The Color of Night

by David Lindsey

  Strand paused on the sidewalk across the street from the Connaught Hotel. The clean gray and black cars that seemed always to be waiting at the curb in front of the hotel and along the Mount Street side glinted in the dull glow of the street lamps, adding a luster of the modern to a famous old landmark that still maintained the staid and subdued manner of British propriety.

  In front of the hotel was a triangular traffic island where Carlos Place forked and went in opposite directions onto Mount Street. The near side of the island was usually lined with black cabs quietly biding their time until a Connaught guest emerged from the old residence. There was a cluster of plane trees on the island as well as a few stone benches and, in its very center, a dark bronze statue of a nude woman in a shrugging, crouching posture.

  On the other side of the island was a five-storied Victorian building of terraced row houses made of bright red orange brick and having bay window facades with white stone and wood trim. The front of the building swept in a gentle arc from Carlos Place to Mount Street.

  “He lives there,” Strand said, lifting his chin toward the row houses. “Number Four.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. A discreet brass plate beside the front door says ‘Carrington, Hartwell and Knight. Private Dealers in Fine Art.’”

  “There’s a light,” Mara said. “Second floor.”

  Strand took a few steps to get a better line of sight through the trees.

  “That’s where he does most of his work,” he said. “There’s a large room with an ornately carved library table near the windows. Opposite that, there’s a walk-in vault with narrow vertical bays for storing canvases. The drawings are kept in stacked rows of shallow drawers. There are bookcases along the walls below which are cabinets with countertops about waist high. He uses the countertops to display his canvases and drawings. Where there are no bookcases, the walls are covered in crimson silk. There’s a sitting area furnished with rosewood and ebony antiques.”

  They crossed Mount Street to the island and stood under the plane trees, looking up at Carlos Place, Number Four.

  “The first floor,” Strand continued, leaning against one of the trees, “is a reception area. There’s a gallery to the right to exhibit drawings. Here the walls are done in indigo silk. Usually some small, first-rate sculpture scattered about. All the woodwork is mahogany. Down a short hall there’s a generous bathroom for clients. Marble. Linen washcloths. Complimentary flacons of cologne and perfume. There are little silver boxes with handmade tortoiseshell combs with a tissue band around them. Complimentary.”

  “Good Lord,” Mara said.

  “It’s intended to convey a sense of elegant wealth. A client understands that the very best art is traded here. They can expect to be treated like royalty—and to pay royal prices.” He went on with the description. “The stairs leading from this first floor to the second are wide and turn slowly back upon themselves. Mahogany banister and railing. A truly stunning Persian carpet covers the treads all the way up.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Carrington is going to play a very big role in our plans,” Strand said. “You need to know what he’s like, and what to expect from him. A young man usually stays at a desk in the foyer. He’s a sort of security person, doorman, factotum. He takes care of the electric lock on the door and monitors people who come in to browse around the downstairs gallery.”

  “What does Knight look like?”

  “He’s just shy of six feet. Stocky, a little puffy. His hair is prematurely gray, white really. He wears it longish, like an artiste. Very stylish. He likes to wear black clothes to offset his hair. Sometimes he wears thin black wire-rimmed eyeglasses.”

  “Sounds foppish.”

  “Yeah, it sounds that way, but he’s thoroughly masculine. Somehow it all balances out.”

  “What about his education?”

  “Oxbridge.”

  “Really? What else about him?” She drew closer to him, putting her arm through his, lacing their fingers together.

  “He understands Wolfram Schrade.”

  “Understands him?”

  “The only thing that fascinates Carrington more than the art that he buys and sells are the people from whom he buys it and the people to whom he sells it. He’s a collector of psychological minutiae.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Carrington believes that people who buy art, who care enough about it to want to own it, are an anomaly in the general scheme of modern life. In today’s world, which so values speed and the quick result, the immediate feedback, the quick payback, the person who turns to art—something that requires a meditative discipline to create and to appreciate—is a rower against the tide. Everything modern militates against it.” Strand paused. “Nothing fascinates Carrington more than a rower against the tide.”

  “Even if he’s Wolf Schrade.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with morality. Besides, Carrington doesn’t know anything about Schrade’s criminal side. The connection is purely an artistic one. Carrington simply recognizes a fellow rower.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Claude Corsier sat at a small square table with a starched linen cloth. It was set with Victorian china and sterling silver and Dutch crystal. Carrington Hartwell Knight sat across from him, each man enthroned in an elaborately carved, high-backed Spanish chair several hundred years old. Knight’s elbow rested on the damask-upholstered arm of his chair, his wan face resting in his hand, an index finger lying close to one pale eye. His longish wavy white hair was carefully coifed, a full dandy’s wave sweeping back in undulations from his temples.

  The two men were eating a late brunch in Knight’s second-floor library. The food was prepared upstairs in Knight’s well-appointed kitchen by a French cook whom he retained three days a week. It was brought down in a small elevator by the chef’s niece, who also served the two men. They had begun with a modest mixed-leaf salad with small medallions of grilled goat’s cheese and then had gone on to noisettes d’agneau garnished with potato galettes. They had followed that with little plates of fresh fruit and slices of brie de meaux. Dessert and coffee were declined in favor of finishing off a very good bottle of Pouilly-Fumé.

