The Last Weynfeldt (5 page)

For a long time it had looked like Weynfeldt senior would be the last Weynfeldt. Till his wife, approaching forty-four, bore the late arrival Adrian, a triumph of gynecology and genealogy.

Baier remembered Adrian as a little boy. The Weynfeldts were great hosts, always giving lavish dinners and receptions, and at every event he was paraded around like a trophy. A shy child with a disproportionately large head and—even then—tailored suits. In summer in shorts; in winter in knickerbockers.

The child had disappeared from his radar, and he first took notice of him again at Luise Weynfeldt's seventieth birthday party. Although really it was Adrian's guest Baier took notice of: a red-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned English girl with the old-fashioned name Daphne, the important girlfriend for whom Adrian Weynfeldt had actually left home and moved to London. Baier wouldn't have kicked her out of bed either, as he observed later in the proceedings, after the birthday banquet in the Lisière, the pleasure palace on the outskirts of the city which Sebastian Weynfeldt had booked for the occasion.

Now Adrian was the last Weynfeldt. His father was not granted time to see his son ensure the continuation of the family line. His mother was denied this too, although she clung to life for nearly twenty further years after her husband's death. Baier sometimes suspected Adrian had refrained from marrying or procreating to get back at his parents for something they had done to him—whatever that might be.

Or perhaps he was gay. It wouldn't be surprising for a bachelor who lived with his mother till her death at ninety-four, surrounded himself with beautiful things and took such care of his appearance, despite the serious affair with the English art student. That sort of thing featured in every homosexual biography.

Baier couldn't care less. Adrian was good company, well mannered, helpful and useful. The latter above all, now.

He took the painting down from the easel. Without his stick, his teeth clenched, he carried it across the room and compared it to the one hanging above the bureau.

Perfect. Every detail correct. Even the smell.

He slid the painting into the narrow space between the bureau and the wall. At that moment he heard the doorbell and Frau Almeida's voice as she greeted Adrian.

F
RAU
A
LMEIDA
, B
AIER'S
P
ORTUGUESE HOUSEKEEPER
, opened the door before Weynfeldt's finger had left the doorbell.

“Boa tarde,”
Adrian said,
“como esta?”

“Tudo bem, obrigada,”
Frau Almeida said and, knowing that was all the Portuguese Weynfeldt knew, added, “He's waiting for you in the salon.”

Fernanda Almeida had taken over Baier's housekeeping after his last divorce. She was a tall, slender woman, and lived with her husband and their nine-year-old twins in the little servants' apartment in Baier's villa. Her husband worked shifts in a canning factory and made a little on the side as Baier's janitor, running errands and working in the garden, much too small for the huge building. Baier's villa was hemmed in by other villas, all indistinguishable, all with gardens much too small, with a view of the city and the lake obscured by overgrown firs and pines it was now illegal to fell.

Frau Almeida took his Burberry and the gift-wrapped bottle of port he'd brought. Weynfeldt followed her to the cloakroom while she hung up his coat, and out of habit checked his appearance in the mirror.

Although his face was not sharply chiseled his skin was still very smooth for his age, and he had a straight, even nose with a broad bridge, a “Weynfeldt beak” as his mother called it, blue-gray eyes, generous lips, chin neither protruding nor receding, with a dimple tricky to shave and thick, brown hair streaked with gray. He had it trimmed every fortnight, his neck and the area behind his ears shaved every Tuesday. He wore his hair parted, shorter on the left, longer on the right and combed to the side. From midday onward, as it began to lose the elasticity from its daily, morning wash and the long part increasingly began to fall over his forehead, he would smooth it back to its proper place in an unconscious gesture, like something precious.

This haircut gave Adrian Weynfeldt a slightly 1940s look, which he knew full well, and liked to emphasize through the cut of his suits.

He straightened his necktie and the handkerchief in his breast pocket, smoothed his hair away from his forehead and let Frau Almeida show him into the living room.

