Caravaggio's Angel

by Ruth Brandon

  So why wouldn’t he tell me?

  Well, perhaps he didn’t know after all. Nevertheless, here, amid the swirling mists, was a fact: Charlie Rey had found the body. It would be nice to have another, to join it. Perhaps the press reports of Rigaut’s death might yield more, now that I was slightly better informed than when I first read them.

  Googling Antoine Rigaut produced 58,802 possible web-sites. Among the first were the official obits I’d already read, followed by a number of reports, almost identical and evidently syndicated, of his death and the events that had followed it. He had been found ‘by a friend’ (presumably Rey) at his apartment. He had died of gunshot wounds, and the gun had been found beside the body. The assumption was suicide, though no one could suggest any reason why he should have wanted to take his own life. Emotional problems were hinted at.

  I scrolled through the various sites, dipping in here and there when something sounded promising. Only a small proportion were of any interest. Many dealt with Rigaut’s brother, and some with his father. One told me about an Antoine Rigaut who had been born at a place called Douchy in the eighteenth century, another concerned a saxophonist with a band called CRIME. There were accounts of auctions at which my man had bid, of paintings he had authenticated, committees he had chaired, news conferences he had given following particularly interesting or prestigious acquisitions. I flicked through the pages, which became increasingly less relevant. And then my eye was caught by the words Russian Paintings Scandal.

  When I called the page up, it turned out to be an old magazine story, dating from 1995. Someone, or some several people – a picture dealer in Zurich, an employee of Sotheby’s, various unattached names I did not recognize – had been running a scam around acquisitions for public galleries. The dealer, it seemed, was in contact with the staffs of various galleries in the ex-Soviet Union, now impoverished and looking for ways to stay alive. From time to time this meant that important artworks suddenly and mysteriously arrived on Western markets. When something potentially interesting was about to come up, the dealer would notify one or more of his contacts and a sort of private auction would take place. Then, some months later, and for considerably more money, the art-work would arrive in some public collection. The author of the story, a journalist named Janet Colquhoun whose name I vaguely recognized from the saleroom pages, had some-how insinuated herself into the confidence of a member of this ring – perhaps the Sotheby’s man, whom she must have met in the course of her work; though on second thoughts that seemed unlikely, since surely he would have known she was a journalist? Antoine Rigaut’s name featured only tangentially: the Louvre had been one of the paintings’ eventual destinations, and he had authorized the purchase in question. Interviewed by Colquhoun, he had expressed his horror at being involved, however in-directly, in a scam that not only deprived the Russian people of its patrimony but at the same time defrauded public collections in the West.

  I stared at the screen for a while, then printed the item out. Switzerland. Rigaut, according to one of the obituaries (I scrolled back and found it) had made several lucky finds in Switzerland. The inference was obvious: he must have been far more closely caught up in the scam than this article implied. It was one of those pies everyone had a finger in, though they weren’t spelling that out, at least in the obits.

  At this point my resolve was further quickened by the arrival of a note from the top man himself: Dear Reggie, per-haps you would like to give me an update on your Caravaggio project sometime? TM.

  As usual, I found him hovering between his many windows. ‘Ah, Reggie,’ he said, sounding as always slightly surprised, as though he had half expected me to forget our appointment, or (more likely) had forgotten it himself. ‘Come in, come in. Just a bit of an update, you know. How’s it going?’

  ‘Quite well, actually,’ I said, and told him about Freddie Angelo.

  ‘How very interesting,’ he said, in that airy voice of his. ‘Quite a character, isn’t he, Freddie. I do seem to remember mentioning something about your project, but he never said a word then. Well, well. A positive shower of Caravaggios. If you find any more we’ll be overwhelmed. How about the one that was in private hands? Did you ever get anywhere with that?’

  Yes, I told him. I’d found that, too, in France, as I’d sus-pected. Been to see it again only two weeks ago.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said approvingly. ‘I can’t wait to see all this in the catalogue. The lost Caravaggio . . . We’ll have quite a popular hit on our hands if it keeps on this way. Well. Keep up the good work. We’ll have another review soon and perhaps set a definite date. What d’you think?’

