Authors: Karen Swan
It felt wrong being here. She knew she ought to go to bed, try to sleep and then make a polite but hasty retreat in the morning. If she could escape before he suggested breakfast, she’d be
doing well—
Her eyes fell to the drawer, the almost-invisible drawer that lined the bottom of the bookcase like a plinth. Instantly, her mind went back to work. The portrait.
There was a file in there, he’d told her that, detailing the provenance of the portrait with the same meticulous attention to detail as he’d compiled on the Renoir. Yes, at the
restaurant he’d given her the name of the artist and the name of the subject, both of which would be helpful in establishing the title and kicking off that provenance research. On the other
hand, if the information was all just sitting there, already collated . . .
She looked over to the bedroom door. It remained ajar, not a sound suggesting Noah had stirred or noticed her missing. Quickly she put down her glass and scurried to the drawer, pushing on it
and pulling out the box file. Inside, she looked for the red folder tabbed
Art
. Then she flicked the sub-files for the artist Gustav Huber.
She found it quickly thanks to his alphabetized system and, kneeling on the floor, her eyes darting every few seconds towards the bedroom, she hurriedly took off the paper clip. Topmost was a
colour photocopy of the painting and stapled to it, the same photo she’d seen in the Renoir file earlier.
She put the photos down and looked at the next sheet of paper. To her surprise it wasn’t a receipt or copy of a ledger but a letter – she scanned it quickly but as it was in German
she was unable to understand anything it said, only that it was addressed to Herr Haas and signed Gustav Huber. There were no numerals that she could make out suggesting a transfer of money between
them, not unless it was written in longhand. Had it been a gift, perhaps? Or was this just an acceptance of the commission? A chase for payment maybe? There were so many possibilities and yet again
she was locked out of understanding what they might be.
Remembering her phone in her bag, she thought she could photograph the letter and get someone else to translate it later, but it was in the bedroom, beside the bed. Dare she go in there and risk
waking Noah? She couldn’t afford to leave this paperwork lying around in case he did wake up.
Frustrated, she set it aside and studied the final sheet. It was an original copy of a ledger, the ink now bleeding rusty yellow onto the paper, that familiar trademark oval around the
letter-heading at the top of the page and she took in the dates, that dreaded name again.
But she felt the hairs rise on the backs of her arms as a sudden sound – the one she’d feared – in the bedroom caught her attention. She heard the creak of the bed, the rustle
of the duvet being thrown back. With a gasp, she shuffled the papers into a neat pile and paper-clipped them together, but there wasn’t time to find the exact spot in the alphabetized order
and she slid them randomly into the red file before placing it in the box file and depositing it all back in the drawer.
When Noah emerged a moment later, she was standing by the window, a glass of water in her hand and her back to him. Silently he walked over, slipping a hand inside the gown and closing it around
one breast, his lips on her neck. She closed her eyes and groaned lightly, pushing her body back against the length of his, nuzzling into his touch. If he did feel the quickened thud of her heart
against his palm, he would put it down to sexual excitement. Nothing more.
‘We have a big problem.’ Flora was pacing the tiny office, having waited all day for New York to wake up and then – thanks to a golfing day with clients at
the Maidstone in East Hampton – for Angus to actually get near a Wi-Fi connection. It was Sunday but she had come straight from the airport and it was getting dark outside now. She was
feeling almost hysterical at the thought of a shower, a meal and a sleep, and Angus’s candy-pink golfing jumper wasn’t helping matters.
Angus kept his poker face on. ‘I’m listening.’ This was what he always said when he meant, ‘
You’re scaring me.
’
She took a deep breath. ‘You know the portrait I found in the downstairs apartment?’
There was a pause. ‘The untitled, unsigned – ergo worthless – one?’ he asked after a moment, visibly relaxing that it wasn’t anything to do with the Renoir and
leaning on his nine iron.
‘Exactly.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘What about it?’
‘I’ve got an artist’s name and a title for it.’
Angus looked baffled and Flora could see he was trying to link why she was telling him about this when she had travelled out to investigate the Renoir. ‘Uh . . . OK. So?’
‘No. The question you have to ask me is, how? How do I know all this?’
