Old Scores (Chris Norgren 3)

by Aaron Elkins

  "Aargh," I said.

  Calvin shrugged. "Told you."

  With a sigh I leaned back against the sofa, took another draught of the coffee, and continued.

  According to Mr. Mann, Mr. Vachey was at that time the owner of the Galerie Royale, located in Paris's Place des Vosges. As such, he bought up Jewish art collections at forced, greatly depressed prices, then sold them to Nazi buyers for removal to Germany at substantial profits to himself.

  I lowered the paper. A slow shudder slithered down between my shoulder blades. René Vachey a Nazi collaborator, and a particularly vile one at that? I could hardly make myself think about it. A rogue, sure; a con man, no doubt about it; a humbug, well, yes, a little of that too—but a beast who would fatten on the horrible plight of the Jews under the Nazis? With all my heart I hoped it wasn't so. I turned back to the article.

  Mr. Mann claims that the alleged Rembrandt painting now in the possession of the Seattle Art Museum was purchased in this way from his father in 1942 for a price of 20,000 Occupation francs, less than one-hundreth of its actual value. This is in sharp contrast to Mr. Vachey's assertion that he purchased the painting at a Paris antique shop in 1992.

  "It was the same thing as stealing it," Mr. Mann told our reporter bitterly. "Like Jewish families throughout France, we were desperate and persecuted, our rights gone, our possessions stripped. What choice did we have? If we had not 'sold' the painting to Mr. Vachey, the Nazis would have taken it at will. It broke my father's heart to part with it. My father was not a rich man, not a collector. He was, like me, a government employee. The picture was the only thing of value we owned. It had been left to him in 1936 by an aunt in the Netherlands. It hung in our living room. I grew up with it."

  The painting, according to Mr. Mann, who was a child of seven at the time, is a portrait of an old soldier known to be by the seventeenth-century minor painter Govert Flinck. When asked how it was that Mr. Vachey and the Seattle Art Museum were now ascribing it to Rembrandt van Rijn, he replied: "You would have to ask them that."

  Mr. Mann says he believes that the painting rightfully belongs to his family, and that he plans to press charges against Mr. Vachey in criminal court and to vigorously pursue the recovery of his property. He says he will gladly refund Mr. Vachey the 20,000 Occupation francs. In today's currency this would amount to 125 francs.

  Our investigators have confirmed that it is also true that Mr. Vachey managed the now-defunct Galerie Royale during the German Occupation. Rumors of his dealings with Nazi officials have been heard before, but Les Echos Quotidiens believes that this is the first time specific allegations by an aggrieved party have been made. Whether proof is forthcoming is yet to be seen.

  Proof. I raised my head. "That scrapbook," I said slowly. "It would have covered the acquisitions he made during the Occupation. It would have covered this."

  "Maybe, maybe not," Calvin said. "You're not going to know until you talk to Vachey."

  "Maybe that's what somebody didn't want me to see."

  Calvin spread his hands. I lifted the paper again.

  Mr. Vachey, who was involved some years ago in a spectacular court case stemming from his admitted theft of paintings from the Musée Barillot in Dijon, has refused comment to our reporters. Seattle Art Museum officials in the United States have likewise been unavailable for comment.

  Les Echos Quotidiens believes it is in the public interest to continue its investigation into this matter. Mr. Mann's accusations raise serious questions about Mr. Vachey's recent gift to the Louvre of 34 paintings purported to be by various French and Dutch masters from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

  We will remain on the job!

  I put down the newspaper, went to the high window, leaned my elbows on the sill and my chin on my forearms, and stared out at the ancient, narrow towers of Saint-Bénigne, drenched in clear morning sunlight.

  "Who in the hell," Calvin said to the back of my head, "is Govert Flinck?"

  Chapter 9

  Govert Flinck (aka Govaert Flink), b. Cleves, 1615; d. Amsterdam, 1660.

  Or maybe it was 1670. Either way, I told Calvin, he was bad news. Flinck had been another of Rembrandt's students. Not as famous anymore as some of the others have become, but well-known in his day, and—this was the bad news—particularly gifted in imitating the style of his master, as anyone who has seen his portrait of Rembrandt in London's National Gallery can attest. So gifted, in fact, that long after he left the workshop, he was going around selling his own paintings as Rembrandts. And getting away with it.

