by Peter Mayle
Claude took up a position by the door, his arms folded. It was obvious that he had decided to stay with them. Andre tried not to sound disappointed. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Cyrus passed him the clipboard and a pen. “Would you mind taking notes as I dash around? Thanks so much.” His voice gave nothing away. If he was feeling let down, he was concealing it very convincingly. “Now, it seems to me,” he said, “that the focus of the room is the Cézanne, which is quite superb. So we mustn’t have anything fighting with that, must we? Colors, finishes, fabrics—they must all work with the painting. Cézanne knows best. So that’s where we start. Come along.”
He took a bundle of swatches over to the fireplace and stared intently at the painting, occasionally holding up a scrap of fabric next to it before calling out a reference number, which Andre dutifully recorded on the clipboard. The process was repeated with the paint colors, and repeated again and again as second and third thoughts occurred to Cyrus, who seemed mesmerized by the painting. For two hours this continued, with Claude a silent, bored presence in the background and Andre’s spirits lower with every pointless note he made on the clipboard.
It was close to noon before Cyrus had taken some measurements and one final, long look at the painting. “I think I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Are you sure you’ve got it all down?” Without waiting for Andre to answer, he went across to Claude and pumped his hand vigorously. “Désolé to make you wait like this, my dear fellow. You’ve been most kind. Many thanks. Merci, merci. Vive la France.”
Claude turned a bemused eye to Andre, who added his thanks as they went out to the car. They drove through the gates without speaking. Once out of sight of the house, Andre pulled onto the side of the road. “Cyrus, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how you managed to go through all that nonsense.” He shook his head, staring through the windscreen. “I’m sorry. You were terrific, and that makes it worse.”
“You weren’t to know, dear boy. But the painting’s a fake.”
“What?”
“A wonderful, wonderful fake. I’m sure of it.” Cyrus watched with amusement as, Andre’s face was split by a smile that almost reached his ears. “Well, don’t just sit there. Drive on.”
“Where to?”
“Lunch, dear boy. Lunch.”
There are few better settings for a sunny lunch than the terrace of the Voile d’Or, overflowing with geraniums, high above the port of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Cyrus hummed with contentment as they were seated at a table beneath the shade of an old olive tree. Andre left him in peace as they studied the menu after ordering a bottle of rosé. Finally, curiosity overcame him.
“How do you know it’s a fake?”
“Mmm? The roast crevettes sound rather good, don’t you think?”
“Come on, Cyrus. How do you know?”
“Well,” said the older man, “I think it’s mainly the result of years and years of looking very closely at the real thing, and I’ve handled quite a few Cézannes since I started. In time, your eye learns. Did you go to the Cézanne exhibition in Philadelphia last year? I spent two days there, looking and looking. Quite wonderful. Ah, good man.”
The waiter uncorked the bottle, murmuring something about the complexion of a young girl as he poured the delicate, smoky-pink wine into their glasses. He took their order, nodded with approval, and padded back to the kitchen.
Cyrus held up his glass to the sun before tasting his wine. “There’s nowhere quite like France, is there? Now, where was I?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Indeed. The point I was making is that it’s a matter of getting your eye accustomed to the way an artist paints, his use of color and light and perspective, his tricks of composition, his brushwork, which can be fast or slow—it’s sometimes as distinctive as a signature. It must be the same with you photographers, surely. I mean, you could tell the difference between a genuine Avedon and an imitation.” He smiled. “Or a genuine Kelly, for that matter.”
“Not quite the same league, Cyrus.”
“But you understand what I’m saying. There isn’t a formula for spotting fakes. It’s your eye, your experience, and your instinct—or your gut reaction, as it’s sometimes rather indelicately called. There are tests you can do to establish the age of the canvas and the paint, the stretchers and the nails, but even tests are far from foolproof. Take canvas, for instance, or wood. There are thousands of old, undistinguished paintings floating around. A competent forger will pick one up for a few dollars—of the appropriate period, obviously—and use it for his fake. The more recent the painting, the easier it is to find materials of the same age, and Cézanne only died ninety years ago.” Cyrus drank some wine. “To think that the forger undoubtedly got paid a great deal more than Cézanne ever received for the original! It’s a wicked old world.”
