Aaron Elkins - Old Scores

Julien Mann lived in this charmless area, on the fourth floor of the OVLOV building. His wife, a self-effacing, slightly crosseyed woman in a simple, floral-printed dress-what used to be called a housedress in the United States before it went out of fashion forty years ago-let me into a foyer, then took me through an old-fashioned kitchen with a faint, greasy smell of lamb, and into a living room filled with heavy, dark furniture from the fifties. Everything was spotless, dustless, and in its place. I wondered if she had spent the day cleaning on my account.

Mann was sitting in one of a pair of overstuffed armchairs, waiting for me. According to the newspaper article he had been seven in 1942, so he was now fifty-seven. He looked seventy, and an old seventy at that-a frail, severe, schoolmasterish man in suit and tie, with a pinched nose, a long, narrow mouth, and fierce, squinting eyes behind thick lenses. His gray hair had retreated halfway up his scalp, but what was left stood up in two stiff waves reminiscent of the "horns"-rays, actually-on Michelangelo's Moses.

He rose halfway and shook hands perfunctorily. "Good day," he said in clipped French. His nose was faintly blue at the tip. He gestured me into the corner of the massive couch opposite him and resumed his seat, inspecting me from under drawn-together brows.

"So he's dead," he said.

Mrs. Mann murmured something and left us alone, closing the door behind her and going out-into the kitchen? The foyer? Silence followed. I had thought Mann was waiting for her to leave before continuing, but he just sat there, hunched alertly forward, elbows on the arms of his chair, squeezing the fingertips of one hand with the fingers of the other, scrutinizing me with unsettling directness. "So he's dead," it appeared, was all he meant to say.

"About the painting," I said.

His attention was acute but he didn't move, didn't speak. This was going to be up to me.

"First," I said, "I want you to know that I'm not against you. If the painting is rightfully yours-if Vachey got it the way you say he did-then my museum would never stand in the way of your getting it back."

He responded the way he had when I'd told him pretty much the same thing the night before, which is to say he didn't.

"On the other hand," I went on, "you can understand that since his story is so different from yours, I have to do my best to find out as much as I can for myself."

Silence. His fingers continued to pinch each other.

"May I ask you a few questions, Monsieur Mann? About Rene Vachey, to begin with?"

A dip of the chin, wary and reserved. It was more than I'd gotten till then.

"According to the Echos Quotidiens article, you said Vachey bought up Jewish art collections at desperation prices, then sold them to the Nazis at a profit."

Another minuscule nod.

"Aside from your own case, do you have any evidence for that?" I winced the moment the words were out. It sounded like an interrogation.

He stiffened. "It was no secret. Everyone knew it was so," he said sharply.

"But you were only seven," I said, trying to seem less like a cross-examiner. "I'm surprised that a child would be aware of such things."

I didn't like pressing him, but I had to find out what I could about Vachey's wartime activities. If he had really built his collection on what he'd made as a Nazi middleman and profiteer, then-even if the Rembrandt turned out not to be Mann's Flinck-Christian Vachey was welcome to it.

"I know," Mann said through clamped jaws, "because my father told me. Later… in the camp."

"Did you know Vachey yourself? Were you ever in his gallery?"

"I saw him when he came for the painting. A cold man, with a cruel smile. He frightened me; I clung to my father's hand." He shook his thin shoulders, like a horse ridding itself of a biting fly. "My father pleaded for a reasonable amount, but Vachey laughed in his face and told him he was lucky to get anything. I recall this with perfect clarity, monsieur."

Did he? Or was it what Calvin had suggested-that he couldn't distinguish between what he remembered, what his father had told him, and what he had built up in his mind over the years? And what hope was there of my finding out after all this time?

"Maybe we ought to talk about the painting itself," I suggested. "You haven't actually seen it-that's right, isn't it?"

This was another important question Calvin had raised. Vachey's reception and showing were invitational affairs, not open to the general public. And no photos had been allowed. So how could Mann know what the picture looked like, let alone that it was the same one that had hung in his father's house?

"Not since 1942," he said.

"No, I'm talking specifically about the picture that's now on display in the Galerie Vachey."

His mouth set. "Not… since… 1942."

Time for another tack. "What I'm trying to find out, monsieur, is what makes you think that the Rembrandt that's now in Dijon is the same one-"

"Flinck," he said aggressively, "not Rembrandt."

"Well, either way, how do you know-"

"How do I know?" he said sharply. "I'll tell you how I know." He pushed himself forward a little more, chin thrust out. Perched on the edge of his seat, with those hunched shoulders and that pointy nose, he was like a belligerent little sparrow hawk.

"I never forgot that painting, monsieur. How could I? And I didn't forget Vachey either, but I didn't know what had happened to him. A few years ago I learned he was still alive, in Dijon, but what could I do? I assumed the painting was long gone. Then, a few weeks ago, there were stories of a mysterious Rembrandt he was giving away-a picture of an old soldier, it was said. Well, that gave the game away, because my father's painting was of an old soldier, and it was once thought that it might be by Rembrandt. But he had it looked into, you see."

"He had it appraised?"

"Yes, by some expert he'd heard of; from the Sorbonne, I think. It's definitely by Flinck. He was Rembrandt's student, you know."

"Ah. Even so, mightn't-"

"Let me finish. As it happens, my wife's cousin's son knows an Echos Quotidiens reporter who is familiar with the story. She was invited to the reception on Monday, and called me at once to describe it." His chin was thrust pugnaciously out; the tendons in his neck looked as if they might snap. "It is the same painting in every detail, monsieur!" he said triumphantly. "The old soldier, the hat, the plume!"

"Still," I said, "if you haven't seen it for yourself, you can't be sure-"

"And how am I to do that?" he said angrily. "My brother-in-law-ah, that is to say, my attorney-has demanded that I be given an opportunity to view it, and the Vachey people refuse. How then am I supposed to identify it? I ask you, is this just?"

Actually, yes. The thing was, the burden of proof was on Mann, and Sully had the right to refuse to let him see the picture. In a case like this, so the reasoning ran, it would be too easy for a spurious claimant to look at the object in question and say: "Yes, definitely, that is the very same painting stolen from my family fifty years ago. Now I remember this fly speck, that fleck of glue on the frame, this repair." Who could argue? On the other hand, keeping the painting hidden from view left precious little in the way of ammunition for a legitimate claimant who had no independent proof-no photographs, no insurance records- that it was his.

It was just, all right. What it wasn't, was fair.

"My apologies, monsieur," Mann said abruptly. "Would you care for an aperitif?"

I nodded gratefully. I cared for anything that might loosen things up.

The side table next to him held a tray with a freshly opened bottle of Chablis, a cut-glass decanter of cassis, the blood-red black-currant syrup the French love so much, and two silver-rimmed, ornately etched glasses that would have been right at home in my Norwegian grandmother's cupboard. He mixed us two Kirs -wine and cassis -and handed one to me. "To your health, monsieur." He swallowed.