The Rembrandt Secret

by Alex Connor

  ‘So,’ Doug asked, finishing his pie and screwing up the brown paper bag, ‘are you working for Mr Hemmings today?’

  Greg paused to make the answer seem more important. ‘I’ve just collected his solicitor from the station.’

  ‘Solicitor, hey? Wonder what he’s come for. It’ll cost money, whatever it is.’

  ‘He’s up from London,’ Greg replied, eager to embellish the tale. ‘Mr Hemmings said he was coming for a meeting this afternoon. Said it was important. Lily’s made a cake.’

  ‘Cake?’ Doug repeated. ‘She never said.’

  Greg was about to move away, but couldn’t resist passing on his news. ‘Mr Hemmings has asked me to stay at the house for a bit.’

  ‘You never!’

  ‘True,’ Greg replied, nodding. ‘Asked me to come on in the evenings, when Lily goes off. I reckon he’s not feeling up to being alone anymore. You know, being in that wheel-chair most of the time must be a struggle. I suppose he wants company.’

  God, Doug thought, the old man must be pushed if he had chosen his brother-in-law for company.

  ‘What are you supposed to do?’

  Greg could see that the news had irked the usually equable Doug, and the thought pleased him. ‘Nothing much, just be around. There’s a flat over the garage where Mr Hemmings said I could stay. He wants me to be in the house until he goes to bed, but after that, my time’s my own.’ He paused, the idea hadn’t appealed to him at first, but now that he could see Doug’s unexpected discomfort, it was growing on him. ‘You should see it. Nice little bathroom, bedroom, sitting room. Really comfortable.’

  ‘He never asked me to stay at the house.’

  ‘You never worked for him!’

  ‘My wife does.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe he thinks we’ll get on better.’

  Miffed, Doug stared at Greg, his tone sly. ‘Well, I suppose it’s all right – if you don’t mind fetching and carrying for an old man.’

  ‘He’s paying me well enough not to mind.’

  Smiling stiffly, Doug nodded. ‘Like I said, being a nurse-maid might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I hope it goes well for you. You could do with some excitement in your life.’

  Turning into the garage of the Sussex house ten minutes later, Greg was surprised to see a car in the driveway. He had collected the lawyer from the station, so who was this? Parking, he stared over the hedge, but couldn’t see anyone. He lifted his suitcase out of the car boot, then climbed the steps to the room above the garage, where the stuffiness smelt warm from the heating. Greg glanced out of the window towards the house. From this vantage point he could see anyone approaching – or leaving. He liked the idea. His insomnia had plagued him most of his life and made the nights elastic. He had lost count of the hours he had spent staring out of windows into empty streets. At least, living at Samuel Hemmings’ house it would be a different view, if nothing else … He sighed, glanced over the mature garden and the long drive, then turned back his suitcase. Perhaps Doug was right. Perhaps he was just going to be a babysitter for an old man.

  After all, what was likely to happen here?

  Preoccupied, Samuel looked past his visitor into the garden. He had just seen Greg Horner arrive and was unexpectedly relieved. Perhaps it would be comforting to know that there was someone else on the premises, someone more than capable of handling themselves. Greg wasn’t a friendly kind of man: bitter enough to be mean, and big enough to make any burglar think twice.

  ‘Samuel?’

  He turned at his name, smiling an apology. ‘Sorry, I was day-dreaming. You do that a lot at my age.’

  Jonathan Henderson nodded, eager to get on with the discussion and catch the last train back to London. With luck he could be home by six-thirty, before it was really dark. Then again, if he couldn’t get his client to concentrate, the whole meeting might drag on interminably.

  ‘You’re now happy with the contents of your will?’

  ‘I think so,’ Samuel said, looking at the notes he had made. ‘How quickly can you get this drawn up and legalised?’

  ‘Within the week.’

  ‘Good,’ Samuel replied, liking the idea of his life being sorted.

  He wouldn’t care to be caught out, dying before everything was organised. He shifted in his wheelchair, wondering again why Marshall was coming to see him that night. Surely he wasn’t that worried? Or did he know something else?

