“There’s no signature,” Fundy said craftily. “Doesn’t that make it worth less?”
“Oh, naturally,” Suffield answered. “That’s why I’m able to offer it to you at such a low price.” For a man who appeared to be a little slow on the uptake, he had his wits about him.
Fundy fingered the frame, then turned aggressively on Suffield. “How do I know it’s really that old? How do I know it’s not a fake?”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. Then Suffield flushed deeply. “A fake? My dear man, really—I mean—that is to say, I’ve been in business at this location since—you’re free to check—well, really—”
“Okay, okay,” Fundy said, waving him to a halt. “Look, I want to talk to my associate here for a minute, right? In private. So how about, uh …” He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Of course,” Suffield said woodenly. “Certainly.” He didn’t like being dismissed in his own gallery, no more than he liked being accused of fraud. And who could blame him? “I’ll be in my office.”
“Is it worth it?” Fundy asked Claude when he’d gone. “Sixteen thou?”
“I think it is, Frank,” Claude said. “It’s a well-done piece, and I don’t think there’s much doubt about its being authentic. A follower of Hals, obviously. Maybe even one of his students. You could probably turn around and sell it tomorrow for more than you’re paying for it.”
“So who’s Hollis?”
“Hals,” Claude said with one of those tight little smiles. “Frans Hals, one of the greatest painters of the seventeenth century.”
“No kidding. Write that down, will you? So I can tell Clarice.” He reached up and clapped Claude familiarly on the shoulder. On the shoulder of his new—and expensive—camel’s hair coat. “Okay, what the hell, I’ll buy it. But I’m not paying his asking price, no way. He just made that up out of thin air.” He gestured with his chin in the direction of the glass-enclosed office where Suffield sat, his back to them. “Go in there and jew him down a little.”
Claude stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”
“Go offer him five thousand. He’ll settle for ten, believe me. Twelve at most.”
“Frank, I’m very sorry,” Claude said stiffly, “I agreed to advise you to the best of my ability, and in my opinion that painting is well worth what he’s asking. I did not agree to … jew anybody down.”
For a moment Fundy’s froggy eyes bulged, hot and angry. Then he laughed. “What the hell, I’ll do it myself. Come on, you want to learn something about human nature?”
“Thank you, no. I’ll wait here.”
This also struck Fundy’s funny bone. “Th’nk yaw, neow,” he said through his nose. “Hey, how much you want to bet I get him down to twelve?”
“I have no doubt you will,” Claude replied coldly. He turned away even before Fundy left and took off the camel’s hair coat, folding it with care and laying it neatly over the back of a chair. Then he closed his eyes and leaned against an open carton of books. He was trembling with resentment. Even at $200 an hour Fundy had no right to treat him like, like … It was infuriating. The very fact that an oaf like that could afford to spend twelve or sixteen thousand dollars on a seventeenth-century painting (when he really would have preferred a picture of a puppy!), while he, Claude, who could genuinely appreciate the delicate, fastidiously rendered little portrait, was reduced to being a … a …
He opened his eyes. The trembling subsided. What a gem the painting was, its artistry easily apparent through the cracked, aged varnish. Far superior to the daubings on the other two panels. Yes, it had definitely been done by a follower of Hals and very much in the style of the master’s middle years: limited color range; thick impasto in the face; wonderfully spontaneous alla prima technique; simple, monochromatic background. One might almost think …
No, impossible. Things like that didn’t happen anymore. No, definitely not. There was that absence of a signature, for one thing, which made it almost certain it was simply a workshop piece. Possibly a copy of one of Hals’s works, painted as a studio exercise. Even so, it was particularly well done. Claude would gladly have paid $16,000 for it, and done it without quibbling. If he’d had $16,000 to spare.
Fundy’s brassy voice carried to him from the office. “Okay, I tell you what. I’ll give you thirty thousand for all three of the little suckers, how about that?”
“Oh, no,” Suffield murmured with an apologetic laugh, “I couldn’t imagine doing business in that—”
“Okay, I tell you what. You interested in a giant-screen TV with on-screen graphics and sleep-timer?”
