Caravaggio's Angel (18 page)

‘I’ve no idea. That’s what I wanted to ask you. I came across an article about it that mentioned his name. Not as being involved, but as someone who knew about it.’

‘Well, naturally he
knew
about it. Everyone knew about it. Everyone always does, until someone breaks the eleventh commandment and the
Daily Mail
gets hold of the story, and then, dear oh dear, tsk tsk, who would ever have imagined such a thing could happen. It’s inevitable, isn’t it, when you think about it. Art’s hard currency – where would you put
your
cash, pictures or euros? Hardly even a question, is it? – and where there’s currency there’s speculation. With added uncertainty, of course. You see a fake, I see an original worth millions. Pick your expert and take your choice. Those poor Russians were experts all right. They knew they were sitting on millions, and they hadn’t been paid for months – years. What were they expected to do, starve slowly in the name of art? But they could hardly sell the stuff openly, could they? So they sold it under the counter and got peanuts and had to watch other people make the millions. Still, I expect a peanut went quite a long way in Russia then. D’you know how that particular story came to light?’ he went on, all vagueness cast aside now in the interests of a good gossip. ‘Some journalist fell out with her boyfriend.’

‘Janet Colquhoun?’

‘Janet, yes,’ he agreed, giving an approving nod. ‘A
very
ambitious young lady
.
Not so young any more now, of course,’ he added, not without relish.

‘Who was the boyfriend?’

‘Now what was his name? I did know it . . . No, it’s gone. All I can tell you is that he worked for Sotheby’s. I believe he left her for another. So she took her revenge by telling all. Consternation all round,
dear
oh dear. Moral,’ he concluded, ‘steer clear of journalists.’

I felt myself blush, and hid behind my glass of wine, but he spotted it and took it for a comment on himself. ‘Take no notice of me, dear girl, I’m an old cynic. But when you’ve been in the business as long as I have . . .’

Bringing the conversation back to the matter in hand, I asked, ‘Are you saying Rigaut may have been involved?’

‘Involved, involved . . . If something interesting comes up, it’s his duty to acquire it if he can, at the best price he can. That’s part of his job. Or was, poor fellow,’ he corrected himself. ‘Why are you suddenly interested in all this, anyway? As you say, it was years ago.’

‘Oh, I happened to be surfing, you know how it is, and I saw something about it and got curious, that’s all. And then I remembered one of the obits mentioned he made lots of lucky finds in Switzerland.’

Freddie wasn’t to be drawn any further. ‘I believe one of his boyfriends was Swiss,’ he murmured, and beamed as the food arrived, effectively closing the subject.

My sandwiches looked very anaemic and well bred beside Freddie’s beef. He ladled on a generous dollop of horseradish and took a capacious bite. ‘I hope,’ he said through it, ‘that Antoine’s popping off like that’s not going to put too much of a spoke in your wheel.’

‘Not more than was there already.’

He looked up: like my previous revelation that I’d found three pictures, not two, this was something he hadn’t expected. ‘What d’you mean?’

I made him promise he wouldn’t mention any of what I was about to say to Tony Malahide, then told him the puzzling story of Antoine Rigaut’s veto on lending the Louvre St Cecilia.

‘How
very
odd,’ he said, wiping his mouth and pouring himself another glass of Sancerre. Instead of taking a sip, however, he sat back and fingered his braces. Not quite twanging yet, but clearly this lunch was proving more interesting than he had anticipated. ‘Now why should he have done that?’

‘Refuse permission? I’ve no idea, it’s one of the things I’m trying to find out. What’s even odder is that he didn’t refuse it, at first. It was all going through as normal. But then he suddenly put his foot down.’

Freddie shook his head wonderingly. ‘I’d plug on with them, if I were you – if they’ve changed their mind once they can change it again. Though it’s amazing how obstinate people get when they know they’re in the wrong . . . But I’m afraid all I can do is wish you the best of luck. Now Antoine’s gone I’m afraid I don’t have any strings to pull at the Louvre.’

