Aaron Elkins - Old Scores

He moved closer to the canvas to point carefully at some unidentifiable-to me, anyway-small objects depicted on the table. "Note how the grays are on close inspection a range of carefully blended cream washes. And see, throughout, how the paint is thickly applied-but no impasto-and with precious little brush marking? These are all unmistakable attributes of Leger, impossible to simulate so exactly."

If Charpentier said so, who was I to argue? He really was one of the world's most sought-after authorities on the Cubists, and this wasn't the first time he'd been faced with a previously unknown Leger. Five or six years earlier he had made minor headlines of his own as head of an international team that had authenticated, as a Leger, a painting that had been hanging in a Basel restaurant for thirty years, on the wall of the corridor between the telephones and the restrooms. Originally, it had been reluctantly accepted by the owner in lieu of a thirty-dollar tab. Three years after its rediscovery it was on the auction block in London, where it went for somewhere in excess of two million dollars.

So there wasn't much doubt about his knowing his stuff. Still, I couldn't help thinking that what he was describing didn't seem so impossible to simulate. Why couldn't a knowledgeable and competent forger do all that? I suppose I was doing some wishful thinking. Since my first enigmatic talk with Vachey, I'd never shaken the idea that there was some kind of forgery involved in his show. I knew it couldn't be any of the paintings that were going to the Louvre; they were all impeccably documented. So was the Duchamp that Gisele was getting. That meant it had to be the Leger, or the Rembrandt, or both. I sure as hell didn't want it to be the Rembrandt, which left the Leger as my favorite candidate.

But Charpentier wasn't interested in helping my case. "You can see," he went on mercilessly, his wild eyebrows almost brushing the canvas, "the characteristic pencil markings that show through the ground. And see here, gentlemen, where this cadmium yellow band has clearly been repositioned two times- no, three. Always, Leger was making these changes in striving for the perfection of his effect."

He straightened up. "Not, unfortunately, to be achieved this time. As I trust I made clear last night, a Leger it is, but a third-rate work at best, of the sort that even the finest artist produces from time to time. Usually, he destroys it. I tell you frankly, I wish he had done so with this."

"Well, at least it'll fit in at the Barillot," I said.

"Yes, there's always that," he said with a near-smile. "Froger, that pompous elephant, will no doubt convince himself he has a masterpiece, whatever I say. Ah, that reminds me. I'm going to see him when I'm finished here. He asked me to invite you to join us, if I saw you. If you prefer, I'll say I didn't see you."

"No, that's fine. I'll go over with you."

Pepin poked his head into the alcove. "So here you are," he said to me, as friendly as ever. "Make up your mind, do you want to get it down or not?"

"Please." Then to Charpentier: "I'll need another few minutes with the Rembrandt, Jean-Luc," I said. "Want to join us?"

He shook his head. "The Baroque," he said turning again to the rehung Leger with its welter of clashing colors, jarring angles, and harsh perspective, "is not my cup of tea."

Back in the Dutch section, Calvin and I stood by while Pepin used his tournevis to unscrew the clamps that held two sturdy eyelets in the back of the picture's frame to a pair of hooks on metal rods coming down from a bar that ran along the ceiling. When he'd gotten them loosened, he got himself set and began to lift the painting from the wall, brushing off my help at first, but I got pushy again. Taking old pictures down is a two-man job. Together we lifted it carefully from the hooks and placed it upright, with its back to us, on a carpeted dolly he'd brought.

The result wasn't worth the effort. As I'd anticipated, the picture had been relined; that is, the age-weakened old canvas had been glued to a fresh piece of linen backing to strengthen it, and the whole thing reattached to a new stretcher. There wasn't a mark on it.

"Recently done," I said. "New lightweight bars, thermoplastic adhesive, all brand-new… Vachey probably had it done himself."

In itself, there was nothing wrong with that. It's the proper way to treat old pictures, and the relining had been done competently enough. On the other hand, it's also the first thing a crook does if there's something about the back of a canvas that he wants to hide. Not that I had found anything yet to suggest there was something-

"Pick up Nadia, quarter to one, for lunch at the Toison d'Or," Calvin said matter-of-factly from over my left shoulder.

I turned toward him, frowning. "What?"

"Not you, me," he said. "That was my pen."

It took a moment to register. "Your pen talks? Now why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Neat, huh? Well, if you don't need me anymore, I ought to get going."

"I'll get along," I said, "somehow."

"Anything I can do to, you know, help things along this afternoon?"

"Sure, maybe you could see if you could dig up something useful."

"Such as."

"Anything. The name of the junk shop Vachey's supposed to have bought this from would be nice."

"Where am I supposed to get that?"

I lowered my voice. "You could try Pepin. He seems pretty forthcoming."

"Right. Sure. Will do. Well, gotta go."

I nodded mutely to him as he left, his toothy, cocky grin in place. Pick up Nadia. Lithe, sexy, pretty Nadia. How did the guy do it, I wondered glumly. And where, while I was on the topic of lithe, sexy, pretty people, was Anne right now? Sleeping, no doubt; it was just 4:00 a.m. on the West Coast. In an hour the pale early-morning light would begin to filter through the curtains onto her face. She would stir.

"We are finished?" Pepin asked, having had enough of watching me staring into the middle distance.

"We are finished," I said. Together we got the painting back up. I had to admit that no one could have handled it any more tenderly than Pepin did.

I was hot from the mild effort, which struck me as odd. Picture galleries usually have rigid climate control systems, and the ideal temperature is generally agreed to be sixty-eight degrees. But it felt more like seventy-four or seventy-five to me. It had the previous night as well, but I'd attributed that to the crush. The air seemed dry too, below the conventional fifty to fifty-five percent humidity, but I was less sure about that.

"Monsieur Pepin, does it seem a little warm in here to you?"

Pepin took this, as he took just about everything, as a personal insult.

"Thank you. Are there other complaints you wish me to convey to Monsieur Va-to Madame Guyot?"

"I'm not complaining, I-never mind, forget it."

The hell with it, I thought. A few weeks at seventy-four degrees wasn't going to hurt my Rembrandt. Not when you considered that it had apparently gotten along without my expert advice, or anybody's expert advice, for 360-plus years. Junk shops and attics are not known for their exacting temperature controls.

Oops. Did I just call it a Rembrandt? No quotation marks, no "alleged"? Did I just call it my Rembrandt? Watch it there, Norgren, don't commit yourself before you have to. Even dead, Vachey was likely to have a trick or two up his sleeve.

I thanked Pepin for his help, and went and got Charpentier.

"Frankly, Christopher," he said as we departed le maison Vachey, I'm glad you're coming with me. You can restrain me if Froger again brings out the savage beast in me."

I laughed. "We can restrain each other."

Hunching grouchily along with a cigarette loosely wedged in the corner of his mouth, hands in the pockets of his baggy tweed jacket, chin tucked into a wool muffler, and black beret jammed down to his ears-all despite the mild fall weather-Charpentier reminded me of one of those black-and-white photos of postwar France, in which everybody was riding a bicycle, or carrying a baguette, or both, all the while looking Gallic as hell.