Rembrandt's Ghost Read online

  It was now eight o’clock in the morning and after an hour on various overheated London Transport vehicles crammed with various overheated passengers, Finn Ryan was not in good spirits. Her mood wasn’t made any better by the sight of Ghastly Ronald standing at the ornate Louis the Fifteenth escritoire that passed as a reception desk, chatting up Doris, the plain-Jane battle-ax who acted as the first line of interference for anyone entering the sacred halls of Mason-Godwin.

  The Ghastly Ronald’s real name was Ronald Adrian DePanay-Cottrell, better known as Ronnie and sometimes behind his back as Lady Ron. According to Ronnie he was somehow related to the queen but he could never quite explain the connection. He had a plumy Oxford accent, a degree in something he never talked about, thinning black hair, wet lips, and intelligent, dark eyes that always seemed to be in motion. He had the kind of lanky loose-boned body that belonged in a Monty Python skit, but the John Cleese-Ichabod Crane look was muted by the expensive Crockett & Jones calfskin oxfords, the even more expensive Anderson & Sheppard pin-striped suit, and the creamy silk Dege & Skinner club tie in dark blue with little tiny crowns on it, hinting once again at a royal lineage that Finn was positive the Ghastly Ronald didn’t really have any claim to at all.

  Ronnie and Doris glanced up as Finn came through the doors, both looking at her with mild disapproval as though she’d blundered clumsily into some intimate and important conversation. Finn instantly felt self-conscious, which was the whole point of course, and her self-consciousness instantly turned to resentment. The whole nose-in-the-air snobbishness of Mason-Godwin and a thousand years of English aristocratic arrogance were beginning to wear a little.

  ‘‘Ah, Miss Ryan,’’ said Ronnie, ‘‘arriving for work, I see,’’ as though she were tardy, which she wasn’t—not by a full half hour.

  ‘‘Ah, Mr. DePanay-Cottrell,’’ she responded with some dry ice in her tone, leaning a little heavily on the ‘‘Mr.’’ knowing just how much Ronnie yearned for something else like ‘‘His Grace’’ or ‘‘Baron’’ or ‘‘my lord’’’ or even a bare-bones ‘‘sir.’’ Not in this lifetime, Finn thought.

  ‘‘One should eat one’s breakfast at home, Miss Ryan, not spread crumbs across one’s desk at one’s place of employment.’’

  Finn wondered how often Ronnie could use the word ‘‘one’’ in a single sentence. He really was profoundly irritating.

  ‘‘Not when one has to make allowances for one’s ride on London transport that takes an hour, one doesn’t,’’ Finn answered.

  ‘‘Tooting, isn’t it? Stepney?’’

  ‘‘Crouch End.’’

  ‘‘Crouch End. Indeed.’’ Ronnie of course lived in a house in Cheyne Walk once occupied by the American painter James McNeill Whistler and his famous mother.

  ‘‘Indeed it is,’’ said Finn. She gave Ronnie her most insincere smile and turned away. She’d had enough of him for one morning; he’d probably soured the cream in her cooling coffee.

  ‘‘No crumbs, Miss Ryan!’’ Ronnie called as she started to climb the stairs leading up to the floor above.

  ‘‘Not one!’’ Finn called back without bothering to turn around. ‘‘Twit,’’ she murmured under her breath. She reached the landing and headed down the corridor to her office.

  2

  Finn’s office was a cubicle among cubicles at the windowless rear of a rabbit warren of rooms and corridors on the second floor of Mason-Godwin. Being in England, it wasn’t called the second floor; it was the first floor, while the first floor was called the ground floor, which made sense but was still a little annoying. Living in England was sometimes a little like living inside a page from Alice in Wonderland, and that made sense as well, she supposed, since Lewis Carroll wasn’t the author’s real name and he hadn’t really been a writer. He had been an Anglican minister and a mathematics professor at Oxford.

  England was a confusing place full of confusing people. According to her mother, dead barely a year ago now, England, like the rest of Europe, suffered from enduring the burden of too much history. As she put it, ‘‘It makes them all a little eccentric, dear. As a civilization they tend to make everything as complicated as possible, from people to pornography.’’ Finn didn’t know much about the pornography part of it beyond the flyers for hookers and their various specialties found pasted inside every phone booth, but the eccentric people part certainly was true enough. She reached her office, had her muffin and coffee, and tried to forget about Ronnie and everything he stood for, burying herself in work.

