Rembrandt's Ghost Part 2

Remarkably, the rain had moved on to some other unlucky part of Britain, at least for the time being. It was sunny and warm so she'd chosen one of the little cafe tables outdoors. She drank her Americano and nibbled on a biscotti as she looked around. On the far side of Great Russell Street a little farther down the crowds were gathering in the big open courtyard in front of the British Museum, standing like some enormous transplanted Greek temple in the middle of London.

Outside the wrought-iron fence the huge polished black German tour buses with their darktinted windows gleamed like giant beetles, tourists spilling out of them onto the sidewalk like pale little maggots in Lederhosen. They chattered excitedly and scuttled across the sun-bright courtyard, vanis.h.i.+ng into the gloomy depths behind the row of giant columns, intent on an afternoon of "kultur" peering at the famous Rosetta Stone, the famous Bog Man, and the infamous Elgin Marbles; this after all was one of the settings for The Mummy and its sequel. If it was good enough for Brendan Fraser it was good enough for a hausfrau from Stuttgart and her husband, nicht whar? Finn made a little snorting sound and took a sip of her coffee. She'd spent too long under Lady Ron's thumb; she was getting as cynical as he was.

"h.e.l.lo." It was a familiar voice. She looked up, shading her eyes in the bright, early afternoon sun. It was Billy Pilgrim or, more properly, His Grace the duke of whatever and all the rest of it. This time there was no Harvard sweats.h.i.+rt. He wore a well-tailored suit, a nice oxford-cloth s.h.i.+rt in pale blue, and a tie to match. The shoes were s.h.i.+ny, the hair was brushed, and the cheeks and chin were clear of stubble.

"You clean up well, my lord," said Finn. "You know, then."

"I was told in no uncertain terms. In fact I was fired for not knowing your pedigree," she said, unable to keep the chill out of her voice.

"Oh dear!" The blond-haired man looked horrified. He dropped down into the chair across from her. "I can talk to them if you'd like, explain the circ.u.mstances... make them understand." Finn caught the edge in the last words. The pedigree she'd mentioned had weight and he knew it.

She shrugged off the suggestion. "No sweat. It had to happen sooner or later. I couldn't take much more of that place."

"But still, I mean, really..."

"It's okay." She paused, looking at him squarely. The silence went on. Across the street somebody yelled something in very loud German. It sounded like a drill sergeant giving an order instead of a mother calling to her children. Finally Finn spoke. "This isn't a coincidence, is it, meeting like this?"

Pilgrim blushed redly. On him it was cute. She remembered the name of his boat, the Busted Flush. With a "tell" like that he'd be a lousy poker player.

"No, I'm afraid not," Pilgrim answered. "You knew I'd be here?"

"Not this particular spot, but I knew you were coming to Great Russell Street this afternoon, or at least I hoped you would be."

"How?" Then she made the connection. "Tulkinghorn."

Pilgrim nodded. "Sir James is my family's solicitor. One of them at any rate."

"And coming to the auction house, that didn't just happen, either."

"No. You are mentioned as a beneficiary in a relative's will as I understand it. The circ.u.mstances are a little peculiar. I wanted to see who you were."

"Did you know the painting was a fake?"

"No." He laughed. "I was always told it was a Jan Steen. I should have known better. Half of my mother's jewelry was paste as well." He smiled shyly. "Ours is a hollow dukedom, I'm afraid. Not like the old days back in the twelfth century, plundering with Richard the Lionheart, whacking the Saracen hordes and all that." He laughed.

"Sounds like fun," said Finn. "So you really did want to sell it? The painting, I mean."

"Rather." He nodded emphatically. "The Flush could use a refit and a hull sc.r.a.ping, not to mention the family pile on the coast. Falling to bits it is. Even the National Trust doesn't want it, and it's up to its ears in the tax. Meur ras a'gas G.o.drik dhe'n wiasva ma!" The last had a rolling, rhythmic sound like music. It was beautiful, like something from The Lord of the Rings.

"What language is that?" asked Finn, delighted.

"The language of Pendragon and Trebarwith Strand, the language of Tintagel and King Arthur."

"Cornish."

"It is and I am," said the duke. He held out a hand across the little table. "Am I forgiven for my deception?"

"I suppose so, Your Grace," Finn answered. She shook his hand.

"It's still Billy," he said. "No one calls me Your Grace except Tulkinghorn and my great-aunt Elizabeth."

"Your great-aunt Elizabeth?"

"The queen," said Billy.

"You're kidding!"

"Unhappily I am not. A great disappointment to all my cousins, I am, to be sure. I am one of that vast sp.a.w.n of Victoria and Albert, discounting a few indiscretions along the way as I am given to understand. I should have amounted to more. I don't even play polo!"

