Eighty Days Red (8 page)

our hands, surely?’
‘I know. But I was just wondering …’
‘Why?’
Dominik hesitated for one brief moment. How could he explain it? That he was clutching at

straws? That he wanted Summer to come back into his life? That he had become a writer with nothing to write about?
‘It’s difficult to explain. The person I bought the violin for is—’
The other man cut him short. ‘Was it the Bailly?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Dominik admitted, surprised.
‘Ah …’
‘So …’
‘Listen, it’s late. Why don’t you call me tomorrow morning; not too early though, and maybe we can arrange to meet up.’
‘Absolutely. I’d love that.’
The shop’s owner lived close to Dominik, in north London, his house a ramshackle cottage off a private road near Highgate Village. The front garden was overgrown, the lawn peppered with weeds, and rose bushes which hadn’t seen a trim in ages. The front doorbell didn’t work and Dominik had to repeatedly knock hard before he heard any signs of life inside.
The moment the man opened the door and peered at him, Dominik recognised him. Somehow the soft voice on the phone had made him think the man was much older than he actually was. He was, at worst, in his late fifties. He had seen him before. Twice, in fact. And each occasion was lodged deep in his brain.
He had been present at two of the most excessive parties Dominik had attended on the London scene during his wilderness months. More of a voyeur than a major participant, the man had usually faded away after his initial enjoyment of the woman who had volunteered to be at the centre of attention, and then had spent the rest of the evenings sipping a glass of white wine and watching the others – and Dominik – as they continued to play with and use the woman. Dominik had initially found the situation a little creepy, but by then the action in the room had taken over his attention.
The instrument dealer’s rheumy eyes looked at him. There was no sign of recognition. He evidently did not remember Dominik. After all, the sights on display on those particular infamous hotel room evenings had been pretty distracting and more notable for bodies and body parts than faces.
‘We spoke on the phone – I’m Dominik,’ he introduced himself.
‘John LaValle. Come inside.’
He led the way to the front room. A massive grand piano sat at its centre, its top littered with a mess of old, yellowing newspapers, partitions and broken-spined books.
LaValle showed him to an old leather armchair and sat himself down on the piano stool to face him. He offered Dominik a drink, which Dominik declined, and helped himself to a measure of Scotch from the adjacent liquor cabinet.
‘Keeps me alert, you see,’ LaValle said, pointing to his glass and the amber liquid stirring inside it before taking a few slow sips.
‘You weren’t at the store the day I acquired the violin,’ Dominik remarked.
‘No. A great pity. My colleague, who left my employment shortly afterwards, felt he could make a bit of a name for himself and please me by disposing of it. As a matter of fact, I had no intention of selling that particular instrument.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘It was a collectors’ item. Strictly speaking, worth so much more than what you ended up paying for it,’ LaValle said. ‘It had only come into stock a few weeks earlier through a lawyer in Germany disposing of an estate’s assets, unaware of the violin’s value or significance, and I was of a mind to keep it for myself, bring it back here. I felt it would be safer under this roof …’
‘Safer?’
‘It’s an instrument that has a habit of getting lost.’
‘Tell me more.’
LaValle ignored his question. ‘But I gather it’s no longer in your possession. Did you intentionally purchase it for a third party?’
‘It was a gift,’ Dominik confessed.
‘To Summer Zahova. A rather expensive gift, no?’
‘How did you know that?’ Dominik asked.
The older man rose, leaned over to the piano top and pulled a folded poster from the mass of papers lying there, unrolled it and, with a flourish, presented it to Dominik.
It was the poster that had initially been produced to advertise Summer’s first solo concert. Cropped just beneath her chin and below her midriff, although allowing for a cascade of red curls to emerge like tentacles from the unknown space above, it showed her torso and stomach, her breasts artfully concealed by the body of the violin, its deep orange burnish contrasting with the pallor of her skin.
It was erotic and intriguing and had no doubt played a major part in attracting a sell-out audience to her performance, drawing a crowd to the venue where the face of the mysterious violin player would be revealed.
Dominik realised he never did try and obtain a copy of the poster at the time.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘It’s surprising that no one appears to have noticed at the time that the violin displayed in the photograph was the Angelique,’ LaValle pointed out. ‘It’s so distinctive.’
‘The Angelique? I was told by your colleague at the time that it had been manufactured by a French luthier called Bailly. His name appeared on the pegbox, beneath the strings.’
‘Oh yes, Bailly was the man who created the instrument. But he made many such violins. It’s just that this particular one comes with a lot of history. An interesting man, our Mr Bailly. Very interesting indeed. Most violin makers, luthiers as you put it, were initially Italian, but Bailly was one of the few French artisans who carved a distinctive reputation for himself in this delicate trade.’

