Richard Powell - False colors (aka Masterpiece in Murder)

FALSE COLORS

Most of my friends in Philadelphia lead breathless lives. They go through each day like a man running up steps two at a time. This leaves me rather far behind, because while other people are taking steps two at a time I am hunting for an escalator. In the great race of life, I am just along for the walk.

Perhaps, in view of these facts, it was a mistake to let myself get interested in a breathtaking girl named Nancy Vernon. Like a lot of other men, the moment I met her I began thinking in terms of birds singing and flowers blooming and a walk hand-in-hand down the lane. I didn't realize that whenever Nancy heads down a lane, there is likely to be trouble at the far end. And if there is, Nancy will find it. Trouble is a challenge to her, like Mach 1 to a jet pilot.

Speaking of Mach 1, which of course is the speed of sound at any given altitude and temperature, I learned a few facts about it while trying to keep up with Nancy. It seems that a number of unpleasant things travel at that speed. I refer to screams in the night and the noise of a man running for his life. I was sorry to hear the running feet because they were my own, and at the time I heard them I was trying to break through the sound barrier.

I met Nancy on one of those lovely May afternoons when even Philadelphians from the Main Line get slightly irresponsible, and start nodding to strangers, taking off their coats in public, and wondering if the Phillies could win the pennant. I left the Philadelphia Art Alliance, after lunch, in just that sort of mood. I didn't want to go back to my shop on Walnut Street and be Peter Meadows, art dealer, the rest of the day. For one thing, it was too pleasant outside. For another, I didn't want to face the disapproval of my assistant, Miss Krim. I hadn't pleased her that morning. First she had caught me handing out fifty bucks' worth of canvases and oils on credit to a nice kid from the Museum School of Art. Then she had caught me promising to give a one-man show the next month for a guy who does pretty fair water colors but never sells any.

Miss Krim is middle aged and has no interest in life except the shop. She looks on its bank balance as her baby, and she gets upset when I drop it on its head.

A little up the street from the Art Alliance, sunlight slanted onto Rittenhouse Square and broke into splashes of color like a painting by Monet. As a matter of fact there were a lot of paintings over there, although none was quite in the Monet class. They were holding the annual Clothesline Art Exhibit in the square. It is one of those things anybody can enter. For a small entrance fee you can get a reserved space and put your paintings on display and watch the public fail to appreciate them. The exhibitors are usually art students, with a sprinkling of ladies who didn't go to art school but picked up their technique sort of by chance, the way you might pick up measles.

There was no real hope of making a find at the exhibit, but it gave me an excuse to put off going back to work. I crossed the street and began wandering along the paths of Rittenhouse Square. As I walked I became interested in counting lighthouses. All art students paint lighthouses. They paint them in water color, gouache, oils, casein, and anything else that will stick on canvas or paper. It made me feel slightly shipwrecked.

I had counted fifteen lighthouses when somebody tapped my shoulder and said, "Hello, Pete. Is this where you find that junk you peddle?"

I looked up and saw Sheldon Thorp III. He was smiling to show that his remark was all in fun. Sheldon has always tried not to hurt my feelings. Back in prep school, whenever he ran through me for a touchdown he would come back and help pick me up and say, "Nice try, Pete. I had too many blockers." When he took my girl away from me in college, he said, "It's not that she likes me better, Pete. It's just that I'm so lousy with money." Once overseas during the war he gave me a lift in his staff car, and said, "I ought to be slogging along with you guys, Pete. It was just influence that got the general to make me his aide."

Sheldon was born with a collecting urge. He can't get interested in any subject without trying to make the world's biggest and finest collection of things relating to the subject. Back in school, he collected sports trophies and girls. During the war he collected medals. After the war he went hunting in Africa and collected animal trophies. In the last few years he had been collecting art.

All the right people around Philadelphia think Sheldon is wonderful. That makes me one of the wrong people.

"Look," I said irritably, "I don't handle junk. Not even famous junk. When I peddle a painting, it's because I think it has a future, not a puffed-up present."

"Sure, sure. Just kidding, Pete. What you say is absolutely right. In fact, I've been wondering if I shouldn't do some of my buying through you."

That startled me. Sheldon had been collecting art without any help from me. Not that he needed my help. From all reports, he had the three things you need to be a successful collector of art: good judgment, luck, and several million bucks. Once or twice in the past I had suggested buys to him, but he turned them down. He seemed to feel that I wasn't even qualified to deal in finger paintings from a nursery school.

"What's the matter?" I asked suspiciously. "Have other dealers been stinging you?"

"Oh no. I don't let people sting me. It was just that I thought you might help me this afternoon. In return I might ask you to buy a few things for me. Like a Picasso I'm after and a couple of Miros."

"That sounds as if I might have to be pretty helpful."

"It's quite easy, Pete. To start with, I'm here on a sort of collecting expedition."

"Here? At the Clothesline Art Exhibit? Don't tell me you've found anything worth your trouble here."

"Pete," he said softly, 'look over there and you'll see a real masterpiece."

I looked where he was pointing, but the canvases he was talking about were a hundred feet away and of course I couldn't tell anything about them. A girl was stooping in front of one of the pictures. The lines of her body struck cleanly through a light print dress. Her head was bent and her face was hidden by shoulder-length hair that looked as if it ought to be carted away to Fort Knox.

I said, "From this distance even a Renoir would look like a postage stamp."

"This masterpiece isn't wearing canvas. She's wearing a print dress."

"Oh. The girl. You're still collecting dames?"

"Xot dames, plural. I gave that up. It was too easy. The only real fun in collecting is in going after something that's very hard to get. The girl over there is Nancy Vernon."

Of course I knew the name. Nancy Vernon, of the Van Rensselaer Vernons. She was one of those golden creatures whose life you can follow in the papers. Nancy Vernon taking the blue ribbon on her hunter at the Devon Horse Show. Nancy Vernon winning the Middle Atlantic States Girls Tennis Championship. Nancy Vernon at her debut. Nancy Vernon returning from the Coronation.

"AD right," I said. "What's the deal 0 "

"You can help me make time with her."