The Art Forger (36 page)

Alana furrows her brow. “Claire Roth . . . Claire Roth . . .” She snaps her fingers. “Cullion. The Great Pretender. Is this another one of your publicity stunts?” Before I can answer, she stands. “I’ve heard enough. The police can take it from here.”

“No!” Rik jumps up. “Please, Alana, just hear her out. Maybe, just maybe, she’s on to something you need to know.”

She glares at him, then at me, then sits. “You’ve got five minutes.”

I tell her about my job, my expertise in Degas. “So I get a call one afternoon from Aiden Markel. We’d met, but I hadn’t spoken to him in years. He said he had a Repro-like job for me if I was interested. I’m just a consultant for Repro, no noncompete or anything, so I said sure.”

Alana waits. Rik studies his hands.

“He told me the gallery had a client in India,” I continue. “Some guy who had seen a high-quality reproduction of
After the Bath
owned by a friend of Aiden’s. The man wanted one that was equally as good.”

“Why didn’t he just have whoever painted the first one do another?” Alana asks. A legitimate question.

“The painter died,” I say quickly, wishing Aiden and I had spent more time on this story, hoping I’ll be able to think fast enough to fill in the holes.

Alana is stone-faced.

I clear my throat. “So Aiden said he’d heard I was the best, the only one who might be good enough to please his client, and he wanted to hire me to do the reproduction. He said he’d bring me his friend’s painting to use as a model.”

“There’s nothing illegal or unethical about copying a painting,” Rik says. “It’s done—”

“I’m speaking to Ms. Roth,” Alana barks. “I’ll hear from you later.”

Rik rubs his forehead with the palm of his hand, but he doesn’t say anything more.

“So,” I continue, “the next day, he showed up with two canvases. One was a late nineteenth-century painting by Ernest Meissonier. And the other was what he claimed was ‘the best copy ever produced’ of Degas’ last
After the Bath.
”

“Was it?” Alana asks.

“It was very good—but it was a copy.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I reproduce paintings for a living.”

“So the Meissonier was for you to strip so you could use the canvas for your forgery? And because you’re a ‘certified copyist’ you knew how to do this?”

“I’ve worked for Repro for years, taken classes, done a lot of research. I relied on known techniques.” I look at Rik, whose eyes are wide. “Used my notes, my experience, how-to forgery manuals.”

Alana’s lips are taut. “Are you telling me you created the
After the Bath
that’s hanging downstairs by following instructions in a paint-by-numbers book?”

“I guess that’s kind of true,” I admit. “Plus an oversized oven and a bit of phenol formaldehyde.”

Alana’s eyes narrow. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“I wish.”

“Let me get this straight,” she says. “Aiden Markel contacts you out of the blue, and you think the whole thing is on the up-and-up? You never wonder? Never question his motives?”

“It was Aiden Markel of Markel G,” Rik begins. “Who wouldn’t—”

Alana silences him with a fierce look.

“I just figured the client was really rich,” I say. “And after I studied the painting, I knew it was a copy, so why would I suspect anything?”

“You’re saying it wasn’t until the reinstallation that you realized what was going on?” Alana asks.

I look her straight in the eye. “I’m still not sure what’s going on.”

“Wait here,” Alana orders, then turns to Rik. “You come with me.”

A
HALF AN
hour later, Alana walks back in, followed by a wide-shouldered man in a sport jacket and tie. Although his head is too small for his body, which might make him look a bit comical, the hard expression on his face overrides this effect.

I stand, my stomach clamping down on itself. A cop if I ever saw one. High-ranking.

“Agent Lyons, FBI,” Alana says to me, then turns to the agent. “This is Claire Roth.”

“Hi.” I hold out my hand. Even worse than a cop.

The agent shakes it with his surprisingly soft one, but his face remains chiseled in steel. He doesn’t say anything, just nods curtly.

Alana sits at her desk, and Lyons takes Rik’s chair. “Explain to Agent Lyons what you explained to me,” she orders.

After I do, Lyons asks, his voice thick with incredulity, “And you believed Mr. Markel when he told you the painting he brought you was a copy? It never occurred to you it might be the one stolen in the robbery?”

“I could tell right away it wasn’t a real Degas, so, no, it never occurred to me to question it.”

“Do you think that was naive?”

I hesitate. “No. I’m still certain it wasn’t painted by Degas, and I know Aiden was certain of that, also.”

“How can you be so sure what he believed?”

“That’s what he told me, and the man knows his business. Plus, he’s Aiden Markel.”

“We see how far that got him.” The agent scribbles in his notebook, frowns, scribbles again.

I eye him warily. “I, ah, I think I should get a lawyer.”

Lyons and Alana share a glance. “Why?” he asks, looking perplexed. “You’re just reporting a possible incident, aren’t you? We’ve no idea if there’s been any law-breaking here. Or that you’re involved in any kind of criminal activity.”

When I don’t respond, the agent’s body language shifts into nice-guy mode: elbows on knees, torso toward me, smile on face. “So,” he says, “Ms. Roth, you believe Isabella Stewart Gardner was blackmailed by this . . .” he checks his notes, “this Virgil Rendell. Into hanging
his
painting instead of Degas’? And then she hid the real one?”

“That’s one theory. It could have happened for many other reasons. The important thing here is that the painting hung last night is the copy I was hired to paint. The copy of Aiden Markel’s copy.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I recognize the craquelure.”

He looks at Alana and raises an eyebrow.

“It’s how paint cracks over time.” She glowers at me. “A way of determining the age of a painting.”

