The Color of Night

CHAPTER 40

Claude Corsier sat at a small square table with a starched linen cloth. It was set with Victorian china and sterling silver and Dutch crystal. Carrington Hartwell Knight sat across from him, each man enthroned in an elaborately carved, high-backed Spanish chair several hundred years old. Knight’s elbow rested on the damask-upholstered arm of his chair, his wan face resting in his hand, an index finger lying close to one pale eye. His longish wavy white hair was carefully coifed, a full dandy’s wave sweeping back in undulations from his temples.

The two men were eating a late brunch in Knight’s second-floor library. The food was prepared upstairs in Knight’s well-appointed kitchen by a French cook whom he retained three days a week. It was brought down in a small elevator by the chef’s niece, who also served the two men. They had begun with a modest mixed-leaf salad with small medallions of grilled goat’s cheese and then had gone on to noisettes d’agneau garnished with potato galettes. They had followed that with little plates of fresh fruit and slices of brie de meaux. Dessert and coffee were declined in favor of finishing off a very good bottle of Pouilly-Fume.

Knight laughed richly at Corsier’s third or fourth anecdote of the meal and poured himself a full glass of the vaguely smoky white wine, adding some to Corsier’s glass. He sat back in his chair, smiling. Corsier recognized his moment.

“Carrington, the food was wonderful, as always,” he said, lifting his glass. “My compliments.”

Knight smirked pleasantly, accepting the praise.

“I told you I had something special,” Corsier went on, “and I do, something that I am sure will delight you.” He reached down beside his chair, where he had leaned a wafer-thin, royal blue leather portfolio. “I have photographs of two drawings in my possession.”

He opened the portfolio and took out two eight-by-ten color photographs and handed them across the table to Knight, who put down his glass and sat up in his baroque chair, hand outstretched.

He looked at the first photograph. Frowned. Looked quickly at the second. Frowned. His attention still glued to the images, he moved aside the few things in front of him and laid the pictures side by side on the linen cloth. He leaned over them. Without removing his eyes from them, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took from behind his gray linen handkerchief a pair of eyeglasses with perfectly round, black wire frames. He put them on, continuing to stare at the photographs. The frown disappeared. He began to shake his head slowly.

“ Good God… extraordinary.” He closed his mouth and swallowed, his eyes squinting, his head thrust forward.

He looked up at Corsier. “Where did you get these?”

“Long story.”

“I’ve never seen them.”

“Nor have I.”

Knight tilted his head, looking at Corsier like a handsome if exotic owl. “Claude, are these cataloged?”

“No.”

Knight gasped. “They’re not authenticated?”

“Carrington”-Corsier leaned toward the flamboyant dealer-“I’ve only just discovered them!”

“How many people have seen these?”

“Only me.”

“What?”

“And, soon, you.”

Knight tucked in his chin skeptically, trying to hide his excitement at being in on the beginning of such an event.

“How the hell did you come up with these?”

Corsier relished the question.

“How many times have you heard this?” he began. “An estate discovery. But it’s true. Two weeks ago a middle-aged British woman came to my gallery in Geneva. She had been visiting friends to whom she had told the following story, and they had urged her to come to me. An elderly aunt had died. The old woman had been very much of a rounder in her day and had flounced around with artists in Berlin and other places Germanic and had lived so bohemian a life as to have made herself an outcast from the rest of the family. Or at least a thoroughgoing black sheep. She lived a hermit in Bedford. She died. Left her little cottage and its contents to this niece.

“The niece dragged herself to Bedford, girded for the chore of cleaning out this dirty little cottage and its junk. She found scores and scores of drawings of every sort, all kept in boxes, one on top of the other. She also found seven framed drawings on the walls of the old woman’s bedroom, where she spent the last four years of her life. Thinking the art might be worth something, the niece photographed it and sent the photographs to her friends in Geneva.

“When my assistant saw the photographs, she called me immediately. I was in Zurich. I flew home that night. The next day I visited the woman, saw the photographs, and made an appointment three days later to visit her home here in London.” Corsier opened his eyes wide. “I found two little Kokoschkas, a rather nice Czeschka, a very good Kubin, two Broschs, and”-he paused for effect-“two Schieles.”

“And you have the drawings?”

“I own them.”

“You bought them yourself?”

“I bought the lot.”

“You didn’t tell her what she had?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Corsier said coyly. “I’m still not sure.”

Knight returned his eyes to the photographs, studying them. As he bent his head forward, a white lock dangled over his forehead rakishly. His fingers rested on the edge of the table as if he were at a piano keyboard, wrists down. He examined every line, every stroke, delved into the colors at their deepest and out to their lighter edges. He squinted at the expressions on the faces of the subjects and followed the intentions of the lines, where they broke or continued unexpectedly, where they hesitated, repeated, and confidently pressed on to unusual conclusions.

“Early ones, I’d say,” Knight murmured to himself. “Before he grew so harsh, so cruel.”