Claude shook his head and turned from the little painting. How had he come to this? Spending Christmas Eve playing second fiddle to a barbaric ignoramus? Idly he fingered the spines of the books in the carton in front of him. Art books, mostly from the turn of the century, and mostly dealing with English nineteenth-century watercolorists. Not a subject that inflamed his interest. But one book did catch his eye: Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, published in London in 1921 by Methuen.
He slid it out. A big book, well used and bound in olive green cloth, with translucent endpapers. An expensive book, consisting of a ten-page introduction followed by a hundred high-quality pages with handsome black-and-white photographs glued to them, two to a page. He remembered seeing (and coveting) a copy of it years before. He leafed through it idly, paying little attention, but in the act of closing it he stopped, rock-still. An afterimage of one of the prints, unnoticed when he’d flipped by it, burned in his mind. Heat prickled across his shoulders. My God, was it possible … Barely breathing, cradling the image gingerly in his mind as if losing it would make it vanish from the book, he went carefully back through the volume.
He found it on page forty-seven. He studied it a long time, not letting himself look at the caption yet. He was breathing rapidly through his mouth, hardly able to get the air down. Now, finally, he looked at the words below the picture:
PLATE 92. FRANS HALS, LAUGHING GUARDSMAN, 1644. PANEL, 16⅛ by 13½ IN. MONOGRAM “FH,” LOWER LEFT. MONOGRAM “GL” ON BACK (GERHAERT LEYSTER, HAARLEM PANEL MAKER [?]). COLL. D. SCHULDE, VIENNA.
He glanced up at the glass-walled office. Fundy and Suffield were still going at it. Hurriedly he went back to the painting. He made himself close his eyes for a second in something like prayer, then opened them, barely managing to stifle a gasp. It was the same painting! The same! There was a tape measure on one of the workbenches. Making sure that his back blocked what he was doing, he quickly measured the picture: 16⅛ by 13½ inches—exactly! My God! But the signature, Hals’s monogram—where was it? What had happened to it?
Suffield and Fundy were standing up, shaking hands. Claude ran back to the book. “Monogram ‘FH,’ lower left.” He studied the photograph, feeling as if his heart, his lungs, were bursting. Yes, there it was in the photo, dim but visible, on the cavalier’s dark sleeve. Shaking, he dashed back to the painting. Why wasn’t it—
But it was. If you looked hard, if you knew what you were looking for and where to look, there it was. FH. In a dull, muddy red. Painted on the ample, gray-black folds of the sleeve, made almost invisible by age and the thick, dark varnish that some fool of a restorer had coated it with. My God, a Hals! What was it worth? Jasper Johns, for God’s sake, was going for $17,000,000 in these crazy days, Van Gogh for over $50,000,000! Why, a Hals—a Hals—
He jumped—literally, both heels coming off the floor—when Fundy’s meaty hand thumped him on the shoulder.
The horrible little man was grinning at him. “Twelve Gs,” he said proudly. He waited for a response, but Claude’s mind was numb, his throat stuffed with rags.
Fundy turned to Suffield. “I’ll pay in cash,” he said, as Claude had known he would. Surely he was the only person in America who actually carried $1,000 bills around in his pocket twenty years after the Federal Reserve had stopped issuing them. (This from a man who screamed “Who needs cash?” at the end of
every commercial.) And of course he kept them in a glittering gold-and-diamond money clip shaped like a dollar sign.
“One,” he said, and plunked a bill into the goggling Suffield’s palm. Fundy laughed, delighted with himself. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and slurped at it. “Two …”
Claude watched, sick and desperate. In his ears he heard his own breath, the shallow panting of an animal.
Claude stood erectly on the ferry’s top deck, his hands on the rear railing, looking down into the black, chill waters of Puget Sound sixty feet below. Directly below, the boiling, dimly phosphorescent wake slid smoothly away into the fog.
“It’s freezing out here, Mary Beth,” a woman standing a dozen feet away said to a six-year-old. “Let’s go inside.”
“Aw, Mom, I want—”
“I’ll get us some hot chocolate, how about that?”
Mary Beth paused, wavered, and made her decision. “With extra sugar?”
