head turned just slightly away from the viewer, in her eye that impenetrable look that had nothing to do with human perceptions or thought.

    “Um, well, it’s yours now,” she offered shyly, as I mentioned it could be the real thing. “You could get it valued, if you think it might be genuine. I don’t know when he bought it, I think he’d had it for a long time. Mrs Crozier didn’t like it, she said it was ugly and the horse had a—a weird look in its eye.”

    “Of course it does! Its head’s full of horsey thoughts and feelings completely unknowable and even inimical to mere human beings!”

    She stared at me. “Yes. I’ve always thought that…” she said slowly. “You really like horses, don’t you?”

    “Mm. And equine art. –When I was a kid,” I suddenly found myself confiding, “I wanted to be a jockey. I wouldn’t have had to be a professional, I could have been an amateur, but my family would never have worn it, of course. Dad wasn’t unsympathetic, but I think he was very relieved when I started to shoot up in my teens. I was already too tall for flat racing by the time I hit sixteen. And I was never good enough over the jumps to be a professional jump jockey, though I did some point-to-point for several years. –I don’t think you have much jump racing here?”

    “No, it’s mainly flat racing; and there’s a strong movement opposed to jumping,” she said with a sigh. “They reckon it’s unnatural, and cruel to the horses.”

    “Uh-huh. Funny how the animal-rights nutters never seem to object to the jockeys getting maimed, isn’t it?”

    She bit her lip. “Mm. Um, will you get the other one valued?”

    “I think I should. And insured, if it’s genuine.”

    “Oh—yes, I suppose so.”

    “I like some of the others, too, but I don’t know the artists. They seem to be mostly of Australian horses, I think. I recognised Ruthven of Trethewin—I saw him run at Flemington.”

    She nodded. “Mr Crozier found a man in Sydney who specialises in painting horses. He did most of Trethewin’s winners. Um, there was a little picture in the safe but I don’t know what happened to it.”

    The safe was in the study, open and empty. And she might not know what had happened to the picture, but I did. Sotheby’s. A quarter of million. A Rembrandt etching. Not an early impression, otherwise it would have gone for a lot more.

    “I suppose the forger went to gaol, did he?” I said idly, taking another look at the ponies.

    “I don’t know; I would think so.”

    Mm. The thought arose, where was he now, and what was he doing? Well, it was getting on for forty years back: he might be dead. Or not. Well, caveat emptor!

    “Um, there’s a pretty picture upstairs,” she volunteered.

    “Oh? Could you show me?”

    It was in one of the bedrooms. It was very pretty indeed. Post-impressionist but I couldn’t put my finger on the school. Circa 1910, I’d have said. Two women in long white dresses on a swing seat on a verandah. White predominated, with shades of blue, green and purple in the shadows… Touches of pink. Not small, about six foot wide by four high. Golly.

    “Would it be an Australian artist, Cassie?”

    “I think so. Mr Crozier said it wasn’t a Norman Lindsay, and Leanne said that was a relief; that was an odd thing to say, don’t you think?”

    Er—not if this Lindsay was the one I thought he was.

    “Then she said it was too pretty-pretty for words and if Ralph thought they were gonna have it in their bedroom he could think again. So they put it in here: this is just a spare room.”

    “Mm. Well, I like it very much. If I keep the house on,” I said unguardedly, “I’d definitely bring it downstairs.”

    Her face had fallen ten feet; oh, God.

    “You—you aren’t gonna sell the house, are you?” she faltered.

    “Uh—well, it’s a long way off for a country retreat, Cassie.”

    “It’s not that far— Oh. You mean from England?”

    “Mm.”

    “But with the Internet and everything… Some people work from home,” she said in a tiny voice.

    I thought of the keen go-getters at ABC Freight’s head office, and their sworn enemies, the stodgy old brigade at head office… Ugh. Keep them in line at long-distance? It’d never work.

    On the other hand the company would roll along okay without a Cartwright in charge. Well, Branson was in the wings, ready to pick up the pieces if ABC Freight management fell off its trolley, but stopping that from happening would be entirely up to whoever was in charge, wouldn’t it? I could go back to my first love, horses, stay here in the dusty Adelaide hills, get the training stables back on their feet, let the bloody company get on with… it.