  ‘I’ll just need your signature.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When the will’s drawn up, Mr Hemmings. You need to sign it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Samuel agreed. ‘Get it done as quickly as you can, will you?’

  ‘You’re not ill?’

  ‘No,’ Samuel replied, smiling. ‘Never been better.’

  24

  Irate, Tobar Manners slammed the front door of his home in Barnes and went into the drawing room. A vase of dying lilies was on the window ledge, three days’ worth of newspapers lay on the coffee table. Glancing at the answer phone, he was further irritated to find no messages. Rosella had left him, as she had said she would. Without another word. Obviously she had been preparing her departure for some time because, although she used to receive mail regularly, nothing had come to Barnes. Wherever she had gone, she had made sure her post followed her.

  The thought irritated Tobar even more than her leaving. He had never suspected Rosella of being premeditated and was stung by her indifference to him. Their marriage had lasted ten years. Surely, even for a façade, that was a sign of commitment? He went into the kitchen, looked in the fridge. There was a dying lettuce, a pint of milk and a slab of hard yellow cheese. He found some bread in the cupboard and toasted a couple of slices, then piled cheese on top, pushing the toast back under the grill. The smell was inviting, more so than the lunch at Le Gavroche, which had stuck in his craw. Or perhaps it hadn’t been the food to blame for his lack of enjoyment, but the silky, puffy smugness of Rufus Ariel …

  Moving back into the drawing room, Tobar ate his cheese on toast, letting crumbs fall on the Aubusson carpet and then discarding the empty plate on the floor by his feet. He felt a perverse pleasure at being a slob. He might even watch television with his feet on the coffee table, or order a pizza. Anything which Rosella would have abhorred. Yet there was little pleasure in undertaking actions – however satisfying – which would not be seen. What good was it annoying his wife when she wasn’t there? What use provoking a phantom? Tobar’s thoughts turned back to Rufus Ariel, and the way he had hinted, without actually saying anything specific, that there may well be two companion Rembrandt portraits possibly coming up for sale in the summer. In New York. Fuck you, Tobar had thought, watching Ariel’s manicured pink hands break into a bread roll, you know something I don’t.

  ‘Who’s selling the Rembrandts? A Japanese collector?’

  Ariel had paused, rosy-cheeked in a pale blue suit. A little like Goering, in the wrong light. ‘I don’t know. It could be a rumour.’

  ‘Who has two Rembrandts to sell?’

  Ariel had shrugged, staring lovingly at his lobster. ‘Maybe it’s only one.’

  ‘You said they were a pair.’

  ‘I said I’d heard about a pair. I don’t know, Tobar.’ He had paused, picking up a lobster claw and sliding it into his mouth. He made a sucking sound, then withdrew the decimated limb. ‘It could just be hearsay.’

  ‘So why tell me?’

  ‘You deal in Dutch art. I thought you’d be interested.’ He had paused again. ‘Especially after you were so badly treated over the last Rembrandt.’

  The sarcasm was vicious.

  ‘I was told it was really by Ferdinand Bol,’ Tobar replied, reiterating the old lie. ‘I lost a fortune.’

  ‘So did Owen Zeigler. He ran out of luck in the end, didn’t he? Shame that, when he’d been so successful for so long. And to be killed in such a brutal way … God, it makes you think.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tobar agreed. ‘It makes you think.’


  ‘I said to Leon Williams the other day, no one can be too careful. London is getting to be a violent place.’ His toffee-coloured eyebrows had risen at the thought. ‘Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘About the Rembrandts?’

  ‘About the murder?’

  ‘No,’ Tobar had said, surprised. ‘Should I be?’

  ‘Leon – and other dealers – have been talking. Wondering if there’s some kind of set-up, some game plan. You know, if the killer or killers might break into other galleries. I mean, there were two thefts last autumn, but then again, theft isn’t the same as murder. Leon mentioned Stefan van der Helde.’

  Tobar had put down his fork. ‘Who?’

