The Cézanne Chase

by Thomas Swan

  She wasn’t wasting any time, he thought. “I have friends at McMillan. You might find an opening there.”

  “I have worked with the finest designers in Norway and Denmark. And a very good one in London.”

  “Call me in a week,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I won’t disappoint you.” She turned her eyes to meet his. “Thank you.”

  It happened again. In that brief exchange, Llewellyn felt that she had exuded some sort of extraordinary energy. She turned and walked toward the door leading out from the auction room. He watched her, his smile still in place. He added great legs to the inventory he had made.

  At the door Llewellyn was met by a short man blessed with a marvelous voice and bright eyes that lit up a small, round face. “Who’s your friend?”

  Llewellyn showed one of Astrid’s cards. “New York’s newest interior decorator drumming up business. Interested?”

  “She’s too tall. We’d never see eye to eye.” The short man laughed. He was Harvey Duncan, director of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Paintings Department. “What did you think of the Pontoromo?”

  “Not a great deal,” Llewellyn replied. “Not worth what the Getty paid.”

  “Agreed,” Harvey said. The brightness in his eyes suddenly faded. “I’ve been waiting to give you a piece of bad news we received from our Moscow agent this morning. The media’s not in on it yet.” He moved closer to Llewellyn. “The Cézanne self-portrait in the Hermitage was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed!C Llewellyn said incredulously. “How in God’s name did that happen?”

  “Not sure.” Harvey shrugged. “We havn’t received a complete report, but we think it was sprayed with some kind of acid. Whatever it was, the painting’s a complete ruin.”

  Llewellyn stared past Harvey Duncan to the small stage, where minutes earlier a painting, to his mind of no great consequence, had sold for $35 million. “Any idea who did it?”

  Harvey shook his small, round head. “No. But I suggest you tighten up security around that collection of yours. You act as if all you had were a few old copies of the National Geographic.”

  In fact, Llewellyn had inherited a collection of paintings. The star among them was a self-portrait by Cézanne. His grandfather had bought it from Cézanne’s agent Ambroise Vollard in 1903. The others were the work of run-of-the-mill artists and together were worth a fraction of the value of the Cézanne. He had acquired other paintings, each one valuable, all by Americans except one by Marc Fortin, a Canadian.

  “No one gets past Fraser, and I’ve got triple locks everywhere,” Llewellyn said triumphantly. “And then there’s Clyde.” Fraser was a combination handy man, cook, and family retainer, and Clyde was a Norwich terrier with a marked proclivity for barking at the slightest provocation.

  Harvey replied wryly, “Yes, of course, there’s Clyde.” He looked up at Llewellyn, his eyes now showing deep concern. “We’re friends, Lew, and I don’t want anything to happen to you or your painting, but THOMAS SWAN Rembrandt’s Night Watch a few weeks ago. Fast work and a layer of lacquer saved it.”

  Harvey gave Llewellyn a firm, yet friendly pat on the shoulder. “They’re mad, some of them. And people get hurt.”

  Chapter 3

  On Tuesday the 13, shortly before noon in the National Gallery off London’s Trafalgar Square, the miniature pagers carried by security personnel emitted an irregular beeping sound that meant an emergency condition existed and commanded all guards to report immediately to their duty stations.

  In the corridor off Gallery A an attaché case had burned furiously, throwing off thick, black smoke. It had caused hysteria among the visitors, particularly the crowds in rooms where the smoke had reached. The beeping of the pagers had been joined by fire alarms sounding throughout the great old structure. Foam was needed, and a crew arrived to smother the stubborn blaze and put out a row of fans to blow away the dirty, foul-smelling air. Though nearly all of it had been reduced to black ash, the attaché case was surprisingly recognizable, its metal lock and hinges intact. Someone had scooped the remains into a plastic bag.

  The entire floor had been evacuated as a team from the security department began their investigation, and the curatorial staff made a room-by-room assessment of the damage. The smoke had been cleared within an hour, and the only apparent damage had been a burned scar on the wood flooring and a fine layer of soot that settled over several nearby pictures. The incident was put down as one of those bizarre and troubling affairs and most likely an accident caused by someone too embarrassed to explain what happened.