  For Finn, work that day consisted in poring over old catalogues from past sales, noting trend changes and amounts for repeat clients likely to attend the next sale due at the end of the month. The end of April sale was a bad one; instead of concentrating on a simple theme like, say, ‘‘Between the Wars British Contemporary Painters 1918-1939,’’ the sale was a spring-cleaning auction that covered everything from a half dozen ‘‘School of Delft’’ paintings that were part of unsold inventory from the fifties to a small Cézanne that Ronnie had been keeping off the market while the prices rose.

  Inventory—a dirty word in the auction industry, but an important one. Not many people knew just how speculative the art market was. All of the big houses had been doing it for hundreds of years—buying pictures and other items for themselves,not clients, then slipping lots under the gavel when cash was needed or the market was right, taking full price and not just commissions.

  This April was no exception; more than half of the items in this year’s sale were from the store-rooms upstairs. The scuttlebutt was that Ronnie had spent far too much over the past year acquiring paintings of questionable provenance or even authenticity. Finn knew for a fact that Lady Ron had recently picked up a fifteenth-century bust of Piero de’ Medici supposedly done by the Leonardo contemporary Mino da Fiesole that turned out to be a very well-made forgery by Giovanni Bastianini sometime in the 1850s. The difference between the two sculptors was the difference between platinum and pig iron. The cost of Ronnie’s mistake was going to have to be made up one way or the other. He wouldn’t dare sell the fake as a real Fiesole, so he’d probably wind up attributing it to ‘‘Renaissance School,’’ but he’d take an enormous loss.

  By twelve-thirty she’d finished the Ds on the computerized client files, then broke for lunch. She went for a slice of pizza at the Europa since she couldn’t afford the upscale Irish stew at Mulligan’s down the street, then came back to her desk and started on the Es. By four she was wishing she smoked just as an excuse to get outside for some air, rain or not. She was saved by a call from Doris downstairs.As usual, the receptionist’s whining voice grated on her nerves.

  ‘‘We’ve got a walk-in with a parcel wrapped in string. I told him we didn’t do spot evaluations but he insists it’s a Jan Steen. I thought I’d send him on to you. Can’t miss him, dear, he’s wearing one of those silly sweatshirts with Harvard across the front. Purple. And he’s wearing scruffy-looking trainers as well.’’

  In other words, not the type who’d have a Dutch Master from the seventeenth century under his arm. The tone in Doris’s voice was dismissive. She was passing a nuisance on to Finn.

  ‘‘He’s American?’’

  ‘‘No, British. He was very insistent. Asked to see Mr. DePanay-Cottrell, but I informed him that you’d have to do, Miss Ryan. Deal with him please.’’ Doris hung up without giving her a chance to respond. The name of the university on the man’s sweatshirt had sent him in Finn’s direction. She quickly checked the computer inventory to see if Steen’s name appeared. It did. A small scene of villagers dancing around a Maypole had made a hammer price of slightly less than a million pounds sterling, well over a million dollars U.S. Jan Steen had always been a blue-chip artist, even in his own lifetime.

  Two minutes later a figure appeared in the doorway of her office. Just as Doris had described:

  purple Harvard sweatshirt, bruised Nikes, and a scruffy-looking package under his arm wrapped in brown paper and tied
with what a Midwesterner like her would have called binder twine, the stuff you wrapped around bales of hay. As well as the sweatshirt and runners, he wore a pair of stained blue jeans worn at the knees. Definitely not the type to have a Jan Steen or any other masterpiece under his arm.

  What Doris had not mentioned was that the man was disturbingly handsome. He had a lean, tanned face under a thatch of sun blond hair and the body of an Olympic swimmer. He also had huge, bright blue eyes blinking pleasantly behind a simple pair of Harry Potter wire rims. Both the man and the package he held were lightly spattered with rain. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella. He looked a little older than she was, mid-thirties or so.

  Finn smiled. She didn’t know what else to do. ‘‘Can I help you?’’

  ‘‘I’ve got this painting,’’ he said, taking the package out from under his arm and holding it out to her. His voice was definitely Oxford—the real thing, not the walnut-in-the-cheeks adenoidal version poached by Lady Ron. The parcel was oblong, twelve by sixteen, just about right for a Jan Steen. He laid it carefully on the desk.

