A Study in Gold

by Annie Dalton

  ‘Something’s upset you,’ she said. ‘Was it that awful volunteer woman?’

  Anna swallowed.

  ‘She said Lili worked for the major London auction houses. What if she worked for Hempels?’ As soon as Anthea had said it, Anna had had a dreary feeling of inevitability. She didn’t know how or why, but somehow everything went back to Hempels and her father’s involvement with the Scott-Nevilles.

  ‘It’s highly possible that she did,’ Isadora said. ‘But that doesn’t—’

  ‘What if David Fischer isn’t just a sad fantasist like everyone seems to want to believe?’ Anna interrupted. ‘And my father really did fail him in some unforgivable way?’

  ‘Anna, even if Lili did work as a consultant for Hempels, why would that implicate your father?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d think learning that Julian wasn’t really my dad means I’d feel less freaked out, but it seems to make everything a hundred times worse! I feel like I can’t bear to …’ She stopped, then burst out, ‘there have already been so many lies. I mean, do you ever really know somebody, Isadora?’

  ‘From my own experience? I would have to say not.’ Isadora gave a wry smile and Anna could have kicked herself. She belatedly remembered the charismatic intelligence agent, who had approached Isadora in her first year at Oxford, and for whom she’d said she’d have willingly walked through fire for.

  ‘This is going to sound like a really bad soap,’ Anna said, when she felt reasonably sure she wouldn’t burst into tears.

  ‘As life so often does,’ Isadora said with a world-weary sigh.

  ‘Not this bad.’ Anna gave a tearful laugh. ‘First, my mum has an illicit affair with Chris Freemantle, my dad’s best friend, who, it turns out, is my biological father. And now my dad, who might not be my real dad after all, but is still the man who brought me up and taught us that lying was cowardly and stealing was despicable—’

  ‘You’re thinking he was maybe guilty of both?’

  Anna nodded.

  They parked in the station car park, left a window cracked open for the dogs and set off to walk the short distance to the Harris arcade.

  The pretty Art Deco arcade was home to a wide range of businesses, including a vintage record store, a shop selling traditional Chinese medicines, a cigar shop and a beer, ale and cheese emporium called The Grumpy Goat. The bookshop, Dog-eared Adventures, was sandwiched between a nail bar and a shop specialising in comics.

  Dog-eared Adventures fitted perfectly into the ambience of the arcade, Anna thought, surprised. Had David Fischer thought up this oddly endearing name for himself? If so, that implied a sense of humour and that too surprised her.

  Through the window, she saw a shabby, yet cosy looking space with squashy, comfortable sofas, shelves stacked with books, books piled on tables and yet more books piled on the stairs. Fire hazard, said Anna’s inner administrator.

  Her dad would have loved it. He’d been physically incapable of passing by a second-hand book shop. It had driven her mother and the adolescent Anna wild with irritation. Oh, Dad, she thought, and felt a treacherous prickling behind her eyelids. Though she felt obliged to keep reminding herself that Julian Hopkins hadn’t really been her dad, the truth was, he had, in every way that mattered.

  ‘Come on,’ said Isadora and almost propelled Anna inside.

  It had that familiar, old bookshop smell. She could feel her heart beating as she and Isadora wove their way between the shelves. Dog-eared Adventures mainly seemed to specialise in hard-backed books about art and artists, but it also stocked a range of vintage paperbacks. A young woman, her hair in a bundle of dreadlocks, was standing on a stepladder reorganising a top shelf. The hems of her jeans rose up as she stretched, revealing the silver gleam of an ankle bracelet against blue-black skin.

  Anna stopped by a table piled with vintage Penguins. She extracted a paperback from one of the piles and took her find over to the counter.

  The woman on the ladder spotted her and called down.

  ‘Do you mind dinging the bell for David while I finish up here?’

  Her mouth suddenly dry, Anna dinged the bell. Isadora glanced at Anna’s purchase.

  ‘A Moveable Feast. A wonderful memoir. Just a shame Hemingway was such an old misogynist. Have you read it?’

  ‘Not yet. Jake said I should.’

  Plus, it’s my alibi, Anna thought, for if I lose my nerve.