  I told him terrific, and hurried back to my office. To my relief, he hadn’t asked anything about whether or not people were prepared to lend. Perhaps he assumed that in a sane world – the kind of world he inhabited – there would be no problems on that score. Or perhaps he simply wasn’t bothered. He was past the point where life is a constant low-level hurdle-race. I, on the other hand, still had to keep jumping. If I jumped high enough often enough I, too, might one day achieve a room with three tall windows. In the meantime, holding on to my job would be an excellent start.

  Back at my desk, I surveyed the course ahead. To get any further, I needed help. Specifically, inside information. TM could almost certainly have told me at least some of what I wanted to know. But asking him would have been unwise on a whole raft of levels. For one thing he wasn’t a natural gossip. He could do it, I’d seen him, but always with a slight aura of distaste, as though this wasn’t something chaps – decent chaps – should really indulge in. For another, my project, as far as he was concerned, was whole, sound and progressing steadily, and that was the way I wanted to keep it. My questions would have introduced a note – more than a note, a whole chord, a virtual orchestra – of uncertainty, not to say a certain flakiness. No. In a situation like this, Freddie Angelo was my man. Something told me that uncertainty and flakiness were no strangers to him.

  ‘Reggie!’ he exclaimed when I introduced myself, his delighted tones balm to my hypersensitive ears. ‘How clever of you to call, I was just thinking about you. I had the picture out for another little think, and one thought led to another.’

  ‘I need a bit of help,’ I said, ‘and I wondered if you had a moment.’

  ‘Absolutely. About Caravaggio? Of course, what else. Why not tell me over lunch? How about that? Do you hap-pen to be free?’

  I admitted that might just be the case, and we agreed to meet at a winebar he knew, just off Bond Street.

  He was waiting when I got there, bald head shining, red braces extensively displayed over a blue and white striped shirt, making him look like a living Union Jack, or perhaps a tricolour. He waved and said, ‘I’ve ordered us a bottle of Sancerre. Hope that’s all right. Need something to keep you going through the afternoon, that’s what I always say.’

  I reflected that half a bottle of Sancerre wouldn’t so much keep me going as shut me down entirely, but it would have been rude to say so. Besides, I like Sancerre. I ordered some fizzy water on the side, to at least dilute the effect, and some smoked salmon sandwiches to act as blot-ting paper. Freddie was having the cold beef, which he assured me was excellent here. He tried to persuade me to have some too, but I didn’t feel strong enough for anything so unequivocally meaty.

  ‘Well,’ he said, filling our glasses. ‘Fire away.’

  I fired, straight in. ‘I was wondering if you happened to know Antoine Rigaut.’

  ‘Rigaut? Yes, I knew him, poor fellow.’ He looked at me shrewdly. ‘Hadn’t seen him for a few years, but at one time we were great mates. What did you want to know, exactly? If it’s gossip you want, I’m afraid I’m not current. It must be at least five years since we met.’ In other words, if I wanted to know about recent events, Freddie Angelo was making it quite clear he was not my man.

  I at once disclaimed all interest in such things. ‘No, what I’m interested in is further back than that. Did you eve
r know anything about some scam based in Switzerland? About ten years ago. Pictures coming out of the old Soviet Union, being bought up cheaply and sold on later for much more.’

  ‘I seem to remember something of that sort,’ he agreed vaguely, without, however, specifying exactly what. ‘Was Antoine involved? Surely he must have been at the Louvre by then.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. That’s what I wanted to ask you. I came across an article about it that mentioned his name. Not as being involved, but as someone who knew about it.’

