“Probably best not to,” Annie said, with a smile, “but no, nothing really.”
The maitre d’ came over and led them to their table. It was in a quiet corner of the restaurant, a table with a scarlet cloth, lit by a shaded lamp, polished silverware gleaming. Wallpaper music piped softly in the background, Beatles via Mantovani, not loud enough to interfere with conversation, but audible enough to create an atmosphere of soporific calm. Cozy and intimate.
Annie watched Phil as he studied the menu: the small, boyish mouth, slightly receding dark hair, just showing a tinge of gray here and there, the watchful and intelligent gray eyes. He must be seven or eight years older than her, she thought, probably in his early forties. Banks was older than her, too. Why was it she went for older men? Did she feel safer with them? Was she looking for a father figure? She almost laughed out loud thinking what Ray, her dad, would have to say about that.
In some ways, Annie thought, Phil was actually quite similar to Banks: a little traditional, conservative, even, on the surface, but broad-minded and free-spirited underneath it all. Besides, it wasn’t so much age that mattered to her, but intelligence, maturity and a sense of culture. Not that career and money didn’t matter, but most of the mobile-flaunting men she had dated of her own age had been interested in them to the exclusion of other things, and it was the other things that interested Annie most.
She decided on a salad with pears, walnuts and crumbled blue cheese to start, and a wild mushroom risotto as her main course, then put the menu aside. Phil was still studying his.
“Problem?” Annie asked.
“Just can’t decide between the venison and the guinea fowl.”
“Sorry, can’t help you there.”
Phil laughed and put his menu down. “I don’t suppose you can.” He took out a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air and caught it. “Heads,” he said, looking at the way it had landed. “Venison.”
“How do I know you didn’t cheat?”
“Actually, I did,” he confessed. “It was supposed to be heads for the guinea fowl but I realized at the last moment I really wanted venison. Wine?”
“Please.”
Phil chose a bottle of 1998 Chianti Classico. Not too ostentatious, Annie thought, but not cheap, either.
“How’s the Turner?” she asked when they had given their orders.
“Still resting comfortably. It should be up for auction soon. The Tate’s interested, naturally, but so are the V and A and several private collectors.”
“It’s definitely genuine, then?”
“Oh, yes. So the team of experts attests.”
“It wasn’t just your opinion?”
“You must be kidding. Not a chance. It would be immodest of me to say my voice doesn’t carry some weight, but a discovery like that comes under incredible scrutiny. Any art forger worth his salt wouldn’t pick a big-name artist like Turner or Constable to copy. Forgers with any sense stick to less famous artists. Turner’s a national treasure. You might as well try and pass off a Da Vinci or a Van Gogh.”
“It has been done, though, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. It has been done. Tom Keating, for one, comes to mind. He did Rembrandt, among others. And Eric Hebborn did all right with Corot and Augustus John. But that was in the fifties and sixties. These days, there are far more forensic tests and, as I said, a battery of experts to get past. This one’s been verified through fingerprints, among other things.”
“Fingerprints?”
“I thought that might interest you. They can last a very long time, you know. Prints have even been found on prehistoric cave paintings and pottery unearthed at archaeological digs.”
“But how can you verify them? Turner’s been dead for more than a hundred and fifty years.”
“Painting can be a messy business. You get your hands dirty, and as often as not an artist applies his fingers to the paint and the paper or canvas during the process of painting. Especially oils, but even with watercolors like this one. If you examine the surface carefully with a magnifying glass – a bit like Sherlock Holmes, I suppose – you can often find very good fingerprints.”
“But how do you check against the artist’s original?”
“That’s the problem. It’s not always possible, and the results are sometimes dubious, but in the case of Turner, it actually works very well.”
“Why?”
“His prints are on file in the Tate archives.”
“Of course,” said Annie.
“Naturally, you need an impeccable source. A painting with credible provenance leading right back to the artist. But not many other people would have been in a position to get their fingerprints in the paint on a Turner canvas. He was known to work alone, without assistants.”
Annie nodded.
“And it’s been done before,” Phil went on. “A Canadian called Peter Paul Biro pioneered the whole technique some years ago. He worked with the West Yorkshire Police to identify a Turner called
“In 1995 I was a mere DC in Somerset and Avon.”
“Well, that explains it.”
“We tend not to notice that much outside our immediate areas,” Annie explained. “You get focused on the job in hand and-”
“I understand,” said Phil.
“How much do you reckon it will go for?”
Phil pursed his lips and thought for a moment, then said, “About three hundred thousand. Maybe a bit more, seeing as it’s part of a set.”
The wine came and the waiter first showed off the bottle, then presented the cork and a tiny splash in Phil’s glass. “Just pour it,” said Phil. “I’m sure if it’s corked you’ll bring us another bottle.”
“Of course, sir,” said the waiter. Annie wasn’t used to such deference in Yorkshire restaurants, or restaurants anywhere, for that matter. But there was something about Phil that seemed to bring it out in people. Maybe he looked like someone famous, though Annie couldn’t think who. Stefan Nowak was the only other person she could think of who had the same sort of aura. She could imagine waiters being deferential around Stefan, too.
Phil sipped some wine and looked around. “Turner actually dined here once,” he said, “on the same tour he did the sketches for that watercolor.”
“Really? I knew the place was old but…”
“Well, I don’t think it was the same chef. Mostly he complained about the weather. Bit of a miserable bugger, was J.M.W. Bit of a miser, too.”
“He’d fit in well up here, then.”
“I’ve never found Yorkshire folk to be anything less than generous.”
“I agree, actually. It’s just one of the myths around these parts, and people sometimes seem quite proud of it, the parsimony.”
“They’re canny with their money, I’ll give them that. But there’s no harm in not being a wastrel, as my grandfather always used to say.”
Annie almost asked him about his Yorkshire grandparents, but she held herself back. She didn’t feel like getting into family histories and reminiscences tonight. There was something about other people’s families that always disturbed her a bit.
The starters arrived and both ate in silence for a while. “One thing I never got around to asking you is why this painting went missing for so long,” Annie said, when she had finished the last walnut. “I mean, seeing as it was a Turner, and part of a set.”
“There are plenty of Turners unaccounted for,” said Phil. “As you know, this one was part of a series of twenty watercolors Turner painted for the