  At that moment, David Fischer emerged from the back of the shop, wearing spectacles with Buddy Holly-style heavy rims. Here, on his home ground and wearing an old dull red sweater, over an old blue shirt made soft with washing, he looked less like a mad scarecrow and more like the slightly distracted owner of a second-hand bookshop.

  He saw Isadora and pushed his spectacles up into his wildly disordered hair, smiling. Then he registered Anna and his smile faltered.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘You don’t know me, but you may have known my father. I’m Anna Hopkins and this is my friend, Isadora Salzman.’

  She saw Fischer’s expression change as he remembered where he’d seen her. She saw him clench and unclench his fist. ‘You were at Hempels. You heard me talking to Lenkov.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He’d turned very pale.

  ‘You’re – you’re the child who survived. Everyone died that night except you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Anna had an overwhelming urge to run.

  ‘I am sorry, truly sorry, for what you’ve had to bear.’ Again, she saw his knuckles whiten. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that your father did something terrible to my family. It was his father who committed the crime, but Julian had the opportunity to put it right and he didn’t. He didn’t,’ Fischer repeated and his voice shook.

  His assistant quickly came down her ladder.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ She shot a reproachful glance at Anna and Isadora.

  ‘Yes, yes, Constance,’ Fischer tried to smile. ‘Everything is fine.’

  By this time nearby customers were giving them intrigued glances.

  ‘You’d better come into my office,’ he told Anna.

  Isadora shot her a sharp look. Is this what you want?

  Anna nodded. She had to know.

  The office, on the other side of a faded, velvet curtain, was sparsely furnished; just a desk overflowing with papers and a single chair, which Fischer took then immediately hitched closer to the wall. He put his reading glasses back on and fiddled pointlessly with some papers before he said, in a voice gritty with suppressed emotion, ‘so, Ms Hopkins, are you here to find out if your father was as much as a bastard as I think he is?’

  Anna heard Isadora’s intake of breath, but she said coolly, ‘no, actually. I already know my father wasn’t a bastard.’ Please God don’t let him have been a bastard. ‘But I am interested in finding more out about Lili Rossetti.’

  Though Fischer’s expression didn’t alter, she felt the atmosphere shift.

  ‘Lili was on my side,’ he said stiffly. ‘I believe she was on to something and if her abusive husband hadn’t finally followed through with his violent threats, I believe we could have got at the truth.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, I believe we were that close.’

  Anna felt a surge of disgust. How could someone be so callous about a friend? Then she thought; he’s not callous, he’s ill. This painting has driven him mad. Nothing existed for him at this moment except the Vermeer. She’d seen it on the psych ward, when an obsession took someone over body and soul. Seen it, I’ve worn the t-shirt, she thought wearily.

  With this in mind, she tried to keep her voice gentle.

  ‘Surely you don’t think that a man like Herr Kirchmann would have involved himself with Hempels, if there was the smallest whisper of wrong-doing?’

  His face twisted.

  ‘Oh the saintly Michael! I’ve heard that story so many times and that’s what it is, a story. I’ve been to Innsbruck. I’ve spoken to people who were there. I know what happened.’<
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  Anna felt her heart thumping as she waited for this tormented man to tell her the thing she most dreaded to hear.

  ‘Michael Kirchmann stole my grandfather’s painting. He stole all those paintings he was supposedly protecting for his own personal gain.’ Disturbingly owlish in his glasses, Fischer turned his fixed stare on Anna. ‘And your family profited.’

  SEVEN

  Anna’s first instinct was to turn furiously on the man who had made these accusations. She could feel Isadora watching her, concerned, uncertain about intervening.

  Then she flashed back to that windowless interview room at St Aldates police station, as she told her sceptical interviewers who she suspected of murdering the woman, whose body she’d found on Port Meadow. The harder she’d tried to convince them, the more deranged her accusations had seemed. Not to be believed was a kind of hell, enough to make the sanest person mad. They’d come to David Fischer’s bookshop to ask questions. She should at least do him the courtesy of listening to his answers.

  ‘That’s a big claim,’ Anna said, as calmly as she could manage. ‘Can you show me some evidence?’

