The Rembrandt Secret (49 page)

Let me be clear with you – I cared for your father and admired him. From the first time we met, I saw his intelligence and his skill. He had all the potential to be a great dealer, a connoisseur. His intellect was never lacking, it was his character which was threadbare.

Marshall stopped reading, stunned by these words, and took a long pause before reading on:

Owen lacked discipline. And worst of all, he lacked trust. Your father had great charm, but no talent for friendship. I had limited charm, but was a great friend to those I took under my wing. Years ago, Owen Zeigler was introduced to
me and he wanted to learn, to know everything he could about the Dutch painters. He worshipped the great artists of Holland: Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt. He liked the cool tones, the dour Dutch skies and doughy faces of their sitters. His attraction for this period was heightened when he discovered, and bought, that small Rembrandt he treasured so much. The Rembrandt Tobar Manners lied about. The Rembrandt which was one hundred per cent genuine.

You must understand your father, Marshall, for any of this to make sense. You must also understand me, and the art world. The dealers, the connoisseurs, the traders, the auctioneers and the historians live to uncover some monumental discovery. They dream of it as other men dream of women. Because with knowledge – unknown before, uncovered only by them – they have status. And a hidden, voyeuristic insight into the great. We know we are all dwarves beside Rembrandt, Leonardo and Titian, but we all long for that covert look into the lives of the giants.

I was no different. All my life I strived to uncover something important. Which I did. I wrote perceptively about Goya and the Dutch painters. I argued attributions and mocked Brit Art. I predicted the downturn of contemporary realism, and as far back as 1940 I knew Caravaggio would seduce a new generation of followers. But I’m getting off my story, I must stick to the facts. And they are as follows.

You probably don’t remember your grandfather, Neville Zeigler. He was a very secretive character. As a Jewish refugee, he had every right to be suspicious of people and their
motives, but he passed this wariness – and weakness – down to his son. Luckily Neville Zeigler was also clever. He knew his ambitions were limited by his foreign status and by the times in which he lived, but Owen was another matter.

Neville’s ambition for his son was unbounded. While Neville laboured in markets and later in a dour little brica-brac shop in the East End, he coached the boy Owen in art history. He trailed him round galleries and exhibitions, and was rewarded by his son’s natural intelligence and instinctive passion for the subject. Who knows what Neville Zeigler’s past was? I never knew, but his drive and skill must have had their roots in some wellspring of breeding and culture. By the time Owen was in his teens he was dazzling; Neville was remote as a ghost, driving his star child on.

Of course he was well rewarded. He lived to see Owen go to university and finally slide into the gluey womb of the art world. Father and son were different, but in some ways alike. Both kept secrets. Neville kept his secrets very well, perhaps too well. When I had known your father for a couple of years he introduced me to Neville, and I found him intriguing; we even became friendly. He spoke of what he wanted for his only son, but constantly worried about money. I suspect that Neville had lost a great deal when he came to this country before the war, and his penury rankled. Even when he had made a good sale, he worried about how long the money would last and he used to talk about the art world and rage at the blanket greed of the dealers.

I couldn’t argue with that.

And Neville had a wish – one of the few he ever confided in me – that he wanted to be able to leave Owen an inheritance so that, whatever might happen in the future, his son would always be secure. He longed to find something valuable, some painting or art work. He wasn’t a fantasist, but I know he dreamed of this. Seeing Owen’s potential, I had always been keen to mentor him, and Neville was grateful, knowing my name would advance his son further. Owen and I became close, two people dissimilar in age, but identical in interest and ambition. And we talked about that favourite subject of the art world – the theory.

Theories spring up like daisies in this business. Your father and I talked often of such things, and one day, after I had known him for a couple of years, Owen said that he believed Rembrandt had had a bastard son. He said that Geertje Dircx could have borne Rembrandt a child when they were both young. A child who was farmed out to another family – a child called Carel Fabritius. After all, your father went on, Dircx had certainly worked for Rembrandt, and been sent to an asylum. Wasn’t that too brutal a punishment for a woman he had simply fallen out of love with? Why would Rembrandt go to the trouble of having an ex-mistress committed?