  ‘You remember, last year. He was murdered in Amsterdam. The man who was forced to eat stones.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tobar said, his tone dismissive. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Leon was saying that Van der Helde and Owen Zeigler had both been tortured and then killed.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He wondered if there was a connection.’

  ‘Why should there be? People are murdered every day. It was terrible about Owen, but Leon panics. Always has, always will.’

  ‘But murder is something to panic about, isn’t it?’ Ariel had said, pausing with the other lobster claw in his hand. ‘Perhaps he has a point.’

  ‘Galleries are always getting robbed. Mind you, I wish someone would rob me. Then I could claim on the insurance.’

  ‘Not if you were dead,’ Ariel had replied, sucking his fingers and then wiping them on his napkin. ‘We thought we might form an organisation, like Neighbourhood Watch.’

  ‘Neighbourhood Watch?’ Tobar had repeated, with incredulous amusement. ‘We have a fucking Neighbourhood Watch, it’s called the Metropolitan Police. Anyway, I don’t understand why everyone’s so jumpy. There was one murder last year, in Holland, and one in London. Hardly an epidemic, is it?’

  ‘So why didn’t they take any of Zeigler’s paintings?’

  ‘Presumably because they were disturbed,’ Tobar replied, pushing away his plate and impatiently beckoning for the waiter to come over. ‘Coffee, please. Strong.’ He had then turned back to Rufus Ariel, trying to change the subject. ‘These Rembrandt portraits – is there anyone I could talk to?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Tobar. I just heard a rumour and thought I’d pass it on. Just to keep you in the picture, if you’ll forgive the pun.’

  Smug bastard, Tobar thought, remembering the conversation. Why would there be a connection between the murders, he wondered, walking back into the kitchen and musing about Owen Zeigler. He had last spoken to his old friend three weeks before he died, at a private view that Owen held for a newly acquired Gerrit Dou. And, it was suggested, a possible Carel Fabritius. Very few paintings by Fabritius had survived, and so the viewing had been well attended and the small portrait of a sleeping maid attracted much attention. Impressed, Tobar had gone up to the canvas and studied it, noticing the silvery tones, typical of the artist, and the understated realism.

  ‘So, what d’you think?’ Owen had asked, coming up behind his friend.

  Tobar had smiled warily. ‘A Fabritius? That’s pushing it a bit, isn’t it? I didn’t think there were any left to find.’

  ‘I can’t prove it, but I will,’ Owen replied. ‘It might be the start of a change of fortune for me. Not before time. Fabritius was a fine painter, better than we give him credit for.’

  Curious, Tobar had put his head on one side. ‘He died too young to make a splash.’

  ‘Who knows what he could have done if he’d lived longer? He lived nearly as long as Caravaggio.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Owen, he wasn’t in that league.’

  ‘He was an original.’

  ‘Well, maybe. After all, he was the only one trained by Rembrandt who didn’t copy his tutor.’

  ‘Rembrandt referred to him as his most gifted pupil.’

  ‘Doesn’t fetch Rembrandt’s prices though, does he?’

  Owen had paused, and for a second Tobar had thought he was going to tell him something. But the moment passed and Owen was soon preoccupied with a customer, while Tobar drank his free champagne … It had been the last time Tobar had seen Owen Zeigler alive, and now, apart from when he glanced at the picture of them fishing up in the Lake District, he would never see his friend again. He would have to make do with a photographic image, which would fade and lose colour as quickly as his memory.

  Melancholy, Tobar poured himself a glass of wine and mentally toasted the only real friend he had ever had; the one person who had made excuses for his low dealings and greedy, avaricious ways. As Owen had advanced in business through skill and charm, Tobar had wheedled and plotted his progression. Friendships with Lebanese businessmen and East End hard men had put money in his pocket, but for every rent boy reward, Tobar had wallowed a little further in the mire. And now he was alone, his wife gone, his guilt a dark puddle in the middle of his gut.