"How dreadful."

He waggled his fingers. "I'm left-handed. They don't allow left-handed polo players with the exception of cousin Charles."

"The prince?"

"That's the one." He grinned. "No left-handed airline pilots, either."

"I never thought much about it."

"The world's largest invisible minority. Terribly oppressed we are, except for Bill Gates. He's lefthanded as well."

"So is Bill Clinton."

"True, but then again, so is George Bush the Elder."

"Michelangelo," said Finn.

"Leonardo da Vinci," countered Billy Pilgrim.

"Kurt Cobain."

"Who?"

"A dead musician," explained Finn.

"Great-Aunt Elizabeth."

"I didn't know that."

"Queen Victoria as well. Second cousin William. It runs in the family."

Finn laughed. "We're getting silly. We should stop."

"Agreed." Billy glanced at his watch, a big heavy thing in a steel casing that would have looked appropriate on a diver. A long way from the thin little bauble worn by Ronnie. "It's just gone two. Sir James will be waiting. Finished your coffee?"

Finn nodded and stood up. They headed down the sidewalk to the narrow doorway leading to the offices above the bookstore at number 47.

"What are these peculiar circ.u.mstances you mentioned?" asked Finn as they climbed the dark stairs.

"I'm not entirely sure. Tulkinghorn was a little evasive on the telephone."

They reached the second floor and went down a short corridor. Tulkinghorn's was the first door on the right. Billy opened it and ushered Finn into the room. If the lawyer's letter had been out of d.i.c.kens, the man's office was positively Edwardian.

There were three rooms in all, a boardroom to the right, a small, book-lined library to the left, and the actual office in the center of the suite. There was no room for a secretary. A large oak desk with an inlaid, dark red leather center stood between the two large windows that overlooked Great Russell Street. The walls on either side of the windows were decorated with dour handtinted foxhunting prints.

There was a thin, worn rug on the wide-planked polished floor and a brick fireplace on the left. An electric fire brooded coldly in the hearth. Everything was paneled in dark-framed squares of exotic woods like lime, black walnut, and Brazilian cherry. The old-fas.h.i.+oned office chair behind the desk was upholstered in the same deep morocco leather as the desk inlay. There was an oldfas.h.i.+oned inkstand on the desk, complete with an onyx base, and an ebony straight pen with a bright gold nib. There was a green-shaded desk lamp on the left and a pipe rack and a tobacco jar on the right. The tobacco jar was blue Delft with a bra.s.s lid and the painted figure of an Indian in a headdress. There was a crest on the side facing Finn showing three letters, VOC, intertwined.

The man seated in the chair was dressed in a dark suit and a s.h.i.+rt with a high collar. He looked like something out of a Merchant Ivory film; an Edwardian face to match the furniture: dark gray eyes above sagging pouches of seamed skin, long cheeks, thin, bloodless lips, and thinning iron gray hair swept back from a broad, heavily lined forehead that at the moment served as a resting place for a pair of very heavy-looking horn-rimmed reading gla.s.ses.

"Sir James," said Billy.

The man creaked up out of the chair and bowed slightly. "Your Grace," he replied. He held out his hand and Billy shook it. Tulkinghorn was in his seventies at least, the hand skeletal and gnarled with arthritis. Finn noticed how gently Billy took it in his.

"This is Miss Fiona Ryan," said Billy, introducing her.

"Finn." She smiled, and took the old man's hand lightly. Tulkinghorn lowered himself into his chair and gestured toward the leather armchairs set in front of his desk. There was no small talk. The gray-haired man looked down at a pile of papers on his desk, adjusted the reading gla.s.ses, and pursed his thin, unhappy-looking lips. This, Finn thought, was not a man who smiled very much and probably never laughed.

"This present matter is in regard to your cousin on your mother's side, Your Grace, a Mr. Pieter Boegart, residing at, among other places"-here he glanced down at his desk and rustled through the papers-"flat nine, 51 South Street, Mayfair, W1."

"He disappeared as I recall," said Billy.

Tulkinghorn nodded. "Quite so. Precisely twelve months ago. Somewhere in the Far East as I recall, Sarawak or Brunei or some such." Tulkinghorn slid open a drawer in his desk and took out a three-by-five color photograph. It looked like an enlarged copy of a pa.s.sport picture. It showed a middle-aged man with a narrow face, thinning red hair, and a full beard. He looked like a Viking.

"A bit of an adventurer," Billy said.

"That is certainly one way of describing the man," murmured the lawyer, clearly insinuating that he had some other word for him. "At any rate Mr. Boegart left instructions for me in the event that he had not returned to London within a year or had not somehow contacted me to change those instructions. These instructions were also to apply in the event of his death by violence rather than natural causes. The year was up Wednesday week."

