by Annie Dalton
‘It’s the Hans Thoma,’ Isadora said with a note of surprise. ‘The one in your first picture.’
‘Yes. The woodland landscape. Now, off to the left, can you just catch a glimpse of the corner of a gilt frame? That was my grandfather’s Vermeer.’
There was a moment’s silence. They knew, of course, that this didn’t prove anything. The gilt frame could have held anything: a piece of embroidery, an amateur’s oil colour. And yet, Vermeer or no Vermeer, the fact remained that David Fischer’s father and grandfather had once been in the same room as a valuable painting which was later photographed in a luxurious apartment used by high-up Nazis.
Fischer returned to his chair and took a sip of his tea.
‘It eventually became necessary for my father’s family to leave Vienna. Obviously, they couldn’t take everything with them. My grandfather heard on the grapevine about this man in Innsbruck, who was looking after artworks for families like ours. He contacted him. Michael Kirchmann came to Vienna to collect the paintings, also some valuable family jewellery. My father was at home when he came. He told me that Kirchmann was visibly horrified at the growing Nazi presence in Vienna. He had grown up in Vienna, but his lungs were badly damaged by gas in the First World War and the doctors thought Innsbruck’s mountain air would be better for his health. My father liked him very much. He said he seemed physically frail but completely trustworthy and, though he was not a Jew, he showed great sensitivity to our family’s plight.’
‘A righteous gentile,’ Isadora said.
‘My father’s words exactly.’ Fischer shot her a wry smile. The tortoiseshell cat had insinuated herself on to his lap without him noticing. He began stroking her unconsciously, as he talked, his thin knobbly hands soothing the soft fur.
‘I won’t bore you with the whole story, but my father was able to escape to England by the skin of his teeth, even as the rest of his family was being rounded up to be taken to the camps. At the last minute, I don’t know why, some premonition maybe, my grandfather made my father tuck Michael Kirchmann’s card into his wallet.
‘After the war was over – not immediately – but a year or so later, when he’d scraped up sufficient money, my father made his way tortuously through France and Switzerland to Innsbruck. You probably know that it was still extremely difficult to travel through Europe during this period. By this time, of course, my father knew that he would never see any members of his family again: his parents, his grandparents, his sisters, all the aunts, uncles and little cousins. All dead.’
Anna saw Isadora briefly close her eyes. Fischer took a shaky breath.
‘I need you to understand that my father did not go to Innsbruck hoping to sell the family paintings and jewels and return a rich man. He went because these things were all that remained of his life. The only things.’ His hand stilled on the cat’s fur. ‘But when he finally reached Innsbruck, he discovered that Michael Kirchmann had been shot and all the hidden paintings and jewels had disappeared from his secret basement. It is not a big leap to assume that these treasures somehow ended up in the coffers of the Third Reich.’
The cat jumped down and strolled away to the kitchen area where they heard her lapping steadily from her bowl. His throat suddenly dry from talking, Fischer began to cough and he took a long gulp of his tea before he resumed his story.
‘I think it’s well known now that the Nazis were meticulous, not to say fanatical, record keepers? My father had the idea that it might be possible to use these obsessively kept records to help him find out if his family’s paintings had been sold on or given away to some favoured officer. I’m speaking of much later in my father’s life,’ he explained. ‘After he’d established a life for himself in this country, after he had married and Europe had begun to return to some kind of normality. Whenever he could spare the time from his work, he travelled to Germany and Austria. He went through archives of photographs of important SS officers, anyone high up in the Nazi party. He interviewed anyone he could persuade to talk to him, which, as you can imagine, was no easy task. People were desperate to forget the collective madness that Hitler and his kind had unleashed. No-one wanted to see painful, old sores or private shames exposed. But, eventually, he was able to discover that the Klimt from his grandfather’s dining room had ended up in the home of a high-ranking official in Berlin.’
‘Did he manage to get it back?’ Anna was experiencing a distinct fellow feeling for David Fischer’s doggedly persistent father.