  Had he been capable of painting the portrait in question, Calvin wanted to know.

  That was the question, all right. Flinck had been a fine artist, good enough to take commissions away from Rembrandt—on his own merits—in the 1640s. There were pictures of his not only in the National Gallery, but the Met, the Louvre, and the Hermitage. When he'd been on his form, not too many of his contemporaries could beat him.

  "Well, I'll need to look at it again," I said, "but I'd say that, at his best—his absolute best—probably, he could."

  And was I capable of telling if he had? Calvin persisted.

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "Jeez," said Calvin, "this thing isn't getting any tidier, is it?"

  "You know, Calvin," I said, still looking out the window, "this question of who did or didn't paint that picture doesn't seem quite so important anymore. We've got a bigger problem to worry about now."

  He looked up, squinting against the sunlight. "Who owns it, you mean. Can this guy Mann prove his case?"

  "Exactly."

  A lot of claims like this one had been made in the fifty years since World War II. Some had been won, but many more had been lost. For one thing, the more time passed, the harder it was to prove anything about anything, particularly when it involved the Occupation, an era that everyone would like to forget. For another, not everybody who made a charge like this was honest. Crooks and poseurs had gotten in on it, as on anything else where big money was involved, and as a result the rules of evidence had gotten very strict. Moreover, French law made it extremely difficult to get anything done about a crime committed more than thirty years ago. For that matter, what crime had Vachey committed? Mann himself said the painting had been bought, not stolen, but on the other hand …

  "No," I said, turning from the window with a sigh, "who am I supposed to be kidding? The question isn't how good a case he can make, the question is, do we—Tony, you, me, the SAM board—want to get into the middle of a disputed ownership contest, especially one like this?"

  "I don't see that we're in the middle of it," Calvin said. "This is between this guy and Vachey. Where do we come into it?"

  "We come into it because we have to decide whether to take the painting or not. If we do, then it's us he'll have to make a claim against to get it back."

  "So? Let's say the courts say it's rightfully his. That's that, he gets it. There's no problem. Nobody at SAM is going to fight him on that, Chris. You know that."

  "Sure, but say he loses. Maybe it's not 'technically' his. Maybe his story doesn't stand up to the rules of evidence. What difference would it make? Regardless of what the courts decided, would we want it as long as we thought there might be any truth at all in what he says?" I shook my head roughly. "I don't know, the whole thing has turned so ... so ugly—I'm starting to think we don't want anything to do with it."

  Calvin put his coffee down on the end table and came to stand with me at the window. "Now, listen to me for just a minute," he said firmly. "You're jumping to conclusions. Why don't you just do your job and wait and see what happens? Even if this guy thinks he's telling the truth, that doesn't mean that's the way it was, you know. He was, what, seven at the time? So the chances are he's repeating things he heard from his father, not things he really remembers for himself."

  This was Calvin earning his keep, Calvin the realist, the hard-headed M.B.A. snapping the muzzy, oversensitive art historian out of h
is funk and putting him back on track. Or trying to.

  "That doesn't mean they aren't true," I said stubbornly.

  "Look, Chris, how could he even know what Vachey's picture looks like? Vachey kept it a secret from everybody. Hell, we were the ones he was giving it to, and he wouldn't even let us see it ahead of time. Unless Mann was one of those hundred people there last night, which he wasn't, there'd be no way for him to have any idea if this was his father's painting or not. I'm telling you, the guy could be inventing the whole thing. He's probably just another crook." He grinned. "Think positive."

  I drained my coffee and smiled back, but thinking positively was more than I could do. There was a queasy sensation deep in my chest, as if my stomach had shifted up where it didn't belong. The Rembrandt—the Flinck?—had been fishy enough from the beginning, and getting myself shoved out of a window hadn't improved my attitude about it. But now it was tainted with something genuinely repugnant. As much as I didn't want to believe Mann's story, it sounded like the truth. I didn't want to be involved in it, and I didn't want my museum involved.

  "I'm going to call Tony and recommend that we forget it," I said.