  She heard Fischer catch his breath and Anna felt some of the tension leave that bare, little office. He hadn’t expected her to meet him half way. He took off his spectacles.

  ‘I know what people say, but I’m not one of those comedy conspiracy theorists. I wish I was!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It would be so much less disturbing than the truth.’ He dropped his spectacles on to his desk, lenses down, and Anna itched to turn them the right way up.

  ‘You’ve seen my website?’ he asked them. ‘Well, I should tell you that I didn’t put everything I know on it. I daren’t. It was too dangerous.’ He shot Anna an apologetic glance. ‘I know how that makes me sound, but my search has led me into murky waters.’ He shook his head. ‘So many countries, so many different agendas, so many lives have become entangled with this painting, including prominent families, who will do anything to cover their tracks. Anything,’ he repeated. Then he stopped, and Anna saw some troubling thought pass behind his eyes before he added, ‘I understand that you’ve got no reason to trust me, but you also asked for evidence. So, if you can spare me a few minutes, I’d like to show you something that might change your mind. You …’ Fischer swallowed, and started again. ‘You’re Julian’s daughter. Maybe you can put right what your father wouldn’t – or couldn’t.’

  Anna remembered the porters escorting him from the auction house. Come on, sir, you’ve had your five minutes. She wondered how many times this mortifying scenario had been enacted. She saw Fischer quickly replace his spectacles, but not before she’d seen the fearful hope in his eyes.

  ‘We’ve got time,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll just tell Constance.’ He disappeared through the curtain and they heard him quickly conferring with his assistant. Isadora and Anna had time to exchange looks before he reappeared.

  ‘This way,’ he said. They followed him through a second curtained doorway and up another steep flight of stairs, picking their way past yet more piles of books. At the top, a door opened into a small sunny apartment. It was little more than a bedsit, except that bedsits, in Anna’s experience, were universally grim. This was unexpectedly charming; a comfortable chaos of books and paintings, sofas heaped with cushions and soft throws. She realized she’d been preparing herself for a sick man’s stale-smelling burrow, not this pleasantly crowded sunlit room. A plump, tortoiseshell cat regarded them speculatively from one of the sofa backs, then made her way over to be stroked.

  A polished table held a seven-branched candlestick, a menorah, Anna remembered, from visits to Jewish friends. There were a few pieces of fine china inside a glass-fronted cabinet; Anna admired a dark red, lustre jug and some delicate white cups and saucers, painted with yellow flowers. The Persian rug laid on top of wooden floorboards was old and worn, but the faded colours were pleasing to the eye. A wall clock with an exquisitely painted ceramic face, ticked away softly.

  Then it came to Anna that this was a loving recreation, in miniature, of the Fischer family’s apartment in Vienna; a world David Fischer had never actually seen and a world that no longer existed. She felt a sudden wrenching pity for this strange, lonely man. Concerned that her feelings might show on her face, she went across to the window and looked down into the twenty-first-century street below. She watched a woman pushing an off-road buggy, people chatting on mobiles and two men in high-vis gear unloading scaffolding from a truck. From up here, it all seemed muffled and unreal. She had the feeling she often had just before a storm; torn between her longing for her tension to be relieved and her childhood terror of lightning, because there was no way of knowing what, or who, the lightning was going to strike.

  She turned to see Isadora murmuring sweet nothings to the cat.

  ‘What velvety fur,’ she crooned. ‘And such pretty colours.’ She smiled up at Anna. ‘I love tortoiseshells. They’re almost always bonkers!’

  ‘Please make yourselves comfortable,’ Fischer said.

  Anna seated herself next to an alcove filled with framed photographs of people she assumed were his relatives.

  ‘My grandparents,’ he said, seeing her interest, ‘and my uncles, aunts and cousins. My father was only able to bring two or three photos with him, the others he had to hunt for years to find.’ One photograph showed a street view of an apartment block, its imposing stone facade softened by the spreading branches of a lime tree.

  ‘Was that where your father grew up?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘His family had the top two floors. My grandparents lived on the floor below.’ Anna couldn’t see any photos of anyone who might be David’s wife or child. She wondered if David Fischer had ever had a family of his own, or if he’d driven them away with his Vermeer obsession.