  ‘‘Please sit,’’ said Finn, gesturing toward the only other chair in the office. ‘‘My name is Finn Ryan, by the way.’’ She smiled again.

  ‘‘William Pilgrim,’’ he said. ‘‘Billy. You’re an American.’’

  ‘‘Columbus, Ohio.’’

  ‘‘Good-bye, Columbus.’’

  ‘‘Philip Roth.’’

  ‘‘His first book.’’

  ‘‘Ali McGraw and Richard Benjamin for the Hollywood version. My mom made me watch it on TV once.’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ Billy Pilgrim said smiling, ‘‘I think we’ve exhausted that vein of conversation.’’

  ‘‘The painting,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘The painting.’’ He nodded.

  She unwrapped it. Oil on canvas, no frame, the canvas stapled to the stretcher with rusty iron half-moons. It was a representation of another village scene, this one with a half dozen beer swillers sitting on a bench under a tree. Just the kind of thing the artist was famous for. The signature on the bottom was a group of initials: JHS, Jan Havickszoon Steen.

  ‘‘Very nice,’’ said Finn. Nice but not right.

  ‘‘Not by Jan Steen,’’ said Pilgrim, picking up her tone.

  ‘‘I don’t think so, no,’’ agreed Finn.

  ‘‘Why not? It’s been in the family forever. Dutch ancestors. Everyone always called it a Jan Steen.’’

  ‘‘A Jan Steen of this size probably would have been painted on an oak panel,’’ Finn explained. ‘‘If it had been painted on canvas, it would have been tacked or glued to the stretcher, not stapled. It would also almost surely have been restretched and relined over three centuries.’’

  ‘‘Oh dear.’’

  ‘‘And the signature is wrong. He signed his paintings as J. Steen, not with his initials. He hated the name Havickszoon for one thing. It’s not all bad news, though,’’ she added.

  ‘‘Oh?’’

  ‘‘If you’re lucky, it might be a Keating.’’

  ‘‘Keating?’’

  ‘‘Tom Keating. A British master forger from after World War Two. His forgeries are worth a lot of money on their own now. He specialized in Dutch Masters.’’

  ‘‘But not as much as a Jan Steen would fetch.’’

  ‘‘Not by a long shot,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘You seem to know a great deal about it,’’ said Pilgrim. There was nothing accusatory; he just seemed curious.

  Finn shrugged. ‘‘I did a double major for my BFA. Dutch golden age and Renaissance painters. I had a professor who did his doctoral dissertation on Jan Steen.’’

  ‘‘Steen stuck, so to speak,’’ said Pilgrim, smiling.

  Finn laughed. ‘‘So to speak.’’ Billy Pilgrim seemed to be taking his disappointment well. She started wrapping up the little painting again. ‘‘I can give you a number at the Courtauld Institute to call about Tom Keating if you’d like. They’ll give it a look.’’

  Pilgrim thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘‘No, that’s all right, Miss Ryan. I quite like it, and if it’s not worth a great deal of money, I think I’ll keep it. Hang it up in the salon.’’

  ‘‘Salon?’’ Finn asked. He didn’t look like a hairdresser but maybe he meant something else. In England they spoke English, not American.

  ‘‘I live on a boat,’’ the blond man said. ‘‘The Busted Flush.’’

  ‘‘Funny name,’’ said Finn, tying the string back around the parcel. ‘‘Trouble with the toilet?’’

  It was Billy Pilgrim’s turn to laugh. ‘‘It’s a poker term,’’ he said.

  Finn nodded. ‘‘As in royal flush.’’

  ‘‘A busted flush is a flush you fail to complete— ten, jack, queen, king without the ace. In my case it’s a literary term as well. It was the name of Travis McGee’s boat in the John D. MacDonald series. I did my dissertation on MacDonald as a matter of fact.’’

  ‘‘As in doctoral dissertation?’’

  ‘‘That’s right.’’ Pilgrim blushed apologetically. ‘‘I was a bit of a prodigy actually. French literature for my bachelor’s, as you call it, Spanish for the postgraduate, and modern literature for the doctorate.’’ He made a little snorting sound. ‘‘Not good for much, really, when you get right down to it. I thought about teaching, but then I thought about it again and decided I preferred messing about in boats a great deal more, so there you are.’’