The waiter came, murmur at the ready. “Les crevettes pour monsieur, et le Saint-Pierre avec la sauce gaspacho. Voilà. Bon appétit, messieurs.”
Further questions from Andre had to wait while they paid due attention to their food. They were sharing the terrace with a few other couples, who revealed their origins by their choice of tables: the locals in the shade, the northerners sitting in full sun, making up for a long gray winter. Beneath them, the port was quiet, the rows of yachts and dinghies empty, their owners hard at work in their faraway offices to pay for the mooring fees. In July and August they would come down, the two-week sailors, to spend their vacations squeezed hull-to-hull among thousands like themselves. But today the seagulls owned the boats.
Andre mopped up the last of his sauce and saw Cyrus casting an appraising eye over the cheese board. “I’m beginning to think I’ve lived in America too long,” Cyrus said. “I’ve been conditioned by the propaganda: Cheese is bad for you, the sun is bad for you, and don’t even think about alcohol or tobacco. Remarkable how the French manage to survive to a ripe old age, isn’t it? They must be doing something right.”
“Would you ever think of living out here?”
“Adore to, dear boy, but it’s a question of pennies. The house in New York is mortgaged, and I’m still paying off the last wife. But you never know—one big deal could change everything.”
“Do you think this could do it?”
“Maybe. But there’s a long way to go. We’ve got to get hold of the painting first.”
“You said that the one in the house isn’t just a fake but a wonderful fake. Is that any kind of clue?”
“Oh, I know who must have done it. There’s only one man who’s that good on Impressionists. If I hadn’t spent so much time with my nose practically touching the canvas I’d never have spotted it. Fine, fine work. But while I know who did it, the problem is finding the rascal.” Cyrus beckoned to the waiter with the cheese board. “He won’t be in the yellow pages.”
“What good would it do to find him? He’s hardly likely to tell us anything, is he? He’s a crook.”
“Exactly,” said Cyrus, “and crooks can always be bribed. A certain subtlety may be necessary, but I’m sure we can manage that between us. Think about it. The only other person who’s involved as far as we know is Denoyer, and he’s not going to come clean. He’s already lied once. My word, look at those cheeses. Do you think I could risk the Camembert? It looks as if it’s going to attack at any moment.”
He pointed to the cheese, and the waiter cut him a slice, dripping ripe and unctuous. “Avec ça, monsieur?”
He took some Cantal and a baby chèvre, ordered a glass of red wine to see it down, watched with interest as Andre made his choice. “How about you?” Cyrus asked. “You seem to like it here, you speak the language. I can see you in a little studio in Paris. Or even Nice. It’s not as if you have to turn up at an office every day.”
Andre looked out over the port. “I’ve thought about it quite a lot recently,” he said. “But New York is where the good jobs are.” He shrugged. “Or were, until a couple of weeks ago.” And he went on to tell Cyru
s about the cold shoulder he was getting from Camilla and DQ. “It happened overnight,” he said. “As soon as I got back from the Bahamas, she wouldn’t even take my calls.”
Cyrus frowned over his Camembert. “That’s interesting. She doesn’t know Denoyer, does she?”
“Well, yes. She came with me on the shoot last year and met him then. But she’s never mentioned him since.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd—the timing, I mean? You see something you weren’t supposed to, and then …” Cyrus drew a finger across his throat.
“I don’t know. Probably just a coincidence.”
Cyrus grunted. “The older I get, the less I believe in coincidences.”
Bernard Denoyer was a troubled man as he performed his dutiful fifty laps in the swimming pool at Cooper Cay. Claude’s call from Cap Ferrat had woken him at six, and what Claude told him had made a disquieting start to the day. Initially, he had thought—he had hoped—that his wife, Catherine, might have been organizing some redecoration as a surprise. But when he had asked her, she knew nothing about it; nor did she know anyone called Paisley.
