The Appraisal

by Anna Porter

  Attila was impressed. She was looking right into his eyes (with her own most astonishing green eyes!) and he was certain she was lying. That sort of behaviour took some practice. “He was not Hungarian.”

  “Wasn’t he?”

  Attila turned his attention to Kis, who had backed away from the photographs. “Dalchev, as you may know, Mr. Kis, worked for one of your Titian buyers. A Mr. Grigoriev from St. Petersburg, via London. You may have met him with Mr. Grigoriev?”

  Kis shook his head. “I didn’t,” he said in Hungarian. “I didn’t even meet Grigoriev. I talked with his secretary, a man called Abramovitz. He said he was empowered to negotiate on behalf of his boss.”

  “Big guy, pockmarked face?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “I guess you were lucky,” Attila said, in English. “There was no reason for Grigoriev to send you Dalchev. Although I admit he doesn’t look much like any secretary I have ever met, he professes to be Grigoriev’s secretary. Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Marsh?”

  “Mr. Grigoriev?” Helena asked. “Should I know him?”

  Attila laughed appreciatively. She was good. Exceptionally good. “Indeed, you should, Ms. Marsh. You are both here about the same painting. The Titian.”

  “It is not, as it happens, a Titian,” she said.

  “It isn’t?”

  “I am, as I expect you know by now, an expert on Renaissance art. I have had serious doubts about that painting from the first, and now I have consulted a valued colleague from Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia, and his opinion is the same as mine. This painting was executed by a minor artist after Titian’s death.”

  Helena was deliberately using stilted, precise English. She wanted the policeman to categorize her as an academic and unlikely to cause the death of some hired thug. She was still puzzled about his presence at the Gerbeaud the first time she met Kis. Why would he have thought her worth following?

  “You don’t look much like your photograph,” he said.

  “And you don’t look much like a policeman,” she lied. He looked very much like a policeman, although he acted less formally and certainly less threateningly than some others she had met.

  “Now, if you don’t mind,” Kis said, “I am going to call Dr. Krestin again. We have arranged to meet today, and he has not yet arrived. He is very punctual as a rule. I have been representing him in these matters, and he needs to be kept informed.”

  “I think that would be pointless,” Attila said in Hungarian.

  Helena raised her eyebrows, not an easy task, “You were saying?” she asked.

  “I was about to explain to Mr. Kis here that János Krestin would not be turning up for his appointment today, or any other day for that matter. Mr. Krestin died sometime earlier today. We are not yet certain of the exact time but our medical examiner will be able to determine when.”

  “Jessus,” Kis said in Hungarian.

  “How?” Helena asked.

  Kis had exhibited genuine shock, though some people can even fake that. Attila would advise Tóth not to remove him from the list of suspects. As for Helena, she seemed neither shocked nor surprised, merely sombre.

  “He was murdered,” Attila said. “Garroted, if you must know. It’s an unusual way to kill a man, especially here. It’s a more popular method in countries to the east of us, wouldn’t you say, Ms. Marsh? You did, of course, meet him last week. At a restaurant on Múzeum, right?”

  “Yes,” Helena said. “Very fine food. We were trying to close our deal for the painting.”

  “I don’t understand,” Attila said.

  “Just because the painting is not a Titian does not mean that it has no value,” she said. “By the way, is the painting still there?”

  Attila thought that, for the first time, her veneer had cracked. She had sounded almost anxious.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked. “And earlier today?”

  “Out of town,” she said. “There is an old saying about those who lie down with dogs arising infested with fleas, and János Krestin knew a lot of nasty dogs. Do you have any suspects?”

  “Other than you two?” Attila asked.

  “Can you really picture me garroting anyone?” Helena asked. “I imagine it would take a great deal of strength to do that, assuming the victim is opposed to the proceedings, and I do not think that János Krestin — although I didn’t know him well — was the willing-victim type. Do you?”

  Attila thought her tone much too light for the subject.

  “Was there a sign of struggle?” she asked.

  “Well, Ms. Marsh, while I appreciate your interest in Dr. Krestin’s death, I am not obliged to give you details. You could go down to police headquarters in the thirteenth district. Big glass building. You can’t miss it. Ask for Captain Tóth. This is his case.”

  Helena nodded. “And the painting?” she asked again.

  “The painting’s still there.”

  “That should rule out me and Dr. Kis,” she said. “We are only interested in the painting and it is still on the wall in Dr. Krestin’s home. I assume you are looking into other options. Have you come across a man called Bika, for example?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He was in Vorkuta with Krestin. They may have had a disagreement.”

  “Vorkuta?” Kis asked.

  “In Siberia somewhere,” Helena said.

  “While we are considering all new information, I suggest you do not leave the country,” Attila said. “Captain Tóth will certainly wish to talk with you. Where, exactly, are you staying this time?”

  “The Gresham,” Helena said. “And if you are not a member of the police force, under what authority are you following me?”

  Attila ignored her question. “That goes for you, too, Kis. Do not leave the country till our inquiries are done. Understood?”

  Kis found the strength to nod.

  After the ex-policeman left the gallery, Helena turned to Kis.

