The Rembrandt Secret (2 page)

What Owen
didn’t
tell the agent was that Neville Zeigler dealt not in fine art, but in a variety of ‘collectables’; a Jew who had come to London before the war; a Jew who had learnt the business the hard way; a Jew clever enough to develop an eye for the marketable and, later, the valuable. And over the years Neville had instilled in his only child a terrifying ambition. He would take Owen to Bond Street and Cork Street and show him the galleries and
tell his son – no,
insist
– that one day there would be a Zeigler Gallery within this cluster of culture and money. With a ferocity which might have daunted a lesser child, Owen learned to develop his natural appreciation into a skill. Neville’s long hours of labour in the East End afforded Owen a university place – and the son repaid the father well.

When Owen Zeigler finally entered the bull ring of the art world, he was clever, adept and confident. He could pass as an upper class scholar, a natural inheritor of a cultural career. With his innate ability and his further education, his progress was seamless. But what people didn’t know was the other side to Owen Zeigler, the side inherited from his Jewish father, along with Neville’s shrewd, invaluable business acumen.

Encouraged by the widowed Neville, who knew the fortunes to be made in the art world, Owen was told to keep quiet about his background and ‘get climbing’.

‘You’ve a foot in both camps,’ Neville told him. ‘You know about culture, and you’re street-savvy too. Use it. And remember – there’s plenty of room at the top.’

Of course Mr Lyton didn’t know any of this, but was impressed when Owen returned a day later having uncovered the gallery’s erratic history – which he used as a bargaining tool. In short, by the time two weeks were up, Owen Zeigler had become the new gallery owner. And by the time three weeks were up, the interior had been painted, the flat above was furnished, and there was a
new sign outside: after an uncomplicated delivery, the Zeigler Gallery had been born.

In that same bitter winter, Owen held an opening to which his neighbours came to gawp and to criticise, a few to predict disaster. But the dealers from Dover Street and Bond Street realised within minutes of walking through the door that they had a serious new rival. The market at that time was swamped with French art, and the Impressionists, the gauzy country scenes, were becoming commonplace – almost boring – by their very repetition. So Owen had chosen another speciality – Dutch art. Not the thundering names of Rembrandt or Vermeer, in which he could not afford to trade, but the smaller followers, and the still-life painters.

There had been only twenty paintings exhibited on that cold winter day in 1963, but by the end of the month eighteen had been sold. Owen Zeigler’s career had been launched. Not perhaps as a grand, ocean-gobbling liner, but as a swift, clever little lighter that could ride the waves of the art market and survive …

And all this, Owen Zeigler’s son, Marshall, remembered, looking at his father in disbelief.

‘Where did all the money
go
?’ Marshall asked

Owen put his head in his hands. Now in his seventies, he looked no more than sixty-five. Years of careful grooming, and long walks in London parks, had kept him lean, and his hair, although grey, was thick and well cut. In front of him was the desk he had used since the first
day he had begun business at the gallery. A desk on which many a cheque had been written, and across which had passed many a handshake. Above it hung a Dutch painting by Jan Steen. Valuable, as were all the pictures in the gallery, the insurance rising regularly over the years to accommodate and protect Owen’s success. The burglar alarms, red lights flickering outside like out-of-season Christmas bunting, all connected to nearby police stations.

Still staring at his father, Marshall thought back to his childhood. His first ten years had been spent in the flat above the gallery, but as his father had prospered the family had been moved out of London to a country house, Thurstons. During the week, Owen had lived in the flat, spending his weekends in the Georgian stereotype of up-market success. But when Marshall’s mother had died, Owen had returned frequently to Albemarle Street, leaving his son in the care of a nanny, and later the rigid arms of public school.

‘Where did the money go?’ Marshall repeated.

His father made a movement, almost a shrug, but the action dropped off, half-made. ‘I have to do something … I have to.’

