The Rembrandt Secret (6 page)

7

‘He never liked these places,’ Marshall said, without turning round. He had heard the door open and had recognised the footsteps and the slight pressure of her hand on his shoulder. ‘He’d have said that I should just have put him in a box – one of those earth-friendly things that break down naturally – and buried him in a field somewhere.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

He turned and looked at his ex-wife. ‘Aren’t you going to say something funny?’

‘It wouldn’t be the right place.’

‘That’s why it would be funny. You always said the wrong thing in the wrong place,’ Marshall replied affectionately, his voice low, as he reached for her hand.

Georgia pulled up a chair next to him, both of them sitting beside Owen’s coffin in the Chapel of Rest. She didn’t look at her ex-father-in-law’s face. Couldn’t bring herself to – not yet. As soon as she had heard about Owen Zeigler’s death she phoned Marshall, and been there for him – on and off – over the next forty-eight hours. Talking, but mostly listening.

Taking the scarf from around her neck, Georgia flicked her long curly hair from her face. Lying hair, Marshall used to call it. Always changing. Chestnut in the morning, fire-red in fluorescent light and amber coated in sunshine. But her eyes were constant, dark and steady, always alert.

‘They patched him up,’ Marshall went on. ‘He doesn’t look too bad now.’

Slowly Georgia turned from Marshall and looked into the dead face of Owen Zeigler. The scalp wound had been closed, leaving only a faint scar line running vertically down his forehead. Puzzled, she then realised that the ochre tinge to Owen’s skin came from make-up, applied thickly to cover the wound and the bruising. Steadily she studied his closed eyelids, the long line of his nose, his mouth. Unrecognisable, fixed into an undertaker’s idea of a beatific smile.

‘It’s not like him.’

‘No,’ Marshall agreed. ‘Someone said that they always make the dead smile so that they’re less frightening, but that grimace looks odd, sinister. My father would’ve hated it.’

He reached out, then realising that he couldn’t change his father’s expression, he withdrew his hand. Marshall stared at the red carnation in Owen’s buttonhole, taking in the light grey suit and the white shirt which he had brought into the undertakers the previous night after his father’s body had been released to the Chapel of Rest; after the pathologist and the police had done with it; after Owen Zeigler’s scalp had been stitched together again …

‘How long have you been here?’ Georgia asked.

‘All morning.’

‘Have you eaten?’

Marshall shrugged. ‘I’m not interested in food.’

‘You have to eat. I’ll take you for some lunch.’

He didn’t move. ‘People have been coming and going all morning.’

‘Your father was popular—’

‘Not with his killer.’

Her hand tightened over his. In the corner of the small, clean room candles burned, a stained glass window depicting a Biblical scene. The glass was thick, and coloured darkly enough to prevent anyone from seeing in – or out. Georgia looked at the dead man, noticing minute, pointless details. Like the pristine way the pale blue silk lining of the coffin was pleated; was this a grim echo of birth, she wondered? Blue for a boy, pink for a girl?

‘The funeral’s tomorrow. I’m burying him in the church near Thurstons,’ said Marshall, quietly. ‘Only a few people will travel that far, but the reception in London will be for everyone else. My father would have preferred that, I think … I don’t know, he never said. I don’t know what he would have wanted. He didn’t leave a will either.’

‘He didn’t expect to die.’

‘Nicolai Kapinski said my father had never even thought about death. Well, in a way, why should he? He wasn’t
that
old a man, but still, you’d have thought it would have come into his mind now and then.’

‘I think people fall into two categories – half think about death too little, the other half too much.’

He turned to look at her. ‘Which are you?’

‘I’m superficial, I only want to think about life.’

‘You were never superficial,’ he replied.

Leaning forward, Marshall’s eyes fixed on the coffin. Varnished wood, with brass handles that looked pseudo-French. The undertaker had shown him numerous brochures of coffins and brass plaques and handles – so many bloody handles – as if the handles mattered. And Marshall, still deeply in shock, had studied the brochures and chosen everything carefully, with thought, as though he was planning a menu. And all the time he was remembering how he had found his father; reliving the same hot fear as details of the murder scene intermingled with the coffin handles. He saw again the rope which had bound Owen’s hands; recalled the hot, iron smell of blood, as the overhead light had dimmed and flickered, and the swollen insides sliding to the floor. He had wanted to pick them up, to push them back into the cavity of his father’s stomach, to hold them in, and somehow make him whole again …

‘Marshall?’

Distracted from the memory, he became aware that he had been grasping Georgia’s hand so tightly her fingers were white. ‘Sorry,’ he said, letting go. ‘I was just thinking.’

