by Thomas Swan
A station wagon turned into the driveway. It pulled to a stop in front of the house and out of it stepped a tall man wearing a light tan suit and peaked cap. Emily answered his ring and escorted him to the garden.
Peder Aukrust seemed taller and more handsome each time Margueritte met with him. She had judged him to be forty and was studying him more carefully than before. His face was tanned by a genuine Côte d’Azur sun and his eyes under heavy brows moved constantly, reminding her in a strange way of a mischievous little boy. His hands were as large as melons, and she feared her own hand would be crushed when she extended it in greeting. His French was workmanlike, well influenced by his guttural Scandinavian inflections.
“You have a beautiful home.”
“Thank you,” she replied warmly. “Everyone likes the view over the water, but I prefer the land and the changing colors.”
Emily brought a tray with coffee.
“Your choice of a frame is a success,” he announced, then unwrapped the package and held up the Renoir for her inspection.
Margueritte’s smile matched the one in the painting. “Let’s put it where it belongs.”
She took the painting to a room that at one time had been the dining room. Two years earlier it had been converted to a gallery. Windows were removed and skylights installed to provide a flood of natural light, and yet there was an auxiliary light beamed at each painting. Aukrust stood in the doorway, his eyes darting from painting to painting.
“Do you like it?” Margueritte asked.
Aukrust didn’t reply immediately, but moved to the center of the room where he slowly turned a full circle, studying each painting briefly. His attention was drawn to the Cézannes that were hung next to each other, his eyes fixed on the self-portrait. In a hushed voice he said, “It’s a beautiful collection, you chose wisely.”
Margueritte was pleased by the mild praise. She put the little portrait by Renoir in the space immediately to the left of the Cézannes.
“You like it then?” Aukrust said.
“Yes, very much. The new frame makes the others look very sad.
He smiled and gestured broadly. “Then you’ll come back to my shop and choose new frames for the others.”
“Only for the ones I will keep. Let the new owners choose their own frames.”
“Which ones will you keep?”
She touched the Renoir, “This is my friend and will go in my bedroom. It’s not one of his best, but I like it and that’s what matters.” A few steps took her to the pair of Pissarros, and she put her finger on a picture of a flower garden that exploded with a blaze of color. “And I will keep this one.” Then she moved in front of the Corot, a mere twenty-four square inches of pure charm, “I can’t part with this one, it has special meanings that are important only to me.” Two more steps took her to the Cézannes. “I know this old farmhouse, it’s only a ten-minute walk from my childhood home.”
She stared at the painting and her eyes misted. “It’s my favorite.” She extended her hand until her fingers gently touched the still shining paint.
The sound of a ringing phone came from another room. Emily came to the door, and a tilt of her head gave the message. Margueritte excused herself.
Aukrust went immediately to the Cézannes and ran his hand over the frame of the self-portrait. The painting, not including the heavy six-inch frame, measured nearly twenty-six by twenty inches and was quite large for a Cézanne self-portrait. He pulled it away from the wall and found that the protective heavy brown paper covering the back was torn in the lower right corner. He allowed the painting to come back to rest against the wall, then stepped in front of the Pissarros just as Margueritte came back into the room.
She said, “I neglected to tell you that theft alarm sensors have been put on some of the paintings.”
She could not see the surprise on his face. He said, with a flat voice, “I was hoping to find that you had protected them.”
“When my husband was alive we didn’t think to take any special precautions, but when I realized that Gaston could not stop someone from running off with a sterling soup spoon, I knew we needed better security. Then Frédéric Weisbord became involved, and he had alarms put on the Cézannes and the Pissarros. Freddy’s a perfectly dreadful man, what Gaston saw in him I’ll never understand.”
She came beside him. “I turned off the sound on the alarm system, but if they’re tampered with, a light goes on at several places in the house.” She looked up at him. “The lights were on.”
“I’m afraid that’s my fault... I was curious, but I didn’t see the sensors.”
“They’re in the frame, very small, and very hard to find,” she said proudly.
“But someone could cut the painting from the frame. Thieves don’t care for frames.”
“Why steal a valuable painting at all? They can’t be sold, even privately. Except for an obscenely low price to some kind of strange recluse living in Antarctica.” Then her eyes widened. “Freddy became so obsessed with protecting the paintings that he had fluorescent dye injected into each one. The insurance people are the only ones pleased by all our precautions.” Her expression turned angry. “Since my husband’s death, Freddy’s taken a fanatical interest in the safety of the paintings.”
“Is the alarm connected to the police?”
“Yes, and they’re very angry with me. We’ve turned in too many false alarms, and they’ve threatened to put us off their list if it happens again.”
“Show me the alarms. I have a customer who might be interested in the system.”
Margueritte pulled the painting away from the wall and pointed to the frame where the backing was ripped. “Here, where the wood is joined you see a circle the size of a small coin. Under that is the alarm and battery.”
“How much movement before the alarm goes off?”
