The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [51]
″It would have been painted between 1880 and 1886,″ Peter began. ″In his Dutch period. Nobody would have bought it then, I don′t suppose. Say it was in his possession—or better, his brother Theoʹs—for a few years. Then bought by some fictional collector in Brussels. Turned up by a dealer in the 1960s. You can invent the rest.″
″Shall I use the name of a real dealer?″
″Might as well—only make him an obscure one—German, say.″
″Mmm.″ The room became quiet again as the three returned to their work. After a while Mitch took down his canvas and began a new one, a Munch. He put on a pale gray wash over the whole surface, to get the brittle Norwegian light which pervaded so many of Munch′s paintings. From time to time he closed his eyes and tried to rid his mind of the warm English sunshine in the studio. He tried to make himself feel cold, and succeeded so well that he shivered.
Three loud knocks at the front door shattered the silence.
Peter, Mitch and Anne looked at one another blankly. Anne got up from the desk and went to the window. She turned to the men, her face white.
″It′s a policeman,″ she said.
They looked at her with astonished incredulity. Mitch was the first to adjust.
″Go to the door, Peter,″ he said. ″Anne, hide those provenances and the notepaper and stamp. I′ll turn the canvases with their faces to the walls. Let′s go!″
Peter walked slowly down the stairs, his heart in his mouth. It just did not make sense—mere was no way the law could be on to them already. He opened the front door.
The policeman was a tall young constable with short hair and a sparse mustache. He said: ″Is that your car outside, sir?″
″Yes—I mean no,″ Peter stuttered. ″Which one?″
″The blue Mini with things painted all over the wings.″
″Ah—it belongs to a friend. He′s a guest here at the moment.″
″Perhaps you′d like to tell him he′s left his sidelights on,″ said the bobby. ″Good day, sir.″ He turned away.
″Oh! Thank you!″ Peter said.
He went back up the stairs. Anne and Mitch looked at him with fear in their eyes.
Peter said: ″He asked me to tell you that you′ve left your sidelights on, Mitch.″
There was a moment of uncomprehending silence. Then all three of them burst out into a loud, almost hysterical laughter.
In her playpen, Vibeke looked up at the sudden noise. Her startled look dissolved into a smile, and she joined enthusiastically in the laughter, as if she perfectly understood the joke.
PART THREE
Figures in the Foreground
″You need to think of the role which pictures such as paintings have in our lives. This role is by no means a uniform one.″
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN,
philosopher
I
THE MULTISTORY, REINFORCED CONCRETE hotel in Rimini offered English breakfast bacon, eggs, and a pot of tea. Lipsey glimpsed a portion on someone′s table as he made his way through the dining room. The egg was fried hard and there was a suspicious green patch on the bacon. He sat down and ordered rolls and coffee.
He had arrived late last night and chosen his hotel badly. This morning he was still tired. In the foyer he had bought the Sun—the only English paper available. He flicked through it while he waited for his breakfast. He sighed with exasperation: it was not his sort of newspaper.
The coffee made him feel a little less weary, although a real breakfast—the kind he cooked for himself at home—would have been better. As he buttered his roll, he listened to the voices all around him, picking out accents from Yorkshire, Liverpool, and London. There were one or two German voices, too, but no French or Italian. The Italians had more sense than to stay in hotels they built for tourists; and no Frenchman in his right mind would go to Italy for a holiday.
He finished his roll, drained his coffee, and postponed his cigar. He asked an English-speaking hotel porter for directions to the nearest