A Place of Hiding (66 page)

Deborah understood that she was meant to follow.

Chapter 26

S
T.
J
AMES FOUND
K
EVIN
Duffy round the side of the cottage, labouring in what appeared to be a dormant vegetable garden. He worked the earth with a heavy pitchfork but stopped what he was doing when he saw St. James.

He said, “Val's gone to the big house. You'll find her in the kitchen.”

“It's you I'd like to talk to, actually,” St. James said. “Do you have a moment?”

Kevin's gaze went to the canvas St. James was holding, but if he recognised it, he gave no sign. “Take your moment, then,” he said.

“Did you know Guy Brouard was your niece's lover?”

“My nieces are six and eight years old, Mr. St. James. Guy Brouard was many things to many people. But pedophilia wasn't among his interests.”

“Your wife's niece, I mean. Cynthia Moullin,” St. James said. “Did you know Cynthia was having a relationship with Brouard?”

He didn't answer, but his glance moved over to the manor house, which was answer enough.

“Did you speak to Brouard about it?” St. James asked.

No answer again.

“What about the girl's father?”

“I can't help you with any of this,” Duffy said. “Is that all you've come to ask me?”

“No, actually,” St. James said. “I've come to ask you about this.” Carefully, he unrolled the old canvas.

Kevin Duffy drove the tines of the pitchfork into the ground, but he left the implement standing upright in the soil. He approached St. James, wiping his hands on the seat of his jeans. He looked at the painting, and a deep breath whistled between his lips.

“Mr. Brouard apparently went to a great deal of trouble to get this back,” St. James said. “His sister tells me it's been missing from the family since the nineteen-forties. She doesn't know where it came from originally, she doesn't know where it's been since the war, and she doesn't know how her brother got it back. I'm wondering if you can shed light on any of this.”

“Why would I—”

“You've two shelves of art books and videos in your sitting room, Mr. Duffy, and a degree in art history hanging on your wall. That suggests you might know more about this painting than the average groundskeeper.”

“I don't know where it's been,” he replied. “And I don't know how he got it back.”

“That leaves the last,” St. James pointed out. “So you do know where it came from originally?”

Kevin Duffy hadn't stopped looking at the painting. After a moment he said, “Come with me,” and he went into the cottage.

By the door, he kicked off his muddy boots and took St. James through to the sitting room. He flipped on a set of overhead lights that shone directly upon his books and he reached for a pair of spectacles that lay on the arm of a threadbare chair. He moved along his collection of art volumes until he had the one he wanted. He pulled this from the shelf, sat, and turned to its index. Finding what he was looking for, he riffled through pages till he had the appropriate one. He looked at it long before he turned the volume round on his lap to face St. James. He said, “See for yourself.”

What St. James saw was not a photo of the painting—as he'd thought he'd be seeing, considering Duffy's reaction to it—but instead it was a drawing, a mere study for a future painting. It was partially coloured, as if the artist had intended to check which hues would work best together in the final piece. He'd done only her gown, though, and the blue he'd chosen for it was the same as that which had ended up on the painting. Perhaps, having made a quick decision about the rest of the work and finding it unnecessary to colour the drawing in further, the artist had simply gone on to the actual canvas itself, the canvas St. James now held in his hands.

The composition and figures in the drawing in the book were identical to the painting that Paul Fielder had given to Ruth Brouard. In them both, the pretty lady with the book and the quill sat placidly in the foreground while in the background a score of workers heaved round the stones that formed a massive Gothic cathedral. The only thing different between the study and the finished work was that someone along the line had given the former a title: It was called
St. Barbara
and anyone wishing to see it would find it among the Dutch masters in Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Art.

“Ah,” St. James said slowly. “Yes. When I saw it, I thought it was significant.”

“Significant?” Kevin Duffy's tone blended reverence with incredulity. “That's a Pieter de Hooch you've got in your hands. Seventeenth century. One of the three Delft masters. Until this moment, I don't expect anyone knew that painting even existed.”

St. James looked down at what he held. He said, “Good God.”