Nodding, she glanced through the small round glass window in the door. Someone was passing and paused, looking in and smiling a kind, professional smile. She responded, wondering how anyone could work in an undertakers’ office, where there was only one ending – death. As a teacher, Georgia was involved with children; little humans for whom life was beginning, not ending. With luck, none of them would die too young, and she hoped that, in twenty years time, they would seek her out and tell her what a difference she had made to their lives.

It was a familiar daydream, which Georgia already had when she was married to Marshall. They had met at a private view at the Zeigler Gallery, Georgia invited there by friends and finding herself quickly bored. Rescued by Marshall, she had been amused at how little he was interested in his father’s illustrious business. He could so easily have slid into ready-made affluence but, as he told her later, his heart wasn’t in the art world. Georgia had liked that about Marshall Zeigler. Liked a man who didn’t take the easy way out.

Their marriage had fallen apart after six years because they were both too young and too independent to settle into domesticity. Friends yes, lovers certainly. But a married couple? No. That hadn’t been written into either of their charts, so their decision to separate had been amicable, their divorce good natured. Georgia had quipped to her friends, ‘I was very good to my husband. I left him.’

In time they both found other people. When Georgia had had her heart broken, she had turned to Marshall, and when the heady intoxication of his affairs fizzled into flat champagne, they had always commiserated. In fact, they had remained fixtures in each other’s lives, and their bond was such that they could talk every day for a week, and then have no contact for two months without it being a problem. When they spoke again, they picked up where they’d left off, and if one of them needed the other, they were always there.

‘You never think your parents will be frightened, do you?’

Surprised, Georgia glanced at her ex-husband. ‘Was Owen afraid?’

‘Terrified, the last time I talked to him … He was supposed to be spending the weekend with
me
, not lying in a bloody coffin.’ He stared angrily at the corpse. ‘They made him look like a ghoul.’ He fiddled angrily with his father’s tie. ‘And he never tied it like that! They’ve done a crap job. I told them. I told them
exactly
how it had to be, how everything had to be. You’d think they’d have listened. You’d think that, wouldn’t you?’

Georgia put her arm around him.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I never said goodbye.’

‘Say it now.’

‘What?’

‘Say goodbye now.’

‘He’s dead. I don’t believe in life after death.’

‘I’d still say it, Marshall. You never know.’

Georgia got to her feet and walked out of the chapel. She leaned against the wall in the corridor, took a few deep breaths, and then looked in through the porthole in the door. Marshall was standing at the head of coffin, looking down. She could see his lips move, but could only decipher the last six words:
I’ll make someone pay for this.

8

Dressed in their heavy overcoats and black armbands, Gordon Hendrix and Lester Fox stood in the gallery doorway and watched the street. Next to them, Vicky Leighton, the gallery receptionist, was crying softly. They could see Marshall talking to a dealer, and Lester nodded respectfully to Samuel Hemmings, who had come up to town for the funeral of Owen Zeigler. Off to one side, on his own, stood a tiny, shaken Nicolai Kapinski, drained of all colour, his balding head a pale orb against the dark collar of his winter coat. Tufts of other people dressed in black clustered like barnacles on the bow of the London street. Faces, pallid from emotion or cold, exchanged murmured remembrances of a dead colleague. And at the corner of the street, the pinched figure of Tobar Manners watched. Surrounded by a bevy of his cohorts, his metallic eyes flicked from the mourners to Marshall, and back again.

Rosella had kept her word and left him, but no one knew. Everyone thought it was just another of her holidays. And Tobar would leave it like that … His face turned slightly against the wind, he stared at the back of Marshall’s head, only half listening to what someone was saying. Of course there had been talk about the Rembrandt sale – a good deal of whispering behind Tobar’s back. Some people had even intimated that he had cheated Owen Zeigler, and implied that he was indirectly responsible for his friend’s murder.

And now, suddenly, the stakes had been raised even higher. Now there was a murderer in their midst.

He wouldn’t admit it, but Tobar Manners had been struggling too. Not as much as some of the less successful dealers, because his coup with the Rembrandt had protected him. Of course he had lied to Owen; of course he had arranged for a second party to sell on the painting, then share the proceeds with him. His wife might know, but no one could prove it.

Pulling up his coat collar, Tobar turned, watching as Samuel Hemmings approached in his wheelchair.

‘Manners,’ Samuel said, his tone unreadable as he sat, leaning his chin on his stick, his driver waiting in the car across the street. In the dropping temperature, Samuel looked frail; whippet thin, muffled in a coat and scarf with a fur hat pulled down low over his forehead.

