“Yes, I see what you mean,” said Francis, trying to conceal the fact that he was learning fast. “But still—nothing that proves fakery.”
“That’s what the Germans say. And also what the Dutch say. They want it to be genuine, of course, because it would be a marvellous acquisition for a Dutch gallery. The man from the Mauritshuis is particularly keen. If it proves to be a national treasure they’ll never let it out of the country, and they’d love to thwart Göring. They fight about details but they’re wholly agreed on that. They’ll pay Letztpfennig a goodish price, but not the really big money he would get from the States, or the splendid swaps he could get from the Germans.”
“What do you know about Letztpfennig?”
“Nothing to his discredit. Indeed, he is rather an impressive figure. Lectures learnedly on Dutch art, and is probably the best restorer in Europe—except for Saraceni, of course. Knows perhaps a little too much about Old Master painting techniques to be entirely trustworthy in a situation like this. But I mustn’t let my suspicions run away with me. It’s just that in my bones I sense something wrong, and as long as the scientific boys from London are kept at bay, I have to rely on my bones. Aesthetic sensibility, we call it in the trade, but it comes down to a feeling in the bones.”
“Like Berenson.”
“Yes, Berenson has wonderfully shrewd bones. But when Joe Duveen is paying you a full twenty-five per cent of the sale price of a picture for an authentication, I wonder if your bones can always be heard above the sweet music of the cash register. It costs a lot of dough to live like Berenson. Of course, it’s all academic to me; whatever happens I won’t get the picture. But I hate a faker. Bad for business.”
Addison Thresher’s manners left nothing to be desired. He did not hover over Francis but took himself off, saying that they would meet again in the morning. And what was Francis to do? Go to the Mauritshuis and look at the pictures? He had been there before and he was sick of looking at pictures. Encouraged by his good lunch he went to the Wassenaar, and spent the afternoon at the zoo.
Jean-Paul Letztpfennig’s hand, when he gave it to Francis to shake, was unpleasantly damp, and Francis immediately drew out his handkerchief and wiped his own hand somewhat too obviously. Some of the other men in the room were quick to notice. Professor Baudoin, whom Francis had already decided was the nasty one, sucked in his breath audibly. This was much better than when he blew it out, generously, as he did in conversation, for his breath suggested that he was dying from within, and had completed about two-thirds of the job. It was a striking contrast to Addison Thresher, whose breath smelled of the very best caries-defying toothpaste. He was dressed this morning in a completely different outfit, somewhat formal and suggestive of great affairs.
Indeed, great affairs were in hand. Expectancy was in the air, and all the sensitive bones of all the experts must have felt it. Dr. Schlichte-Martin, ample and red-faced. Dr. Hausche-Kuypers, young and merry, were like men playing a game of Snakes and Ladders; if the van Eyck were real, the fat old man advanced and the young jolly one was thrown back, but if it were the other way round, youth rejoiced and age grieved. Frisch and Belmann, the Germans, wore iron-grey suits and iron-grey expressions, for they were losers whatever happened. They rather hoped Letztpfennig would be exploded and regretted their earlier excitement about his find. Lemaire and Bastogne and Baudoin were philosophical, but inclined to negative opinions; the two Frenchmen would have liked the picture to be genuine, but doubted if it could be; the Belgian wanted it to be a fake, for he was a friend of whatever was negative. They were all hedging their bets in the guarded manner of critics the world over.
“Everyone knows everyone else, I believe? Shall we proceed to our business, which may be brief? Mr. Cornish, will you tell us what your conclusions are?” The Judge was by far the calmest man present. The Judge, and the big guard at the door.
Francis approached his task with inward shrinking, but outward calm. He was inclined to like Letztpfennig, though he wished he could wash the corpse-sweat from his right hand. Letztpfennig was by no means the comic figure of Saraceni’s derision. A grey man, with the appearance of a deeply intellectual man, thickly spectacled and possessing a mop of grey hair which might have suggested an artist if the man were not so obviously cast in the mould of a professor. A carefully dressed man, with a white handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket in just the right proportion. A man whose shoes gleamed with loving care. His appearance of calm impressed nobody.
Well, here goes, thought Francis. Thank God I can be both decisive and honest.
“I fear the picture cannot be accepted as genuine,” said he.
“That is your opinion?” said Huygens.
“More than simply an opinion, Edelachtbare,” said Francis; the occasion he thought deserved the fullest formality. “The picture may indeed be an old picture. The quality of the painting is superb, and it strongly suggests van Eyck. Any painter at any time might be proud to have painted it. But you cannot even attribute it to alunno di van Eyck or amico di van Eyck; it is probably a century after van Eyck.”
“You speak with great certainty,” said Professor Baudoin, with unconcealed gloating. “But you are—if you will allow me to speak of it—a very young man, and the certainty of youth is not always appropriate to such matters as this. You will give us reasons, of course.”
Indeed I shall, thought Francis. You think Letztpfennig is virtually destroyed and now you want to destroy me because I am young. Well—bugger you, you bad-breathed old nuisance.
“I am sure your colleague will be glad to give his reasons,” said Huygens, the peacemaker. “If they are truly convincing, we shall call back the experts from Britain, who will make scientific appraisals.”
“I don’t think you will need to do that,” said Francis. “The picture has been put forward as a van Eyck, and it certainly is not by van Eyck, either Hubertus or Jan. Have any of you gentlemen visited the zoo lately?”
What was this about the zoo? Was the young man trifling with them?
“A detail of the painting tells us all we need to know,” Francis continued. “Observe the monkey who hangs by his tail from the bars of Hell, in the upper left-hand corner of the picture. What is he doing there?”
“It is an iconographical detail that one might expect in such a picture,” said Letztpfennig somewhat patronizingly toward the young man, glad to defend the monkey. “The chained monkey is an old symbol of the fallen mankind that preceded the coming of Christ. Of souls in Hell, in fact. He belongs with the defeated devils.”
“But he is hanging by his tail.”
“Since when do monkeys not hang by their tails?”
“They did not do so in Ghent in van Eyck’s day. That monkey is a Cebus capudnus, a New World monkey. The chained monkey of iconography is the Macacas rhesus, the Old World monkey. Such a monkey as that, a monkey with a prehensile tail, was unknown in Europe until the sixteenth century, and I need not remind you that Hubertus van Eyck died in 1426, The painter, whoever he is—or was—wanted to complete his composition with a figure, not too commanding, in that particular spot, so the chained monkey had to be hanging by his tail from the bars of Hell. There are several examples of both Cebus capucinus and Macacus rhesus informatively labelled in your very good local zoo. That is why I mentioned it.”
In the melodrama of the nineteenth century there may frequently be found such stage directions as Sensation! Astonishment! Tableau! This was the gratifying effect produced by Francis’s judgement. None of the experts tried to suggest that they were well up in the lore of monkeys, but when they were shown the obvious they made haste to declare that it was indeed obvious. This is one of the things experts are frequently called on to do.