“Look at every art history volume you can get your hands on and you'll never find that painting,” Kevin Duffy said. “Just the drawing, the study. That's all. Far's anyone knew, de Hooch never made the painting itself. Religious subjects weren't his thing, so it's always been assumed he was just dabbling and then put the effort aside.”

“As far as anyone knew.” St. James saw how Kevin Duffy's assertion corroborated Ruth's claim. The painting, she had said, had always been in her family, as long as anyone could remember. Generation after generation, each father had passed it on to his children: a family heirloom. Because of this fact, probably no one had thought of taking the painting to an expert to learn exactly what it was. It was simply, as Ruth herself had said, the family's picture of the pretty lady with the book and the quill. St. James told Kevin Duffy what Ruth Brouard had called it.

“Not a quill,” Kevin Duffy said. “She's holding a palm. It's the symbol of a martyr. You see it in religious paintings.”

St. James examined the painting more closely and saw that indeed it appeared to be a palm frond, but he also saw how a child, uneducated in the symbols that were used in paintings of this period and looking upon the picture over time, could have interpreted it as a long and elegant quill pen. He said, “Ruth told me her brother went to Paris when he was old enough, after the war. He went to collect the family's belongings but everything they'd owned was gone. I assume that would have included the painting.”

“That would have gone first,” Duffy agreed. “The Nazis were intent on grabbing up what they deemed Aryan art. ‘Repatriating' was what they called it. Truth was the bastards were taking everything they could get their hands on.”

“Ruth seems to think the family's neighbour—a Monsieur Didier Bombard—had access to their belongings. As he wasn't Jewish, if he was the one who had the painting, why would it have ended up in German hands?”

“Lots of ways art ended up with the Nazis. Not just outright theft. There were French go-betweens, art dealers who acquired for them. And German dealers who put adverts in Paris newspapers, asking for art to be brought round for prospective buyers in this or that hotel. Your Monsieur Bombard could have sold the painting that way. If he didn't know what it was, he might have taken it along to one of them and been grateful to get two hundred francs in exchange.”

“From there, though? Where would it have gone?”

“Who's to know?” Duffy said. “At the end of the war, the Allies set up investigation units to get art back to their owners. But it was everywhere. Göring alone had trainloads of it. But millions of people were dead—entire families wiped out with no one left to claim their possessions. And if you
were
left alive but you couldn't prove something belonged to you, you were out of luck.” He shook his head. “That's what happened to this, I expect. Or someone with sticky fingers from one of the Allied armies stashed it in his duffel and took it home as a souvenir. Or someone in Germany—a single owner perhaps—bought this from a French dealer during the war and managed to keep it hidden when the Allies invaded. The point is if the family was dead, who was to know who owned what? And how old was Guy Brouard at the time? Twelve? Fourteen? At the end of the war he wouldn't have been thinking of getting back his family's belongings. He would have thought of that years later, but by then this would have been long gone.”

“And it would have taken years more to find it,” St. James said. “Not to mention an army of art historians, conservationists, museums, auction houses, and investigators.” Plus a small fortune, he added to himself.

“He was lucky to find it at all,” Duffy said. “Some pieces went missing during the war and never turned up again. Others are still being argued over. I can't think how Mr. Brouard proved this was his.”

“He appears to have bought it back rather than attempted to prove anything,” St. James explained. “There's an enormous amount of money that's gone missing from his accounts. It's been wired to London.”

Duffy raised an eyebrow. “That's the case?” He sounded doubtful. “I suppose he could have picked it up through an estate auction. Or it could have turned up in an antiques shop in a country village or in a street market. Hard to believe no one would have known what it was, though.”

“But how many people are experts in art history?”

“Not so much that,” Duffy said. “But anyone can see it's old. You'd think they'd've taken it to be valued somewhere along the line.”

“But if someone actually nicked it at the end of the war . . . ? A soldier picks it up . . . where? Berlin? Munich?”

“Berchtesgaden?” Duffy offered. “Nazi bigwigs all had homes there. And it was crawling with Allied soldiers at the end of the war. Everyone went for the pickings.”