“I know what it means,” Lyons says, and I sense that he may be more open-minded than he seems.

“As I told you before, this isn’t the first time Ms. Roth has made this kind of claim,” Alana says. “Her credibility is more than a little suspect.”

“Ah, Cullion’s
4D.
” He smiles at me. “But weren’t there some questions? Didn’t you have support from a number of people at MoMA?”

“Yes there were. A lot actually.” I’m well aware they’re playing good-cop-bad-cop, but the less said about
4D
the better. “I know the painting downstairs is mine because I was worried about a particular dark area along the bottom. That I didn’t wipe enough of the ink off before I sealed it. It felt overdone to me. And when I saw it last night, I knew it was.”

“Are you certain of this?” Lyons asks.

“I put a green dot on the back right-hand corner of the painting. On the stretcher. Check and you’ll see it.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Alana argues. “A random spot of paint could have come from anywhere. She could have seen it last night—or know about it because she was involved in the heist.”

“That’s ridicu—”

The agent leans in toward me. “Fair enough, but I still don’t understand how you know this Virgil Rendell forged the painting.”

“I don’t
know
for sure, but he is an established forger, and I saw his sketchbook. There are drawings in it of both the original and the forgery.”

“Now I’m really confused.”

“I have a book of Degas’ drawings containing preliminary compositional sketches for
After the Bath.
One set of Rendell’s drawings matches Degas’ preliminaries, and the other matches the painting that was in the Gardner.”

“Couldn’t Rendell have seen these same sketches? Been playing around with them?” Lyons asks.

“It’s unlikely. Although they were contemporaries, Degas was in Europe and Rendell in Boston, and I highly doubt they ever met. My theory is that Rendell saw the original when Belle brought it back here but before it was hung in the museum. Then, for whatever reason, when he forged it, he changed it.”

“How do you know what the original looks like?”

“It looks like Degas’ preliminary sketches.”

“And the one downstairs doesn’t?”

“No. Like I said before, one of the women is different, the configuration is different, and if you look at it closely, it doesn’t look like a Degas.”

“Preliminary sketches are never the same as the finished painting,” Alana snaps. “It’s a Degas. And I’ve looked very closely. As have a number of expert authenticators. People with training and credentials. Not some random certification by some Internet art copying company.”

“So,” Lyons says to me, “you knew it was a forgery when no one else did?”

“I just happened to have the right combination of background and skills to detect it. But mostly, I think I was the first one to really look.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, if we go with the idea that Isabella Gardner hung Rendell’s forgery, even under duress, then the painting would never have been officially authenticated. Everyone would have assumed it was a Degas and never questioned it. And because her will says nothing can be moved, the painting never went out on loan, where the duplicity might have been caught.”

“Could this have happened?” Lyons asks Alana.

“It’s absurd.”

“But possible?”

Alana crosses her arms over her chest. “Pretty much anything is.”

He turns back to me. “But wouldn’t Degas have known it wasn’t his painting? Wouldn’t he have visited the museum? Or seen a photo of it?”

“Degas came to this country only once,” I explain. “To New Orleans, and it was way before the museum opened. Communication wasn’t the way it is now, nor was travel. No phones, no planes. So, no, in all likelihood, he never saw it after he sold it to Belle.”

The agent sets his face in an overly thoughtful expression. “So, no one but you, three years out of graduate school, ever
really
looked
at a painting that hung in a major museum for almost a hundred years? No one but you ever figured out it wasn’t a Degas. Impressive. Very impressive.”

I just stare at him.

“Remind me how you did this,” he asks, again with disingenuous respect. “What were the clues?”

I explain again about the brushstrokes, the colors, the compositional sketches, the symmetry, the secret room in the basement. “It just all started to add up. And when I recognized my painting at the reinstallation last night, well . . .” I shrug.

Lyons whistles. “Excellent detective work, Ms. Roth. Ever consider a career at the FBI?”

Alana laughs.

Although I feel like planting my fist in both of their faces, I say, “I didn’t have to come forward with this information. I could’ve kept quiet, and everyone would have gone happily on their way. I did this to find out the truth and hopefully return a great masterpiece to the Gardner. I don’t appreciate being treated like some idiot child.”

“You didn’t ‘come forward,’ ” Alana reminds me. “You were caught trespassing by the Boston police.”

Lyons studies me closely, then says, “If I understand you correctly, then the Rendell forgery is the one that was stolen in the heist, and that’s the one Mr. Markel brought to you.”

“No, no, that’s not what I said.” I give him a hostile look so he’ll understand I’m on to his tricks and won’t be that easily tripped up. “The one Aiden brought me was a copy, a copy of Rendell’s forgery. Or, or it could have been a copy of someone else’s copy, I guess. I don’t really know. How could I know?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Alana points out.

“Do you happen to have these famous sketchbooks with you?” Lyons asks.

“They’re in my studio,” I say, furious with myself for falling into his trap.

“And you also tracked these down with your highly tuned detective skills?”

My first reaction is to tell him to go fuck himself, but instead, I say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, Agent Lyons, that’s exactly what I did.”

I’m rewarded by a quick flash of amusement in his eyes before he asks Alana, “You’ve got the blueprints, right?”

She glares at me before turning to her computer and starting to type.

“Perhaps, when you pull it up,” Lyons says, “Ms. Roth here can point out her secret room to us.”

I stand and move around to the side of Alana’s computer.

“You said the basement?” Alana asks without looking at me.

“Sub-basement.”

“Didn’t even know there was one,” she mutters, as she searches for the right page. “Here,” she says and pushes back her chair. “Show us.”