  He went over to an antiquated-looking safe.

  ‘You will probably think this is paranoid, but experience has taught me that I can’t be too careful.’ He fished around under his shirt, pulled out a key on a fraying straggle of string, and inserted it in the lock. Keypads and electronic codes had evidently passed him by. Reaching inside the safe, he pulled out a thin, cheap, cardboard file.

  Isadora said, ‘Mr Fischer, before we start, would it be intrusive of me to make us all a pot of tea? I’m completely parched!’

  He flushed, obviously flustered. ‘Of course, how rude – I should have – I’m afraid I’m out of the habit of entertaining. I’ll make some.’

  Isadora shook her head. ‘Please, let me do it. I’d like to.’

  ‘At least let me show you where I keep the good cups.’ But Isadora had already seen his delicate yellow and white china. ‘Absolutely not,’ she told him firmly. ‘Those are far too precious.’

  Anna had felt annoyed with Isadora for delaying the opening of the file with this – as she saw it – totally unnecessary faffing around, hunting for tea things in a strange kitchen. But, as her friend brought over the tray with a large blue teapot and three mismatched mugs, she saw that Fischer was looking – if not more relaxed, at least significantly less edgy. He settled himself in an armchair opposite the two women, holding the file on his knees and gently fending off the cat, who clearly believed she had a prior claim to his lap.

  ‘I made us Earl Grey; I hope that’s all right?’ Isadora said. She lifted the teapot and filled all three mugs. Anna’s was poppy red with the words Dog-eared Adventures above a mischievous cartoon hound with a folded down ear.

  Fischer saw her smile. ‘Constance commissioned them,’ he explained. ‘She thinks I should do more to promote the business.’ He shot them an unexpectedly sweet smile. ‘She’s very stern with me, Constance is.’ He opened the file, slid out some papers and his smile faded.

  ‘Lili Rossetti is the only person, apart from me, who has seen these.’

  Down in the street, a loud metallic crash was greeted with male jeers and laughter. Anna felt her heart thud unevenly against her breastbone.

  �
�First this.’ Fischer laid a black and white photograph on the coffee table, turning it around so that they could see.

  Anna and Isadora leaned forward. The photograph showed three men lounging on an antique Louis Quatorz sofa, wearing the iconic uniform that Anna knew, without knowing how, had been worn by the German SS.

  ‘See this guy in the middle?’ They peered at the well-fed middle-aged man with the wide smile. ‘That’s Herr Richter,’ Fischer said. ‘He was very high up in the Kunstschutz, a Nazi unit that—’

  ‘Looted priceless artworks belonging to Jews,’ Isadora finished. ‘Yes, we know.’

  Fischer seemed relieved that he needn’t go back to basics.

  ‘Can you see that painting behind his head?’ he asked. ‘It’s not very clear in the picture, I’m afraid, but it’s a woodland landscape, by a German artist called Hans Thoma. It used to hang in my grandparents’ apartment, beside a Klimt and my grandfather’s Vermeer.’ He shot them a glance, trying to gauge their reactions.

  ‘With respect,’ Isadora said, slipping into her Oxford tutorial voice, ‘this doesn’t prove anything. Anyone could point at a painting and say, “That was mine or my family’s.”’

  Fischer levered himself out of his chair and went across to the alcove of photographs. They watched him carefully detach one from its hook and Anna saw that his shirt had come slightly untucked from his jeans. He laid the photograph down on the coffee table so they could see.

  ‘My father in his forties, more than twenty years after he came to England.’ He pulled another photograph from his folder and set it beside the framed photo. It showed a laughing boy in the centre of a family group.

  ‘My father as a young man.’

  Anna felt a pang. He was just a boy, no more than seventeen or eighteen, mischievous, carefree, but with the same dark, almost almond-shaped eyes and the same unmistakable widow’s peak.

  ‘This is my grandfather with his arm around my father’s shoulders,’ Fischer said. ‘Those are three of his aunts. His uncle Saul was behind the camera. Now, can you see this painting behind them?’