It was more than I wished to know. 'What was he doing in the Place Darcy at five-thirty in the morning?'
'Walking. He was an insomniac. He walked most mornings at five if the weather was all right. At six-thirty he would have coffee in one of the brasseries.'
'But that must narrow things down for you,' I said. 'How many people would know he'd be out then?'
'No more than a few million,' Huvet said, shifting the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. 'He was the subject of several magazine pieces. These solitary before-dawn walks were featured. One had a photograph of him against a cloudy sunrise. Taken in the Place Darcy. Sitting on the same bench.'
'So much for that,' I said.
'Indeed,' he said sadly.
When I came back in, Calvin was waiting for me in the lower hallway, outside Pepin's office. 'What now, chief?'
'Well, we ought to have the gallery all to ourselves right now. Let's go see if I can tell a Flinck from a Rembrandt.'
He looked at me, head cocked. 'What for? I thought you didn't want anything to do with it.'
'That was then. It's different now.'
'Yeah, how is it different?'
'Vachey's dead,' I said.
'What's that got to do with anything? That guy in Saint-Denis is still claiming it's his.'
'I know, Calvin, but… I'm not sure I can explain what I mean, but Vachey's being killed changes everything. He wanted us to have the painting, he went to a lot of trouble to see that we'd get it, and now somebody's killed him.' I shrugged. 'I don't want to drop it now; I feel as if I owe him more than that.'
He nodded. 'I understand what you're saying.' Good, I thought; I wasn't sure I did.
'Let's go on up,' he said. 'Who knows, maybe I'll learn something.'
I laughed. 'So you can impress your new girlfriend some more, right?'
'Sure,' Calvin said, 'what else?'
We went up to the second floor, but the movable walls at the head of the stairs had been shoved together and locked, so we had to go back down and get Pepin to let us in. Convincing him took some doing; the time lock would have to be disengaged, he groused, the alarm systems would have to be disarmed, there were many other demands on his attention at this moment, etc., etc. But we insisted, and he finally went unwillingly along with the idea, probably figuring that it would take less time to just let us in, than it would to keep arguing with us about it.
A few minutes later, he slid the walls apart and stood doubtfully aside to let us pass. 'Touch nothing, please. You'll tell me when you go? I must arm the systems again.'
'Of course,' I told him.
'Arm the systems, hell,' Calvin said as Pepin reluctantly left us on our own. 'He probably wants to count the paintings when we leave.'
I laughed. 'Forget it, it's just his manner. Nothing personal. Come on, let's have a look. Maybe I'll learn something too.'
'Looks good to me,' Calvin said helpfully.
We'd been at it for half-an-hour. Calvin had listened uncomplainingly, possibly even comprehendingly, to my muttered comments on the paints, the manner of application, the surface crackling, the canvas, the frame construction.
'Looks good to me too, Calvin.'
'As good as a Rembrandt?'
It wasn't easy to say. The technical details all seemed to be as they should have been on a genuine Rembrandt. But what did it prove? All of them applied to Flinck too. Same time period, same place, same materials, same equipment. And the same techniques, patiently learned over several years, from the master himself.
I took a few steps back to get away from the minutiae, to try to take in the subtleties, nontechnical and intangible. And the more I studied it, the more I thought I could see signs of that mysterious, brooding power that would bloom later in Rembrandt's career, the singular ability to make the viewer feel that he was looking into the mind, even the character, of the subject. The longer I looked at that worn and dissipated face, the more I seemed to see in it. No doubt about it, that wistful old bum was getting to me.
'I think,' I said slowly, 'it might be the real thing.'
Calvin looked at me with interest. 'Yeah? That's terrific.'
'On the other hand…' I said.
He shook his head. 'I love you guys. There's always another hand.'
'It's a judgment call, that's all. I think it's a Rembrandt, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.' After a moment, to cheer him up, I added: 'Yours, maybe.'
'Thanks. Tell me this: So let's say it doesn't belong to Julien Mann- is it good enough to hang in SAM?'
I nodded. 'Oh, yeah, it's Dutch Baroque at its finest. Whoever painted it.'
'If that's the way you feel about it, then what's the problem? Sign the contract, and we can worry about where it came from later.'
'I just told you. I'm not positive it's a Rembrandt.'
'Big deal,' Calvin said, 'you're not positive. You also just told me it's a great piece of art in its own right. Why do we have to say what we think it is or isn't? Can't we just waffle a little, sign the papers, and say thank you? So what if it turns out to be by Flinck or somebody else? We still wind up with a great painting, right? Unless it's really Mann's, in which case we turn it over to him. What's to lose?'
'No good, Calvin. You're forgetting one thing.'
'What am I-? Oh, yeah.' He settled down. 'The restrictions. We have to display it as a Rembrandt.'
'So that if it turned out not to be, we'd look like goats no matter how we tried to explain it away-which is just what we've been worried about from the beginning, isn't it?'
'Yeah, but-'
'Look at what Les Echos Quotidiens has already done to us. Not only do they have us accepting the painting, they've got us agreeing that it's a Rembrandt. And we haven't said a word yet.'
Over the partitions we heard the voices of Pepin and Jean-Luc Charpentier. Charpentier, it appeared, had come at Froger's request to look at the Leger, and Pepin was delivering the same prissy lecture he'd given us, about not touching anything.
'See?' I said to Calvin. 'He picks on everybody.'
A moment later, Pepin himself appeared in the alcove, pushing his fingers through his dark, thinning hair. 'Is everything all right? You are done?'
'Not quite,' I said. 'Could we take it down, please?'
He stared at me. 'Down?'
'Yes, I'd like to examine the back.'
'The back?' He was peering at me as if I'd asked him to be so kind as to slice the picture into eight equal segments. 'Why do you want to examine the back?'
'I need to see what's on it. The back of a painting is part of it.'
Not really. Any canvas this old had almost certainly been relined, possibly more than once, so that the back that would now be visible wouldn't be the original one. All the same, one finds all kinds of things on it-stickers, numbers, notations, stamps-that can tell something of its history. And this one needed all the provenance it could get.
He scowled at me, then at his watch. 'No, I can't, I would have to get a tournevis.'
It was a word I didn't know. 'Pardon?'