He shook his head.
‘The house took a direct hit during an air raid. The official and his family were killed. The house and everything in it was burned down to ash. There’s no way the painting could have survived.’
‘Your father must have been terribly disappointed,’ Isadora said.
‘My father was a very patient and, despite his life experiences, an extremely optimistic man,’ he told her. ‘He refused to give up.’
Patient, optimistic and totally driven, Anna thought, remembering her own grief-fuelled investigations.
Fischer drained the last of his tea before he said, ‘eventually my father found that first photo I just showed you of the SS officer. There was a date-stamp on the back and my father immediately realized that this date didn’t make sense. The photo had been taken a year or more before Michael Kirchmann was executed, when the Thoma landscape was supposedly safely stashed away in his secret basement, yet here it was hanging in the quarters of a notable SS officer.’
He met their eyes and nodded. ‘As you can imagine, my father was disturbed by this discovery. He didn’t want to entertain these unpleasant suspicions of Michael Kirchmann, the righteous gentile, but what else was he to think?’
The cat wandered back, settled herself in the middle of a shaft of sunlight and began to wash one velvety, toffee-coloured paw.
Fischer went on to explain how his father had made strenuous efforts to contact those few surviving members of the Jewish community in Vienna, who had also entrusted their artworks to this man. Thanks to them, he could compile an extensive list of the treasures that had been given into Michael Kirchmann’s safe-keeping. From these same survivors, David’s father learned that paintings and items of jewellery entrusted to Kirchmann had been seen displayed in Nazi homes and, in the case of jewels, openly worn by officers’ wives.
Anna felt numb. Could this terrible story be true?
‘And have you ever spoken to Thomas Kirchmann about these accusations against his father?’ Isadora asked.
‘I’ve never been allowed close enough to him to have a proper conversation. Anyone questioning the authorised version of this story – that Michael Kirchmann was a selfless preserver of art – comes up against this glass wall of disbelief.’
Anna swallowed. ‘Everything you’ve said is shocking, but you still haven’t explained how my father is implicated in all this.’
Fischer shot her a look of dismay that hardened into suspicion, making her wish she hadn’t spoken, just when he was on the verge of trusting her.
‘I’m getting there, I promise,’ he said stiffly. Still obviously wary, he explained that, during his researches, his father had occasionally come across what he believed to be cryptic references to the stolen Vermeer.
‘For instance, “Dutch Gold”,’ Fischer said. ‘Another one was “ESIG”, the initial letters of the painting’s title in Dutch. Een Studie in Goud. To my father these were like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of white pebbles; signs that the painting had not been lost, that it still existed out there somewhere in the woods.’
Involved in his story, Fischer gave Anna a fleeting smile as if he’d forgotten his moment of anger. ‘This erratic trail of pebbles also led him to think that, at some point, the painting had been taken out of Europe.’
The cat rolled on to her side and began to purr to herself, a loud, husky sound like an old-fashioned dialling tone.
‘In April 1945, as I’m sure you know, Russian troops encircled Berlin,’ Fischer continued. ‘Th
ose in command of the Russian units knew, of course, of the activities of the Kunstschutz, as did the American and British allies. In the middle of the chaos and confusion at the end of the war, the Soviets, British and Americans loaded their trucks with any stolen treasures they happened to stumble across and took them back home.’
‘You think your painting could have ended up in the US or Russia?’ Isadora sounded astonished.
Fischer nodded. ‘My father was absolutely certain it ended up in Russia, for a time. One of his sources intimated that, after passing from hand to hand, the Vermeer had ended up in Moscow, in the private residence of some extremely high-ranking communist official. You know a little about the Cold War?’
Anna avoided looking at Isadora whose Cold War experiences had cost her more than one friend, as well as almost costing her life.
‘A little,’ Isadora said drily.
