The Rembrandt Secret

by Alex Connor

  ‘No one can hold anything against Marshall,’ Georgia went on. ‘The truth was in the letters.’

  ‘Don’t shoot the messenger?’

  ‘All right, what else could he have done? Died for them? What good would that have been?’

  ‘No good at all, but perhaps Marshall could have thought all this through a little more. He could have destroyed the letters when he first got them. Four people died.’

  ‘And he was damn near the fifth!’ she said shortly. ‘You’re such a hypocrite, Philip. I remember you telling my mother how truth was everything in law, and in life. How veracity always triumphed. How it should … So what changed?’ she challenged him. ‘What Rembrandt was, and what he did, is in those letters. And now the world will read them. The woman he tortured will be heard, and his bastard recognised. The truth will come out.’

  Philip smiled distantly to himself and said, ‘A client once told me that the absolute truth is an instrument that can only be played by an expert.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I advised him to start lying.’

  Covering his eyes with his arm, Marshall lay back on the bunk in the cell, trying to sleep. He had talked to Philip Gorday at length and was waiting to be released, for the guard to come and tell him he was free to go home. The auction house had wanted to press charges, Philip had told him, but when the truth came out they had hesitated. Marshall’s reckless action was excusable, but between the shock of the damage and the exposure of the letters, he was going to be left to sweat a while in jail.

  Philip had fielded the media, who were clamouring to line up interviews with Marshall on his release. He told them that Marshall Zeigler would be talking – but not for the time being. Exhausted, Marshall kept his eyes closed, remembering the expression on Tobar Manners’ face when he had slashed the painting. Marshall had been so quickly overpowered that he hadn’t had a chance to look at anyone else, just Manners. And he had held his gaze while the police were handcuffing him and jerking him to his feet. Tobar’s expression had said everything before he skirted the crowd and disappeared out the back of the auction room, a beaten man. Marshall, hoisted to his feet, had been marched out. In passing the crowd, he had caught sight of Rufus Ariel and turned his head to look for Timothy Parker-Ross – but his seat was empty.

  Screwing up his eyes, Marshall thought about Parker-Ross. He had never suspected him, not even considered him. He’d suspected every cunning, clever person his father had ever been involved with, but not the kindly fool … His mind turned back to his youth, to the two of them jumping onto London buses. Then he remembered the last time he’d seen Timothy Parker-Ross in London, deceptively caring as he called around at the gallery.

  ‘What’s up, Marshall?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything was wrong.’

  ‘No, but I’ve known you since we were kids. I can always tell when you’re worried …’

  Marshall flinched as he recalled other conversations.

  ‘You’re like me. You’ve never been really interested in the art business. But then again, you got out, made another career for yourself. I never had the brains to do anything else …’

  ‘I’m a fool, everyone knows that.’

  A fool. A vicious fool. Overlooked, underestimated. With a character which had brooded on its ill treatment for years. A fool in public, a thug in private. Marshall rubbed his temples with his fingers, trying to understand. How could Timothy Parker-Ross be a killer? he thought blankly. Maybe the actual killings had been done by others; perhaps Tim would have focused on the letters, dismissing the murders as an unpleasant necessity. After all, the letters must have seemed his only hope, the one thing that would ensure him status in a world which sneered at him. Perhaps, Marshall thought, his longing for power would have expunged everything else – even the death of a man who had helped him and protected him.

  Marshall swallowed. He had to know if Parker-Ross had been at the murders. Had to know if his old friend had watched Owen Zeigler being tortured and gutted. If he had seen Stefan van der Helde sodomised and forced to swallow stones. If he had witnessed the knife go into Charlotte Gorday and split her heart. And if he been in that bleak hotel room and seen Nicolai Kapinski held down, his eyes gouged out, blood choking him as he died …

  Had Tim seen all this? Jesus, had he?