‘OK, Flora, how do you know all this?’
‘Noah Haas told me . . . The woman in the painting is his great-aunt.’
There was a silence. ‘You’re kidding?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, that’s a bit of a big fucking coincidence,’ he exclaimed.
She took a deep breath again. ‘Yes and no.’
Angus looked back at her suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a big coincidence that I happened to end up in the apartment of the great-nephew of the woman whose portrait we currently have warehoused in Paris. Less so when you learn that
it was sold to a certain dealer in 1943.’
Angus’s face fell instantly. ‘Oh Jesus, don’t tell me—’
‘Franz Von Taschelt. Yes, I’m afraid so,’ she finished for him.
‘Shit!’ he hissed, getting up from his chair and beginning to pace too. He disappeared out of sight briefly but she sat still, knowing he’d reappear shortly. ‘So
that’s two paintings, now, in the Vermeils’ apartment that were sold to Von Taschelt?’
‘Two that we know about but there could be more. Once we start researching the other paintings, it could be more of the same. Hell, the entire consignment could have been bought from him!
A job-lot deal, nice and cheap in the middle of the war.’
Angus was quiet for a long time and Flora knew he was fretting about losing out on his juicy commission that would come from successfully getting these to sale; the Vermeils weren’t going
to auction anything from the apartment if this was the backstory. ‘Fuck.’ He ran his hands through his hair, pulling so tight at the roots he gave himself a momentary facelift.
But Flora didn’t laugh at the funny sight. She felt hollow inside. Last night – all of it – felt like a bad dream now. She didn’t recognize the person she’d become
out there: deceitful, reckless, bitter, manipulative. That wasn’t who she was. What was happening to her?
‘Does Haas know we’ve got it? The portrait, I mean?’
Flora shook her head. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Good. The last thing we need is for him to make some sort of claim on it.’
‘He’s got a copy of the receipt showing his family sold it to Von Taschelt. It was a pretty good price too, so it would be hard for him to argue it wasn’t legit. But he
does
want to buy it back. He’s been trying to trace it, but obviously the trail runs cold with V.T.’
‘Jesus, we have got to establish why that Nazi’s paintings are in our client’s property.’
‘I think for the obvious reason,’ she said quietly. ‘Because they bought them from him. He was their dealer.’
‘No. I won’t accept that until we’ve got the paperwork to support it,’ he said stubbornly. He thought for a moment. ‘There’s still a very plausible chance
that Von Taschelt sold the requisition to another party who then sold the lot, in its entirety possibly, to the Vermeils.’
Flora blinked back at him. A job lot sold not once, but twice, within a year? His hypothesis was a stretch of credibility to say the least. ‘It’s a tiny chance, Angus. I think we
need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario that the family basically bought from him direct and profited from the Third Reich.’ She shrugged. ‘Hell, maybe that’s why
Jacques’ father shut up the apartment. Maybe it was a deliberate plan. Lie low, let the dust settle . . .’
Angus closed his eyes as if in pain. ‘Holy crap, don’t even say that,
please
, Flora. You don’t understand the potential gravity of this. The Vermeils are Jewish. If this
was to get out to the press, the public consequences for them could be huge. They stood behind the President on Memorial Day last year. I can’t . . . I can’t even begin to think about
breaking this to them.’
Flora fell quiet, looking helplessly round her tiny office. The room felt even smaller at night, as though the darkness outside was pushing against the walls, contracting the space. There were
no curtains or blinds to keep it out, either, and she felt conspicuous in the all-white light, as though her first-floor office had become a stage.
‘We need to see what it says in Von Taschelt’s own ledgers – I don’t care if it’s a receipt, bill of sale, whatever. We need that final link in the chain to put a
bit of space between him and them. It all keeps coming back to that,’ Angus said finally. ‘Tell me you’ve heard back from the gallery in Saint-Paul?’
‘Not yet. I’ll chase them again.’
‘You said that before you went to Vienna.’
‘Yes. And I went straight to Vienna!’ she replied, frustrated. ‘And then I came straight back here. I’ve been busy, Angus. I’m not dragging my feet! And do I need
to remind you it’s Sunday – supposedly a day of rest? They won’t be working, even if I am!’