  "Well, you're not going to call him now. It's the middle of the night in Seattle. Listen, we were going to see Vachey this morning anyway. Why not put this Nazi thing to him and see what he says?"

  "Calvin, it doesn't make any difference what he says. There's too much. I just want out. I have a lousy feeling about the whole—"

  "Christ, give the guy a chance to defend himself, Chris. What can it hurt?"

  I shrugged. He was right, I supposed. "All right, you're—" The telephone rang.

  "This is Monsieur Norgren?" the unfamiliar voice asked in French.

  I said it was.

  "Of the art museum in Seattle?" I said it was.

  "Very good. I am Sergeant Huvet of the Police Nationale. It would be helpful if you could come to the Galerie Vachey on the Rue de la Préfecture at ten o'clock. Is this convenient?"

  I frowned. "Does this have something to do with—with what happened last night?"

  "Pardon?"

  "What is this about, please?"

  "It is concerned," the sergeant said with businesslike detachment, "with matters proceeding from the death of Monsieur René Vachey."

  * * *

  Vachey had been found dead early that morning, the sergeant explained, in the Place Darcy, a small park near the center of town. The cause of death appeared to be a gunshot wound.

  "You don't mean—do you mean he was murdered?"

  "So it would appear."

  That was as much as the sergeant would tell me. "You will be there at ten o'clock, monsieur?"

  I told him I would.

  "Your associate, Monsieur Calvin Boyer—he doesn't answer his telephone. Perhaps you know where we could reach him?"

  "I'll have him there for you," I said numbly.

  "Very good."

  I sat slowly down on the bed, my thoughts tumbling.

  "Who's murdered?" Calvin asked.

  "Vachey," I said. I told him what little I knew, and sat there staring at my clunky jogging shoes.

  "We better get going," Calvin said when I'd finished. "It's nine-fifteen.

  We talked about the murder on our walk to Vachey's house, of course. Not that I remember much of it. I seemed to be functioning in a near stupor; a sort of jumble-headed reverie. How could he be dead, I kept thinking. Hadn't I seen him only last night—what, nine, ten hours ago?—and hadn't he been sparkling with life, rascally and genial? How could he be dead this morning? I found myself mouthing the question without meaning to: How could he be dead, how could he be dead?

  "Look, Chris," Calvin said with some exasperation, "that's the way it works. A guy's alive, and then he's dead."

  "I know, but—yeah, I know."

  We stopped at a cafe on the Rue Musette for another café au lait and some croissants, which helped to settle my thoughts, but still left me sick and empty, dreading having to talk to the police. I suppose some of my reluctance came from realizing that I was going to have to tell them about my ill-thought-out incursion into Vachey's study; mostly, though, I just hated to think about him dead. Shot. I didn't know where he'd been shot, or how many times, or anything else about it, and I didn't want to know. I hadn't thought to ask if an arrest had been made. I just didn't want to accept it.

  I had finished eating before something dawned belatedly on me. It didn't matter what I recommended to Tony; the business with the Rembrandt was over. Vachey had died without our meeting his conditions, so the gift could be valid. The picture belonged to whoever would have gotten it on Vachey's death if he hadn't decided to give it to us. The same went for the Léger. If that meant his son, Christian, which I supposed it did, then somehow I didn't think they were ever going to wind up on the walls of the Barillot or SAM.

  Calvin nodded his agreement. "I think you're right. Unaccepted offer dies with the offerer, that's the way it works. Let's hope the Louvre has something on paper for its share."

  "I hope so."

  Actually, at this point I didn't much give a damn. I felt rotten.

  At my instigation we dawdled—well, procrastinated—over a moody second cup of coffee, and arrived at the gallery five minutes late.

  Chapter 10

  We had assumed we were coming in for interrogation, but that wasn't it at all. This was a group affair, held in a large, sparsely furnished room at the back of the daylight basement, below Vachey's living quarters. Part storage area, part office for Marius Pepin, Vachey's secretary, the room had several irregular recesses in which were objects ranging from mattresses on their sides and folded card tables to broken Roman statuary. In the central area seven people sat in assorted chairs that had been arranged in a rough semicircle to face a plain wooden desk. A spare, balding man sitting to one side and a little behind the others motioned us with an imperious little snap of his fingers toward the only available seats, two folding metal chairs on the far right.