Photo ©
www.mattchristie.com
LaValle took a further sip of his whisky.

‘I assume you’re not a collector of vintage instruments, seeing that you passed the violin on to Miss Zahova, so I was wondering what is now your interest in it?’ he asked Dominik.
‘I just collect books,’ he replied. ‘That’s enough of a pastime. I was just curious. I was thinking of writing something about musical instruments. A novel. And having been involved in this particular Bailly violin to a certain extent, I thought it could be a starting point for my research.’
‘How interesting.’ LaValle nodded.
‘I’d love to know more. You’ve certainly whetted my appetite,’ Dominik pointed out. ‘You mentioned something about the instrument getting lost?’
‘More to the point, stolen,’ LaValle said. ‘In fact, during the fortnight I had the instrument in safe storage at the store in Burlington Arcade, there were two breakin attempts. More than we’d experienced in the previous twenty years we’d been in business. Highly suspicious. Not that anyone knew it was there. We never advertised it, whether in store or in our catalogues. I’d barely had time to identify it after it came in from Germany. Whoever it was tampered with our alarm system, broke a few cabinets and locks but never located the safe where I had stored the Angelique. Unfortunately, the breakins affected our insurance premiums, yet another reason for winding the business up a few months later, although by then you’d acquired the instrument. I’d been running it for too long, and was getting bored with the work. But don’t let me bore you with talk of business rates and taxes …’
‘No, I’m fascinated.’
‘And Miss Zahova has it insured, I hope, and in a safe place whenever it’s not being used.’
‘I assume so. We don’t see much of each other these days.’
‘How sad. She appears to be a striking woman.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘But I know you are a man who appreciates women deeply. Something we have in common.’ He smiled at Dominik, with a look of complicity. Of course he had recognised him. He had known all along.
‘You knew—’
‘Who you are? Naturally. I have a memory for faces.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘We all have our secrets, our dark places,’ LaValle said dismissively. ‘No one was hurt and much pleasure was enjoyed. Let other people judge …’
‘Are you still … in contact with the group, the women?’ Dominik enquired.
‘No, everyone just drifted away in different directions after a time. No offence, but Miss Zahova would have made a wonderful addition to our parties. Did you ever think of bringing her along? I’ve always found that musicians make for the best submissives – no logic to it, more gut feeling – and—’
‘I hadn’t met her then. We met later,’ Dominik interrupted LaValle.
‘Shame.’
‘So,’ Dominik hurried to change the subject, ‘tell me about the Angelique.’

Born in 1844, Paul Bailly was a man who suffered badly from wanderlust. He trained in the craft of violinmaking in his hometown of Mirecourt in the French provinces and later in Paris with the famed luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume and the legendary Jules Galliard.

A restless and romantic soul, Bailly had a particularly turbulent love life, and moved endlessly across France and later England. In Paris he met and fell head over heels in love with a young English au pair, Lois Elizabeth Hough, who was working for a wealthy French family out there.

He followed Lois to London when she returned, but their relationship didn’t work out and he soon moved to Leeds. There, he worked for a local company manufacturing musical instruments, although no violin from this period bearing his signature has ever been seen, leading to speculation that he worked there on menial tasks and neglected his art.

