He repulses her. She hates him, and wants more than anything to send him away, but she doesn’t. God help her, he reminds her of how she once loved him, loved the feel of his lips on her body, his tongue. How she loved his smell. And for a flash of a moment, she wants it back. All of it. Youth and love and boundless optimism.
“I’ll make us some tea.” She flees to the kitchen. Once there, she fumbles with the match and burns her finger as she lights the stove. She sticks her finger in her mouth and tries to assess the situation. She doesn’t know what’s more absurd, his claims of shame or of love. In order to feel shame, you have to believe you’ve done something wrong, and George is unable to view his actions as anything other than reasonable and evenhanded. In order to feel love, you have to experience empathy, another impossibility.
She eyes the knife drawer but pulls two cups from the shelf over the sink, trying to figure out what he’s really after. Obviously, allowing him into the Bradley under cover of darkness will give him the opportunity to take additional paintings, but that’s too clean and straightforward. Does he plan to keep all the paintings his stooges steal, including the colonnade seven? Perhaps, but again it’s too small a take for a man who thinks as big as George does. Last time, she was his entrée to her family and their wealthy friends. This time, she’s his entrée to . . . Edwin. Or more precisely, Edwin’s art and wealth.
George has his sights on the collection. That’s why he stalked her, went to the speakeasy, insinuated himself with Gertrude, and agreed to participate in the robbery. Although some may suspect, few know for certain that she’s Edwin’s heir. Needless to say, a few are all that’s necessary for George—or István or whoever the hell he is—to ferret out the truth.
He’s a master at extracting information with charm and deception. No one’s secrets are safe. But this time she isn’t his dumb mark, following him around like a lovesick puppy. She’ll entrap him while he believes he’s entrapping her. The fact that he’s embarking on this game means he knows nothing about the trust. And this gives her an advantage.
She arranges the teapot and cups on a tray and waits for the water to boil. First they’ll have a nice “spot of tea,” as George would have said when he was pretending to be a Brit, and then they’ll have a heart-to-heart.
30
George/István, 1926
He didn’t just arrive in the States, as he told Paulien. He’s been here for four months, long enough to take three courses at the Arboretum School at the Bradley, all of them taught by Ada Bradley: Plant Materials, Soil Science, Cultivated Trees and Shrubs. One in the spring and two over the summer.
He walked miles through the acres of landscaped gardens in Merion and made two site visits to Ker-Feal, the Bradley’s Chester County estate, where Mrs. Bradley has designed terraces of flowers and fruit trees and turned a quartz quarry into a botanical garden. He has no particular interest in horticulture, but he has a compelling interest in Ada Bradley, with whom he’s now on a first-name basis. Actually he calls her “sweetheart” much more frequently than he calls her Ada.
She usually calls him István but sometimes shyly reverts to “dear.” She believes he’s a Hungarian count—yes, Paulien had gotten that right—who always wanted to be a landscape architect but was forced into the family’s massive munitions business. Being a man of the earth, he hated guns and war and hated his job even more. He recently escaped from his family’s clutches. Ada also believes he’s in love with her.
Which is ludicrous. But as the soon-to-be owner of the Bradley, he can’t leave anything to chance. Which means he needs to have an angle in reserve. More than one.
Ada fell in love with him easily, and now he needs her to divorce Bradley. Stripping her of her status as Mrs. Bradley will clear the path for Paulien to inherit without any legal interference from the bereaved widow. And then once he and Paulien are married—how convenient that she proposed the idea herself—the collection will be his free and clear.
“So here’s my deal,” Paulien told him when he first went to her house. “You give me my paintings after you steal them, and I’ll make sure you get the collection. Edwin is old, and he’s not well. After he’s gone, the entire collection will belong to me. If you do what I ask, I’m willing to marry you and then I’ll move back to Europe permanently. I won’t take anything else with me. It will all be yours.”
