The Rembrandt Secret (17 page)

But at that moment Tobar Manners wasn’t thinking about the recession or his absent wife; his whole attention
was focused on a rumour he had just heard about two Rembrandts which were apparently coming onto the market for sale in New York. Was that what Rufus Ariel wanted to talk about? Tobar sensed an opportunity presenting itself. Apparently they were portraits of a Dutch merchant and, the companion piece, his wife. Two Rembrandts for sale in New York? How fucking convenient was
that
, he thought cynically. Two Rembrandts being sold by a private collector in a recession. Two Rembrandts which had never come onto the market before.

Of course, it could be merely a rumour, he thought, making a note to ring the collector as soon as possible. He had brokered for the Japanese man before, so why hadn’t he been approached this time? And why was the sale in New York rather than London?

‘Excuse me, sir …’ His thoughts interrupted, Tobar looked up to see his secretary standing by his desk. ‘Mr Langley wants a word with you.’

‘I’m sure he does.’

‘Shall I put him through?’

‘Did I say that?’ Manners replied, his tone biting. ‘Did I say – put him through?’

‘No, sir,’ she replied, a composed woman in a light suit, her expression unreadable.

She had worked for Tobar Manners for nearly two decades and was immune to his rudeness. Loathing him, she told her husband, was just a perk of the job. Manners was too careful to let her see too much, but she had overheard many innuendos about his dealings, and had had
to put off a number of dissatisfied clients. When paintings were sold as one artist and then discovered to be by another, lesser, painter, Tobar Manners always affected an injured stance. Good Lord, of course he hadn’t known. What would it do for his reputation? Would he have honestly risked his good name selling something he did not believe to be genuine?

In the 1980s there was gossip that he had been involved in trading forgeries; then he was suspected of stomping up the bidding on a Flinck, but it was never proven and Manners had his lawyer on speed dial.

‘You don’t put Mr Langley through to me. You don’t
ever
put Mr Langley through.’

‘Shall I tell him you’re out?’

‘Tell him I’m fucking water skiing, for all I care.’

Nodding, she turned to go, then turned back to him. ‘Mr Langley said that unless you took his call he would feel obliged to visit you.’

‘And when he does, I’ll be fucking out,’ Manners replied, staring at his secretary. ‘Have you changed your hair?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Looks good.’

Fuck you, sir, she thought, smiling sweetly as she walked out.

He had overreacted, Samuel thought, angered by his own nervousness. It had been two weeks since Owen Zeigler had been killed and there had been no more instances of burglaries or murders in the capital. Taking off his reading
glasses, Samuel heard the sound of his housekeeper walking past the study door. He waited, counted to five, then smiled as she knocked.

‘What would you like for your dinner this evening?’ Mrs McKendrick asked, walking in and keeping her head facing forward, as though to see the mounds of books and clutter would unnerve her. ‘I thought chicken might be nice.’

‘Would be lovely,’ Samuel replied, glancing up at her and making a mental note to leave her some little inheritance. She had been a loyal employee, and even if her cooking was erratic, she was willing. ‘My solicitor is coming to see me at three o’clock tomorrow, I wanted to give you some warning. Perhaps we could have some tea?’

‘I’ll see to it,’ Mrs McKendrick replied, pleased at the chance to bake and garner the usual compliments. ‘Will he be staying for dinner?’

‘No, not that long. Just afternoon tea.’

‘Perhaps scones?’

‘Good.’

‘Or a Battenberg?’

‘Or both?’

She smiled, the answer was the right one.

‘The newspaper, sir,’ she said, passing it over to Samuel and pointing to the front page. ‘Gets worse everyday. Unemployment rising again. I voted Labour, but now I wonder … There’s two families in the village selling up and going, can’t pay their mortgages. Both men been working at the local garage and laid off.’ She looked at
Samuel, as though daring him to contradict her. ‘It’s the kids I feel for the most. Fancy being moved from your home
and
school friends. It’s not right.’