For the first time Marshall noticed that his father’s hair was thinning slightly at the crown. Even his expert barber hadn’t managed to disguise it, he thought, knowing that it would embarrass his father if he knew. Then he noticed the raised veins in his hands, the liver spots puddling the tanned skin. His father was getting old, Marshall realised,
unaccountably moved. All Owen’s little vanities were becoming noticeable, obvious … Marshall glanced away, thinking of the telephone call which had brought him back to London, his father asking him to return from his work in Holland.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Owen had said, his voice shivering on the edge of panic. ‘If you could just come home.’

He had done so at once, because his father had never been possessive or demanding. Marshall might have longed for more closeness as a child, might have grieved alone for the loss of his mother, but in his teens he realised that his father’s affection had never been withheld. Just neutralised. Having lost his wife so unexpectedly in a plane crash, Owen had spent the next decade in waiting, almost as though some other plane – real or ephemeral – might bring her back. As though, if he refused to accept her passing, she would one day arrive at some spiritual terminal. Where he would be waiting by the gate to bring her home.

But she never did come back, and Marshall watched as his father finally faced the truth, ten years after her death. He watched the grief, sitting with his father in the country house, staring into country fires or country views. He listened to old memories that had never been his, memories from before his birth, and realised that inside some men there is one space for one woman. And if that woman is lost, the space is never filled again. With a father so bereft, Marshall absorbed his own grief alone, and by the time Owen invited him to talk about his mother’s death,
she had been parted with. As beautiful, but out of time, as his grandfather’s old French paintings.

His thoughts coming back to the present, Marshall prompted, ‘You said the money had gone.’

‘All gone,’ Owen said, nodding.

‘How?’

‘Debts.’

‘
Debts?
’ Marshall was shaken. His father had never intimated that money was tight. ‘You never said you were struggling. The last show was a success—’

Still seated, Owen turned his face upwards to his son, fixing his gaze. ‘I’ve been cheated.’

I’ve been cheated
… The words seemed to swell in the gallery, skim along the picture rails, slide across the red silk on the walls, and then slither up the staircase into the dark beyond. A creeping sense of unease swept over Marshall, the same feeling he had had as a boy sleeping in the flat above, remembering the old story of the building. And listening for the ghost of the unknown soldier. The young man who came out at night, who walked around the gallery below, then crept up the stairs in the darkness.

‘Who cheated you?’

‘I should never have believed him.’

‘Who? Who are you talking about?’

‘Manners.’

Manners. The name fell like a corn thresher, slicing the air between the two men. Tobar Manners, one of his
father’s oldest friends and a fellow dealer. Tobar Manners, with his small pink hands and dandelion hair. Tobar Manners, quick, clever, mercurial, always so charming to his father, but another man to Marshall. Indeed, it was Manners who had told Marshall about the murdered soldier, taking delight in frightening a child with stories of a ghost and then laughing, insisting he was only teasing, but knowing that he had planted a poisonous thought. Many disturbed nights of his childhood Marshall put down to Tobar Manners. Many times, waking at a sudden noise, he blamed his unease on his father’s changeling friend.

‘What did he do?’

Owen shook his head.

‘Dad, what did he do?’

‘I’ve been in debt for some time,’ Owen said slowly, the words crisp, as though he could keep back his panic by the control of his delivery. ‘Business has been bad. The collectors aren’t investing, and the auctions have been hit too. A couple of galleries have even closed down.’ He paused, grabbed at a breath. ‘In the last few years, I overbought. I came across some good paintings and thought I’d have no problem selling them. But then there was the credit crunch. Not many people buy at these times …’

‘But the big collectors?’

‘Are holding back.’

‘All of them?’

‘No, but not enough are investing to stop me going under.’

‘Christ!’ Marshall sat down next to his father. ‘What about the house?’

‘Remortaged.’

‘The paintings,’ Marshall said, feeling some panic himself, ‘sell what you’ve got. You might make a loss, but you’d raise some money.’

‘Not enough,’ Owen replied quietly, his hands clenched together. ‘I didn’t want to tell you how bad it was. I thought I could get out of it, I thought if … I sold the Rembrandt …’

Slowly, Marshall lifted his head, staring at his father. The painting had been in the family since 1964, when Owen had bought it in Germany. At first he had believed it to be painted by Ferdinand Bol, a pupil of Rembrandt’s, but after numerous tests and some intensive research, it had proved to be genuine. It had been the first spectacular triumph of his father’s career. A seal on his talent as a dealer. Marshall could remember hearing the story repeated by his father, and by Owen’s mentor, Samuel Hemmings.
Watch your back now
, Samuel had warned him,
now you have enemies.

