A Study in Gold

by Annie Dalton

  Anna heard Tansy’s soft intake of breath. A trail of pebbles, Anna thought. Without trying, they had come back to the place where it had begun.

  She let the guide’s words flow over her as he related the same events Thomas Kirchmann had described to Anna that day in Pfeffers. She pictured towering pyres of burning canvases as the Kunstschutz disposed of artworks the Fuhrer had designated as ‘degenerate’. She saw the cattle truck arriving under cover of night outside the apartment block, where David Fischer’s father had lived as a little boy, then abruptly resurfaced to hear a horrified American woman exclaim, ‘Gunned down in this darling little street? How awful!’

  ‘As you see there is now a small fountain to honour his memory,’ the guide said. ‘If you don’t read German, the words on the plaque say only, “Michael Kirchmann, a hero of Innsbruck.”’

  ‘Well, he was definitely one of the good guys, like Schindler,’ another American woman said.

  Everyone seemed moved by what they’d heard. No wonder, Anna thought. Thomas Kirchmann’s father had died, not just to help Jews but to protect the noble cause of Art itself. Standing in this peaceful courtyard, where Michael Kirchmann’s blood had been spilled over the cobbles, Anna longed to believe in this story of selfless courage. Except, she thought, that would make David Fischer’s version a lie …

  Back at their hotel, they rested their sore feet and then took turns to shower, before going out to meet Frau Brunner.

  They set out through the silky, golden light of early evening and quickly found the beer garden. As they waited at the entrance, Anna saw a fair-haired woman walking slowly towards them, using a stick for support.

  She smiled and called out, ‘I think one of you must be Anna?’

  Anna laughed in surprise. ‘Yes! I’m not even going to ask how you could tell we were English! This is my friend Tansy. You must be Frau Brunner?’

  ‘Clara, please. Let us first find a table. Fortunately, it is early so there is still plenty of choice.’

  A waiter came to take their order.

  ‘Shall I order beer for you?’ Clara asked them. ‘And pretzels? They are so good here.’ She leaned her silver-topped cane against the table. For the first time, Anna saw that Clara’s blonde hair was thickly threaded with grey. She was probably Isadora’s age, but dressed more conservatively in a high-necked blouse, tweed jacket and skirt.

  ‘So,’ Clara said, ‘to get down to business. I understand you have questions about the restitution of stolen artworks?’ She smiled at their expressions. ‘You are surprised to find me so blunt! But that is why you are here? You did not come to Innsbruck solely for a holiday?’

  ‘We actually came for both,’ Tansy said.

  ‘But the artworks part is the main reason,’ said Anna. Their beer arrived with the promised plate of pretzels. When the waiter had left Anna asked, ‘how did you become involved with restitution?’

  ‘In my former life I was an art historian,’ Clara said. ‘These days I am what you might describe as a family archivist. Nowadays, I prefer to do this only part-time, but I like to help Heinrich with this important work when I can.’

  ‘Heinrich is Herr Muller?’ Anna said. ‘The lawyer?’

  ‘Yes and very knowledgeable in this field. But I will try my best to answer any questions you may have.’

  Anna broke off a glossy piece of pretzel. ‘I’m guessing it must be quite a complex process to reunite claimants with their stolen artworks?’

  ‘It is incredibly complex,’ Clara said. ‘Imagine, Anna, that – against all odds – you have survived the Holocaust. You have had everything stripped from you, everything that you thought you were: your profession, your home, your loved ones and finally the last little shreds of your humanity. Then, when the war is over and you try to reclaim that which is rightfully yours, you find that the Kunstschutz have sold your most precious possessions for profit or stored them away in some secret vault for future insurance. For these survivors, it is tragedy heaped on yet more tragedy.’

  Clara took a sip of her beer. ‘Even when lost paintings are successfully located, legitimate claimants find themselves having to compete with museums and galleries or super rich collectors. It’s likely that they no longer have receipts or any written proof of ownership, assuming they ever had those in the first place. A painting might have been an old heirloom handed down through the generations, originally gifted by the artist to the family. He may have eventually become one of those artists who is nowadays revered as a genius, but back then he was just some rascal with gambling debts, who offered to paint his landlord a flattering portrait in lieu of rent!’ She laughed. ‘I am exaggerating of course, but you get the idea?’