  ‘Well, naturally he knew about it. Everyone knew about it. Everyone always does, until someone breaks the eleventh commandment and the Daily Mail gets hold of the story, and then, dear oh dear, tsk tsk, who would ever have imagined such a thing could happen. It’s inevitable, isn’t it, when you think about it. Art’s hard currency – where would you put your cash, pictures or euros? Hardly even a question, is it? – and where there’s currency there’s speculation. With added uncertainty, of course. You see a fake, I see an original worth millions. Pick your expert and take your choice. Those poor Russians were experts all right. They knew they were sitting on millions, and they hadn’t been paid for months – years. What were they expected to do, starve slowly in the name of art? But they could hardly sell the stuff openly, could they? So they sold it under the counter and got peanuts and had to watch other people make the millions. Still, I expect a peanut went quite a long way in Russia then. D’you know how that particular story came to light?’ he went on, all vagueness cast aside now in the interests of a good gossip. ‘Some journalist fell out with her boyfriend.’

  ‘Janet Colquhoun?’

  ‘Janet, yes,’ he agreed, giving an approving nod. ‘A very ambitious young lady. Not so young any more now, of course,’ he added, not without relish.

  ‘Who was the boyfriend?’

  ‘Now what was his name? I did know it . . . No, it’s gone. All I can tell you is that he worked for Sotheby’s. I believe he left her for another. So she took her revenge by telling all. Consternation all round, dear oh dear. Moral,’ he concluded, ‘steer clear of journalists.’

  I felt myself blush, and hid behind my glass of wine, but he spotted it and took it for a comment on himself. ‘Take no notice of me, dear girl, I’m an old cynic. But when you’ve been in the business as long as I have . . .’

  Bringing the conversation back to the matter in hand, I asked, ‘Are you saying Rigaut may have been involved?’

  ‘Involved, involved . . . If something interesting comes up, it’s his duty to acquire it if he can, at the best price he can. That’s part of his job. Or was, poor fellow,’ he corrected himself. ‘Why are you suddenly interested in all this, anyway? As you say, it was years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I happened to be surfing, you know how it is, and I saw something about it and got curious, that’s all. And then I remembered one of the obits mentioned he made lots of lucky finds in Switzerland.’

  Freddie wasn’t to be drawn any further. ‘I believe one of his boyfriends was Swiss,’ he murmured, and beamed as the food arrived, effectively closing the subject.

  My sandwiches looked very anaemic and well bred beside Freddie’s beef. He ladled on a generous dollop of horseradish and took a capacious bite. ‘I hope,’ he said through it, ‘that Antoine’s popping off like that’s not going to put too much of a spoke in your wheel.’

  ‘Not more than was there already.’

  He looked up: like my previous revelation that I’d found three pictures, not two, this was something he hadn’t expected. ‘What d’you mean?’

  I made him promise he wouldn’t mention any of what I was about to say to Tony Malahide, then told him the puzzling story of Antoine Rigaut’s veto on lending the Louvre St Cecilia.

  ‘How very odd,’ he said, wiping his mouth and pouring himself another glass of Sancerre. Instead of taking a sip, however, he sat back and fingered his braces. Not quite twanging yet, but clearly this lunch was proving more interesting than he had anticipated. ‘Now why should he have done that?’

  ‘Refuse permission? I’ve no idea, it’s one of the things I’m trying to find out. What’s even odder is that he didn’t refuse it, at first. It was all going through as normal. But then he suddenly put his foot down.’

  Freddie shook his head wonderingly. ‘I’d plug on with them, if I were you – if they’ve changed their mind once they can change it again. Though it’s amazing how obstinate people get when they know they’re in the wrong . . . But I’m afraid all I can do is wish you the best of luck. Now Antoine’s gone I’m afraid I don’t have any strings to pull at the Louvre.’

  ‘There was just one more thing,’ I said hurriedly, before the subject of Antoine Rigaut finally closed. ‘I don’t sup-pose you know his address in Paris?’

  ‘It always used to be 14, quai des Grands Augustins. Of course, he might have moved . . . Why d’you want to know that?’

  ‘No particular reason, I just wondered. When I was at the Louvre everyone seemed determined not to tell me. He wasn’t there, and I wanted to find him, and they were being protective. I realized afterwards he must already have been dead.’