    What the Hell was I thinking? “Bloody” company? What murky depths of the subconscious had that come from?

    I took a deep breath and said as mildly as I could: “I don’t think that would work for my sort of thing, Cassie. But I haven’t nearly made up my mind about the house, yet.”

    “No,” she said wanly. “Well, I’d better get back to it.” And she hurried away.

    Just as well, I told myself bleakly, staring blankly at the pretty but definitely not pretty-pretty painting which was far too good for a spare bedroom.

    “Thing is,” said Jim Hawkes, giving me a persuasive look, “it’d pack much more clout if you’d do an interview in pers—”

    “No.”

    “But heck, Alex!”

    “No. In the first place, I don’t give interviews to the damned Press, and in the second place, bloody Anson—uh—Andrews—would be on the alert immediately if he saw me with a photo of him as Brownloe!”

    “Oh.”

    Yes, “Oh”. I didn’t say it.

    “Well,” he said gloomily, “the cops reckon they can get it on TV official. It’ll just be one of their usual does: have you seen this person, contact number too fast for the average human eye to take in, kind of thing. The networks might pick it up as human interest, but it’s too long since the place burned down, really…”

    “Mm. How long would it take to get an advertisement on your television?”

    His jaw dropped.

    “Well? –Just the photo with contact numbers and a warning that he’s a con artist, could be using any name, changed his hair colour—that sort of thing.”

    “Cripes,” he said, goggling at me.

    “I think it would work.”

    “Uh—yeah, it’d work, mate,” he said, scratching his head and grimacing. “But getting it on… Dunno who you’d have to bribe, but it’d have to be someone bloody high up. All that’s planned yonks in advance, ya know, and the advertisers pay multi-megabucks for the right slots. You’d be pushing somebody out, and there’d be Hellish ructions—probably mean breaking a contract, the networks ’ud be sued for megabucks what between you and me, mate, they haven’t got. The younger generation doesn’t watch TV, never mind the digital channels crap they’re going in for. We could sound them out, but I really think you’d be beaten before you started. Um, don’t know James Packer personally, do you ya? –No,” he recognised as I shook my head. “Dunno whether he still owns one of them or not, actually: ya never know from one day to the next what’s going on or who owns what. Last rumour I heard, Ten was supposed to be flat broke, but they’re screening just the same crap as the others, so—” He shrugged.

    “I see.”

    “Um… You on Facebook?”

    “God, no!”

    “Didn’t think so. Um, look, let’s give it a whirl, anyway: get it on all the social media. It may strike a chord and go viral, who knows? Clarysse’ll know the best way to go about it: she’s a whizz with the bloody Internet.” He pounced on the phone and, as usual, asked Lorrae to ask Clarysse to step in.

    “Doesn’t she have a phone, Jim?” I asked in spite of myself.

    “Eh? Aw! Nah, she does—a couple, actually—but we don’t tie them up, she could miss somethink crucial.”

    And with that Clarysse came in, her usual quietly composed, competent self—today looking about sixteen years old in a skimpy little sleeveless yellow top—and it was all systems go.

    Yes, well, fingers crossed.

    “Um,” said Cassie over the phone, “I’m sorry to bother you, Alex…”

    “That’s perfectly all right!” I replied—too eagerly, alas. “What can I do for you?”

    “It’s just… Well, I was thinking about the pretty picture in the bedroom that you liked, and I mentioned it to old Miss Evans, she lives locally, she’s got a tiny little old house between us and the shops… She, um, knows quite a lot about art, her father was an artist, he started back in the 1930s. He mostly did portraits later on: you know, governors and mayors and things. She knows who painted it, it was a lady. She said she was much better than any of the ruddy male chauvinists who dominated the art Establishment back then. Um, she talks like that,” she added awkwardly.

    “Well, that’s great, Cassie. Can you remember the lady artist’s name?”

    “Edna Lambert. Nobody’s heard of her nowadays, she reckons, because serious painting in SA was dominated by men back at the beginning of last century. The women only did things like linocuts and watercolours. Um, she said the Edna wasn’t a joke, people really were called that back then.”

