The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) by Aaron Elkins, Charlotte Elkins Read Free Book Online Page B

with twinkling good grace. That smile of his really was a winner. “Not necessary, Mrs. B. I think you’ve pretty well seared it into my brain.”
    Mrs. B relaxed into a near smile herself, having made her point: When push came to shove, she still held the whip hand. “Good. Let’s move on. Alix, the board has unanimously accepted your bid to clean three of the paintings going to auction—the Sargent, the Eakins, and the Mary Cassatt still life—as long as you can guarantee to have the work completed by the time of the auction.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. B. I should have them done in ten days; two weeks on the outside.”
    “However . . .” Mrs. B’s long, knobby fingers drummed delicately, perhaps nervously, on the glossy tabletop. “. . . However, there is one issue—”
    “The Stubbs,” Alix said. “ Chestnut Stallion with Two Spaniels. ”
    “Yes, the Stubbs. Can you explain?”
    “Explain what?” asked Madge Temple. “What about the Stubbs?” The word issue had grabbed her attention. If there was an issue in the making, she wanted in on it.
    “Alix declined to clean it,” said Clark, who had apparently been briefed earlier.
    “You declined ?” Madge said. “Why? It’s our oldest painting and it looks like hell. The varnish has turned so yellow the damn stallion looks like Lassie. And then there are all those fly specks, and what about the paint blisters that are starting—”
    “I didn’t ‘decline’ to clean it, Madge, I said it can’t be cleaned.”
    “Which means you can’t clean it,” Drew said. “Maybe we need to find another—”
    “No, I meant that you couldn’t find any knowledgeable, reputable conservator who would even try.”
    “Then we know what has to be done. Our course is clear,” Alfie contributed with a swig of his bourbon-laced coffee. “Only where do we find a disreputable one?”
    Mrs. B ignored him and spoke to Alix. “Explain, please.”
    “Of course—”
    “Are you aware,” Clark interrupted, “that the Stubbs is the cornerstone of our auction, the unit that is projected to bring the greatest return?”
    “No, I wasn’t aware of that,” Alix said. “And frankly, that surprises me. It really isn’t one of his better works.”
    “That’s so,” Prentice said. “It’s little more than an oil sketch.”
    Clark’s friendly, boyish, snaky smile gleamed. “I agree with you both—I mean, who am I to disagree with you two?—but the pertinent fact here is that Stubbs’s Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath sold at Christie’s London not very long ago for more than thirty million dollars, the third highest Old Master price in auction history. So as you can imagine, that brings everything by Stubbs, including doodles on napkins, into the best-of-breed class when it comes to sales. Quality is not the issue we should be concerned with here.”
    “Quality is not the issue we should be concerned with?” Prentice echoed. “What are we aspiring to be, a used-car company, a—”
    “All very interesting,” said Mrs. B, “and pertinent, I’m sure, but can we get back to my question? Alix: Why can’t it be cleaned?”
    “It’s because of the materials he used in some of his paintings from this period, and unfortunately this is one of them.”
    George Stubbs had been a late eighteenth-century English painter known for his pictures of animals, and especially for his portraits of famous horses, the champion Gimcrack being the prime example. But apparently in an attempt to make his paintings on wood panels as smooth as enamel, he had experimented with various arcane waxy materials—s ome of them so obscure that they had never been identified—to thin and smooth his pigments. The problem, as Alix now told them, was that no one had yet come up with a solvent that could safely dissolve the darkened varnish without also dissolving the wax-impregnated paint underneath. Unfortunately, as Alix had determined, Chestnut Stallion was one of these paintings.
    “Well,