The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) Read Online Free Page A

are some things that make me see
     red. I have to watch myself.”
    “We all do,” said Isabel.
Watching yourself
, she thought. It was the essence of the moral life. Watch yourself; evaluate. The
     examined life; the watched life. “Duncan Munrowe? You were telling me about him.”
    It was as if Isabel had introduced an entirely new topic of conversation. “Oh yes,”
     said Martha. “Duncan would very much like to meet you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because something has happened up at his place.” Although there was nobody near them,
     Martha lowered her voice. “Duncan’s family used to be pretty well-off. They had rubber
     plantations in Malaya. And they were something to do with Hong Kong—I have no idea
     what, but they were. So when they came back to Scotland there was plenty of money.”
    Isabel remarked that this was not an unusual story. The Scots had profited greatly
     from the British Empire; they did not always like to admit it, but they had. There
     were numerous families that had done well out of things like jute in Calcutta or wool
     in Australia and had returned to Scotland to buy landed estates. It sounded as if
     the Munrowes were in this category.
    Martha leaned forward. “They were discreet about it, but one of them, Duncan’s grandfather,
     had a very good eye. He was rather like that shipping man in Glasgow—what was he called?”
    “Burrell?”
    “That’s him. He put that great collection together, didn’t he? Well, Duncan Munrowe’s
     grandfather had the same sense notonly of what was what in the art world, but also of what
would be
what. He anticipated fashions.”
    This began to sound familiar to Isabel. “And he lent paintings to the Scottish National
     Gallery?”
    Martha nodded. “Yes. You might have seen some of the Munrowe collection there. It’s
     not quite as impressive as the Sutherland collection, but it’s still pretty good.
     He was particularly strong on the Post-Impressionists. Bonnard and so on. He picked
     those up by the dozen in Paris, as you could in those days.”
    Isabel had seen them. She remembered the wording on the labels:
On loan from the Munrowe Collection
. The galleries, with their tiny acquisitions budget, increasingly relied on such
     generosity. She tried to bring to mind particular Munrowe paintings, but could not.
     There were the Titians, and that whole roomful of Poussins, but they belonged to the
     Sutherlands. Was there a Bonnard of a woman sewing, or was that Vuillard? And was
     it part of the Munrowe collection?
    “They still have some of the paintings in the house,” Martha continued. “They live
     near Doune. It’s a rather
shy
house. I call it shy because it’s tucked away and you’d not know it was there until
     you turn a corner and there it is next to some woods. And a hill. It has a hill directly
     behind it—straight up. It’s an odd place to put a house, but there we are.”
    Isabel was keen to hear what had taken place. “You said something happened. What was
     it?”
    “They have all these paintings in the house, as I’ve said. Maybe they’re not quite
     as good as the ones in the Gallery, but they’re still pretty special. There’s a whole
     room of seventeenth-century French and Italian paintings, and the dining room hasgot a Toulouse-Lautrec in it—not a big one—and a Vuillard, I think.”
    “They’re very fortunate,” said Isabel. “Imagine being able to look at paintings like
     that over your boiled egg in the morning.”
    Martha laughed. “There’s a small Degas drawing in one of the loos.”
    “Loos, too, can be made beautiful.”
    Martha frowned. “Have you heard of the open gardens weekend that they have round here?”
    “Yes. It arranges for private gardens—”
    “To be open to the public on a particular day. Exactly. And Munrowe House—that’s the
     name of their place: somewhat unimaginative, but accurate, I suppose—was opened to
     the public. The house too.”
    Isabel could tell what was