[Poppy Denby 05] - The Art Fiasco Read online

  “Poppy Denby’s back doing what she does best, and this time in Newcastle! Cleverly plotted as always, with an exceptional eye for detail and a fabulous amateur sleuth, Veitch Smith carries us back once more to the Golden Age for this delicious murder mystery.”

  Jacky Collins (Dr Noir)

  “This latest in the Poppy Denby series continues Fiona Veitch Smith’s compelling grip over historical story and murder mystery. She throws a spell as she brings together her cast of characters that instills in the reader empathy with them and forms a vivid sense of place (in this case north-east England) and period. Smith’s choice of a 1920s setting is inspired, with its deep social and cultural changes which are so vividly captured you could wonder if the author had time-travelled.”

  Colin Duriez, author of Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography: Death, Dante and Lord Peter Wimsey

  “Poppy Denby’s latest investigation combines an intriguing cold case mystery with a murder puzzle set in Newcastle in 1924. Complete with map and cast of characters, this is great fun for fans of mysteries set during detection’s Golden Age.”

  Martin Edwards, author of Mortmain Hall, Gallows Court and The Golden Age of Murder

  Text copyright © 2020 Fiona Veitch Smith

  This edition copyright © 2020 Lion Hudson IP Limited

  The right of Fiona Veitch Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by

  Lion Hudson Limited

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park,

  Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com

  ISBN 978 1 78264 319 7

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 320 3

  First edition 2020

  Cover image: © Laurence Whiteley

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  For my granddad Fred Veitch:

  Your art lives on.

  From: The Dunlop Book: A Motorist’s Counsellor and Friend Ed. J. Burrow & Co. Ltd., London, 1920

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Character List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 32

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Art Fiasco starts nearly three years after the end of Poppy’s last adventure in The Cairo Brief. In the “real” world it’s been two years, and I apologize to all Poppy’s many fans left in limbo at the end of the last book, desperate to find out what happens next. Well, wait no more!

  I always love writing Poppy Denby books, but this one has been particularly enjoyable. When you read the historical notes at the end (don’t do so now as there are some spoilers) you will discover that the idea for the story is rooted in my own family’s experience in the 1920s. In addition, it is set in my home town of Newcastle upon Tyne. There has been something really special about walking the streets of Grainger Town or browsing the Laing Art Gallery and seeing it all through Poppy’s eyes. Some of the book is also set on the same street as the church I attend, Heaton Baptist, and I have been able to plot as I drive or walk past the various locations. I have also visited Morpeth and Ashington – places I have known since I was a child – but seen them through different eyes.

  As always, there are many people to thank. Firstly, Dave, Robyn, and James Giles at the Laing Art Gallery, who showed around the eccentric woman who wanted to set a murder in their place of work. James, particularly, was helpful in guiding me around the “backstage” area of the gallery and pointing out the staircase to the roof that became so important in the plotting of the book.

  Thanks too to Rajan Nair, who let the eccentric woman in to look around his town house on Jesmond Vale Terrace. It really helped to envisage where my characters would be living for the duration of the story. Thanks too to Lorrie at Morpeth Methodist, who not only showed me around the church but also pointed out the exact house that Poppy’s parents would have lived in if they were really ministers there in 1924. I am also grateful to the archivists at Woodhorn Colliery Museum and the very helpful folk of the Heaton History Group.

  As always, I am indebted to the professional and supportive team at Lion Hudson, including Julie Frederick, Louise Titley, Lyn Roberts, and the fabulously talented cover designer Laurence Whiteley. However, the team is far poorer for the loss of my indefatigable editor and partner in literary crime Jessica Gladwell, who has accompanied Poppy and me on so many adventures. We will both miss her hugely. Jess, may the next chapter of your life be just as flapulous as the last.

  Finally, to my wonderful husband and daughter: thank you for believing in me. I could not be a crazy author lady without you.

  So now, dear reader, without further ado it’s over to you.

  CHARACTER LIST

  1897

  Agnes Robson (14) – daughter of a coal miner from Ashington Colliery. Art student.

  Jeremy Robson (11) – brother of Agnes.

  Mrs Sadie Robson – their mother.

  Mrs Alice Denby – mother of our heroine, Poppy Denby (b.1898). Wife of a Methodist minister.

  Revd Malcolm Denby – father of Poppy. Methodist minister.

  Christopher Denby (2) – brother of Poppy.

  Michael Brownley – art teacher.

  1900

  Claude Moulton – a Parisian artist and Agnes’ lover.

  1924

  Poppy Denby – arts and entertainment editor for The Daily Globe. Amateur detective.

  Dot Denby – Poppy’s aunt. Former suffragette and leading lady on the West End stage.

  Grace Wilson – Dot’s companion. Former suffragette and bookkeeper to the Women’s Suffrage and Political Union (WSPU).

  Delilah Marconi – actress, flapper, and socialite. Poppy’s best friend.

  Rollo Rolandson – senior editor and owner of The Daily Globe. Poppy’s boss.