  ‘It sounds like a nightmare task,’ Tansy said.

  ‘It is.’ Clara leaned forward and the flame of their tea-light bent very slightly in its glass holder. ‘But it is a task that is right. Our work is about what is owed to these people, these survivors and their children and grandchildren.’ She regarded them with her clear blue gaze. ‘You understand that I am not referring only to money? We talk about “sentimental value” and it sounds so trivial, but what can be more important than the human heart? It is wrong that people should be profiting from such suffering. To my mind, it is the equivalent of blood diamonds.’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to make a speech. But we have to care where these paintings come from. It’s our moral responsibility.’

  Above them the mountains were gradually veiling themselves in violet shadows. Somewhere far off a dog barked, the sound carrying in the stillness.

  ‘That’s actually why I’m here.’ At that moment, Anna felt almost as if her parents were listening, as if she’d waited her whole life to speak these words in this place. ‘I have a – a particular concern that a very valuable painting, stolen during the war, may have passed through the hands of someone in my family. I’m worried that they might not have done the right thing.’ She took a sip of her beer. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded really incoherent.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘Not at all. I understand perfectly and I wish I could say this was unusual. After the war, all these wonderful paintings, drawings and engravings began to appear from out of the woodwork.’ Her forehead puckered. ‘Is that the correct expression? It was impossible for anyone to know how legitimate these sellers were. After all anyone could claim that something belonged to them or their old great-granny.’ She gave them a fleeting smile. ‘The first months after the war had ended were what you might term a free-for-all. Former Nazis, the Soviets, professional art thieves and opportunists of all political shades were all fighting for their share of the loot, before the window of opportunity slammed shut and law and order was restored. Again, I am over-simplifying, but yes, what you describe could have happened and we know that it did happen.’

  ‘I don’t care if it isn’t unusual!’ Anna was suddenly scalded with shame. ‘It’s unbearable, knowing that someone I was close to, someone I – I loved, might be involved in such a disgusting heinous thing.’ Tansy touched her hand, concerned, but Anna went on talking. ‘Hempels, that was my family’s auction house, prides itself on being ethical and responsible, yet at some point I am afraid that it might have gone rotten.’

  ‘Hempels?’ Clara’s blue gaze sharpened. ‘I never thought,’ she murmured almost to herself. ‘Are you possibly related to Julian Hopkins?’

  Anna stared at her, completely taken aback. ‘He was my father. Did you ever meet him? He came to Innsbruck in the late eighties.’

  ‘Your father came several times to Innsbruck,’ Clara said to her surprise, ‘and in between we corresponded. I was so very sorry to hear of his death.’

  Anna felt her heart racing. ‘Do you know – is it at all possible that these visits had anything to do with a stolen painting?’

  Clara nodded. ‘Julian consulted with me about several problematic paintings. Whenever he was concerned about the provenance of pieces that came into the auction house, he always called me or Heinrich.’<
br />
  Anna could have wept with gratitude. She let this welcome news sink in before she said huskily, ‘My dad was really involved in restitution – like you and Herr Muller?’

  ‘In his quiet way.’ Clara smiled and it was obvious that she remembered this diffident Englishman with affection. ‘Your father was extremely anxious that no one should find out that he was helping us. Though he never said this in so many words, I sensed he was taking particular care to conceal his activities from a business partner of some kind.’

  Tansy fidgeted with the thread of her Buddha bracelet. She was being careful not to intrude but Anna could hear her mentally yelling; ask her about the Vermeer!

  Anna’s mouth had gone dry. She quickly drank some of her beer before she asked, ‘have you ever heard of a Vermeer called A Study in Gold?’

  She saw a change in Clara’s eyes, as if an old sorrow had suddenly come close to the surface.