“You bet, honey.” Hand in hand, they headed for the steps that led below.
That left only one other person on the dark, open top deck; Franklin Fundy. It was time to act.
The cleansing wind and moist, salty air had purged Claude’s mind of its dithering confusion. He knew what had to be done, and he knew how to do it. He turned, narrowing his eyes against the pelting strands of his own wind-whipped hair. Fundy was sitting in one of the plastic chairs, staring happily at nothing, chewing on a dead cigar. At his side, tossed carelessly onto the seat next to him, was a large red plastic sack containing a thick cardboard package that jutted out of it. Dear God—a Hals in a plastic shopping bag!
Characteristically, Fundy had shown no surprise when Claude had suggested that he accompany his client on the ride to Bremerton. “For the conversation,” Claude had said, and Fundy had affably, even generously, agreed—as if it were only natural that his conversation should be a sought-after commodity. And for once Fundy’s disgusting propensity for sweaty warmth had come in handy. Claude had been delighted to follow his suggestion that they make the trip in the fresh air of the upper deck.
“Well, I wonder what that is!” Claude said loudly, leaning over the rail to peer down at the water.
“What what is?” Fundy said with little interest.
“I’m not sure. It appears to be …” He had given this a lot of thought. Fundy was not a man of wide interests. A seal or even a whale would be unlikely to get him out of his chair. Even a floating body might not do it. “… It appears to be a washing machine!” Claude exclaimed.
“A what?” Claude was at the rail instantly, the painting left behind. “You’re nuts! Where?”
“Down there. You have to lean over a little more. Just a little more yet.”
He steeled himself, sucked in a lungful of the cold air. “Merry Christmas, Frankie,” he murmured and stepped forward.
When the boat docked at Bremerton, Claude stayed aboard for the return run to Seattle. Once back he put the painting in one of the 75-cent lockers at the terminal and went to a pay telephone.
“Mr. Whatcom? I’m sorry to bother you, but didn’t you say Mr. Fundy would meet me at Pioneer Square at four? Well, no, he didn’t, sir. I came down to the ferry terminal thinking he might have gotten one of the later boats, but the six twenty-five just came in and he wasn’t on it, so … yes, sir, I suppose he simply changed his mind. Yes, he’s certainly done it a few times before.” He laughed easily along with the senior partner. “Oh, no, no trouble at all. I’ll do that, sir. Merry Christmas to you too.”
He hung up. How calm he was, how clear-minded. And why shouldn’t he be calm? Fundy’s body would not surface for days, and by then the tide might have taken it all the way to Olympia, or perhaps west to the strait and the open sea. It might never be found, and even if it was the experts would never be able to determine his exact time of death. The assumption would be that he had fallen from the boat on the way in to Seattle to meet Claude. Who could say otherwise? Mr. Suffield had been paid in cash; there was no way for him to know who his customer had been, no reason to connect him with a body that might or might not wash up in Edmonds or Port Townsend the next week. And there was absolutely no one else to connect Fundy with Claude. Nothing could go wrong.
There was just one loose end. He was probably being overcareful to be worried about it, but that was the way he was. It was not his way to leave anything to chance. He rapidly walked the three dark blocks down Alaskan Way to Washington Street and turned left to Pioneer Square. It had gotten colder. He turned the soft collar of the camel’s hair coat up against his cheek.
Suffield had closed up the gallery but he was still there, working with his cordless screwdriver, stooped with fatigue but smiling.
“Book?” he said in response to Claude’s question. “Of Dutch …?”
Claude showed him. “This,” he said casually. “I’m quite interested in the period, you know, and assuming it’s for sale, I’d very much like to have it.”
“Well, yes, of course it’s for sale—”
“And if you have any other copies of it, I’d be interested in those too. They’d make wonderful Christmas gifts for friends.”
Suffield shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, it’s the only copy I have. Hardly my specialty, you see.” He stood there, smiling tiredly.
“And the price?” Claude prompted.
“Oh. Well. I’ll have to look it up.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the office in back, and apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Look, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just keep it with my compliments?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t—”
“Please. As a Christmas present. And to thank you for your help earlier.”
