If Anton had spoken these words I’d have been filled with panic ... panic at my own fierce longings, at my pitifully weak defences. And because Raimund—his brother—was so much like Anton to look at, I was swept through with a sense of outrage.
“I suppose your mother put you up to this,” I exploded bitterly. “Do you always do whatever Mama tells you?”
“Gail, that’s unkind.”
“But is it true?”
“My mother has grown very fond of you. She’s made no secret of the fact that she would dearly like you and me to ...”
“Indeed she hasn’t. We had a cosy chat this afternoon on that very subject. But I thought I made my answer crystal clear to her.”
“I did not realise you had talked about it,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Gail, but please forget all that. I’m asking you myself now, and it has nothing to do with her.”
“Oh, Raimund, don’t pretend. Your mother has this odd idea in her head that it would be nice for Benedict Sherbrooke’s daughter to be matched with her son, and she’s putting pressure on us both. But it won’t work, not with me. And you should be ashamed of letting her manipulate you.”
Raimund flushed, and he spoke unsteadily. “Look, I think we’re both a bit on edge tonight. Let’s leave it for now, shall we? Tomorrow you’ll see things in a different light”
“No, I won’t. I never will.”
“Never is
a hard word to say to a man, Gail.”
I was behaving cruelly, I knew. But I couldn’t help it. Having to fight this two-pronged attack in addition to all my other problems had pushed me almost to the point of desperation.
“Let’s get this straight, Raimund. The answer is no. And if you persist, then I’ll have no alternative but to leave here at once.”
He grasped my hand with sudden urgency, cupping it in both of his.
“Please ... forget all this. Give me another chance. Let us begin again and take things slowly. Let’s see how things develop. I swear I won’t press you, Gail.”
A door opened suddenly and Anton came into the hall. For a moment he didn’t notice us, then I caught his look of stunned disapproval as he did. Turning swiftly, he strode out again without speaking a word.
Too late, I dragged my hand from Raimund’s.
During the night the smell of smoke had permeated everything. After breakfast, I decided to go upstairs and look at the burnt-out turret, and I took the lift to the attic floor.
The curving stairway was no longer in darkness. Daylight filtered down sparsely, and when I made my way up—taking care not to slip on the wet and sooty stone steps—I was confronted by a gaping hole where the floor of the turret room should have been. All the other woodwork, doors, window frames, everything combustible, had also vanished, leaving only charred remains.
And with it had gone, if I was to believe what I’d heard last night, the meaning of Sigrid’s life, all her cherished hopes and dreams. Was it possible that losing a random collection of childhood treasures could have such a devastating effect on her?
I heard footsteps down below and Anton’s voice called up, “Gail, are you there?”
I kept silent, hoping that he’d give up and go away. But the footsteps came on up the stone steps.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he told me. “This was my last hope. What are you doing up here?”
Fear churned in my stomach. Behind me was only a yawning black gap, and if Anton were to give me the tiniest push now my death would have the appearance of an accident.
“I ... I wanted to see the extent of the damage,” I faltered.
“For heaven’s sake come away. It’s dangerous here. We can’t be sure that the structure is safe until we’ve had it checked over by a surveyor.”
I followed him down, thankful to be returning to a part of the Schloss where other people were around. When we reached the first floor, instead of continuing down the last flight of stairs, Anton turned along the corridor and threw open the door of his study.
“I want to talk to you, Gail... privately.”
My fear flared again and I jerked out, “Can’t you talk to me downstairs?”
“If you insist,” he said, frowning, “but I’d prefer it to be here. I have something to tell you, and I don’t want to be interrupted.”
It was a fairly large, square room, and comfortably furnished with a heavy oak desk and a hide-covered wing chair. There were a couple of other chairs, too, and masses of books arranged on shelves along two walls. Through the open door to a smaller room I could see a divan bed, pushed against the wall. It gave a makeshift impression, as if Anton couldn’t be bothered to fix anything more permanent. I recalled Raimund saying that Anton and Valencienne had slept apart for quite some time, and I found myself wondering where her bedroom had been. And wondering too how she had felt when her husband no longer shared it. Had she regretted driving him away, or hadn’t she cared?