  By two o’clock the gallery had been reopened, and soon after, at 2:15 according to the records, a young Australian couple had informed the guard in Gallery A that something was wrong with one of the paintings, a small Cézanne self-portrait, one that the artist had painted of himself without a hat, looking dead-even at the viewer. The paint had begun to dissolve, and splotches of foam the size of large coins were spotted over the canvas. Tiny wisps of what seemed to be smoke escaped from the foam, and a sharp, sour odor surrounded the picture. The painting had been rushed to the conservator’s laboratory where it had been bathed in mineral oil and the action of the acid halted. But all efforts to save it were too late.

  There were no clues, nor had there been a warning or letter or even an irrational phone call. Bottom line: No one claimed responsibility, yet it was obvious that the smoking briefcase had been a diversion and had quite admirably served the purpose of emptying the gallery of visitors and security personnel.

  The incident had been reported in the morning tabloids, and one speculative writer with the Sunday Sport had gratuitously given the destroyed painting a value of $29 million. Another suggested an investigation into the Gallery’s security system was long overdue. The Guardian’s headline escalated the affair to the level of a national disgrace, and an editorial in the Times concluded, “... there is much to explain concerning the woefully inadequate, if not complete absence of, proper surveillance and security. We have lost a national treasure.”

  On the following morning, the director of the National Gallery, Sir Anthony Canfield, K.B.E., convened a meeting at ten o’clock. In attendance were three chief supervising security managers; the guard assigned to Gallery A; plus guards from the adjacent galleries, corridors, and all entrances to the building. A Miss Cook took verbatim notes. Also present was Elliott Heston, Commander of Operations Command Group—OCG—under which was the Arts and Antiques Squad, Metropolitan Police. The director of security, a curiously private man named Evan Tippett, was attending a conference in California. He had been reached by phone and given preliminary details of the painting’s destruction. He had asked several questions, then directed that a full report be on his desk when he returned.

  Elliott Heston focused on what he considered to be the most intriguing question: “Why a Cézanne self-portrait? Any thoughts on that?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Canfield replied, “but whoever’s up to this horrible mischief has a ways to go. Lionello Venturi’s catalogue of Cézanne’s paintings shows that he completed twenty-five self-portraits. Not the life’s work of a man lacking ego, would you say?”

  Heston ignored the question. “Any other portraits in England?”

  “There is one. Owned privately by some upstart collector south of London ... uh, man named Pinkster.” He handed a sheet of paper to Heston. “This inventory of the self-portaits is the best we’ve got, but it’s incomplete and woefully out of date because at least two of the portraits have been sold, and we don’t have a record of the new owners. And two more are on loan, and we’re not certain where either one is at this point. There’s a separate report that describes a self-portrait owned by an American named Llewellyn. It’s a bit of a mystery because the public has never really seen it. We’ve got a black-and-white photograph and not a very good one. But its provenance is flawless. Add that to the others and there are—correction—were—twenty-six in all.”


  Heston stood, shook hands around the table, then eased himself out of the meeting room. He went on to his car, walking with long, deliberate strides. He was tall and angular, with the build of a distance runner, which he had been during his school years. His hair was unruly and would likely fall across his forehead. His face, like his body, was long and narrow, and it had the inquiring look of a policeman, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses selected by his wife, who insisted they gave him a scholarly air. His driver saw him taking the steps two at a time and pulled the car forward.

  “The Abbey,” Heston said, getting in beside the driver.

  The car maneuvered around Trafalgar Square onto Whitehall, past the government buildings to Victoria Street. Heston entered Westminster Abbey by the west door where he was confronted by a half-dozen tour groups. He walked along the north aisle to the transept and stopped between the choir and the high altar. An organ played, accompanied by a brass trio. Unusual, he thought; perhaps a rehearsal for a special event. Then he turned toward the choir, where, as he suspected, seated in the first row was a man keenly involved with whatever he was writing in a notebook perched on his lap. Heston circled around a group of tourists, came up behind the man, and leaned down and said in a heavy accent, “You got a special pass to sit in there?”

