The Color of Night

CHAPTER 49

TWO DAYS LATER

The woman had called the day before and wanted an appointment to see him. Carrington Knight had no openings in his calendar for that day. She persisted. She said that she understood he was one of the leading authorities on the drawings of these five particular artists. She named them. Was this true?

Knight modestly agreed. He detected an American accent.

Well then, she had drawings by these artists. Seven drawings, which she wanted to sell for a client.

Knight was suddenly alert. These artists did not come on the market every day. In fact, they were rare. Highly collectible. She had seven of them?

These were actual drawings? Documented?

Oh, yes. Every one. Documented.

Maybe they should meet after all. What about tomorrow? he asked. That would be fine, she said, and they arranged a meeting late in the afternoon.

So here he was now, balancing a cup of Lapsang souchong and looking out the windows at the brooding day. On the countertop nearby he had propped up the two photographs of the Schiele drawings. For the past two hours he had paced his second-floor showroom, casting a bright eye at the rain one moment and an avaricious eye at the Schieles the next. The previous day he had e-mailed his news of the Schiele discoveries to Wolfram Schrade at a special number reserved for his art business in Berlin. The woman who handled the paperwork for his acquisitions had responded immediately. She was quite excited at his news, but, she said, Mr. Schrade could not be contacted until that evening. She would communicate the news to him as soon as possible. She was sure she could get back to him the next day.

Today. But she hadn’t. Yet.

Knight looked at his watch. Urgency was very important in these situations. It created a fire in the clients. Urgency begat urgency, and the greater the urgency about a particular piece of art, the greater its importance. Therefore urgency was a valuable psychological tool, and once urgency had been introduced, it was a terrible thing to let it subside. It was like an erotic moment. One did not want to be distracted by the plumber or by a delivery from the grocer. Sustained urgency usually could be stoked up to a really satisfying financial climax.

So Knight looked at his watch again. He sipped the smoky tea, which he particularly enjoyed on rainy days. A rich tea for a rich moment.

He was thinking of this as his eyes made regular sweeps from the photographs of the Schiele drawings to the telephone at the end of the library table and down to the rainy street-unlike most Londoners, he relished the rain, liked watching it, always had, and summer rain was the best-when the black Jaguar Vanden Plas pulled up to the curb in Carlos Place and stopped.

After a moment a uniformed driver got out of the front door, put up an umbrella, and opened the back door of the car. For a flicker of a moment two long legs, almost entirely exposed beneath a short black dress, swung out of the car and onto the sidewalk; the chauffeur’s umbrella blocked his line of sight and hid the woman’s face. As she was helped out of the car, Knight saw the drape of an ankle-length raincoat descend to cover her long legs, and then the chauffeur and the woman hurried up the steps to the front door of Carrington, Hartwell amp; Knight.

Knight’s preoccupation was momentarily arrested. What an elegant arrival. He loved it. It was a fine day.

He watched as the chauffeur returned to the car with Jeffrey, Knight’s receptionist/security guard. While the chauffeur held the umbrella, Jeffrey removed a package from the rear seat, and the two of them hurried up the steps and out of the rain. Ms. Paille and her seven drawings had arrived.

Jeffrey had been given instructions to show her up straightaway upon her arrival, so Knight stood beside his library table and waited for the woman who belonged to the long legs to ascend the staircase, her high heels silent on the Persian-carpeted treads.

As she made the last graceful turn of the staircase, she arose slowly from within the winding tracery of the mahogany balustrade like Venus from the sea. Knight’s heart stalled. Ms. Paille, dressed in black, was a most exotic mixture of Asian and European: tall, trim, her beautiful proportions clothed in a short two-piece affair of snug, fine silk. Her jet hair spilled generously over her shoulders, its highlights glistening in the soft spotlights of the showroom. Her dusky eyes were deep enough to swim in-swim naked, Knight thought-and her olive complexion was stunningly set off by rich carmine lips, which, as fate would have it, were the exact color of the scarlet silk walls of the library in front of which she now stood.

“My dear Ms. Paille,” Knight said. The word of endearment surprised even him, but it just seemed so appropriate.

“Mr. Knight…” She extended a long arm, and he took her hand… and kissed it.

By God, if ever a woman wanted to have her hand kissed… The surprised smile she gave him was worth the extravagance of the gesture, and-should he not have guessed? — so was the fragrance of her wrist.

Jeffrey emerged from behind her and put the wrapped package on the library table, then disappeared silently down the staircase.

“I do appreciate your taking the time for this,” she said. “My pleasure, I assure you,” Knight beamed. He turned to the package. “These, apparently, are the drawings?”

“Yes.”

“And these are your own personal drawings?”

“No, I represent the owner, a gentleman from Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong? Really?”

“I’m Chinese American,” she said, smiling. “Mr. Cao Pei is Hong Kong Chinese. I’ve worked for him for eleven years. Mr. Cao is not an art collector, but he acquired all of these drawings during the last fifteen years from a variety of sources, mostly Englishmen living in Hong Kong. Now he wants to sell them. He believes he can get better prices here than in Hong Kong. That’s my purpose for being here.”

“How interesting.” He looked at her. “Then, your background is not in art?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh?”

“International economics.”

“Then, uh, this is just an assignment for you. Art is not particularly an interest of yours.”

“Not particularly.”

What, Knight wondered, did impassion her? He couldn’t imagine, but he would love to know. He would love to see her impassioned.

“Well, then, do you have documentation that this belongs to Mr. Cao? That’s a very important part of my business, you know, provenance. A work of art, especially an important work of art, has to have, as it were, a genealogy of ownership.”