‘There was just one more thing,’ I said hurriedly, before the subject of Antoine Rigaut finally closed. ‘I don’t sup-pose you know his address in Paris?’

‘It always used to be 14, quai des Grands Augustins. Of course, he might have moved . . . Why d’you want to know that?’

‘No particular reason, I just wondered. When I was at the Louvre everyone seemed determined not to tell me. He wasn’t there, and I wanted to find him, and they were being protective. I realized afterwards he must already have been dead.’

For the rest of the lunch we discussed technical matters: optics, faking techniques, the picture he’d shown me, its prospects, various other interesting items that had at one time or another passed through his hands. At the end of the meal he insisted on paying, as I had known he would. I thanked him profusely, but he waved my thanks away. ‘My pleasure. I’m afraid I wasn’t much use to you this time, though.’

I assured him he was wrong: he looked slightly alarmed. ‘Oh well, anything I can do, you know,’ he murmured, per-haps not quite as enthusiastic now (what was it he’d inadvertently given away?) as earlier in our meeting. ‘Any time.’

Reeling back to the office (of course I hadn’t been able to resist a second glass of wine, nor even, to my shame and undoing, half a third) I tried to work out exactly where I stood now, and what I should do next. But my poor fuddled brain was in no state to cope unaided, so I had to wait until I was once more at my desk and could write things down. Getting out a nice clean sheet of paper, I jotted down a few notes and headings.

Pictures

Getty – ex-Doria – promised.

Louvre – ex-Santa Cecilia via Berenson – refused – why?

Jaubertie – ex-Cavalletti – dubious – refused by JJR – why?

Freddie’s – the first? – ex-Del Monte if so – probable.

I stared at what I’d written, but it still refused to make sense. I could have sworn that the Jaubertie picture was ‘right’. But there were only three versions of the St Cecilia, of that I was pretty sure; and of the four pictures, Juliette’s, whatever I might think, had unquestionably the most dubious provenance.

Oh, well. Onwards.

To do

Check sample from La Jaubertie?

Janet Colquhoun?

Retry Louvre.

Olivier re JJ.

Here at least were four solid objectives for instant action. But I didn’t feel up to Olivier quite yet (and besides, he was writing his story and mustn’t be interrupted). And I needed to have something else under my belt if I was to make any progress with Charles Rey. So, Janet Colquhoun. It was not easy to see quite how she and her Swiss scandal fitted in with all this. But I was convinced that the two Rigaut refusals, from the Louvre and from La Jaubertie, were somehow linked; and whatever that link was, it was not straightforward. I was likelier to stumble upon it by a roundabout route, if at all. And once I’d found it, there might be some way of dealing with it.

I found my printout of her piece, then checked to see if she had a website. Sure enough, she did. The photograph at the top looked about twenty-five – a bit of cheating there: judging by her CV, she had to be getting on for forty. The website listed her publications, and I saw they included a book on the Swiss affair:
Bread, Butter and
Canvas – from Russia to Sotheby’s
, published in 1996. I’d better check that out before contacting her. I rang the Gallery’s library: yes, they had it. If I liked to come down, they’d point me in its direction.

The book, though, told me little more than the article I’d already read. There were too many breathless reconstructions of scenes in hotel rooms and heartrending, though doubtless accurate, descriptions of destitute Russian curators left high and dry by the fall of Communism. However, it included, which the article had not, the name of the dealer concerned, which it seemed was Hegelius, and also of the Sotheby’s boyfriend, one Tim Salisbury-Newall. And the interview with Antoine Rigaut was omitted, though I noticed that some of what he’d had to say now appeared as general wisdom, without attribution, and the Louvre was included in the list of collections that had acquired works by this route.

I turned back to the website. It gave an email address: that would probably be the easiest way to get in touch. I wondered how approachable Ms Colquhoun was, and took the opportunity of a tea-break to ask my friend Alice, who had the office next to mine, if she’d ever met her.