After a time, Bailly was next heard of back in Paris in the 1880s, his most prolific period and one that was reflected in a series of exquisite instruments on which his reputation was established. It was also in Paris that he met Angelique Spengler, a woman married to a famous theatrical impresario, Hughes Caetano.

Angelique was an extraordinary beauty; in contrast with her rough and ready husband who controlled several Paris theatres and was said to have strong connections with the Paris underground sex trade. In all likelihood, political connections helped Caetano expunge anything illegal from the records. But his reputation was one of a fierce and jealous man. Rumour had it that he had acquired Angelique, straight from her convent education, as settlement for a gambling debt with her impoverished father.

How Bailly and Angelique met was uncertain. Possibly a concert. But when they did, sparks flew and they quickly became lovers. What with her husband’s possessiveness and position in society, it was inevitable that the affair would eventually be discovered, and so it was. Bailly was set upon by thugs in the hire of the husband and badly beaten. The story goes that his right wrist was broken, and that as a result he never made any further instruments from that date onwards, and certainly no violins with his name have ever surfaced since that time.

Incensed by her husband’s actions, Angelique succeeded in breaking into his safe, and with the stolen money, she and Bailly fled to America.
Caetano’s reaction was swift as soon as he discovered where the fleeing couple were and some of his acolytes were despatched to New York where Angelique and Bailly were quickly located. Angelique was abducted while Bailly was out working, and she was never seen again. Some said she was executed and her body dumped in the Hudson, while others told a tale of revenge and degradation in which the once beautiful young woman was forced into sexual servitude, initially in Chinatown and later in Tijuana in Mexico. But, as LaValle said, these sorts of stories are passed from mouth to mouth over the years and can sometimes be subject to much in the way of disinformation, and truth is often the first to suffer.
At any rate, and maybe this was also a form of punishment in the vengeful Caetano’s mind, Bailly was left unharmed, aside from the terrible anguish of having lost Angelique and worrying about her fate. In due course, Bailly returned to France but was never involved in the violinmaking trade again.
‘Fascinating,’ Dominik said when LaValle had finished his story. ‘But what about the violin you call the Angelique, then?’
‘Ah,’ LaValle said. ‘This is where it becomes even more interesting …’
Some years later, a decade after the turn of the twentieth century, a violin bearing Bailly’s name and no visible year of manufacture appeared in an auction at Christie’s. Experts were puzzled. It was recognisable as Bailly’s handiwork, but the wood used for its manufacture appeared to be of a different provenance than all the other instruments he was known to have been responsible for. In addition, the curves of the violin in question were ever so slightly different – more subtle, rounded, sensual one expert claimed, as if the way the wood had been carved into shape had been inspired by a woman’s body. At which stage someone claimed the reasons for the discrepancy was that this particular instrument had originated during the time of Bailly’s affair with Angelique and had been influenced by his love for her. It was unanimously agreed that this was the very last violin ever crafted by Paul Bailly. And so, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, a legend had been born and the violin acquired a name.
Which is where the story takes a more sinister turn.
The collector who won the auction for the Angelique later became one of the first English officers to be killed in the trenches in the First World War. Not an uncommon occurrence but for the fact that the next two owners of the instrument, the first inheriting it and then another purchasing it from the deceased’s family, would suffer a similar fate. So far, just bad luck during the course of a bloody period of history. However, after the war had come to an end, the violin fell into the hands of a British family who all died in a house fire at their country estate – the instrument having remained safely at their London house. But when the beneficiaries of the estate came to retrieve it, it could not be found. It had been stolen.
