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

himself, it will all be gone. Frankly, I doubt he would have had a baroque masterpiece, if that’s why you are interested in him. A Gentileschi would have been hard to hide.”

“Is there a record of a Gentileschi sold sometime, years ago, to a Hungarian collector?”

“The closest I can come to a record of a painting by Artemisia in eastern Europe is a self-portrait seen in Warsaw before the war. Some nobleman, later executed by the Germans, had one that he had not wished to sell to Göring. So you think the painting in Strasbourg is a real Gentileschi?”

“Still not sure,” Helena said.

“Your tests at Arte Forense confirmed it’s the right era?”

“As far as we can tell.”

“We?”

“Andrea Martinelli and I tested the paints used, and the canvas. Trouble is, some of the best in the fakes business have been known to use old canvases and make their own paints from the same basic materials.”

“Would your client allow us to do more tests?”

“No. They want a quick opinion and a sale.”

“Please tell them we could handle the sale. We have the expertise and the experience. We are the best in the business and would get them more money than if they go on their own.”

“James,” Helena said, “I don’t need a sales pitch. I will let you know what they decide.”

She had been wondering who was selling off Biro’s collection and where the money went. The old guy in fuzzy slippers Attila had met? Unlikely. Berkowitz, the archer? Very unlikely. Could he have been hired by one of the men in Rózsadomb? If so, why?

There was only one Gyula Berkowitz listed at a Buda address. Another tree-lined street with well-kept houses, smaller than the ministers’ houses but very nice. Berkowitz had part of a duplex with shared stairs, separate outside entrances, small side gardens, low fence, high windows. His side had a red-painted door, drawn blinds; the other had a couple of half-open windows and a brown door with a mezuzah on the side.

Helena rang Berkowitz’s doorbell. The sound echoed inside the apartment. Few carpets and not much stuffed furniture to muffle sounds, she thought, and waited. She tried the bell again, then knocked on the door loud enough that she assumed the neighbours would hear. Still no one came.

She rang the neighbour’s bell and, judging by the time it took for the response, the woman who answered must have been standing an inch from the door, looking out, waiting to see what would happen. “Nincs otthon,” he is not at home, she said.

“He doesn’t seem to be at home,” Helena said in English.

They regarded each other for a moment, before the woman said in English, “You are not Hungarian.” She was short, just over five feet, with a big curly black hairdo that added some height. She wore a knee-length burgundy dress, matching lace-up shoes, and a lot of makeup for an at-home afternoon.

Helena smiled. “No. I am American,” she trilled, inhabiting Marianne Lewis’s personality, “I have come such a long way to see him. Very, very disappointing to say the least. I cannot imagine flying all the way home to New York without seeing him. Any idea when he will be home?”

“New York,” the woman repeated.

Helena stretched out her hand. “Marianne Lewis,” she announced.

“Zsuzsa Klein,” the woman said, shaking Helena’s hand. “That’s ‘Susan’ where you come from. We haven’t seen your friend for some time now.”

“Days?”

“Two weeks, at least.”

“He didn’t happen to say where he was going?”

“Not really,” Zsuzsa said after a moment’s hesitation.

“But you have guessed?”

“I thought he may have gone to France. He travels a lot, and sometimes he asks me to pick up his mail. You know how it is: when your mail sits outside, people know you’re away, and someone could try to break in.”

Helena nodded. “So you have been keeping his mail for him.”

“No. We put it inside. But I noticed he hasn’t touched it in a long time, and a couple of small packages looked like they were from France.”

“That’s why you thought he was in France?”

“I thought perhaps he had bought a few things and sent them home so he wouldn’t have to carry them.”

“Oh.”

Zsuzsa hesitated before she asked, “You are a relation?”

“Only a friend,” Helena said with a small pout. Given the upper lip enhancement that being Marianne required, she could manage only a very small pout. “Gyuszi said he would be here.” Vargas had called him Gyuszi — that being the diminutive of Gyula. “Perhaps, if it’s not too much trouble,” she asked, “you would let me have a look inside. He had invited me to stay at his place. Maybe there is a note or something for me. Like I said, he was expecting me to come. . . .”

“I didn’t see a note,” Zsuzsa said.

“He was” — Helena stressed the “was” — “really expecting me.”

“Hmm.”

“All the way from New York.”

Zsuzsa rattled some keys in her pocket, selected one from a key ring, and opened the red door. She stepped back to let Helena in, and followed close on her heels.

The apartment was all open concept, airless, and smelled of disuse and disinfectant. Someone had cleaned the black-and-white tile floors and the clear plastic-backed chairs, the low plastic-top table. There was one angular brown sofa that occupied the living area. In the middle, under the table, a brown woven rug. The walls were beige. No paintings, no books, nothing that suggested someone had enjoyed relaxing here. A set of shelves with a few photographs, face down, and a copy of Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace from three days ago, a photograph of the murdered lawyer on the front page.

Helena murmured something about the photographs and wondered loudly, for Zsuzsa’s benefit, whether he had a picture of her, and she leafed through the black-and-white photos. One of the lawyer Magoci at an outdoor restaurant table, laughing and talking with a young woman; one of Gizella Vaszary and her husband also laughing; and another of herself half-turned toward the River Ill,