Alice stopped compiling a list of possible invitees to a conference she was organizing and swivelled round to face me. ‘Janet Colquhoun? The journalist?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Not actually. Doesn’t she write for the
Financial Times
?’

‘Mostly. I’ve got to ask her about something and I wondered what she was like.’

‘No idea,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘Just ask, what’s your problem?’

But something told me it might not be as straightforward as that. If Freddie Angelo was right about her motivation, then this might be an episode Ms Colquhoun did not much care to recall.

On the other hand, if I didn’t ask any questions she most definitely wouldn’t answer them.

Dear Janet Colquhoun, I’m at the National Gallery

No. The fact that I was at the National Gallery was neither here nor there in this particular inquiry. Anyway, it would be obvious from my email address.

Dear Janet Colquhoun, I’m trying to find out about
Antoine Rigaut, who as you probably know committed
suicide earlier this year.

No, that wouldn’t do either. What I wanted to know was about the scam. After that, we could move gently on to Rigaut. Or not.

Dear Janet Colquhoun, I’m trying to find out one or two
details relating to an artworld scam that took place in
Switzerland about ten years ago. I read your book and
wondered if it might be possible to come and talk to you
about it? Yours, Regina Lee.

Next morning, when I checked my email, Janet Colquhoun had not replied. Nor was there anything in the afternoon, nor the following day. Perhaps she was away on a story. Or maybe she didn’t check her website mailbox very often. I phoned the
Financial Times
, and they con-firmed that yes, Janet Colquhoun did work there, and yes, had an email address there. So I copied my message to that address. Next morning, there was still no reply. Clearly I’d have to phone.

When the switchboard put me through, the phone was picked up almost at once. A cool, brisk Scots voice – an Edinburgh voice, with those little squeezed-up vowels – said, ‘Janet Colquhoun.’

She was there, then.

‘Oh, Ms Colquhoun, I emailed you – perhaps you didn’t get it. My name’s Reggie Lee. It was about that art scam in Switzerland in 1995.’

‘Yes, I think I did get something.’ She sounded bored, blasé: wholly unenthusiastic. Perhaps she really was all those things, but I sensed embarrassment: she’d been intending to ignore my messages, and I’d caught her out. ‘I’d really like to talk to you about it. Could we meet for a drink, perhaps?’

‘I don’t quite know what you expect, ten years after the event,’ she drawled. ‘People always seem to think if you write a book you must have left out the really juicy bits. I can’t imagine why.’

I ploughed on regardless. Eager obtuseness, that was the tone. ‘I’m interested in Antoine Rigaut, that’s how I came across this. I notice you mentioned him in your original article, but not in your book, and I couldn’t help wondering why not. Was he involved?’

‘Antoine? There wasn’t much going on he
wasn’t
involved with.’

‘So he was?’

‘That’s not quite what I said. Read the book, it’s all there. All I know, anyway.’ And she rang off.

Not much joy there, then. Still, all was not lost. I could always try and find the boyfriend. With a monicker like that it shouldn’t be too hard.

17

London, September

The following Tuesday, I found a small padded envelope postmarked Meyrignac lying on the mat when I got home. Olivier had evidently passed on my message, and Francis had acted upon it, more promptly than I had dared hope. I rushed upstairs and tore the package open. Inside was one of those transparent plastic seal-tight pouches, and inside that, the samples I’d asked for.

The obvious place to test them would be the Gallery – we had a whole department devoted to such things. But I didn’t want to do that, just as I hadn’t wanted to ask the Director about Antoine Rigaut. People naturally prefer to know what it is they’re working on, what they’re supposed to be looking for, and word gets around. So I decided to call one of my old university teachers, who specialized in this kind of work. She’d been comparatively young when I knew her – in her early thirties. That would put her in her fifties now. Still around somewhere, even if she’d changed jobs. As I dialled my old college I pictured her in her eyrie there, up at the top of the old house in Bloomsbury.

