• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He had not.

Had he had a recent visit from someone interested in a Giacometti?

Indeed he had.

Several weeks earlier, a “nice, modest man” named Drewe had wandered in. He was a doctor and a distant relative of the architect Jane Drew, and he had inherited a 1956 portrait of Peter Watson from his mother. It was purportedly by Giacometti, but Drewe was trying to fill in the gaps in the provenance. He showed Ellis-Jones a letter indicating that the painting had been sold through Wildenstein as part of an exchange for a Modigliani. He had several other letters referring to the Giacometti’s past ownership, and he wanted to verify his research.

“Drewe’s a timid amateur, ignorant but sincere,” said Ellis-Jones. The painting could never have come through Wildenstein because the gallery did not deal in modern art. Worse still, Ellis-Jones thought the piece looked dubious, and he’d told Drewe to contact Palmer and ushered him out the door.

The connection between Peter Watson, E. C. Gregory, and Jane Drew was clear: They were all spokes of the ICA wheel. Each one had been an important figure in the British modern art movement.

Palmer wondered whether the inclusion of these notables in the provenances was intended to take the focus away from the fakes, to distract potential buyers with the luster of owning a work that had once been in the hands of such luminaries. She also wondered whether Cockcroft, Drewe, and Viscount Chelmwood were somehow connected. Could they be one and the same person?

She went back to her files, found the original letter from Dr. Drewe, and laid it out on her desk next to Richard Cockcroft’s letter to Phillips. Her eye settled on the return addresses: Drewe lived at 30 Rotherwick Road, and Cockcroft at 20 Rotherwick. Their phone numbers were almost the same, off by just a single digit. The signatures were similar, and beneath each one the writer had typed his name and then underlined it.

Palmer checked her notes on the viscount’s phone call. His complicated explanations echoed the tone of the letters: an abundance of detail coupled with a certain overall vagueness. At the bottom of her phone log she had jotted down the viscount’s number. It was identical to Drewe’s.

From her files she dug up a third letter containing a photograph of the same suspicious Portrait of a Woman that she and David Sylvester had seen in the Hanover album at the Tate. The letter was signed by John Cockett, chairman of Norseland Research, the firm Dr. Drewe had claimed to be representing as agent for the Footless Woman.

Were Drewe and Cockett colleagues? Was Cockett an alias?

This third letter had the same discursive quality as the others. Cockett said he would bring the painting to Paris for Palmer’s review, but that the trip would coincide with a business venture in which he was “co-operating with the French on a project to develop new propulsion systems.”

“It might not be possible to get the painting on board our aircraft if the customs indicate that it would complicate the clearance of the industrial equipment we are bringing with us,” he wrote.

Cockett’s signature was underlined, and the letter, like the others, contained several cc’s at the bottom. Palmer suspected that these were deceptive flourishes, and that he had no intention of copying anyone. The letter was typed on what looked like expensive stationery, with fancy heraldic signs at the top, but when she ran her fingertip across the letterhead, she could tell it was not embossed. The type was smooth to the touch, a mere photocopy. Suddenly she thought she had a clearer picture of the man: He was arrogant, a risk taker, and a cheapskate.

Curious about Norseland, Palmer phoned the Trade and Industry Department in London, which kept records of all registered British companies. She learned that Norseland was registered to a physicist, John Drewe, and his secretary and art historian, John Lawrence Myatt. The firm had never earned a cent or filed a tax return. It was a shell.

15

FALLING OFF A LOG

It had been a bad year for Clive Belman. The onetime jewelry