  “You still have authorization to sell Krestin’s painting, don’t you?”

  Kis nodded.

  “In writing?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case, Mr. Kis, let us conclude this deal, no matter the unfortunate circumstances. I will take care of transporting the painting to my client.”

  ***

  Once he was outside the gallery, Attila phoned Tóth and reported that he had found Helena Marsh. As far as the original job was concerned, he could no longer encourage her to leave the country as she might be wanted for questioning. That, he told Tóth, meant that his task was over. He could requisition his cheque, and he would go home and tend to his family. Right?

  Tóth’s response was remarkably calm. “I assume you know where she is.”

  “She is staying at the Gresham,” Attila said. “The art business must be thriving. I couldn’t afford a coffee in that place, at least not on what you are paying me.” He was still hurting over the cost of the girls’ ice creams.

  Tóth asked whether Attila would like to stay on the case. Same daily fee as before. It was summer, the Budapest police force was short-handed, and this was going to make the papers, given who Krestin was.

  “I thought the party had the news media under control,” Attila said. “The czar sends word and they all buckle, isn’t that how it usually is?”

  “Usually, but not now. Krestin was known to the offshore media, and if the locals don’t cover it, they will be asking why. The minister of communications came down from the castle this morning to tell us the news would be released. He also said the PM expects there to be an arrest within the week.”

  “Do you have any leads?” Attila asked.

  “Not yet, but forensics is on it. At the least, we’ll discover when he was topped. We’ve got four detectives questioning everyone he knew — or everyone we k
now he knew. You could handle the others.”

  “The others?”

  “This painting he was selling. How many bidders were there, and were any of them unhappy with his choice of buyer?”

  “From what I recall of your concern at the start, you were in favour of the Ukrainians.”

  Tóth was quiet for a few moments, then he asked, “Do you think so?”

  “You were adamant that they wanted this woman out of the country. That was the main reason you hired me. Remember?”

  Another short silence.

  “Was it?” Tóth asked. “By the way, did you manage to establish where that woman was when the Bulgarian was killed?”

  “She says she didn’t even see Dalchev, never mind kill him. But you need to know where she went and why she left the hotel that afternoon, if she was not planning to leave the city. Why bother changing hotels?”

  “Go and talk to her, Fehér. This damned place is a zoo today. I will call you when we know more.”

  “I visited the Ukrainian Embassy. I thought you would want to be informed, given your fondness for Ukrainians.”

  “Why?” Tóth asked.

  “I’ve no idea why you are fond of Ukrainians, but it may have something to do with forints. Or hryvnia, if their currency has survived another day.”

  “I asked why you went there.” Tóth’s voice had resumed its customary cadence of barely controlled fury.

  “Because one of their nationals landed here around the same time as Helena Marsh. He was gone for a day, then he returned — on his own plane, of course — and he may have been here overnight. The embassy was less than cooperative, but I did manage to extract from the voluptuous Mrs. Klitchko that Vladimir Azarov is an art collector.”

  “Good for him,” Tóth said. “As far as I know, there is no law against collecting art. Did you say voluptuous?”

  “Exceedingly.”

  Attila glanced through the gallery window. Helena and Kis were still standing where he had left them. They were both looking out the window but neither seemed to be paying him any attention.

  CHAPTER 23

  Géza Márton was not particularly surprised to hear that János Krestin had been killed. There were dozens of people who would gladly have murdered the man and felt no remorse, he thought. The news made him feel light on his feet, as if he had been carrying Krestin on his back since 1945. Just knowing that Krestin was thriving had deprived him of sleep. Tonight would be his first peaceful night since before Vorkuta, and he told his wife, Klara, that he was going to bed early to make the most of it.

  “I suppose Nagy couldn’t have done it?” he had asked Helena when she called with the good news. “You said he is frail, didn’t you? But that son of a bitch broke his fingers. He must have wanted to get even, didn’t he?”

  “He is no longer interested in getting even. And even if he still longs for revenge, he is too old to exact it. And I am pretty sure it was not Krestin who broke his fingers, but a man called Bika.”

  “Bika. He had the other prisoners beat me. But it was Krestin who ordered Bika to break Gábor’s fingers.” Géza took a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about him. Nagy told you Krestin used to be in state security, didn’t he? In the ÁVO? Those guys were as bad as the Nazis. They may have killed fewer people, but I think they enjoyed it more. I told you that Krestin had my father jailed, had him condemned to death. For no reason at all. He accused my father of shooting ÁVO men during the ’56 Revolution.”

  “Perhaps he had your father jailed because of your relationship with Gertrude?”

  Géza was quiet for a while, then he said, “I really doubt that. I don’t think Gertrude met him till after my father’s trial. Late ’57. I was long gone by then.”

  “Did you talk with Gertrude after you left?”

  “Back in ’57? She would have been in trouble if she heard from me. Even if she didn’t reply, she would still have paid a price. My letters would have been opened, and if I’d still been trying to persuade her to come west, she would have been under suspicion. I was sure her phone was tapped. You must understand, it was a police state. People simply disappeared if the state chose to have them vanish. No formal charges, no trials, just whoosh.” He took some shallow breaths before he resumed. “I sent her a postcard from Salzburg with a picture of some baroque towers. They were a great tourist attraction even then, but they’re much prettier now. Klara and I visited Austria a couple of years ago. Back then, I was in the refugee camp outside town, so I never saw any baroque towers. The Austrians were kind enough, but they didn’t want us contaminating their town. Mozart’s birthplace, did you know?”