“You can jar the painting or straighten it and nothing will happen, but pull it away several inches or take it off the hooks and the alarm goes off.”
He ran his finger over the circle of wood. “An alarm will stop the amateur, but nothing stops a professional.”
“I suppose that is true,” she sighed, “but I’ll only have four to worry over.”
“When will you sell the others?”
She shook her head. “Gaston’s will requires us to sell each one at auction. While that may mean a higher price, I care more about who buys them than how much money is paid. But it matters to Freddy because he gets a commission when each painting is sold. She touched the frame of Cézanne’s self-portrait. “This painting has been in a private collection for too long and should be in the Musée Granet in Aix.”
“Will Weisbord allow you to sell it to them?”
“He insists on following the terms of the will.” Her eyes widened and anger showed. “He wrote it, of course.”
“Perhaps you can loan the painting to the museum.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Freddy saw to that, too. He’d like to see every one sold, and for the highest possible price.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
Margueritte’s eyes brightened. “What can you do?”
Aukrust lifted the portrait from its hooks, then held it at arm’s length. “You can ask me to replace the torn paper, here on the back.” He turned the painting around and pointed to the paper. “I could also check the canvas for mildew or mold, then replace the hanger wires.” He grinned. “I could find several months’ work once I began looking for it.”
“Of course. Old paintings and frames always need fixing,” she mused. “I promised the director at the Granet that they can display it during their Cézanne exhibition when it opens in January. You could deliver it to them.” She laughed. “Freddy would be furious. He claims it will bring a record price.”
“For a Cézanne, it might,” Aukrust agreed.
“The Granet has raised seventy-five million francs, that’s more than enough.”
“In an auction in New York or London it wou
ld bring twice as much.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the self-portrait then toward the country scene. Her mind was racing, and she was suddenly struck by the immensity of what was before her. Neither she nor Gaston had purchased or sold a painting in nearly seven years; instead they had traded shrewdly, reducing their collection from more than thirty paintings to the eleven that were on the walls in front of her.
A new determination had come over her, and she spoke firmly. “I will speak with Freddy about the will. My family’s money paid for these paintings, and I’m not going to let a selfish old fool tell me how or when or to whom I must sell them. For the present I’ll leave everything as it is.”
She smiled. “On to more important matters. Let me pay you for the new frame.”
Chapter 12
Lancet Ventures Ltd. occupied the thirty-first floor of National Westminster Tower, the tallest building in the City of London, though no longer the highest in all of Greater London, as that distinction belonged to One Canada Square on Canary Wharf, the spectacular and speculative real estate development that had come into being in the middle of the Thames River. Lancet’s offices were furnished in an understated elegance and, by the reckoning of some, expensive beyond reason. The grandest space of all was a conference room that commanded a view of the Thames to the south and St. Paul’s Cathedral to the west. Beneath a wide spreading chandelier was a table made of teak inlaid with blond and brown grained woods, surrounded by two dozen high-backed chairs upholstered in a silk fabric designed with eagles and lions and purple-red roses. A painting by Jackson Pollock and one by Andrew Wyeth were given prominence on an interior wall and were flanked by two unremarkable paintings by contemporary British artists. One, a geometric exercise in shapes of red, was by Margaret O’Rourke and aptly titled Untitled A while the other, Number 3–1954 by Jeremiah Tobin, was a vast canvas of blue with streaks of purple and green that had been applied by a broom swept over wet paint.
Lancet Ventures was owned equally by First Bank of New York and London/Westminster Securities. The New York offices were precise duplicates of those in London and were located on the thirty-third floor of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhatten. Lancet’s business was the infusion of capital into new enterprises, and over a threeyear period Lancet had scored a few hits but too many misses; so word had come down from the executive suite to “stop the bleeding.”
The senior managing partner from New York had come to London to meet with his counterpart about the ominous signs that Lancet ’s largest deal, a once promising investment in high-priced fine art, was about to turn sour. At stake were loans of over $100 million, and also in the jaws of jeopardy were the partners’ share of profits and the the nearly $3 million deposited to their escrowed “set-aside” accounts.
Harold “Bud” Samuelson was a thin-lipped, short man with alert, searching eyes, a tan from the sun room in the New York Athletic Club, and a nervous way of talking with his hands and odd shakes of his shoulders. He was forty-two, University of Missouri and Harvard Business School, and known as a shrewd negotiator.
London’s senior managing partner was Terrance Sloane. Terry Sloane was forty-five and had reached his position through gutsy hard work and a brilliant record in international assignments. He was not old school, only reasonably well-connected socially, but had succeeded on the strength of a sharp business mind, old-fashioned common sense, and a penchant for working twenty-hour days.
Samuelson had spent his entire flight on the Concorde preparing himself to face the man who had been advanced a kingly sum to acquire a collection of great paintings but who had failed to generate the promised profits. In the process Samuelson had put himself on a sharp edge, and now his face was fixed in taut determination. His first words gave away his pent-up frustration. “The bastard’s going to give us a weary story and demand an extension. Hear what I’m saying, Terry? He’ll go for the fucking initiative and do all the demanding.”