‘Did you sell the Rembrandt?’

‘I took it to Tobar Manners …’

‘And?’

‘He said it wasn’t genuine. That it was by Ferdinand Bol, as we had originally thought—’

‘But it
was
genuine!’

‘It’s all in the attribution, Marshall,’ his father said shortly. ‘There’s no cut and dried proof—’

‘Samuel Hemmings backed your opinion,’ Marshall interrupted. ‘Surely his name carries enough weight?’

‘Samuel is a controversial historian, you know that. What he says is accepted by some people and vigorously denied by others.’

‘Usually when there’s money involved.’

At once, Owen flared up, his unruffled urbanity overshadowed by hostility.

‘I know what you think of the business, Marshall! There’s nothing you can say about it I haven’t heard before. You made your choice to have nothing to do with the gallery or the art world. Fine, that was your choice, but it’s my life, and despise it all you will, it’s my passion.’

The argument was worn thin between them. Owen might be committed to art dealing, but Marshall wasn’t blinded to the realities of the trade. And trade it was. A hard, tight little trade where a pocket of honest men traded with a legion of those without scruples. Dealers who had inherited galleries, working cheek by jowl with titans who had bought their way in. Deals brokered between old-school traders and the hustlers who drafted in dummy bidders to up the price on a gallery’s painting at auction. Not that all of the auction houses were blameless; the process of
burning
was well known. If a painting didn’t reach its reserve, it was supposedly sold, but instead it was
burned
, put away for years until the market had either forgotten about it, or presumed it had been put back on sale again by a private buyer. That way no famous name was seen
to lose its kudos and market value. Because market value was imperative. For every Cézanne that scorched through its reserve and set a new benchmark, a dozen other Cézannes in museums and private collections rose in value. Over the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties the art market had inflated the value of Van Gogh to such an extent that one purchaser had to put his painting in store for twelve years for insurance reasons. Art was being priced out of the galleries and off the walls into the steel tombs of bank vaults.

Sighing, Marshall realised that this was no time to resurrect the old argument and moderated his tone. ‘So Manners said it wasn’t a Rembrandt?’

Owen nodded. ‘He said it was by one of Rembrandt’s pupils. Besides, there was no signature on the painting—’

‘There’s no signature on many of Rembrandt’s paintings!’ Marshall snapped. ‘That never stopped them being attributed to him. And God knows there are enough paintings
with
his signature that people doubt are genuine.’

‘Tobar was sure mine wasn’t genuine. When I asked him to buy it, he was told that it was by Ferdinand Bol. He had it looked at twice, thoroughly investigated.’

‘By whom?’

‘By specialists!’ Owen barked, hurrying on. ‘Tobar was so sorry. He said that he would give me as much as he could, but nothing like I would have got for a genuine Rembrandt … Jesus, I
trusted him
. I’ve known Tobar for years, I had no reason
not
to trust him.’

Unbidden, images curled in front of Marshall. Images
of Christmases, of private views, of visits to the gallery – and in every image was Tobar Manners. Always there. Sometimes alone, sometimes in a group. Manners and Samuel Hemmings, and other friends of his father’s, talking, laughing, swapping stories about dealers or customers. Gossip flirting from one glass to another; snippets of information traded over caviar and canapés; cankers of venom floating into greedy ears.

‘What did he do?’ Marshall asked finally.

‘He bought the painting off me.’

‘And?’

‘I just heard,’ Owen said blindly, ‘I just heard about it. The sale in New York. Someone showed me the catalogue, and there is – was – my painting. The same one Tobar had bought from me as a Ferdinand Bol. Only it wasn’t. It was in the catalogue as a Rembrandt.
It had been sold as a Rembrandt.
’ His words were staccato, gunning his story out. ‘Tobar Manners gave me a fraction of its value! He cheated me!’