  For the rest of the lunch we discussed technical matters: optics, faking techniques, the picture he’d shown me, its prospects, various other interesting items that had at one time or another passed through his hands. At the end of the meal he insisted on paying, as I had known he would. I thanked him profusely, but he waved my thanks away. ‘My pleasure. I’m afraid I wasn’t much use to you this time, though.’

  I assured him he was wrong: he looked slightly alarmed. ‘Oh well, anything I can do, you know,’ he murmured, per-haps not quite as enthusiastic now (what was it he’d inadvertently given away?) as earlier in our meeting. ‘Any time.’

  Reeling back to the office (of course I hadn’t been able to resist a second glass of wine, nor even, to my shame and undoing, half a third) I tried to work out exactly where I stood now, and what I should do next. But my poor fuddled brain was in no state to cope unaided, so I had to wait until I was once more at my desk and could write things down. Getting out a nice clean sheet of paper, I jotted down a few notes and headings.

  Pictures

  Getty – ex-Doria – promised.

  Louvre – ex-Santa Cecilia via Berenson – refused – why?

  Jaubertie – ex-Cavalletti – dubious – refused by JJR – why?

  Freddie’s – the first? – ex-Del Monte if so – probable.

  I stared at what I’d written, but it still refused to make sense. I could have sworn that the Jaubertie picture was ‘right’. But there were only three versions of the St Cecilia, of that I was pretty sure; and of the four pictures, Juliette’s, whatever I might think, had unquestionably the most dubious provenance.

  Oh, well. Onwards.

  To do

  Check sample from La Jaubertie?

  Janet Colquhoun?

  Retry Louvre.

  Olivier re JJ.

  Here at least were four solid objectives for instant action. But I didn’t feel up to Olivier quite yet (and besides, he was writing his story and mustn’t be interrupted). And I needed to have something else under my belt if I was to make any progress with Charles Rey. So, Janet Colquhoun. It was not easy to see quite how she and her Swiss scandal fitted in with all this. But I was convinced that the two Rigaut refusals, from the Louvre and from La Jaubertie, were somehow linked; and whatever that link was, it was not straightforward. I was likelier to stumble upon it by a roundabout route, if at all. And once I’d found it, there might be some way of dealing with it.

  I found my printout of her piece, then checked to see if she had a website. Sure enough, she did. The photograph at the top looked about twenty-five – a bit of cheating there: judging by her CV, she had to be getting on for forty. The website listed her publications, and I saw they included a book on the Swiss affair: Bread, Butter and Canvas – from Russia to Sotheby’s, published in 1996. I’d better check that out before contacting her. I
rang the Gallery’s library: yes, they had it. If I liked to come down, they’d point me in its direction.

  The book, though, told me little more than the article I’d already read. There were too many breathless reconstructions of scenes in hotel rooms and heartrending, though doubtless accurate, descriptions of destitute Russian curators left high and dry by the fall of Communism. However, it included, which the article had not, the name of the dealer concerned, which it seemed was Hegelius, and also of the Sotheby’s boyfriend, one Tim Salisbury-Newall. And the interview with Antoine Rigaut was omitted, though I noticed that some of what he’d had to say now appeared as general wisdom, without attribution, and the Louvre was included in the list of collections that had acquired works by this route.

  I turned back to the website. It gave an email address: that would probably be the easiest way to get in touch. I wondered how approachable Ms Colquhoun was, and took the opportunity of a tea-break to ask my friend Alice, who had the office next to mine, if she’d ever met her.

  Alice stopped compiling a list of possible invitees to a conference she was organizing and swivelled round to face me. ‘Janet Colquhoun? The journalist?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Not actually. Doesn’t she write for the Financial Times?’

  ‘Mostly. I’ve got to ask her about something and I wondered what she was like.’

  ‘No idea,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘Just ask, what’s your problem?’

  But something told me it might not be as straightforward as that. If Freddie Angelo was right about her motivation, then this might be an episode Ms Colquhoun did not much care to recall.