‘Time is often the most important factor for some of our clients,’ he said. ‘So we can set a date for a preliminary report, say a week from now. This would enable us to work out how much info we are likely to get, even if we have not been able to obtain everything you want by then. After that we can go on until we have got what you need, or until we have exhausted our possibilities. Or you can set a deadline and we can present you with as much as we can within that time.’
‘Time is not an overriding consideration for me,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t want this to go on for months, but I don’t need the information tomorrow. I would rather you took longer and were more thorough. Anyway, let’s say a month. Let’s see what you can come up with after Christmas.’
11
Julian had stimulated my ideas about the Lady in a Pelisse. I was now even more certain that there was something wrong with the painting. In some respects, it was too good to be true. It was Vermeer pared to the bone, with what we expect and nothing more, just the light, the face, the earring, the colours, dark gold and dark blue: Vermeer without ambition or difficulty. Vermeer in essence. The Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Mauritshuis has the same poignant simplicity and perfection, but it does not have the coarseness of the brush work, the weakness of the shoulders and hand.
I looked over the texts to find my point of departure. I began with Minna’s monograph of the 1950s in which she suggested 1666 as the date of execution on stylistic grounds, which had been generally accepted. She cited an entry in a 1696 sale catalogue, which offered A Lady in a Fur signed IMEER as the earliest reference. This seemed a reasonable starting point for the story. The painting had always been known by that name and indeed the fur was its distinguishing characteristic. If I had not just visited the Foundation with Julian, I might have accepted it But the signature that I had looked at the previous weekend had not been I MEER. Vermeer used different styles at different times of his life and there was no reason why a variation should be suspicious. However, since the signature I had seen had clearly been J VER MEER, the painting mentioned in 1696 could not be the Litvak Lady. And since a gold and ermine jacket figures in at least five other paintings by Vermeer, several of which are signed, the cursory catalogue description must have referred to one of them. It did not take much further enquiry to establish that the sale catalogue quoted by Minna was also used, by other scholars, as provenance for the Berlin Young Lady with a Pearl Necklace which really is signed IMEER. I noted Minna’s sloppiness and the fact that it had gone unremarked for all these years, with some astonishment, and then told myself I should not be surprised. In intellectual matters the mind works no differently from the eye in visual ones. Preconceptions mould the evidence. Trustingly we accept authority. Only when we are driven to it, do we check that reality corresponds to the label. The question was whether Minna’s error was careless or deliberate.
Then I turned to the question of scientific analysis. In all the documentation I had assembled, I had found no record of any scientific tests being carried out. This seemed to me to be almost incredible. X-ray analysis was available for authenticating paintings even in the 1920s when the Lady had first appeared on the market. Evidently the judgement of experts had been regarded as so secure that no additional endorsement was considered necessary.
However, there had been some fuss in the 1960s. The incident had occurred when an American post-doctoral student called Skaekbekker had aimed at tenure at an American university by writing an article on false Vermeers. In this group he included the Litvak Lady and the Girl Holding a Flute, along with several other works, which were now agreed to have been optimistic attributions made by earlier experts. His article had been published in a prestigious British magazine, so he had had some influential backing from somewhere. I remembered that the editor of the day, a certain Timothy Goldie, now dead, had once crossed swords with Minna. The board had removed him from the editorship sometime afterwards. Perhaps this article had appeared during his defiance of Minna’s rule. Skaekbekker’s reasoning was entirely art historical, not scientific, and his analysis of the weaknesses was not dissimilar from my own.
Minna had quickly regained the scholarly upper hand. I found an off-print of her reply to Skaekbekker’s attack. She, too, argued on grounds of technique and artistic quality, although I remarked one sentence of significance. ‘All scientific tests support a mid-seventeenth-century date for the work.’ This was very odd. It would have been normal for the author to give the details of the tests undertaken and the results obtained. Admittedly, even in the ’sixties scientific evidence was regarded with less esteem than connoisseurship. If a work was a blatant forgery and an X-ray showed it to be such, that was one thing. If the test did no more than confirm an approximate dating that an expert could make without resort to science, it still seemed that technical tests were only stating the obvious in a timeconsuming and expensive way. Today science was regarded with more respect, and even if an analysis did not say more than was already known, it would not, for that reason, be omitted. Why did Minna not make more of the tests if they were favourable to her argument, I wondered.
The question, unanswerable but useful, remained at the end of my research. Minna was so enraged with me that there was no possibility of gaining access to the Foundation’s records by the usual means of asking permission. I had placed a request to see the papers held there. So far no reply had been forthcoming and enquiries by my secretary had been met with evasion.
I had recently had a phone call with no apparent purpose from Anthony Watendlath, who had asked about how my researches into the Litvak Lady were progressing. When I had taken the opportunity to complain of the lack of co-operation from the Foundation, he had replied, ‘But what do you expect? You’ll have to make a less direct approach.’
‘I’ll need some help,’ I said. But he had not volunteered. I found his attitude distinctly manipulative.