    “Er—yes, not an uncommon name, I believe,” I said blankly.

    I heard her swallow. “Dame Edna Everage,” she said in a small voice.

    “Oh! Yes, of course! –Well, that’s good to know, Cassie. Thanks very much.”

    “That’s not all!” she said quickly.

    “Mm?”

    “She said, did you know about the ones in the cupboard in the bedroom.” She swallowed hard.

    “No,” I said blankly. “Which bedroom?”

    “Yours—the main bedroom, I mean.”

    “Er—there are only the two big built-in wardrobes,” I said uncertainly. “I did glance into them, but they were empty apart from a few hangers—no paintings."

    “Um, she said there’s a cupboard at the back of one of them and he—he squirrelled stuff away in there.”

    Oh, really? I raised my eyebrows a little.

    “She said it was really silly, because we are in a bushfire-prone area, of course,” she added matter-of-factly.

    “What?”

    “Yes: we’ve never had one really near us at Trethewin, but they still talk about the Ash Wednesday bushfires in the hills, that was back in the 1980s. Dad said they could see the glow in the sky, and the air was black with smoke. If they’d had to evacuate they couldn’t’ve gone down to the city, they’d’ve had to go the other way. The fires got down as far as the outer suburbs of the city.”

    “What?”

    “Yes: Greenhill. Dad said it was simply terrible, but there was nothing anyone could do. The temperature was up around forty-three and there was almost no humidity and the winds were terrifically strong. I think about thirty people died in South Australia and a lot more in Victoria. They—they had another really awful one only last year in Victoria, Black Saturday, but SA was spared.”

    “Cassie, I— This is terrible!”

    “People take better precautions these days, and they said on the News that Black Saturday was a real wake-up call, and everyone in the hills needed to slash back any undergrowth and clear their gutters and make sure they had an escape plan. But the land’s been cleared so much for the horses round here, we’d only get a grassfire, but if it was bad we’d have plenty of time to get out. It’s when it gets into the trees that you can’t stop it, it can jump the highways in the high winds. You don’t need to worry, we have got a proper escape plan, and—well, it’s no use relying on tanks and pumps if the hoses are burnt out, Dad said that happened to a lot of people in the hills, but we’d start hosing down early.”

    “Cassie, the house is ringed with bloody gum trees!”

    “Yes. Dad pointed out to Mr Crozier that if it got into the trees the house’d be a goner, but he said they were prepared as much as possible and the house’d be no loss. Um, and it cost him a fortune to put them in, but the big cellars at the winery are really deep. The wines would probably survive.”

    I was speechless.

    After a moment she added: “We are used to it, Alex. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

    I wasn’t frightened—except for her and little Gavin—I was bloody well appalled! And, talking of “escape” plans—sweet Christ, what an expression!—talking of such—

    “Look, you didn’t even have enough petrol to take the kid to school!” I shouted. “How the Hell did you expect to get out if there was a fire?”

    “There’s an emergency supply. Don’t—don’t be cross. Dad knows what he’s doing.”

    Yes, but he wasn’t there, was he?

    “And Ben and Mike are very capable, don’t worry.”

    These were the two chaps at the winery: Ben Purdue was the manager and Mike Gilfillan the winemaker. Certainly they had both struck me as practical. Both straightforward, up-front personalities, devoid of any pretensions and, thank Christ, anything approaching the charm of Mr Anson/Brownloe/Andrews. They were, however, about half a mile down the road, and their escape route to the north, that was, away from the hills and the city, would not take them back up the road to the stables—unless I had the geography of the place entirely wrong, which given the maps that had been forwarded to me before I bought it, I really didn’t think I had.

    I sighed, but didn’t insist. I did, though, make a mental note to get hold of Mr Forrest and grill him, retired or not, ASAP.

    “Okay, you all know what you’re doing. Well, did you manage to open this secret cupboard of Crozier’s?”

    “No. That’s why I was ringing you, really. Christina—Miss Evans—she says she knows where it is but she’s bug—um, she doesn’t know how to open it. I had a good look in the robes but I couldn’t see anything.”