“Exactly.”

“Mmmmm… mmmm.” Knight was unaware of his audible voice. Suddenly he looked up. “Schiele.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back once again. “Sure as hell looks like Schiele to me.” He picked up his glass, paused. “Until I get to see the paper itself, anyway.” He drank, rather quickly now.

“What do you think of them?” Corsier asked. He stroked his mustache and goatee.

Knight sighed and savored the lingering, smoky aftertaste of the wine. He raised his white eyebrows. “Well, they’re sublime, Claude.” His eyes grew heavy lidded. “Why are you showing them to me?”

“I want you to authenticate them. Then I want you to broker them.”

“What’s the matter? Why don’t you do it?”

“I can’t.”

Knight sipped his Pouilly-Fume. “Explain.”

“I know who will give the highest price for these two beauties,” Corsier said. “Unfortunately, he and I had a serious falling-out recently, and if he knows I’m connected with these drawings, he will not buy. And we will not get the highest possible price.”

“You’re talking about Wolfram Schrade?”

“That’s right.”

“Really?” Knight’s voice rose and fell.

“We’ve exchanged words. Angry words. Legal threats all around. So, you see…”

“Of course.”

“It’s imperative that I remain out of the picture here. Entirely. You mustn’t mention me at all.”

“Why should I?”

Corsier smiled to himself. Carrington Knight was already counting his crowns and pounds and guineas.

“Are you interested, then?”

“Christ. Of course.” He paused, calculating while pretending not to be as he looked at the photographs over the top of his glass. “You don’t want to be connected with the sale in any way?”

“Absolutely not.”

Knight frowned abruptly and cut his eyes at Corsier.

“All this excessive secrecy, not wanting my man Jeffrey here when you come-all that has to do with your anonymity?”

“Precisely. I don’t want anyone other than you to know who’s offering these. You know Schrade. He snoops around.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Knight nodded, thinking. “It will be of importance to the media.”

Knight was understating it. Egon Schiele was one of the most collectible moderns. His output had not been enormous, and none of the known works could be said to be available. Everyone who had them was hanging on to them.

“You can have all the cream and all of the credit for the discovery,” Corsier said.

“You want to be mentioned after the sale?”

“No.”

“You’d just as soon the attribution remained ‘the Property of a Gentleman.’”

“Forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Fine. What’s the commission?”

“Standard.”

“Can’t argue with that. What are you asking for them?”

“If they’re authentic, I have an idea of what they’re worth. But you’ve sold Schrade far more art than I have. I think you’ll know best what he will put on the table.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Knight was sitting forward in his small throne again, elbows on the arms, hands holding the wineglass. His eyes returned to the two photographs. “It’s extraordinary, really, to come up with two unknown Schieles. Extraordinary.”

“I have a suggestion about Schrade.”

Knight looked up at Corsier from under his brows.

“A greater egoist never walked,” Corsier said. “I actually think you could enhance the asking price if he were allowed to be part of the discovery.”

“Explain.”

“Tell him you think you have discovered a couple of lost Schieles. Briefly describe the background. Tell him that you are going to authenticate them. You knew he would want first look at actual Schieles. Would he be interested in being present for the ‘discovery’ itself? If they are Schieles, he will literally have first look. If they are not…” Corsier shrugged.

Corsier could see Carrington Knight’s mind wheeling, his imagination foreseeing the drama… and the value of the drama. Corsier went on.

“If Schrade could share in the thrill of discovering a Schiele,” he enthused gently, reaching out with his hand and closing it into a fist, his white French cuffs extending from the sleeves of his dark suit as he turned his fist and drew it back toward himself to connote the compelling effect of his argument. “Schiele the iconized.” His voice softened to a whisper. “Schiele the harsh magician of nervous sexuality. Schiele the disturbed light of modern concupiscence.”

He let his hand return softly to the linen tablecloth.

“I think that even the cold Mr. Schrade could be enthused, as it were, by the drama of seeing these drawings still encased in the frames that have held them since, say, the nineteen thirties, or twenties. The two frames, incidentally, are monstrosities, heavy, ornately carved, gold leaf. Who knows what one might find behind those drawings. Another sketch? A scrawled annotation in Schiele’s own hand that would shed some light into his psyche?”

Carrington Knight was motionless, his face blank. For a moment Corsier was afraid he had overdone it. But no, Knight was seeing a vision. He blinked a couple of times.

“Jesus Christ, Claude,” he said, “have you always been this calculating, and I have simply overlooked it?”

Corsier smiled kindly. “To tell you the truth,” he said, picking up his wineglass, “I think these damn drawings are authentic. I suspect they will be on the market for only the few moments following Schrade’s realization of this. Think of it. They have been lost for three generations, and then they come to light. For only a moment. Schrade will buy them and lock them away until he dies… another generation until his estate is sold. This, my dear Carrington, is a flickering moment of opportunity. It will not come again to either of us.”