  I nodded to Clotilde Guyot, Vachey's gallery manager, who was sitting next to me clutching a balled handkerchief, her round face blotchy from weeping. Next to her was Froger, showing no signs of tears over the demise of his old adversary. He did look a little sickly, however; probably because he'd come to the same conclusion we had about the fate of the two paintings and was mourning his lost Léger. Beyond him was Vachey's son, Christian, looking like a man nursing a hangover. He had taken a bottle of mineral water from a side tray and was rolling it, unopened, against his temple. Pepin was next to him, jumpy and distracted, and after him was a man I didn't know but whom I'd seen at the head table the previous evening.

  Gisèle Grémonde, without her wig, without her gaudy makeup, rounded out the half circle. She was vacantly twisting her fingers, looking utterly shaken. Of course, she had drunk enough cognac to shake an elephant not so many hours before, but it went beyond that. I barely recognized the former opera star. She sat like a heap of old meat, boneless and shrunken. With her thin gray hair and gray, collapsed face she looked a hundred years old.

  "I think we can begin now," the balding man said in a cool, nasal voice when we'd sat down. "Everyone speaks French? Good. I am Chief Inspector Lefevre of the Office of Judicial Police. I shall be in charge of conducting the investigation into the death of Monsieur René Vachey, as most of you already know."

  "I want to know why I was summoned here," Froger said.

  Lefevre ignored him. "When I learned that Monsieur Sully planned to meet with the legatees of Monsieur Vachey's will before some of them—that is to say, some of you—found it necessary to leave the area, I asked to attend. I apologize for the necessity of intruding at this sad time."

  He crossed his legs and settled back. "Monsieur Sully—if you please?"

  Monsieur Sully was seated behind the desk. Plump, capon-breasted and silver-haired, he wore an expression suggestive of feathers that had been severely ruffled.

  "That is not quite accurate, I
nspector," he said, irritably fingering a few handwritten sheets of lined white paper in front of him. "I would like it to be understood that this gathering was instigated by you. I am complying with your instructions, but I wish it to be known that I consider it premature and highly irregular."

  Lefevre gazed impassively back at him. "As you like."

  "I also wish you to make it clear that if anyone prefers to leave, he is under no compulsion to remain. I will contact all concerned persons in due time."

  "Certainly," Lefevre said. "All who wish to go are free to do so."

  No one moved.

  Lefevre looked steadily at Sully. "You have done your duty, monsieur. Proceed."

  Sully cleared his throat. "As some of you are aware, I am Charles Sully, Monsieur Vachey's attorney of many years. All of you are here because you are concerned in one way or another with the estate of René Vachey."

  Calvin and I exchanged surprised glances. What did that mean? Were we in Vachey's will? Was it possible that he had actually bequeathed the Rembrandt to us, something I hadn't even considered? From the corner of my eye I saw Froger perk up; apparently his thoughts were running along similar lines. To my surprise, I felt my own attention quicken. Despite everything that had happened, apparently I wasn't as disinterested in the Rembrandt as I'd been telling Calvin—and myself.

  "I must tell you," Sully went on, "that at this point I can relate to you only certain of the more significant provisions of Monsieur Vachey's will. The document is complex, and I do not have a copy with me. The original is in a Credit Lyonnais safe deposit box in Paris, for which Monsieur Vachey and I are joint signatories. It was placed there upon its completion in January of this year—"

  "January of last year," Christian Vachey said.

  The younger Vachey wasn't as young as I'd thought at dinner the previous night, when I'd been fooled by a softly rounded chin, smooth baby-cheeks, and an adolescent smirk. Seen up close he was well into his forties, a husky, laid-back, Hollywood ish kind of man with dark, curly, blow-dried hair that came down almost to his shoulders in back and hung in a Superman forelock in front. He was wearing a sharp double-breasted gray suit with no tie, but with his white shirt buttoned up to the collar. A gold earring in the form of a cross with a loop for its upper arm—the Egyptian ankh sign—dangled from his left ear.