When he posed a hypothetical and asked what she’d do if he decided to abscond with her paintings, she said, “You want more than my measly seven—you want them all—and I swear if you don’t give mine to me, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure no part of Edwin’s collection ever becomes yours.” He doesn’t believe she can or will do this, but all he needs is for her to believe that he does. Nor will she have him arrested; he controls what she wants, which is more protection than a crooked judge.
He’s optimistic Ada and Paulien will both fall in line; they’ve each taken the initial steps. But he’s less sure of Paulien. If by some long shot, things don’t work out with Paulien, he’ll dissuade Ada from divorcing, and when Edwin dies, he’ll marry her. Either way, he wins.
Obviously, Paulien is his first choice. Gertrude was reluctant to part with the details of Paulien’s situation, and it took him longer than usual to wrest the information from her. But as always when he pours on the charm, the woman succumbed and finally told him everything.
Ashton King’s art forgery scam is moving forward, but he’s surprised by how problematic it is to find artists who are willing to forge paintings. The half-dozen forgers he’s managed to hire, whom he’s using to scout for others, are also having trouble. It seems that even the most poverty-stricken artists feel a moral compunction about copying someone else’s work. Even when it’s explained that the paintings aren’t going to be sold, they still shy away. Misplaced principles make fools of so many.
So he stored his authentic artwork in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, blackmailed a man to oversee his forgers, and told his friends and colleagues that Ashton King’s father had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis and that he had to rush back to Australia. And now here he is in Merion, Pennsylvania, of all the godforsaken places.
The Bradley scam is different from his previous endeavors, and he welcomes the challenge. Especially a challenge that includes courting Paulien Mertens. Not only is she more appealing than ever, but despite her family’s tumble from grace, she’s managed to position herself quite well. Heir to the Bradley fortune. He’s got to hand it to her.
Yet Paulien’s standing is more tenuous than he would like. Her fortune is only on paper, and he’s run into more than his share of clever lawyers who would be more than happy—and able—to wrest it from her. Then there’s Paulien’s rumored affair with Henri Matisse, which makes the whole arrangement even less secure. And he’s troubled by Edwin Bradley’s notorious volatility and fickleness. Too many unknowns for his taste, but there have been virtually no initial capital expenditures and the payoff is mammoth, far more than any of his cons have accrued thus far. Hence the new love of his life, Ada Bradley.
He was the perfect student in Plant Materials last spring, his first class at the Arboretum School. He listened carefully, took detailed notes, and, most importantly, smiled and nodded sagely at everything Mrs. Bradley said. After class he approached her and asked probing questions involving the finer points of nomenclature and the intricacies of plant identification. He never skipped a class and he always arrived early. No one doubted his status as teacher’s pet.
Needless to say, there’s the age difference. But as he’d done with Katherine in the Talcott Reserves scam, he added a touch of gray to his hair and told Ada he was forty-eight, which is ten years older than he is and only five years younger than she. By the time he began Soil Science in June, she was too besotted to question his age, and now that he’s completed Cultivated Trees and Shrubs, she’s so agog over him that if he told her he was twenty-five she would believe him. She sees what she wants to see, sees just w
hat he wants her to see.
Fortunately, Ada doesn’t seem interested in sex, although if he pushed she would undoubtedly succumb. He flinches at the idea, but he’s performed more debased deeds in pursuit of his goals in the past. He just hopes it won’t come to that. Paulien, on the other hand, is a whole different ball of wax.
It’s clear she’s never fallen out of love with him. He felt it in that kiss. As much as she tried to fight, there was a give in her lips, a moment of surrendering herself to him. Paulien is caught in his gravitational pull, the way the earth is fixed in its orbit around the sun. And like any planet, she’s tethered to him, unable to go anywhere except where he leads her.
