The question embarrassed Kate. She somewhat naively hoped she simply would be given access to the gallery’s records.
Chloe presumed her faulty English was the reason Kate hadn’t responded. “I apologize. I don’t use English often enough. Is there a family name I should be looking for? On whose behalf are you researching the painting’s provenance?”
“The current owner has requested privacy,” Kate lied.
“Privacy? I’ve never heard of such a request.” Chloe’s voice rose in amazement. Her reaction was so spontaneous, so genuine, it took Kate a moment to recover. She hoped above all else Chloe didn’t press for more details. “I’ve been asked to look through these papers before under similar circumstances. In each case, the family wanted its interest in the painting under question as widely known as possible. I trust your client has posted its inquiry in one of the Internet sites devoted to reuniting families with stolen art. If they haven’t, I can give you details.”
“That won’t be necessary. Thank you.”
Chloe looked incredulous, but didn’t press for details. “This gallery has been selling the finest quality art out of the same building since the eighteen fifties. We have records going back to the beginning. Switzerland wasn’t drawn into either world war, of course, so the records never have been disturbed.”
Chloe held a receipt in her hand, but not for a painting by Courbet. Kate sensed she looked puzzled, that she hadn’t fully accepted Kate’s explanation that the family she had made up as her client wanted privacy. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. I presumed you were searching on behalf of a particular family. I obviously don’t understand the purpose of your visit. Perhaps the painting’s current owner wants to know its provenance. It’s not my place to pry. However, if I am not searching for a particular family name, am I looking for a specific painting?”
“I believe it was named
Le Dent de Midi
, after the peak in the Alps.” Kate felt chastised.
Chloe shrugged, as if to say with her body what she’d just said in words, that it wasn’t her place to do more than be a gracious host. Kate apologized, said the long flight and the time change were catching up with her. She was afraid of saying anything more than she had to. The two women searched through the remaining boxes with very little conversation for the better part of an hour. The shuffle of papers was the only sound in the room.
Chloe’s voice eventually broke the silence. “Have you ever heard the name Hirsch associated with this painting?”
Kate was surprised, both by the sound of Chloe’s voice after such a long period of silence and by the commonness of a name. She was slow to react.
“Do you have evidence, Chloe, linking that family to the painting?”
Chloe was holding a receipt. It had been prepared by her great-grandfather in November, 1870. The receipt was for a painting by Gustave Courbet named
Le Dent de Midi.
It had to be what Kate came here to find. The receipt was to a Karl Hirsch, of Linz, an industrial town in Upper Austria on the Danube River, about an hour’s drive west of Vienna.
“It appears Herr Hirsch paid around three hundred Swiss francs. He made an excellent investment. I suspect a piece by old Gustave could fetch many millions today. He’d be pleased with that news. He was quite the showman, but he died penniless.”
Chloe opened the top of her small copy machine. A green light danced along the wall behind her for a moment. The printer whirred to life and three copies of the receipt slipped onto its small plastic tray. Kate closed all of the other boxes. She put them on the floor. Chloe put the three receipts on the table. Both women ran their fingers over Karl Hirsch’s name. Neither spoke for the longest time.
“Is it possible, Chloe, you have other records relating to Mr. Hirsch? Did your family keep letters or records of the people with whom they did business?”
“I wouldn’t know where to look if they’re not in the boxes which I found for you. You’re welcome to go back through them to see if there are any letters. I’d be surprised, very pleasantly so, I might add, if any member of a family named Hirsch from Mr. Hitler’s birthplace is alive at this point.”
Chloe’s reference was obvious. The odds of a Jewish family getting through that period were almost nonexistent.
Kate felt if she didn’t change the focus of their conversation she’d be unable to breathe. “Chloe, how does one authenticate a painting under these circumstances? What passes for a legitimate provenance?”
“That is a very murky area. There was much theft during that period, much confusion. Tracing the ownership of a painting can be hazy after the late nineteen thirties.”
“Hazy?”
