Aaron Elkins - Old Scores

Many of the pictures had placards like ATTRIBUE A ABRAHAM VAN DEN TEMPEL or D'APRES JEROME BOSCH beside them; less than emphatic, as labels go. We have some at SAM too-every museum does-but most of the ones here were very obviously no more than amateur efforts, or student exercises at best, some of them flat-out dreadful. The more boldly identified paintings, and there were some by bona fide Old Masters, were almost as bad. Every artist has off-days, of course, and the Barillot offered living proof. In a way, it was unmatched in that respect. It had a bad Murillo, a bad Steen, a bad Tintoretto, and a bad Fragonard, and how many museums can you say that about? There was even a bad Velazquez, and that might just be unique.

And now, it seemed, they would be getting a bad Leger for company.

The building itself, an eighteenth-century townhouse, was still impressive, but it hurt me to see the once-delicate decorative moldings on lintels, jambs, doors, and ceilings buried under so many layers of thick white paint that they were no more than lumpy globs. Fortunately, there wasn't too much anyone could do to the central staircase, an austerely handsome stone spiral that Charpentier and I took upstairs, to where Froger's office was.

At the top, Charpentier put a hand on my arm. "Would you care to make a wager?" he asked. "Froger's first words will be to the effect that the demise of his dear friend Rene Vachey has shocked him to his soul, and that he himself will go to any lengths to see that justice is done. He may even have tears in his eyes. In fact, I'll include that in the wager."

I smiled. "No bet."

Froger had plenty of warning that we were coming, because we had to walk through three tiny "galleries" with wooden floors so squeaky that we sounded like an army. And we were the only visitors, this being the off-season as far as tourists were concerned, and the people of Dijon having better sense.

Froger's office was larger than most of the gallery rooms. It had no paintings in it, but there was a pedestal bearing an early version of Houdon's marble bust of Mirabeau in one corner, three good Sevres vases in a wall cupboard, and on one wall a large, faded Gobelin tapestry of hunting goddesses and deer, which hadn't been cleaned in two hundred years. Otherwise, there was just an elegant desk in the center of the room, actually a converted, drop-leaf gaming table from the early eighteenth century, and a couple of superb Empire chairs. Funny kind of a museum, I thought, where the classiest objets d'art in the place were in the director's office.

Seated behind the desk, facing us as we entered, was Froger himself, his hands folded on his belly, and his beefy face grave and composed.

"So somebody's finally killed the arrogant son of a bitch," he said.

I promised myself that the next time Charpentier offered me a bet, I'd take him up on it.

"Do they know who did it?" he asked me.

"How would I know that?"

"You went outside this morning. You had a talk with the inspector."

I'd forgotten he'd been there for the session on Vachey's will. "Well, if he knows, he didn't tell me," I said.

He waved us into the Empire chairs. "There shouldn't be any shortage of suspects, God knows."

There, at least, he, Charpentier, and I were all in agreement. I wondered if it had occurred to him that he was likely to be on the list himself. His feud with Vachey had been long and bitter, and last night's spiky, highly public encounter hadn't improved things.

"Beginning with me," he said with a rumbling laugh.

I was starting to have a bit more respect for Froger. He might be a horse's ass, but he wasn't a hundred percent horse's ass.

"Well, Jean-Luc," he said, "you've examined the painting again?"

"I have."

"And?"

"And it is still a Leger. Still an extremely poor one."

Froger's chin came off his chest. "Extremely poor? Last night it was merely not so good."

Charpentier pursed his lips. "I was being charitable. I may have been carried away."

Froger glowered momentarily, then rearranged his face and smiled. Clearly, he had resolved not to let Charpentier get his goat this time. "In any case," he said, moistening his lips, "you advise me to accept it?"

"I advise nothing. I'm not being paid to advise."

"But it is a Leger? You're sure of that?"

"It is a Leger," Charpentier said with truly amazing patience, given the fact that he had to be pretty tired of having his expertise questioned by now. "If that's all that matters to you, accept it."

Froger got his fingers into his collar, under the rolls of flesh, and tugged at it. "Look, Jean-Luc, no offense, but I'm very nervous about this. No one knows Leger better than you, I freely admit it, but even you can't be sure it's authentic."

"I am ready to stake my reputation on it," Charpentier said quietly.

But it was Froger's reputation that was worrying Froger. He hunched his massive shoulders uneasily. "It's just that I don't know what I'm getting into, and I don't want to be made a fool of."

Charpentier had finally had enough. He thumped the desk with a fist. "If you don't trust my judgment, damn it, go ahead and get someone else. They'll tell you exactly what I've told you."

Fat chance, I thought. Getting someone else would mean the Barillot, not Vachey's estate, would be footing the bill. Predictably, Froger started hemming and hawing. "Well, no, that is to say, of course I trust your judgment, Jean-Luc. Implicitly. That goes without saying. Er-Christopher, what about your Rembrandt? Are you going to accept it?"

"Probably, yes, if I can get some questions about its history settled. I think it's authentic."

How about that, I'd actually said it out loud. It was a bit of a shock hearing it.

"Gentlemen." Froger had summoned up his bottom-of-the-well baritone. He leaned forward, thick elbows on the satiny, billowing surface of the desk. "Gentlemen, if you're right, if this is an authentic painting by Leger, an authentic painting by Rembrandt-then what are we to make of Vachey's posturing and fooling about, of his absolute refusal to allow tests? What was he trying to do?"

That was a switch. Last night he'd been telling us what Vachey had in mind, not asking us.

"According to you," Charpentier said, not letting him forget it, "it's because they're forgeries. Well, they're not forgeries, and I would have thought that would be enough for you. As to Vachey, whatever he had in mind, no one is ever likely to know what it was now."

That didn't satisfy Froger. "All right, let me put it this way, Jean-Luc. Let's say I had independently commissioned you to help me decide whether to buy this painting, the very same painting. Let's say there were no restrictions about testing. Would you recommend that I send it to a laboratory to be absolutely certain it's authentic before purchasing it?"

Charpentier rubbed his nose. He got out his pack of Gitanes and lit up. Froger hurriedly produced an onyx ashtray and put it in front of him. "Only if you had money you were determined to waste," Charpentier said. "In the first place, every criterion reveals it as a Leger and nothing else; every single one. Second, remember that Leger is a twentieth-century master, not an artist of the Baroque or the Renaissance, so there is very little help that scientific tests can provide."

That seemed like an overstatement to me. True, even the most advanced dating techniques weren't going to be of much use on a painting less than a hundred years old, but what about infrared photography to highlight painting techniques, spectroscopy to analyze paint formulas, and all the rest of it? (Not that I could claim an overwhelmingly thorough grasp of all the rest of it.)

"Do you mean you never advise your clients to test modern paintings?" I asked him.

"Once in a great while I do, if there is some question that expert scrutiny cannot answer. But ordinarily, no. A scientific test is no better than the technician performing it. Technicians are people, and people make mistakes, Christopher."