Pausing, she realised that Samuel wasn’t going to respond and turned away, opening the window half an inch to freshen the room. She knew about her employer’s reputation in the art world. The articles in
The Times
, the
Observer
and the foreign papers had all caught her eye, but she had never read them. As she said to her husband, art wasn’t her thing. Art was for the toffs. Art was what people talked about when they wanted to sound cultured. Art was a joke to the common man.

Turning back from the window, Mrs McKendrick looked at her employer. ‘About four o’clock be all right for your tea, sir?’

Samuel nodded. ‘That would be excellent, thank you, Mrs McKendrick.’

Nodding, she left the room. Oh no, Mrs McKendrick thought, her employer was a kind man, and generous, but he had no idea of the realities of life. No idea at all.

New York

Charlotte Gorday returned to New York alone. Dreading the long flight, she sat in first class and stared out of the window until it was dark, and then pulled down the blind. She hoped the engine’s incessant murmuring might help her sleep, but sleep proved impossible. Her food remained untouched. Trying to engage her mind, she glanced at the magazines she had bought, then spotted an article that would be sure to interest Owen … But Owen was dead and, remembering this, Charlotte found herself shaking uncontrollably. Embarrassed, she pressed herself against the window, but she was trembling so much she couldn’t control, or disguise, it.

‘Are you all right?’

Charlotte looked up into the air hostess’s face. ‘Yes, fine. Thank you …’

‘Are you a nervous flier?’

No, she wanted to say. No, no, no. Go away. I’m shaking because I’m in shock; I’m shaking because I’ve just left
my dead lover behind. I’m shaking because it’s natural, normal. And if you knew what I felt, you’d shake until your teeth rattled.

But she only said, simply, ‘I’ve just lost somebody …’

‘
I’ve just lost somebody.
Not misplaced them. Not forgotten where I put them, but lost them. How careless was that? How little interest did that show?

‘I’d been in love with him for eighteen years,’ she went on numbly, feeling the air hostess’s hand on her shoulder. And then Charlotte pulled herself together. She certainly wasn’t about to fall apart on a plane, in public. That wasn’t her style. Her sense of decorum made her straighten herself up. Controlled elegance helped her to stop shaking. There would be a time to let go – but not now, not here.

‘I’ll be all right,’ she said calmly. ‘Perhaps I should have a little something to eat after all.’

When Charlotte finally arrived at the Manhattan apartment she shared with her husband, Philip, she was surprised to find him at home, waiting for her. In fact, he had cried off a previous dinner engagement.

‘Don’t change your plans for me, Philip.’

‘No problem,’ he assured her. ‘I’d have picked you up from the airport if you’d told me which flight you were coming in on.’

‘I should have rung you. Thoughtless, wasn’t I?’ Charlotte said numbly.

But her husband sat down on the window seat without replying. Several photographs, and a contemporary portrait
of Charlotte, stamped her joint ownership on the apartment, but in reality the place lacked her spirit and was mostly her husband’s abode. Newspapers and business books were piled around the room; Philip’s mobile phone lay next to his lap top; an open cigar box had been left on another chair, and his reading glasses stared at her quizzically from the mantelpiece.

‘It was terrible news about Owen Zeigler,’ Philip began, glancing at his wife. ‘I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I want you to know that.’

She turned to him, her expression unravelling, her vulnerability obvious.

‘Thank you … thank you.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No,’ she said after a pause.

‘I know you loved him,’ Philip went on, a reasonable man who loved his wife, but loved others too. A man who had made no secret of his tendencies, and in Charlotte had found a woman who had also been committed elsewhere. ‘We could go on holiday somewhere …’

She nodded absentmindedly.

‘ … a change of scene might help you,’ he went on, getting up and walking over to her. They had not made love for many years and he found it awkward to be close to her. Nevertheless, he sat down on the sofa and put his arm around her shoulders. He could smell her perfume, gone stale from long hours of travelling, and noticed the puffiness around her eyes. ‘I liked Owen Zeigler,’ he said.

‘I loved him.’

‘You know, sometimes I thought you’d leave me for him,’ Philip said, Charlotte leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘Stay in London, move in with him permanently. I thought I’d lose.’

