At about five o’clock, almost at Gunning Cove, we saw an estate sale in progress at an enormous nineteenth-century gabled house with a wraparound porch, in obvious disrepair. All sorts of furniture and paraphernalia were set out on the lawn. There were fifteen or so people looking things over. The house itself was for sale, too. Off to the left, sitting at a roll-top desk (also for sale), sat a stodgy-looking woman about forty-five years old. There was a handmade sign taped to the table: HAGGLING ALLOWED. Cynthia went over to the woman and found out that she was the granddaughter of the original owners of the house, who’d had eleven children and nineteen grandchildren when they died—“within two days of each other, her grandparents, isn’t that something?” Cynthia said to me.
“Detective Cynthia,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“Still, one thing I’ve learned from living in Port Medway — sometimes the more chatty, the deeper the secrets.”
I sat on the porch watching people inspecting items, buying, hauling off a lamp here, a chair there. Sales of the small items especially were brisk, and the till was slowly filling. I turned my attention to Cynthia, who had gotten down on her knees to inspect something. She then joined me on the porch, tapped a cigarette out of its pack—“I allow myself one per day”—and lit it with a lighter, drawing in the smoke with her lips and cheeks with the succinct choreography of, say, Bette Davis. “My heart is beating a mile a minute,” she said. “I’m going to have a heart attack.”
“What happened, Cynthia?”
“I think — I think—oh, this is too much. Sam, I believe I’ve found a Diego Giacometti table. It’s got the tiny birds and everything.”
“Come on. You’re having an antiquer’s hallucination or something.”
“I’ve studied his tables for thirty years. It’s a signature Diego Giacometti.”
“Here in Gunning Cove, Nova Scotia?”
“I’ve read everything about Giacometti tables. I even attended lectures in Paris and Rome — Philip and I went. And one thing I remember is how American and Canadian servicemen in Europe would pick up amazing art for very small sums. It was the war, of course. Artists were letting things go for a pittance.”
“So you speculate that someone in this family was in France or Italy.”
“That’s my somewhat educated guess.”
“Go back and look again, Cynthia.”
Dropping the cigarette on the porch and pressing a heel to it, Cynthia returned to the ornate table, which had a china tea set on it and a dozen or so paperback books. She then got down on the ground and lay on her back (I didn’t see anyone else notice) and, elegant as she was, inelegantly slid halfway under the table. A few moments later, she slid out again, got to her feet, brushed off the back of her slacks and jacket, tapped a second cigarette from its package, lit it with her lighter, took a few puffs, then walked back to sit next to me on the porch.
“Is it?” I asked.
“Definitely. I all but saw Diego Giacometti’s reflection in the glass.”
“What’s it going for?”
“Twenty-five dollars.”
“Chump change, like they say in the States.”
“Know what’s ringing in my ears? That goddamn thing Philip keeps saying: situational ethics. What are the options here, do you think, Sam? All right, should I just tell the granddaughter what the table is? Tell her its potential worth? You know?”
“What do you think it might be worth?”
“A hundred thousand, if Sotheby’s, or another of the big auction houses, was to appraise and sell it. Oh, I don’t know,” Cynthia said. “I may be high in my estimation. Then again, I might be short.”
“A life-changing amount for most mortals.”
“Even after the auctioneer’s fee. If one were to go that route.”
“Okay, that’s one option,” I said. “You educate the granddaughter, your good deed for the day, and we go home. You could leave her your address. Maybe she’ll send you a thank-you note.”
“Option number two: I buy the table and keep it,” Cynthia said. “An authentic Diego Giacometti table. The granddaughter remains in the dark. What she doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her. Or what is hurting her she’ll never know about. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Cynthia thought for a moment and added, “Option three: I sell it and send the granddaughter a big check. Or how about, I tell the granddaughter it’s a Diego Giacometti and say I feel she should know, in case someone in her family had been in Italy or France during the war, give her a context. Give her some history and say I feel it is very much underpriced, and can I offer her, say, a thousand dollars.”
“Oh, I get it. If you offer five thousand, she might get too strong a hint that it’s worth a lot more.”
“I’m simply thinking out loud here. Okay, what if I rely — rare as it is in a person — on her sense of equity, and tell her I’ll work through professional channels and get the table sold, and promise to split the money fifty-fifty with her.”
“Which option can you live with?”
“I could probably live with any of them, but with each one differently.”
“Slippery use of words, Cynthia.”
“Don’t judge me, for God’s sake. I haven’t made a choice yet.”
“Don’t look now, but you’ve got competition.”
Cynthia hurried over and stood near the Giacometti table and eavesdropped on the conversation between a late-middle-aged man and his wife. When Cynthia returned to the porch, she looked relieved. “‘I don’t want the thing’”—she mimicked the woman’s voice—“‘because those stupid little birds remind me of the chirpers who wake me up before daylight every morning. No thanks.’”
“Close call. What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to have a heart attack,” she said. “I’m all worked up.”
I walked into the house, which did not seem open to the public despite the For Sale sign. I went into the big empty kitchen, saw some cups and glasses on the counter, filled a cup with water from the spigot, and carried it out to the porch. Cynthia gulped it down. “Thank you,” she said.
“Maybe the best option is to just go home,” I said.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
In the end, after an additional twenty minutes of torment, rumination, and debate, striving to worry each option to acceptability, a hint of dusk now on the ocean horizon, Cynthia lit a third cigarette. “Okay, I’ve come to a decision,” she said.
I accompanied her to the granddaughter, who was still sitting at the roll-top desk. The granddaughter said, “I’m Violet, by the way. I used to smoke on the porch too, as a teenager.”
“I’d like to purchase the glass table, please,” Cynthia said.
“Will it fit in your car?” Violet said.
“It’s a station wagon. So, yes, I think so,” Cynthia said.
“Bring me the tag, please, if you would. I can’t recall the price.”
“It’s twenty-five,” Cynthia said.
“Oh, yes, all right. But I’ll need the tag anyway, for recordkeeping.”
The transaction completed, we gently loaded the Diego Giacometti table into the back of the station wagon. I offered no comment on the entire drive back to Port Medway. It was well past dark when we arrived, and I went straight to the beach.
It was nearly an hour before Elizabeth appeared. She lined up her books and we spoke, but only briefly. “I don’t want to talk, not really,” she said. “But tell me about your day, darling. Just tell me, then I have to go.” So what else could I do but tell her about the antique stores and the Giacometti table. I spoke with as much detail and deliberation as I could, to try and keep her on the beach. “I love you but I have so much work to do,” she finally said. Then she picked up her books and was gone. Back in the cottage I thought, Every night is different, promoting, for the sake of a little solace, let alone the possibility of getting some sleep, the obvious as a revelation.