The Hogarth Conspiracy by Alex Connor Page B

when he opened the door.
    â€œVictor, come in, come in,” he said, stepping back and allowing his visitor to enter the spacious, high-ceilinged drawing room that overlooked the Thames Embankment. The windows were almost the height of the room, and French doors led onto a balcony that spied on the river and let in the sound of traffic and pigeons.
    â€œCoffee?” Tully asked. His lofty figure moved over to the stove in the open-plan kitchen, where a pan of milk simmered on the stove. “I remember how you like it, milky and sweet.”
    There was no mention of Victor having been in prison, no surprise at the sudden reemergence of an old friend, just a genuinely affectionate welcome tempered with an old uncomfortable memory that neither of them would ever forget.
    Years earlier, Thomas Harcourt had been in the running with Ian McKellen, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Jeremy Irons to become one of the greatest English actors of his generation, formidable in the theater and mesmerizing on the screen. His tall, rangy frame, loose-limbed and supple, had allowed him to take on many of the great Shakespearean roles, and his voice, never strident, could become intimate for the screen. His indeterminate looks and mobility of expression allowed him to convince an audience that he was whatever the character called for: handsome, virtuous, heroic, predatory….
    Tully’s decline came not through any failure of his own but from the sudden and traumatic death of his wife. Returning to work a month after her suicide, he developed stage fright or—keen to make light of an affliction that was crippling him— life fright, as he explained it to interviewers. People believed it was due to grief, but it was not that Tully missed his wife; it was more that she obsessed him, her suicide a constant reproach, a subtle undermining of his confidence that rendered this most articulate of actors a mumbling tyro.
    Victor had never known his friend’s wife but had heard that she was jealous of his success. She had wanted a career as successful as her husband’s, but the public didn’t take to her, and her bitterness turned to resentment. Her suicide, although professed in her note to be an act of release for her husband, was in fact the opposite. From the moment she killed herself she never left him. On stage, on a film set, she was there, making gibberish of his lines or wiping his memory until there were no lines and no more work.
    â€œTwo sugars, isn’t it?”
    Victor nodded and sat down. The apartment was in perfect order, the valuable Georgian commode in precisely the same place it had always been, as was a faded Hogarth print of His Servants and the luscious Gainsborough portrait hanging beside a vertiginous spiral staircase.
    But the sofa was showing signs of wear and tear, Tully’s trousers weren’t as expensive as they had been, and his slip-on shoes were scuffed at the toe.
    â€œHere you go.” He handed Victor his coffee and sat down next to him. “You look well. Older but good.”
    â€œYou look the same.”
    â€œI am the same,” Tully replied, “and my work’s picking up. I do voiceovers now. Can’t forget your lines if they’re printed in big, bold letters in front of you, and the pay’s pretty good, especially if you do voice for feminine products. Tampax has been very good to me.” He laughed, the sound resonant. “I expected to see you when you got back to town.”
    Victor nodded. “I’ve got a job.”
    â€œWhich side of the law?”
    â€œWhich side d’you think?”
    â€œYou had it coming, you know,” Tully went on, sipping his coffee. He set down his cup on the table next to him. “Too much, too young,” he said. “You’d have gotten away with it if you’d been your brother, but people resent charisma, Victor. They can’t forgive a person for having it.” He paused,