“He might have a good argument, Bud. Remember, he’s had an incredible loss, made doubly so with the murder of his curator.”
“I’m sorry about Barnes or whatever his name was, and about the painting, too. I didn’t know he owned that kind of stuff.”
“The curator’s name was Boggs,” Terry Sloane said, “and his ‘stuff,’ as you call it, is first rate.”
“We were pretty damned stupid to get sucked into a deal where we can’t invade his personal holdings, especially when the bastard’s got God knows how much tied up in his own paintings. He’s got a pair of balls the size of the Tower Bridge, for Christ’s sake.”
“We were stupid for not knowing more about the art market.”
Samuelson was not interested in talking further about his or Terry Sloane’s stupidity. “I assume the painting was insured, and pretty well spread around.”
“Lloyd’s, probably.”
“You know damned well he’s going to demand an extension.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Terry Sloane asked.
Samuelson flipped open a folder. “Here’s six pages of all his goddamned assets—not including his painting. He’s got money. Plenty of it.”
“He’s leveraged up to his neck.”
Beverages and ice had been set out on a table beneath the large blue painting with the purple and green streaks. Samuelson poured a tall glass of soda water and returned to the table. As it was customary for the visiting senior partner to sit at the head of the table, Terry Sloane had staked out his position to Samuelson’s right, and in front of the chair to Samuelson’s left were pads, pens, and a telephone.
“He’ll be exactly ten minutes late,” Terry Sloane predicted, and added wryly, “It’s part of his charm.”
At that moment the door opened and an attractive woman came into the room. “Hello, Bud,” she said warmly. “You didn’t stop to say hello.”
Samuelson stood. “You were having a torrid affair behind closed doors.” He held up his glass to her. “I didn’t peek.”
Her reply was to close her eyes and shake her head gently. “Do you want me to sit in or listen in?”
“I’d prefer that you listen, Marybeth,” Terry Sloane said, getting to his feet and coming to her side. “Alan’s apt to be on his high horse, and he’s easier to deal with when he doesn’t have an audience.”
Marybeth Warren was a lawyer and a good one. She had been chosen as general counsel from the parent bank’s fifty-lawyer legal department. She was an American married to an Englishman and the mother of two small children. Marybeth was an all-around success yet was not in the conventional mold of highly accomplished people who also exhibit strong personality quirks. There was something awesome in that.
“I feel badly about his curator; that was terrible news. If there’s a chance, I’d like to say that to him.” She paused momentarily. “I want you to tell him that the meeting is being recorded. I know you don’t like doing that, but I do.”
The men exchanged glances, then Samuleson spoke up. “We’ll explain that he’s being recorded—that it isn’t bullshit time.”
Marybeth smiled. “You still have a delicate way with words, Bud.”
Terry Sloane’s secretary came into the room and announced that Mr. Pinkster had arrived.
It was exactly ten past six o’clock.
Alan Pinkster and Bud Samuelson first met in Japan in the mid-eighties. Pinkster was with an aggressive New York–based brokerage house that was expanding its international department. Samuelson was second in command of his bank’s Tokyo office. Terry Sloane and Pinkster knew each other through their wives; they had been schoolmates. Pinkster’s wife, after her divorce, remained a close friend of Sloane’s wife and became the source of information about Pinkster’s celebrated pursuit of wealth and possessions.
Pinkster came into the room, his high anxiety-level clearly showing, his air of confidence equal to a board chairman who had summoned his minions to announce plans to snap up his largest competitor. His usually crisp app
earance was marred by the rash on his forehead and cheeks that he had been unable to put under control. His gruff greeting was meant to convey that he was anxious for the discussions to begin and be over quickly so he could go on to more important matters. He put his thin briefcase next to the telephone, pulled the chair away from the table and sat. Samuelson and Terry Sloane remained on their feet, waiting for Pinkster’s early head of steam to subside.
“Long time no see,” Samuelson said, then added, “Sorry about Boggs. That’s awful stuff.”
Pinkster turned his head up. “I lost two good friends.”
“Boggs was a genuine tragedy. The loss of the painting was terrible, but it was a painting, and those things can be replaced.”
Pinkster stared hard at Samuelson. “Not that painting. It was irreplaceable.”
“It puts you in very good company, I’m afraid to say,” Terry Sloane said.
Pinkster ignored the comment and, looking at Samuelson, said, “How did your Cardinals do this year?”
“You really want to know? The pitching staff had an ERA of 4.68, and the team couldn’t hit shit. That’s how.”
“You Americans go on about baseball with numbers and statistics.” Terry Sloane interjected. “Is that the fun of it?”
Samuelson said, “Alan was a Yankee fan when he was in New York. Right?”
Pinkster nodded his reply, then turned his eyes to the notepad. He took the pen and wrote the date at the top of the page. “Shall we begin?”
