with clippings pasted into it. You know it?'
She nodded.
'You know what's in it?'
'Oh, yes.'
I tried not to sound excited. 'Yes? What?'
She smiled charmingly at me, her plump cheeks dimpling. 'Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that.'
I stared at her. 'But-is there anything about the Rembrandt?'
She shook her head.
'The Flinck, then?' I said after a moment. She shook her head.
'But it is a record of how he came by his collection, isn't that right?'
But she just went on wagging her head from side to side, sweetly smiling all the while. She wasn't saying no, she was telling me I wasn't going to get an answer out of her.
My lips were dry. I licked them. 'Madame, I know that's what it is. Perhaps I haven't been clear; I think it may have had something to do with his death.'
'Oh, I think not. You must trust me, I'm afraid.'
'But-' I paused to settle myself down. 'I think it's pretty obvious to everyone,' I said with a knowing, encouraging smile, 'that Monsieur Vachey had some kind of plan in mind in connection with the gallery's current exhibition. Some kind of-of game. Everything about these two paintings-the Leger, the Rembrandt-has been peculiar, right from the beginning. You must see that.'
'Certainly, I see it,' she agreed.
'Well, that book might give us some clue as to what that game was.'
'Ah, but I already know what it was.' '
You do? What?'
'Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that either.' She was being positively coy now. I tried to think just where it was that I'd lost control of the conversation. Or had I ever had it?
'But he may have been killed over it,' I said.
'Oh, I doubt that very much.'
'If you won't tell me, you have to tell the police.'
'I have to do no such thing, Monsieur Norgren.'
'Madame Guyot,' I said, doing what I thought was an excellent job of keeping my voice down, 'surely you see that his murder could have been related to-to whatever he was planning.'
'Well, I don't see how. It hasn't happened yet.'
'All the same…'I stared at her. Yet? 'Do you mean that it's still going to happen?'
Her smile was at its most grandmotherly and serene. 'I certainly hope so, young man.'
Good work, Norgren. Your skillful interrogation, disguised by a clever facade of bumbling incoherence, had pried from the elusive Madame Guyot a significant fact: 'It' hadn't happened yet.
Whether 'it' really had any connection with Vachey's death, I didn't know. Despite her supreme confidence that it didn't, I was reserving judgment. As to whether it had any bearing on the Rembrandt, I didn't see that there was much room for doubt. What else was there but the Rembrandt and the Leger?
There was, of course, one little thing I hadn't quite managed to find out: What was 'it'? All I knew now that I hadn't known before was that the fireworks weren't over yet. Whatever kind of stink bomb Vachey had lit, there was a delayed-action fuse on it. But for the moment, there wasn't much to be done about it. All I could do, in effect, was wait for another shoe-dropped by a dead man-to hit the floor. And something told me it was going to make a hell of a noise.
On leaving the Galerie Vachey I went back to the Hotel du Nord and called the prefecture of police to let them know that I would be in Paris overnight, staying at the Hotel Saint-Louis. I left the message with a clerk, getting off the line before Lefevre could come on to hector me about keeping my nose out of official police matters. Not that my Paris plans had any direct relation to Vachey's death. I was going there to see what I could learn that might be relevant to the Rembrandt, and that was all. If I did happen to find out something that seemed pertinent to the murder, I would pass it right along to the inspector, braving the abuse I would no doubt receive for my trouble.
I threw a change of clothes and some toiletries into an overnight bag, stopped at the hotel desk to tell them I'd be back late the next day, and walked three blocks along the Avenue Marechal-Foch to the railway station, where I was twenty-five minutes early for the 12:16 train for Paris. There wasn't time for lunch in the crowded buffet, but I went downstairs to where the coffee bar was, to get a quick double-espresso (I'd been away from Seattle too long; my blood was starting to thin) and a ham-and-cheese-stuffed croissant. Taking them to a circular stand-up counter with room for four, I glanced up at the tall, stooped, balding man across from me. We both spoke at the same time.
'Lorenzo! I thought you'd gone back to Florence.'
'Christopher! I didn't know you were still here.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I'm still trying to decide what to do about the Rembrandt. But what about you?'
'As long as I'm here in France- ah, mi scusi, signora -I thought I would visit some dealers. You know, I'm- scusi, signore-'
When Lorenzo Bolzano spoke, arms and elbows were likely to fly anywhere. The people on either side of him scowled at him, gathered up as much of their drinks as hadn't been spilled, and went elsewhere, muttering.
Lorenzo, grandly unaware of their withering glances, continued: 'You know, I'm making some big changes in the collection, Christopher.'
'Oh?' The 'collection' was the great assemblage of paintings, rich in Old Masters, that had been begun by his father, Claudio, a man who made Rene Vachey seem almost like a penny-ante dabbler.
'Yes, I want to develop some real depth in the Synthetists. What do you think?'
What did I think? I thought it sounded like Lorenzo. The Synthetists-or Symbolists or Cloisonnistes-were a school of French artists who rejected naturalistic interpretation for a more 'expressive' style in which objects were represented by areas of flat, brilliant color bounded by heavy swaths of black. Open-minded though I am, I've never been able to make much sense of them. They were Lorenzo's cup of tea, all right.
'Jean-Luc Charpentier is helping me. We're off to Lyon today to look at an Anquetin and a couple of Bernards.' He poured the last of his Orangina into a paper cup, sipped from it, and smacked his lips. 'It comes at a good time, you know. I finally managed to sell off those two Bronzinos, remember them?-brr, so cold, so formal-so I can afford to expand in other directions. When are you coming to Florence, Christopher? I want you to see.'
The idea of finding Bronzino's elegant, exquisitely finished figures and limpid, enameled colors replaced by the turbid mush of Redon and company was enough to make me shudder. Lorenzo's discriminating father, I imagined, would be turning over in his grave about now. Of course, this is not to say that Claudio Bolzano had not been been lacking in certain respects. He had been a crook and a murderer, for example. Lorenzo, for all his nuttiness, was as honest and open as anyone could be.
'I'd like to do that, Lorenzo. Can I ask you about something else?'
'Sure, ask.'
'It's about Vachey-'
His mobile face darkened. 'Ah, Vachey. How terrible.'
'You've bought a fair number of paintings from him, haven't you?'
He nodded, sipping the Orangina.
'Look, you're aware that I've got good reason to think there might be something fishy about this Rembrandt- it might not even be a Rembrandt. What I want to know is: Have you ever had any reason to doubt the authenticity of anything he sold you? Could you always rely on his attribution?'
Lorenzo's coffee-bean eyes gleamed; I had given him the kind of opening he loved. 'But wherein does an attribution lie?' he asked in his rhetorical singsong. 'Entirely in the perception of the attributer, no? Ah-ha-ha. Your question presupposes a simple dichotomy of possibilities that are inherent in the object-authentic or inauthentic, and nothing else, yes? And yet, surely you would not deny that the levels of attributional certainty are unlimited, and that they pertain more to the artificial and predetermined constructs of the attributer's perspective-'
