First Gravedigger (3 page)

“I don't have any idea,” I lied. “Personality conflict, I guess.”

But Peg wasn't buying that. “Not good enough. There's a man who's been here ten years that Speer can't stand. But he'll never get rid of him because he's so good at his work. And you're good at your work, Earl. You must have done something to him.”

“But I didn't,” I lied again. “I don't know why he's out to get me. I haven't done a thing!”

“Oh, come, dear boy, think back,” said an officious voice behind me. “Not even
one
little indiscretion to return and haunt you? Even the blessed saints themselves don't claim to be that pure.”

I faced him angrily. “You have something to say, Wightman? This is a private conversation.”

“Oh, I always have something to say,” Wightman told us unnecessarily. “And if you want privacy, shut the door. The Speer just consulted me about your little boo-boo with the Meissen, and I am now in the process of riding to the rescue. The June-bug says you have a photocopy of your evaluation. I'd like it back, please. Can't leave our dirty linen floating about, you know—dreadful metaphor, I apologize.”

“What are you hinting at, Wightman?” Peg asked with a touch of asperity. “Who'd want that evaluation?”

“
Spies,
” Wightman hissed melodramatically. “If word ever got out that Speer's couldn't tell new Meissen from old, the clients would start deserting in droves.” Pure bull; Wightman was just rubbing it in. He held out his hand. “Your evaluation, please.”

My evaluation. I remembered wadding it into a ball and looking for a place to—ah. I pulled the crumpled paper out of my jacket pocket and ceremoniously handed it to Wightman. The look on his face helped a little.

“Dear me,” he said with distaste. “Must you be so violent? But scrunched-up is better than nothing, I suppose. Ah well, now the world can resume its orderly orbit once again. Peg, my love, when are you coming away with me for an illicit weekend?”

“When hell freezes over.”

“How very original,” Wightman murmured as he left.

“One of these days,” I said, closing the door behind him.

“Not before I do,” Peg snapped. “When will I come away with him! I'm fifty-eight years old and I've been with Speer Galleries since I was twenty-four. And he talks to me as if I were some giggling schoolgirl who feels flattered every time a man flirts with her!”

I waited until her indignation sputtered itself out and then brought her back to my problem. “Speer wants me out, Peg. He's trying to get rid of me.”

“Then why doesn't he come right out and fire you?”

“You know him better than I do, Peg. You tell me.”

She sighed. “Because he likes to hurt.”

That was the right answer. We'd both seen it happen before. Three or four years ago Speer had gotten rid of an agent who wasn't as sharp as he should have been, and he'd gone about it in the same unpleasant way—putting the man in impossible situations, even turning the other agents against him. Then when he'd made the agent as miserable as he could, he'd dismissed him. I was sure Peg had seen it other times too, before I came to Speer Galleries.

“Seven years I've been here,” I said, allowing an edge of bitterness in my voice. “I've built my reputation at Speer's. You think other dealers are going to take on someone Amos Speer has kicked out?” The antiques world wasn't like industry, where noncompeting companies absorbed one another's misfits. A dealer's financial life depended upon his having a reputation for trustworthiness, and any agent who was considered incompetent or not quite honest or suspect in any way was avoided like the plague. If Speer fired me, word would go out over the network and I wouldn't find a single door open to me. The only defense I could see was to leave voluntarily before Speer gave me the sack.

“Maybe he'll change his mind,” Peg said with a false enthusiasm.

“You really believe that?”

“Anything's possible, Earl. He might. Don't let it get you down—Speer could do a complete about-face before the week is over.”

So that was going to be her line. Buck up, don't lose hope, things will work out. Notice how Peg did
not
offer to go to Speer and put in a good word for me? I studied the expression of sympathy on her face—it was genuine, I was sure, but it was the limit of what I could expect from her.

