Old Scores (Chris Norgren 3)

by Aaron Elkins

  So I didn't know anything that I didn't know before.

  * * *

  By now, the noise, heat, and jostling of the mob in the alcove had started to get to me. I made my way out and back into the reception area, my mind bouncing all over the place. That painting was going to need more study, the back as well as the front, and I couldn't very well do it in that crush. Or even if I could, I didn't want to. Tomorrow I'd have it to myself, and have all the time I wanted with it.

  I'd gotten a well-deserved comeuppance in there, and I was no longer sure about being able to carry out the task I'd come for. What did I do if, as Calvin had so happily and repeatedly posited, I looked at it all day and the day after that, and then some, and still didn't know if it was genuine or not? Having seen it, however, at least I knew we weren't being flummoxed with some preposterous fraud. If it was a fake, it was a dandy.

  What I needed right then was a little peace to sort out my thoughts, but it was almost as crowded in the reception area as in the gallery. The bar along one wall was open, and by now people had had enough to drink so that the sound level was about where it is a couple of hours into a successful cocktail party. I peeked around a partition to look into the somewhat isolated bay just outside Vachey's study, with the paintings by Duchamp, Villon, et al. To my relief, only one person was in it, a woman in her sixties, who was slumped in one of two armchairs in the center, quietly sipping cognac and contemplating the Duchamp. Near her, on a butler's table, a waiter had set down and forgotten a tray with seven or eight glasses of cognac and a few empties.

  By this time I'd decided I could use another glass myself, so I helped myself to one from the tray, offering my companion a perfunctory smile when she glanced at me. I got an uncordial nod in return, but sat in the other chair anyway. If she didn't bother me, I wasn't about to bother her.

  The brandy tasted stale and heavy. All the same, I drank most of it down. My mind felt stale and heavy too. Maybe I didn't want to think; maybe I just needed a few minutes of passive contemplation on my own. The far wall of the bay was mostly made up of the glass doors that led into Vachey's antique study, now softly illuminated with indirect amber light, like an interior by Rubens. For a while I let my eyes rest on the furnishings in a mild, pointless, but somehow rewarding bout of covetousness. Then I turned toward the silvery blue Duchamp on the wall a few feet away. I could read the title on the placard: jeune fille qui chante. Singing girl.

  "You think he's so wonderful, don't you?" The woman said in French, quite loudly.

  "I beg your pardon?" I thought she might be calling to someone out in the reception area.

  "I said," she replied, staring at the painting and not at me, "you all think he's so wonderful, don't you?"

  "Uh . . . Duchamp?"

  "No, not Duchamp." She jerked her head to the left, toward Vachey's study. "The upstanding, the virtuous, René Vachey. You all stand in line to kiss his ass, don't you? The great benefactor of society. Yes? Well, I say shit to that."

  I began to see why she had the bay to herself.

  I also realized that the tray of cognac had not been accidentally left by an absent-minded waiter. It was hers alone, and until I'd arrived to horn in, she'd been making solitary progress through it.

  She turned to look at me, a blowzy woman with an awful coppery-red wig and copper-dyed eyebrows tweezed and teased into painfully thin, scanty arcs in which each separate filament of hair could be seen. Dry-eyed for the moment, her face was blotched and out-of-focus from crying, the mascara smeared, the lurid lipstick blurred and off-center. In her hair, on the left side, was a black velvet bow glittering with rhinestones, girlish and pathetic.

  "You like him?" she said.

  "Uh . . . Vachey?"

  "Not Vachey, Duchamp."

  The conversation was not improving.

  "So?" she prompted. "Tell me. You like that painting?"

  "Yes, it's fine," I said, putting down my glass and thinking about going. But to leave now would look too much as if I were fleeing (which I would be), and I didn't have the heart to be rude to this forlorn old woman. No doubt Louis would explain to me that it was me I was worried about, not her—that I was reacting to feelings of guilt generalized from the childhood suppression of aggressive impulses toward my mother, etc., etc.—and maybe he'd be right. Anyway, I supposed I could stand it a little longer.

  She gave a little snort. "He likes it fine."

