There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
—Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
WITH ITS THICK glass and solid frame, Harriet McClure’s strange self-portrait turned out to be quite heavy. Walt and Seymour had to work together to wrestle the rectangle off the wall.
Despite his age, Walt climbed up and down his library ladder like a nimble squirrel gathering nuts, while Seymour—who could never be described as light on his feet—nearly lost his balance on a footstool.
With Brainert giving outspoken directions, the two men lowered the painting onto a side table. Immediately, the professor took a closer look at the canvas. After a long string of hems and haws, he spoke.
“There’s something wrong with this picture.”
“What do you mean wrong?” Seymour demanded.
“I believe this might be a forgery,” Brainert declared.
“You’re crazy. What’s your evidence?”
“Let me instruct you,” Brainert replied in such a patronizing tone that he might as well have added the word knucklehead. He then pulled a sterling silver pen from his lapel pocket, wiped a thin coating of dust off the picture glass, and tapped on a section of purple sky.
“Look along the edges of this cloud bank. Do you see the series of letters and numbers written in a very fine, spidery script?”
Seymour folded his arms. “Yeah, I see them.”
“And here, on the beach. Is that supposed to be a two-headed baby carved into that red rock?”
“Sure looks like one baby with two heads. Could be two babies. It could go either way.”
“Right here is a bar of music, running along the sand, while a bird hieroglyphic hovers over the house. And see that pink fish jumping out of the water? Something is written on its scales, but the script is so tiny I can’t read it without a magnifying glass.”
Seymour squinted. “Okay.”
“And finally this bird above the house—”
“The seagull?”
“It’s an albatross,” Brainert corrected.
Seymour squinted again. “Looks like a seagull to me.”
Old Walt stepped forward. “No, the professor is right—not about the forgery. I honestly can’t say he’s right or wrong about that. But he is right about the bird.” Walt raised a finger and recited: “What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.”
“Samuel Taylor Coleridge!” Brainert exclaimed. “I knew it!”
“Knew what?” Seymour said. “What are you talking about?”
Brainert smugly tapped the bird with his pen. “See the tiny M under the albatross? Clearly, that stands for Mariner, as in Coleridge’s epic poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner—in which, of course, the careless killing of an innocent albatross is profoundly mythologized.”
With a victory flourish, Brainert tucked the pen back into his lapel. “I concede that the woman in the picture looks like Harriet, but she’s far too young. No other existing self-portrait depicts her that age. Furthermore, there are no surreal elements in any of Harriet McClure’s other paintings, so why would she indulge in such a technique here? Thus, I conclude this painting is a fake.”
Seymour smirked. “Are you finished?”
Brainert raised an index finger. “There is one more detail I should point out, since you failed to notice it.”
Seymour studied the portrait and finally shrugged. “Okay. I give.”
“Ask yourself, Mailman, where is the signature? Because I don’t see it. Yet Harriet always signed her work, in big flamboyant letters, which once again supports my theory that this work is a forgery.”
“All right, Professor, I’ve been patient. Now it’s your turn to make like a student and listen up.”
Seymour counted down with his fingers.
“First, you have to be nuts to forge a virtually unknown painter’s work. For what reason? To make a killing at the church flea market? Think, Brainiac, we are not talking Picasso here. Crazy Harriet is part of Quindicott folklore, not the international arts scene.
“Second. You obviously need to wear your glasses because I noticed those peculiar elements before we hauled the painting down. And you know what? They don’t bother me in the least. Plenty of painters have put codes on their canvases—even your precious Caravaggio snuck a picture of himself into his Bacchus masterwork. In Harriet’s case, this is an early painting, maybe her very first self-portrait, and it’s clear to me she’s desperate to communicate something. What it is, I don’t know yet. But I feel as if she wants me to find out. That she’s chosen me.”
Brainert pursed his lips at Seymour’s lovesick tone but said nothing. I had to admit that Seymour’s statement did sound absurd. But he spoke with such passion—and (honestly) who was I to discount the legacy of a haunting spirit from another time communicating what few could appreciate or even see?