Peg had had a good life with Speer Galleries—doing work she liked, traveling extensively. And, as a sort of side issue, prudently outliving two husbands along the way. She'd once told me about Amos Speer's first ventures into the international market, how he'd sent her hither and yon to check out legal titles. She'd go into a country where she'd never been before—not knowing the legal setup, not knowing the language, not even knowing how to go about hiring a reliable interpreter. She'd loved it. Obstacles were made to be surmounted. Then about the time she reached the age when gallivanting about was starting to become a chore instead of a pleasure, Scotland Yard had formed its art treasures squad and started doing a lot of her work for her. Peg was a fixture at Speer Galleries and she owned shares in the firm; she wasn't going to do any boat-rocking for my sake. She was quite willing to challenge Amos Speer on matters she thought were important—but my future obviously didn't fit into that category. Peg knew which side her bread was buttered on.

I went back to my office, called Mrs. Percy in Beaver Falls, and told her I was on my way.

CHAPTER 2

On the way to Beaver Falls I had time to think. The Leda I'd examined the week before had been old Meissen, I was sure of it. If Speer had substituted a near-identical nineteenth-century reproduction, then what had he done with the original? I immediately ruled out theft; there was no way he could get away with it. Where had the Leda come from? I thought back and could remember no name, only a lot number. Not unusual. Also not very revealing. Except negatively, perhaps: What if the owner's name was Amos Speer? Both figurines could have come from Speer's personal collection and I'd have no way of knowing it. That must be it; it was the only way he could pull off a substitution without having to worry about ugly repercussions later. The owner wouldn't complain because Speer himself was the owner. End of the case of the missing Meissen.

Speer had been quick enough to call Wightman in and tell him I'd misidentified a piece. There was no reason Wightman needed to know; Speer had simply wanted him to. The new fair-haired boy? My god, that meant that if I did somehow manage to hold on to my job, I'd end up working for Wightman. Almost as unsettling was the fact that June Murray had taken it on herself to tell Wightman I had a photocopy of the evaluation. That meant she'd decided the percentages lay with him and not with me.

The street in Beaver Falls where I parked had seen better days, but Mrs. Percy was young and pretty. And harassed-looking. Her living room had what is euphemistically called a lived-in look—I could hear young children's voices in the back yard. Department store furnishings—that bland, no-statement style that's somehow more offensive than outright vulgarity. Mrs. Percy and her husband weren't collectors; they were obviously a young couple in need of money who'd decided to sell off the family heirloom.

“We hate to give it up,” Mrs. Percy was saying of the writing table as she led me to the den. “My husband's father says it's been in their family for five generations that he knows of, maybe more.”

I made some noncommittal noise as we went into the den. Even from across the room I could tell this one wasn't the real McCoy. But for Mrs. Percy's sake I pulled out measuring tape and magnifying glass and went through the ritual of examination.

The table was a good imitation of an American Chippendale-style piece. Clean-lined marlboro legs supporting an essentially sober top structure with oddly inappropriate rococo carved ornament superimposed on it. I opened the drawers, peered underneath, took a few measurements.

I don't like giving people bad news. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Percy, it's a reproduction, not an original.”

The color drained from her face; that wasn't what she'd been expecting. “But Denny's father said it was over two hundred years old!”

Denny's father lied. “An honest mistake. It happens a lot—your husband's family probably had an original at one time, but somebody sold it and substituted this one.”

Mrs. Percy wasn't ready to give up. She went over to the only bookcase in the room—in the house, so far as I could tell—and pulled out a paperback book, her authority on how to identify antiques.

“Look,” she said, pointing to a picture. It was an exact line drawing of the kind of writing table that now sat in Mrs. Percy's den. Even the ornamentation was similar. The drawing was labeled “Philadelphia, c. 1770.”

I nodded. “That's the one your table's modeled after. Mrs. Percy, you can call in another evaluator if you like, but let me show you a few things.” I pulled out one of the drawers and pointed to the dovetailing. “Eight joints. A drawer made two hundred years ago would have only one or two.” I laid my tape measure across the joints. “The joints are uniform in size and evenly spaced. This dovetailing is machine-cut. The 1770 table in your book would have joints cut by hand, because the machinery for doing this kind of work wasn't developed until the nineteenth century.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Percy said blankly.