  ‘Ach, that painting,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The trouble it has caused, you would think the artist himself put a curse on it.’

  Tansy’s eyes went wide. ‘It actually exists?’

  Anna found she’d forgotten to breathe.

  ‘For years, your father searched to find the truth about that painting.’ Clara shook her head. ‘It haunted him, poor man.’

  Anna felt herself go still inside. She heard Chris saying, ‘Julian wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing, but he preferred to do it behind the scenes. He never wanted recognition.’ He was still looking, Anna thought. He couldn’t tell David Fischer, but my dad never stopped looking. She felt her eyes sting with tears.

  ‘But he never got anywhere,’ Clara was saying. ‘Until a few weeks before—’ she checked herself, ‘before his unfortunate death, he wrote saying that at last he had irrefutable evidence of its existence.’

  Anna quickly brushed her hand across her eyes. ‘Did he – did he say where it was?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘He didn’t know, but he told me who did.’ All at once, she looked old and very tired. ‘I suspect you know this man, actually? He is now the new owner of Hempels.’

  Anna felt as if she’d plummeted down several floors in a lift.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ she whispered.

  TWELVE

  Anna woke from a fathoms-deep sleep to the distant hum and clatter of trams, and the clangour of foreign-sounding bells calling people to morning Mass. Sunlight filtered through gaps in the shutters, creating moving patterns on the walls and the white cotton of her quilt. For a moment, she lay, stunned by the fact of having slept at all and listened to the bells, imagining the sound travelling over the medieval rooftops and through the still alpine air of Innsbruck’s Old Town. Then she remembered Candlestick Lane where Thomas Kirchmann’s father had died in a hail of bullets; Michael Kirchmann, a hero of Innsbruck. And Clara Brunner’s troubled blue gaze as she said: ‘I think you already know him. He is the owner of Hempels now.’

  Clara had left the beer garden soon afterwards, having made plans to meet a friend for supper. But even if they’d had more time to talk, Anna had been thrown into such confusion by what Clara had told her, that she couldn’t begin to frame the questions she needed to ask: why her parents went to Innsbruck, for instance, and what – if anything – they’d found out? She was grateful to Clara for inviting them over for a proper Austrian breakfast, so that they could continue their conversation.

  Anna heard Tansy’s quilt rustle. A bare arm emerged as she consulted her phone, then she sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. In the dimness of their room, her dark curls stuck up in all directions.

  ‘Are you awake?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes. Just.’

  ‘When did we agree to meet Clara for breakfast?’

  ‘Around ten, but I need coffee first.’

  ‘How long did I live with you, Anna Hopkins?’ Tansy said, shaking her head. ‘Of course you need coffee!’

  When Anna emerged from the bathroom, her friend, still in her sleep shorts and camisole, was just setting down a tray, on which two steaming cups of coffee nestled beside a plate of wafer-thin almond biscuits.

  ‘Room service,’ she said, beaming. ‘I love hotels! I think I could live in a hotel!’

  ‘You’re like Jake,’ Anna said. ‘Every time he goes somewhere new he says, “I could live here!”’ She took a grateful sip of velvety continental coffee. ‘I wish I could be like that, but it’s like there’s some invisible magnet that’s always pulling me back home.’

  ‘To Oxford?’

  ‘It’s Oxford for now, before that it was wherever I was living at the time.’

  ‘How do you feel about – you know – what Clara told us.’

  ‘Unbelievably relieved about my dad. Utterly confused about everything else.’ Anna looked at Tansy over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘I always felt there was something Herr Kirchmann wasn’t telling me, but out-and-out lying? I like to think I’d have sensed it if he was stringing me along, but my track record isn’t great as you know.’ She gave her friend a wan smile.

