Angels of the Flood Read Free

unforgettable weeks, would the Marsyas detail have had the power to sabotage her well-planned lecture?
    She was still considering this while she unlocked the door to her studio, a large, airy, north-facing space which took up the entire first floor of the house and a generous extension into the garden as well. He seemed fascinated by the tools of her trade. While she tidied away the slides and her notes, he prowled round, examining everything, from the high-tech magnifier to the maulstick, a small piece of cloth wrapped tightly round the end of a piece of wood that artists have used to rest their painting hand on for centuries.
    ‘Isn’t there a Rembrandt self-portrait that shows him holding one of these?’ he asked. ‘At least you’re in good company, Kate.’ When she didn’t answer, he sniffed the air, then said, ‘I know what’s strange. I expected this place to smell of turps and oils, but it doesn’t. Why’s that?’
    ‘We use acrylic paints when we have to retouch paintings,’ she told him. ‘It’s easier for future conservators to remove and it’s the only way to get a permanent match since oils darken over time.’
    He considered this. ‘Presumably you want to restore the picture as nearly as possible to its original state.’
    ‘There’s a lot of debate about that,’ she told him. ‘Some conservators think the retouching should be easily distinguishable from the original. The most famous example of that school of thought is the Cimabue crucifixion in Florence which was so badly damaged by the flood. Do you remember that? It was almost destroyed, and they decided not to try to retouch it at all, just coloured the damaged bits in a kind of neutral cross-hatching as a memorial to the destruction. Now a lot of people think that was too extreme. There’s no one right way of doing this job.’
    ‘Oh look,’ said David. ‘Here’s Marsyas.’ He’d found the painting on an easel to one side of the studio. Kate didn’t look up. She was searching through a box of slides. ‘Are you going to remove the animal graffiti?’ he asked.
    ‘We’re waiting for instructions from the owners.’
    ‘I thought you said they were anonymous.’
    ‘Yes, but we can communicate via the dealer who’s acting as go-between.’
    ‘You recognized the painting, didn’t you?’
    Kate froze. Something was squeezing her ribs, making it hard to breathe. She said, ‘I—don’t know.’
    ‘We both recognized it,’ David said firmly. He’d moved quietly across and was standing right in front of her. His bulk seemed to be sucking the air out of the room. He said, ‘It was at the—’
    ‘I really don’t remember where I saw it before,’ she interrupted him quickly.
    ‘The Villa Beatrice.’ He pronounced the words in the Italian way—Bay-ah-tree-chay. Kate recoiled. The Villa Beatrice. Extraordinary how just hearing the name of that place had the power to take her breath away even after all these years.
    ‘Maybe,’ she said. There was some kind of constriction in her throat.
    ‘You know it was.’
    ‘Maybe,’ she said again. Her fingers had been flicking through the slides. Now they stopped. She’d reached the ones she was looking for, but found she was reluctant to touch them, as though these particular slides were coated with poison. And, in a way, they were.
    ‘What’s that?’ asked David.
    ‘Just another picture.’
    ‘So?’
    She hesitated, then, ‘This one was altered as well.’
    ‘And then sent to you?’
    Kate nodded.
    ‘By the same person?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘But you think it is?’
    ‘Yes, probably.’
    ‘Can I see it?’
    ‘It’s not—’
    ‘I’d really like to have a look.’
    Gingerly, Kate took a slide from its cover and set it in the viewer, before passing it to David. He looked at it for a few moments, then said, ‘Explain, please.’
    She moved a little distance away and began picking the dry leaves off a geranium plant. They released their cool aromatic scent