    Huh? Oh! Yes, she had referred to the wardrobes as “robes” when she’d shown me the room, come to think of it. Odd. Was it an Australianism, or peculiar to South Australia?

    “Well, should I come up there with a crowbar?” I said lightly.

    “It is your house.”

    Well, yes, but I didn’t give a damn if she and this elderly lady broke into a wardrobe—or, indeed, all of the wardrobes—in search of putative secret cupboards holding putative pictures which, if the Croziers had left them there at all, highly unlikely, would turn out to be more fakes.

    I found myself, however, saying: “Okay, I’ll come up. Um—see you around twelve, I suppose. Can I bring anything for lunch?”

    “Um, well, anything you like, really, Alex,” she replied shyly.

    I promised that it wouldn’t be anything from the dreaded McDonald’s and hung up, smiling.

    Er—steady on, Cartwright, I reminded myself. Half your age, and unsophisticated and naïve into the bargain. Even without the age difference she’d never fit into my world. I thought of the over-lipsticked, overdressed bitches with the fluting voices and the superior noses who infested Ascot and similar venues where I was accustomed to put in an appearance, and winced. They’d destroy her. No, the thing was impossible.

    Nevertheless I headed for Trethewin with my heart beating absurdly fast.

    The elderly Miss Evans turned out to be rather good value. She must have been around seventy, but she was brisk, clearly very intelligent, and very far from doddering. Why I’d been expecting something small, white-haired, plump and cosy with a penchant for frilly cushions I don’t know. I was completely out: she was tall and gaunt, with a mad shock of bright pink curls. True, she did turn up with a pot of homemade jam, which had also been in my mental picture. Gooseberry, from some of the berries she’d frozen last summer. Gavin’s eager suggestion that we could “try it” on muffins for lunch was met with a very dry look and: “Gooseberries are known for their acidity: you’ll think it’s sour, but if your aunt says you can, go ahead and suffer.” Which settled Master Forrest’s hash.

    “It’s this one,” she said, opening one of the big double wardrobes in the master bedroom. “Jim showed it to me not long after he had the place built. Well—nobody else was interested,” she said with a shrug, “least of all that cold bitch he married. –Deb of the year, wouldja believe?” she added drily. “Thought he was going up in the world, silly bugger. Well, it worked, insofar as they let him into the ruddy Adelaide Club and he sent Ralph and Jenny to private schools, tra-la-la, but if she ever let him near her bed after Jenny was born, I’m a Dutchman in his clogs in his tulip garden. And at that she was an accident, poor little sprat: the woman got pissed out of her brain after Jim had sold one of the stallions for millions. He’d promised her a flaming villa in Spain or Portugal if the sale went through: she’d have let anything get up her that night, including the bloody horse. And at that it’s ten to one the kid isn’t Jim’s: saw her with me own eyes doing it early that evening with one of the uni students that were working up here over the Christmas holidays. Six-foot, complete hunk, half her age.” She shrugged. “Since graduated to become a pillar of the legal Establishment, on track to follow in Andrew Zeff’s footsteps.”

    “Ooh, we know him!” gasped Gavin, who was, of course, superintending the entire operation.

    “Lucky you.”

    The stream of scurrilous reminiscence had been produced while she was poking and prodding at the back of the wardrobe. “Nope,” she decided, sitting back with a sigh. “Can’t do it. He fiddled with something down there, but it’s beyond me.”

    “Lemme give it a go!” gasped Gavin.

    Shrugging again, Miss Evans accepted my help up and let him give it a go. The face and ears got very red, but nothing eventuated.

    “Are you sure it was this robe?” asked Cassie. Frankly, I wouldn’t have dared. I looked at her in some horror.

    “Yeah. I’m not in my dotage yet,” the redoubtable Miss Evans replied drily.

    “No—well—if it was a long time ago!” she gasped.

    “Eh? Aw! No, I’ve seen it several times since: if he bought a new piece of junk he’d usually show it to me, and then shove it in there.”

    “Did his son know about it?” I ventured.

    “Doubt it. Well, there could be a question of ownership if there’s anything worth anything in there, I suppose, but you bought the house and contents, didn’t you? Did they itemise the contents?”