  She stood up, a little rocky, and a little top-heavy too; one of those boxy, thin-legged women who put on weight above the waist, not below. Once reasonably steady, she went to the painting and stood beside it, lifting both arms, looking upward, her stretchy red lips parted in what I believe she thought was a carefree expression. When she realized she was still holding her glass, she stuck it in my hand and resumed her stance, expression and all.

  "You see?" she said out of the corner of her mouth. I didn't see.

  Slowly she lowered her arms. "This picture was made in 1929," she said with simple, slurred dignity. "I am the little girl, the model." Briefly, she struck the pose again. "You don't see it? The line of the arm? The tilt of the head? The expression of childish abandon?"

  Now, I don't know how familiar you are with the works of Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase? We are talking about the prime mover of Dadaism here, one of the original Cubo-Futurists, the man we all have to thank for Conceptual Art, and this picture was right up there: a swirl of hard-edged overlapping forms like steel plates arranged in a complex spiral. You might be able to find the line of an arm or the tilt of a head if you were willing to be open-minded about it, but an expression? Of childish abandon, no less? Not bloody likely.

  When I couldn't think of what to say, she gave a sigh of exasperation. "Naturally, monsieur, one changes with time. I am, ah, sixty-eight years of age, as it happens."

  Oddly enough, I believed her—not about the sixty-eight, but about having posed for Duchamp. "You knew him then, madame? You were a model?"

  "No, no," she said, gratified by the question. "I had an uncle who was Duchamp's chess partner for a time, and he recommended me to the artist as a sitter. Only that once. No, my life was given to music, not art. I was an opera singer. Somewhat before your time, I'm afraid. My name is—" She drew herself up. One of those hairline eyebrows rose as she peeked at me from under lowered lids. "—Gisèle Grémonde."

  "Gisèle Grémonde," I repeated wonderingly. "Why, of course. You were famous for . . . wasn't it—"

  "My Gilda—yes, that's right," she purred. "And my Violetta."

  "Of course!" I exclaimed. No, of course I'd never heard of her, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Madame Grémonde turned into a prima donna before my eyes, taking back her cognac and re-seating herself as if she were on stage, regal and straight-backed. She finished her glass, picked up another, and gestured graciously toward the tray. "Please help yourself, monsieur."

  But it didn't last. As she drank from the new glass, looking over its rim at the Duchamp, her eyes overflowed. Tears slid down her cheeks, leaving two oily tracks. Her mascara, her chins, and her body in the chair all slumped at once. She put down the glass and rubbed at her nose with a damp, wadded handkerchief that had been in her hand all along.

  "Do you want to know the truth?" she asked, snuffling back the tears. "Would you like to hear the entire, sad, miserable story?"

  I may be a pushover, but I knew I definitely didn't want to hear the entire miserable story. I put my glass on the table. "Madame, I've taken up too much of your time already. I've enjoyed—"

  "René has had that painting for over forty years, did you know that? He bought it in 1951, to please me. It hung in his Paris apartment for many years. We used to look at it from our chairs at breakfast."

  "At breakfast?" I was caught in spite of myself. "Are you— were you and Vachey—?"

  "We were not married, no. Of course, René would have left his wife at a word from me, that was common knowledge, but my operati
c schedule would not permit it, you see, and always my art came first. But we were very great friends." Her loose, crimson mouth wobbled, then firmed. "Well. That was some years ago. I bear no malice. Passion runs its course. One moves on to the new."

  She laid a heavy hand on my forearm. "But always it was to be mine, this painting, you understand? He promised it to me some day, to me. And now I learn he has conveniently forgotten. I learn ..." Her face was mottled with an angry flush. "Why should the Louvre have it? Does a freely given promise count for nothing once love is spent? Is the Louvre in such need of another picture?"

  She still had hold of me. I patted her hand clumsily. "Madame—"

  "So you see, he's not so wonderful as you think, is he? Oh, yes, and I could tell you a few other things too."

  She used my arm to push herself ponderously up. Luckily, I saw it coming, or we both might have wound up on the floor. She leaned heavily against the glass doors to Vachey's study.