“I have that in a bank box.”

“I see.” He looked at her breasts, their contours revealed to him in relief, black upon black, their actual shape apparent beneath the capillary attraction of the watery silk. “Then, let’s take a look at what you have.”

The double entendre was out of his mouth too quickly to stop. He smiled at her. She smiled back. Did they understand each other? He wasn’t sure.

She stepped up to the library table, undid the clasps on the case, which was bound in heavy wheat buckram, and opened it. Inside the case a cover page preceded the actual drawings and was closed with a bow of silk. She untied the bow and folded back the cover leaf.

He was silent.

He leaned over the portfolio and carefully put his fingertips on the edge of the table. The first drawing was a Balthus. A fine, a very, very fine Balthus. My God, he thought. A surprise. He turned the leaf. On both the left and the right were two Delvauxs. Rare Delvauxs. Both deliberate drawings, not studies. Knight’s stomach quivered. He turned the leaf. On the left was an Ingres. On the right, Klimt. Both impeccable. Im- pec — cable. Good God. Either alone would have been a wonderful sale. He turned the last leaf. Maillol, left and right. Mother of God. He steadied himself. He squinted as if to see better, but he saw well enough. He saw damn well. He bent closer and pushed up his eyeglasses to the top of his head.

It was extraordinary.

When you were in the art business a long time, as he had been, you experienced over the years many exciting discoveries, you lived through many exciting deals, near misses, achievements. All of these accumulated in the course of one’s career until, eventually, the best dealers were in possession of a colorful oeuvre of anecdotes, stories of art and artists, dealers and collectors, of happenstance and serendipity, of good luck and bad, stories of people who were eccentric and feckless and passionate and ignorant. By far the best stories of all were those of discovery of great works of art and of serendipity. Carrington Hartwell Knight was staring down at a portfolio that represented a second great opportunity in as many days, which together would make one of the best anecdotes of serendipity and discovery that he would ever have to tell. It was passing odd how incidents of good (and, unfortunately, sometimes bad) luck often came in clusters.

Jesus. Mary. And Joseph.

“Ms. Paille,” he said, pulling out a chair for her, “please sit down.” He held the chair for her. He pulled out another for himself and sat down, each of them turned half toward the other, the unbelievable portfolio between them on the table.

He concentrated on bringing himself under control. Ms. Paille-how the hell did she get that name? — was, it was obvious, a most sensible woman. She would not react well to flighty excitement.

“This is a very fine collection,” he began. “Really, it is superb. A singular collection.” He hesitated, but only a heartbeat or so. “Does Mr. Cao have any idea of the collection’s worth?”

She looked down at the two Maillols. Knight studied her profile, appreciating the little dimple at the corner of her mouth that gave her smile a slightly askew expression.

“I have looked into this a little,” she said. “It’s my responsibility to be somewhat informed. But I would rather you told me.”

“I would say, surely, a minimum of three million pounds.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, as slow as the minute hand, her mouth formed a soft, pensive smile.

“Well,” she said, “what do we do now?”

“If you want me to sell them for you, I shall need all the documentation you can give me about their provenance. You mentioned that you had considerable documentation.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need some time to examine that. I will also need to spend time with the drawings themselves, outside of the portfolio. I’ll want to examine the paper, and the medium… whether it’s pencil, crayon, graphite, chalk, etc.”

“I understand,” she said. “But they must not leave here.”

“Oh, of course not. They remain here.”

“Now, I would like to discuss some of the business aspects of the sale.”

Knight nodded.

“What is your fee for brokering these?”

He told her.

“Will you sell them as a lot or separately?”

“I think as a lot.”

“As I understand it,” she said, “the drawings market is distinctive, quite different from, say, paintings.”

“Exactly.”

“Those collectors-individual collectors, that is, excepting institutions, who consistently pay the highest prices for the finest-quality works-are a rather small group. Some of them, those at the top, are passionate.”

“Exactly.”

“I looked into this,” she said, “and I would like you to offer Mr. Cao’s drawings to three different collectors. I understand that they are especially ardent collectors, and therefore pay the highest prices.”

She suddenly produced a small card of cream paper with deckled edges and put it on the table between them.

“I’d like you to offer the drawings to these persons, one at a time, in this order.”

What an extraordinary turn of events. Carrington Knight picked up the card and read the names. He looked at Ms. Paille.

Her eyes were fixed on his. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he realized that he had underestimated her.

“Well,” he began, momentarily at a loss for words, “you have indeed done your homework. How did you arrive at these names?”

She smiled. “The same way I arrived at yours. It is my job to research well whatever Mr. Cao asks me to research. Mr. Cao does not tolerate mistakes. Would you disagree with the list?”

“I should say not.”

“Not even the order?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then that is what you will do?”

He hesitated, though he didn’t know why. She was absolutely right. For some reason he could not fully put his finger on, she seemed suddenly more astute. He felt a little odd about it.

“Yes,” he said, “I will.”

“Good. Mr. Cao has one stipulation.”

A stipulation? What would an eccentric collector be without a stipulation? In this rarefied business prerequisites were a common expression of a special clientele.

“Mr. Cao wishes to remain anonymous in this sale.”

“Very well.” This was not out of the ordinary.

“Nor does he want you to reveal the seller’s ethnic identity. Or mine, his representative.”

This was out of the ordinary. But not a problem, just odd. “Very well,” he said. He loved it.

“Then we have an agreement?”

“Yes, indeed, we have.”