Another question niggled. The time Hendall would have taken to make his copy meant that the spot on the parlor wall where the Albertinelli had hung would have been empty for weeks. “At absolute minimum, three weeks.”
Hendall was good, but work of that quality, forgery or not, took time.
Why had nobody noticed the painting was missing?
Godfrey thought back to the room he’d entered with Ellie. He might have become almost instantly fixated on the painting, but out of habit, he’d noticed the other furniture.
There had been no dust on the polished surfaces, and none had swirled into the air when Ellie had drawn back the curtains.
Perhaps knowing he would be shown into the room, the staff had dusted and cleaned.
But the room hadn’t possessed that musty smell that permanently closed rooms inevitably developed.
“I’ll have to ask how frequently the staff clean that room.”
Regardless of the answer, how had the thief—presuming it was someone who didn’t know the family and the house—known where the painting was hung? It hadn’t been displayed in a main reception room and, as he understood it, had been hidden away in the unused upstairs lady’s parlor for the past decade and more.
And how had any thief from outside known the painting wouldn’t be missed—at least long enough for the copy to be made and rehung in place of the original?
He could think of numerous questions, but the most pertinent was: Where was the Albertinelli—the original—now?
He stared, frowning, at the forgery, then pulled out his fob watch and consulted the dial. It was almost eleven o’clock.
He’d breakfasted early and had only briefly crossed paths with Mr. Hinckley and Harry. He’d been cravenly glad that neither had pressed him for his verdict.
He hadn’t said anything about his findings to anyone yet. Aside from all else, he didn’t want to break the news—whatever he elected to say—to the Hinckleys in front of Morris and Pyne. Luckily, when he’d passed the pair in the front hall that morning, they’d been discussing leaving after luncheon; he’d waved and called that he would see them at the luncheon table.
Godfrey looked out of the conservatory windows. Although the park still slumbered under a blanket of snow, when he’d seen Wally that morning, Wally had mentioned that the roads were said to be mostly clear.
He would definitely wait until Morris and Pyne left before saying anything to the Hinckleys.
The more vexed issue was deciding what to say. What he should do, especially now that he knew why Matthew Hinckley had decided to sell the Albertinelli—that the family’s need of cash was very real.
That knowledge…left him confronting a quandary unlike any he’d previously faced.
As a forgery, the Hendall was exceptional. Brilliant, in fact. There were very few other assessors—certainly none in England—who would be likely to detect the very slight differences in the brushstrokes, not unless they had a genuine Albertinelli of the same period against which to compare. The canvas Hendall had used was almost perfect to pass as one from the early sixteenth century, and the paints were a close match as well, although perfectly duplicating paints from that era was impossible.
In truth, the only reason Godfrey had detected the forgery was because he was an expert in Hendall’s work and had studied a host of the man’s forgeries of High Renaissance masters’ paintings to the point he could identify the master forger’s hand.
Yet the Hinckleys had provoked his protective instincts in an entirely novel way. He wanted—with an intensity he’d never felt before with respect to any action—to protect them from the shock and loss the forgery looked set to cause.
In the circumstances…he could say the painting was genuine and expect his authentication to pass unchallenged.
But that would be a lie, a deception of the worst sort, perpetrated on people—not just the Hinckleys but also Eastlake and the directors of the National Gallery—to whom he owed his professional honesty; he’d been commissioned specifically to deliver that.
Still…could he bring himself to do it?
Just the thought turned his stomach; he’d witnessed enough lies and deceit in his life for the notion to provoke a visceral rejection.
Despite that, he stared at the painting and wondered whether he was capable of that level of deception.
Alternatively, could he tell the Hinckleys that the painting was real, while informing Eastlake and the gallery of the forgery, and somehow, in some way, buy the forgery himself?
He could afford it, and the Hinckleys would no longer be pressed for cash.
He would still have to gird his loins and lie to them.
Jaw clenching, he started listing all the possible responses he might make, yet the inescapable question remained: Should he verify the forgery as authentic or cleave to the truth and dash the Hinckleys’ hopes?
Chapter 9
Godfrey skipped luncheon, too exercised by the decision before him to settle to eat with the family while pretending nothing was wrong. With the family he was convinced beyond reason he had to help get through this situation.
In some ways, he felt as if he was the instigator of the problem rather than whoever had stolen the Albertinelli.
Irrational nonsense, yet…that was how he felt. Somehow, he had to make this right.
He was sitting with his back to the end wall of the conservatory with the painting propped on a chair before him, two paces away, when he heard the door open, followed by the soft pats of Ellie’s slippers as she walked down the room. The skies had cleared, and the afternoon sunlight streamed in from over his shoulders, illuminating every line of the supposed Albertinelli composition.
With her gaze on Godfrey, Ellie halted level with the painting.
He didn’t rise but, feeling her gaze, raised his to her face.
She smiled faintly and arched her brows. “Have you completed your assessment yet?”
He stared at her for several seconds, then said, “I grew up in a house with a collection of paintings that inspired in me a love of art. In that regard, I was blessed. But at the same time, my mother, who was definitely no pattern-card for the role, through her own actions, taught me all about deception and deceit and, most especially, the cost of those to others.”
His lips twisted in a self-deprecatory grimace, and his gaze grew distant. “My mother was a truly dreadful person. She was monstrous, in fact, although we didn’t comprehend just how monstrous until the very end. However”—he drew a tight breath—“courtesy of her and her teachings, I developed an eye—and an instinct, as well—for…” Tipping his head, he thought, then went on, “I suppose you could say for anything that strays from the genuine.”
His voice had remained low and even. He seemed to be studying, pondering, something far away, beyond her, beyond the painting. She had to wonder if, in some strange way, it was himself he was examining in an aloof, detached fashion.
“Originally,” he continued, “that instinct was focused on people, on steering me, guiding me, through the shoals of lies and fabrications and self-interested prevarications that abound in the ton. There were times when it seemed deceit and deception were all around me and only by honing and trusting in that instinct would I survive.”