  He should never have cheated Owen Zeigler, he knew that. He should have given him the money for the Rembrandt painting, not lied about its provenance. The coup had pulled in a greedy profit for Tobar, and – using an intermediary – he had hidden his deception. No one knew that the Rembrandt was back with Tobar, that the one possession Owen Zeigler had relied on to save his business was now lounging in Tobar’s bank. Every so often he tried to convince himself that Owen Zeigler would have found a way out of his financial difficulties, but he knew he was lying to himself. Owen had needed the money – the fortune every Rembrandt painting reached. Tobar thought again of the rumour about the pair of Rembrandt portraits coming up for sale. He had to find out who was organising the sale, and where. He had to ensure that he was the broker. After all, everyone knew that Tobar Manners could get the highest prices for Dutch art. Even if he did take the biggest percentage.

  Hating the silence, Tobar put on a CD of Mendelssohn, then changed it, choosing Mahler instead. The house was hideously quiet, his thoughts loud in the stillness, his guilty conscience singing like a trapped bird.

  Lillian Kauffman got out of the taxi, paid the driver and tipped him well. Her late husband, Albert, had always told her to be generous – people rely on tips, he’d said. Looking up at the entrance, she read KAUFFMAN GALLERY on the door; in the barred window a fine painting of a Dutch interior was on display, the one Lillian had put there three weeks earlier, before she had gone off to Florida for a vacation. Although over seventy, she was as sparky as a thirty-year-old. She was slightly built, but oozed a kind of chutzpah which made people cautious about taking her on. Her hair was carefully arranged, the highlights blonde to cover the grey, and she always wore a pair of very large pearl earrings, mounted in gold. Everyone knew they were worth a fortune. Just as everyone knew Lillian never took them off, even though the weight of them had made her ear lobes droop. Lillian and the earrings were inseparable.

  ‘I don’t care if my ear lobes stretch down to my bloody kneecaps,’ she had told Owen frequently, ‘the earrings are my trademark.’

  A very shrewd woman, Lillian Kauffman had learnt the trade from her husband, and after his death twenty years earlier she had taken over the gallery and made it a third more profitable within eighteen months. Business acumen was not the only reason for her success; Lillian also had a ferocious appetite for gossip. And she remembered everything. About everybody. If there were hidden skeletons, Lillian knew why, where and how. So revered and feared was she that other dealers gave her gifts, or invited her to their country homes, hoping to curry favour with the art world’s Hedda Hopper.

  Enjoying her power, Lillian understood that the business was pretty much like any other. Her ability was not so much in her artistic appreciation, but in her skill at understanding the market. She had been one of the first to buy into Brit Art.

  ‘I hate the bloody stuff,’ she would say defiantly, ‘but it means I can make money to buy what I want.’

  And so she started buying Damien Hirst when he was jus
t beginning and showed conceptual art when the movement first emerged. Smoking handmade cigarettes in a tortoiseshell holder, Lillian would stand at her gallery door, watching the art world go by. Terrified of her power but conscious of her influence, dealers passed the time of day with Lillian, and also passed on rumours and news. Wearing Chanel suits and Hermes shoes, Lillian was an elegant rodent, exuding an aura of Bal à Versailles perfume, and wearing an expression which daunted most men.

  Standing outside her gallery, looking down the street, instinct told Lillian that much had changed in the time she had been away. Her holiday routine was always the same: she was not to be bothered. No news was to be given her, no interruption to her time of rest. By sticking to this, she found that when she returned to London it was with renewed zest and her instincts heightened. She was hungry again, curious. Almost sniffing the air on Albemarle Street, she sensed a change in atmosphere; something had happened. She glanced across the street, surprised to see that the Zeigler Gallery was closed. That was unusual, Owen Zeigler never closed. Opening the door of her own gallery, she left her bags inside and then crossed the road.

  Outside the Zeigler Gallery, she peered in at the window, surprised to see someone looking back at her.

  Unfazed, Lillian rapped on the window, and Marshall opened the door.

  ‘My God,’ she exclaimed as she walked in. ‘What happened here? And where’s your father?’

  She could sense the tension as she rummaged in her bag for a cigarette and lit up. ‘Marshall, where’s your father?’

  ‘He was murdered—’

  ‘He was what!’ Lillian snapped, as though it was a personal insult to her. ‘I’ve been away. What happened?’