Chapter Twenty-Six
Clem walked into the kitchen. She was feeling groggy from a lack of sleep, trying to solve last night’s problem. Last night she had been tossing and turning for hours trying to think of a solution when the obvious thing hit her. Do nothing. As soon as she had the solution, she fell straight asleep and didn’t wake again until her alarm clock woke her.
On the camping stove she had bought, a pan of porridge and a jug of coffee was on the go. Otto was moving back and forth around the kitchen but other than herself the place was empty.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ve taken the liberty of sending the staff home for the day. We need to continue our conversation and we don’t want to be overheard.’
‘I have a wedding dress to finish. I don’t care about your mess. I’ve decided that we will just do nothing. No one knows about it other than you and now me and we’ll keep it like that.’
Clem sat down and poured herself a coffee from the cafetière. She wasn’t normally a mornings person but she had fallen behind yesterday with Otto’s nonsense, so she was going to have to work twice as hard today. ‘And I wish you hadn’t sent the staff home. I wanted to talk to them about a rota for the sewing groups that are coming to work on Mari’s train.’
Otto poured a ladle of porridge into two bowls and placed one in front of Clem and then sat down opposite. Grabbing some golden syrup, she squeezed on a smiley face and then pulled her laptop towards the pair of them. Opening it up she pushed the screen towards Clemmie and started to eat her breakfast.
Clem looked at the web page, frowning, and sipped at her coffee. ‘Well that changes things, doesn’t it? Shit.’
She started her breakfast, eating in silence, reading on through the website, scowling at Otto from time to time and occasionally swearing.
‘Don’t say a bloody word.’
Pushing the screen away from her, she stared at her coffee and when she decided there were no solutions to be found there, she looked at Otto again.
‘Well, any suggestions? Or are you going to continue blaming my family for your cock-up?’
Otto ignored the barb and pointed to the laptop, where a website was announcing an upcoming exhibition that was going to be exciting and innovating.
‘Last year they did one of these for Turner. It was widely praised and the public loved the detective work involved. Some paintings had full X-rays to show hidden sketches, others had chemical analysis of the paints used at the time as well as DNA analysis of eyelashes that had fallen into the wet oils. There were family histories detailing how a particular picture had moved from buyer to buyer over the centuries, and the entire exhibition had been more like a biography of the art rather than the artist. It had been a great success and now it looks like the VA plan to do the same thing with Vermeer.’
‘And your painting won’t stand up to that level of scrutiny?’
‘No, not a hope. My others would have a chance, but as I had no intention of this one ever hitting the market, I didn’t do as thorough a job. There are no hidden sketches; there may be modern fibres in the paint. And of course it wouldn’t pass an isotope test. But that’s pretty rare; it’s expensive and only done where there is uncertainty.’
‘So, if our painting gets spotted the trail could still run cold? Your other work could avoid detection?’
‘No, because like I said, once they see this they will know there are others, and once they know that they will look harder at any borderline cases. Plus they will also then have my signature.’
‘You signed it?!’
‘No, of course I didn’t, you fool. But every brush stroke, how I built up the paint, how I mixed the temper – these will all be unique to me.’
Clem stood up to pour another cup of coffee.
‘Things will probably go better if you don’t call me a fool again. I’m going to work on the dress and think about things.’
‘But we need to talk about this now,’ snapped Otto.
‘I’m not sure how helpful this fool can be right now.’ And she left the room her mind swirling in a sea of panic