  Marshall had been right about one thing – the victims had all let him in. They had all known Timothy Parker-Ross and would never have been frightened of him. Van der Helde, Owen, Charlotte Gorday, Nicolai Kapinski – they would have recognised him as being part of their world. Someone no one feared. Of course Owen would have let Parker-Ross into the gallery, into the basement. Marshall could picture it only too easily, his father talking to the man he had thought of as another son. Perhaps Parker-Ross had asked him for the Rembrandt letters, tried to make some kind of deal. Marshall knew that his father wouldn’t have taken him seriously; would have laughed it off.

  Letters, Owen would have said. What letters, Tim? He would have looked at him and smiled, thinking that of all people Timothy Parker-Ross wouldn’t have the clout to be able to handle something of such importance. No, Owen would have said, there are no letters …

  With a shudder, Marshall wondered when his father first realised what Parker-Ross really was. When did he first fear him? Did the initial blow come from Parker-Ross, or from his accomplice? Not from Tim, surely. He had always been so afraid of blood, turning his head to one side if anyone cut themselves … So when did he turn his head away from Owen Zeigler? At what point did he separate himself from that death and the other violent deaths to come?

  Hearing a banging, Marshall opened his eyes and glanced at the door, waiting for it to open. But it stayed closed, locked. Sighing, he stared back up at the ceiling. He would ask to talk to Timothy Parker-Ross, because he wanted to hate him. Wanted to know more. Because Parker-Ross was still partially the playmate of Marshall’s childhood, too benign to be feared …

  And then Marshall realised that everyone would see Parker-Ross in the same way. That a clever lawyer could get him off by pleading insanity. Regurgitate the public-school upbringing, the bullying, the patronising dislike of the art world grandees; the people who admired his father so much, and pitied the son more by comparison. A mirror would be held up to the business, with all its petty spites recalled. Poor Timothy, they would claim, he had money, but nothing else. No affection, no love. Detached, he had rattled around the world as an outsider, and then, obsessively and compulsively, he had fixed his thoughts on the Rembrandt letters. The way, finally, of making his name.

  Anyone could understand that, couldn’t they? No, Marshall thought, and he had to make sure that no one ever understood what Parker-Ross had done.

  Sighing, he sat up on his bunk and went to the door, calling out, ‘Hey, I need to see my lawyer.’

  A guard came down the corridor and paused outside his cell. ‘You want something?’

  ‘My lawyer. Philip Gorday. I want to see him. I should have been out of here by now.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s so. Please, can you get hold of him for me?’

  ‘Gorday, you say?’

  ‘Philip Gorday.’

  ‘He left a message for you,’ the guard went on. ‘He said to tell you that he’d be back soon.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘London—’

  ‘London!’ Marshall snapped, incredulous. ‘He can’t have! He can’t leave me here.’

  ‘He can, and he has.’

  ‘Let me out!’

  ‘Mr Zeigler, you must know I can’t do that,’ the guard replied, shrugging. ‘Relax. Your lawyer will be back.’

  ‘Did he say when?’

  ‘No, he just said he’d be back soon.’

  ‘Can I make a phone call?’

  ‘You had your phone call.’

  ‘Can I send a message?’

  ‘Do I look like a fucking pigeon?’ the guard replied curtly. �
��There’s nothing you can do, but wait. So wait.’

  House of Corrections,

  Gouda, 1654

  For many days I did not touch the pen. The nib weighed heavy as a pail of water.

  No one in Delft knew anything. It’s being called ‘’t Sekreet van Hollandt’. The secret of Holland. So many secrets … It was the 12th October at 10.30 in the morning. It was warm, nothing unusual, still, without rain, even a small sun … They say the shudder reached the island of Texel in the far north.

  No one had known … It was a secret, the gunpowder storage hidden behind trees and under bushes, under greenery which never shed its leaves in winter, just kept its knowledge to itself. It was a storage bunker that no one could reach by foot. So no one knew of it. Not behind the bushes and the trees … They say it was a building on the grounds where the Clarisse convent once stood, near to where the schutterij – the civic guard – once trained… They say you could hear the explosion in the far north.