Unless she knew something so damaging she had to be locked away and silenced.

You know the story, Marshall, you’ve read the Rembrandt letters, you listened to Geertje Dircx’s history. So what you’re wondering now is – what am I going to say next? Guess, Marshall, try and guess before you read the next lines. Or
perhaps you want to throw this letter away, and never know the answer. You can choose. But be warned, if you read on, you’ll be given some information which will change you, and your life. Information which will demand action from you. Or inaction. But certainly a choice.

I think we both know that you’ve changed. You can’t look away now, can you?

It was only supposed to be a joke.

In the 1960s, Neville had been to an auction in Amsterdam. There had been a fire in a synagogue, and the authorities were trying to raise funds for the repairs by selling off anything salvageable. As the items were religious Jewish artefacts, your grandfather was naturally interested. He bought a few items and then spotted a casket, badly scorched. Thinking he could repair it then sell it on as a jewellery box, he was disappointed to find that he couldn’t undo the lock. Fire damage and age had warped the casket, so he held onto it, unsold. He kept it in his office, where I spotted it one day and realised just how old it was.

‘Fifteenth century,’ I told him.

‘
Worth much?
’

‘Not if you can’t open it.’

It was then the idea occurred to me. Asking if I could have a go at releasing the lock, I took the casket home. After some effort, I did open it and it was empty. But not for long. When I returned the casket to Neville, I lied; telling him that I hadn’t been able to open it, but he should keep trying. And then I waited. I knew that the next time Neville tried the lock, it would open and he would find the old
papers I had secreted inside. The Rembrandt letters. Yes, Marshall, I hid those letters in Neville Zeigler’s box.

You see, I wrote them.

Marshall flinched, read the words again, hardly taking them in. Samuel Hemmings had written the letters? How could that be? No, it couldn’t be possible … His hand shaking, Marshall continued to read.

But days passed and Neville said nothing. Weeks passed, then months, but not one word was uttered. All that changed was Neville’s attitude. He became withdrawn, cooler with me. He made excuses to be busy when I called at the shop and would only talk easily of Owen’s progress. In fact, he grew even more certain of his son’s success, almost jocular, as though he felt secure in a way that people do when they have backing. When they believe themselves rich.

And then it struck me. Neville
had
found the letters, but he wasn’t going to share his discovery with me. After all, I knew nothing of his coup, did I? Neville didn’t know I had planted the letters there. I’d told him that I hadn’t been able to open the casket, so how would I know of any documents? For a while I wondered if I should confess, but Neville’s deliberate choice to keep quiet about his discovery rankled with me. How dare he? I thought. Weren’t we friends? Hadn’t I mentored his son for years? How deceitful of Neville Zeigler to banish me from his good fortune, from his release from the tyranny of his poverty. He had wanted a find, and I had given him one.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking, Marshall, how did I dare to be angry with Neville? Oh, but I was. Time passed, and he never said one word about the letters. Perhaps he knew I’d planted them and was waiting for me to confess. Or he was turning the joke back on me, but I doubt that. I believe he thought he had found his gilded nest egg and when he hinted, now and again, about having some secret, I wanted to laugh, to tell him the truth. But as the years went on my revenge was watching Neville Zeigler believe he had outsmarted me. Samuel Hemmings, the respected, wealthy art historian, outflanked by an impoverished refugee. I told myself that when Neville died, and the Rembrandt letters had passed to his son – which they would, of course, hadn’t he always dreamt of leaving Owen an inheritance? –
then
would be the time to tell the truth. My protégé and I could laugh about it. Then.

Or so I thought.