  Without looking up, the man replied, “That’s an obscenely terrible accent, Elliott.”

  Heston smiled and sat next to the man, whose attention remained fixed on his notes. Heston had come to the Abbey numerous other times to find his man in the choir or, if the crowds were unusually thick, in the small and quiet Chapel of St. Faith. Heston had attended the memorial service for a popular assistant commissioner of New Scotland Yard and another time had witnessed an Easter service at the urging of his wife. Otherwise he rarely visited the great abbey and knew it mainly as a tourist attraction or as a spiritual hideaway for the Arts and Antiques Squad’s Detective Chief Inspector Jack LaConte Oxby.

  “They know me, but they might ask you to step down from the choir,” Oxby said matter-of-factly.

  “Then use your considerable influence, as I rather like the view from here. What’s the music about?”

  Oxby said, “It’s for old King Ed the Confessor. It’s his nine hundredth birthday.”

  “Has it been that long? It hardly seems it.” Heston hoped to raise a smile from his obstinately independent companion.

  Oxby turned. No denying he was a small man, though it seemed there was a largeness to him, because even as he sat, his eyes were nearly level with Heston, who stood several inches taller. When he shifted his weight or moved his arms, it was apparent that he had a coordinated and well-conditioned body. His nose was long but somehow it did not dominate his face. No, the real fascinations about Oxby were his eyes and his voice. The eyes were perfect; a blue-gray that penetrated with curiosity or warmth, humor or intense determination as the circumstance required, and his rich baritone had been trained for both singing and acting. He spoke French with the ease of a Parisian and Italian with the singsong fluency of a very proper Florentine. Oxby had also mastered the infinite ranges of accents and idiosyncratic slang of the language spoken throughout the British Isles. He could identify and mimic a solicitor from Glasgow as well as a Liverpudlian stevedore.

  Heston’s smile faded. “Something’s come up, and you’ve got a new case.”

  Oxby widened his eyes in acknowledgment and to signify he wanted to hear more.

  Heston placed a copy of The Sun on top of Oxby’s notebook and paused while Oxby stared at the screaming headline and a photograph of the portrait taken before its destruction. “I know you’re just back from the country, but don’t you ever read a newspaper?”

  “Certainly not that one,” Oxby said disdainfully, his eyes focused on the front page of the newspaper. “I’d rather you told me what happened.”

  Heston took the paper back and swacked it across his thigh. “There’s not much to tell. Whoever did it created a diversion, then sprayed the painting with some kind of exotic acid or solvent, then disappeared.” He filled in with the sparse details that he had picked up earlier.

  Oxby turned to a clean sheet in his notebook. “What’s a Cézanne self-portrait worth these days?”

  Heston laughed. “A ridiculous amount, I’m sure. I don’t buy them, you know. Depending on size, and which one, I suppose ten million ...fifteen? More?”

  “Much more,” Oxby said firmly. “And perhaps a little more now that one has been permanently removed.”

  “I thought of that. An interesting speculation.”

  “Do we know how many self-portraits there are?”

  “Canfield told me that Cézanne painted twenty-six in all. We still have one in England, owned by an Alan Pinkster who I believe you know.”

  “I’ve met him, twice perhaps. Lot of money, bit of a pain.”

  “One of the twenty-six is owned by a New Yorker. Also wealthy. It came into his family a few generations ago, and it’s still there. We don’t know much about it.”

  A man dressed in plain cleric’s clothes came up to Oxby and touched his arm. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Oxby. The choir’s coming along for their rehearsal any minute now.” The man spoke with a rich cockney accent.

  “It’s all right, Teddy. We’re moving on.” Oxby motioned for Heston to step down from the choir. “Now there’s authentic cockney,” he said with admiration. “Teddy’s fifth-generation East End.” He led Heston through the accumulating crowd.

  Heston’s driver had pulled beside a row of taxis. Oxby said, “I’ll walk. Officially, I’m still on holiday.”

