The Body in Bodega Bay (22 page)

“Do you know if Dan talked to him about the table?”

“He did. So Tom knows about the icon.”

“Do you think he knew about it before?”

“He denied it. But of course, he would, wouldn't he? I just don't know. It's hard to say.”

“Well, keep looking for those storyboards. They could be important. I'm seeing George Greeley tomorrow, so maybe by evening we'll have news for each other.” After some racy patter about missing me and the power of crystals, I asked him if Angie was there to say hello.

“Hi, Nora. I wanted to tell you Sophie had another insight today while we were calling on the angel Michael to help you on your trip. Sophie says she feels strongly that there are other angels involved with you, and you need to be alert for them.”

“Okay, I'm on high alert. But I thought these sessions were about your future, not mine.”

“Too proud to accept advice from your little sister?”

“Nope. I promise to keep all channels open.”

And so I did. After a little reading, giving time for the beer and brats to settle, I slowly drifted off to sleep with images of painted angels floating before my eyes.

R
utledge Street, just a mile east of the Capitol and downtown Madison, reminded me of my grandparents' working-class neighborhood in Gloucester. The antiquated wooden houses were not quite Victorian, not quite bungalow, but a slapdash mix invented in the 1920s to house workers from the nearby Oscar Mayer meatpacking plant. This I learned from the loquacious taxi driver, who was half-proud and half-sheepish about being in his eighth year of a doctoral program in urban history. Madison, I've been told, has the highest concentration of postgraduate taxi drivers of any city on the planet.

George Greeley's was the tallest home on the block and therefore easy to spot. Greeley himself opened the door before I reached the top snow-covered step of his wooden porch. The packed snow crunched underfoot. Immediately, he reached out with both hands to cushion the progress of my briefcase over the threshold. Here was an expert totally focused on his professional task. He barely looked at me as he took the weight of the case and transferred it to a cushioned chair. Then he turned to greet me.

“You can call me George,” he said, offering a hand to shake. The gesture, like his whole body, was firm and graceful. Greeley was as lean as a dancer, or, more likely here, a runner or biker. Perhaps because of that, he looked much younger than his friend Al. Gray hair cut close to the skull contributed to the lithe look. “Let's get to work right away,” he suggested. “We'll have to go upstairs.” He picked up the briefcase from its bottom and led me briskly up a narrow staircase to the second floor.

“I have my studio up here,” he explained. “The light is best on the second floor, and there's running water in my workroom.” He led me down a hall into a small room with windows on two sides, a double sink, and deep cabinets above and below spacious counters. “During World War II, the house was converted into a duplex, and this was used as the kitchen for the upstairs apartment. I'm lucky the owner never took out the plumbing.” He placed the icon on a high workbench, positioned where the stove must have been in years past. We sat down on two kitchen stools.

“So you can do all your consulting and restoration work from home?”

“Yes, this is my studio. After my wife left, I turned her study, across the hall, into my library and office. So I'm all set.” That could have been a neutral statement, but he gritted his teeth when he mentioned his wife, and he sounded less than happy.

“We should talk about your fee before we start, don't you think? Al said you'd be reasonable, but I really don't know what that means.”

“Sure. It will be six hundred dollars for today's consultation, if it takes as long as I think it will, that is, the rest of the day. After that, the cost of restoration will depend on what we find. If we're only cleaning the current painting, the total could run you under a thousand, even if I have to do some reconstruction and repainting in the corner. Al tells me that it's got some damage.”

“Yes. But what if what we suspect is true? What if there's an older painting underneath and your job is to uncover and restore that?”

Greeley's smile was condescending. “If we find what Al told me could be under here, you won't be worried about the fee, my dear. Let's cross that bridge if we come to it.” Suddenly I felt the barrier of decades of professional experience that separated us. I wasn't only Greeley's customer. I was his student, too, as I was Al's. I let the “my dear” pass without challenge.