‘I’m trying to contact Dr Lindsay Hillier.’

‘Hold on, please. Putting you through,’ said the woman at the switchboard.

Still there, then. Whether I’d find her in the office was another matter. It was by now the beginning of September, but term wouldn’t begin for a few weeks yet. If it were me I’d take the opportunity to lie on the beach a little while longer, or get on with my own work in blessed peace somewhere. Lindsay’s work, though, was inseparable from her workbench. So maybe she’d be around.

She wasn’t in college that evening, but the voicemail was taking messages for her, so she must come in from time to time. I didn’t leave a message, preferring to try again next morning.

This time she answered. Surprisingly she remembered me, or said she did. I explained where I was working and said I had something for analysis that might possibly be rather interesting, and would she mind giving me a quick opinion? To which she replied that of course she was, as always, very busy, but that if I wanted to bring it round, she’d try and have a look at it sometime the following week. I said I’d bring it straight over.

It was strange finding myself back among Bloomsbury’s tree-shaded Georgian squares, and as I mounted the familiar, shabby stairs and threaded my way through the labyrinth of dingy corridors, the sense of being caught in a time-warp became ever stronger. Or perhaps it was a ghost-train: from time to time, as I navigated some dark, narrow passage, a door would fly open, and there would be a half-remembered face from my student days, peering at me with a puzzled expression. Was I someone they should recognize? Doubtless I seemed vaguely familiar . . . Finally, at the very end of a corridor, and up three flights of increasingly rickety stairs, I arrived at my destination.

The door was shut: in my student days, a sign that Dr Hillier was to be left severely alone. But I wasn’t a student any longer. Fortified by an appointment, I knocked and entered. And there she was, exactly where I’d left her last time we’d met, at her bench of samples beside the mansard window, the back wall stacked with canvases left by over-optimistic clients in the almost invariably doomed hope that Aunt Julia’s old seascape with cows might prove to be a long-lost Cuyp. She welcomed me with her usual preoccupied smile, and indeed seemed in every way eerily unchanged: thin, unmade-up, dressed in jeans – a beacon of pure scholarship, on whose findings millions turned. From time to time, well-padded men in Savile Row suits, their hair a little long at the nape, could be seen gingerly advancing along these druggeted corridors in their hand-made shoes, carrying smaller or larger flat parcels. Months later, the papers would be full of some exciting new find in the world of art – a hitherto unidentified De Hooch, a lost Renoir, a ballyhooed sale filled with glitterati. Lindsay’s name, however, would not appear in the news-paper reports. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘So what’s the mystery?’

I handed over my plastic envelope and explained that I’d rather not say anything at this point – I just wanted to know what she thought of the contents.

‘
Very
mysterious. Aren’t you even going to show me a photograph?’

Feeling rather stupid, I burrowed in my bag and pro-duced one. Lindsay reached for the rimless half-moon glasses that were lying on her bench and studied it intently. ‘Looks like a Caravaggio, or that school. Is that right?’

‘It may be. That’s what I need to find out.’

‘You do realize,’ she said, looking at me over the tops of her glasses, ‘that I can never tell you that anything definitely
is
something? I can tell you what it may be, and how likely, and what it certainly isn’t. But in the end it’s just varying degrees of likelihood.’

I nodded agreement.

She turned the envelope over in her hands. It contained a fragment of canvas and a flake of paint about three millimetres square – Uncle Francis had been laudably concerned not to damage other people’s property. A minute amount, it looked, but we were talking microscopic analysis here. ‘All right. You do know I charge for this?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I replied smoothly, though in fact the thought hadn’t occurred to me. Somehow, like most people, I assumed university expertise came free. ‘I’ve got a budget.’

She looked at me sharply. ‘Didn’t you say you’re at the National Gallery? Why don’t you give this to them to analyse? If you’ve got a budget, presumably this is something official. They’d do it for free, surely?’ One way or another, she seemed determined to refuse my piece of work.