Klaus Baier sat in the midst of his dimly lit salon in his high-backed, upright armchair. He waved Weynfeldt toward him. Adrian walked over and shook Baier's hard, bony hand, which somehow didn't fit the old man's rotund body and bloated face. It was at least a year since he'd last seen Baier, and now for the first time he really looked like an old man.

“Excuse me if I don't get up,” Baier said, and pointed to a chair next to him. “Sit down.”

Adrian perched on the edge of the golden-yellow 1960s plush armchair, sitting up straight and holding on to the arm so his eye-level wasn't too much lower than Baier's.

“Port or a proper drink?”

“Port is fine.”

“Pity, I was hoping you would give me an excuse for a proper drink.”

“I brought a good port.”

“Thanks, but I've got a very acceptable
Bas-Armagnac hors d'age
open. You have something to celebrate. And I need a little consolation.”

Frau Almeida, who had been waiting at the door till the drinking requirements were clear, now walked over to the bookcase and folded down the flap, opening up the little bar. A light went on, illuminating its mirrored interior, full of bottles and glasses. The two men waited till she had poured their drinks.

Weynfeldt was about to raise his glass, but before he had the chance Baier put his to his lips and took a big gulp, held it in his mouth awhile, then pointed to the painting above the bureau. “There it is. Why don't you bring it over and put it on the easel here.”

Adrian did as Baier said. Took the painting down from its two hooks, held it in front of him with outstretched arms till this was too much—it measured three feet by four feet after all, with a heavy, ornate, golden frame—and placed it on the easel. He stood to one side, so he wasn't blocking Baier's view, and took a good look at the work.

“And?” Baier asked after a while.

“You know what I think about this painting. It's amazing.”

“In francs please.”

“Between seven-hundred thousand and a million.”

“You said that last time. And since then
En promenade
went for 2.3 million. A tiny picture, not half as big as this.”

“Auction dynamics. Two collectors were spurring each other on.”

“That kind of thing can be engineered; you've said so yourself. You know the Vallotton collectors. Contact a few of them and pit them against each other.”

Baier was right. Weynfeldt knew a few collectors who normally bid over the telephone. And he was the one in charge of the phone lines. It was true that he could influence proceedings. He could advise telephone bidders not to go any higher, but he could also do the opposite. He thought for a second. Valuations were tricky. Too high and the house risked being stuck with the lot; too low and the discrepancy between estimate and hammer price could be so great it would damage Weynfeldt's reputation as an expert.

“I'm not going under a million,” Baier announced. “Between 1 and 1.5? How about that?”

Weynfeldt hesitated. “Between 1 and 1.3.”

“Take it,” Baier spluttered. “Now, at once.”

This would not have been the first time Weynfeldt had temporarily stored a painting at home. A quick call to the insurance department in London was enough. They were flexible there, and Weynfeldt's apartment was easily as secure as Murphy's storerooms, given that he shared the building with a bank.

“Sure,” he said, and walked toward the easel.

“No, stop! Leave it with me till tomorrow. One last night, to take my leave.”

Next morning Weynfeldt was driven to Baier's villa in one of Murphy's delivery vans, where he packed the painting carefully in Bubble Wrap and corrugated cardboard, signed the receipt and took it away.

On the way to his office a vague instinct told him not to take the painting to Murphy's but first to his apartment. He was surprised at himself, as he never normally followed his instincts.

T
HE PLEATED, MOTHER-OF-PEARL SILK TOP WAS HELD
together with a gathered ribbon of the same fabric. It was attached with a slender strap above the right breast, then wound its way over to the left shoulder where it formed a rosette. The top reached down just above the navel, exposing a swathe of stomach, then descended asymmetrically, tapering away above the left thigh. The turquoise silk wraparound skirt was attached using one single, white button at the hip, pleated in front of the left thigh. It opened and closed like an inverted fan as you walked. The whole outfit looked like it could be shed in an instant.

“Everything okay, madam?” The sales assistant called into the cubicle.