  Knight laughed richly at Corsier’s third or fourth anecdote of the meal and poured himself a full glass of the vaguely smoky white wine, adding some to Corsier’s glass. He sat back in his chair, smiling. Corsier recognized his moment.

  “Carrington, the food was wonderful, as always,” he said, lifting his glass. “My compliments.”

  Knight smirked pleasantly, accepting the praise.

  “I told you I had something special,” Corsier went on, “and I do, something that I am sure will delight you.” He reached down beside his chair, where he had leaned a wafer-thin, royal blue leather portfolio. “I have photographs of two drawings in my possession.”

  He opened the portfolio and took out two eight-by-ten color photographs and handed them across the table to Knight, who put down his glass and sat up in his baroque chair, hand outstretched.

  He looked at the first photograph. Frowned. Looked quickly at the second. Frowned. His attention still glued to the images, he moved aside the few things in front of him and laid the pictures side by side on the linen cloth. He leaned over them. Without removing his eyes from them, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took from behind his gray linen handkerchief a pair of eyeglasses with perfectly round, black wire frames. He put them on, continuing to stare at the photographs. The frown disappeared. He began to shake his head slowly.

  “Good God . . . extraordinary.” He closed his mouth and swallowed, his eyes squinting, his head thrust forward.

  He looked up at Corsier. “Where did you get these?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve never seen them.”

  “Nor have I.”

  Knight tilted his head, looking at Corsier like a handsome if exotic owl. “Claude, are these catal
oged?”

  “No.”

  Knight gasped. “They’re not authenticated?”

  “Carrington”—Corsier leaned toward the flamboyant dealer—“I’ve only just discovered them!”

  “How many people have seen these?”

  “Only me.”

  “What?”

  “And, soon, you.”

  Knight tucked in his chin skeptically, trying to hide his excitement at being in on the beginning of such an event.

  “How the hell did you come up with these?”

  Corsier relished the question.

  “How many times have you heard this?” he began. “An estate discovery. But it’s true. Two weeks ago a middle-aged British woman came to my gallery in Geneva. She had been visiting friends to whom she had told the following story, and they had urged her to come to me. An elderly aunt had died. The old woman had been very much of a rounder in her day and had flounced around with artists in Berlin and other places Germanic and had lived so bohemian a life as to have made herself an outcast from the rest of the family. Or at least a thoroughgoing black sheep. She lived a hermit in Bedford. She died. Left her little cottage and its contents to this niece.

  “The niece dragged herself to Bedford, girded for the chore of cleaning out this dirty little cottage and its junk. She found scores and scores of drawings of every sort, all kept in boxes, one on top of the other. She also found seven framed drawings on the walls of the old woman’s bedroom, where she spent the last four years of her life. Thinking the art might be worth something, the niece photographed it and sent the photographs to her friends in Geneva.

  “When my assistant saw the photographs, she called me immediately. I was in Zurich. I flew home that night. The next day I visited the woman, saw the photographs, and made an appointment three days later to visit her home here in London.” Corsier opened his eyes wide. “I found two little Kokoschkas, a rather nice Czeschka, a very good Kubin, two Broschs, and”—he paused for effect—“two Schieles.”

  “And you have the drawings?”

  “I own them.”

  “You bought them yourself?”

  “I bought the lot.”

  “You didn’t tell her what she had?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure,” Corsier said coyly. “I’m still not sure.”

  Knight returned his eyes to the photographs, studying them. As he bent his head forward, a white lock dangled over his forehead rakishly. His fingers rested on the edge of the table as if he were at a piano keyboard, wrists down. He examined every line, every stroke, delved into the colors at their deepest and out to their lighter edges. He squinted at the expressions on the faces of the subjects and followed the intentions of the lines, where they broke or continued unexpectedly, where they hesitated, repeated, and confidently pressed on to unusual conclusions.

  “Early ones, I’d say,” Knight murmured to himself. “Before he grew so harsh, so cruel.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mmmmm . . . mmmm.” Knight was unaware of his audible voice. Suddenly he looked up. “Schiele.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back once again. “Sure as hell looks like Schiele to me.” He picked up his glass, paused. “Until I get to see the paper itself, anyway.” He drank, rather quickly now.

  “What do you think of them?” Corsier asked. He stroked his mustache and goatee.

  Knight sighed and savored the lingering, smoky aftertaste of the wine. He raised his white eyebrows. “Well, they’re sublime, Claude.” His eyes grew heavy lidded. “Why are you showing them to me?”

  “I want you to authenticate them. Then I want you to broker them.”

  “What’s the matter? Why don’t you do it?”

  “I can’t.”

  Knight sipped his Pouilly-Fumé. “Explain.”