    “Er—well, no. I assumed it might just be a few heavy pieces of furniture and perhaps the larger appliances.”

    “And the bath,” put in Gavin.

    “Er—yes. All the bathroom furniture, that would be normal,” I agreed.

    “It’s not furniture!” he retorted scathingly.

    “Fitments, then,” said Cassie soothingly. “Well, it’s a crowbar or nothing, then, Alex.”

    Gavin’s eyes narrowed. “Say I got a chisel—”

    “No,” said his aunt and the old lady simultaneously.

    “Absolutely not,” I agreed. “Is there a crowbar on the premises, Cassie?”

    “I think so. In the shed. The key’s on that big bunch I gave you.”

    “Oh—well, I put them in the top drawer of the—”

    Gavin was into it like a shot.

    “—bureau,” I ended limply

    “Gavin, we don’t look in other people’s drawers!” cried his aunt.

    “He called it a bureau.”

    “It’s an English name for a lowboy. Did you hear what I said?”

    “Yeah, but heck!”

    “Apologise to Mr Cartwright for being a rude little oik,” drawled Miss Evans, horribly dry.

    “Do I have to?” he asked his aunt immediately.

    “Yes!” she snapped, very flushed.

    “Sorry, Alex. –But ya never told me not to!” he added in a rush.

    “That is beside the point,” said Miss Evans coldly. “As I think you’re more than intelligent enough to know.”

    He glared but didn’t deny it.

    “Well, since you’ve got them, Gavin, perhaps you could point out the right key,” I said feebly.

    The right key was found, Master Forrest’s offer to find the crowbar was vetoed, and Cassie and he hurried downstairs, while I had a go at the cupboard. N.B.G.

    Miss Evans, meanwhile, had sat down on the bed. “Comfy!” she approved. “Way back when, he wanted a waterbed, but she vetoed it, of course. Vulgar.” She awarded me a wink.

    “Uh—yes!” I replied with a laugh. “Fun, though.”

    “Exactly. Oh, well, poor old Jim… He got his, mind you, between you and me and the gatepost.”

    “Uh—surely not her mother?” I hissed, jerking my head at the door.

    “No: proper little homebody, devoted to that numbskull, Fred Forrest. No, untold bimbos with both eyes on the main chance, Mr Cartwright.”

    “Alex, please,” I said, grinning at her. “I know the type.”

    “I bet. –I’m Christina. Mum had fancy notions. My sister got Melinda. –Think every bloody teacher she ever had called her Belinda, poor girl,” she added detachedly. “I got Christine most of the time, of course. But anyone who tried to call me Chris got very short shift!” She grinned.

    “Good for you. I’ve always been Alex—well, surnames at school, of course—but I got to the point of threatening to clock anyone who called me Sandy.”

    “Ugh, did they?”

    “Yes, it seems to be fairly standard for Alexander in Britain.”

    “Revolting.”

    I entirely agreed. I grinned at her. “Quite.”

    “That thing in the front hall’s not a Munnings,” she said out of the blue.

    “I know,” I agreed.

    “Did Cassie tell you?”

    “Not exactly: confirmed my suspicions.”

    “Mm-hm. And the one in the study?”

    “I think it’s the real McCoy, Christina.”

    She gave me an approving nod. “Yeah: he bought it when the up-themselves idiots of the art Establishment were looking down their noses at anything representational but especially at equine art. –Ever read Munnings’s farewell speech to the bloody RA?”

    “No, but I know of it,” I replied, swallowing a laugh.

    She grinned. “It’s worth reading the transcript in full—the fatuous BBC broadcast it to the whole country, ya know! Pissed as a fart. After that his name was completely mud in the art world, of course, for more than a generation. Jim Crozier got in when the going was still good. I think that sketch cost about fifteen quid, and he could have got it for less.”

    “Hell’s teeth.”

    “If you were thinking of giving it back to ruddy Ralph, don’t. He’s not interested in art of any sort—well, other than his own bodily adornment, which I must admit he’s always done rather well,” she said, horribly dry. “Likewise anything in the cupboard.”

    “I presume there won’t be a Picasso in there?” I murmured.