“In so many cases, the chain of custody is broken. Tens of thousands of pieces of art and jewelry were appropriated from their rightful owners.” She touched the receipt Kate was holding. “I have no way of knowing with any certainty, of course, whether that was the fate of this painting. I hope Mr. Hirsch enjoyed it for a long and healthy life and then passed it on to his children. I wish life were that simple.”
“How do you authenticate the provenance of a painting in light of what you just told me? How are any of these pieces sold?”
“Business must go on. The art community has adjusted. A dealer will see words such as ‘private collection, London,’ with no other explanation and choose to let that suffice. But we all know what that means.”
Chloe put the original receipt into an envelope. She slid the envelope into the drawer in the middle of her desk. “From time to time you will read of a piece of artwork surfacing, and of course there’s been a bit of litigation over the occasional painting or statue. The issue is far from resolved. Even though the various Internet projects have facilitated the flow of information, there are so many gaps that never will be filled.”
Chloe paused. “You used the phrase ‘current owner’ before. Perhaps I’m reading too much into what you said, but that suggests there may be others who could lay claim to this painting. I’ve read of claims being successful on the basis of less proof than you hold in your hand.”
Chloe’s voice was gentle. “This is all a remarkable coincidence.” Kate looked puzzled.
“Mister Hitler fancied himself quite the collector. He wanted to build the biggest museum in the world to house all of his stolen goods.” She pointed once again at the receipt. “It is quite the coincidence that Herr Hirsch was from Linz. That’s where Hitler wanted to build the museum.” Chloe continued. “It’s also somewhat ironic you’re tracking down a painting by Gustave Courbet.”
“Ironic?”
“When he was younger, Courbet couldn’t get his work shown by the Salon, so he held his own exhibitions. I believe he was the first artist to do that.” Chloe slid all of the copies of the receipt toward Kate. “Hitler considered Courbet’s work degenerate. He wouldn’t put it in his museum.” She reached to whisk away a bit of a cobweb from below the windowsill.
Chloe swept some of the dust the ancient paper left on the table into her right hand. She shook the dirt into a red trashcan next to her desk. “Poor Gustave. First they wouldn’t let him into the Salon because his pictures were too scandalous and then they wouldn’t let him into Linz on the Danube. The dear man knew no peace.”
FOURTEEN
Ed asked to see Kate at ten. He and Steve needed to be in Boston by seven for cocktails and dinner with the head of the Harvard endowment fund. They had slightly less than ninety minutes before they needed to leave to catch the Acela.
The city looked like a postcard, but Kate was too exhausted to appreciate it. Ed wasn’t looking anywhere except at the copy of the receipt on the conference table in front of him. He buzzed Margaret King, asked her to bring him an Alka-Seltzer and then drank it as though she’d brought him hemlock. Steve sat somewhat rigidly next to Ed.
Clive Daley, the general counsel Ed had plucked from Barrington & Carlyle, fingered a copy of the Hirsch receipt. Clive was perhaps fifty, but an old fifty, in need of both an exercise program and hair plugs. But as the only lawyer in a room full of legal problems, what he had to say counted.
“Technically, this proves nothing. A man bought a painting several generations ago. He might have sold it. He might have traded it for another painting. Or a boat. Or a team of horses. His house might have burned down,” Clive said. He was an expatriate Brit who spoke in a clipped accent.
Kate hadn’t been able to shake the image that came into her mind somewhere over the Atlantic when she flipped on the light above her seat and put one of the receipts Chloe had printed on her tray table. It was as though
Schindler’s List
was streaming before her eyes. A well-dressed family rushing through their home, grabbing whatever they could while fierce men with guns drawn and snarling dogs at their side shouted they would be shot if they didn’t move faster. She said nothing, though. She wanted to see where Clive was taking this conversation.
“But given the need to get cash into this company for the Christmas season, we need to verify as quickly as possible both that the painting is authentic and that no one in this Hirsch family or otherwise can lay claim to it as quickly as possible. With all the publicity and suits over stolen artwork floating around these days, if we simply dropped the painting into the deal with knowledge of this receipt we’d be an easy target for litigation.”