‘You look like a fucking mushroom.’

‘Good to see you too, Tobar.’

‘I didn’t expect you to make it up from Sussex, I thought you’d died.’

‘Oh, no. After all, it wasn’t me you robbed,’ Samuel countered deftly. ‘How are you sleeping?’

Shuffling his feet, Tobar glanced at his companions, then looked back to the old man, his voice low. ‘Don’t go throwing around accusations, Mr Hemmings. Although you’re old and most people would put it down to senility, I’d still be careful.’

‘You look thin,’ Samuel went on, unperturbed. ‘Your food not going down well? Must be all that bile in your gut, Tobar. Or a bad conscience. It shows on your face—’

‘Shut up!’ Tobar hissed, leaning down towards him. ‘Owen’s death has nothing to do with me.’

‘He was in trouble.’

‘Well, that much is obvious now,’ Tobar replied, pulling his collar up further against the cold.

‘Owen needed money, and you could have helped him out.’

‘You were his bloody mentor, why didn’t you do something?’

‘He didn’t come to me.’

‘Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?’ Tobar replied peevishly. ‘Go home, old man. You can rattle all the sabres you like there, but stay away from me.’

‘Your wife told me she’d left you.’

Paling, Tobar flinched, guiding Samuel’s wheelchair a little further away from the group.

‘She’s on holiday—’

‘I know Rosella,’ Samuel replied, his voice quiet but steady. ‘And she told me she’d had enough. Apparently what you did to Owen finished your marriage. Rosella has always talked to me, Tobar, about all kinds of things. She’s basically an honourable woman. Materialistic, certainly, likes her comfort. But she has a conscience, and living with you and seeing the things you did …? Well, it was too much for her, and she needed a confidant.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘With what, Mr Manners?’

‘That’s what I want to know.’

He was breathing more quickly, staring at Samuel and realising that he had a real enemy. And worse, that this enemy not only hated him for cheating Owen Zeigler, but for his treatment of Rosella. In that moment Tobar realised that he had underestimated the old man, believing him grown mute and toothless in Sussex.

‘Now if I told you that, you’d be as wise as me,’ Samuel retorted. ‘You think you’ve got away with it, but you haven’t. I want you to know that, Manners. I want you to think about that, and worry—’

Moving behind the art historian’s wheelchair, Tobar suddenly flipped off the brake with his left foot. Samuel sensed the movement and gripped the wheels.

‘What the—’

‘You’re an old man, Mr Hemmings.’

Samuel wasn’t about to show fear. ‘I’m old, but I have a long memory.’

‘Too long for your own good,’ Tobar replied, flicking the brake back on. ‘I’d start forgetting things, if I were you.’

Samuel could still feel Tobar Manners’ hatred as his driver pushed him towards the Zeigler Gallery. Not that he would have allowed it to show to anyone present, but he was aching with the cold and longing to be home. But nothing, he thought, taking in a ragged breath, would have prevented him from paying his respects to his protégé.

Glancing round, Samuel took in the empty gallery space, remembering what Marshall had told him about the night he found his father. The police had decided that it was a burglary gone wrong, that the gallery had been broken into and the thieves – for there had had to be more than one – disturbed; the violence intimating a drug-fuelled attack. It was further assumed that Owen had been tortured for the combination to the safe, but Samuel didn’t believe it. Owen would have handed over the money rather than die – Samuel didn’t believe his old friend had been given the choice. Leaning his hands, then his chin, on the top of his cane, Samuel looked ahead at a Jan Steen painting on the wall opposite. Why hadn’t they taken that? It was worth good money, why leave it? Why leave the Epstein bust in the back gallery? The Dutch parquetry cabinet?

Quietly a door opened in the back and Marshall walked over to Samuel. He seemed diminished; listless with shock.

‘Are you all right?’

Nodding, Marshall stared around the gallery. His actions were strained, as if the slightest movement was exhausting to him.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘About what, Marshall?’

‘Someone was looking for something. This wasn’t a burglary, too little was taken. It wasn’t just that my father surprised them and was killed by accident …’ He paused, then closed the entrance door of the gallery and clicked the lock. ‘I don’t believe that. And neither do you.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘They were looking for something very specific.’

‘What?’

‘I think they were looking for the letters. The Rembrandt letters.’ Marshall stared at the old man. ‘I can see from your face that it’s already occurred to you too. When we talked about them you said they were dangerous, that they could cause a scandal—’

‘But I was only telling you about your father’s theory. I could be wrong—’

Infuriated, Marshall cut him off. ‘Where are the Rembrandt letters?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you do think someone was looking for them?’