He isn’t bothered by her threats. Frankly he admires her boldness, as he admires her for intuiting his true motives. She’s been studying his methods, learning his moves, considering him a mentor of sorts, a real protégé. A worthy—or in this case, semiworthy—adversary makes the game all that much more fun. Her threat to keep the Bradley collection from him is based in her naïveté and inability to see the whole chessboard, but a few more years of studying at his feet and she might have been able to figure it out. Fortunately she’s a freshman.
Nor does he have any worries in the unlikely event that Paulien has a change of heart. Locked in the safe of his hotel is her letter describing the enclosed map of the Bradley with an X marking the location of each of the seven paintings she wants him to steal.
The Trial, 1928
When Ada took the stand, she was calm and composed and believable, much tougher than I thought she’d be. The grief-stricken widow, married for decades, her husband’s life and vast wealth stolen from her by a gold digger. A gold digger with a past. A gold digger who had killed her sugar daddy because she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the gold.
Ronald’s objection to this depiction of me was sustained, but from the way the jurors were leaning forward in their seats, hanging on to Ada’s every word, it seemed they were inclined to accept anything she said.
I can just imagine the fury in your eyes when she described me this way, Edwin. How you would have snapped at her to keep quiet.
Ada told the court that I ensnared you with brazenness and debauchery, lured you into making me your beneficiary. She explained how she begged you to fire me, to change your heir to anyone but me. Pleaded with you to see me for who I really was.
But you dismissed her entreaties, told her she didn’t understand me or my value to the Bradley. Obviously the words of an older man smitten by a clever and provocative younger woman who was feigning adoration in order to get his money. A story as old as the Bible.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Bradley,” Pratt said, “but I’m confused. If your husband was so smitten with Miss Gregsby and had already named her as his heir and successor, why would she have needed to take any other action?”
“Obviously she didn’t want to wait until he died.”
“Objection.”
The judge, for once, shook his head at Pratt. “Rephrase.”
“Do you know of any circumstance that might have caused the defendant to believe Dr. Bradley might want to change his will?” Pratt rephrased. “That he planned to disinherit Miss Gregsby?”
“His attorney told me after . . .” Ada struggled to collect herself.
“Hearsay!”
“Please proceed, Mr. Pratt,” the judge ordered. “This information is already part of the record.”
Ada sniffed. “Afterward, Jacob Gusdorff told me Edwin directed him to disinherit her and change his beneficiary to me.” She covered her face with her hands. “Just three days before she killed him!”
“Objection!”
But Ada, suddenly no longer the fragile, bereaved widow but an enraged woman scorned, didn’t care about Ronald’s objection. She pointed at me. “You murdered my Edwin to feed your own greed!”
“Objection!” Ronald roared again.
Before the judge could rule, Ada turned to the jury. “Please don’t let her get away with it.”
Ronald’s objection was sustained, but it was a hollow victory. The jury heard what Pratt and Ada wanted them to hear.
During his cross-examination, Ronald did establish that Ada had also known what time you were leaving that day and that you never obeyed the stop sign, but when she saw the thrust of the argument, she addressed the jury again. “If I were going to kill anyone, I would have killed her!” she said, and began to sob.
The judge admonished her for the outburst, but it was clear that we had lost what little advantage we might have gained from suggesting that Ada had the same opportunity I did.
31
Vivienne and George/István, 1926
Vivienne is the first to arrive at the Bradley on the day she and George have chosen for the robbery. The building is dark and shadowy, and she turns on the lights in the hallway, her office, and the main room. Then she saunters nonchalantly through the circle of rooms on the first floor, hands in the pockets of her dress. She makes another half circle and enters Room 10, which is the farthest point in the building from Edwin and Ada’s residence.
The south wall of Room 10 holds four of Henri’s paintings, including one of her favorites, Reclining Odalisque, and a door. The door is barely noticeable, painted the same warm beige as the walls, its hinges camouflaged by the metal works included in almost every ensemble. Behind it, a small anteroom and another door lead to the back garden.