  When the gunpowder went up the town went with it, a crater in the earth left like an empty basin, ready to catch the rain. Trees were mutilated, left as stumps … Many hundreds of buildings were destroyed, including the Oude Doelen. Many people were injured.

  But only Carel was killed.

  Sssh, there is movement outside the window and the guards look in, watch me. Wonder why I don’t move anymore. Not these last days anyway … I heard them talking about self murder. Would I do that? they ask themselves. They can’t afford to let me die. If I did, there would be no more money coming from van Rijn.

  Watch her, they say, watch her. Watch the mad whore.

  Friends brought me news of the explosion in Delft. They reported the death of Carel Fabritius because they thought it might interest me, not because they knew my past. Not because he was a blood link, a dead child …

  Wasn’t he apprenticed to Rembrandt? they asked me. Sad he died, and all his works with him …

  All his works in his studio, his paintings, gone into nothingness. All his drawings, his oils and pigments, his skill and the paintings he created for himself – as Carel Fabritius, not Rembrandt’s monkey.

  They told me that nothing was left. That the artist was blown into fragments, spun through the air, scattered with his paints and brushes across Holland.

  His family lived …

  Alone, I cried for him. I cried, with the bag of coins pressing against my stomach, where my womb had once held him. And I knew that Rembrandt would have heard the news too, in his house, with his mistress, with the portrait of Saskia watching from the wall … He would grieve for his pupil, his accomplice. But for his child? I doubt that. Grieve for his income, his partner, his faker. But for his bastard? …

  If I bought my freedom, bribed my way out of here, where would I go? What town would want me? What person hire me? What future invite me? Where is there on earth that would welcome me? So I shall stay here. And keep writing, hiding the letters, adding to the letters, keeping my testament. Stay behind the locked door, where the damp rises in the late months and the privy brings flies come May. The winter will eat at my soul, and the ice will freeze under the canals, and more oxen, showing the whites of their eyes in terror, will fall to the knife. In the distance, the church bells will glower into the sky and shake the crows from their nests. And I will be still be here …

  The explosion took away my last hold on Rembrandt van Rijn. It took my child, my son, my helpmate … It blew a hole in my heart.

  And the door in the wall slammed closed on me.

  47

  Two weeks after the Rembrandt revelations, Rufus Ariel sold his business for a loss and Leon Williams tried to commit suicide. Faced with the wreck of his business, Williams had found himself confronted by usurers who wanted their loans repaid. And there was no money to satisfy them, nor was there likely to be enough until the market recovered. And no one knew how long that would be.

  Worldwide, every Rembrandt was questioned. The most famous Old Master on earth was enjoying his second celebrity as, in every gallery, museum, and private collection, the paintings were checked against the damning list. Despite a hundred legal arguments to delay decisions, the letters and the list were proved, twice more, to be authentic. Despite the conflicting views of handwriting experts and art historians, no one could discredit the Rembrandt letters. Within the first month, thirty-seven paintings previously believed to be by Rembrandt were reattributed to Carel Fabritius. In the second month, another fourteen were found to be fakes.

  The market plunged.

  Already suspicious, collectors drew back from the cultural blood bath. With the fall of Rembrandt came the scrabble for revaluations. After all, the dealers argued, the list might not be extensive. Geertje Dircx was not always present at Rembrandt’s studio and had relied on her son’s record – she could be wrong. Perhaps some of the discredited Rembrandts were real, after all. Perhaps others, not listed, were fake? The argument might have been persuasive in another, more buoyant, climate. But in the worst recession since the 1930s, it was seen as just another manoeuvre. Another artistic sleight of hand.

  Then the market realised that if one of the biggest names in art could take such a beating, other painters might well suffer from a knock-on effect. Rumours, unsubstantiated and reckless, began to circulate. Were there really secret documents about Titian? Was he going to be the next casualty? The innuendos were absurd, but they put a match to the bonfire of panic. And the dealers looked for a scapegoat.

