In the early eighties, it seemed, he had acted as a middleman for the French government, successfully negotiating with shadowy figures in East Germany for the return of a famous ceramics collection that had been looted from a museum in Nancy during the war. This patriotic mission he took on without any payment and without any public recognition. His part in it came out only when the French government minister involved retired and published his memoirs. More recently there had been governmental leaks suggesting that it had been only one of several such delicate assignments Vachey had performed for his country.
"So you see," de Quincy said, pausing to catch his breath at the top of the stairs, "more to the man than meets the eye."
"Amen to that," I said. "Did you stay in contact with him all these years?"
"Not really. Followed his career, of course. Ran into him now and again. Always liked the fella. Something to him."
"Fuzzy, why didn't he invite you to the reception the other night? That gift was really in your honor."
He smiled, pleased. "Did invite me. Fact is, I don't go much of anyplace if it involves sleeping out." He patted his hip. "Ligament troubles. Need to sleep in my own bed. Tell me, what's the Rembrandt look like?"
"It looks good. I think it's authentic; a lot like the one in the Getty, but with a huge plume and a greenish cast in the background. I'm sure it's not listed in Bredius. Does it sound like anything you've ever run into with Vachey?"
He shook his head. "Nope. Wasn't in his collection when I saw it way back when."
"I don't suppose you'd have any idea where he might have gotten it?"
"Nope. All I know is what he said. Junk shop. Knowing him, it could be true."
We walked through the Apollo Gallery, where groups of avid schoolchildren were clustered three deep around cases holding the crown jewels, turned right, and found ourselves at one end of what used to be called the Grande Galerie, and with good reason. Now blandly referred to as Denon Rooms 4 to 8 for touristic ease, these adjacent spaces form a single glorious gallery 1,000 feet long (I know because I paced it once and counted 332 steps), the longest, greatest gallery of art that ever existed, densely lined on both sides with masterpieces of French painting-Watteau, Poussin, La Tour, Fragonard-and a few dozen assorted Italians-Botticelli, Giotto, Giovanni Bellini, for starters-thrown in to avoid too parochial a flavor. The elegant, arched ceiling is punctuated every 250 feet or so by an ornate, marble-columned cupola. At the far end, you go around a crick in the floor plan, and there you are, looking down an additional 300 feet of Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish masterworks.
All this is one half of one floor of one wing. And there are three wings. Some museum.
While we walked slowly through it, pausing occasionally to look at a particular painting, I told de Quincy about the puzzling restrictions that Vachey had placed on both the Barillot and SAM, and about the generally queer goings-on that had followed them.
By the time I'd finished, we'd walked the entire floor-the lengths of four football fields, as an American guidebook predictably puts it-and were sitting on a stone bench at the head of the east staircase, surrounded by El Grecos, Murillos, and Riberas.
"Interesting," de Quincy said when I was done. "What do you make of it?"
"That's what I was going to ask you. What do you suppose he could have been up to?"
He shook his head slowly back and forth. "Got me."
"Look, Fuzzy, I have to come to a decision tomorrow. If you were in my place, would you take the painting?"
"If what's holding you back is worrying about what he did or didn't do in the forties, I'd say yes, for damn sure, take it."
"That's the main thing, but those weird conditions of his make me nervous too. You knew him pretty well-"
"Not so well."
"But you liked him, you admired him." He nodded. "Fair statement."
"Well, would you say you could take him at his word?"
"Well-"
"If he told you what he told me-that there was nothing tricky behind the restriction on testing, or behind the time limits he set up, or behind anything else, would you trust him?"
De Quincy pulled thoughtfully at his earlobe. "About as far as I could throw him."
Chapter 17
I got back to Dijon at 3:00 p.m., which left me just twenty-seven hours to make up my mind about the Rembrandt. If I didn't sign off on Vachey's conditions by the close of business Friday, the offer would be void, and the painting, presumably, would revert with the rest of Vachey's "residue" to his son, Christian.
Christian, who had tried to keep me away from the Rembrandt, and Froger away from the Leger. Christian, who had tried to wrest the Duchamp from Gisele Gremonde. Christian, who was so little trusted by his father that the older man had kept his new will secret from him, and in it had aced him out of the ownership of the Galerie Vachey and removed him as executor besides.
However, Christian had also been living in the same house with his father for the last six months. Disappointed in his son or not, it seemed probable that Vachey would have let him in on whatever game he was playing with the paintings, and even more likely that Christian would know something about that scrapbook. Until now, however, I hadn't even tried to talk to him. I didn't think he'd see me, for one thing (he had done his best to keep me out of the house altogether), and for another, how could I trust anything told to me by a man who was in line to get the Rembrandt if I turned it down? So I had started with likelier sources, and struck out. Pepin claimed he knew nothing about anything; Gisele knew about the book but wasn't telling. And Clotilde knew about the book and about Vachey's intentions, but she wasn't telling either. That left Christian.
"Okay, I'll say it one more time," Christian said with a sort of nonchalant irritation. "One: I don't know anything about any blue scrapbook, I never heard of any blue scrapbook, I never saw any blue scrapbook. Two: I was born in 1956, so do you want to tell me how I'm supposed to know anything about my father's activities in the war? Three: I don't know what my father had in mind when he offered you the Rembrandt, why should I? Okay?"
He went back to what he'd been doing: arranging a carton of dog-eared papers and index cards into neat little stacks on the surface of an aged rolltop desk. His English was idiomatic and barely accented, the pronunciation American rather than British, with a slangy, choppy flavor that gave credence to the stories of mob connections in Miami.
"That's hard to believe," I said. "You're his son. You were living in the same house."
He shrugged and stood up, stretching. There was a faint whiff of expensive cologne, dry and lemony. "Well, I can't help what you want to believe. Look, I'm sorry, but I have a million things to do, you know?"
This was the way it had gone from the beginning. We were on the first floor of Vachey's house, at the end of a blind corridor that served as a small study. Christian, in a pin-striped gray suit, again with no tie, hadn't been out-and-out rude, but he hadn't bothered to stop his paper-arranging when I'd arrived either, and he hadn't offered me a seat. I wasn't sure if I'd ever quite gotten his full attention.
Now he smiled and held out his hand. "Sorry, my friend. I wish I could have helped." I could see that his mind was already back on his cards.
There wasn't much I could do but go. "Well, thanks for your time," I said. "If you happen to think-"