“But you are supposed to be protecting the husband, not the wife. Right?”
“In a way, yes, but I think I am also supposed to watch over that painting. Tóth was very interested in what our man was doing talking to someone at the Louvre. He wanted me to insist I had to be there. Vaszary, that’s our man, wouldn’t agree.”
“Do you know where they got their painting?”
“They brought it with them from Budapest.”
“You realize it’s quite unlikely that it’s a real Gentileschi. Gentileschis don’t just pop out of people’s attics in Budapest.”
“This one is in Strasbourg, and she’ll pay you to look at it.”
Since she had been left a small fortune, Helena did not need the money. What she did need was a bit of excitement, and the chance of discovering a real Gentileschi, however unlikely, was irresistible. Her last job had paid well, but it had been boring, three weeks in a Brussels lab examining paint chips with a spectroscope and x-raying bits of canvas with faded colours to date the overlays of a Poussin. A pastoral scene with shepherds. She had never liked Poussin and was somewhat allergic to his pastoral scenes.
Curiosity, Helena decided, was one of her most dangerous personal traits.
Chapter Two
The great Strasbourg cathedral announced its ten o’clock mass by vigorously, and perhaps a little desperately, bell-ringing the faithful to prayers. If, indeed, it was prayers they craved on this thronging Sunday. There were no cars allowed here, and it was early October, still warm and sunny, perfect for hordes of indecisive dawdlers and harried, anxious guides. Helena ran along the Grand Rue, dodging pedestrians, cyclists, and dogs, her small black backpack bouncing on her shoulder blades. She had arrived at Gare Centrale a good fifteen minutes ago, giving herself time to drop her holdall at the hotel and scout the area before her meeting.
There was no particular reason to be cautious except for her new client’s insistence on secrecy and a nagging feeling that someone had been following her. Mme Vaszary had declined the invitation to come to Helena’s office in Paris since both she and the painting resided in Strasbourg. However, she said she would be happy to meet Helena’s usual fee and, of course, her expenses. Paid in advance.
The woman had chosen a strange way to deliver the message and the retainer. A plain brown envelope with no return address had arrived at Helena’s Rue Jacob office, where it lay unopened on Louise’s desk for a couple of days while Louise assessed whether its bulk contained anything lethal. It didn’t. There was a one-page document retaining Helena Marsh for the work of appraising an old painting, €20,000 in cash, a map of Strasbourg with the Place du Marché aux Poissons circled in black felt pen, and the date of the proposed meeting in the same black pen, printed in capital letters with the promise of another €10,000 when she finished her report.
It was times like these that reminded Helena of Simon’s bottomless ability to make the wrong decisions. Usually egged on by his desire for more money and another adventure. Simon had been so good at what he did that money had never been a problem. He could afford his peripatetic life, the grand house in Toronto, and his daughter’s expensive education. He seemed to value money for what it proved about his abilities as the best in the business, so good that his commissions hung in the world’s most distinguished museums. That he had been a rare visitor to the house he had bought for Annelise and Helena in Toronto’s lush, leafy Rosedale — one of Canada’s best residential areas — left Helena with the impression that he was her mother’s occasional lover, an exceptionally close friend with far-flung interests that kept him from living with Annelise.
Till the end of her childhood, she had no idea that he was also her father. No matter how much Helena had insisted, how often she had brought up the subject, her mother had consistently claimed that Helena was the result of a short-lived fling, a love affair that was never meant to last. Helena began to question other visitors to the house, but no one seemed to remember him. Annelise’s story was that Helena’s father had departed mere days after she was born to pursue a different life with, perhaps, a different family, and that he died soon after. How was it possible, then, Helena had persisted, that he had left enough money to maintain that large house, the antique furniture, and the grand collection of art spread over three floors. He had also left ample money for Helena’s private schools, her art and art history classes, and Annelise’s exquisite clothes and her European jaunts.
Annelise told her all this had been his legacy. Perhaps he had felt guilty about leaving, and he had wanted to make sure they had everything they needed — except, of course, his love. It was not until she was fifteen, travelling in Europe with “family friend” Simon (a birthday gift) that the truth emerged. Even then, he wouldn’t acknowledge her publicly as his daughter (“It will be our secret,” he told her), and she was too angry about his years of subterfuge to even want to acknowledge him.
The call had come early in the morning. Louise had just arrived with her café au lait and pain au chocolat and listened for a minute with her mouth full before she managed to tell the man that she was not Madame Marsh and that Madame Marsh would not be back from Brussels for two more days.
He hadn’t left a message.
When he called again, Helena was in her office. He introduced himself as Mrs. Vaszary’s lawyer — Magoci (no first name) — and that if she was interested in the offer, she should come to Strasbourg, and he confirmed he would meet her at noon the next day on the tour