  Oddly enough, it wasn’t Timothy Parker-Ross. In the end he had managed to achieve what he always longed for – acceptance. The art market might loathe him for his crimes, but he was one of them as Marshall Zeigler had never been. Immediately after Parker-Ross’s arrest, his legal team asked for him to be tried in London, but the plea was rejected and he was kept in New York. His behaviour in prison deteriorated rapidly; he began to hallucinate, became violent and attacked a guard. Put on medication, Parker-Ross was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and transferred to a mental facility, where he was sedated to keep him from harming himself or anyone else. Although he talked endlessly about the letters, when his accomplice was finally caught in Marseilles, he couldn’t even recognise the man he had hired – and tutored in murder.

  ‘And you left me here for two weeks while all this happened?’ Marshall said bitterly, as Philip faced him across the prison table in the visitors’ room.

  ‘You weren’t safe. I had to know you were somewhere that no one could get to you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Would you have agreed to it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you,’ Philip replied wryly. ‘But you can leave today.’

  Nodding, Marshall stared at the lawyer. He had thought, when Philip left so suddenly for London, that he had been double crossed. That Gorday would prove to have been involved all along. But Marshall had been wrong there. Instead of betraying him, Philip Gorday had promised his daughter that he would protect Marshall, and he had kept his word. Unsure of what would happen next, and unwilling to let his client leave custody until Parker-Ross’s accomplice was found, Philip had left New York for London. Once there he got in touch with Lillian Kauffman and, through her, he discovered the full damage caused by the letters.

  Riding the cataclysm, Lillian had done what she had always done: tightened her Hermès belt a couple of notches and decided to brazen it out. Over coffee and half a pack of cigarettes, she listed the victims and told Philip that Tobar Manners had disappeared.

  ‘Disappeared?’ Marshall said when Philip passed on the news. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just upped and went. No one knows where.’

  Disbelieving, Marshall stared at the lawyer. ‘He must have left a trace.’

  ‘He left with nothing. The guy’s finished. You got what you wanted.’

  ‘You think I wanted this?’ Marshall challenged. ‘You think all this pleases me?’

  ‘You wanted revenge—�
�

  ‘For my father’s death. I didn’t want the rest of it.’

  ‘They’re blaming you,’ Philip said evenly. ‘I have to make that clear, Marshall. You’re the scapegoat. You have to be, you’re not one of them.’

  ‘My father was.’

  ‘You’re not your father, and besides, the dealers know that your father wouldn’t have released the letters.’

  ‘Maybe he would have done if he’d not been murdered. My father was in real trouble, God knows, he might have been forced into it.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘But he didn’t. You did.’

  ‘And he’s dead and I’m alive. Am I supposed to feel sorry for that?’ Marshall asked, his tone acid. ‘I had no choice but to expose the letters. Parker-Ross told me he was going to go after Georgia. He’d already killed four people, why wouldn’t I believe him? And why, in God’s name, would I think that any bloody letters were worth another death? Especially not hers.’ He stared across the table at Philip Gorday. ‘Those letters are the truth – about Rembrandt and about his paintings. I didn’t want to bring down the art market—’

  ‘Well, you’ve made a good fist of it, nonetheless. Thing is, Marshall, you’re not going to be able to live like you did before.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People know you, and what you did is all over the media. That stunt you pulled when you slashed the painting, that was Indiana Jones stuff. I’ve held the press and TV off for a while, but they want to talk to you. You’re a hero to them. Avenging your father’s death and taking on the art market single handed.’ He paused, almost amused. ‘The feminists love you.’

  ‘The feminists? Why?’

  ‘For revealing Geertje Dircx’s story. It’s made you very popular with women. Famous painter puts mistress in asylum makes a good headline in the seventeenth and the twenty-first centuries. I don’t doubt Oprah will want to interview you.’ He paused, looking Marshall full in the face. ‘I’m grateful to you. For finding out who killed my wife.’

  ‘So you won’t be sending me a bill then?’