Aaron Elkins: Old Scores

Except one.

I lifted it, examined it, checked the frame, and finally propped it back against the wall. Another piece of the puzzle had dropped into place. If this kept up, I might eventually figure out what was going on.

"Look familiar to you?" I asked Christian.

"What? No. Well, in a way. It looks a little like that Rembrandt."

"It looks a lot like that Rembrandt," I said.

Christian gave it a quintessential double take, eyes boggling, jaw dropping. "Rembrandt!" He stared hungrily at it, then at me, a laugh gurgling in his chest. "You're not telling me that this is actually a

… that all this time, down here in the cellar, there's been a-a-"

"A Flinck," I said.

" A flink!" he shouted back at me. "What the fuck is a flink?"

Pepin, who was standing quietly behind us, said thoughtfully to me: "You may be right, monsieur."

"You've never seen this before?" I asked him.

"I have never seen any of these before."

"Who the fuck…" Christian began again, and Pepin explained who Govert Flinck was.

"It took a few seconds to penetrate. "You mean this is the painting this guy Mann wants back?" he said to me. "Not the Rembrandt upstairs?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Look at it. Picture of an old soldier-obviously the same model, same costume, same pose. He probably copied it directly from the Rembrandt picture-or more likely from some other student's copy."

Christian leaned over from the waist to examine it, hands on his knees. "Show me where it says 'Flinck.' "

"It doesn't. Nobody would sign a picture like this; it was just an exercise. Look, it isn't even properly finished. But I don't see how there can be much question that it's Mann's painting. How many pictures of this particular model, posed this particular way, could your father own? And you've already said he got these in the forties."

But there was more than that to back up Mann's claim. A small part of the lower right corner of the frame had been broken off and been glued back on. Some of the gilt around the break had flaked off, and the repair was plainly visible. It even looked like a job done by a couple of frightened kids, with a dried spurt of glue protruding from the back. We were looking at Capitaine Le Nez, all right.

I held back from mentioning the crack to Christian, however. It would have been too easy for him to get rid of the frame and put a new one on.

"What's it worth?" he asked.

"Just what you said-not much. It's nowhere near as good as the one upstairs and wasn't meant to be. It's a student exercise, a long way from Flinck at his best. And I doubt if there's any way to prove it is by Flinck." I turned from the picture to look directly at him. "Why don't you give it to him, Christian? Nobody's going to give you much money for it."

"Give it to him? What for? His father sold it, didn't he?"

"Come on, you know what the situation was. It would be a generous gesture on your part."

But his loose-lipped mouth had firmed. "If he thinks he has a case," he said sullenly, "let him go ahead and prove it in court."

And there I had to let it rest, not very hopefully. Even with that repair on the frame, I didn't give Julien Mann and his lawyer brother-in-law much chance of convincing a court of law that he had a legal right to it. A moral right, maybe, but courts didn't deal in moral rights.

We left Pepin rewrapping the paintings and came upstairs, back to the front door.

Christian had his easy, male-bonding smile in place again, and even went so far as to drape an arm over my shoulder. This was not a good move on his part; I could smell that now-familiar, citrusy cologne again. Back came distinct and unwelcome memories of pitching nose-first into the night.

"Well, what do you say, friend?" he said. "I've been as honest as I know how. Everything I know, you know. What now?"

"What do you mean, what now?" I got out from under his arm.

"You know what I mean. What are you going to do now?"

"What am I going to do now? I'm going to talk to Lefevre. Everything I know, he knows."

I opened the door and stepped out into the public vestibule. Several people were coming down from viewing the show. Christian, still smiling, waited for them to pass.

"Look, I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to get me to tell you what my father had cooked up, but I honest-to-God don't-"

"No, I'm telling you what I'm going to do."

"What the hell good will it do you? And what do you do if I deny everything? I don't believe you have any proof. What proof do you have?"

"So long, Christian." I went out and down the outside steps.

He followed me to the head of the staircase. The smile had disappeared. "Now wait," he shouted after me. "I thought… you led me to believe… Now look, Norgren, you can't… you can't.. ."

I could, but I didn't. He was right about the proof. What was I supposed to tell Lefevre, that I recognized Christian's cologne? So what? How many other men in France wore the same scent? Besides, I believed his story, at least in its general outlines. He hadn't set out to murder me; it had been the book, the record, he was after, and I didn't think there was any connection between his hapless attempt to get it and his father's death. Even the business about somebody else making off with it rang true to me. As for Mann's portrait, that hadn't been a police matter to begin with, and it wasn't now.

I supposed I'd ultimately have to tell Lefevre all about it, but I knew he'd classify it under the heading of Unsolicited Assistance, and I wasn't up to his reaction yet. It could wait one more day. Right now, I was ready for a drink and something to eat.

When I got to the Hotel du Nord, Gerard, the clerk behind the counter, called out to someone as I entered the small lobby. "Here he is now."

There was a movement on my left, in the corner where a group of easy chairs were arranged around a table. I turned toward it.

"Hi, Chris," Anne said.

The waiter laid out our breakfast, cafe complet for two: a big pitcher of hot coffee, a jug of hot milk, two six-inch chunks of baguette, croissants, hard rolls, butter, and foil-packed jams.

Anne did the pouring into the big cups. We tore off pieces of our croissants, littering the white tablecloth with flakes. We buttered our croissants. We took our first bites, our first sips. We looked at each other.

"Well," Anne said.

"Well," I said.

There is a way of saying "well" that means the small talk is over, and very pleasant it may have been, but now let's get down to serious business, if you please.

In our case it had been more than small talk, and it had been extremely pleasant. Once I'd come down off the ceiling the previous evening, Anne explained that she'd decided that my idea of a weekend in France was too good to pass up, and that maybe she could pull just a few more strings. She'd lined up a military flight to Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. From the nearby Frankfurt Airport she'd caught a commercial plane to Paris, and then another flight on to Dijon. She'd arrived only an hour earlier, and she was starving.

We'd gone out for a simple, wonderful dinner of moules mariniere, bread, and the house Chablis at a plain little restaurant on the Rue Dr. Maret, two blocks from the hotel. I hardly remember what we talked about, but it wasn't anything important. Mostly, I just basked in the knowledge that I was going to have three days to be with her after all. I think I didn't so much listen to her talk as watch her talk, happily taking in everything about her: those lovely, near-violet eyes, the wide, friendly mouth, the ghost of a tic that came and went in the soft skin below her eyes when she was nervous or excited, and which never failed to move me.