time,’ said Bimsley, breaking into a run.
43
* * *
OIL AND WATER
‘Blimey, a rare sighting of the lesser-fancied detective, Homunculus Senex Investigatorus,’ said Peregrine Summerfield, scratching his face through his wild ginger beard. ‘Come in before the neighbours see you. Excuse the pyjamas, I prefer to paint in them because of the mess.’ He waved Bryant in with a flick of his paintbrush, dabbing the wall turquoise. Bryant noticed that there was vermilion paint on the ceiling. ‘How the devil did you find me?’
‘Lilian told me you were living up here now,’ Bryant explained. ‘I bumped into her a few weeks ago.’
‘I hope you were driving a bulldozer. She’s been a proper cow since she walked out. I only own one painting, a small and rather sickly Wols that looks like a regurgitated prawn biriani, but Bauhaus stock is higher than ever and now she’s demanding it in the divorce settlement.’
‘I had no idea you liked German abstract art. I don’t suppose there are any clean cups.’ Bryant wandered into the kitchen and ran a kettle under the tap. Every piece of crockery on the draining board was covered with brushes and half-dried blobs of acrylic paint.
‘I use plastic ones now, saves on the washing up. Well, you can look upon me and despair. How the once mighty art lecturer has fallen, Ozymandias in Stoke Newington. I haven’t seen you since that business of the vandalized Pre-Raphaelite at the National. You only bloody call on me when you want something.’ Summerfield wiped a brush out on his striped pyjama shirt. ‘What is it this time?’
‘I need some information on an artist. At least you’ve started painting again.’
‘Well, after Countess Dracula left I packed up the classes and stopped going out for a while, until my pupils came around one day and accused me of giving up on them. What could I do? I couldn’t mope about for ever. Besides, there’s good light in here. I can sit around all day in my underpants flicking paint at the walls if I want to. It feels like a proper home. I still teach art two days a week, but I’m selling my paintings down the Bayswater Road at weekends. Frightful rubbish, sunsets and puppies for tourists with no taste, but I’m making a living wage for once. Who are you after?’
‘Did you ever hear of an artist called Gilbert Kingdom?’ asked Bryant.
Summerfield fondled his beard ruminatively. ‘Not for a very long time,’ he said finally.
‘So you do know of him?’
‘Of course. A great enigma, something of a bête noir. He was a disciple of Stanley Spencer, perhaps a more formidable talent.’
‘Then why have I never heard of him?’
‘Because he never fulfilled his potential. But he’s known to most fine-art historians worth their salt. Kingdom suffered the fate of so many geniuses. Showed great promise as a student at the Slade—Spencer went there, of course—then he underwent some kind of epiphany in much the same way as Spencer had done. Kingdom took a more pagan approach to understanding the world, dividing it into elemental spirits of fire and water. He wasn’t interested in knocking out gilt-framed portraits for punters, he was preoccupied with linking pagan rituals directly to the land. All the talent in the world can’t save a man born out of fashion. Eventually he went barking mad and died in poverty. There are hardly any books on him.’
‘I have one.’ Bryant removed the volume from a scuffed leather briefcase. ‘Unfortunately, the section on his work has been removed.’
‘Ah, I’ve got that book,’ said Summerfield with obvious pleasure. ‘I think it’s pretty much the only place where I’ve ever seen his work reprinted. Let me see if I can find it for you.’
Bryant drank his tea and listened while the art master rooted about in his lounge.
‘I’m afraid the cover’s torn off, but it’s the same edition.’ His rough, paint-stained fingers ploughed through the volume until he came to the pages missing from Tate’s copy. He passed it to Bryant.
‘All we have is a tantalizing glimpse of the man’s brilliance, two paintings now both in California, a few studies and sketches. Just as Spencer painted Cookham, Kingdom painted London. He broke the city down into four distinct colour palettes, densities and timescales.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘Well, there’s London of the Great Fire, and later, during the industrial revolution, a city of steely flame, a man-made inferno of pumping pistons and belching boilers. Then there’s the city of swirling unhealthy fogs, mists and windswept