A few days later I received an intriguing e-mail message on my computer in the university. It was headed: Subject: Litvak Vermeer, and read Go for the tests. It had come from within the university and its originator was ‘gill’. I e-mailed her in reply, asking her to phone me, and had a bewildered call from an administrator in the Admissions Office who denied any message. I said there must have been a mistake and rang off, without commenting to her that someone had gained access to her terminal. I was hoping for more from the same source.
The tests, if they existed, could only have been done by the Litvak Foundation, so the data must be held under Minna’s guard. I must somehow see what was there. So I devised an indirect method of seeing the archives and Julian came to my mind at once as an assistant. Never in all my marriage would I have asked Emily for help in my work, still less in something a little disreputable, but I saw Julian immediately as a fellow conspirator. What I had in mind was not, in fact, anything dishonest. Since I could not see the files on the Lady myself, I wanted someone whom I could trust to do so for me, and Julian, intelligent, adaptable, seemed an ideal agent.
To persuade her to help me was not a difficult task. It was done, as usual, at a meal. I had begun, in desperation, to cook, or at least to assemble food. Julian was no housewife, making no attempt to prepare meals or take over the running of my flat when she moved in. She would order cases of wine or water, by telephone, and take delivery of them. She bought flowers, nothing more. So I had to look after her, a new experience for me, after years of being looked after by Emily. I became an expert at selecting from delicatessen counters, from Marks and Spencer’s and Harrods’ Food Halls. I remember the evening I was going to proposition her about the Foundation I bought oysters and lemons outside Bibendum on my way home. We ate them with some brown bread. I grilled a rack of lamb and we had broad beans from the freezer. I found a bar of black chocolate in a cupboard to have with our coffee. This seemed to me a pretty persuasive menu.
Julian was as picky as a child, worse than Cordelia, and had to be tempted by small quantities of delicious things that s
he liked. She was, unusually for a woman, a meat-eater, loving offal and particularly tempted by things on other people’s plates. She ate the oysters with enthusiasm and, while cutting into her rack of lamb, she told me about Victor’s latest problems.
‘Rose wants a dog.’
‘Ah. Remind me, Rose is the daughter.’
‘No, that’s Josie. Rose is the granddaughter. Victor simply adores her, but he doesn’t want her to have a dog.’
‘Ah.’
‘They used to have a lovely big half-poodle cross, with a fluffy grey-white coat, called Sleepy, because it was so energetic. But something terrible happened to it and they were all so sad that he doesn’t want to go through it all again.’
‘Well, this is the next cliff-hanger. Will she persuade him. What kind of dog will it be. There’s plenty of mileage in this.’ I wanted to get through Victor quickly so that I could broach my own subject, but she was too quick for me.
‘Nicholas, confess. What do you want to tell me? You’ve just heard that Emily wants you back? You’re selling the flat? Out with it.’ She did not sound worried.
‘I haven’t any news for you, good or bad.’
‘You’re up to something. You’re completely transparent, you know.’ Just as she was completely opaque.
‘I want to ask your help.’
‘Yes? To do what?’
‘Some skulduggery.’
‘I don’t know what that means. You use such god-awful schoolboy language sometimes.’ She sounded cautious. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with Emily or the children, OK?’
‘It’s nothing to do with them. It’s to do with Minna and the painting. You’ll enjoy it.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I want you to be an art student and do some research for me.’
‘Is that all?’
Yes. Do you mind?’
‘No. I thought you were working up to a really big deal. Of course I’ll be an art student.’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’ll have to scruff myself up a bit.’
I told her about the e-mail message.
She said, ‘But there aren’t any tests.’
‘As far as we know. But it’s fairly extraordinary, when the Litvak is in the forefront of the application of all kinds of science to restoration. I thought that they hadn’t done any because there was no need, because there was no doubt. But perhaps they did some after all.’
‘And this is a message from someone on the inside. Someone who heard your lecture, or who has read about it in the papers.’
‘I suppose so. Now, what I want you to do is this.’
It is appalling how quickly one works out everything that has to be done once one embarks on dishonourable behaviour, even justifiably dishonourable behaviour. It becomes just another administrative problem that has to be solved.
A couple of days later we met at a cafe in Mayfair. As we ate lunch, I instructed her on how she would register at the Foundation in order to use the library, the cover story she would use, the material she would ask for. I knew that the library permitted students into the stacks to find their own books. I was hoping the same rule applied to the archive and documentation centre.
As we left, she bent down to pick up from the pavement a single glove.
‘A missing half again,’ she said, as she put it on the railings of a neighbouring house to call attention to it. I watched her set off. She was wearing black jeans and a white jacket, a scarf wound around her neck against the cold and mittens on her hands. She looked vulnerable and young, easily ten years less than her real age.
I went off to the Courtauld to read about van den Bergh. I had discovered a thesis on him, available on microfilm. There was no point in waiting for Julian and, although I wanted to lurk outside the Foundation’s fan-lighted front door to meet her as soon as she came out, I forced myself to sit at a desk and to make some notes for two hours before returning home by taxi. I had stretched out the afternoon, thinking that in this way I would find her home before me and as soon as I arrived I would have news of what she had discovered. She was not there. As soon as I opened the door, her absence enveloped me. I waited impatiently, watching the six o’clock news. I poured myself a drink and ate some nuts, rapidly cramming them into my mouth and crunching them vigorously.