  “It’s important that we talk, Jack. There’ll be hell to pay if we don’t nip this thing right off. There’s a call in from the director and—”

  “We’ll talk,” Oxby said, moving away. “You know, Elliott, I’d be mad as hell if this were happening to a Manet or a Degas.” He shook his head slowly. “Cézanne isn’t one of my favorites.” Then he brightened. “Cheerio... see you in your office.” Instantly he was absorbed by the crowds converging on the great cathedral.

  He crossed Victoria Street and continued to Broadway, covering the half mile in six minutes and arriving at New Scotland Yard ahead of Heston. He was surpised to find two of his assistants waiting, both wearing worried expressions. Detective Sergeants Ann Browley and Jimmy Murratore were young, bright, and ambitious. Ann was a bit of an anomaly, as her family was old money with strong links to London society, while Jimmy’s Italian-born parents worked long and diligently to make a living from their bakery shop in Brixton.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” Oxby guessed.

  “Very wrong,”Jimmy said. “We just got word that the self-portrait in Alan Pinkster’s collection was destroyed.”

  Oxby’s eyes narrowed. “Acid, or whatever they’re using?”

  “I’m afraid yes,” Ann replied. “Pinkster himself called, mad as a hornet and as much as saying it was our fault.”

  “And him with a security system good enough for the queen’s jewels,” Jimmy said.

  Heston arrived, frustration clearly showing. “Bloody damned press will have us responsible... see if I’m not right.” He went into his office, the others following. “When did it happen?”

  “Probably during the night,” Oxby said. “Pinkster’s collection isn’t open to the public except by special arrangement.”

  “A group from the Danish embassy was on a tour, eighteen in all,” Ann said. “They were gone from the the gallery before five, and apparently everything was in good order when they went off.”

  Heston said, “Jack, you’re on this now. Tell me what you need, but get something sorted out quickly.”

  Oxby instructed Ann to assemble a file on Pinkster and his collection. To Heston he said, “I want Nigel Jones.” Then he went to his office and collected a notebook and palm-sized tape recorder. At the precise moment he picked up his phone to order a car, it rang. A voice said, “Detective Tobias is in the lobby. Shall I send him up?”

&nbs
p; Oxby sighed heavily and said softly to himself, “Alex old friend, you promised that you’d give me fair warning.” He called Ann into his office and thrust the phone at her. “Alex Tobias is at the reception desk. Get him on the phone and tell him I’ve got to run off but say that I’ll stop to see him on my way to the garage. And Ann, see if you can have a decent car waiting for me.”

  “Alex, you scoundrel,” Oxby said, reaching the reception desk, “You promised to call ahead of time.”

  “Don’t lecture me, young Jack, I’ve been taking orders from every member of my family since we left New York, and I don’t need any more of it from you.” His scowl turned to a smile and he extended his hand.

  Alexander Tobias was on the comfortably portly side, with a thick, fluffy crop of gray hair and heavy-rimmed glasses set on a slightly bent nose. He wore a mustache, a nearly solid thatch of hair, and had a florid face that showed equal amounts of curiosity and compassion. Tobias had had a successful career and was considered a superb detective. But he had never mastered the nuances of police politics, which meant that while he had edged into the top ranks of the New York City police department at age fifty-five, he had been passed over for appointment to a deputy commissioner’s spot. At fifty-eight, and at his request, he took the rank of sergeant detective and was reassigned to the major case squad, where he investigated art forgeries and thefts. He and Oxby had first paired up on a Rembrandt stolen from a London gallery and traced to New York. The case began a professional relationship that had grown into a deep friendship.

  “We flew in from Dublin a day ahead because once our son was married there wasn’t any purpose in staying around, and Helen was anxious to visit her sister, who couldn’t come to the wedding because of some damned bone problem.”

  “So they took away all the telephones in Dublin and in the airport, and you want me to believe you couldn’t call me,” Oxby said, chiding his friend.

  “Believe what you damned want to believe. Your sergeant said you’ve got to run down to Surrey, something about another Cézanne?”