Lorena opened the door, came out and took few feline steps—one foot in front of the other—toward the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror. She knew how to walk in designer clothes; she had, after all, worked as a model. Not at the big fashion shows in Paris, Rome, London or New York—at five foot four inches she was too short—but she had modeled regularly for shows in boutiques and once had a permanent job as in-house model for a Swiss label for a while. For three seasons she'd done catalogues for a mail-order company too. She tried to forget those days spent in alternately sweltering or freezing studios in some provincial town. The commercial photographer acted like a star, and her colleagues fought for a few meager privileges by sharing sagging beds and shabby hotel rooms with him or his assistant or the company' advertising manager. Lorena had kept out of all this, with the result that after three catalogues she was no longer part of the team.

The three editions were also enough to do lasting damage to her modeling career, however. The agencies that recognized her face from the frumpy catalogues stopped giving her work. It made no difference that she had one of the most professional comp cards on the scene. It was designed by an award-winning art director she had been together with for a while—not least for that reason.

It was a few years since her modeling career had ended, but she still knew how to pose in an Issey Miyake number in front of a full-length mirror in one of the city's most exclusive boutiques so that the sales staff would take her for a highly promising customer. The saleswoman serving her said, “You're the first person we've had in here who can wear that.” And the shaven-headed salesman with the Comme des Garçons look standing on the spiral staircase leading up to the men's department gave her a smile of respect.

Lorena sauntered over to the racks inset between the matte black shelves and began sifting through the clothes nonchalantly. Now and again she took a hanger from the rack, inspected the item and either returned it or placed it over the back of a nearby leather armchair on her short list.

She came to a Prada dress in iridescent violet and black silk and held it in her hand a little longer. She draped it against herself, drew it in around her waist and stood in front of a mirror. She hesitated, then shook her head, appearing to have reached a decision, and hung it back. She continued shifting the hangers from right to left.

She paused again at another Prada dress, black silk, simple and close fitting. She took it out and pressed to her body. It had a round neckline, fastened with a button, and an open slit extending down between the breasts to the middle of the body. The sleeves ended above the elbows, the hem below the knee. She hesitated, looked back through the hangers till she found the violet dress, retrieved it, held both dresses up next to each other, hung them both back, picked up the short list pile from the chair, had second thoughts, took the violet Prada dress back out, placed it on top of her pile and took the lot into the cubicle.

She drew the curtain and hung the violet Prada number on a hook. The black one lay beneath it. She had swiped it from the rack under the cover of the violet one. Now she folded it and rolled it up into a compact silk parcel which she stowed at the bottom of her handbag. Then she lowered the empty hanger into the wastepaper basket, hung the other dresses on the hooks, slipped into the violet Prada, did the zipper up as far as she could and opened the curtain. The saleswoman was standing just a few feet from the cubicle.

“Could you assist me with the zipper?” Lorena asked, without leaving the cubicle, instead waiting for the saleswoman to come to her. She turned round so she could do up the dress.

It had a stand-up collar, long sleeves gathered at the forearms and a generous wedge-shaped kick-pleat beginning at its broad leather belt and ending below the knee.

Lorena scrutinized her appearance in the mirror at length, giving the sales assistant lots of time to look inside the cubicle. “A little formless, somehow,” she decided in the end.

Over the next quarter of an hour Lorena appeared in a slightly hippy Christian Lacroix number made of various large-scale-flower-print silks, in a steel-blue ankle-length Issey Miyake outfit, a linen blouse with a high collar and an outsized frill by Emanuel Ungaro, in a black-and-white horizontal-striped
deux pièce
with a huge black bow by Sonia Rykiel and a short, high-necked dress by Karl Lagerfeld with broad, angular shoulders and a zipper running from the collar to the hemline.

She sashayed toward the floor-to-ceiling mirror each time and observed herself over her shoulder from behind as if on a catwalk, getting a little attention from the handful of other customers and the bored staff.

Before removing the Lagerfeld piece, she called the saleswoman over into the cubicle. “Would you be an angel,” she said, a shade condescending, “and put
this
,
this
and,
this
to one side.” She handed her the three outfits. “I'd like to show them to my boyfriend tomorrow. That'll be fine, won't it?”