In 1973, when Neville died, your father told me he had been left some letters concerning Rembrandt. I smiled over the phone and asked him to bring them to show me. But instead of wanting to share his moment of elation with his mentor, Owen hesitated. His mistrust injured me. For once, he was not his urbane self, and stammered an apology. He said he wasn’t being evasive, but that he had wanted to get the letters authenticated before he showed them to me.
Me!
Of all people.
Me!
The person who had taught him.
Me
! The friend and mentor.
Me
! The man who had trusted him with my knowledge and my affection.

The discovery of the Rembrandt letters changed your father, or maybe his suspicious streak – inherited from Neville – grew until it engulfed his common sense. But, as ever, he took my help quickly enough. On my recommendation, he took the letters to Stefan van der Helde for authentication – yet when your father came back to London he was shifty, unlike himself. Well, Owen said, Van der Helde had authenticated them, but he should get another opinion.

I offered him mine. It was rejected on the grounds that we were too close, I would be biased. That I would obviously want to please him by authenticating the discovery. How could he put me into such a difficult position? Owen asked. We were friends, very close friends, he would be asking me to put my reputation on the line. A reputation I had built up over years … The truth was, he didn’t trust me. Thought I would expose the letters myself, claim the victory as my own. You thought the same, Marshall. But you were both wrong.

Let me be frank with you. I was a jealous man, with a competitive streak. Yes, sometimes I was envious of other people’s triumph, but I never took anything that wasn’t my own. I never stole another person’s victory, or their work. I didn’t have to, my name spoke for itself. All my life I had willingly shared my knowledge with others; opened my home and my heart to people as passionate as myself. As eager to learn and share.
But your father could not share.
When he inherited the Rembrandt letters he hugged them to himself. I knew from the first he would never let the world enjoy them.

Again, I asked to see them and, finally, he lent them to me. The Rembrandt letters, which were so damning – as you found out. But your father didn’t give me all of them to read, he kept back one back, and the list of fakes. I’d written them. I knew the letters made no sense without the last one. But Owen smiled his clubhouse smile and thought he’d fooled me. I was an old man, after all, easy to cheat. And he couldn’t risk my having all the information. If I had the list I would know as much as he did – and Owen couldn’t bear the thought of that. He had to be the only person on earth who had read all the Rembrandt letters. And owned them.

The day was very hot when he came to see me. We chatted in the garden and I watched this surrogate son of mine – for whom I had cared so deeply and of whom I had been so proud – lie to me. You see, I thought he would relent and share the letters with me. But he didn’t. And my affection for him turned into hatred.

Like his father before him, Owen hugged his treasure to himself. I imagine he would have died with the Rembrandt letters still a secret if it hadn’t been for the sudden, corrosive downturn in his finances. Your father had been too confident and had gambled in a failing market.

Over the years he had often mentioned his Rembrandt theory, but never suggested that he might have the proof to back it up. When the art world realised Owen Zeigler had the potential to wreak havoc, his fate was determined. Ironically it was the blow Tobar Manners dealt him which was the catalyst. When Manners cheated your father with
the Rembrandt sale, Owen realised just how ruthless the business was. He had no real allies, no true friends, all he had were the letters.

But they turned out to be his death sentence, not his salvation.

I must tell you that I didn’t believe – not for one moment – that your father’s punishment would be so great. I never thought there would be deaths, and my cowardice kept me silent. They say that the man the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Well, I have been in my own madness of guilt for some time. The joke had festered over the years and turned into a canker which would destroy us all.

Of course you want proof, don’t you, Marshall? I mean, I can say I faked the Rembrandt letters, but anyone could say that. So I’ll tell you how I did it. I used paper from antique books I had collected, written around the same period as Rembrandt, and made the ink myself. I studied the calligraphy and struggled to emulate the Dutch language, making many copies because sometimes my hands shook. But I told myself that it didn’t matter if the writing was uncertain at times. Geertje Dircx had been ill educated, and she was recording her history under extreme circumstances.