  “There was something she said that made me think Krestin was jealous of you.”

  There was another long silence before Géza said, “She could have come with me when I left. I asked her to come. She chose not to. But, like I said, he didn’t even know her then. Once I found out she’d married him, I never gave her another thought. Of all the people she could have chosen . . . How did he die?”

  “He was garroted,” Helena said. “That would take a great deal more strength than Mr. Nagy has. Even you would find it difficult.” She didn’t believe him when he said he hadn’t given Gertrude another thought. Or that they’d never seen each other again. He had visited Budapest in 1977. He had been to Slovakia. Jenci had said he had met Géza more than once, although he didn’t want his mother to know.

  “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  Helena laughed. “I am reasonably good, but not that fond of killing, and I had no reason to want him dead. And he denied he was in Vorkuta. How can you be sure he was the man you sold the painting to . . .”

  “I didn’t sell it, not in the usual sense,” Géza said. “Any one of us would have sold our souls for a crust of bread. A few of us did sell our souls. And what did a painting matter to me when I was dying of hunger? You have to believe me that he was in Vorkuta.”

  “You said he was in the state security police after Vorkuta. That he forced you to sell.”

  “Did I? Have you any idea how humiliating it is to talk about being an inmate in a camp? Can you imagine the cold, the lice, the misery, and, above all, the hunger? None of us can bear to think about what we became in those years. How utterly devoid of pride, humanity . . .”

  “All along, didn’t you wonder whether you had the right man? How could you be sure? Even after I sent you the photograph. Did he look anything like the person you remembered?”

  “People change,” Géza said. “I have changed a lot since then. The picture you sent me of Gábor Nagy doesn’t look much like the Nagy I spent four years of my life with either. Back then, I knew every pore on his body, every rag he wore, every bit of potato peel he ate. I cleaned up his shit when he got dysentery. I slept next to him in the barracks. In the winter, we held each other to keep warm. But now, I wouldn’t know him if we passed each other on the street. He was never a big guy, but he was strong, not the ancient troll in your photograph. I saw him only once after we came home, in ’55 or ’56, before the Revolution. He was still the same then. But I never met Krestin again after I came back from the Gulag. Did you ask Gertrude about him and Vorkuta?”

  “I did. He never talked to her about being there or in any other Soviet labour camp. Why have you never asked her? Haven’t you ever wondered?”

  “No. I had no reason to wonder. I knew he was a guard. What did she say about the Titian?” he asked.

  “She remembered seeing the painting in their apartment and then their house. He kept it in the library, she said, but I doubt there was ever enough wall space in that library. She thought it was an odd picture for him to have at all, since he wasn’t religious. He had a Communist’s disdain for religion.”

  “We’ve been over all that,” he said impatiently. “I hope you are satisfied with its provenance, and why I would like you to buy it for me. You
have read the documents. You know my family has owned it for more than a hundred years. The money will be transferred to your German account. You can draw on it when the deal is done. Now, you must come to Toronto. We have a lot to talk about, and there are some things best discussed in person. The telephone is not suitable for all subjects. How soon can you get here?”

  “About the painting,” she said, “I think I may be able to bring it out of the country when the police are done investigating Krestin’s murder. I told you it has been de-attributed, so the state cannot now claim it is a national treasure. The paperwork shouldn’t take longer than a week. I may need a second payment to draw on, but I doubt it will be more than a few thousand to grease palms. The minister or his deputy will try to shake us down, but he will be reasonable now that we are no longer talking about a Titian.”

  She told him she would come for only a day, while the painting was being examined by local authenticators and while the police tried to determine who had killed Krestin. She also told him that she doubted anyone would be charged because whoever was behind the murder was likely to be a foreign national, and the locals were more inclined to go for a friendly shakedown than the bother of an extradition, years of delays, and perhaps a long trial.

  CHAPTER 24

  Since it had been such a productive day, Helena decided to dine in the Gresham Restaurant. She asked for the table in the far corner with a clear view of the entrance, sat with her back to the wall, and ordered a champagne cocktail. The value of the painting had declined substantially with the acceptance of its certification as an imitative work by a talented follower. The bureaucratic wrangling had been reduced, and she no longer had to devise a way to take it out of the country hidden in the roof of a car or, worse, pinned under an antique table cleared for export. She would never have folded it or rolled it into a tube, as so many art-robbers did. She loved Titian, and she was delighted that a painting long believed lost had surfaced. She felt no guilt about Matamoros and none about her role in denigrating a masterpiece. It happened all the time — in both directions. Appraisers had lost their reputations on declaring that a painting was a genuine Old Master, then classifying it as a “school of,” then returning it to its former standing. Géza Márton had told her that he would leave it in his will to the Art Gallery of Ontario, at once an act of generosity and a lucrative tax dodge.