Abruptly, Seymour yanked the silver pen out of Brainert’s pocket.
“Finally, there is something you failed to point out with this fancy pointy-pointer, so let me point it out for your pointy head.”
With the tip of the pen, Seymour touched the lower right-hand portion of the glass, where the canvas met the dark wooden frame.
“Like I said, I know you have them, and you’re too vain to wear them, but if you actually used your glasses, you would see the top of each cursive letter of Harriet’s signature peeking out from under the wood. She signed this work. This frame is hiding her signature, that’s all.”
“Don’t let that frame upset you,” Walt put in. “I’m throwing it in for free.”
“Great!” Seymour replied. “Then all we have to do is wrap her up and get her out to my van. Let’s get this done, shall we? I have a good feeling about this.”
Seymour used his smartphone to snap a few photos of Harriet McClure before he and Walt carefully wrapped Seymour’s new pride and joy in protective crating and waterproof bubble wrap.
MINUTES LATER, WALT was all smiles as he returned to the house. When he did, he noticed me going through his blue notebook on the cookie table.
“What are you doing there, Pen?” He sounded upset. “Those transactions are meant to be private.”
“Sorry, I was just checking to see if that story behind the Nathan Brock painting was in here.”
“Oh, is that all!” Walt shook his head. “It wouldn’t be in my blue book. The sale was too long ago. Like I mentioned earlier, that notebook is in my attic archives. Light’s bad up there at night. I’ll track it down for you in the morning.”
“Thanks, I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”
“It’s just my policy. All my sales are confidential. I’ve had problems in the past.”
“Problems? What sort of problems?”
Walt shrugged. “Collectors are funny birds. They can get very upset about losing a bidding war. I made the mistake of telling one bidder that he lost my Hannes Bok signed illustration to another bidder. Boy, oh, boy, was he angry. Went and tracked down the nice lady who bought the illustration for her son’s birthday. When she refused to sell at double the price, he started harassing her. She had to get a restraining order, and I felt like a heel. Never again, never again . . .”
After Walt wound up his story, we loaded the rest of his loaner paintings into Seymour’s VW. Walt even lent us some of his display easels. Luckily, the storm had let up, and we were able to get the work done without ducking raindrops.
At the last minute, Walt informed me that he’d placed prices on all the cover art paintings we were borrowing for the Palantines’ event.
“If they sell, your shop takes fifteen percent, and I get the rest. How does that sound?”
It sounded good to me. Better than good. It was a step in the direction of that consignment arrangement I was hoping to reach with him.
I shook his hand. “We’ll do our best for you, Walt.”
“I know you will.”
“And we’ll take good care of the paintings, too.”
“They’re all insured, Pen. I’ve been doing this a lot of years, so don’t worry.”
“Thanks again.” Before turning to go, I had another thought. “Is it all right if I take the Nathan Brock, too?” (With Jack’s connection to the picture, I didn’t want to part with it just yet.)
Walt was more than happy to oblige. “Let me put a price on it and wrap it up. It’ll just take a minute.”
“I appreciate it.”
“You know, Pen, now that I think about it, I’ve got a few more pieces in my attic that should be perfect for the Palantines’ audience. I’ll bet they get snapped right up. Tell you what, I’ll put prices on those, too, and drop them off at your shop this weekend. Then maybe you and Sadie and I can discuss my entire collection, art and books, the whole treasure trove. I’ll bring an inventory list.”
I agreed and thought we were finally through.
Not Walt. Like an antique machine, stuck in one gear, he couldn’t stop pitching. Thank goodness Brainert came to my rescue, interrupting with a quick offer on that Philip Wylie first edition.
While the two worked out their transaction, I bolted for the exit.
On the narrow front porch, I found Seymour staring into the still-cloudy night sky. The phone in his hand displayed Harriet’s digital image. Seymour had converted her pixels into a screensaver.
“Our luck is changing,” he declared, grinning down at me. “The storm seems to be passing. I should have my Harriet home by midnight!”