He reached the end and turned, lowering his head in the cool water as he pushed off, watching the slow progress of his shadow on the bottom of the pool. If this scheme of Holtz’s didn’t work out, he would be in trouble. It had sounded so foolproof, too. A simple substitution of the Cézanne by a wonderful forgery, the original discreetly sold, the proceeds hidden away in Switzerland. No death duties, and plenty of cash to cover those unfortunate losses incurred during the Credit Lyonnais fiasco. And now this. Why was the young photographer so interested, and who the hell was this Paisley? He finished his laps, put on a toweling robe, and went to his study, shutting the door behind him before picking up the phone.
For once, Rudolph Holtz was unable to provide any reassurance. He, too, was a troubled man as he finished speaking to Denoyer and climbed down the steps from his bed. The photographer was becoming a pest; more than a pest. He was becoming dangerous. Holtz shaved and showered, and sat brooding over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. The scam he devised had seemed foolproof, and indeed had worked for two years without a hitch. Like all the best scams, it was relatively straightforward. Camilla, through DQ, could gain access to the homes of the rich. She could spend hours, even days, roaming through the art-encrusted rooms, ingratiating herself with the owners and their servants, taking Polaroids, making notes. By the time she was finished, she would have the material for one of her predictably fawning articles. But that was merely the front.
The other purposes of her research—and these, naturally, never appeared in print—were to establish two things. First, the owners’ pattern of absence, the dates on which they regularly left their principal residences for the delights of the Caribbean or the ski slopes. And second, the extent and sophistication of the security arrangements, which were often out-of-date or surprisingly inadequate.
Armed with this information, Holtz then briefed the specialists: his forger and his removal men. A chosen painting would be copied (and the Dutchman was a genius, no doubt about it), and when the owners were safely on some distant alp or beach, the removal men—artists, too, in their own stealthy way—would tiptoe in and substitute the fake for the original. To all but the most expert and suspicious eye, nothing would have changed. The original would find a new home in a gloater’s vault or a Tokyo penthouse. The Swiss accounts of Holtz and Camilla would swell in comfortable secrecy. Nobody would be any the wiser. And in this particular case, with Denoyer as a willing accomplice, there should have been no risk at all, nothing to go wrong. In theory.
Holtz’s reflections were brought to an end by the return from the gym of Camilla, in sunglasses, leotard, and the calf-length chinchilla that had been her bonus from their last big score. She bent down to kiss him on the forehead.
“Why the furrowed brow, sweetie? You look as if the maid’s run off with the Renoir.” She took a bottle of Evian from the refrigerator and made her breakfast by adding a slice of lemon to the glass before taking off her coat and coming to sit down.
Normally, Holtz found Camilla in her leotard a stimulating sight that had frequently caused him to put her through a second workout, but today such things were far from his mind, and he found her bright mood intensely irritating. “That goddamned photographer of yours,” he said. “He’s poking his nose in again.”
Camilla removed her sunglasses, always a sure sign of concern. “Nothing to do with me, sweetie. I haven’t spoken to him for weeks, just as you told me. What’s he done now?”
“He’s been in Denoyer’s house with someone called Paisley, who says he’s a decorator. D’you know him?”
Camilla looked blank. “Doesn’t ring a bell. He can’t be one of the top forty. I know all of them.”
Holtz dismissed the top forty with a flick of his hand. “Bunch of fabric salesmen.”
Camilla bridled. “They’re very useful to us, Rudi, and you know it. And some of them are my dearest friends. Gianni, for instance, and that lovely man with the difficult name I can never remember.”
“Screw Gianni.” Holtz leaned forward and tapped the table with a stubby finger. “You’ve got to do something about the photographer before he makes any more trouble.”
Camilla, who actually had screwed Gianni (and it was very nice too, she remembered) after a particularly cozy lunch, realized that this was not a morning for levity. She glanced at her workout watch, the one that the salesman at Cartier had assured her was sweatproof. “Sweetie, I’m running late. What do you expect me to do about him?”