‘So you know that, during the 50s and 60s communications, between east and west were not exactly welcomed on either side. It was almost impossible for anyone in the west to find out what was going on behind the so-called Iron Curtain. But my father went on patiently searching, until one day he was contacted by a Russian émigré, a man who was formerly involved in intelligence. He told my father that a disgraced official had defected from Soviet Russia in the 60s and the Vermeer he was seeking had been used as payment for his safe passage to the west.’
‘You mean, like a bribe?’ Anna was cynical enough not to be surprised that asylum could be bought in such a way.
Fischer gave her an ironic smile.
‘My father’s source told him that certain British agents routinely demanded payment in valuable artworks to help high-placed Soviet citizens make their escape.’
Isadora went very still and Anna guessed she was thinking of one particular British agent, Matthew Tallis.
‘The Russian advised my father to give up his search before he got himself into serious trouble. He said he should just accept that his family’s paintings had disappeared. “You’ve survived the unthinkable,” he told him. “You have a wife and child, a life. Millions were not so lucky.”’
‘And did your father stop?’ Anna asked.
Fischer sighed. ‘I don’t know if he would have stopped, if he hadn’t had the stroke. Though he survived into his eighties, he was never the same. Oh, his mind was undimmed to the end, but all his old optimism deserted him. It almost broke my mother’s heart that, after all his efforts, he died with the mystery still unsolved.’
‘But you continued his search,’ Isadora said softly.
‘I’ll be honest with you, to begin with it was quite half-hearted,’ Fischer said. ‘And so it wasn’t surprising that my feeble efforts always resulted in the same dead end. Until—’
‘The porter,’ Anna said.
He nodded. ‘Porters who work at auction houses often become extremely knowledgeable about the art world. Lionel Rosser was one of those porters. Someone must have told him about this unhinged character forcing his way into London auction houses and ranting about his imaginary Vermeer, and he must have asked around about me. He wrote to me saying he had some information that might interest me. We met in a café in Soho and he told me the story which I think you read on my website?’
‘About seeing a painting in my grandfather’s office and my grandfather throwing him out.’ Anna only dimly remembered her paternal grandfather. She remembered being afraid of his voice, but could not have said, as a small child, just why it had frightened her so badly.
‘It was the woodland landscape,’ Fischer said. ‘The Hans Thoma.’
Anna stared at him. ‘Oh,’ she said faintly. She realized she was digging her nails into her palms.
‘Do you see why I had to tell you the whole story?’ Fischer stood up and went over to the galley kitchen, coming back with a bottle of mineral water and three glasses.
He filled their glasses and Anna drank thirstily. She was in a daze.
‘That was my defining moment,’ Fischer admitted. ‘That was when I finally threw myself into my father’s search. Before, I’d been doing it out of a vague sense of filial responsibility. But from then on it became like – my ancestral task. My family, my people, had been robbed, cheated and lied to and I was determined to get to the bottom of it. I am still determined.’
Outside there was a thunderous crash, as if someone had hurled a metal bedstead down into the street. The cat shot awake. Ears flat, she stared about her in terror.
‘It’s just scaffolding,’ Fischer told her soothingly. He scooped her up and carried her to the sofa, where she struggled out of his arms and on to the sofa back, her eyes still wild.
‘I tried several times to get your grandfather to admit his involvement,’ he said. ‘But he made it oh-so-icily clear that he thought I was deranged. When he retired and your father took over the auction house, for a time I thought …’
Anna drew a sharp breath, ‘Dad listened to you?’
Fischer nodded. ‘At first. Then, seemingly overnight, his attitude changed. He froze me out. Just didn’t want to know.’ The memory obviously saddened him.
Anna felt a pang of dismay. Had this painful reversal come about because Ralph Scott-Neville had put money into Hempels? Had that given Dominic’s father some sinister hold over Julian?
She saw Fischer push his hands distractedly through his hair. He seemed to have lost his thread.
‘And then you met Lili Rossetti,’ Isadora prompted.
