“Meister—”
“Yes?”
“I have never mentioned this, because it seems tactless, but I have been told that you possess the Evil Eye. Why don’t you simply destroy Letztpfennig yourself?”
“Oh, what a dreadful world we live in! How spitefully people talk! The Evil Eye! Of course, I know that stupid people say that, merely because one or two people to whom I have taken a dislike have had unfortunate accidents. Only a broken bone, or losing their sight, or something of that sort. Never anything fatal. I am still a Catholic, you know; I would recoil from killing a rival.”
“But don’t you want me to kill Letztpfennig?”
“I spoke in terms of melodramatic exaggeration, to get your full attention. I only want you to kill him professionally.”
“Oh, I see. Nothing serious.”
“If he dies of chagrin, that is because he is over-sensitive. Nobody’s fault but his own. Psychological suicide. Not uncommon.”
“This is just a matter of professional rivalry, is it?”
“Do you suppose I would elevate such an idiot as Letztpfennig to the status of a rival? A rival to me! You must think I hold my abilities in low esteem. No, he must go because he is dangerous.”
“Dangerous to the trade of selling dubious pictures to the Reich?”
“How coarsely you judge these things! It is the Lutheran streak in you—a perverse, self-destroying concept of morality. You refuse to see things as they are. I, and several people of whom you know one or two, am carefully securing some Italian art from the German Reich in exchange for pictures they like better. And not one of those pictures has been a fake—only a picture that has been assisted to put its best face foremost. The chain of action is carefully calculated. Everything goes through people with unexceptionable credentials, and we never pitch the note too high—no Dürers, no Cranachs. And now this Flemish buffoon appears with a fake Hubertus van Eyck, and wants gigantic sums either in cash or in paintings the Reich thinks it can spare, and he has the effrontery to haggle, and bring in an American bidder for his picture, with the result that the Dutch government is intervening in the matter, and God alone knows what beans may be spilled.”
“Could you give me some facts? I now know the range of your passion; I’d just like to know what Letztpfennig has done, and what you want me to do.”
“There is a very nice strain of common sense in you, Corniche. Your family background is in banking, is it not? Not that my experience of bankers puts them above art dealers in matters of probity. But they manage to look and sound so trustworthy, even when they are not. Well—this all began about two years ago when Jean-Paul Letztpfenmg let it be known that during a jaunt to Belgium he had come upon a picture in an old country house that he bought because he wanted an old canvas. Idiot! Who wants an old canvas unless he means to fake something with it? Anyhow—he says he cleaned the picture and found it to be a painting of The Harrowing of Hell. You know the subject?”
“I know what it is. I’ve never seen a painting of it.”
“They are extremely rare. It was a favourite theme in manuscript illuminations and sometimes in stained glass, but it did not appeal to painters. It is Christ redeeming the souls of the better class of pagans from Hell, where they had presumably languished until His death on the Cross. Well—if it were real and not something Letztpfennig had fudged up himself, it would be interesting, and if it were in the Gothic style it might reasonably go to the Führermuseum, if the German experts passed it. Though those highly intelligent men have so far shown themselves willing to deal only with reputable people like the group with whom I—and you, now that Drollig Hansel has given such satisfaction—are associated. But Letztpfennig, like the blockhead he is, asserts that a signature—by which he means a monogram—is on the picture that establishes it as the work of Hubertus van Eyck.
“When that leaked out, there was a sensation, and an immediate request for information and a chance to bid from an American collector. One of the biggest, and when I tell you that his agent and expert is Addison Thresher you will know whom I am talking about. And there were complications, because, as you know, the Reichsmarschall is a keen collector himself, and if there were a Hubertus van Eyck to be had, he wanted it. To be paid for, I need hardly tell you, by paintings from German museums. Great men are above trivialities in such negotiations. He offered, or his agents offered on his behalf, some splendid Italian things, and Letztpfennig was out of his meagre wits trying to decide whether he should grab the American dollars at once, or grab the Italian pictures, for resale in the States.
“That was when the Dutch government stepped in. You know how dearly they love the Reich. Their Ministry of Fine Art said that a great masterpiece by Hubertus van Eyck was a national treasure and could not leave the country. You would have thought that Belgium would have intervened and said that the picture had, after all, been found in Belgium, but nothing was heard from Belgium and that made Addison Thresher suspicious that the picture had never been in Belgium and was probably a fake.
“Not to toil through all the details, the picture is now in the protection of the Dutch Ministry of Fine Art, and all sorts of people have been visiting it, trying to decide whether it is genuine or not. Medland and Horsburgh from the British Museum and National Gallery laboratories in London have seen it, and can’t give an opinion unless they are permitted to use X-rays and chemical tests—which the Dutch so far won’t allow. Lemaire and Bastogne and Baudoin from Paris and Brussels have hemmed and hawed. Two Dutch experts, Dr. Schlichte-Martin and Dr. Hausche-Kuypers, are at each other’s throats. Addison Thresher is now almost ready to break off all negotiations on grounds that the thing is a fake, and the German experts Frisch and Belmann are outraged because he suggests that they are afraid to speak their minds for fear of being proved wrong.
“They are running out of experts. Of course, they can’t have Berenson, ostensibly because his area is confined to Italian art, but really because he is a Jew and the Reichsmarschall would be outraged. Duveen can’t get near it or bring anybody to look at it for the same reason. It’s the old wrangle between scientific testing and aesthetic sensibility, and Huygens, the judge who is in charge of the matter, is tired of it and wants to have somebody say that the thing is genuine, or that it is dubious and the scientific tests should proceed. So he has sent for me. And I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the delicacy of the situation in which our group finds itself. It must never for one moment be thought that we want to destroy Letztpfennig, but Letztpfennig must be destroyed or the Germans may become more suspicious than they naturally and quite rightly are, as professionals in art appreciation. We don’t want every fool with an old picture horning in on the work we are doing. So I have written to Judge Huygens saying that my health is precarious, but that I shall send my trusted assistant to his aid, and if it proves absolutely necessary, I shall make the journey to The Hague myself. You are going.”
“To do what?”
“To decide whether The Harrowing of Hell is by Hubertus van Eyck, or not. To show, if you can, that Letztpfennig either painted it himself on an old canvas, or at least over-painted an existing picture, and put in the van Eyck monogram. This is your chance to establish yourself as an art expert. Don’t you understand, Corniche? This is one of your great tests, and I am putting it in your way.”
“But what is being tested? You are sending me with instructions to declare the picture a fake and to discredit a rival. It doesn’t sound like art criticism to me.”
“It is a part of art criticism, Corniche. Your North American innocence—to use an absurdly kind word for it—must come to terms with the world in which you have chosen to put your life. It is a cruel world and its morality is not simple. If I had the least feeling that this thing in The Hague was a genuine Hubertus van Eyck I would be on my knees before it, but the chances are ten thousand to one that it’s a fake, and the fake must be exposed. Art is very big money, these days, owing to the extraordinary exertions of certain geniuses, of whom Duveen is certainly the greatest. Fakes cannot be endured. Good art must drive out bad.”