  Tansy went off to shower. Anna dressed in a light sweater and jeans, then took out the small envelope she’d slipped into her travel bag before she left home and drew out three photos: The one of her, Bonnie and Jake; the badly faded snap of her parents in Innsbruck; a rare picture of herself, the one with all her siblings that she’d found when she was searching through the trunk. She sat studying their four young faces. She had never felt close to Will or Dan, but Lottie had been different. Six-year old Lottie had loved her out-of-control teenage sister passionately and against all reason, so that it was impossible not to love her back. Seeing her glowing intelligent little face, Anna felt an ache that would never fade. If she’d lived, Lottie would have been a couple of years younger than Tansy now. Who would that loving, little six-year-old have grown up to be? Anna wondered, then quickly pushed the thought away.

  She felt as if she was trying to fit not just one but two, or even three, puzzles together and all the edges were obstinately refusing to match up. A half-formed thought kept nudging at the underside of her mind. Something about fathers and sons and their different legacies: Thomas Kirchmann, proud son of the hero of Innsbruck; David Fischer, who’d made his father’s quest his life’s work; her dad, Julian, who had dreaded growing cold and corrupt like Charles. Not to mention Ralph and Dominic Scott-Neville. But in this tangle of lives, one constant kept recurring: Hempels, her father’s auction house.

  A terrible suspicion had begun to dawn on Anna, too terrible to voice aloud. What if her family had been murdered because of David Fischer’s Vermeer?

  Tansy came out of the bathroom, trailing wafts of her favourite, white jasmine and mint cologne.

  ‘You OK?’

  Anna mustered her brightest smile. ‘I’m fine! Let’s go.’

  Clara’s home was just off Innstrasse, named for the river which gave Innsbruck its name. They were a few minutes early, so they walked beside the water for a time, looking up at the row of brightly-coloured houses with the mountains beyond. If Tansy noticed that Anna was unusually quiet, she was too tactful to say.

  At last they made their way through narrow lanes to Clara’s apartment in Museumgasse. As they turned into her street, they came to a bewildered standstill. A police car was parked up on the pavement in front of Clara’s building. Clara herself was coming out of the building, limping and looking pale and shaken, escorted by two Austrian police officers. A man in a leather jacket and jeans waited by the car, arms folded and emanating stony-faced authority. Anna barely had time to take this in, before Tansy yanked her back out of sight.

  ‘Don’t let them see you!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Anna hissed. ‘We should go and see if Clara needs help.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Tansy hissed back. ‘That man by the car? He was at the hotel yesterday waiting for the lift with a bunch of other people, as we were going out to lunch and later he joined our tour.’

  ‘Are you su
re?’

  ‘One hundred percent,’ Tansy said in a whisper. ‘He wasn’t dressed like that guy in Chicago P.D. yesterday though. He smiled at me. I thought he was a bit lechy.’

  Anna risked another peek and saw someone looking so much like the tough, TV cop that she would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so scared. She could hear the men talking, but their German was too fast and too colloquial for her to follow.

  ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time,’ Tansy was saying. ‘It’s a little tourist town. You’re bound to run into the same people. But now …’ She gave a shiver.

  Then, amongst the rapid stream of German, Anna heard the man in the leather jacket say shockingly and unmistakably, ‘Anna Hopkins.’ She felt the tiny hairs rise on the back of her neck.

  Tansy’s eyes went wide with shock. ‘Listen,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t want to say before, but that guy has got a really suspicious-shaped lump under his jacket, like a holster with a gun in it.’

  ‘How can you possibly tell that?’ Anna’s heart was thudding.

  Tansy gave her a look. ‘I know, OK.’

  Anna had another cautious peep. Clara was in the back of the car now, with one of the Polizei. The leather-jacketed man, who Tansy had recognised from their hotel, was in the passenger seat. The officer who was driving did a fast U-turn and an elderly woman, who had come out to walk her giant white poodle, stopped open-mouthed, as her neighbour was taken away. For an instant, Anna was equally stunned by this surreal event. Then it flooded back to her, the fear she hadn’t dared to speak aloud.

  ‘We’ve got to get out right now,’ she told Tansy.

  Tansy just nodded.

  ‘We’ll go back to grab our stuff and jump on a train.’ It was only rarely that Anna got to glimpse Tansy the gangster’s daughter, but this was one of those times.