‘Yes. We met at a party, a fund-raiser for the Wennekes Institute, ironic really. Neither of us were party people. Lili had come for work reasons. I, of course, was there in my well-practised role of The Ancient Mariner, buttonholing anyone who’d stand still long enough to listen.’ He gave them a painful smile.
‘And you buttonholed Lili?’ Isadora said.
‘She’d already heard of me, though I hate to think what exactly she’d heard. But instead of giving me a wide swerve, she sought me out.’ He shook his head smiling. ‘She actually asked me about the painting and how my father had described it. She even took out a little notebook and jotted down the colours and measurements.’
‘She took you seriously?’ Anna said.
‘Lili was a good listener. There are some people who seem born to fight injustice. Lili was like that. She said my story made her angry.’
He’d admired Lili Rossetti, Anna thought. She had sensed something genuine in David Fischer, enough to make her ignore mocking comments about the Rasputin of Reading.
‘We arranged that she’d come to my shop, so I could show her the photographs I’ve just shown you. Lili went off saying she’d do her best.’ Fischer reached up to pet the cat, who was now tranquilly washing one of her front paws. ‘To be honest, I didn’t think she’d get anywhere. But it meant a lot that she was prepared to try. Yes, it meant a great deal.’
There was a world of loneliness in that sentence, Anna thought. A need to be seen, to be believed, to be accepted, however strange.
‘Did she ever find anything, do you know?’ Anna asked, her tone as neutral as she could manage.
Again, Fischer raked his hands through his hair.
‘I believe she did.’
‘You don’t know for sure?’ Isadora said.
He swallowed. ‘A couple of weeks before she was murdered, Lili sent me an email that absolutely astounded me. You know, when you have searched without success for so long and then …’
Anna found she’d stopped breathing.
‘What did she say?’ She almost whispered.
‘She said she’d seen it. She’d seen my grandfather’s Vermeer with her own eyes.’
EIGHT
‘So what can you see out of your window?’ Anna was sitting on the floor of her living room, sorting through slippery piles of old photos. She’d put Jake on speaker phone.
‘Darlin’, my room doesn’t have a window,’ he said in a tone of such patient resignation that she should have instantly smelled a rat. Was the internationa
l security firm Jake worked for really that strapped for cash?
‘However,’ he said, suddenly gleeful as a small boy, ‘I do have French doors on to a balcony! Hold up, I’ll open them. If you listen hard you might hear cow bells.’
‘You pig,’ she said, half annoyed at being so completely taken in.
In Anna’s sitting room, the original, Georgian shutters were still closed against the street. She hadn’t thought to open them that morning and it was too late to bother now. She’d switched on a lamp beside the old, rosewood chest, it doubled as a coffee table and was where she kept her family photos. That morning she had dragged them all out: the neat leather-bound albums religiously compiled by her mother and then the bulging manila envelopes containing photographs that her mother had felt unable to destroy, but had never made it into the official annals of Hopkins family life. She’d just settled down with the contents of the first envelope, when Jake had phoned from Geneva.
Jake had the best timing, Anna thought. In the days when she was routinely moving from one rented flat (dreadful dives most of them) and drifting from one town to another, she’d religiously packed, unpacked and repacked her family photos alongside all her other belongings. Yet she could never bring herself to actually look at them. After she’d returned to Oxford, she had sacrificed a few to her cupboard but that was purely to help focus her search. This was something else. This was opening herself to images and sensations that she’d buried for over sixteen years. To have Jake’s voice, his steady presence available, even on the end of a phone eased some of her dread.
‘Ok, I’m outside now,’ he said in what would have been a conspiratorial David Attenborough whisper, if David Attenborough had grown up in the American South. ‘No cowbells, but I can see the sun setting over Lake Geneva which is quite a sight. If I crane over the edge of this fancy wrought-iron railing, I can just make out a little, white motor boat moored directly below. I’m thinking I might sneak off at first light to play at being Huck Finn and damn their induction session! Hang on, someone’s at the door.’