“Did you bring the key? The briefcase is locked.”

I quickly produced the key and moved to insert it, but Greeley put out his hand. “Allow me, please. I was the one who taught Al how to wrap a painting, and I want to do him the courtesy of unwrapping it properly.”

Seeing that I was taken aback, he explained, “Everyone's careful when doing the wrapping. Most damage to artwork is done at the unwrapping stage. People get careless because of excitement, greed. Just like at Christmas. It's human nature.” He gently lifted the wrapped icon from the case and placed it on a soft towel on his workbench. “Did you have any trouble with it on the plane?”

“No. I went through security without a hitch and kept the briefcase under the seat in front of me.”

“Better than in the overhead bin. When did you get in?”

“Yesterday. I had time to visit the Chazen, and I saw their icon exhibit. I've been wondering how a collection like that ended up at a university museum. It seems unusual.”

“That's the Davies collection. He was a university alumnus and the U.S. ambassador to Russia just before World War II. Later wrote a book about his time there called
Mission to Moscow
. Ever hear of it?”

I had but hadn't read it.

“It turns out Davies had a mission of his own, which was to buy up all the Russian treasures he could lay his hands on. His pal Stalin arranged some sweetheart deals for him. This was during the time of the purges, which, by the way, he never protested. Maybe that was just a coincidence, but I don't think so. Anyhow, Davies made quite a haul. Later he donated the icons to the university because he was buddies with the governor and with some other bigwig donors. You know how these things work; each one scratches the other's back.”

I was unsettled by Greeley's resentful tone. All the while, his slender, delicate fingers flew over the package on his workbench, efficiently unwrapping its protective layers until the icon was exposed. He took a quick, dismissive glimpse at the angel Michael, then flipped the panel over, as Al had done. He studied it. “Al was right,” he said. “This panel is much older than the painting on it.” He turned the icon face up again and examined the damaged corner, probing the gouged wood with a fingertip.

“Can it be repaired?”

“That won't be a problem. In this case I can rebuild the surface and retouch to match the gilding, if that's what you want. But we're after bigger game than that, aren't we?”

“I hope so. That's what Al thinks.”

“Right. I'll start with some photos. That way you'll have a complete photographic record of the process.” He picked up the icon and placed it on an easel facing the window. “Natural light is best.” Then he brought over a digital camera on a tripod and positioned it between the window and the easel. He took a few shots, checked the display on the back of the camera, and made a satisfied sound.

He returned the icon to his workbench and began laying out his tools and materials. “The first thing we're going to do,” he said as he repositioned an extension lamp clamped to the bench, “is remove the darkened drying oil and the top layer of pigment. And while I'm doing that, you're going to tell me the story of the panel, everything you know, just as if Al hadn't briefed me.”

Greeley had already prepared his solutions. While he set about the preliminary cleaning, I gave him the broad outline of what I knew so far, beginning with Charlie's murder, my interviews with the auctioneer at Morgan's and with Rose Cassini, our pursuit by a Russian gangster, our discovery of the icon hidden in a table, how we damaged it, and finally Al's account of the legend of the Rublev triptych.

“That's quite a tale,” said Greeley. “And what about the other two panels? Do you have any idea where they are?”

“Not really,” I had to admit. “But I'm following a lead.”

“Then I wish you luck.”

He said nothing more but concentrated on his work. Greeley followed the basic procedure Al had demonstrated to us in Berkeley, but he was quicker and more adept at his tasks. He began with balls of sterile cotton on toothpicks (homemade Q-tips), dipped in a light-colored organic oil, which he swabbed across the surface of the icon using circular motions that quickly brought up black gook. Then came the process of paint removal, using a small swatch of absorbent cloth soaked in a darker solvent. The swatch was positioned with tweezers, pressed under a weight, and lifted after a few minutes, followed by additional swipes with clean cotton, until a circle of previously unexposed color stood out from its surroundings like an area lit by a spotlight on a dark stage. He had chosen a small section of Michael's cloak to begin with. What had been dull reddish pigment now was rich ocher.