The Angelique was next heard of in France. To compound the coincidences, the next owner was a Parisian politician and collector who died in the arms of his mistress within weeks of acquiring the instrument. It appears that, to compensate for the loss of a benefactor, the courtesan in question quickly grabbed the violin and other moveable items in her lover’s collection and spirited them away before reporting the death and the body. The violin’s whereabouts for the following ten years are unknown, but it next turned up in Germany, owned by a high-ranked army officer who became involved in one of the rare plots to overthrow Hitler and ended up hung on a meat hook for his involvement. The authorities impounded his belongings and the violin came into the hands of the governmental authorities. It was stored in a museum near Hamburg, which ended up being looted by the Russian Army.
The next time a record of the violin appears was in more peaceful times in the 1950s, where it was owned by the Christiansens, a well-to-do Hannover family, none of whom died an unnatural death over the course of three generations. The violin was passed from child to child, until it came into possession of Edwina Christiansen.
The name of the last proprietor of the violin, according to its certificate of provenance, Dominik remembered.
Edwina was the wild child of her bourgeois family, and by all accounts an outstanding beauty. During the 1960s she had come under the influence of an older man, an American, whom she had met in San Francisco. But their relationship was unconventional and very far from respectable. To cut a long story short – ‘Maybe you could write it all into your novel,’ LaValle had suggested – Edwina had been turned into his whore.
‘What about the violin?’ Dominik asked.
‘It remained in Germany, while Edwina was in America. She just happened to own it; it had been passed on to her by her father. She actually never played it, or any instruments, at that.’
‘What happened to Edwina?’
She’d ended up killing her American lover. The circumstances were murky and Edwina, at her trial, had been steadfast in refusing to answer any questions, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The case had made newspaper headlines for a few weeks, if only because of the sordid backstory that was unveiled by the prosecution as much as the accused’s spectacular beauty and sadness.
Disowned by her prudish family and alone in a foreign country, Edwina had not stood a chance.
She died in prison a decade or so later. Back in Germany, her relatives, embarrassed by the whole farrago, drew a lid over the episode and Edwina’s belongings went into storage, with no attention to the Bailly violin. It was only when the building in which her affairs were kept was threatened by demolition a few decades after her death – the area it was sited in was pinpointed for regeneration – that distant relatives arranged for a lawyer to dispose of everything as he felt best.
‘That was how I came into possession of the violin,’ LaValle said. ‘It was listed in the estate disposal catalogue as a Bailly, with no indication of its particulars, as the lawyer involved had no idea of either its history or its value.’
‘And when you first saw it, did you realise it was the Angelique?’ Dominik asked.
‘Not initially. I’d acquired a lot of other instruments as part of the transaction and I knew I already had buyers for most of them, so I didn’t give the Bailly too much thought initially. But when I did, I realised it was the instrument so many had talked about in the trade because of its uncommon history. Now I don’t believe in curses and all that, but I was thinking that I might actually keep it for myself, and not put it on sale, but before I had a chance to do so, that fool of an assistant who thought he was being clever, sold it. To you.’
‘The Angelique.’
‘Yes.’ LaValle grinned. ‘So, might I ask if the instrument has brought Miss Zahova any bad luck?’
Dominik considered his words carefully.
‘Well, she’s become quite famous since. Maybe others have been affected, though …’
LaValle looked him in the eyes.
‘I hope you’re not superstitious. It’s just coincidences, you know. Although all these silly stories certainly give the instrument an interesting reputation. And beautiful objects do attract thieves, these days. If she were willing to sell, I’m sure it would manage at least five or six times what you paid for it.’
‘I don’t believe it’s a question of money, Mr LaValle,’ Dominik said, standing. ‘But it’s been a most interesting story. Thank you for your time.’
‘I hope I’ve satisfied your curiosity,’ the dealer said.
‘Absolutely. You’ve given me much to think about. Truth can be stranger than fiction, can’t it?’
‘It certainly can,’ LaValle agreed. ‘And have you got enough material for your novel?’
‘A start, I believe.’
Outside, the sound of the rain was like a tattoo on the Highgate Village roofs, but Dominik knew he now needed some fresh air to contemplate everything and decide what his next step should be, and whether he should warn Summer about the violin. He also knew that appearing out of the blue with silly stories about curses, thefts and dead lovers was not likely to endear him to her or make him welcome again.