Anton pulled a chair around for me, but I shook my head. “No, I won’t sit down.”
With a shrug, he perched himself on the edge of his desk. He gave me a strange, long look before speaking.
“I’d hoped to do this differently, Gail, if things had worked out according to plan. But that wretched fire has changed the situation completely, and now I’m forced to make a confession.”
“A confession?” I held my breath for what was coming.
“I have to go back a long way, if I’m going to make you understand. You know already of the extremely high regard my stepmother had for your father as an artist. But what you don’t know is that for some years now she’s cherished the idea of holding a public exhibition of his work which would force people to recognise Benedict Sherbrooke’s true stature—as she saw it. She believed that such an exhibition would cause a sensation.”
“What a hope.” In my nervousness the words came out flippantly.
“Perhaps Sigrid had more justification than you realise. You see, there was another collection of your father’s work which you never saw.”
My brain began to race, snatching at fragments and fitting them together. The locked door to the turret room, and Raimund’s odd manner when he’d found me up there one day. Karl’s suspicious attitude when he’d seen me descending the turret stair with a canvas under my arm. And I remembered the second door I’d seen up there, obviously a cupboard and securely locked. I thought of Ursula’s behaviour in the kitchen last night, talking strangely of Sigrid’s hopes and dreams ... her sudden keenness that I should return home to England. Anton had entered the kitchen at that moment, and told Sigrid that there was nothing left, not a trace.
This is the end, then,
she’d said with an air of tragedy.
They had all been involved, every single one of them. Conniving together to conceal from me a substantial part of my father’s output. And the fire last night had somehow brought about a change in their tactics.
I was convinced that I was on the right track, but I merely said to Anton, “Well ... go on.”
“About four years ago, Gail, your father did a painting that was different from anything he’d ever done before. I myself knew nothing about this at the time. In fact, I only learned about it quite recently.”
“In what way was it different?”
He said, without colour to his voice, “It looked exactly like a Constable.”
I stared at him. “You mean it was a copy?”
“No, not a copy. An original in Constable’s style.”
“Are you saying my father was a forger?” I burst out.
“No, Gail, don’t jump to conclusions. Give me time to explain.”
“I just want you to tell me the plain, simple truth.”
“It’s not simple, it’s very complicated. But this is the starting point. Benedict had been feeling despondent about his lack of success, and he painted this picture in a fit of bitterness. It was his method of demonstrating that he was every bit as good an artist as Constable had been.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“Benedict didn’t think so. And neither did Sigrid, when she saw what he’d done. She dreamed up the idea of holding an exhibition of his paintings, all in the style of famous landscape artists of the past. She believed that after seeing these, the art world could no longer ignore his greatness.”
“But my father must have known it was a nonsensical idea,” I protested.
“I think he was ready to grasp at any straw. And he was very much under my stepmother’s influence, remember. Anyway, over the next few years he secretly produced quite a number of these imitations for her.” Anton glanced at me questioningly. “Surely, Gail, if such a painting is so well done that even an expert is fooled, it must have great merit?”
“Oh, it’s clever, of course ... no one would deny that. But cleverness isn’t art. Besides, the whole idea is immoral.”
“Not if there was never any intention to deceive. The plan was purely to bring credit to your father, not to put the paintings on the market as genuine.”
“I should hope not.” I challenged Anton with a look. “I presume what you’re trying to work around to is that these paintings were kept in the turret room, and that they’ve all been destroyed in the fire?”
I saw relief in his eyes. “I must say you’re taking it very calmly. I’d been anticipating ...”
“What had you been anticipating? That I’d rant and rage because those paintings would have put money in my pocket?” My voice grated with bitterness. “That was what you thought right at the start, wasn’t it ... that I’d come rushing out to Switzerland for the pickings? And you’ve never really altered your opinion, have you?”