  "Do you see that book, the blue one on its side, on the end of the shelf there? The fat one? Wouldn't you like to know what's in it?"

  "Actually, madame, I think I'd better—"

  "I'll tell you, monsieur. The private record of all his 'great discoveries,' nothing less. You follow me?" Her eyes had turned cunning now, and mean. "All of them. Where they really came from, what they really are. Yes, that's right." With a drunk's malevolent snigger she held up a key she'd dug out of her sequined purse. "You see what I have?"

  The key scratched clumsily at the door plate and found the slot. The tumblers turned. The door opened slightly. "Come, I'll show you. Don't be afraid."

  Rude or not, it was past time to get out of there. I put on an awkward dumb show of seeing someone I knew near the bar, excused myself, and fled.

  * * *

  The truth is that I had come within a hair of taking her up. . . . his "great discoveries" . . . where they really came from, what they really are. If Gisèle knew what she was talking about, which was hardly a sure thing, everything I needed to know might be right there in that book. All I'd had to do was walk through that door with her and find out. But that kind of unethical adventuring is out of my line. I don't believe in prying uninvited into other people's offices, however virtuous the ends, and, to be honest, I don't have the stomach for it.

  I mean, what if I got caught?

  As you can imagine, the conversation hadn't done much to ease my mind. I slipped back into the gallery to look at the Rembrandt again. The longer I looked, the fishier it got, but I attributed that to the effects of Madame Grémonde and the cognac. Still, it made me nervous, and I decided again to leave it for tomorrow when I would be both fresh and sober. For now, I wanted to see how Charpentier was doing with the Léger.

  Violon et Cruch. A relatively straightforward painting, as Légers go, about two feet by three, of a violin and a jug on a small table against a gaudy background of geometric patterns; squares, diamonds, circles, rectangles. I didn't have a clue as to whether it was real or fake, or good or bad. My impression—and that's all it was in this case; not even a guess— was that it wasn't a bad picture, presuming, of course, that you liked Légers. The colors were bright, the lines clean, the perspective attractively screwy, and the objects entertainingly distorted.

  It seemed to me, in fact, to be a rather happy, even comic, picture, but you could never tell that from the sober, expectant group standing in front of it and taking up almost the whole of the alcove in which it hung. They were, I gathered, hoping to be in on a further exchange between Vachey and Charpentier.

  The two men stood in a cleared space in front of the painting, Charpentier studying it down his nose, his head thrown back, his arms behind him, hands clasping elbows. Vachey stood beside him, radiating confidence. When I came in, I got a little smile from him.

  After a minute or two Charpentier let a long, noisy snort out through his nose, brought his arms from behind him, and reclasped them in front the same way, each hand on the opposite elbow.

  "So," he said.

  "So?" said Vachey.

  Charpentier looked at him with surprise. "You want to hear now? Here, in public?"

  "Why not? What do I have to be afraid of? I already know what it is."

  "All right. Well, you happen to be correct. I congratulate you. Without doubt, it comes from the hand of Fernand Léger."

  No one said anything, but you could feel a spark crackle through the room. In a corner I saw Froger looking as if he didn't know whether to yip for joy or to weep.

  Vachey smiled at Charpentier, so self-assured—or self-controlled—that not a glimmer showed through of the relief he must have felt. I was impressed. Nobody can be that sure of a painting.

  "Not a very good one, however," Charpentier said.

  Vachey caught his breath, as if he'd been punched in the chest, then responded hotly. "Not a—not a very good—how can you—"

  "Well, what do you expect me to say?" Charpentier out-growled him. "Do you want the truth or don't you? The composition is unsure, the handling of the oils lacks his finest sensitivity, the whole is tentative and unemphatic. It is experimental. Surely, you can see that for yourself. I should say it was done shortly after the war, when Léger was, shall we way, feeling his way toward the more explicitly figurative tradition of his later years. I'd put it at about 1918, or perhaps as late as 1920. It may—"

  "Unemphatic!" Vachey burst out. "Tentative? I can hardly believe you seriously . . . Just look at it. ... And you call yourself a—" He choked on his words.