    Christina Evans, bless her, laughed so much she almost choked. “No!” she gasped at last. “Boy, did I set myself up for that!”

    “Ooh, what?” asked Gavin eagerly from the doorway.

    “An art joke, Gavin,” she said, hauling a flaglike man’s handkerchief out of the pocket of her baggy jeans and blowing her nose loudly.

    “Aw, art,” he said in disgust.

    “We’re looking for art, you nit,” noted his aunt calmly, handing me a crowbar.

    “Me?” I said faintly.

    “I’ll do it!”

    “Over my dead body, little chum, and probably yours,” I noted, approaching the cupboard gingerly.

    “Alex, open your eyes!” cried Cassie with a giggle.

    Reluctantly I opened my eyes.

    “Want me to do it?” asked Miss Evans, giving me a sardonic look.

    “Er—guide me, if you would, Christina.”

    She pointed at the floor of the wardrobe. “Down there, at the back. No skirting, see?"

    Oh, good grief, nor there was!

    “Dig,” she ordered, at her driest.

    I dug.

    Nothing.

    “Let me have a go!”

    Could he do worse than I was doing?

    “Put your back into it, Cartwright: whaddare ya, a man or a mouse?” sighed the elderly lady.

    “Bully.” I dug again.

    “The man’s never handled a crowbar in his life!” she said wildly to Cassie.

    “No, I think it’s just that he— Ooh!” she gasped, as there was an almighty crack and the false back of the wardrobe splintered.

    “—that he didn’t want to bust the whole door,” I ended for her.

    “Hey, LOOK!” shouted Gavin. “It really is a secret cupboard!”

    Well, sort of. It was only about six inches deep, but it certainly had enough stuff stacked in there. Talk about the miser’s secret hoard!

    “Christina, did you have any idea—”

    “Not this much,” she croaked, goggling. “My God, that’s Meissen!” she cried.

    “Yeah. Pity he didn’t manage the set,” I replied as we carefully lifted out the two figures from the monkey orchestra and laid them on the bed.

    “Ooh!” cried Gavin, his eyes shining. “Monkeys! Keen!”

    “Don’t you dare to touch them: I’ve seen them on the Antiques Roadshow: they’re worth thousands if they’re good ones,” gulped his aunt. “—Are they good ones?”

    “Yes,” Miss Evans and I replied in chorus.

    “Help,” she muttered.

    “Georgian silver,” said Miss Evans in remarkably neutral tones, laying a coffee-pot on the oatmeal brocaded silk.

    “Uh-huh,” I agreed.

    “Early South Australian silver,” she added, laying a— My eyes stood on stalks.

    “Is that— It can’t be! Is that an emu’s egg, Christina?” croaked Cassie.

    “Yes. I’ve seen several similar ones,” she said, looking at the horribly ornate trophy-cup-like thing with its little silver wings and tendrils and ferns and curlicues, all intricately chased.

    “They musta hadda cut it in half very carefully,” decided Gavin, peering. “It musta been an addled one,” he pronounced definitely.

    We avoided his innocent eye and got on with emptying the shelves.

    “There’s more,” he prompted when we’d cleared them.

    “Yeah,” Miss Evans agreed without enthusiasm, eying the paper-wrapped oblong shapes leaning up against the back of the cupboard under the bottom shelf. “Frankly, I’m not game to look without considerable fortification.”

    “Mm,” I agreed. “I rather think Zeff would kill to get his mitts on those netsuke. There’s nothing half as good in his own collection.”

    “Right. I vaguely remember when Jim got them, actually, but I thought he’d sold them yonks ago. It was when he went to the 1964 Olympics. He said the stands were half empty: too many people remembered the War too bloody clearly, it was too soon.” Possibly catching me eying her dubiously, she added: “I know that’s the Dark Ages to you, but I was about twenty. I’ve known Jim all my life. My grandparents were his parents’ next-door neighbours. He was a lot older, of course, he’d have been—uh—in his late thirties by then, I suppose.”

    “I see. I suppose they’ve never been valued… Christina, what’s the position with death duties in Australia? Er—inheritance tax?”