“Gail, you’re not being fair.”
“Have you been fair to me, any of you? You can’t even pretend—as you did about my father’s death, and about Willi being my half-brother—that you concealed these other paintings from me to spare my feelings. From what you say, Sigrid was proud of them, not ashamed. So hadn’t you better start telling me why I was kept in ignorance?”
His grey eyes reproached me. “I’m trying to, but it isn’t easy. You see, not all of them were destroyed in the fire. There is one painting still in existence, in America. It’s a landscape done in the style of a Victorian painter named George Frederic Watts.”
“In America? How did it get there?”
“It was sold ... sold as a genuine Watts.”
A coldness shivered up my spine. “But you told me that my father never had any intention of passing them off as genuine.”
“That’s quite true. It was nothing to do with Benedict. He was very angry and upset when he heard what had happened.”
“Then who
did
sell it?”
He hung back a moment. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but I can’t avoid it, not any longer. It was Raimund.”
“Raimund? But... but how did he come into it?”
Anton ran one finger along his eyebrow in a weary gesture.
“Look, why don’t you sit down, Gail?”
“I prefer to stand.”
He didn’t argue. “Before explaining about Raimund, let me tell you how I came into things. When I was in New York recently I happened to run into a man I’d met once or twice before at the house of a mutual friend, a business contact of ours over there. He’s an art dealer, and he mentioned casually that he was sorry he’d not been able to help my brother get back the George Frederic Watts. It emerged that when Raimund was in the States a few weeks earlier he’d taken a painting to this dealer for appraisal. Raimund’s story was that he’d inherited it from an aunt, and he wanted to know whether it was genuine and what it might be worth. The dealer not only verified the painting as the work of Watts, but made a handsome offer for it. Raimund accepted, and the deal was clinched. Then a few days after my brother returned home, the dealer had an urgent phone call from him wanting to buy the painting back ... but he explained that it had already been resold.”
“What did your dealer friend say when you told him that the painting was an imitation?”
“I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t know it at the time. I was completely mystified. My only thought was to get back here so I could ask Raimund what the devil was going on.”
“That’s why you returned home in such a hurry, then?”
“Exactly. And if you remember, Raimund was out with you all that day. But I managed to get the truth out of Sigrid.”
I gasped. “So Frau Kreuder knew about the deception, too?’
“She did by then. Raimund had been forced to tell her what he’d done. You see, towards the end of last year Sigrid had decided that the time was ripe to hold the exhibition, but by now your father was getting cold feet. Perhaps he’d known all along that it was a nonsensical idea. Anyhow, he confided his fears to Raimund—who’d been let into the secret—and my brother came up with a suggestion. He would take one of the paintings with him when he went to America and try it out on an art dealer he knew there. See if this man was fooled into thinking it genuine, and ...”
“You just said that my father was very angry when he found out,” I interrupted. “Now you’re trying to tell me he was a party to it all along.”
“Not to the
sale,
Gail ... that’s the whole point. Raimund has a somewhat odd sense of morality. It’s his argument that he never made any claim about the painting being genuine, and the offer the dealer made for it was based on his personal judgement as an expert. So what was wrong in accepting his money? He thought Benedict would be delighted and that they could split the proceeds. But instead your father flew into a rage, insisting that it was nothing less than fraud, and that Raimund must get the painting back at once.”
I felt a faint glow steal through the chill in my veins. “You told me once that the most important thing in my father’s life was his integrity as an artist ... that he had his own code of honesty. I suppose this is what you meant?”
Anton nodded.
“And Frau Kreuder, where did she come in?”
“Raimund had to go to his mother for help with money, since the dealer would obviously expect a profit on the transaction. At once Sigrid instructed Ernst to realise some of her securities so as to have the cash ready to hand. But when Raimund phoned the dealer to ask his price, he was told that the painting had been resold.”