  Yasmin Rolandson (née Reece-Lansdale), KC – barrister. Rollo’s wife.

  Daniel Rokeby – press photographer. Poppy’s former beau.

  Agnes Robson (41) – world-famous artist.

  Gerald Farmer – Agnes’ business manager and publicist.

  Gus North – Agnes’ studio assistant.

  DI Sandy Hawkes – police detective inspector with Newcastle CID.

  Peter MacMahon – journalist with the Newcastle Daily Journal.

  Walter Foster – journalist with the Morpeth Herald.

  Dante Sherman – curator at the Laing Art Gallery.

  Maddie Sherman – Dante’s mother and Aunt Dot
’s neighbour in Newcastle.

  Mr Helsdon – caretaker at the Laing Art Gallery.

  Jimmy Jackson – stable boy at the Laing Art Gallery.

  Professor Reid – head of Newcastle Art School, Armstrong College.

  Edna Storey (12) – art student in Ashington.

  Mrs Storey – Edna’s mother. Owns a sweet shop in Ashington.

  Betty – Aunt Dot’s char.

  Sister Henrietta – runs St Hilda’s home for unwed mothers and women in distress.

  Mrs Northanger – patron of St Hilda’s.

  CHAPTER 1

  30 SEPTEMBER 1897, ASHINGTON COLLIERY, NORTHUMBERLAND

  Agnes Robson hurried into the church hall, smiling an apology at the gentleman in charge, and took her usual place at the easel nearest the window. The other young artists – half a dozen of them, ranging from eight to fourteen – were already busy with their paints and brushes. Agnes lifted the sack off her canvas to reveal a half-finished study in oils. She inhaled the fumes, allowing the familiar smell to settle her quickened breath, picked up a brush, and chewed the end while she contemplated the composition.

  She had been attending the art class – which was held every Saturday afternoon for the children of pitmen – for four months. Since graduating from watercolour to oils, she had discovered that the paint did not dry completely between each class, and she could still work and manipulate last week’s efforts if she needed to. Mr Brownley, the art teacher who came up on the train from Newcastle, had suggested she take the painting home to work on it during the week, but she had declined. Her mam did not like her coming to the classes. She had to leave her job at the laundry an hour early to get here, and Mrs Madsen always paid her a penny less on Saturdays because of it. So, each week she bought a bag of boiled sweets from Mr Storey’s shop and bribed her fellow artists so they wouldn’t tell on her. As for Mrs Madsen, well, she had come up with a plan to keep her quiet, too.

  “That’s coming along very nicely, Agnes. What do you think you need to do to improve it?”

  Agnes looked up coyly through her dark lashes to see the tall figure of Michael Brownley at her right shoulder. He wore a paint-splattered smock over his smart tweed suit, but splodges of paint daubed his leather shoes. He never bothered to clean them. Obviously he didn’t get into trouble like Agnes did. The girl always took her clogs off to paint, and her darned stockings, braving the cold of the wooden floor. As the classes had run through the summer this had not been a problem up until now, but as autumn was approaching, she might have to reconsider her attire.

  She curled her toes, then lowered her eyes from the kind, handsome face of her tutor, to contemplate her painting. It was a view from the railway bridge that separated the twin pit villages of Hirst and Ashington. The track sloped gently to the right, leading the eye to the edge of the canvas where it continued in the viewer’s imagination. To the left of the track was the blackened brickwork of Mr Storey’s general goods shop on Station Road; then, in the distance, silhouetted against a splash of sky, was the giant wheel of the pithead, blocking out the sun. But as the track curved away, the light returned, with the brightest part of the painting in the top right corner.

  Agnes contemplated her tutor’s question. How could she improve it? She took the tip of the brush handle out of her mouth and used it to point to the foliage on the trees, sparsely lining the track. “Can I change the colour, Mr Brownley? Of the trees? They was green when I started it, but now they’s orange and yella. I was looking at it on the way ower. The picture’s changed ower time.”

  The tutor smiled at her, his full lips pushing back the whiskers of his moustache and beard. Agnes’ heart skipped a beat.

  “Of course you can change it. It’s your creation. You can do what you like. But why do you want to do it? How do you think it will improve your painting? Is it just because the scene you imagined has changed, or is there some other reason?”

  He paused, looked deeply into her dark brown eyes, then said: “Perhaps it reflects a change of emotion?”

  Agnes felt her cheeks flush. The lad next to her tossed her a curious look, then returned to his charcoal sketch.

  “I’m not really sure, Mr Brownley. It’s just that it doesn’t feel right with the green. And… and…”

  “Yes,” he said, leaning in, until she could smell the sharp scent of his aftershave cutting through the turpentine miasma. “And what? Don’t be scared to say what you feel, Agnes – there is no right and wrong here.”

  She swallowed hard. “Well, it’s because of the sun. Or the lack of it. The pithead blocks it oot. But I want to show that it’s still there, in a way, through the natural things. Though the leaves are dyin’ they’ll be back. They’ve sucked in the sun. And they’ll take it with’em. Where e’re they go.”