Ed looked at Kate as though she were to blame for doing exactly what he’d told her to do. But even he couldn’t find a way to criticize her for being successful.
“Then let’s see if we can find any heirs. If none remain, our path at least should be clearer.” Ed turned to Steve. “God, I wish we had other things on our plate so we could jettison this deal. The timing of our trip to Cambridge couldn’t be worse. We need to come up with some way to spin this in our favor.”
“One moment, Ed. I’m about to show you something that will make this transaction even more troubling than you expect,” Clive said. He opened a manila folder and spread a number of newspaper articles in front of him. Most of them were from the forties. They were the detail Leslie promised Kate, pictures of a frightened young soldier standing in front of military police, a gold cup and a candelabra on the table in front of them. “I’m not surprised Mr. Franklin didn’t want to talk about the painting’s provenance.”
Ed fished through the copies and then said, “His father stole the fucking thing?”
Steve laughed. Sneered was more like it. “I guess this puts a bullet in your idea about including the painting in the deal,
n’est pas
, Kate?”
Kate wasn’t going to stoop to Steve’s level by responding.
“I take it stealing a painting that’s been stolen doesn’t neutralize things,” Ed said.
“No, Ed, I’m afraid not,” Clive responded. “But what I found curious about all the material Ms. Elliot uncovered was there was no mention of a painting being among the stolen items.”
Ed had been rolling a napkin into a tight ball. He unrolled it and wiped his brow. “This is going to make our meeting in Cambridge tonight a real ball-buster. Harvard’s been spooked about our results of late and was talking about pulling out of our Magna fund before this pile of crap fell into our laps.” He picked up a pencil and was drumming the table with the eraser. “We need something good to report tonight. Anything. Kate, is there any way we can pull this star-crossed deal off on the basis of Majik’s potential cash flow? I’ve got to be able to tell David Blakely something.”
Kate pulled out a list of the investors she’d already sounded out about the deal. Nobody had shown the slightest interest in investing in such a thin prospect.
Steve leaned forward in his chair. “What if there is no one to challenge Franklin’s ownership? What if we say we tracked down family members and posted information on some of the sites that track this sort of thing?” His hands were flying through the air. “If no one comes forward we should be in the clear. Nobody is going to raise this stuff about his father. It’s over sixty years old, for God’s sake.” He had a smug smile on his face, the same smirk he wore the day Ed forced this deal down Kate’s throat.
“Steve, we can’t just make these things up,” Kate said. “You’re asking us to put our name on a fabrication.”
“Not so fast,” Ed said. “Steve is on to something. We’re not in the right-or-wrong business. Let’s leave that to the clergy. You’re making the assumption this Hirsch family could lay claim. You’re making another assumption that because Franklin’s father stole one thing he also stole another. There might be a dozen other explanations that could be just as plausible. Clive?”
Clive took his time calibrating his answer. Steve grabbed a legal pad from the green leather basket in the center of the table. He began scribbling.
“Hard to say. On the Hirsch side of the equation, there really is no bright line where we’d be safe to say we’ve created a safe haven.”
Clive moved the articles around with both of his hands. Kate thought his analysis had run its course and he was buying time to think up something else to say. “I’d certainly want to make a strong record that we turned over every stone to find any heirs of the man or any evidence he transferred the painting innocently.”
Ed nodded. Tensely, he pushed himself against the table, as though Clive were closing in on a solution to their problem. Clive put his right hand up. “Before we post anything or otherwise go public, though, we’d need Franklin’s permission. We’re hoping to be his bankers, but we’re not the cops on the beat. Also, as long as we’re going to be talking to him about hiring an expert, I suspect Mr. Franklin is going to have to tell us how the painting found its way to his wall.”
To Kate, the room was filled with carnival barkers trying to convince some yokel the bearded lady’s beard was real. The problem was there was enough of a resemblance to truth in what Clive was suggesting to make it appear as though Drake had been diligent in its efforts, but only if the idea was vetted by the truest of believers and only then by the slimmest of margins.
“I need to register my disagreement.” She made certain her voice had conviction. “I’m not comfortable being part of the crew that assembles this façade.”