I reached in the space left by the drawer and felt the exposed wood. “Circular saw marks. Same objection—modern machinery was used. Look at the screws holding the drawer pulls. The notch in the head is perfectly centered in every one of them. Machine-made. Everything about this table—the thickness of the wood, the width of the planks—it's all too uniform to be eighteenth-century. It's a good piece of furniture, Mrs. Percy, but it doesn't have any antique value.”

Mrs. Percy was drooping visibly; she'd been counting on that money. “Then Speer's isn't interested at all?”

“I'm afraid not. I'm sorry.”

She tried to put a good face on it. “Well, then, I'm afraid I got you all the way out here for nothing.” She laughed nervously.

I smiled. “Happens all the time. Don't worry about it.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee before you leave?”

I declined. Mrs. Percy was chattering to cover her embarrassment and disappointment. I half listened as I followed her out of the den and down the short hallway—when I saw something that stopped me cold.

A half-open door on my right showed me the foot of an unmade bed, a chest of drawers, and two legs of a chair on the other side of the chest. “Mrs. Percy, could I take a look at that chair in there?”

She quickly closed the door and gave her nervous laugh. “That's just a raggedy old thing I should have gotten rid of long ago.”

“I'd like to see it,” I persisted.

Well, why not?
you could see her thinking. “I tell you what. The light's better in the living room—I'll bring it in there.”

I got the message: the room was messy and she didn't want me going in. I nodded and went back to the living room. Mrs. Percy soon appeared carrying the chair, and a pleasurable chill ran down my back. If that chair was what I thought it was …

I winced as Mrs. Percy banged a leg against the wall. She winced too, but because she'd made a mark on the wall. “I've been meaning to get it reupholstered,” she said vaguely as she put the chair down in front of me.

It was a fauteuil, an upholstered armchair with open sides. The gilded wood, the broad back, the elaborate ornamentation, the basically squarish silhouette all screamed
Empire
at me. Flattened, outsplayed arms rested on armposts that took the form of winged sphinxes. The faded dark satin seat cover was split with age. (Unimportant, since the material could hardly be the original covering. It couldn't possibly be. Could it?)

But it was the variations from the norm that excited me. The paneled back curved more than the strictures of the period permitted. A gilt ormolu mount hid a joint on one side of the chair; the one on the other side had fallen off years ago. That didn't matter—I was sure the ormolu had been added later by someone other than the man who made the chair. But what decided it for me were the legs. They were unusually slender but needed no supporting stretchers—indicating good strong mahogany underneath all that gilt. Legs that were graceful and light in a period that demanded massive, Rock-of-Gibraltar furniture. I was sure I was looking at a Duprée chair.

Duprée had been a French cabinetmaker who hadn't paid adequate attention to the politics of his time. Napoleon had wanted to surround himself with furnishings that suggested permanence and grandeur, to lend authenticity to his upstart regime. So he demanded classical motifs and anything else that could link him to the historic past. As a result most Empire chairs were heavy, stiff, formal pieces resembling thrones. Made for show instead of comfort. Duprée had been one of the first cabinetmakers summoned to participate in this artificial image-building, but when he didn't follow the party line he found himself out on his ear. Duprée had loved graceful furniture more than he'd respected the Emperor's glamorized view of himself.

Consequently there were no more than a dozen authenticated Duprée pieces in existence. Duprée had not been as popular in his own time as the lesser talents employed by Napoleon, and for that reason he hadn't been imitated. If the chair looked like a Duprée, the chances were it
was
a Duprée. I ran my fingers along one of the arms. If I was right, I had a small fortune under my hand.

“I'm almost afraid to ask,” I said. “Do you have the rest of the suite?”

Mrs. Percy looked as puzzled as I'd known she would. “What suite?”

“These pieces were all made as parts of suites,” I lied. “There should be at least four more pieces—three identical chairs and a settee or sofa. Perhaps a footstool.”