“Well …” Claude smiled. “Thank you so much, Mr. Suffield. And merry Christmas to you. A merry, merry Christmas.”
Mr. Suffield watched him go. Then he locked up again, went to his office, and opened a waist-high metal cabinet. Inside were his twenty-four remaining copies of the long out-of-print Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, all authentic. Whistling to himself, he pulled one from the shelf and leafed through it, pausing fondly at page forty-seven, and stopping finally at page fifty-two.
“Ah,” he said. “Just the thing.”
He lifted the telephone and dialed. “Vincent? I have another order for you.” He smiled at the surprised reply. “Yes,” he said, “the Hals is already gone. It was wonderful; I wish you’d been there. I’d hardly unpacked it. And the book was still in the carton!” They both enjoyed a laugh. “Not my usual price, of course, but why quarrel with serendipity? Now: Do you have a pen handy?”
He waited. “You’ll like this; you’re good at Rembrandt. Here it is.” Slowly he read aloud from the book. “‘Plate Number 101. Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Woman Holding a Fan. 1634–35. Panel, 30⅛ by 20 inches. Signature and date, “Remb. 1665,” lower right. Monogram “MG” on back (Michiel Gepts, Amsterdam panel maker). Collection—’ Well, that’s really all you need, isn’t it?”
While Vincent went over the details with him Suffield took a scalpel from a drawer and carefully edged it under the photograph of the Rembrandt, beginning to tease it from the page. “No, no,” he said, “I don’t give a damn what sort of fan. What difference does it make? Something Rembrandtish. Ostrich feather, I should guess. When can you have it done?”
The photograph came up from the page. Excellent; no marring of the paper. He tore it into shreds and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. There would be a replacement soon enough. “Next week is fine. And you’ll have it photographed? You still have some of the stock I gave you to print it on? You understand how important it is that it match the rest of the photographs—” He jerked the telephone away from his ear as Vincent swore at him.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said soothingly. “I know how attentive to detail you are. But one can’t be too careful. You won’t forget to lay some heavy varnish over the signature to muddy it up?” He chuckled warmly. “You know how mu
ch they love to think they’re putting one over on me.”
The man railed at him some more. Suffield let him go on. He could afford to be patient. Subtracting Vincent’s fee of $1,000 left him with $11,000 profit on the transaction. And legal profit at that. He had never claimed it was a Hals, had he?
“Thank you, Vincent,” he said amicably when the ranting had stopped. “It’s always a pleasure to do business with you. Oh, and Vincent? A very merry Christmas to you.”
Close to tears, Mary Beth Hasty sat up in her bed, her little face pinched with juvenile frustration. “We did see him,” she cried. “We did! Coming back on the ferryboat from Seattle. Funnie Frankie! And he had a big red bag like Santa Claus, and he was with a big tall man in a funny yellow coat!”
In the twin bed next to her, her sister Amber, three years her senior and infinitely superior, smiled her condescension. “Oh, sure.”
“But we did! Ask Mom. Funnie Frankie is Santa Claus, and he’s coming to our house, and he’s coming down the chimney, and—”
It was too much for Amber. She rolled her eyes and shouted: “Mother! Mary Beth—”
“I can hear!” Susan Hasty answered from the living room, where she was sitting guard over the presents until the girls dropped off. Lord, could she hear. They’d been at it fifteen minutes. This was what came of getting Mary Beth overtired on the day before Christmas. “Mary Beth, honey,” she called, not looking up from the newspaper, “Funnie Frankie is not Santa Claus, and he’s not coming to our house.”
“Ha, ha,” she heard Amber say.
“But we did see him, Amber,” their mother added.
“Ha, ha on you.” Mary Beth’s voice.
“Now you girls go to sleep or I won’t let you get up early. I mean it now.”
But Amber, on the whiny brink of exhaustion herself, padded across the bedroom floor and flung open the door. “Then why didn’t we see him get off the boat when we came to get you?” she said accusingly. “Where did he go? And I didn’t see any big tall man with a yellow coat get off either.”
Mistletoe Mysteries Page 20