  “I know who will give the highest price for these two beauties,” Corsier said. “Unfortunately, he and I had a serious falling-out recently, and if he knows I’m connected with these drawings, he will not buy. And we will not get the highest possible price.”

  “You’re talking about Wolfram Schrade?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Really?” Knight’s voice rose and fell.

  “We’ve exchanged words. Angry words. Legal threats all around. So, you see . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s imperative that I remain out of the picture here. Entirely. You mustn’t mention me at all.”

  “Why should I?”

  Corsier smiled to himself. Carrington Knight was already counting his crowns and pounds and guineas.

  “Are you interested, then?”

  “Christ. Of course.” He paused, calculating while pretending not to be as he looked at the photographs over the top of his glass. “You don’t want to be connected with the sale in any way?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Knight frowned abruptly and cut his eyes at Corsier.

  “All this excessive secrecy, not wanting my man Jeffrey here when you come—all that has to do with your anonymity?”

  “Precisely. I don’t want anyone other than you to know who’s offering these. You know Schrade. He snoops around.”

  “Oh, yes, yes.” Knight nodded, thinking. “It will be of importance to the media.”

  Knight was understating it. Egon Schiele was one of the most collectible moderns. His output had not been enormous, and none of the known works could be said to be available. Everyone who had them was hanging on to them.

  “You can have all the cream and all of the credit for the discovery,” Corsier said.

  “You want to be mentioned after the sale?”

  “No.”

  “You’d just as soon the attribution remained ‘the Property of a Gentleman.’”

  “Forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Fine. What’s the commission?”

  “Standard.”

  “Can’t argue with that. What are you asking for them?”

  “If they’re authentic, I have an idea of what they’re worth. But you’ve sold Schrade far more art than I have. I think you’ll know best what he will put on the table.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Knight was sitting forward in his small throne again, elbows on the arms, hands holding the wineglass. His eyes returned to the two photographs. “It’s extraordinary, really, to come up with two unknown Schieles. Extraordinary.”

  “I have a suggestion about Schrade.”

  Knight looked up at Corsier from under his brows.

  “A greater egoist never walked,” Corsier said. “I actually think you could enhance the asking price if he were allowed to be part of the discovery.”

  “Explain.”

  “Tell him you think you have discovered a couple of lost Schieles. Briefly describe the background. Tell him that you are going to authenticate them. You knew he would want first look at actual Schieles. Would he be interested in being present for the ‘discovery’ itself? If they are Schieles, he will literally have first look. If they are not . . .” Corsier shrugged.

  Corsier could see Carrington Knight’s mind wheeling, his imagination foreseeing the drama . . . and the value of the drama. Corsier went on.

  “If Schrade could share in the thrill of discovering a Schiele,” he enthused gently, reaching out with his hand and closing it into a fist, his white French cuffs extending from the sleeves of his dark suit as he turned his fist and drew it back toward himself to connote the compelling effect of his argument. “Schiele the iconized.” His voice softened to a whisper. “Schiele the harsh magician of nervous sexuality. Schiele the disturbed light of modern concupiscence.”

  He let his hand return softly to the linen tablecloth.

  “I think that even the cold Mr. Schrade could be enthused, as it were, by the drama of seeing these drawings still encased in the frames that have held them since, say, the nineteen thirties, or twenties. The two frames, incidentally, are monstrosities, heavy, ornately carved, gold leaf. Who knows what one might find behind tho
se drawings. Another sketch? A scrawled annotation in Schiele’s own hand that would shed some light into his psyche?”

  Carrington Knight was motionless, his face blank. For a moment Corsier was afraid he had overdone it. But no, Knight was seeing a vision. He blinked a couple of times.

  “Jesus Christ, Claude,” he said, “have you always been this calculating, and I have simply overlooked it?”

  Corsier smiled kindly. “To tell you the truth,” he said, picking up his wineglass, “I think these damn drawings are authentic. I suspect they will be on the market for only the few moments following Schrade’s realization of this. Think of it. They have been lost for three generations, and then they come to light. For only a moment. Schrade will buy them and lock them away until he dies . . . another generation until his estate is sold. This, my dear Carrington, is a flickering moment of opportunity. It will not come again to either of us.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Harry Strand sat on one of the wooden benches in Mount Street Gardens, a small, cloistered common of irregular shape enclosed on its various sides by the Gothic Revival Church of the Immaculate Conception, St. Georges Primary School, Grosvenor Chapel, and the rear entrances to the elegant row houses that faced Mount Street.

  The afternoon air was fresh as the sun filtered down through the bowers of the ponderous plane trees that dominated the gardens, their hand-size leaves rustling in the light breeze like rushing water. Pigeons sailed into the quiet close, skittering through the dappled light to land on the grass, where they strutted about in addled curiosity before finally settling into a meditative squat to warm themselves in the random puddles of sun.

  Strand listened to the intermittent echoes of the voices of children playing behind the tall windows of St. Georges and to the occasional quick step of a solitary pedestrian taking a shortcut through the gardens. He liked the feel of the air on his face and the distant rumble of London traffic that was all but dampened into silence by the surrounding walls of brick and stone.