She did not come in until nine. I realised sometime between six thirty and seven that she either had another appointment, which she had not told me about, or was deliberately teasing me. I turned to the sports channel. Watching sport is, I knew from Emily, among the most provoking activities that men can engage in and it was only this thought that lent interest to the mannikins running around their falsely green rectangle.
When at last I heard her key in the lock, I did not move my eyes from the screen although surreptitiously I lowered the sound and said, ‘How did you get on?’
She was removing her scarf and jacket in the hall. ‘It was only quite a good film.’
‘You’ve been to see a film?’
‘Yes, I went to the Minema.’
‘And the Foundation? How did you get on there?’
She came in with her arms raised as she lifted her hair to settle it over her collar. ‘What?’
‘The Foundation?’
I felt a tide of frustration rising within me. There was nothing I could do to make her tell me the truth. I had no hold on her at all.
She started to laugh. ‘Oh, dear, I can’t keep it up any longer because you’re so funny, Nick.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. Cheer up, I’ve got everything you want.’
She produced a folder. ‘I’ve got it all here for you.’
I was expecting a few pages of hand-written notes. The hideous realisation washed over me: she had stolen a file.
She went on. ‘I found a very nice assistant who showed me how the library and archives were catalogued. I pretended I was interested in the van den Bergh and I asked for the scientific data. Apparently the archives are not open. You need special letters of recommendation describing your research signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister and at least three members of the Cabinet, which have to be considered by the archivist before you are allowed access.’
‘So you saw it was hopeless and beat a graceful retreat.’ I was wondering how I could get the material back as quickly and secretly as possible before I was professionally ruined.
She was laughing now, squatting on the edge of the sofa with one leg up, her arms wrapped around it. From this yogic pose she looked out, her face animated with laughter and risk and success.
‘Not at all. Do you think I am the kind of person who gives up at a little obstacle like that? This guy wanted to show me round. He was showing off.’
I could imagine the scene. A library assistant given Julian’s attention would not want to stop at a brief account of the Foundation’s eccentric cataloguing system. He would want to prolong the help he could give, show her everything, mesmerised by the iconic face.
‘We were in the archives, when the phone rang. At first he ignored it. Then he felt obliged to answer it, so he went off down these corridors of filing cabinets, leaving me alone. I opened a drawer and saw it was arranged by artist. It wasn’t difficult to find V for Vermeer; even I know the alphabet. I took out the whole file, which wasn’t very big, like that.’ She indicated a half-inch space with her finger and thumb. ‘And I put it in my bag. Nicholas, don’t.’
I had pulled my hand down over my eyes like a blind. What, oh, what was I doing? Sexual obsession was one order of folly. Theft was quite another.
‘Don’t.’ She prised up my fingers. ‘I’m cleverer than I look, I promise.’
She was laughing at me, at what she had done.
‘Then I took out one of my own folders and a newspaper and I put them on top of the filing cabinet and moved back to exactly the position I had been in before he left me. When he came back, he showed me how the system worked. We went into another s
ection of the archives and he was pulling open the drawers and explaining that these were the materials on the different paintings in the collection. I was so disappointed, I thought that what I’d got had come from the wrong place and would be completely irrelevant. But, but… Just you wait.
‘I let him show me a whole lot more things. I was so patient and he was so boring. Then I said I would get out a book and do a little work. I sat down at a desk, you know they’re like little phone booths with mahogany wings, so you can’t look at your neighbour’s notes. I thought I might as well go through the Vermeer file since I had gone to all the trouble of nicking it. Not great on filing, those art historians. It was a real old mess, so it took me a while to realise that what I’d got was a sort of administration file, not the stuff that researchers would be given anyway. And it was stuffed full of goodies. All these charts and figures, the lot, that obviously no one was ever meant to see, even if they had all their letters of accreditation. Then I went to the photocopying room and photocopied everything and brought it back to you,’ she finished at a gallop. ‘I hope you’re pleased. It took hours.’
‘My God, Julian, you’re a natural criminal.’
‘I think I must be.’
‘And what did you do with the original file?’ I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that she had chucked in the Serpentine on the way to the cinema.
‘Oh, that. I just walked into the archives and put it back. There was no one there. But if there had been, I would have said that I had forgotten my folder. That’s why I left it there. And to mark the cabinet, because they all look the same.’
She held the folder out to me. ‘I hope you still want it after all that.’
She stretched herself out on the sofa, pointing her bare toes until they touched my thighs, raising her arms above her head, elongating her fingers until the bones cracked.
‘What I can’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why it matters so much to Minna. I thought you lot, intellectuals I mean, were dedicated to the service of abstract truth, that you had higher and more spiritual goals than the rest of us, who are lying or not quite lying or implying something isn’t really the case, all day long.’
The Art of Deception Page 8