"I don't know," I said.
"Oh!" she said. "I almost forgot. Have you seen this? Where is it?" she said, pulling at least three cosmetic bags out of her bag before she found what she wanted. "Here. What do you think? It ran the day after you left. I ripped it out of the newspaper on the plane."
"It" was an article from a a local Toronto paper. "Forging the Past" was the headline. The subhead said something to the effect that on the unveiling of the Magyar Venus at Toronto's Cottingham Museum, it was interesting to note how many of the museum world's most treasured objects had been found to be fakes. The author argued that the advent of better and better testing methods had set the museum world on its ear as more and more of the world's most treasured antiquities were found to be fakes and forgeries, or at least suspected as such. Amongst the Mayan incense burners, the gold mask of Agamemnon, the Minoan Snake Goddess, and other antiquities that someone at some time had questioned, there was an ivory head of a woman called the Venus of Brassempouy, that was supposed to be about the same age and material as the Magyar Venus, but which some expert somewhere had decided was suspect. There were photos of several of these objects, and one of the Magyar Venus. Are they real? the cutline asked. By the time most people had read through to the end, they'd be forgiven for concluding that the Magyar Venus should be added to this ignominious list. It was a rather cleverly done hatchet job on the Magyar Venus. Without ever saying so, its authenticity was called into question.
"My, my," I said.
"Yes, indeed. I wonder who the author, this Dr. Thalia Lajeunesse, is. It doesn't give any credentials."
"No idea," I said. "Never heard of her. I assume it's a her, with a name like Thalia."
"I confess I was rather wondering if it was Diana under a pseudonym," Morgan said. "I asked her if she'd written it, but she denied it. She did not deny enjoying reading it, though."
"I'll bet," I said.
"I know everybody keeps asking this, but where do we go from here?" she said. "I'll help you any way I can."
"There'll be assignments," I said. "Don't you worry."
And there were. The next morning at breakfast, I handed all of them copies of a list I'd spent a good part of the night drawing up—I'd slept for about four hours, making it a very good night. Early the next morning, I'd arranged to have the list copied at the front desk, one for each of them.
"Okay, here's the drill," I said in my chirpiest voice. "These are all places that the diaries mention," I said. "Some of them you should be able to find easily. Others will be a little harder. Sugarut, for example, does not exist today, at least not on my map. But the diaries say the Opera House is on it. That might mean it's an early name for Andrassy ut, which is just a couple of blocks away. You'll need to go over to the Opera and see when it was built, if it was in that same place in 1900. Your assignment is to make sure these places exist, that they are where the diaries say they are, and where there is a discrepancy, make a careful note of it."
"Why are we doing this?" Diana demanded. "I think you're just sending us off on a fool's errand while you do something else."
"She's checking to make sure there are no mistakes, no anachronisms, in the diaries," Cybil said. "Isn't that right? If there's a mistake, then it calls the whole thing, the Venus and everything, into question."
"Exactly," I said.
"What are you doing then?" Diana asked, in a somewhat mollified tone.
"I'm tracking down the lab that tested the Venus to see what they have to say, and—"
"What about the invoice?" Diana said. "You said you found the invoice in the stuff I gave you."
"I've already been there," I said. "I talked to the proprietor."
"And?" she demanded.
"And he refused to tell me who owned the Venus previously. I will, of course, be asking him to reconsider, but we can't count on it."
"That's very suspicious, isn't it?" Cybil said.
"Not really," I said. "If Mihaly Kovacs walked into McClintoch Swain and asked who had previously owned an object I'd had in the store, I wouldn't have told him. It was worth a try, but it didn't work. Now, be back here at four, and we'll go over what we've learned."
By ten, I was in an Internet cafe, googling, to use the new term, Dr. Frederick Madison, the person Karoly had thanked in his preface to the book for testing the Venus. Madison headed up a lab in Arizona, and I managed to find his phone number reasonably easily. With several time zones between us, however, I was going to have to wait until the afternoon to call. I sent him an e-mail telling him what I wanted and that I would call him in the morning his time.
Next I tried to see what I could find out about weather in the British Isles over a hundred years ago. Piper had obliquely referred to an extraordinarily hot season the previous summer and an equally unpleasant February. It took me about half an hour, but the Internet is a wonderful research tool, and I was able to confirm that indeed the summer of 1899 was an unusually hot one over much of Britain, and February 1900 was one of the rainiest months on record. I'd see what the others had found in their expedition, but so far the diaries were tracking just fine.
Then I went to a pay phone, managed to figure out how to use it, and called Mihaly Kovacs.
"Janet McLean," I said. "I was in yesterday?"
I heard a rather pronounced intake of breath on the part of Mr. Kovacs. "I've run into some, shall we say, anomalies in the accounts of the Magyar Venus," I said. "I haven't been able to reach Dr. Molnar to question him about them, given the time difference, but I am asking you once again, to provide information about the previous owner."
"No, I cannot," he said. "That is not possible." He almost croaked out the words.
"Okay, then," I said. "I suppose I may have to call in the authorities. Thanks for your time." I paused for just a moment to see if there would be any reaction. Instead of a goodbye, or whatever, there was this annoying clatter and banging, and I realized that Kovacs had dropped the phone. I waited until the line went dead. Mr. Kovacs was rather, shall we say, high-strung, and I seemed to be making him very nervous. If you've lived under the Communist regime, you would have some anxiety around officialdom, and perhaps my call, and my use of the term authorities, had touched a nerve. On the other hand, maybe there was something he didn't want me to know.
I decided to make it even worse for him. I went back to Falk Miksa utca, the street of antique shops, and just hung around. I looked into Kovacs's shop, and caught a glimpse of him scurrying quickly into the back room. I went in and asked for him, whereupon the assistant pretended not to speak English, but managed to convey that Kovacs had gone out. I hung around outside then, peering into store windows until I was rather bored, and then hungry. Giving up on Kovacs, I set off to find the restaurant I'd happened across the previous day, the one with the delicious soup and dessert, but I couldn't retrace my steps. I tried to ask a policeman on one corner if he knew of the place, but either he didn't understand me, or he didn't know. As I stood beside the officer at a traffic light, I saw Kovacs at the window table of a cafe on Szent Istvan korut not far from his store, and he saw me. He literally paled before my eyes. I couldn't understand why until I realized that he was looking not just at me, but at the policeman beside me, the one to whom I had just spoken. As I'd already concluded, something was really bothering Mihaly Kovacs, and I'd undoubtedly spoiled his lunch. Maybe I'd call him again later in the day.
I went back to the hotel, stopping at a coffee shop for a bite to eat, and thence to my room to place the call to Frederick Madison. I had told him via e-mail that I was writing an article for an antique dealer's newsletter on the Venus—in my defense, I did write articles from time to time, although this wasn't one of them. I said that I had interviewed Dr. Molnar, which was true, although some might call it a date, and that Karoly had told me that Madison's lab had authenticated the Venus, and suggested I call. I got through to him right away.