The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [50]
″No. There are over fifty lecturers at the college, so the connection with me is pretty thin. The bank would have written to the referees and asked whether Hollows and Cox were in fact lecturers and lived at the addresses given. They will get told yes.″
″Suppose the referees mention it to Hollows or Cox?″
″They won′t see them. It′s four weeks to the new term, and I happen to know that they aren′t social friends.″
Peter smiled. ″You have done well.″ He heard the front door open, and Anne′s voice called hello. ″Up here;″ he shouted.
She came in and kissed him. ″I gather it went off all right;″ she said. There was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes.
″Well enough,″ Peter replied. He looked back to Mitch. ″The next step is the grand tour, isn′t it?″
″Yes. That′s down to you, I think.″
Anne said: ″If you two don′t need me, the baby does.″ She went out.
″Why me?″ said Peter.
″Anne and I mustn′t be seen in the galleries before delivery day.″
Peter nodded. ″Sure. Let′s go over it, then.″
″I′ve listed the top ten galleries here. You can get around them all in a day. You look first of all for what they′ve got plenty of and what they′re short of. If we′re going to offer them a picture, we might as well be sure it′s one they need.
″Secondly, the painter has to be easily forgeable. He must be dead, he must have a large body of work, and there can be no complete record of his work anywhere. We′re not going to copy masterpieces—we′re going to paint our own. You find one painter like that for each gallery, make a note, then go on to the next.″
″Yes—weʹll also have to exclude anyone who habitually used any specialized kinds of material. You know, everything would be much easier if we limited ourselves to watercolors and drawings.″
″We couldn′t raise the kind of money we need to make a spectacular splash.″
″How much d′you think we′ll raise altogether?″
″I shall be disappointed if it′s less than half a million.″
An atmosphere of concentration filled the big studio. Through the open windows, the warm August breeze brought distant traffic murmurs. For a long while the three people worked in a silence broken only by the contented gurgling of the baby in a playpen in the middle of the room.
The baby′s name was Vibeke, and she was just a year old. Normally she would have demanded attention from the adults in the room; but today she was playing with a new toy, a plastic box. She found that sometimes the lid would go on, and sometimes it would not; and she was trying to figure out what made the difference. She too was concentrating.
Her mother sat nearby at a battered table, writing with a fountain pen in meticulous copperplate script on a sheet of Meunier′s letterhead. The table was littered with opened books: glamorous coffee table art books, heavy tomes of reference, and small learned articles in paper covers. Occasionally Anne′s tongue would stick out of the comer of her mouth as she labored.
Mitch stood back from his canvas and gave a long sigh. He was working on a fairly large Cubist Picasso of a bullfight; one of the series of paintings which led up to the Guernica. There was a sketch on the floor beside his easel. He looked at it now, and deep frown-lines gouged his forehead. He lifted his right hand and made a series of passes at his canvas, painting a line in the air until he thought he had it right; then with a quick final stroke he put the brush to the canvas.
Anne heard the sigh, and looked up, first at Mitch and then at the canvas. A kind of stunned admiration came over her face. ″Mitch, it′s brilliant,″ she said.
He smiled gratefully.
″Really, could anyone do that?″ she added.
″No,″ he said slowly. ″It′s a specialized talent. Forgery for artists is a bit like mimicry for actors. Some of the greatest actors are lousy mimics. It′s just a trick which some people can do.″
Peter said: ″How are you getting on with those provenances?″
″I′ve done the Braque and the Munch, and I′m just finishing the Picasso,″ Anne replied. ″What kind of pedigree would your van Gogh have?″
Peter was reworking the picture he had