Without doubt, he said, there was an older version of Michael beneath this one, probably dating from the eighteenth century. As I watched in fascination, he repeated his procedures until the entire surface of the older painting was exposed. “Well,” he said, stepping back from his work, “what do you say? Shall I keep going?” Removing the outer layers of darkened oil and pigment had taken about an hour. What was revealed at this stage was an almost identical version of the archangel Michael, but one brighter by far than the surface image. It was evident that the artist who had repainted the angel in the nineteenth century had dutifully copied the outlines and colors used by the previous artist. By then the older image probably had been barely discernible.

“Yes, keep going,” I said after a moment's hesitation. I was fighting the urge to call Toby, to share responsibility for this crucial decision. But he had warned me ahead of time that calling him would be bootless. I was the one on the spot, and it was up to me to make the decisions.

“Good, because I don't think this is the original image, either,” said Greeley. “What you have at this point is an unremarkable eighteenth-century painting compared to an unremarkable nineteenth-century painting that covered it, but in terms of value, it isn't worth that much more. I'll do another small test area. If there's a painting underneath, I'll continue, and if there isn't, I can retouch the test area so you won't notice it. How's that sound?”

“Perfect,” I said. “Let's do it.”

“I'll get a few more photographs first.” Greeley placed the icon on the easel again and took several shots. Back at his workbench, he began the cleaning process all over again, choosing a small area toward the top of the panel above the angel's head. First he dissolved and wiped away a portion of the gilded sky, disclosing another layer of darkened varnish under it, to which he reapplied his solvent, glass press, and weight. After another interval, he lifted the soaked flannel cloth, bringing up black smears, and then he swabbed the area clean again with fresh cotton balls. He peered at the treated area, held it up at a slanted angle closer to the light, and said, “That's interesting. There's an inscription under the varnish, but the script is awkward, as if copied by someone unsure of the letters.”

“Can you read it?” I ask.

“Yes, I read Russian and I know the old alphabet. The letters are Church Slavonic. But I'll have to enlarge the test area.” I nodded, and he proceeded. The work took only a few minutes. “Yes, just as I thought, it says, ‘Archangel Michael.' That's not a surprise, but there may be something else.”

Greeley went over to a cabinet and brought back a small black microscope. It wasn't anything fancy—it reminded me of the instrument they had us work with in my college biology lab. He delicately balanced the icon on the specimen tray, positioned it, adjusted the focus, and peered into the eyepiece. “There may be traces of another inscription underneath. If the patch I've just exposed is from the seventeenth century, that means there's an even older painting under that. Now, that would be something, wouldn't it?

“I guess it would,” I said, my pulse quickening.

“But I can't rush it. This isn't about saving time, it's about saving art.”

“Absolutely.”

“I need to complete the cleaning of this layer before doing anything else.”

“You mean, completely dissolve the painting you've just exposed?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“And you're sure there's another painting there?”

“I'd bet on it.”

“The question is whether I should bet on it.”

“It's your call, but you already know that this isn't the first layer of paint.”

“That's true,” I agreed. “All right, go ahead.”

This time the process took longer. Greeley needed to prepare a more concentrated solution to remove the pigment; the older the painted surface, the stronger the solvent needed to be. The intervals between applications took longer, too. And he needed to use a scalpel to delicately clean away sticky and resistant remnants of loose pigment after the solvent had done its work.

When he was finished, a subtly painted, more commanding figure of the archangel Michael looked out at us below an inscription in Cyrillic letters. The angel's facial features and pinions were more skillfully painted than they had been in later iterations. The colors were denser, and new details emerged, as well. The angel's robe was fastened by a wide belt painted blue and fixed by a golden clasp. His feet bore elaborate sandals, and his upraised sword had a jeweled hilt.