Chương 5
“I have a meeting with the insurer,” she said.
“You have been removed from that process.”
“By you.”
“By counsel.”
“You hired counsel.”
“Come at ten.”
He ended the call.
Elise showered, dressed, and stood in front of her closet for several minutes before choosing trousers instead of a dress. The decision felt absurdly important. She made coffee and forgot to drink it. On the kitchen counter, her gallery key card lay beside a bowl of soft peaches.
At nine fifteen, someone buzzed from downstairs.
It was Celia.
Adrian’s older sister had spent thirty years avoiding photographs. She wore linen shirts, flat shoes, and no jewelry made by the family business. Her gray hair hung to her shoulders. She carried a paper bag from a bakery and looked irritated by the stairs.
“You need an elevator,” she said when Elise opened the door.
“You need to answer your phone.”
“I was driving.”
“For twelve hours?”
“I took the scenic route from Connecticut.”
Celia entered, put the bag on the table, and examined Elise’s face.
“You look like your mother when she was deciding whether to leave him.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“There are almond croissants.”
“I’m going to see him.”
“I know.”
“How did you find Mara?”
Celia sat down without asking. “Coffee first.”
“No.”
“Elise.”
“You gave a seventy-four-year-old woman a confidential transfer schedule. She broke a display case and got arrested. Coffee can wait.”
Celia opened the paper bag and tore a croissant in half. Flakes fell onto the table.
“I found a letter in our father’s desk after he died,” she said. “Not the year he died. Later, when Adrian moved the remaining archives from the old factory. The letter was from Mara. She accused Father of taking the coat and asked for the return of her sketches.”
“When was it written?”
“December 1978.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it to Adrian.”
Elise remained standing.
Celia brushed pastry from her fingers. “He said Father received hundreds of unstable claims. He said Mara was trying to exploit the retrospective. I believed him because believing him required nothing from me.”
“And now?”
“Three months ago, Adrian asked me to sign an affidavit saying I had never seen any competing attribution for the coat.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why would he need that?”
“The Argyle Foundation’s provenance counsel had asked whether the archive contained disputes.”
A car horn sounded below. Celia looked toward the window.
“I told him about the letter,” she said. “He said it had been misplaced.”
“Misplaced by whom?”
“He did not enjoy that question.”
“So you contacted Mara.”
“I remembered her name. It took time. There are eleven Mara Quinns in New York and two were surprisingly hostile.”
Despite herself, Elise smiled.
Celia’s face softened, then returned to its usual severity.
“Mara showed me her records. I told her the coat would move after the opening. I thought she would give you the envelope.”
“Did you know she planned to hit the case?”
“No.”
“Would you have stopped her?”
Celia looked at the uneaten half of the croissant. “I’d like to say yes.”
Elise picked up her key card and slipped it into her bag.
“What else have you withheld?”
“From you or from myself?”
“Today, let’s start with me.”
Celia removed a folded photocopy from her shirt pocket. It was the first page of a conservation log dated May 2004. At the bottom, beneath notes about moth damage and lining replacement, someone had written: maker’s identification strip discovered at interior hem.
The next page was missing.
“Where did you get this?”
“From an old binder before the archive move. I copied it because Adrian took the original.”
“Who wrote the note?”
“I don’t know.”
Elise did.
The handwriting belonged to Thomas Vale, the house’s former master tailor. He had retired when Elise was twelve and died five years later. He had taught her to thread a needle by wetting the thread too much and pretending not to notice when she tangled it.
“This isn’t enough,” Elise said.
“No.”
“It could mean a manufacturer’s mark.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t prove Adrian saw Mara’s name.”
“No.”
“Do you have the second page?”
Celia shook her head.
“Then why show me?”
“Because your father will tell you there was never a reason to look.”
The townhouse smelled of beeswax, old flowers, and the particular dust created by rooms cleaned too often. A housekeeper admitted Elise at ten exactly. Adrian waited in the library with two attorneys and Stephen Bell.
No one offered her coffee.
On the low table lay a printed separation agreement.
Adrian gestured toward the sofa. “Sit.”
Elise remained near the door. “You planned this quickly.”
“The agreement protects you.”
“It suspends me without pay and bars me from discussing the coat.”
“It preserves your position while experts examine the evidence.”
“The statement you issued already called Mara unstable.”
“The statement used no such word.”
“It called her grievance personal. That tells people not to take it seriously.”
One of the attorneys, a woman Elise recognized from company board meetings, folded her hands. “Ms. Rowan, we need to distinguish public messaging from factual findings.”
“Then why is public messaging ahead of factual findings?”
Adrian said, “Because you created a public crisis.”
“Mara created it.”
“You amplified it.”
“I revealed the strip.”
“You cut into a garment under contract for transfer.”
“Because you told me not to.”
The attorney glanced down, perhaps to hide a reaction.
Adrian walked to the fireplace. Above it hung a portrait of Julian Voss in shirtsleeves, one hand resting on a dress form. He had been handsome in the severe manner of men who expected other people to call their cruelty discipline.
“You are not an investigator,” Adrian said. “You are an assistant curator with three years of experience and my surname available whenever your credentials become inconveniently thin.”
May you like
Elise felt the words hit the exact place they were aimed.
She had spent years wondering how much of her career belonged to her and how much had entered the room before she did. Adrian rarely mentioned the advantage. He saved it for moments when she needed to be made smaller.