I felt like a first-year again, explaining why I hadn’t written my essay on time. In the wavy world of accreditation, Lindsay and her unbendable panoply of tests tended to have that effect. People might opine till they were blue in the face, but if the science didn’t add up, all their opinions were worth precisely nothing. I agreed that the Gallery did indeed have its own experts. ‘But it’s a bit edgy politically. It’s all quite OK and above-board,’ I added hastily. ‘But I just thought – I’d rather come to someone outside.’

She considered this, and laughed. ‘Well, all right then,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a ring when it’s done. OK?’

‘There’s just one more thing. You wouldn’t happen to know someone called Tim Salisbury-Newall? Used to work for Sotheby’s.’ I knew Lindsay had connections at Sotheby’s – she sometimes helped them when they needed something authenticated.

‘Salisbury-Newall.’ She stood lost in thought. ‘It rings a bell. Hasn’t worked there for a while, though, has he?’

‘Not for years. I just wondered.’

‘No . . . but I’m sure I heard the name somewhere just recently. Let me think . . .’ After a couple of minutes, though, she shook her head. ‘Sorry. If it comes to me I’ll let you know.’

I was halfway down the corridor when she came running after me. ‘I remembered as soon as you left the room. He’s set up in business on his own account.’

‘I don’t suppose you know where?’

‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but I have a feeling it’s in King Street, St James’s. The shop’s called Salisbury-Newall Associates. Give him my regards.’

By now it was gone twelve, so I decided I’d have some lunch then go straight on to King Street. If Salisbury-Newall was there, fine; if not, I’d make an appointment.

King Street is home to a number of old master dealers. Salisbury-Newall’s shop was about halfway along, with a discreet narrow frontage and shiny black paint, its small window almost entirely taken up by a Dutch flower piece. I rang the bell, and a Sloane sitting at a desk towards the back of the shop eyed me suspiciously before deciding I probably didn’t pack a gun and pressing the buzzer to let me in. A lady in a ruff stared down from my right, on my left hung a tiny view of Venice in an ornate black and gold frame. But I saw better every day of my working life. I con-centrated on the Sloane. ‘Is Mr Salisbury-Newall around?’

‘Who should I say wants to see him?’ she drawled.

I handed over my National Gallery card. The Sloane looked at it, then me, as if it were a passport. I said, ‘There’s something I need to know and Lindsay Hillier thought he might be able to help.’

Reluctantly she rose and vanished into a back room. When she re-emerged it was in the wake of a tall, pink-faced fellow in a close-fitting black and white tweed suit. He had brown slicked-back hair, balding on top and curling slightly on his collar, and a fleshy, small-featured squire’s face out of a Gainsborough portrait. ‘Dr –’ he glanced down at my card – ‘Lee? How can I help you?’

I said, ‘It’s a bit of a long story.’

‘We’d better sit down to it then. Bring us some tea, can you, Venetia?’

Venetia, poor thing. I always think it’s a bit tasteless to name your children after the place of conception. It makes it all seem so biological.

Tim S-N. led the way into the back room, sat himself down behind a large mahogany desk, and motioned me to an armchair opposite. Venetia appeared carrying a tray with a teapot, a milk jug, a sugar bowl, two mugs and a plate with four chocolate biscuits, and set it down on the desk. When we were both settled with a mug of tea and a biscuit Salisbury-Newall said, ‘Lindsay Hillier. It’s a good few years since I’ve heard from her. How is she?’

‘Much as she was when you last saw her, I should think.’

‘Yes, I can’t imagine her changing,’ he agreed. ‘So how did she think I could help you?’

‘Actually, that was a bit of a white lie. I wanted to find you and she kindly gave me your address. It’s to do with an exhibition I’m trying to get together.’

‘Fascinating,’ he said politely when I’d described it. ‘But I don’t really see how I can help.’

I explained about Antoine Rigaut – his unexpected refusal to lend the picture, his even more unexpected death, my growing sense that the two were somehow connected.

