Read Online A Long Silence by Nicolas Freeling - Free Book Online Page B

Caffieri. It was true that he knew nothing about art, but he had recognized the pictures for what they were, a dozen well-made affairs by minor but good seventeenth-century masters, people whose names caused no sensation in an auction-room catalogue but would make the nose of anyone who really knew his subject begin twitching. People like burglars, dealers or restorers would have no clue at all – only a dozen or so people in the world really understood such things or knew what theywere worth. He had this confirmed for him by Charles van Deijssel, an old acquaintance, a picture dealer whose brains he went to pick when it was anything to do with art, whom he asked out for a cognac and who appeared as usual looking like a fashionable dress designer, in lilac linen with an orchid in his buttonhole.
    â€˜Of course,’ said Charles. ‘I wouldn’t even know, probably, if I saw them except to say yes, good – as you know I don’t even pretend to be expert outside my period. I know how it’s done, of course – they pick these things up in the bread and butter line, pay fifty, do a bit of work, get an identification and sell for a few hundred, and every so often you think “that’s interesting” and you do some detective work on it, maybe a great deal, trace it back maybe to a catalogue, maybe two hundred years ago. Getting the confirmation for that, really nailing the provenance and the author might take years. Easy enough to point to some dusty old studio inventory saying “Diana and Actaeon” or whatever – proving it’s another matter. And you’ve got to find proof, otherwise it’ll never be worth more than a few hundred.’
    â€˜Whereas if you did find proof?’
    â€˜Quite a difference,’ dryly, ‘in that case might easily run to several thousand.’
    â€˜You know anything at all about Prins?’
    â€˜What would I know about him? Just because we’re in the same business – we scarcely meet unless a general sale has stuff that attracts us both. Know him to nod to. He has enormous erudition, handles coins, ivories, miniatures, bronzes – he’s not really a picture dealer except by accident. He probably does too much, and doesn’t get anything really first-rate in that shop of his – the specialized competition’s too fierce. But he does very well with the second-rate, and every now and then, probably, he’ll find something really good and turn it over with no trouble at all.’
    â€˜Not putting it through the books?’
    â€˜Well, you know,’ Charles with a false smile, ‘books are there to be cooked. Not your line of country though, is it?’
    â€˜No. Just sniffing privately. Nothing to go on, no witness, no material evidence, just a person, who interests me somehow. No no, not Prins.’
    â€˜He’s perfectly honest as far as I know.’
    â€˜But possibilities of all sorts of little quiet fiddles.’
    â€˜Yes, of course, but you’d have the devil’s own job ever proving anything.’
    â€˜That’s what I guessed.’
    Yes, he thought, going back on his train, no good having feelings about things. Prins loved beauty and beautiful objects, just like old Bosboom. In perhaps a darker way, more secret, more twisted. People left a stain upon the mind. Sometimes clear soft colours, tranquil patterns, and sometimes harsh, clashing, muddy reds and purples, jagged distorted shapes. He had got a sombre feel in that sombre flat. Bosboom had as good as told him straight out that there was something. Crooked corners in a character. He shrugged. What link or tie with Mr Saint? Never mind. One could not press people; one never got any information that way. He had leaned on the old man ever so slightly, just brushed him as it were with police wings. He would do the same with Saint, some day soon, next time he was in Amsterdam. And he looked at his new watch with