"How old was . . . is this Boegart person?" Finn asked.

"Mr. Boegart is fifty-eight, or he was as of the third of this month."

"And what does he have to do with me?"

The old man neatened the pile of papers in front of him. His lips thinned a little more and his frown deepened. He reached out to the pipe rack, chose a curved briar, and filled it from the jar. Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he removed a plain kitchen match and lit it on a sulfur yellow thumbnail. He puffed, filling the air with aromatic smoke.

He took the pipe out of his mouth and coughed briefly. Then he spoke. "As I understand it, Mr. Boegart was your mother's lover for a number of years, her paramour, so to speak." Tulkinghorn cleared his throat again, looking uncomfortable. "Mr. Boegart was of the opinion that there was some chance that he was in fact your father." He sat back in his chair.

"What?" Finn exclaimed.

"Good Lord," said Billy.

"Um," murmured the old lawyer around the stem of his pipe.

"I don't understand this at all," said Finn, recovering a little. "I mean, it's crazy. My father was Dr. Lyman Andrew Ryan, and he was a professor of archaeology at the University of Ohio."

Tulkinghorn fussed with his papers, muttering to himself. He resurfaced, nodding. "Yes, here we are," he said. "According to my information, your father was a senior visiting fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge, which was in fact his alma mater."

"That's right. He was there during World War Two. They asked him back to teach sometime in the sixties."

"Nineteen sixty-nine to be exact," said Tulkinghorn. "He spent ten years there, off and on between digs. He returned to the University of Ohio in the summer of 1979 to head up their department of archaeology."

Finn nodded. "My mother wanted me to be born in the States."

"Indeed," murmured Tulkinghorn. "Be that as it may, Pieter Boegart read archaeology at Magdalene from 1970 to 1973. Lyman Ryan was his tutor and thesis adviser. Between 1973 and June of 1979, he was a lecturing a.s.sistant to your father as well as field supervisor on several of his digs in Central America."

"He knew my father. That doesn't make him my mother's lover."

"No," Tulkinghorn agreed. He put the pipe down on his desk and opened the center drawer. He withdrew a small package of letters held together by a thick rubber band. The letters looked old. The envelopes were pale green, her mother's favorite color. "These make Pieter Boegart your mother's lover." He used one bony index finger to push the pile of letters across the desk toward Finn.

She stared at them. "What are they?"

"Love letters. Billets-doux as the French like to call them. From your mother to Mr. Boegart. They are all dated and they are quite explicit, I'm afraid."

"You've read them?"

"Mr. Boegart insisted when I expressed concern at his bequest."

"Why would you express concern?" Finn asked sourly, her eyes still on the package in front of her.

"Miss Ryan, Pieter Boegart is a majority heir to one of the largest s.h.i.+pping lines in the world. Netherlands-Boegart actually is the largest container corporation in the world. The fortune is immense. To consider paternity, let alone accept it, is a serious legal matter. You could well become what is commonly referred to, I believe, as a spanner in the works."

"A what?" Finn asked.

"A monkey wrench in the gears," Billy translated quietly.

"A problem," said Finn.

"Indeed," said Tulkinghorn, glancing at Pilgrim over his reading gla.s.ses.

"Why did Boegart think I was his child?"

"The timing," replied the old man. "According to Mr. Boegart, his relations.h.i.+p with your mother ended in August of 1979, shortly before she left England with your father. You were born in May of 1980, some nine months later. You were, um, almost certainly conceived in this country. At Cambridge, presumably."

"That doesn't mean it was him."

"The letters would indicate that your father, Lyman Ryan, was incapable of paternity."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Finn asked. "My father was infertile?"

"No," said Tulkinghorn. He looked excruciatingly uncomfortable now. "It would seem from the letters that he was incapable of the act"-he paused and raised a hand to the knot of his tie- "the act of coitus."

The word was so archaic and clinical that Finn would have laughed out loud if the whole thing wasn't so awful and so bleakly intimate.

The old man went on. "It would also appear that he tacitly condoned the relations.h.i.+p between Mr. Boegart and your mother." He paused. "There was a difference in age, as I understand it."

"Twenty years," Finn said flatly. When her parnets had met, her father had been in his early forties, her mother barely twenty-one. A Maya December marriage, teacher and student. Ten years later it was her mother's turn. She had been now thirty-one, the young student, Boegart, only twenty.

Finn stared at the photograph on the desk in front of her. Her father had no red hair or freckles, but her mother's hair had been a deep auburn, and in the summer, there was always a delicate sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. It was possible, maybe even probable. There was a terrible irony to it all. In a few moments she had learned more about her parents than she had ever wanted to know. Things no child should know. "Why are you telling me this?" Finn said angrily.