‘Really?’ he said, even more politely. Clearly he thought me a total fantasist.

Now for it: time to broach the Swiss scam. A tricky topic – that much was evident. Neither Janet Colquhoun nor Freddie Angelo had wanted to talk about it. I couldn’t see why the comfortable gentleman sitting so snugly opposite me, and now embarking on his second chocolate biscuit, should feel any more inclined to oblige. Whatever it had been for them, for him it had been, at least temporarily, disastrous. Still, that was why I was here. I took a deep breath and said, ‘I came across a story that happened ten or twelve years ago that seemed as though it might have involved Rigaut. It was to do with Russian paintings com-ing into Switzerland.’

At the mention of Switzerland Tim Salisbury-Newall may have turned a slightly deeper shade of puce, though given his normal complexion it wasn’t something I’d have liked to swear to. However, whether because he was more shameless than my other informants, or non-informants, or had less of a guilty conscience, he displayed no other sign of discomfort. Instead, biting into his biscuit, he said, ‘No, no,
Antoine
didn’t have anything much to do with that. Though having said that,’ he mused, ‘he did acquire one or two rather good things for his collections. And as I recall there was a very nice Poussin that I’m pretty sure he kept for himself.’

‘When you say
Antoine
didn’t . . .?’

‘The one involved was his brother. Jean-Jacques.’

‘
Jean-Jacques
?’

He nodded. ‘Creepy fellow, don’t know if you know him. Operator, though. Not that you need me to tell you that these days. But he was just an obscure provincial politician then. Mayor of his local town, something like that. When the Wall came down and the Soviet empire crashed, he went to Russia with some deputation of French local politicians to see if they could help, hands across the water kind of thing. And perhaps find something interesting among the pieces. And who should he meet there but some chap who knew his brother – curator of a provincial art museum, the usual kind of stuff, lots of gloomy Russian pictures of melting snow and a few more interesting things pinched from local collectors in 1917. I imagine the chap recognized the name and introduced himself – I know someone called Rigaut, don’t expect you’re anything to do with him but thought I’d just ask sort of thing. Anyhow, he spoke to Jean-Jacques and told his tale of woe – no money, worthless when it did come, everyone’s pensions and salaries down the drain, don’t know where the next meal’s coming from, buildings falling down, collection suffering, the usual ghastly story. People were selling their grandma for a loaf of bread, and perhaps he hoped if he could get in touch with Antoine he’d be offered a job in the Louvre or something. Well, of course he struck lucky all right, but what Jean-Jacques saw was that if he played this right everybody stood to do rather well. So he said Leave it to me, or words to that effect, and when he got back home started to make a few inquiries. What he needed was an anchor-man – someone well-connected but not too over-looked and who wouldn’t ask too many questions. And that’s where Antoine came in. Everyone knew he’d made a few lucky finds through this chap Hegelius in Zurich. I don’t know if Antoine actually put Jean-Jacques in touch with Hegelius or if Jean-Jacques simply went straight to him – it was no secret who Antoine’s dealer was there. Anyhow, he went back to Russia not long after, and all this stuff began to pour out. The way it worked was, Rigaut paid for it in dollars, which Hegelius provided and Rigaut got sent out in the French diplomatic bag. I imagine some-one that end passed them on – I never knew exactly what the arrangement was there. Realistically, I don’t expect many of the dollars reached the actual chaps. Then when the stuff got to Zurich, which of course also took a bit of arranging, there was a private auction. And then a little while later bits and pieces trickled into the public auctions, and bona fide buyers paid lots of bona fide money. And everyone was happy. Some people did
very
nicely for themselves.’

‘Until it was blown.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said imperturbably. ‘Well, nothing lasts for ever. The flow was drying up by then, anyhow. Though I seem to think Hegelius and Rigaut went on with it for a while in a private capacity, if you get my meaning. But by then I didn’t have any more to do with it. Or him.’