A Place of Hiding

“That leaves the last,” St. James pointed out. “So you do know where it came from originally?”


Kevin Duffy hadn’t stopped looking at the painting. After a moment he said, “Come with me,” and he went into the cottage. By the door, he kicked off his muddy boots and took St. James through to the sitting room. He flipped on a set of overhead lights that shone directly upon his books and he reached for a pair of spectacles that lay on the arm of a threadbare chair. He moved along his collection of art volumes until he had the one he wanted. He pulled this from the shelf, sat, and turned to its index. Finding what he was looking for, he riffled through pages till he had the appropriate one. He looked at it long before he turned the volume round on his lap to face St. James. He said, “See for yourself.”

What St. James saw was not a photo of the painting—as he’d thought he’d be seeing, considering Duffy’s reaction to it—but instead it was a drawing, a mere study for a future painting. It was partially coloured, as if the artist had intended to check which hues would work best together in the final piece. He’d done only her gown, though, and the blue he’d chosen for it was the same as that which had ended up on the painting. Perhaps, having made a quick decision about the rest of the work and finding it unnecessary to colour the drawing in further, the artist had simply gone on to the actual canvas itself, the canvas St. James now held in his hands. The composition and figures in the drawing in the book were identical to the painting that Paul Fielder had given to Ruth Brouard. In them both, the pretty lady with the book and the quill sat placidly in the foreground while in the background a score of workers heaved round the stones that formed a massive Gothic cathedral. The only thing different between the study and the finished work was that someone along the line had given the former a title: It was called St. Barbara and anyone wishing to see it would find it among the Dutch masters in Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Art.

“Ah,” St. James said slowly. “Yes. When I saw it, I thought it was significant.”

“Significant?” Kevin Duffy’s tone blended reverence with incredulity.

“That’s a Pieter de Hooch you’ve got in your hands. Seventeenth century. One of the three Delft masters. Until this moment, I don’t expect anyone knew that painting even existed.”

St. James looked down at what he held. He said, “Good God.”

“Look at every art history volume you can get your hands on and you’ll never find that painting,” Kevin Duffy said. “Just the drawing, the study. That’s all. Far’s anyone knew, de Hooch never made the painting itself. Religious subjects weren’t his thing, so it’s always been assumed he was just dabbling and then put the effort aside.”

“As far as anyone knew.” St. James saw how Kevin Duffy’s assertion corroborated Ruth’s claim. The painting, she had said, had always been in her family, as long as anyone could remember. Generation after generation, each father had passed it on to his children: a family heirloom. Because of this fact, probably no one had thought of taking the painting to an expert to learn exactly what it was. It was simply, as Ruth herself had said, the family’s picture of the pretty lady with the book and the quill. St. James told Kevin Duffy what Ruth Brouard had called it.

“Not a quill,” Kevin Duffy said. “She’s holding a palm. It’s the symbol of a martyr. You see it in religious paintings.”

St. James examined the painting more closely and saw that indeed it appeared to be a palm frond, but he also saw how a child, uneducated in the symbols that were used in paintings of this period and looking upon the picture over time, could have interpreted it as a long and elegant quill pen. He said, “Ruth told me her brother went to Paris when he was old enough, after the war. He went to collect the family’s belongings but everything they’d owned was gone. I assume that would have included the painting.”

“That would have gone first,” Duffy agreed. “The Nazis were intent on grabbing up what they deemed Aryan art. ‘Repatriating’ was what they called it. Truth was the bastards were taking everything they could get their hands on.”

“Ruth seems to think the family’s neighbour—a Monsieur Didier Bombard—had access to their belongings. As he wasn’t Jewish, if he was the one who had the painting, why would it have ended up in German hands?”

“Lots of ways art ended up with the Nazis. Not just outright theft. There were French go-betweens, art dealers who acquired for them. And German dealers who put adverts in Paris newspapers, asking for art to be brought round for prospective buyers in this or that hotel. Your Monsieur Bombard could have sold the painting that way. If he didn’t know what it was, he might have taken it along to one of them and been grateful to get two hundred francs in exchange.”