Deceptions by Anna Porter (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📗

and she spelled it in a variety of ways. Orazio himself had written her name with two e’s in some of his letters to her. But Helena had not seen a signature with the entire surname missing. When accepted into the Accademia delle Arte del Disegno, she had spelled the whole name, with Lomi added at the end: “Artemisia d’Orazio Gentileschi Lomi.” Lomi, one of her relatives, was a good name to have in Florence, since he, too, had been a distinguished artist.

Helena ran her fingers over the paint, feeling where the artist had added layers of colour. She felt for the brush strokes, decisive, planned, certain. In her early work, Artemisia didn’t use underpainting or even sketches on the canvas. She had been one of Caravaggio’s followers — a young “Caravaggist,” adopting his startling use of light and of real, unidealized models.

Artemisia shed Caravaggio’s influence as her own style developed, and she began to paint in styles favoured by the courts of Milan and Naples. She needed patrons, and the rough Caravaggist manner was thought unsuitable for a woman. The painting of Cleopatra she had presented to the Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici was much softer, the figure more suggestive and less powerful than her earlier female figures.

“There are forty known paintings by this artist in the world,” Helena said. “I think I have seen them all. I have also spent a couple of winters in the basement of the Hermitage, and I would definitely remember this painting had it been there. I have to do some tests, of course, but I do not believe it’s a copy of anything in the Hermitage.”

“Tests?”

“Carbon dating analysis of the canvas fibres, the pigments in the paint, the wood support of the canvas. It will take time.”

“How much time?”

“It can take months if you want it authenticated. One case I was involved in took two years. If you want to be absolutely sure, you would use spectroscopy, as it allows us to determine the molecular structure of the paint . . .”

“I don’t have months,” Gizella said. “What can you do in a couple of weeks?” She stood and walked to the windows. “I do not think he will give me even that long. He has announced his intention to move to Brussels before the end of the month to take up another appointment. I would not be going with him.”

“That does not sound very cordial. And you said the divorce was not unpleasant.”

Gizella shrugged, rubbed her palms together in a strange gesture of “what can you do,” and smiled out at her garden. “It’s the move to Brussels,” she said. “He has another, more important appointment, and he wants to settle everything before he goes.”

“Presumably,” Helena said, “Mr. Magoci gave you advice on that, Mrs. Vaszary. I certainly cannot, but I can tell you that a proper analysis of the painting cannot be done in such a short time. All I can do is take small samples for carbon dating and give you my best guess as to authenticity.”

“There are buyers who may not demand a complete analysis, don’t you think?” Gizella turned away from the window and came up to the painting. “There are some who may even accept an opinion from an expert, such as you, and not wait for the test results.”

Helena said she would see what she could do. She took a number of photographs of the painting, some from a distance of three metres to encompass all of it, some up, paying particular attention to the faces, the folds in Judith’s cloak, the contrasts of murky dark and brilliant highlights, the signature, and the rusty blood around Holofernes’s neck. She nicked the tiniest bit of paint from the bottom left corner of the painting and put it into her handkerchief, another from where Judith’s dress met her breast, and an even more miniscule sample of the signature. She examined the back of the painting for any telltale marks, felt the canvas, and cut a tiny speck from the wood. “I will let you know,” she said. “Meanwhile, I have a pressing problem with the local police, who knew I was with your lawyer on the boat and seem to think I can tell them something about the man who killed him.”

“And you can’t?”

“I can’t. And I don’t want to be involved with the police here — or anywhere, for that matter. They are slow-moving and tedious. This whole situation has nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know the man.”

“But you did take off after the killer. It’s what the television said.”

“It was the right thing to do. He had just shot someone I sat with, and he was going to vanish long before the police arrived. . . .”

Mrs. Vaszary laughed. “I wouldn’t have thought of running after that man.”

Not in that outfit, and not in those shoes . . . “I need to borrow a scarf and sunglasses, if you have them,” Helena said. “Perhaps I can give you my preliminary assessment and leave before they decide to hold me as a material witness.”

“I can’t imagine they would,” Gizella said, and asked Hilda, who had been lingering in the doorway, to bring her silk Chanel scarf and a pair of sunglasses from the hall closet.

Helena stuffed her baseball cap into her backpack, exchanged the cheap cathedral scarf for Gizella’s chic Chanel, which she wrapped over her head and throat. She put on the sunglasses and checked her reflection in the gold-framed hall mirror. Lucy, she noted, had watched her every move.

Chapter Five

Attila took a cab from the Strasbourg airport to the official residence on Rue Geiler. He asked to see Iván Vaszary. When Hilda told him that Vaszary was not expected back from Paris until eight o’clock, he asked whether Mrs. Vaszary could see him. Hilda, a pleasant woman from somewhere on the Hungarian prairies, was usually happy to see Attila. Someone from home who had no airs and often shared