‘I never thought I would,’ she said honestly, taking her husband’s hand and looking at the wedding ring on his third finger. ‘I don’t know what to do now, Philip. How to live. I don’t know if it was all worthwhile, now that I’ve lost him … I should be grateful for you, Philip, grateful that you’re still here, and I am. But …’ she gazed at him, lost. ‘Why don’t I know what to do?’

‘No one knows what to do at a time like this.’

‘Maybe we should have had children.’

‘We never wanted them.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair on them.’

‘Or us.’

‘Or us,’ she echoed, then asked, ‘Was
I
fair on you, Philip?’

He took a breath, looking into her face, did not know how to answer her.

‘Maybe I wasn’t fair on you,’ he admitted slowly. ‘I always had other women.’

‘I only ever had Owen. I never wanted any other man.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I would have told you, if you’d asked.’ She paused, her voice dipping. ‘Owen was murdered, you know?’

‘Yes, I read about it. Do they have any idea who did it?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Do they know why he was killed?’

‘They say it was a robbery that went wrong.’

‘It happens.’

‘No, it doesn’t. Not like that, Philip. They left the paintings, all the valuable objects they could have taken. Why would they leave them?’

‘I suppose they were disturbed.’

‘They were looking for something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know,
I don’t know!
’ she said. ‘I keep imagining what Owen must have suffered. How he looked, what he was thinking. I keep wondering why I wasn’t there …’

‘Thank God you weren’t.’

‘I’d gone to the country to visit some friends,’ Charlotte went on. ‘I
never
usually did that. I’d spoken to Owen on the mobile earlier that night and he was worried, I could hear it in his voice. I rang him later to say goodnight and he was surprised because it was so early, until I explained that there was going to be a dinner party and it might finish late. He was always a bad sleeper; he would take pills and then he was out cold for hours. I should have called him when I went to bed, but I didn’t. Then my phone went in the early morning and I picked it up without looking at the number and I said ‘hello, darling, did you sleep,’ but it wasn’t him. It was the police …’

Philip held her tightly, burying his face in her hair.

‘I
should
have called him when I went to bed,’ Charlotte said again. ‘He might have answered the phone, and it might have stopped him going down into the basement.

He might still be alive if I’d called. I could have saved him!’

‘No,’ Philip said firmly. ‘It wasn’t down to you to save him. His death had nothing to do with you, or what you didn’t do, or could have done.’

‘How do I live without him?’

‘You’ve still got me,’ Philip answered, knowing that he would never be enough.

She wept quietly, hardly making a sound, Philip holding onto her and looking at her portrait hanging over the mantelpiece. It was Owen who had organised the sittings with a celebrated artist he knew, and Philip had agreed to it. And over the years, he had grown to like his wife’s lover; not that he
knew
Owen, but he approved of his behaviour. And Philip could enjoy his affairs, feeling less guilty knowing that his wife had someone. He never suffered the misery of jealousy when she wore an outfit or a piece of jewellery he did not recognise. Phone calls and letters that came to the Park Avenue apartment didn’t disturb him; he saw them, instead, as another indication of how remarkable Charlotte was. She had inspired love in two men, constant, unwavering attention – which was something Philip had never managed. Aside from his wife, no woman had loved him enough, which was why Philip Gorday felt it was only right that he support Charlotte while she grieved. Right that he didn’t ignore her distress, or believe – selfishly – that it diluted her affection for him.

It was almost ten o’clock when Charlotte finally fell
asleep, Philip having given her a sleeping tablet. When he was sure he couldn’t wake her, he lifted his wife off the sofa and took her into their bedroom. Gently he laid her on the bed and tucked the covers around her. She moved, troubled, murmuring under her breath, but she didn’t wake.

House of Corrections,
Gouda, 1652

I’ve been ill, coughing up blood. A lot of the women do that here because the work’s hard, it’s always cold and the food isn’t good. No fresh fish from the market, or new bread. No thick yellow cheese that you have to chew on your back teeth … An old friend came to see me yesterday. She brought some sweetmeats, smuggling them under her apron, cackling like an idiot when she was confronted. The guard thought she was just another mad old mare, and let her in … Women gamble with their looks. When you’re young you can play a full hand, but when you’re older the stakes get tougher, the face cards showing your age … I used to love cards, and skittles.