She takes a pair of short evening gloves from her pocket, dons them, listens carefully, then opens the first door and steps into the anteroom. She disengages the insubstantial lock securing the second door and then steals back inside. She returns the gloves to her pocket and saunters just as nonchalantly to her office, where she puts in a normal day of work.
Now it’s up to George.
The next morning she climbs out of bed just before first light. She gets dressed, throws down a quick cup of coffee, and heads for the door, a light jacket in hand. An envelope sits on the floor in front of the mail slot. George’s handwriting. She grabs it, tears it open.
A thick note card capped by the embossed emblem of the Morris House Hotel is inside. “Sorry,” the note reads. “Will be in touch when the commotion dies down.” She clutches the coatrack to steady herself.
When she left work yesterday, she didn’t check the door to the garden, as she was afraid it might call attention to Room 10; therefore it’s possible someone found it unlocked during the day and locked it again. But no one uses that door. When she and George discussed this possibility, they agreed he would instruct the thieves to leave and try again another night; so maybe it’s just a small hitch. But why would there be a commotion? She hurries to the Bradley.
The row of police cars parked on Latches Lane answers her question. There’s no small hitch; there’s a full-blown disaster. She stares at the ten-foot wrought-iron fence surrounding the building, a stylized letter B embedded in its crown, wraps her hands around the curved iron. Once again, George has ruined everything. She presses her fingers so tightly to the bars that the squared edges cut into her flesh. She relishes the pain, grips harder. When she finally lets go, fiery red indentations cover the inside of her fingers and palms.
Vivienne takes an unsteady breath and enters the building. Three policemen guard the opening to the main gallery; they ask her questions but refuse to answer hers. Finally they allow her inside. She hears the noise of raised voices and the clank of metal from the direction of Room 10, races up the stairs, and marches into Edwin’s office.
He’s speaking with two more policemen, who look as though they must be father and son. “What’s going on?” she cries. “What happened?”
“A robbery,” Edwin replies.
“What did they take?” she demands. “What’s missing?”
“Nothing.” He begins to cough, punches his fist into his chest, coughs some more. “They couldn’t get in,” he manages through his wheezing.
“Oh.” She looks at the policemen and presses a hand to h
er heart. “Whew. Wonderful. Wonderful news. You had me scared there.”
No one says a word.
“Did something else happen?” she asks, wide eyed with innocence and concern.
“This is my assistant, Vivienne Gregsby,” Edwin explains.
“No, Miss Gregsby,” the older policeman says. “There’s nothing else. Dr. Bradley here is a very lucky man.”
“Please. Tell me what happened.”
“Someone tried to break into the museum through one of the back doors—”
“The school,” Edwin interrupts. “It’s not a museum.”
The officer frowns. “The school, then. The incident took place at approximately one thirty a.m. Looks like he used a crowbar.”
“Did you catch him?”
“No,” the officer tells her. “But he couldn’t have gone far. Seems there was some planning involved, so he might be local. Might even be known to us.”
“Why do you say that?” Edwin asks.
“It appears he knew the layout of the . . . the school,” the younger one explains. “We’re guessing this because he tried to gain entrance through a door that was as far away from your residence as possible. One, from the looks of it, that’s hardly used and had a flimsy lock. Probably would have succeeded if Dr. Bradley here hadn’t heard him. As it turned out, he never even got it unlocked.”
The door was locked. So it isn’t completely George’s screwup. It’s hers, too. “You have no idea who it could be?” she asks.
“As of now,” the older policeman says defensively. “But rest assured, we will find him—or them.” As he summarizes the remainder of the details, Vivienne puts on a great show of shock and dismay. The dismay isn’t nearly as difficult to conjure.
He’s having a scotch, his feet up on the ottoman in his suite at the Morris House Hotel, one of Philadelphia’s finest, tucked alongside Washington Square. A little early in the day for a drink perhaps, but he has to toast his success. Another step completed. A small one, but an important one nonetheless.
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