“Get the schmuck out of circulation. Think of something. If you can’t, I will. I don’t want any more surprises.”
Camilla stared at the back of the chauffeur’s head as he drove downtown to the DQ office. Thinking cap on, sweetie, she said to herself. Divine green eyes or not, Andre would have to be dealt with.
12
THERE was nothing more they could usefully do in France. Cyrus changed his reservation so that he and Andre could travel together on the direct flight from Nice to New York, both men reluctant to leave but impatient to get back.
Cyrus had suggested that they bypass the efforts of the gourmet in the sky, and before leaving for the airport they had spent an enjoyable half hour wandering through the market in Nice, collecting ingredients for a picnic. As soon as they were settled in the modest comforts of business class, Cyrus summoned a flight attendant and handed her a shopping bag containing smoked salmon, an assortment of cheeses, fresh baguettes, and a bottle of white Burgundy. “When the moment comes,” he said to her, “perhaps you could do the honors with this. It’s our lunch.”
The flight attendant’s smile faltered as she took the bag, but Cyrus gave her no chance to reply. “You’re a dear girl,” he said, with a beam. “We have rather sensitive stomachs. Oh—could you make sure the wine doesn’t get too cold? It should be chilled but not startled.”
“Not startled,” she repeated gravely. “Right.”
Andre watched her go to the galley with the bag and wondered why he’d never thought of doing this himself. The well-meaning gastronomic contortions that airline chefs put themselves through never worked, no matter how glowing the descriptions on the menu. Lamb, beef, seafood, veal, meunières of this, fricassees of that—airline food invariably looked and tasted like airline food: mysterious, congealed, and dull. And the wines, even if they had been “specially selected by our flying sommelier,” seldom lived up to their labels.
“Do you often do this, Cyrus?”
“Always. I’m amazed more people don’t. The only things I ever accept on a plane are brandy and champagne. They can’t do much to that. I see the bottle is coming our way. Shall we?”
The 707 went through its preliminary flexing and rumbling as it pawed the ground before takeoff. The two men nursed their champagne and looked through the window at a knot of figures waving goodbye from the airport’s terrace. It was a change—a very pleasant change—for Andre to
have a traveling companion, and it was a reminder that much of his life recently had been spent alone. His own fault, he had to admit. There was Lucy, sweet unattached Lucy, and what had he done about her? Called her from airports and left her to the mercies of men in red suspenders. He was resolving to try harder with Lucy—in fact, to start trying as soon as he got back—when Cyrus turned to him as if he had been reading his thoughts.
“Ever been married, Andre?”
“Nearly.” He was surprised to find that her face was only a blur in his memory. “About five years ago. Then I started getting work that involved going away, and I guess she got bored waiting for me to come back. She married a dentist and moved to Scarsdale. I suppose it was inevitable. Too much traveling, the story of my life.”
Cyrus sighed. “I didn’t do enough. They say there’s nothing like distance to make a marriage last. I’ve had two stabs at it; both of them ended in tears.” With a philosophical twitch of his eyebrows, he took a mouthful of champagne.
“Still like women?”
“Absolutely. The trouble is, I’ve never been able to spot the fakes.”
It was the first time Andre had seen Cyrus with anything less than a good-humored expression, and he decided to leave a discussion about the perils of matrimony for another time. “Tell me about this forger. You said you know who he is. Have you met him?”
“Good Lord, no. He keeps his head well down, which is quite understandable in his line of work. You’re not likely to bump into him at gallery cocktail parties, handing out business cards. I don’t even know which country he lives in.” Cyrus frowned as the in-flight video came on at full blast, the cheerful voice suggesting useful tips in the event of a crash and imminent death. He leaned closer to Andre to make himself heard. “His name is Franzen, Nico Franzen, originally from Amsterdam. The Dutch are pretty good at this sort of thing. Have you ever heard of the Vermeer man?”