    “There isn’t any as such. Uh—the position with real property is a bit more complicated. If you sell it within two years you’re safe, but after that it’s subject to capital gains tax, the same as any other asset. Anything else you sell would be subject to capital gains tax, I’m pretty sure. Um… shares you inherit aren’t taxed, but the income from them is. And anything else that generates income is taxed in the usual way.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    Cassie looked at me uneasily. “Alex, you’re not thinking of giving all this stuff to Ralph, are you?”

    “Your loss,” said the old lady on a sour note, “but like I told you, he’s not interested in art. He will sell them, capital gains or not. Well—as and when his accountant and the valuer advise, I should imagine.” She gave one of her shrugs.

    “Would—would Alex have to pay capital gains tax on them?” faltered Cassie.

    “If he sold them? Dunno: he’s a foreigner.”

    “Yeah—no, I meant now, Christina. Not selling them.”

    “Uh—no, love, he’s bought them legally as part of the contents of the house. He’s not making a capital gain as a seller, you see.”

    “Oh.” She eyed me dubiously.

    “Aren’t we gonna open those others?” demanded Gavin on an aggrieved note.

    We three adults jumped.

    “Later. Let’s have lunch first,” said Cassie feebly.

    “YAY! Lunch!” And off he rushed.

    “Um, I could nip over to the winery if you like, Christina,” Cassie offered.

    “Balls. I’ve brought a bottle: it’s in the kitchen. Come on.” She marched out.

    Cassie looked at me and smiled feebly. “Sorry.”

    I shook my head. “Don’t be,” I said in a lowered voice. “She’s a collectors’ item!”

    “Um—yes. Um, lots of people don’t like her,” she murmured.

    “Lots of people are morons,” I replied lightly.

    “Mm. Um—we’ll have to drink it,” she said uneasily.

    “Don’t worry, I promise to down it and smile.”

    … I drank. “Good Lord, Christina, what is it?” I croaked.

    “Trethewin Estate Reserve Bin Shiraz 2004. I decided I wasn’t gonna let it outlive me,” the elderly dame replied lightly. “Cheers!”

    “Cheers,” I agreed reverently.

    Christina Evans collapsed in splutters. Tears ran down her cheeks and she couldn’t speak, just pointed helplessly.

    “What?” cried Cassie.

    “I don’t think it’s funny,” said Gavin, looking dubiously at the, er, putative surrealist thing that had come from the secret cupboard.

    “Fake—Nolan!” the old woman gasped when she could speak.

    “Are you sure?” asked Cassie. “I’d’ve said it was real.”

    “No,” she said, blowing her nose.

    “Oh.” Cassie looked at me helplessly.

    “I don’t know your Sidney Nolan well enough to judge, Cassie,” I said. “But I’d bet a fair sum that Christina’s right.”

    “What’s it meant to be?” asked Gavin, peering at it. “Is that Ned Kelly?”

    “Duh-don’t set me off again!” gasped Miss Evans. “Yes, it is. –The thing is, Alex, he’s used bits of at least thuh-three well-known Nolans!” She was off again, shaking helplessly.

    “Right; got it,” I acknowledged. “And this?”

    It was a rather nice portrait: head and shoulders of a youngish man in a faded blue shirt.

    “Fake Ivor Hele,” she said instantly.

    If she said so.

    “I suppose this is another fake Munnings,” said Cassie sadly, picking up the last offering.

    “Yes,” we both agreed.

    “Oh.”

    “I think,” Christina concluded, “that Jim must have bought up the forger’s remaining stock and shoved it in here to get it out of the way. Well, the man was damn good in his way—the original of that Ivor Hele’s in a private collection; if I hadn’t seen it I’d have sworn this was the real thing. I suppose Jim felt they were too good to destroy.”

    “So did the man, like, copy stuff or somethink?” groped Gavin.

    “Sort of. Sometimes he copied, sometimes he just painted a new picture in the same style as another artist: making it look as if it was his, you see,” she explained kindly.

    “I getcha. So can’t Alex get money for these?”

    “No, in fact if he tried to sell these as originals, he might well go to gaol.”

    “Heck!”

    “Well, burn them?” I said lightly. “Guy Fawke’s Day’s coming up: a big bonfire?”