  "You commissioned my opinion, monsieur, and you have it," Charpentier said sharply. "I don't propose to argue with you about it."

  Vachey glared bitterly at him, eyes glistening, mouth clamped shut.

  "Now look, René," Charpentier said, unbending just a little, "what we have here cannot be considered a major work by any stretch of the imagination, but as an addition to Léger's known oeuvre, it's not without interest and not without value. If that isn't good enough for you, get someone else's opinion."

  Vachey looked as if he wanted to fight it out, but apparently thought better of it.

  "Thank you, Jean-Luc," he said stiffly. "Is there anything else you can tell me?"

  "Certainly, but not now. I would need more time with it."

  Vachey nodded, stone-faced, but after another moment the smile crept back into place, a little crooked now. "Well, the reputation of Jean-Luc Charpentier remains intact. No one can accuse him of hesitating to speak his mind."

  "You have a reputation too," Charpentier shot back. "Don't forget my fee."

  Vachey joined in the mild laughter that followed this. He was about to say something more when he was stopped by a commotion. Gisèle Grémonde stood near the entrance to the alcove, listing and slovenly, her wig askew.

  "You all think he's so wonderful, don't you?" she said.

  "Now, Gisèle," Vachey said.

  "The generous René Vachey," she said, her voice swelling. "The virtuous René Vachey."

  Before she got herself fully in gear I slipped out. Once had been enough.

  I don't think I consciously meant to return to Vachey's study, but that's where I wound up; in the isolated bay that fronted it, before the glass doors. The metal bar that slid into the doorframe when the key was turned was still withdrawn. The doors were still unlocked.

  Thirty feet away from me lay the thick blue book, seductive and attainable. I peered at it through the glass, irresolute and waffling. Believe me, I was telling the truth before. Skulking uninvited into someone else's office to pry into his private affairs is not something that comes naturally to me. The right course of action, I knew all too well, was to walk away from there and confront Vachey himself about the painting. But I honestly doubted whether I'd get a straight answer. And whatever he told me, could I believe him?

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had an obligation, to myself and to SAM, and maybe even to art itself, to see if that book had anything to say about the Rembran
dt. Or so it seemed after the two cognacs and the four (five?) glasses of wine I'd had that evening.

  I shot one quick look over my shoulder, turned the handle, and walked in. Skulked in.

  * * *

  This time I didn't worry about the Aubusson. I went directly to the pair of painted eighteenth-century bookcases that stood against the wall behind Vachey's chair. The book lay on its side, next to an intricately tooled set of volumes, on the second shelf of the case on the right, within arm's reach of the chair. It was the blue looseleaf book Vachey had had open when I'd come to see him that afternoon, and as Madame Grémonde had said, it was evidently a scrapbook of some kind, with tag ends of newspaper clippings poking out at the edges of pages made curly and stiff by glue.

  Unlike the other books in the case, this was no fancy piece of bookbinder's art. The cover was plain, sturdy buckram, darkened at the corners from use. I glanced furtively over my shoulder again—I must have looked every bit as sneaky as I felt—snatched it up, and took it to a part of the room where an angle in the wall made a recess in front of a set of French windows. There I couldn't be seen from the other side of the door. I lifted the cover.

  In the middle of the first page, written in a large, careful hand, was Les peintures de René Vachey. There was another line, but the ink was old, and the two parchment-shaded lamps that were turned on in Vachey's study were more for the golden, Rubenesque ambience than for seeing by. I didn't dare turn on the overhead lights, but I did quietly open the curtained French windows to let in some light from the outdoor spotlights that illuminated the courtyard. If Vachey wasn't worried about the effects of urban air pollution on his five-hundred-year-old paneling, I didn't think I had to be either.

  I got up close to the windows to let the light fall directly on the page. An unexpected aroma wafted up from it, not of musty old paper, but of something fresh and citrusy. Collection complète, à partir du 4 novembre, 1942.

  The Paintings of René Vachey. The Complete Collection, Beginning November 4,1942. Ah, my skulking was justified; there was something here. If there was information about the Rembrandt, I reasoned, it would probably be toward the end, so I flipped quickly—