Munson Gallery, Jacob Munson admitted to seventy although it was generally believed that he was much nearer eighty. His fierce, explosive temper had been tamed somewhat since the death of his son several years earlier, but his devotion to art and to the business of art remained strong, and his friendship had occasionally smoothed Peake’s progress in the art world.
Beside him sat Hester Kohn, daughter of his late partner, a trim and smartly dressed brunette of thirty-four, with quizzical hazel eyes and a small mouth that smiled easily. She wore gray boots and slacks, a high-collared red silk shirt, and a wide flat necklace of gold enameled in colorful Chinese chrysanthemums. She was addicted to gardenias and her heady perfume fought Munson’s cloud of peppermint to a draw.
Munson had been apprehensive when young Hester Kohn inherited her father’s half interest in the gallery, but these past two years had gone smoothly. She handled the financial side of the business as efficiently as her fa?ther had and seemed equally content to leave final artistic judgments to him.
Jacob Munson considered himself less fortunate than Horace Kohn in his offspring. His only son, the son he’d groomed to come into the gallery, the son who painted like an angel, had been killed in a plane crash before the lad was twenty-five. His two older daughters, resentful because he’d never encouraged their participation until after the tragedy, resisted his tardy attempts to interest them in art. One was now a doctor in Seattle, the other taught economics at a small college in Louisiana. Although the doctor had remained willfully unmaternal, the professor had eventually managed one child, Richard.
Aware of his grandfather’s reservations, Rick Evans found himself a chair just inside the director’s door and now fiddled with his camera lens.
He focused on Munson’s narrow foot, twisting the lens until his shoelaces came into sharp detail. Rick would have liked to point his camera directly at Munson’s face but knew that would annoy. He wished that he pleased his grandfather better.
As Dr. Peake spoke of the Breul House’s financial problems, Rick unobtrusively moved his camera toward Francesca Leeds. Lady Francesca had turned thirty-seven that year, but there was nothing in her clean-lined profile to suggest it. Her golden complexion was as clear as a girl’s, her dark red hair glossy and natural, her slender body at the peak of its physical powers, with a lithe sensuousness that was the birthright of certain fortunate women.
Her companion was five years older and if one looked closely at his straw-colored hair one could see gray at his temples. He had an outdoorsman’s face, yet it took expensive tailoring to disguise the fact that his muscular body had perhaps spent too much time behind a desk instead of at the helm of his racing yacht.
Soren Thorvaldsen was a Danish entrepreneur who had parlayed a boyhood romance with the sea into great wealth by refurbishing aging transatlantic liners into luxurious West Indian cruise ships. After years of hard work, he was ready to start playing again and Lady Francesca’s proposal had amused him and appealed to both his financial and aesthetic appetites.
“Why don’t you explain your idea to Mr. Munson and Miss Kohn?” Peake said smoothly, turning the floor over to Francesca Leeds.
She smiled. “It’s really very simple. The Erich Breul House has a serious image problem. Is it a historical house or is it an art museum? Some of the pictures in this collection are first-rate. No one questions that. The others-”
A graceful half-humorous shrug of her shoulder indicated that she did not intend to speak uncharitably about the bulk of the founder’s collection unless pressed.
“The Breul Collection is highly regarded by scholars world wide,” said Jacob Munson, who chaired the board of trustees. “Even now, Dr. Roger Shambley is writing a new book using examples from the house.”
“But is it the general public who’ll be reading it?” There was a charming hint of Celtic lilt to the lady’s British accent. Her father supposedly owed his title to one of those tumbledown Irish castles.
“Jacob, it’s imperative that we find new sources of revenue,” reminded Benjamin Peake.
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“And we appreciate the loan,” said the director, smiling at young Evans, who looked back at him through the camera’s range finder. “But there’s no point in taking photographs for a new brochure or a larger collection of souvenir postcards if no one comes in to buy them.”
“We think people have forgotten what serendipitous treasures the Breul House owns,” Lady Francesca said coaxingly. “We must remind them-bring back not just the true art lovers but potential donors, too-the people who support what is chic to support.”
Francesca Leeds described herself as a free-lance publicist but she was actually a matchmaker between money and the arts. She maintained a small one-room office in her suite at the Hotel Maintenon and new business came through personal recommendations of satisfied clients. As one of the four most highly regarded party planners in the city, she had a flair for matching corporate donors with charitable fund-raising events.
An importer of Italian shoes, for example, could be persuaded to help support a fashion show to benefit a convent founded by a Sicilian nun. The importer’s shoes would be featured throughout the show while the Santa Caterina Sisters of Charity would net several thousands to further their good works.
The parent company of an expensive line of camera equipment might sponsor a movie premiere to help fund further research in retinitis pigmentosa.
For every worthy cause, Lady Francesca Leeds seemed to find a moneyed patron.
Her dark red hair glinted like polished mahogany as she tilted her head toward the heretofore silent Dane. “As a ship owner, Mr. Thorvaldsen recognizes a natural affinity for the Erich Breul House.”
Rich Evans’ camera followed her eyes, then swept the group as Hester Kohn gave a muffled snort.
Hester was puzzled by her inclusion in this informal planning session. She was not a trustee and she was much less interested in Benjamin Peake’s career than Jacob was.
She regarded her partner with fond uneasiness. He couldn’t possibly last more than another year or two and then what would happen to the gallery? She had grown up speaking the specialized jargon of the art world and she was quite comfortable managing the gallery’s finances. But Hester Kohn knew her limitations, knew that she was no judge of artistic merit. One could be cynical and say that given the current state of visual arts in this city artistic merit hardly mattered; yet ultimately, she knew, it
Although Jacob spoke halfheartedly of educating his slow-talking grandson, who had suddenly appeared full- blown from the Louisiana bayous this past September, Hester soon realized that the boy-he was only twenty-was even less intuitive about art than she herself. Her eyes lingered on him thoughtfully. Momentarily unshielded by his camera, he caught her gaze and turned away in self-conscious confusion. A tractable lad and willing enough to follow-she knew
Jacob must see this, she thought, but would the ties of blood outweigh his devotion to Kohn and Munson’s impeccable reputation? Or would he leave his share of the gallery to one of his proteges, someone like Benjamin Peake for instance?
She could keep Peake in line if she had to, she knew, shrewdly measuring his familiar, well-proportioned body with her hazel eyes. Despite his Ph. D. in modern art, she doubted that he was as sharp as Jacob wanted to believe, but allowances were made because Peake had been a close friend of Jacob’s son. They had met as fellow students at one of Meyer Schapiro’s seminars on modern art at Columbia, and after Paul Munson’s plane crashed, Jacob had transferred his paternal interest to Peake’s career. Indeed, Ben Peake owed his present position here at the Breul House to Jacob, who had persuaded the other trustees to hire him after that fiasco up at the Friedinger left him out on his ear. Jacob would not stand idly by and watch this place go down while under Ben Peake’s direction if there was something he could do to help.
But what?
In accent-free English, Soren Thorvaldsen leaned forward to explain the similarities between his acquisition of a fleet of cruise ships and the first Breul’s fleet of canal barges. They were kindred spirits, it would seem, and like called to like even after a century and a half.
“As I understand it, your endowment has been much eroded by inflation and maintenance,” said Thorvaldsen, his keen eyes flicking from Benjamin Peake to Jacob Munson.
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