    There was dead silence. They were all looking at me in horror, even little Gavin.

    “What?” I said in bewilderment.

    Christina recovered herself first. “Mate,” she said heavily, “this is bushfire country. Bushfire—country.”

    “Yes, Cassie told m— Oh.”

    “Yes, ‘Oh’, you bloody birk! You don’t light bonfires in bushfire country!”

    “No,” said Cassie faintly.

    “Heck, you could go to gaol for that, I reckon!” gasped Gavin, his eyes very round.

    “What he said,” agreed Christina, horribly dry.

    “Sorry,” I said weakly.

    “We’re noddeven allowed to have fireworks,” the little boy added sadly.

    “That applies to the whole of Australia, not merely Trethewin or the nuclear Forrest family,” the old woman explained.

    “Um, yes,” said Cassie, looking at my face. “It’s true, Alex. I think the kids are still allowed to have sparklers, but we don’t have them, it’s just too risky. There are huge great official fireworks displays in all the big cities: the—um, the people that do them, they have to have licences. We usually watch the big display over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on TV.”

    “It’s ace!” Gavin assured me.

    “Er—yes, I’m sure it is, Gavin. –Well, how the Hell do we get rid of these things?” I said feebly to the two women.

    Christina made a face. “Cut them into ribbons, dump them in the rubbish?”

    “Not the lovely horse!” cried Cassie.

    Christina looked at me; I looked at her; we sighed.

    “Cassie, dear, it’s a forgery,” she said heavily. “The bugger’s signed it with Munnings’s name: see? –Given it the right flourish for a later work, what’s more,” she said drily to me.

    “Yes—no: but say I just had it in my room?” Cassie looked hopefully at us.

    “And sixty years down the track your heirs flog it off as an original for megabucks,” noted the old woman. “Well, I’d say Why the Hell not, but it’s yours, Alex: up to you.”

    Oh, God. “Very well, then, Cassie, if you like it so much, keep it. Just don’t show it to any visitors.”

    “I won’t!” she said eagerly, her face beaming. “Thank you, Alex!”

    I sighed. It really wasn’t bad. Late Munnings, a study of a horse and jockey—I’d seen several like it, all beautifully balanced, the horse glowing, the jockey’s silks making bright accents, the background just turf and sky. Sometimes he overdid the sky but the copyist had doubtless seen at least one of his better efforts: he’d made the sky almost a wash effect, palest blue shading to a more intense colour near the top, with soft white clouds. None of the heavy impasto of some of the earlier works. The jockey’s silks were bright yellow and white; I’d seen a couple of genuine versions with pink and white or blue with a little yellow; this was more like the former, horse and rider posed almost motionless, just the off fore bent in preparation for the next step. It was a very nice piece of work but like the ponies downstairs, just a little too careful for a Munnings. One thought “Munnings” and then realised the feel was wrong.

    “Could I have the one of Ned Kelly?” asked Gavin hopefully.

    Oh, why not? Er—but would it give him nightmares? On the other hand, at that age my most prized possession had been a gruesome souvenir of Grandfather’s: a fox’s brush with a silver handle. I still had it; it had once reduced a particularly tender-hearted girlfriend to tears.

    “Do you like it?” I asked him cautiously.

    “Yeah; Ned Kelly’s cool!”

    “Fine. It’s yours.”

    “Gee! Tha-anks, Alex!”

    “Have the other one!” I said madly to Christina.

    “Thanks, I will; I can always tell visitors it’s a copy. I rather fancy it. Well—fancy Hele’s best work, and I always fancied him, too: even in later life he was a bloody attractive bloke, and in his day he was a stunner: there’s a self-portrait from the mid-1930s that knocks your socks off!” she said with a loud laugh.

    Which polished off the late Crozier’s damned fakes. And if there were any more secret cupboards at Trethewin I did not want to know!

    … My life, I reflected drily as we carted the things downstairs, was being haunted by fakery: I did not, really, need another lot on top of the masquerades of damned Anson/Brownloe/Andrews! Still, presumably the art forgeries would be the last of the fakes.

    How wrong one can be.

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/07/it-pays-to-advertise.html