“All right. Berchtesgaden,” St. James agreed. “A soldier picks this up there when the plundering's going on. He takes it home to Hackney and hangs it up above the sofa in the semidetached and never thinks another thing of it. There it stays till he dies and it gets handed on to his kids. They've never thought much about anything their parents own, so they sell up. Auction. Car boot sale. Whatever. This gets bought at that point. It ends up in a stall. On Portobello Road, for example. Or Bermondsey. Or a shop in Camden Passage. Or even in the country, as you suggested. Brouard's had people looking for it for years, and when they see it, they snatch it up.”

“I suppose it could have happened that way,” Duffy said. “No. Truth is, it
has
to have happened that way.”

St. James was intrigued by the decisive quality of Duffy's statement. He said, “Why?”

“Because it's the only way Mr. Brouard could have ever got this back. He had no way to prove it was his. That meant he had to buy it back. He couldn't've have got it from a Christie's or Sotheby's, could he, so it would have had to be—”

“Hang on,” St. James said. “Why not a Christie's or Sotheby's?”

“He would have been outbid. Some place like the Getty with bottomless pockets. An Arab oil magnate. Who knows who else.”

“But Brouard had money . . .”

“Not money like this. Not money enough. Not with Christie's or Sotheby's knowing exactly what they had their hands on and the whole art world bidding to get it.”

St. James looked at the painting: eighteen inches by twenty-four inches of canvas, oil paint, and undeniable genius. He said slowly, “Exactly how much money are we talking about, Mr. Duffy? What d'you reckon this painting's worth?”

“At least ten million pounds, I'd say,” Kevin Duffy told him. “And that's before the bidding opens.”

 

Paul took Deborah round the back of the manor house, and at first she thought he was heading for the stables. But he didn't give these a second glance. Instead, he continued across the yard that separated the stables from the house and gave way to some shrubbery, which he plunged through as well.

Following him, she found herself on a wide expanse of lawn beyond which a woodland of elms stood. Paul ducked into these and Deborah increased her pace so as not to lose him. When she got to the trees, she saw there was an easy path to follow, the ground made spongy by the heavy fall of leaves that lay upon it. She wound along this until ahead of her in the distance she caught a glimpse of a rough stone wall. She saw Paul clambering up. She thought she might lose him for good at this point, but when he reached the top, he paused. He glanced back as if to see if she was still following him, and he waited until she'd reached the bottom of the wall herself, at which point he extended his hand to her and helped her over to the other side.

There Deborah saw that the careful forms and details of
Le Reposoir
gave way to a large but disused paddock, where weeds, bushes, and brambles grew rampant nearly to waist height and a path beaten through them led to a curious mound of earth. She wasn't surprised when Paul dropped from the wall and scurried along this path. At the mound of earth, he headed right and skirted its base. She hastened to follow.

She was wondering how an odd lump of land could hide a painting, when she saw the carefully placed stones that ran along the bottom of the mound. She realised then that she was looking at no natural hillock, but, rather, something that had been built by man in prehistory.

The path to the right was as beaten down as had been the access from the wall, and a short distance round the perimeter of the mound, she found Paul Fielder working the combination on a lock that held closed a worn and crooked oak door, which would allow them inside. He appeared to hear her, for he used his shoulder to shelter the lock's combination from her view. With a click and a snap he had it off, and he used his foot to shove the door open while he carefully put the lock in his pocket. The resulting opening into the mound was no more than three and a half feet high. Paul crouched, crab-walked through it, and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

There was nothing for it but to run off and report back to Simon like a dutiful little wife or to follow the boy. Deborah did the latter.

Inside the door, a narrow and musty passage pressed down on her, less than five feet from stone floor to stone ceiling. But after some six yards the passage opened and heightened to a central vault, dimly illuminated from the daylight outside. Deborah stood upright, blinked, and waited for her eyes to adjust. When they did, she realised she was within a large chamber. It was tightly constructed entirely of granite—floor, walls, and ceiling—with what looked like a sentry stone at one side in which one's imagination could almost see the ancient carving of a warrior with his weapon ready to ward off interlopers. An additional piece of granite raised off the floor some four inches seemed to serve as a form of altar. A candle stood near it, but this was not lit. Nor was the boy anywhere inside.