  Brownley sucked in his breath. “That’s beautiful, Agnes. Beautiful. You have an artist’s soul.”

  Agnes flushed again. “Th-thank you, Mr Brownley.”

  “You will help me clean up afterwards, won’t you?” asked the tutor as he moved on from his prize pupil to give some attention to his other charges.

  “Aye. I will.”

  Agnes pulled on her stockings. Then her bloomers. Michael Brownley ran his finger down the girl’s spine.

  “I hope it didn’t hurt too much,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Agnes.”

  “No. It didn’t hurt.”

  “Then what’s the rush?”

  “I need to help me mam with the tea. It’s getting dark.”

  Brownley rolled over on the makeshift mattress on the floor and looked through the window, smeared with coal dust. The girl was right; it was getting late. He had been a fool to let time slip by. The hall caretaker would be here soon to lock up.

  He sat up and pulled on trousers and vest while the girl thrust her arms and head through her pinafore and started re-braiding her hair into two pigtails. She looked so young with clothes on. Despite having the body of a woman, Agnes Robson was barely more than a child. A pang of guilt struck him.

  He hoisted his braces over each shoulder, then quickly pulled the sack cover over the painting he was working on. It was a nude of Agnes, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her long black hair cascading over her naked white body. It was a very tasteful painting, he thought, with no breasts or genitalia on show. He was glad of that. He did not want to disrespect the girl. In fact, he regretted giving in to his base urges in the first place. He shouldn’t have done it today. Nor last week.

  He pulled out his wallet and counted out some coins. It was twice as much as he normally gave her for posing. He knew she would use some of it to pay off the woman at the laundry – to keep her quiet about coming to art classes – so it would be money well spent.

  “Th-thank you, Mr Brownley.”

  His hand closed over hers, then he lifted her small white fist to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “No, thank you, Agnes. Thank you.”

  Agnes hurried up Station Road, trying to beat the last rays of sun as they slipped over the edge of the world. At the building site where they were constructing the new Methodist chapel, she stopped to let a horse and cart pass, then readied herself to run the last few hundred yards to her house at the end of Eleventh Row.

  “Is that you, Agnes?” She heard a voice behind her and turned to see a young woman, in her mid-twenties, holding a small boy by the hand.

  “It is, Mrs Denby.”

  The woman clicked a padlock shut on the door of a shack. The corrugated iron structure was the temporary home of Trinity Methodist Chapel, which hosted Sunday School classes and church services for the more religious-minded miners. The Methodists were just one group trying to save the souls of the men who descended into the black bowels of the earth, and they had to share the mission field with Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Salvationists. The art classes were held in a Church of England hall.

  “Will we be seeing you at Sunday School tomorrow, Agnes?”

  Agne
s lowered her eyes, not wanting to meet the probing gaze of the minister’s wife. Can she see I’ve just sinned?

  “I’ll have to ask me mam. She might need me to help with the bairns.”

  “You can bring the bairns with you, Agnes. We have room for them all.” She looked down at her young son huddled next to her.

  The young woman smiled as she gestured to the makeshift building. “At least we will when the new chapel’s built. But you know we won’t turn anyone away, don’t you?”

  “Aye, Mrs Denby, I know that. But it’s still up to me mam.”

  “Should I come ask her?”

  Agnes imagined her mother, peeling tatties, with one bairn hanging to her skirt and another screaming in the crib, while she boiled water on the fire for her da’s Saturday night bath. She wouldn’t thank Agnes for bringing a God-botherer home with her, not at the busiest time of day. And she wouldn’t thank her for being too late to help with the tea, either.

  “That’s all right, Mrs Denby. Don’t worry, I’ll ask her meself.”

  “You do that, Agnes,” said the woman, kindly. Then she winced and raised her hand to her swollen belly.

  “You all right there, Mrs Denby? Is the bairn kickin?”

  “Aye, she is.”

  “She?”

  “We’re hoping for a girl, Agnes. A little sister for young Christopher. Aren’t we, pet?” The young mother tousled the golden curls of the little boy. He grinned up at Agnes.

  “Good night then, Mrs Denby. Will you be getting home all right?”

  “I will, thank you Agnes. The reverend’s just gone to fetch the cart. I hope to see you tomorrow.”

  “Aye, Mrs Denby, me too.”

  Agnes picked up her skirt and hurried across the road, then down the alley that ran alongside the colliery terraces, her clogs clacking on the cobbles. The Robson house was on the very end of Eleventh Row – the street closest to the pit. The pit bell rang, jangling her nerves. Her da would be home soon from his shift. He’d be wanting his bath, then his tea; then he’d head doon the Kickin’ Cuddy for a few pints with his mates. Only when their father had left for the pub would the Robson children be able to have their baths. She would have to help wash the littluns first. Then Agnes would have her turn. Then her mam. Her brother, eleven-year-old Jeremy, would have a bath on the morra when he got back from his night shift doon the pit.