‘No, you’re right. Sorry. Sorry.’ He raked his hands through his hair again. ‘It’s just, this is beginning to bother me. We’re not making any progress. If
anything, we’re becoming more mired in problems.’
She didn’t reply. He was right. They were stuck. Far from distancing their clients from one of the most disgraced names in the history of fine art, they were only finding ever more links
between them. Carry on like this and they were going to uncover a full-scale collusion between both parties. ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s not all,’ she sighed heavily. He might
as well know everything. ‘There’s something else. The night before I went to Vienna, I discovered some photos of the Vermeils’ apartment have been posted on the
internet.’
‘What do you mean?
How?
’ His voice rose three octaves. ‘Mother of God, have we been hacked?’
‘No. They’re not our photos at all, that’s the problem. They’re on some “urban explorers” website –’ she made speech marks in the air with her
fingers – ‘and before you ask, it’s some underground cult tribe thing. People go round exploring abandoned buildings and posting the photos on these websites.’
‘And who posted these?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. They’re all anonymous – they’d be busted for trespass otherwise.’
‘Oh Christ!’ He rubbed his face in his hands. ‘You’re telling me there are photos of that entire art haul for just anyone to see?’
‘No,’ she corrected him quickly. ‘No, the photos aren’t of Apartment Eight – it’s Apartment Six.’
‘The empty one?’ Angus brightened up immediately. ‘Well, that’s OK then! There was nothing in there of interest.’
‘Except for the portrait! That’s what I’m saying – Noah Haas could see this.’
Angus paused. ‘Well, there’s a chance, of course, but it’s hardly the same disaster scenario as the haul upstairs being leaked. Can you
imagine
if people were to find
out about that? The press would be all over it. It would be the Munich case – damn, what was his name?’
‘Cornelius Gurlitt,’ she muttered.
‘Yes, him. It would be him all over again – that and then some! The Vermeils are a big deal. No, no, this is all fine – it’s just a painting on a bed in an empty
apartment. Why should anyone be interested in that? Let these explorers have their fun. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.’
Flora bit her thumbnail.
‘Stop looking so worried, Flora. It’s fine,’ he laughed.
She was worried, though. ‘I’m just . . . uneasy,’ she said, trying to find the right words. ‘The more I think about it, the more I think Travers lied to me about which
apartment was discovered. He said it was Number Eight but you went in there with me, Angus – it was clear
no one
had been in before us. And then there’s the whole issue of
Natascha being given the wrong keys – again, by an office junior who’s out of the loop.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I don’t think the family was supposed to know about the apartment downstairs. I think Travers deliberately handed over the wrong keys – the ones for Number Eight – to
prevent them from knowing about it.’
‘But why? There’s nothing in the apartment downstairs, except for the painting on the bed. Why keep that a secret from them?’
‘I know,’ she winced, shaking her head. ‘I don’t get it either. But I just know something’s not right. There’s too many things that are . . . off.’
‘And do you believe Elvis is still alive too? And that Marilyn was murdered?’ he quipped, stretching his arms out wide, distorting the diamonds on the front of his jumper. ‘I
never would have had you down as a conspiracy theorist, Flora,’ he tutted. ‘Look, you said yourself papers have gone missing from the drawers in Apartment Eight. That means someone else
was
in there besides us. That means there
were
two sets of intruders – the explorer guys downstairs, and the others upstairs. I know it’s bad luck but let’s look on
the bright side here – we’re bloody lucky they didn’t nick the art!’
She exhaled, feeling like a dog chasing its own tail. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘I know I am. Look, it’s late over there and you look like you haven’t slept in days. Go home, chill out and if you do nothing else tomorrow, get hold of that bloody gallery in
Saint-Paul. Fly down there and storm the damned archives yourself if you have to. We’ve waited long enough. The answers we need are in those vaults, I know it. This isn’t as complicated
as we’re making it.’
We? Or her? Was he passing the buck here?
He saw her concern and looked away guiltily. ‘Look, you should know I spoke to Lilian yesterday. I know you’re leading this project and I wasn’t stepping on your toes, but you
were in Vienna and she couldn’t get hold of you.’