‘I think it’s a possibility. The letters are important.’

‘Why? You told me part of the story, but not all of it. What do the letters say?’

Samuel was discomfited, shifting in his seat. ‘Your father never confirmed he’d found them—’

‘If he
hadn’t
found them, how could he know what was in them?’ Marshall countered. ‘How could he have told you his theory, with all the details, the names and dates you gave me? My father
must
have found and read those letters.’

Samuel hesitated, Marshall’s voice rising. ‘
You
know what was in them, don’t you?’

‘I only know that they were letters which could damn Rembrandt forever –
and
prove that many of Rembrandt’s paintings were not by his hand, but painted by someone else.’

‘Rembrandt’s monkey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was …?’

‘Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt and Geertje Dircx’s illegitimate son.’

Marshall leaned against the door. ‘So it wasn’t just the scandal of Rembrandt having a bastard son, but the fact that he faked his father’s works?’

Samuel nodded. ‘Many of them. When he left Rembrandt’s studio, Fabritius lived in Delft, away from Amsterdam. Overworked and greedy, Rembrandt farmed out commissions to his most gifted student—’

‘The letters prove this?’

He nodded again. ‘Your father said so.’

‘And if he’d released the letters …?’

‘All Rembrandt’s paintings would have had to be reassessed. It would involve galleries and museums all over the world. Not to mention the private collectors and independent experts.’ Samuel paused. ‘The letters would undermine the art market, which relies on the Old Masters. It would be little short of a catastrophe. If a single Rembrandt portrait – which could sell for upwards of forty or fifty million – was exposed as the work of his pupil, it would undermine his whole catalogue.’

Marshall looked at the old man. ‘I get it. The letters were dangerous …’

‘The letters
are
dangerous.’

‘Enough to make someone kill for them?’

Samuel folded his hands on his lap, his expression stern. ‘Yes, I believe so.’

A chill fell between them.

‘Why did Fabritius act as Rembrandt’s monkey?’

‘The full explanation is in the letters. Geertje Dircx makes it all clear—’

‘So tell me!’

‘I can’t!’ Samuel snapped. ‘I didn’t read them, I only know what your father told me.’

‘Would my father have confided in anyone else?’

‘No, I doubt it.’

A car drove past the window, sounding its horn once, the noise eerie in the gloom of the gallery. The light was fading, rain coming on, the London sky morose over the crouching roof tops.

His voice expressionless, Marshall stared at the historian. ‘Where are they? The letters?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I hope you’re not lying to me.’

Angered, Samuel’s expression hardened. ‘I was your father’s closest friend—’

‘Which puts you in danger, doesn’t it? Because whoever’s after them might think
you
had them.’

‘Or you. You’re his son, Marshall.’

The words cracked around them, the old historian amazed to find himself in the spotlight of Marshall’s blatant mistrust.

‘You know as well as I do, Samuel, that I knew nothing about the letters until you told me about them.’

‘That’s what you say.’

‘And it’s the truth!’

Shaken, Marshall took in a breath. His father’s death had devastated him, and knowledge of his suffering had compounded the shock. According to the coroner, it had taken Owen Zeigler a long time to die and the beating had been protracted to cause maximum pain.

Tempering his tone, Samuel continued. ‘Have you considered the fact that your father might have handed over the letters and
then
been killed? If his murderers got what they wanted, no one else is in danger.’

‘But we
know
about them,’ Marshall replied steadily. ‘Knowing is almost as good as having them.’

‘Knowledge is not proof.’

‘Are you sure you haven’t got them?’

‘
How many times!
’ Samuel asked, his face flushing. ‘No, I haven’t got them. I would love to say I have, but no, Marshall, I’ve never seen them. Never touched them. Never read them. Stop suspecting me, you’re looking in the wrong place.’

Still unconvinced, Marshall stared at the old man. ‘My father wouldn’t have told Tobar Manners about the letters, would he?’

Samuel flinched. ‘No. For some reason he liked Manners, but he didn’t trust him. Why d’you ask?’

‘Because if Manners knew about the letters he was preparing the ground very cleverly.’

Confused, Samuel shook his head. ‘What ground?’

‘My father had been duped into believing that his Rembrandt picture was, in fact, only the work of a second rate painter. He was cheated out of a fortune … Doesn’t say much for his reputation, does it?’

‘Manners duped him.’

‘I know. But how easily could it be made to look like my father didn’t know what he was doing? People would only have to point to his failing business to undermine him. He would have lost his credibility, and if he had
then
revealed the Rembrandt letters, how easily they could have been discredited. They could have been written off as a hoax, or worse, a way for him to get publicity.’