Read Online The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online Page A

share price had plummeted. The sale of the Colourists was the result, along with the sale of a Highland sporting estate and a small fleet of expensive vintage cars. Of course people were sympathetic, but secretly delighted, as they are whenever those who boast of their wealth take a tumble.
    The Colourists were prominently illustrated in the first few pages of the catalogue—landscapes, still lifes, a portrait of a woman with an elaborate feathered hat—and there they were, in the expensive flesh, hanging on either side of the auctioneer’s podium. For the handful of saleroom voyeurs who came to auctions for the excitement of the high prices, this was the highlight of the day; these were the people who had taken the front row of seats although they had no intention of bidding for anything. They liked to watch the saleroom staff take telephone bids, connected to distant purchasers in exotic places, nodding to the auctioneer as the bidding went higher.
    â€œDon’t wave to friends,” said Isabel. “Unless you want a painting.”
    Jamie folded his hands on his lap. “Surely not?”
    â€œIt’s happened,” said Isabel, adding, “I think.”
    The auction started. Isabel noticed Guy Peploe seated a few rows behind them; she smiled at him, and Guy made a thumbs-up sign for good luck. Now the Colourists started to fall: three hundred and twenty thousand pounds, two hundred and eighty thousand…Jamie let out a little whistle and nudged Isabel.
    â€œWho’s got that sort of money?” he asked. “Galleries?”
    â€œEven if it’s a gallery it will be for a private individual in the long run,” Isabel whispered. “Rich collectors.”
    â€œHonest?”
    â€œProbably. People with dishonest money tend to go for different things, don’t they?” She realised, as she spoke, that she did not really know what happened to dishonest money. She was a philosopher, who thought about what we should do and what we should not do, and yet what personal experience enabled her to speak with authority on these matters? She led a very sheltered life in Edinburgh. How many wicked people did she actually know? Professor Christopher Dove? Professor Lettuce? She smiled at the thought. If Dove was wicked, and she really should give him the benefit of the doubt on that, then his wickedness was surely of a very tame nature, confined to academic machinations, jockeying for position on committees and the like. And yet wickedness like that appeared mild only because it occurred in a rarefied context; Trollope’s scheming clergymen may not have resorted to guns and knives—those were not the weapons of their milieu—yet, as people, they were probably just as bad as any Sicilian mafioso for whom the gun, rather than the snide remark, was the immediate weapon to hand.
    After the Colourists had all been sold, a number of people rose and made their way out of the saleroom. That was the end of the excitement for them; there would be no more sums like that bandied about. Isabel and Jamie watched the paintings disposed of, and there were one or two highlights. An unflattering portrait of a dancer, painted in the style of Botero by a Russian artist, went for forty-five pounds to a small man in an overcoat; a picture of a stag in the Scottish Highlands, by an unknown nineteenth-century hand, made the auctioneer wince—a momentary lapse which drew laughter from the crowd. It was an unfortunate slip, even if entirely understandable, but it did nothing to inhibit two telephone bidders who of course had not seen the wince and who bid against each other to drive the price up well above the estimate.
    Then the McInnes came up, and Jamie reached over and touched Isabel lightly on the arm. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. Her palm was slightly moist. But if I were bidding, I would be shaking, he thought.
    â€œNervous?” he whispered.
    â€œNo,” she said.