  Finn realized that any business part of the conversation had run out and she wanted to keep on talking with him anyway. ‘‘Who’s Travis Magee?’’

  ‘‘Good Lord!’’ Billy exclaimed. ‘‘You’re an American! It’s like saying you never heard of John Wayne.’’ He paused. ‘‘You really don’t know?’’

  ‘‘No idea.’’

  ‘‘Did you ever see a film called Cape Fear?’’

  ‘‘Sure. Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte.’’

  ‘‘Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum actually, but that’s another story.’’ Pilgrim frowned. ‘‘The point is the man who wrote the book it was based on was John D. MacDonald. He also wrote twenty-one Travis McGee novels, each one of them with a color in the title. Darker Than Amber, The Green Ripper, The Deep Blue Good-by.’’

  ‘‘And McGee lived on his boat, the Busted Flush.’’

  ‘‘Yes. A houseboat. Slip F18, Bahia Del Mar, Fort Lauderdale.’’

  ‘‘You live in a houseboat, then?’’

  ‘‘No. Hout Bay 40 with a Marconi Rig. One of the South African designs, before Dix went to Virginia.’’

  Finn didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about, but she enjoyed listening. ‘‘This Travis McGee is a fictional character we’re talking about?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘You seem to know all the details.’’

  ‘‘He was an ex-football player with a bad knee who went around ‘salvaging’ stolen property and rescuing damsels in distress. Robin Hood and Mike Hammer combined. The archetype for the lovable rogue in American literature. The man every red-blooded Yankee secretly yearned to be. The Play-boy magazine ideal.’’

  ‘‘Just the sort of guy a red-blooded Yankee girl would loathe and despise,’’ Finn said with a laugh.

  ‘‘Perhaps so,’’ Pilgrim sighed. ‘‘But he was a man of his time and he had an enormous cultural effect. He was your Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, John Wayne, Huck Finn, and Tom Sawyer all rolled into one. The last great American adventurer, the first great American antihero.’’ Pilgrim flushed again. ‘‘I’ve been lecturing.’’

  ‘‘Maybe you should have been a teacher after all,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Good Lord, what a horrible suggestion!’’ said Pilgrim. ‘‘All those children with runny noses and Gameboys in their satchels. I’d go mad!’’ He stood up. ‘‘I’m afraid I’ve taken up too much of your time, Miss Ryan. I’m terribly sorry.’’

  ‘‘It was a pleasure, Mr. Pilgrim, the high point of m
y day, to be honest.’’ She stood and handed him his rewrapped painting. They shook hands. His grip was warm and strong without being overly masculine. He had calluses. These hands worked for a living. She liked that. She liked Billy Pilgrim. She wondered if it would frighten him off to ask him out for a drink or something. She’d never been very good at that kind of thing.

  ‘‘Thank you for your time, Miss Ryan. You’ve been most kind.’’ He stood there looking a little adolescent and awkward.

  ‘‘No problem, really. And it’s Finn. Miss Ryan sounds like a kindergarten teacher.’’

  ‘‘You could teach the little creatures all about Menheer Jan Steen,’’ said Billy.

  ‘‘And then wipe their runny noses.’’

  ‘‘Gad.’’ He looked appropriately horrified and then smiled, his face lighting up and his eyes twinkling.

  ‘‘Off to the Busted Flush?’’ She was groping now, and beginning to feel like an idiot.

  ‘‘Not quite yet. I’ve a flat in town. Appointment in the City tomorrow. Solicitors and such. I’ve been trying to sell a little seaside property of mine in Cornwall.’’ First the painting, now a house. It sounded as though he was going somewhere.

  ‘‘Cottage?’’ Finn asked.

  Billy nodded. ‘‘Something like that.’’

  ‘‘Going on vacation?’’

  ‘‘I thought I’d take a bit of a cruise.’’

  ‘‘Away from the rain?’’

  ‘‘Hopefully.’’

  ‘‘Any particular destination?’’

  ‘‘I haven’t given it much thought.’’

  ‘‘What would Travis McGee do under the circumstances?’’

  ‘‘Make himself a Boodles martini and talk to Meyer about it.’’

  ‘‘Meyer?’’

  ‘‘His philosophical friend a few slips over at Bahia del Mar. He had a boat called the John Maynard Keynes.’’

  ‘‘He must have been an economist.’’

  ‘‘Something like that. It’s never really made clear in the books.’’