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Except that it hadn’t quite, thought Shambley, turning to the letters written after Breul settled in Paris for what was to be his final six months before sailing home. He was discreet about his sorties into bohemia, and his assurances of studious application to conventional art and culture were probably written in response to pointed questions from home.
But the catalogs and Montparnasse menus, not to mention the two Légers hanging four floors down in that zoo of a janitor’s room, gave ample evidence that the junior Breul had spent as much time among the avant-garde of Paris as in the venerable Louvre.
Shambley returned the last letter to its envelope and blocked them between his small hands like a deck of cards. At that moment, Dr. Roger Shambley was a deeply happy man. All his life he’d chased those capricious goddesses, Fame and Fortune.
Native intelligence and dogged hard work had made him a well-regarded expert in nineteenth-century American art. His first two books had gained him tenure; his third confirmed his reputation for good solid scholarship, which translated into speaking engagements, magazine articles, even an occasional spot on the Today Show when a feature story required an art historian’s authoritative comment. If that art historian came across the tube as acerbic and witty, all the better.
Yet everyone dreams of immortality. No matter how competently and wittily written, few books survive their time if they only rehash previously known data; but the discoverer of new material will always be read simply because he was first. That’s why every scholar dreams of new finds-that Greek statue only a shovelful of dirt away, that major missing piece of the puzzle. Discoveries automatically turn on the grant machines and roll out appointments and promotions.
With these letters and a description of how he found an unknown seminal work, Shambley knew he could write a monograph that would become a permanent appendage to the Picasso-Braque legend. Not only that, he would become a hero to everyone co
Which took care of fame.
As for fortune…
Those two Léger canvasses presented interesting possibilities, none of which involved the Breul House. Today, he had gone to the Museum of Modern Art and bought two Léger posters as nearly like the two on Pascal Grant’s wall in size and composition as he could manage. He had already stashed them in one of the basement storage rooms. In the next day or so, as soon as he could substitute them for the real pictures, he would a
There would be such an instant uproar of excitement that even if the janitor noticed the difference between the posters and the authentic paintings, who would pay him any mind?
No one. He’d be home free with two Légers of his very own. Too bad he couldn’t openly offer them for sale at, say, Sotheby’s. Auctions always brought the highest prices. But Sotheby’s required a legal history of the artwork it put on the block: documents, canceled checks, and bills of sale; and the only provenance he could offer would be the 1912 catalog he’d found in Erich Jr.’s effects.
No, he’d have to find someone with a love of modern art, a streak of larceny, and the resources to indulge expensive tastes.
He looked at his watch. Time to put in an appearance downstairs. He started to put the letters back in his briefcase, then hesitated. Maybe it would be safer to leave the letters here for now. There were a million hiding places in this cluttered attic but, as most scholars knew, a misfiled letter is a lost letter.
Shambley opened a drawer marked “Miscellaneous Business Correspondence: 1916/1917” and craftily filed the packet under “August 1916.”
At that moment he felt positively gleeful, as if the ghost of Christmas Present had upended an enormous bag of toys at his feet. If the attic stairs had possessed a free-standing banister, he would have slid right down it, and it was all he could do to keep from chortling aloud. He stepped into the servants’ lavatory on the third floor, smoothed his unruly hair, and put his pugnacious face into a semblance of professorial dignity.
But as he walked downstairs to join the party, it occurred to Roger Shambley that perhaps he wouldn’t have to look very far for the buyer he needed.
The Breul dining room was the scene of many elaborate and festive di
Crème d’asperge
Hûtres Sardines Dinde fumée
Rôti de boeuf
Haricots verts Pommes
Sacher Torte Noix glacée Topfenstrudel
Vermouth Bordeaux Champagne
from Welcome to the Breul House!-An Informal Tour, by Mrs. Hamilton Johnstone III, Senior Docent. (© 1956)
VI
Wednesday Night (continued)
Sigrid Harald?” asked Søren Thorvaldsen. “Er De dansk, frøken Harald?”
“My father’s father was from Denmark,” Sigrid acknowledged, “but I’m afraid I know very few words of Danish.”
And not much more than a few words of party talk either, she thought as she listened to a small white-haired woman quiz Thorvaldsen about the frivolous names he’d given his cruise ships.
“I think ships deserve more stately names,” said the woman, whose own name Sigrid couldn’t remember. “Something like Empress of the Sea or Queen Margrethe.
“But those are for serious ships,” Thorvaldsen answered her playfully. “My ships are frivolous, Mrs. Hyman.”
Hyman, Sigrid told herself. Hyman. Wife of David Hyman, trustee. And next to Mrs. Hyman was Mr. Herzog. Albert. Husband of Lydia Herzog, another trustee, whom she hadn’t yet met but of whom Mrs. Hyman had whispered, “ Lydia was a Babcock, you know.”
Sigrid did not know, but had dutifully placed a mental star next to Mrs. Herzog’s name and attached a Babcock in parentheses since Mrs. Hyman seemed to think it was important. It was the sort of remark that reminded Sigrid of going through reception lines with her Southern grandmother. If Mrs. Lattimore’s hierarchal memory of bloodlines and obscure degrees of kinship had ever failed her, Sigrid was unaware of it.
“I shouldn’t have thought you’d find much profit in ru
“Oh, you might be surprised how many people like the extra time in our casino,” Thorvaldsen said with pleasant candor.
With a vague smile as Thorvaldsen elaborated on Caribbean fun ships, Sigrid detached herself from the group standing near the piano in the drawing room and wandered back to the gallery. So many pictures stacked on the walls like cord-wood both fascinated and repelled her. As did everything else she’d seen of this house so far.