“You are a liar.”
“And it seems Arnold was getting desperate; I searched among his recent bills, and found one for three suction plates. So when we found him on the track I was quite sure.”
“He stuck himself to the track?”
“Yes. The one on his right wrist was electronically controlled, so after setting the other two he tripped the third between his teeth. He hoped that we would discover him there after missing him at the museum, and think that there was someone else who wished him harm. And if not, the cowcatchers would pull him free. It was a silly plan, but he was desperate after I set up that appointment with him. When I confronted him with all this, after we rescued him from the tracks, he broke down and confessed. Sandor Musgrave had discovered that the Monet was a fake while blackmailing the Evans family in England, and after forcing Heidi to give him a job, he worked on the painting in secret until he found proof. Then he blackmailed Arnold into bankruptcy, and when on Solday he pressed Arnold for more money, Arnold lost his composure and took advantage of the confusion caused by the opening of the Great Gates to smack Musgrave on the head with one of Heidi’s mirrors.”
I wagged a finger under her nose. “And you set him free. You’ve gone too far this time, Freya Grindavik.”
She shook her head, “If you consider Arnold’s case a bit longer, you might change your mind. Arnold Ohman has been the most important art dealer on Mercury for over sixty years. He sold the Vermeer collection to George Butler, and the Goyas to Terminator West Gallery, and the Pissarros to the museum in Homer Crater, and those Chinese landscapes you love so much to the city park, and the Kandinskys to the Lion of the Greys. Most of the finest paintings on Mercury were brought here by Arnold Ohman.”
“So?”
“So how many of those, do you think, were painted by Arnold himself?”
I stopped dead in the street, stunned at the very idea. “But—but that only makes it worse! Inestimably worse! It means there are fakes all over the planet!”
“Probably so. And no one wants to hear that. But it also means Arnold Ohman is a very great artist. And in our age that is no easy feat. Can you imagine the withering reception his work would have received if he had done original work? He would have ended up like Harvey Washburn and all the rest of them who wander around the galleries like dogs. The great art of the past crashes down on our artists like meteors, so that their minds resemble the blasted landscape we roll over. Now Arnold has escaped that fate, and his work is universally admired, even loved. That Monet, for instance—it isn’t just that it passes for one of the cathedral series—it could be argued that it is the best of them. Now is this a level of greatness that Arnold could have achieved—would have been allowed to achieve—if he had done original work on this museum planet? Impossible. He was forced to forge old masters to be able to fully express his genius.”
“All this is no excuse, for forgery or murder.”
But Freya wasn’t listening. “Now that I’ve exiled him, he may go on forging old paintings, but he may begin painting something new. That possibility surely justifies ameliorating his punishment for killing such a parasite as Musgrave. And there is Mercury’s reputation as art museum of the system to consider…”
I refused to honor her opinions with a reply, and looking around I saw that during our conversation she had led me far up the terraces. “Where are we going?”
“To Heidi’s,” she said. And she had the grace to look a little shamefaced—for a moment, anyway. “I need your help moving something.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well,” Freya explained, “when I told Heidi some of the facts of the case, she insisted on giving me a token of her gratitude, and she overrode all my refusals, so… I was forced to accept.” She rang the wall bell.
“You’re joking,” I said.
“Not at all. Actually, I think Heidi preferred not to own a painting she knew to be a fake, you see. So I did her a favor by taking it off her hands.”
When Delaurence let us in, we found he had almost finished securing Rouen Cathedral—Sun Effect in a big plastic box. “We’ll finish this,” Freya told him.
While we completed the boxing I told Freya what I thought of her conduct. “You’ve taken liberties with the law—you lied right and left—”
“Well boxed,” she said. “Let’s go before Heidi changes her mind.”
“And I suppose you’re proud of yourself.”
“Of course. A lot of lab work went into this.”
We maneuvered the big box through the gate and into the street, and carried it upright between us, like a short flat coffin. We reached Freya’s villa, and immediately she set to work unboxing the painting. When she had freed it she set it on top of a couch, resting against the wall.
Shaking with righteous indignation, I cried, “That thing isn’t a product of the past! It isn’t authentic. It is only a fake. Claude Monet didn’t paint it.”
Freya looked at me with a mild frown, as if confronting a slightly dense and very stubborn child. “So what?”
After I had lectured her on her immorality a good deal more, and heard all of her patient agreement, I ran out of steam. “Well,” I muttered, “you may have destroyed all my faith in you, and damaged Mercury’s art heritage forever, but at least I’ll get a good story out of it.” This was some small comfort. “I believe I’ll call it ‘The Case of the Thirty-third Cathedral of Rouen.’”
“What’s this?” she exclaimed. “No, of course not!” And then she insisted that I keep everything she had told me that day a secret.
I couldn’t believe it. Bitterly I said, “You’re like those forgers. You want
somebody
to witness your cleverness, and I’m the one who is stuck with it.”
She immediately agreed, but went on to list all the reasons no one else could ever learn of the affair—how so many people would be hurt—including her, I added acerbically—how so many valuable collections would be ruined, how her plan to transform Arnold into a respectable honest Plutonian artist would collapse, and so on and so forth, for nearly an hour. Finally I gave up and conceded to her wishes, so that the upshot of it was, I promised not to write down a single word concerning this particular adventure of ours, and I promised furthermore to say nothing of the entire affair, and to keep it a complete secret, forever and ever.
But I don’t suppose it will do any harm to tell you.
Ridge Running
Three men sit on a rock. The rock is wet granite, a bouldertop surrounded by snow that has melted just enough to reveal it. Snow extends away from the rock in every direction. To the east it drops to treeline, to the west it rises to a rock wall that points up and ends at sky. The boulder the three men are on is the only break in the snow from the treeline to rock wall. Snowshoe tracks lead to the rock, coming from the north on a traverse across the slope. The men sit sunning like marmots.
One man chews snow. He is short and broad-chested, with thick arms and legs. He adjusts blue nylon gaiters that cover his boots and lower legs. His thighs are bare, he wears gray gym shorts. He leans over to strap a boot into an orange plastic snowshoe.
The man sitting beside him says, “Brian. I thought we were going to eat lunch.” This second man is big, and he wears sunglasses that clip onto prescription wire-rims.